Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Xie Family invited imperial physicians from the palace, and they spared no expense on medicine.

Ya’er’s illness improved day by day.

I accepted Xie Erlang’s calling card, and the news that I was going to remarry into the Xie Family soon spread until everyone knew.

Next door at Tangli Garden, The Tale of Dengniang had already reached the part where Dengniang, to save her young sister-in-law, offers herself alone to the tigers and wolves.

I sat there listening as the dan actress’s eyes shifted and shimmered, her sorrow like a secluded orchid weeping dew.

There was not a seat to be had. That only made things easier for us stallholders across the water-we got to hear the whole thing for free.

After watching it, people cursed the top scholar, then cursed those Xie wolves and tigers.

Then they came to my stall to buy a little pickled cucumber and told me that no matter how hard things got, I had to keep on living well.

There were also uninvited guests.

Lu Xiangzhi was one of them.

He blocked the front of my pickled cucumber stall.

“I know this Xie Wuyang you’re going to marry. Back when we were both studying under Liu Shanren, he and I never got along. Our teacher disliked his arrogance and unruliness as well.”

Liu Shanren was a great scholar of Lianzhou. He had once lectured on the classics to the imperial princes. Both the old and new parties had tried to win him over, but he resigned from office and refused all offers. He lived in seclusion on Heshan, taking pleasure in flowers and wine.

In winter and summer alike, I had carried pickles up the mountain and drawn sweet spring water for him to brew tea.

In exchange, he took Lu Xiangzhi as his disciple.

“Besides, you’re dull and boring. You know nothing of elegance or romance. He’ll grow tired of you very soon.”

I looked at Lu Xiangzhi and, for a moment, truly did not know when he had begun to look down on me like this.

Clearly, when my parents died, he had once sworn before their graves that he would never take a concubine and would treat me well.

Clearly, he had once stayed up through the night copying manuscripts for others, earning a little money to buy me a silver hairpin, saying that to have a virtuous wife like me was a blessing earned over three lifetimes.

“Even that pleasure boat belongs to Xie Wuyang’s opera troupe. He keeps actors and courtesans for his amusement.

“Look at yourself. It’s not as if you’re some heavenly beauty.

“If he marries you, it may not be out of sincerity. Most likely, he only wants to spite me.”

As he spoke, the painted pleasure boat shifted toward the shore.

Then the dan actress, separated from us by a stretch of water, leaned against the railing and laughed until she trembled like a branch of blossoms.

“Young Master Lu, aren’t you thinking far too highly of yourself?”

Hearing someone mock him, Lu Xiangzhi turned back in displeasure.

But when he saw that it was a charming, exquisitely lovely young woman, even his tone softened a little.

“Then why does this lady think Xie Wuyang would be willing to marry a discarded wife?”

She gave Lu Xiangzhi a lazy glance, then turned her smile upon me.

“Everyone says one should marry a virtuous wife, but before marrying her, who knows whether a woman is truly virtuous or not?

“Since your wife is virtuous, I’ll marry her.”

I stared blankly at the dan actress before me. Only then did I realize that she was quite tall; she had merely been sitting earlier, so I had not noticed.

Only then did Lu Xiangzhi discover that the person before him was his old rival, Xie Wuyang. Furious, he snapped, “Xie Wuyang! Dressing yourself up in the garb of such lowly performers-aren’t you ashamed to disgrace the dignity of scholars?

“Shen Mingzhu, you heard him. He’s only marrying you to spite me.”

I looked at Xie Wuyang before me, dressed in stage costume and made up as a dan actress, and my confidence began to waver.

Back when Lu Xiangzhi had been his schoolmate, he had told me Xie Wuyang was a silken young wastrel raised in the lap of luxury.

At ten, Xie Wuyang’s reputation as a child prodigy had already spread throughout the capital.

At fourteen, a classical rhapsody he composed before the emperor astonished everyone present, and His Majesty bestowed upon him a scholar’s cap and broad sash.

At seventeen, he went up Heshan and became Liu Shanren’s disciple.

Everyone thought he would one day enter court as an official and that his future would be boundless.

But at nineteen, he fell gravely ill. When he woke, he sawed his bed apart to make a coffin and beat on a basin as he sang.

He said that in his dream he had contracted an illness and would not live past three years.

Since he could not live three more years, he might as well spend his days as he pleased.

From then on, he became completely unhinged.

He no longer studied, caring only for pleasure.

He wrote erotic songs, painted spring-palace pictures, and when the mood struck him, powdered his face and sang opera, mingling with society’s lowest trades.

From then on, no one mentioned the young genius Xie Wuyang anymore.

There was only Xie Erlang the wastrel, the ruffian, the scoundrel, the lecher.

Did the Xie Family truly think I could set him on the right path?

“His Majesty once asked me to select flower-and-bird envoys for the palace. Whatever peerless beauties this world held, whatever moon-palace fairies there were, I saw them all, and my heart never stirred.

“But back then on Heshan, when I saw you, my lady, washing gauze and drawing water, wearing only a plain dress and a thorn hairpin, I could not forget you after that one glance.”

His words made my cheeks burn, and I lowered my head.

Xie Wuyang wore stage paint over his powdered face and peach-blush cheeks, his smiling eyes as luminous as rippling water.

“This Xie believes that such a good woman should not have to live such a wretched life.”