Chapter 3

Eventually, I became pregnant.

By then I had lost count of how many times my dignity and sense of shame had been shattered, how often I had been hung up like livestock.

When Shen Shanliang heard the news, tears streamed down his old face.

Trembling before the spirit tablet of his late wife, Yuniang, he said,

“My dear Yuniang, our Xiaoqing has come back!”

For the sake of this hard-won child, he finally began to treat me like a person.

I had a courtyard of my own. I no longer had to lie beside him every night, breathing in that sickening odor of decay.

I had people to wait on me. Nanny Qi moved into my courtyard with two maids.

A physician was assigned to take my pulse. Morning and evening, there were examinations and medicinal decoctions.

And more besides.

Even so, I felt better off dead.

I ran fevers, vomited, lay awake all night. Fine, relentless pains stabbed through my lower abdomen…

They seemed like the pregnancy symptoms every woman was expected to endure.

Nothing worth mentioning.

But I was nearly driven half to death. I even showed signs of a threatened miscarriage.

Then

the physician said my constitution was weak.

Nanny Qi said I lacked the good fortune to bear children easily.

Shen Shanliang said I was useless, making such a fuss over a pregnancy.

But I came from the modern world. I knew this wasn’t my fault.

Sperm quality affected embryo quality, which in turn affected the mother’s pregnancy and her ability to carry to term.

At Shen Shanliang’s age, how could his sperm be healthy?

People in this era didn’t understand that.

All they knew was that childbirth had always been women’s business. How could a man be blamed?

I endured their accusations in silence.

Since that first night, when Nanny Qi held me down to be humiliated and then hung me upside down,

I had stopped allowing myself the smallest release of emotion.

I knew that in this suffocating household, in this feudal world,

a woman’s tears were utterly useless.

So were arguments.

The broker had been right. If I refused to be sensible, I was the one who would suffer.

A wise person knew when to yield.

Since I was trapped here, I would use this child to climb.

Shen Shanliang was, after all, the foremost salt merchant, with a fortune to rival a kingdom’s.

If I could turn his resources into stepping stones,

perhaps I could reach the very top.

My reason returned. I became extraordinarily obedient.

Throughout the pregnancy, I followed the physician’s instructions.

I stayed inside and drank every last bowl of the medicine meant to protect the pregnancy.

When I felt better, I learned embroidery and sewing from Nanny Qi, making clothes for the coming child.

I was as meek and docile as all the women of this world.

My compliance brought Nanny Qi closer to me.

We often talked about ordinary family matters over our needlework.

At last, one day, I asked about Yuniang.

“Nanny Qi, do I look very much like the mistress of this house?”

Her smile vanished.

Her brows rose, and her expression changed at once.

She studied me with cold, distant eyes.

“We’re both women. An old woman like me can see what’s on your mind.”

I sighed and stroked my belly, which had begun to show.

“Since you’ve guessed, I won’t hide it. I’m asking because I want to stay.”

“Stay? For wealth and comfort, you’d abandon your scholar and the boy at home?”

Contempt entered her eyes.

Tears welled in mine. I described the day I had been leased out.

“Nanny Qi, I didn’t abandon them. They abandoned me.”

“I know my husband. He has some talent for study, but not much. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have failed the provincial examination again and again, until he’d spent everything we owned.”

“In three years, he’ll probably fail again. If I leave the Shens and return to the Qius, he’ll need money to sit the examination. He’ll lease me out again. Who knows where?”

“Tell me, what woman wants to be treated like an animal, leased from one man to another? If I’m always away, even my own child won’t feel close to me.”

“I’d rather stay here. At least I could be with this child. I’m not greedy. I know I’m not worthy to be his mother. But if I can stay, I don’t care about a title. I’d willingly be a servant, a wet nurse.”

“Watching him grow up would be enough.”

The more I spoke, the faster my tears fell.

Nanny Qi softened.

She wiped my tears with her handkerchief.

“In a world like this, what ordinary woman can escape being sold or leased…”

With a sigh, she finally told me about Yuniang.

Her full name was Zhou Suyu. She was a daughter of the Zhou family of Guangling, another wealthy merchant house, and she and Shen Shanliang had grown up together.

When she came of age, she married into the Shen family.

Her health was fragile, and she struggled to bear children.

Of three pregnancies, she lost the first. The second baby died at six months. With the third, a difficult labor ended in a hemorrhage.

She died. Fortunately, the child survived. A boy.

Shen Shanliang named him Shen Xiaoqing. He never remarried, devoting himself to raising his son.

But a year ago, sixteen-year-old Xiaoqing had been killed by bandits while inspecting the salt works alone.

Afterward, Shen Shanliang seemed to lose his very spirit. He aged more than a decade almost overnight.

Nanny Qi herself had been sold into the Shen household as a child.

When Zhou Suyu married in, Nanny Qi was assigned to serve her and became her chief attendant.

After Zhou Suyu died, she helped raise Shen Xiaoqing.

In this household, no one but Shen Shanliang knew Zhou Suyu better.

After my bout of tears,

Nanny Qi was willing to help me. She would teach me to imitate Zhou Suyu.

Because women were always softhearted.

From that glimpse of pity on the first night, I had been certain she would help me.

She taught me carefully. I became more and more like Yuniang.

I began seeking Shen Shanliang out.

In the morning, I gently helped him rise.

At noon, I cooked his favorite dried-bamboo-shoot soup with chicken broth. It tasted almost exactly like Yuniang’s.

At night, I sat beside him in the lamplight as he examined his ledgers, grinding ink and refilling his tea.

And so it went.

Every gesture, every frown and smile, every little habit mirrored Yuniang’s.

His name for me changed from “the leased goods” to “Yunniang,” and finally to “Yuniang.”

He could no longer tell who I was.

Or perhaps he was deceiving himself, unwilling to distinguish us any longer.

Watching the changes in his eyes, I knew the moment had come.

I spoke gently.

“Master, it’s the ninth month, and the osmanthus is in full bloom. It would be a pity to let the autumn wind scatter it. Why don’t we pick some and make wine?”

“When the baby turns one, we can open it for his birthday feast. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

Nanny Qi had told me that Yuniang had made osmanthus wine during her pregnancy.

At Shen Xiaoqing’s first birthday, the wine husband and wife should have shared had all gone into Shen Shanliang’s mouth. Yuniang was dead.

That night, he had held his baby and drunk himself senseless.

Now, at the mention of wine, he seemed to see her again. He agreed.

And so a jar of osmanthus wine was buried beneath the osmanthus tree.

Shen Shanliang held me around the waist and gazed at the tree, his face full of longing.

“Yuniang, a year from now, you and the baby will be here with me. We’ll drink this together.”

Naturally, I agreed, softly and sweetly.

He and I handled every stage of the wine-making ourselves. We left nothing to anyone else.

When he wasn’t watching, I took some old kitchen rice that had grown damp and red, and buried it beneath the fermented mash.

I hadn’t studied biology at university. But common knowledge told me that Monascus and Aspergillus flavus molds in wine made from reddened old rice produced toxins that caused cancer and death.

In a year’s time, this wine should be ready to send Shen Shanliang to his grave.