Chapter 4

I still refused to yield.

They sent Yingyue to persuade me.

Yingyue was Song Zhang’s eldest legitimate daughter, my granddaughter. I had raised her at my side, and we were very close. She brought a balm she had made herself and rubbed it into my temples.

“What do you think of all this?” I asked her.

She smiled gently. “I wouldn’t presume to judge my elders. All I know is that you are the Grand Princess. If you must still suffer indignities at your age, Grandmother, then you really have—wasted your life.”

I clapped my hands and laughed. “Good girl.”

The Third Prince had originally set his sights on her. I had refused, and she herself disliked him, so he had abandoned the idea.

She did not return to the ducal residence.

Liu Sanniang and her daughter came in person.

Liu Sanniang knelt before me. “I will not compete with Your Highness for anything. Please grant us your blessing.”

Song Yumian offered me a glittering promise. “Help me, Princess, and when I become empress, I will give you all the wealth and honor you could wish for.”

I laughed aloud. “I already have all the wealth and honor I could wish for.”

This daughter of Song Heqing’s was not very bright.

I had her slapped and warned her, “An ill-chosen word can bring disaster. Mind what you say. If you don’t know how to speak, keep your mouth shut.”

The beating nearly ruined her face. Song Heqing came charging over to demand an explanation.

“You may be the Grand Princess, but you married into the Song family. Whether we open our ancestral hall or enter Mian in the clan register is none of your business. I consulted you out of regard for our years together. Did you really think I needed your consent?”

He was irritable, aggressive, almost a different man.

From the moment I had met him, his temper had been extraordinarily mild. In more than forty years, he had never spoken a harsh word to me.

Yet since Liu Sanniang and her daughter appeared, he had repeatedly turned on me.

Had he hidden himself so well? Or did Liu Sanniang simply matter more to him?

“Agree now, and I can still spare your dignity by registering Mian as a concubine’s daughter. Keep being so intolerant, and don’t blame me if I register her as legitimate.”

I looked at him. “Song Yumian was born to your first wife. She is your legitimate daughter.”

His face lit up. “You’ve come around? So much the better if you’re willing to recognize her as legitimate. Zhang must have told you—”

I cut him off. “Bring everyone here tomorrow.”

The next day, everyone who ought to be there arrived.

Song Yumian had put medicine on her face, but it did nothing to hide the redness and swelling. She looked at me with hatred and fear. Everyone else seemed quite cheerful.

I looked at them one by one and spoke calmly. “I have given this a great deal of thought. Liu Sanniang and the duke were husband and wife, deeply attached to each other. Fate intervened, and the duke married again. With no one to turn to, it was only natural that Liu Sanniang should seek him out. His gratitude, his refusal to abandon her, may also be called devotion.”

I paused.

Song Heqing looked at me tenderly, satisfaction on his face. Liu Sanniang’s eyes reddened, as though she were remembering those early days.

I continued, “No one is wholly right or wrong here. Liu Sanniang was his lawful wife. Princess though I am, I cannot take another woman’s husband. Nor, given my rank, can I become anyone’s concubine. After much reflection, I see only one solution: everything must return to its rightful place.”

Song Zhang began to frown. Song Heqing looked bewildered. “What does Your Highness mean?”

I met his gaze gently. “I have petitioned the emperor to annul our marriage. You are free to take Liu Sanniang as your lawful wife. Rest assured, I have already had the arrangements made with the Ministries of Rites and Revenue. From now on, you and I have nothing to do with each other.”

Song Heqing gaped. His face went from ashen to livid. It took him a long time to find his voice. “Must it come to this? We are both past sixty…”

Song Zhang went white. “Mother, do you no longer want us?”

“You are my flesh and blood,” I said in the same even tone. “Nothing can change that. But you are a grown man with a family of your own. My duty to raise you is done. From now on, you belong to the Song family. Still, I will not abandon you entirely. If you cannot survive, you may come to my residence.”

He looked crushed, as though he had suffered a terrible blow.

Liu Sanniang prostrated herself, beside herself with joy. “Thank you for your graciousness, Your Highness!”

She thought she was about to become a duchess.

At that moment, an imperial edict arrived. Song Heqing was summoned to receive it.

The Song family knelt all over the floor. I was exempt from kneeling and remained comfortably in the place of honor, watching as Song Heqing turned pale, began to breathe hard, then collapsed.

Song Zhang looked sharply back at me. My lips curved in a mocking smile.

The edict declared that, with his marriage to the Grand Princess annulled, Song Heqing must return every privilege granted him as her consort.

First, the consort’s residence—the Song mansion—was to be reclaimed.

Second, he was stripped of his ducal title.

Next, every official appointment gained by the Song descendants and collateral branches through the princess’s patronage was revoked.

Finally, for deceiving and gravely disrespecting the princess, Song Heqing was sentenced to twenty strokes of the heavy rod as a warning to others. In view of his advanced age, however, his son would receive them in his place.

And so, with great ceremony at the very gates of my residence, Song Zhang was held down on a bench and given twenty strokes.

Whether the men wielding the rods held back, I could not say. The crowd packing the street was certainly real. The other Songs were forced to watch; even the unconscious Song Heqing was propped up at the gates.

Someone was there to explain what had happened.

Before long, everyone knew that the Grand Princess’s consort had kept a mistress and an illegitimate daughter in a separate household. The mistress, however, had been his first wife. Whether she really had suffered an accident, or whether he had done something in order to marry the princess, no one could say. That part was left suitably vague, with ample room for speculation.

The princess had been magnanimous. Instead of pursuing his crime of deception, she had merely annulled the marriage. But escaping death did not mean escaping punishment. Song Zhang was receiving the beating to atone for his father.

Song Zhang kept his head down throughout.

Until this moment, he had been the Grand Princess’s only son, heir to a duke, with boundless prospects. After today, he would be an ordinary man, with neither examination honors nor inherited protection. Song Heqing was old. Song Zhang had a wife and children. The family’s standing now rested on his shoulders. How was he to sustain it?