Chapter 1
Chapter 1
When I accompanied my mistress to deliver the contraceptive draught, they had not yet finished inside.
Our little party stood outside the bedchamber, listening at the wall. Once the noises faded, I judged the time right and pushed open the door.
Behind the screen, Chicken Quill had thrown on an outer robe and was kneeling to help a man into his shoes. The man seated on the bed was my mistress’s husband, the Xie family’s eldest son, Xie Rusong.
He tilted his head back, watching Chicken Quill from the corner of his eye with naked disgust. The instant he saw his wife, however, his expression softened.
“Good morning, my lady.”
My mistress glided forward, all maidenly shyness. “Good morning, Husband.”
After exchanging greetings, Xie Rusong finished dressing and left.
Chicken Quill remained on her knees while Nanny Wu carried over a bowl of pitch-black liquid and watched her drain it. Then she kowtowed and thanked Madam for the medicine.
My mistress waved her away. “That will do. Get back to work.”
Chicken Quill withdrew with lowered eyes, meek and humble to the point of abasement.
I watched in silence, a stone lodged in my chest. Her mouth was ulcerated and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot—symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning.
There was no such thing as a reliable contraceptive medicine in this age. Bowl after bowl of those so-called draughts contained mercury and arsenic. Period dramas had taught people to think safflower was some miraculous abortifacient, but the ancients possessed no miracle drugs. In this era, safflower was precious medicine. No one would waste it on a servant.
After a moment’s hesitation, I tried to counsel my mistress gently.
“These draughts damage the body. Chicken Quill is already in poor health.”
She did not care in the least. “What would you have me do instead? She is only a bedmaid. Should my husband have to deny himself for her sake?”
“A woman who sells herself for beauty is cheap. She chose this path, so whatever happens is her own doing.”
There was nothing I could say.
She had come from the same place I had, yet she fitted into this age with astonishing ease. At times she defended its hierarchy even more fervently than those born to it.
As her maid, I was fortunate that I had hidden my origins from the very beginning.
My mistress was Han Zhaoyun, daughter of a Grand Secretary. She and Xie Rusong were well matched in family and even in name. Their marriage had always been affectionate.
He slept with the maids; she dosed them with poison. Their teamwork was flawless.
Before the wedding, Young Master Xie had kept several prettier bedmaids. My mistress disliked them and sold them all. When he heard, he merely said, “Just as well. I have no taste for seductive women.”
Later, after the clan elders complained, Han Zhaoyun chose two plain-looking girls to protect herself from accusations of jealousy.
On the day they were initiated into his bed, Xie Rusong personally named them Chicken Quill and Duck Quill. It was his way of declaring that, though he had accepted the girls, they were no more than objects in his eyes.
Everyone praised him as a first-rate gentleman who honored his wife and cared nothing for female charms. Han Zhaoyun became the envy of every noblewoman in the capital.
At women’s gatherings, she often lectured her friends on suppressing bedmaids and ruling an inner household.
“If your husband respects and loves you, what harm is there in letting him keep a few toys? They can never escape your palm.”
When a close friend’s husband installed a mistress outside the home, she advised, “Those women are inns; you are his home. However fine an inn may be, he must come home in the end.”
Such wisdom always won applause. The ladies called her clear-sighted, worldly, and profoundly wise.
I could not understand it. How could a soul raised beneath the red flag fall into a vast storehouse of rot and sores, then settle in as comfortably as a rat finding a sewer?