chapter 3

Summer came, and Xidi’s child was due.

I decided that once the baby was born, boy or girl, I would send a pair of gold bracelets. For the sake of money, Butcher Li might treat her a little better.

But Xidi died. Mother and child, both gone.

Rain poured the day they brought her to Yuzhen Convent.

It hammered against her face, pale and flaking like old plaster. Her belly bulged so high it looked ready to burst.

I walked over. Bruises covered her body. When I pulled back her sleeve, I saw burns from an opium pipe along her arm.

My own voice shook. “How did she die?”

Tianbao had lost a great deal gambling and set his sights on Xidi. He stole the cashbox. When Butcher Li returned and found it gone, he beat her to death.

Someone had told him that a woman who died pregnant made the most vengeful ghost. Afraid Xidi would haunt him, he sent her to the convent to be purified.

“No one reported him?”

The man who delivered her scoffed. “A woman belongs to her husband’s family once she’s married. If he beats her to death, that’s her bad fate.”

Blood from Xidi’s skirt spread through the rain until the ground beneath her feet ran red.

Labor had begun, but instead of helping her, he had beaten her. She had died in agony.

What had she thought about at the end?

Perhaps nothing. Perhaps there had only been pain.

The rain fell so hard I could not tell water from tears on my face.

Yuzhen Convent was a den of prostitution. No one there knew how to guide a soul onward.

Still, I lit an ever-burning lamp and kept vigil beside Xidi’s spirit tablet day and night.

Neither my father nor Madam Wang came. A woman who died pregnant was inauspicious.

Butcher Li never appeared, not even when we buried her.

The butcher shop continued as usual, as if no one named Song Xidi had ever existed.

Fear took hold of me. One day, I too might die like Yan Gui and Xidi—silently, in pain, with no one to care.

I stopped drinking the contraceptive medicine. Every time they brought it, I secretly spat it out.

One night, I clutched Gu Zhun’s sash and pleaded, “My lord, please. Take me away from here.”

He seized my chin. “Song Wenxi, do you honestly think you matter?”

What he meant was: Who are you to ask?

Gu Zhun had no children. His wife was barren, and his bedchamber maids were ordered to drink contraceptive medicine after every visit because Madam Xu was jealous.

But a great house needed heirs. Gu Zhun could not remain devoted forever merely because he claimed to love his wife.

I bent to wipe his shoes, smiling sweetly.

“I am with child. If you wish it, my baby can belong to your wife.”

His eyes darkened, and he kicked me away.

“You dare bargain with me?”

I crawled back to his side, still wearing that servile smile.

“My lord, you must consider the future of your house.”

This time, he did not kick me.

He bought me, but only as Xu Jingyun’s personal maid.

He meant to hand me over for his wife to torment, hoping my suffering would appease her rage.

I told myself it did not matter. Once I was outside the convent, I would have a chance.

I looked back at Yuzhen Convent one last time and swore that someday it would be razed to the ground.

Before leaving, I made a special trip to the butcher shop.

Marbled slabs of pork shone with grease. Butcher Li was naked to the waist, a yellowed sweat cloth slung over one shoulder.

He was telling a man nearby, “Cursed woman didn’t even leave me a son or daughter. Gave all my silver to that worthless brother of hers. How was it my fault I hit her?”

His face sagged with self-pity. “And don’t say I treated her badly. She ate four whole pig trotters in the last few months. What other woman gets that kind of fortune?”

“She brought it on herself.”

The onlookers had come for amusement. His wife was barely dead, yet they could still laugh.

“With that temper of yours, how many women could survive you? No matchmaker will dare bring you another now.”

The cleaver struck the block, scattering droplets.

“I’ve got money. You think I can’t find a woman? I’ll buy one if I have to—some orphan from a broker. No parents to make trouble.”

She would only be a woman. No one expected her to serve the nation.

As long as she bore children, she had done her part.

I sat in the tea stall across the road all day. When Butcher Li closed the shop, I followed him home.

Without Xidi to clean after him, the place was almost impossible to walk through. The stench of raw pork mingled with male sweat until I wanted to retch.

His bone cleaver glinted coldly.

He had used its blunt spine to cave in the back of Xidi’s skull.

He stared at me while packing the remaining pork into a bamboo basket.

“Who are you?”

I shut the door and dropped the bar into place.

“Song Xidi’s elder sister.”

His eyes widened in anger.

“Are you Songs never going to leave me alone? I told you, I’ve got no money. Didn’t Tianbao take all my silver? Wasn’t that enough payment for his sister’s worthless life?”

“We agreed the two debts canceled each other!”

He shouted so hard spittle flew from his mouth.

At the foot of the bed, I saw the tiger-head shoes Xidi had embroidered for her baby, now filthy and crushed.

Tears slid from my eyes. I stood there without speaking.

Butcher Li came closer. He laid a greasy hand on my shoulder, bared his teeth in a lecherous grin, and said, “You’re beautiful. Much prettier than Xidi.”

His hand rubbed my shoulder, then moved down to my waist, groping obscenely as he tested whether he could slip it beneath my clothes.

I raised tear-filled eyes to him. “Will you burn incense for my sister?”

He smacked his lips. “What do I get?”

“Go to her grave and admit you were wrong,” I whispered. “Then I’ll give you whatever you want.”

We left through the back. I told him I was promised to another man and could not risk being seen with him.

He suspected nothing and followed me to Xidi’s grave.

It was only a small mound of earth.

My father and Madam Wang cared for no one but Tianbao. Butcher Li had abandoned Xidi at the convent, afraid her ghost would follow him. I alone had paid for her burial.

There were no offerings before the grave. It looked terribly lonely.

Night had deepened. A cold wind made the burial ground feel haunted.

Guilt made Butcher Li’s strong legs tremble. Watching him kneel before Xidi’s grave eased something in my heart.

The instant his knees touched the earth, he screamed.

I had buried thorny vines around the grave and soaked them in poison. A single prick caused unbearable burning; now countless barbs had sunk into his legs.

The Prioress used the same method to break defiant girls, though she used less poison and fewer thorns.

Butcher Li could not stand. He could only howl.

“You bitch! When I recover, I’ll beat you to death!”

He would not recover.

I took out two firestones and struck them together. Sparks flashed.

His hand found the slick pig fat smeared across the ground.

He had dealt in pigs his whole life. It seemed fitting that a pig would escort him out of it.

At last he understood fear. Enduring the pain, he knocked his head again and again before Xidi’s grave.

“I was wrong. I’m an animal. I shouldn’t have hit Xidi. Spare me, for the sake of the years we were husband and wife!”

The years they were husband and wife?

Had Xidi ever begged him this way?

Surely not. Xidi stuttered. When he beat her, she must have borne it in stubborn silence, unable even to plead.

That was why he had crushed the back of her skull with his cleaver and killed her.

“My sister’s life was not worthless.”

I tossed the firestones.

“You must suffer as she did before you can call it atonement.”

I had placed no offerings before her grave because I could think of none more fitting than Butcher Li’s life.

His screams faded behind me as I walked away.

On the road back, I encountered Gu Zhun.

I was meant to enter his household the next day. I should have been at the residence, waiting for his servants to collect me.

Men feared women who caused trouble.

My hand went instinctively to my belly. The child was my talisman against death.

Gu Zhun strode over. My ingratiating smile had barely formed when he slapped me across the face.

It was not hard. It stung only a little.

He lowered his hand. “Cause trouble again, and your life is forfeit.”

I laughed softly.

He did care what happened to me, after all.

That was why he had someone dispose of Butcher Li’s body.