chapter 2
chapter 2
After that, I did not spare my so-called husband another glance. I followed Madam everywhere.
When she read account books, I kneaded her shoulders and thumped her back. When she napped at noon, I fanned her, chased away flies, and prepared fruit. When she inspected her shops, I carried her handbag.
Madam owned several cloth shops. During an inspection, she walked in front with her hands clasped behind her back while I followed with my head high and my chest out. I felt magnificent.
All the shop assistants were pretty women. At the sight of Madam, they blossomed like flowers, calling out “Boss!” one after another and tugging her this way and that.
Every visit left my cheeks pinched red. But since they gave me milk candy, I magnanimously forgave them.
It was a wonderful life.
I had never met women as vivid and alive as Madam and those older sisters. They did not spend their time plotting how to hurt others or win a man’s favor. They sought their own happiness and earned their own silver.
By comparison, the women in the household back home—even the First Madam, who controlled the purse—had stagnant pools hidden in their eyes. Mother hardly dared raise her head at all.
I wanted to send her a letter that instant and tell her to pack up and leave.
“Immortals of every road and heaven, please bless me.” Kneeling before the window, I prayed devoutly to the moon. “Let me follow Madam for the rest of my life.”
Then I added in a whisper, “And please let me become rich.”
…
When yellow leaves covered the ground, Madam’s birthday arrived.
More than a dozen men and women gathered, making the house wonderfully lively. Madam drank wine and ate meat with several of the shop women, free and happy, while I watched from the side in amazement.
Her younger brother was an unbearable nuisance. Like a fly buzzing around my ears, he would not stop calling me “little maid.”
Perhaps Madam tricked me into taking a sip of wine. I slapped the table and smacked him, slurring, “I am not a maid! I am a concubine!”
“I am your elder!”
Then I passed out.
Only after waking did I learn what a fool I had made of myself. The First Madam had sold me here as a maid. I had never been anyone’s concubine.
I also met the real Lord Fu.
He looked like an exiled immortal and suited Madam perfectly.
Yes—the foul feet I had washed for half a month belonged to the groom.
One of the maids explained that Lord Fu had placed first in the imperial examinations. After taking office, he had been away managing a drought and returned only as Madam’s birthday celebration was ending.
She also said Madam and Lord Fu had grown up together and loved each other deeply.
That much was obvious. From the moment he returned, he stole my Madam away. Every day, I could only hide in the shadows and watch him cling to her.
As if that were not bad enough, her younger brother, Young Master Xie, was always ordering me around. One moment he wanted me to copy his practice sheets; the next he wanted to spar and pretend to be a wandering hero he had killed. Afterward he complained that my handwriting was ugly and my hero too weak.
I wanted to swat him with a broom, but I did not dare. The next time he gave me an order, I pretended not to see or hear him.
Without a word, he tossed me a piece of gold.
Good heavens. He was even more lavish than his sister.
I bit the gold lightly, my voice trembling. “Young… Young Master, I can do more than play dead. I can play animals too. I can be… whatever you want?”
I never got to play an animal. My patron was sent to kneel in the ancestral hall again.
He hated studying, had a rotten temper, and delighted in causing trouble. Every few days, Madam chased him around the courtyard with a horsewhip.
I counted the reasons she had beaten him: stealing examination papers, pulling down someone’s trousers, drawing a turtle on his teacher’s face… not one of them was decent.
Madam taught me a phrase for people like him: despised by cats and dogs alike.
“What astonishing talent you have! The legitimate son of the Vice Minister of Revenue—you kicked him without a second thought and sent him into a cesspit!”
In the ancestral hall, Madam’s face was scarlet. Her long whip cracked through the air.
Earlier, the Vice Minister’s wife had stormed over with servants and guards to demand justice. Her son had nearly drowned in the cesspit, and she insisted that Madam break one of Young Master Xie’s legs in compensation.
Madam pleaded and argued with her for hours. In the end, she surrendered more than half her wealth before the woman would let the matter rest.
Holding back her fury, Madam asked her brother why he had done it.
He lifted his chin. “A man who spews filth belongs in a cesspit.”
Naturally, he was whipped again.
Madam clutched her chest in anger, but once the beating was over, she still sent me to deliver medicine.
I was furious on her behalf, so I pressed harder than necessary while applying it. His howls finally soothed me.
He made Madam angry every day. He deserved to hurt.