chapter 4

My imperial brothers could leave the palace whenever they pleased, but I could not.

I could not say so outright, so I used the pretext of going to Huguo Temple outside the city to pray, and under my mother’s cover, slipped out of the palace to do the things I wanted to do.

Huguo Temple had days each month when it set up stalls to give out porridge. At first I stayed inside the temple compound, ladling porridge and serving rice alongside the young monks. Later, pleading that the courtyard was too crowded, I began to give alms outside the temple as well.

My real purpose was to walk out to the fields.

The first time I saw wheat seedlings, I naively snapped off a stalk and put it into my mouth.

Aunt Li, who worked the land, burst out laughing and snatched it from my mouth in a fluster.

“Princess Jing’an, for wheat to become food, it must pass through several stages. Chewing it raw like this will never taste like what the Princess eats in the palace.”

On the first and fifteenth of every month, I went out of the city to pray. And so, in the year I idled my way to fifteen, I saw with my own eyes how the green wheat seedlings turned golden and ripened, how the farmers cut them down with sickles, how they were ground into flour, and finally made into food that could be swallowed.

Aunt Li, who had grown fond of me, had two sons who had gone to war, following Wei Lingxiao.

Only a youngest son, long confined to a sickbed, remained. I could not bear it, so I changed into plain clothes and went to her house whenever I had a spare moment to help her grind flour.

Aunt Li was frightened, afraid of harming my precious body.

I helped her up. “The people who talk of securing a peaceful, well-fed life for the common folk all live in deep mansions with high walls, feasting on jade and beating drums to announce their meals — and throwing away a cartload of delicacies at a single meal. My heart truly feels ashamed.”

The sun blazed down, and my arms were scorched purple-red, yet I still would not stop my steps as I led the donkey.

“At noon they hoe weeds in the fields; sweat drips down onto the soil. Who knows that every grain in a dish is the fruit of bitter toil?” Back in the temple quarters that night, my mother’s heart ached as she applied sunburn ointment to my skin, and I recited the poem to myself.

“We memorized these verses when we were four or five. But memorizing was only to win favor before the Emperor, to compete over who could recite better. No one ever thought that in a few dozen characters lies the lifelong hardship of ten thousand farm households.”

Suddenly wind and rain erupted outside the window. Remembering Aunt Li’s wheat stack, I frowned, changed into plain clothes, and made to leave.

My mother was worried and sent a guard to accompany me.

The guard was named Lingyun. Not only did his name resemble hers, but his eyes also resembled Wei Lingxiao’s.

I forced myself not to keep thinking of her.

Letter after letter had been sent, all of them wild and idle fancies.

They disturbed her — and disturbed my own heart even more.

Lingyun held an umbrella over me. I did not want to look into his eyes, so I said, “Mind the road. When we reach Aunt Li’s house, go look after her little boy. In rain like this, with her roof leaking in several places, I fear the child’s illness will worsen.”

But when we hurried to the house, we were still a step too late.

The wheat stack had collapsed, soaked through by the rain.

The little boy had been caught in the rain and was coughing so feebly his breath hung by a thread.

When we arrived, Aunt Li had just hitched the donkey to the cart and was about to carry her son to find a physician.

The moment she saw me, this woman who had been as steadfast as a rock suddenly burst into bitter tears.

Aunt Li always told me that she was lowly, that standing beside me she was the basest blade of grass.

But even as she said such things, she never shrank back or wiped away her tears.

Her husband had died young, and she had raised three children on her own. Two had joined the army, leaving her to shoulder the farming of a household of four by herself.

At harvest time, when every inch of daylight was worth its weight in gold, she worked the fields without sleep or rest, propping up the sky of her whole household with her own two hands. In my eyes, her fortitude and courage were no less than Wei Lingxiao’s.

And since the day I gave Aunt Li a secret command — telling her I would borrow the name of her distant relative and travel in disguise — she had never once asked me for any reward.

Even with a princess hidden in her home, she still devoted herself to her work, neither servile nor arrogant.

But a bowstring stretched taut day after day must eventually snap.

She knelt before me, despair in her eyes. “Princess…”

A person whose spine was as sturdy as a pine could not bring herself to beg. I hurriedly pulled her to her feet. “Auntie, you drive the cart; I’ll hold Sanlang. There’s no time to lose — I’ll guide you, hurry!”

I snatched the umbrella from Lingyun’s hand, jumped onto the cart, and shielded the child from the rain, then ordered Lingyun:

“The mountain road is rough — follow behind and guard our rear. When we reach Huguo Temple, we’ll wait at the back gate. You hurry ahead and tell my mother to have the imperial physician standing by, then send people to bring us inside!”

Lingyun asked me with concern, “Princess, Huguo Temple is a sacred place for prayer. They are but common folk—”

“How dare you!” I cut off Lingyun’s fawning, condescending words, my tone stern. “If today I turn a blind eye to the lives of my people, then my prayers before the Buddha every month would all be empty words! Would I not have lost my conscience?”

I seized Lingyun’s wrist. Thunder crashed, and I saw that this guard, who usually treated me with a mix of respect and indifference, finally wore a different expression.

“Lingyun, I do not want to make you all lose heart.”

His look shifted from bewilderment to resolve, and in the end he helped us push the cart all the way back to Huguo Temple.

Thankfully, we raced against time, and when a shaft of golden morning light crept into the Buddha hall, the life of Aunt Li’s youngest son was saved.

Even the old abbot, who usually kept his mind pure and serene, was visibly moved and praised me. “Princess Jing’an, saving a life is a great act of merit. The Princess accumulates virtue and does good deeds, and the Buddha will surely protect her.”

I went to help Aunt Li salvage the wheat stack and did not return until dawn, utterly exhausted.

I leaned against Aunt Li’s shoulder as she wept with joy, and gently wiped away her tears.

“Auntie, do not cry. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

I believed that destiny held its own design in the unseen, but I preferred to fight with all my might before that destiny arrived.

And now, the road ahead was long — and I had only just stepped onto the stage.