Chapter 4
When Cairong healed, Xiangjun was released. She seized my arm and asked what Madam Yu planned. I lied that I did not know. In truth, Madam Yu had said Yichun House could not keep so violent a woman and meant to sell her. Wan Niang had been discussing the matter behind closed doors.
Believing herself abandoned, Xiangjun drew the only sharp thing left to her, a gold hairpin. “My father and brothers are dead. Living only shames them. Better to end it.”
Cairong emerged from behind a beaded curtain. “If you must die, do it elsewhere. Don’t bring bad luck here.”
“You have least right to scold me, Lu Jinshang.”
So that was Cairong’s true name. A name meaning flowers added to brocade—an auspicious name.
Cairong smiled without warmth. “You had the right to whip me?”
“Your father’s impeachment made the throne suspect my father and brothers! The Shen family was destroyed because of the Lus.”
“And whom should I blame for my dead father and brothers, my mother and sisters who killed themselves?”
Xiangjun stammered that Heaven punished evil.
“If only Heaven and justice truly existed.” Cairong stepped into the sun. “Those who rule sit in court; those who wield power sit in palaces. My father was a minor official with a narrow view. He thought he had glimpsed a blade that could benefit the people and presented it reverently. He never imagined it would cut his own throat. Our families were discarded when we ceased to be useful—the hound cooked when the rabbit dies, the bow hidden when the birds are gone.”
The hairpin fell soundlessly. Cairong approached her. “I have explained it once. If you target me again, I will not endure it. Miss Shen—this is the last time I will call you that. In Yichun House there are only Xiangjun and Cairong.”
Madam Yu kept Xiangjun. Few houses dared buy her, and Wan Niang proposed turning her rivalry with Cairong into profit. That night two servants posed as patrons bidding against one another. Noble sons loved to compete. Cairong’s price rose to five hundred taels; Xiangjun’s sword dance, once worth ten, rose into the hundreds too.
Delighted, Madam Yu rewarded Wan Niang with a jeweled headdress and earrings. Wan Niang never wore them. She had Zhao Si pawn the headdress, though its gilded iron brought little. When he returned the money, she let him keep one string of coins for sweets. He refused, so she gave him candied fruit.
Wan Niang had sewn him shoes and underclothes, small kindnesses money could not buy. Zhao Si offered the sweets to me. She laughed. “Xi-girl eats those every day. Keep them, young man. But tomorrow, after school, please summon my Bo’er.”
Her son arrived only at sunset. He scowled at the servants staring at his school case and barely called her Mother even after she embraced him in tears. Wan Niang displayed imported mirrors and southern fruit. He showed interest only when she brought out her money. “You said your classmates had fine brushes and ink. Buy yourself a set.”
His face fell after counting it. “Enough for one inkstone, perhaps, but not a purple-hare brush.”
Five taels for an inkstone astonished me. Wan Niang opened her nearly empty jewelry drawer. I tried to stop her, but she gave him the treasured earrings too. Only then was he pleased. He wrote out a new poem for her. She watched every stroke with love sweet enough to fill the lines time had carved around her eyes.
She cradled the paper after he left, though she could not read and he had never explained it. “A parent’s heart is the most pitiable thing,” I sighed with childish solemnity.
Wan Niang laughed and touched my cheek. “You are not a parent. How would you know?” Then she realized she had hurt me. Before she could apologize, the watchman’s clapper sounded. She loosened her dress. “Time to receive guests. Go, Xi-girl. Return at dawn.”
The red curtain fell. The yellow lamp dimmed. Beneath her pillow lay the page her son had written.
I fled.