chapter 3

After laying the final handful of earth over Andai’s grave, I returned to the camp for my things.

Yingzhi was waiting at the gate. She thrust a bundle of clothes into my arms.

“You leave first thing tomorrow, and I have to attend the General, so I can’t see you off. We met by fate. Let this outfit be my parting gift. May your life from now on be peaceful and smooth.”

She had sewn it herself. Gold leaves were stitched densely into the waist, back, and trouser legs. She had once said she wanted me to buy a house and fields and live an ordinary life.

At dawn the next morning, carrying the clothes, Chen Shitou’s ashes, and his effects, I joined the soldiers delivering death benefits.

For an ordinary soldier, his family received compensation only after the war, and rarely more than a few taels.

The vanguard was different. Its men were sent to near-certain death. Their death benefit was twenty taels, and within half a month of a man’s death, the army would send his effects and money to his family.

The arrangement was meant for the living soldiers to see. It assured them that even if the vanguard killed them, at least their families would receive the greatest reward.

As a pregnant woman traveling alone, I was safest following the delivery party to Chen Shitou’s home.

There were only two soldiers. Their leader handed me my household papers.

“Official Li ordered this. Your time in the army has been changed in the register. You were a kitchen laborer. You and Chen Shitou took a liking to each other and secretly conceived a child.”

Official Li was the man who had laid out the dead soldiers’ belongings for me to choose from. He said this amended registry was his reward for my willingness to spend a tael bringing Chen Shitou home.

Relief washed through me. That reward would make the rest of my life far easier.

Taoli Village was neither rich nor poor. Chen Shitou’s parents were exactly as I had imagined. They had raised him well because they themselves were good people.

One glance showed a couple weathered by a lifetime of hardship. When told their son was dead, they sat in silence staring at his ashes.

They did not cry, yet grief seeped soundlessly from every crease of their skin, from their eyes, from their mouths.

They sat until insects sang deep into the night. At last, his mother rose.

“You must be hungry, child. And you’re carrying a baby. This old woman was muddled by grief. I should have cooked for you.”

I was not delicate and could have cooked for myself, but this house was utterly strange to me. I dared not touch another family’s things without permission.

She made three bowls of eggs in sweet soup. Mine was fullest, with four eggs.

Pushing one bowl toward her husband, she said, “Eat. Have something good tonight, so tomorrow we’ll have the strength to dig our son’s grave. He’ll lie there for the rest of time. We must give him a proper home.”

Only after the sweet broth touched their tongues did strength seem to return to them.

And once they had strength, tears began to fall, one after another, splashing into their bowls.

Chen was one of Taoli Village’s great clan names, and every great clan kept its own burial ground.

Beside Chen Shitou lay his elder brother, who had died of illness six months earlier.

The army did not conscript an only son. When Chen Shitou left, his brother had still been alive. Though deathly ill, he still counted as a male heir to the recruiting officers.

By the time word reached Shitou that he had become an only son, whether he could leave was no longer his choice.

A household that had nursed a dying man had no money left—only debts.

I wanted nothing but a lawful place in the registry. I had no desire to covet money bought with another man’s life, so I gave his parents all twenty-one taels that remained.

His mother stared at the silver for a long while. Carefully, she weighed out ten taels and pushed the rest back to me.

“You’re carrying a child. We ought not take a single coin. But the families who lent us money to send our eldest off with dignity aren’t well-off either. Your father and I will work hard. We’ll earn this back for you and the baby one day.”

She called herself and her husband my mother and father as naturally as breathing. But to me, those words held nothing good. She saw my discomfort and patted my hand.

“If it feels strange, that’s all right. Call us Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen instead.”

There was no quarrel over the money in our household. In another family, however, a great commotion broke out.

The family was headed by a man called Chen Ergou. His younger son, like Chen Shitou, had died in the vanguard. Unlike Shitou, he had left behind a wife and a daughter.

The little girl was only three and painfully thin. She had been sick for days. When her mother begged the grandparents to hire a physician, they did nothing but curse her for bringing death to her husband—and for giving their son a useless girl who could not continue the family line.

Desperate as her daughter worsened by the day, Madam Wu stole some of the death benefit her parents-in-law kept. The medicine had barely begun simmering when they seized her and threatened to hand her to the magistrate.

The moment Uncle and Auntie Chen heard, they strode to the house.

From the courtyard, I heard every word of their booming voices.

“Chen Ergou, what are you making such a fuss for? Hand your daughter-in-law to the magistrate? I think the yamen will beat you first! That money was paid for her husband’s life. Of course it should pay for his daughter’s medicine.”

“Xiya is the only flesh your second son left in this world. You’d give every coin to your elder son instead? Be careful—your second boy may come looking for you tonight!”

As the shouting continued, the clan head arrived. Uncle Chen raised his voice again.

“Great-Uncle, you must settle this. Otherwise, when the next conscription comes, no one will be willing to go.”

Uncle and Auntie Chen were speaking so loudly on purpose. Village families often raised several sons, and every round of conscription brought vicious arguments over which one would be sent.

If a man knew that dying in battle would merely enrich his surviving brothers while his wife and child could not even pay for lifesaving medicine, then no matter how his parents pressed him, who would agree to be the one taken next time?

The clan head understood Uncle Chen perfectly. He punished Chen Ergou under clan rules and forced him to give Madam Wu half the death benefit.