Chapter 2
Now that I was in the palace, I had to pay my respects to the people in charge.
After the emperor, the most exalted of them all, came the empress dowager, the second most exalted.
On the way to the Palace of Eternal Longevity, Eunuch Wang led me past a stretch of ruins.
Weeds grew thick among the broken walls.
“Your Little Highness, this is where the late empress passed away. No one has lived here in years. You may pause here a moment.”
Obediently, I knelt and bowed my head to the ground.
I piled some black mud from the roadside into a little incense altar and stuck a few stalks of foxtail grass into it as incense.
Eunuch Wang merely smiled helplessly and handed me a cloth to wipe my hands.
The sun was high by the time we reached the Palace of Eternal Longevity.
Perhaps the empress dowager was in a bad mood. She would neither see me nor let me leave.
She simply ordered me to kneel outside the hall.
They still loved making people kneel in this palace.
Jinshu’s knees had been ruined by kneeling here. They hurt her every day once winter came.
Thinking of Jinshu, I straightened my back again. I had not forgotten what I had come for.
I knelt for a long time, until the sun had almost shriveled me up.
Then I heard hurried footsteps behind me. The emperor had arrived.
He did not tell me to get up either. He merely glanced at me and rushed inside.
An argument soon rang out:
“Mother, what are you doing? The child has only just returned, and you’re already punishing her like this?”
“Her parentage is in doubt. My son, you must not be careless.”
“Just look at that face, Mother. She is Peiyu’s child!”
“For all we know, she may be some other child of the Wang family.”
After a moment of silence, the emperor’s voice came again, hoarse:
“What Wang family? The Marquis of Imperial Grace killed them all, old and young! He checked them off one by one against their portraits!”
Complete silence fell. A long while later, Eunuch Wang came to help me up.
Only then did I stumble in to meet my grandmother in name.
She was a withered, mean-looking old woman. All the jewels in her hair and the finery on her body could not hide the air of decay about her.
Two beautiful consorts stood nearby, one watching coldly, the other wearing a false smile.
“Nian’en pays her respects to Father, to Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, to Noble Consort Shu, and to Consort Zhen.”
“Nian’en? Your name is Nian’en?”
The emperor’s voice trembled.
I bowed again. “Yes, Father. Jinshu said Mother chose it before she died, so that I would always remember your kindness.”
The emperor cried again, right in front of the three women, until their faces turned green.
Then he granted me the title Princess Huaiyu, with the revenues of a thousand households.
The three women looked greener still.
If you asked me, they really weren’t very clever.
As the saying went, even a new privy smelled sweet for three days.
How much more so a freshly discovered daughter like me?
The emperor hadn’t had his fill of playing the loving father yet. The harder they pushed me down, the more enthusiastically he took up the part.
And now look: I had a title, a palace, and gold, silver, and jewels.
If Jinshu knew that making up one name could win me so many things, she would certainly have praised my cleverness.
After the emperor left, the empress dowager took her anger out on me and ordered a matron to search me.
They inspected me inside and out, down to the last strand of hair.
Finally, they submerged me in water and very nearly drowned me.
Water flooded my nose and ears. Unable to breathe, I felt as though my chest would burst.
My consciousness began to blur.
Dimly, I heard the cold-eyed woman say, “That whelp escaped us back then. We must root out the last of them. Aunt, you mustn’t go soft.”
“Shuning, killing a princess in this palace is no great difficulty. But we must not act while my son is so taken with her. There will be time.”
Oh dear. They’d learned their lesson.
It didn’t matter. I had waited fifteen years. I had patience to spare. There would be time.