Chapter 7

“A woman like you probably can’t even write her own name properly. Running a school? You’ll ruin the children! As it happens, I have room for another concubine. Why don’t you become my eighth and warm my bed instead?”

His servant hurried to agree. “Heh, heh! Quite right, sir. Come be Master Guo’s eighth concubine, little lady. He can look after Three Mountains School for you!”

Master and servant seemed to picture the same thing, and broke into lewd laughter together.

Lessons were still in progress. The children hadn’t left the classroom.

I clenched my teeth in fury, trying to decide how to handle this, when an angry roar came from behind me.

I turned to see Qingning and Shunian leading a crowd of pupils, each brandishing a large stick.

Some had pokers, some fire tongs, some cucumbers, and some entire cabbages. They charged at the two men in a furious wave.

“Don’t you bully our teacher!”

“Drive them out! Drive them out!”

“Get out, you villains!”

…

It all happened so fast.

The school erupted into chaos. Rotten leaves flew everywhere as the children joined forces, pelting the same targets.

Guo Huaijiu and his vicious servant fled in disarray.

Even after running a good half a li, he hadn’t forgotten his threats. “Just you wait, you little bastards! I’ll make you pay!”

A sense of foreboding settled over me.

That night, Qingning came to me. “Teacher, did I get you into trouble today?”

Looking at her anxious little face, I couldn’t bear to scold her. “If trouble is coming, we can’t always avoid it. You were a little impulsive today, Qingning, but this isn’t your fault. I should have thought things through more carefully.”

A tall tree catches the wind. Some things were inevitable.

On the day disaster struck, lessons had just ended and the children were making their way home.

Qingning was about to shut the gate when a squad of constables shoved their way in. Shouting that we were hiding a banned book, they arrested me without another word.

I was stunned.

Under the laws of Daye, possessing banned books meant exile a thousand li away!

They sealed the school.

All I had time to tell Qingning was, “Don’t panic. Wait for me at home,” before they dragged me away.

Even I didn’t know whether I would ever return.

The prison of the Court of Judicial Review was darker and damper than I had imagined.

Narrow corridors. Wet floors. Foul, rank air. Dim lamps.

A jailer shoved me into a cell by myself.

“A little woman like you, daring to keep banned books! Settle in. You’ve got plenty coming to you!”

They had found a copy of Writings of the Western Rong at the school.

The book was forbidden because the Daye dynasty had fought a ten-year war with the Western Rong beyond the frontier.

But I knew perfectly well that there had been no such book in the school!

If I had to say where it came from, only the constables had had the opportunity to slip it into my study.

Not long after I was imprisoned, Guo Huaijiu came to see me. “Well? Regret it now, don’t you? I’ll give you another chance. Become my eighth concubine, and I’ll find a way to get you out.”

I spat at him. “You shameless cur! You’re not fit to teach anyone! With a man like you running Diligent Learning, it’s only a matter of time before the place closes down!”

He tried to rush in and hit me, but the cell door stood between us. All he could do was leave, cursing.

Only then did I learn that one of the adjudicators at the Court of Judicial Review was also surnamed Guo.

And Guo Huaijiu was his nephew.