Chapter 9

Liu Liang still came to see me every day. Knowing I found him tiresome, he sometimes remained beyond the beaded curtains and sometimes stood outside the palace.

More than once, Ah Ruo saw His Majesty stand outside my doors until midnight without entering. He only waited in silence and asked her each day how much I had eaten.

I refused to let the imperial physicians examine me.

Once before, the Xie clan had ordered a physician to put poison in my medicine. Even now, the injury from kneeling sometimes flared in damp weather.

Seeing that I had seemed well lately, Liu Liang quietly relaxed.

I behaved as I always did.

I neither wept nor grieved. Every day, I played shuttlecock with Ah Ruo.

Liu Liang had only just established his dynasty, and unrest still broke out from time to time. If he did not want it to become another short-lived regime, he had to labor without rest. War had grown tense in the south, and the Right Chancellor urged him more than once to lead the campaign in person.

Before departing, he came to see me. I was struggling through my calligraphy practice at the time.

He stood too far away to see how badly the characters on the silk trembled.

Liu Liang said, “Wanniang, I must go south again to put down the rebellion. Will you say goodbye to me?”

For a moment, it felt like our days in Yin County. Whenever Liu Liang had to leave, he would wrap his arms around me from behind. Such a tall man, yet even he knew how to wheedle affection.

He would say, “Wanniang, will you say goodbye to your good husband?”

Only now, the distance between us was so very great.

I set down my brush and, for once, turned to look at Liu Liang with a smile.

“Husband,” I said, “come back soon.”

I heard the beaded curtain shift. His Majesty lifted it and almost stepped inside, but guilt and fear still held him back. He retreated again, though his eyes shone brightly.

“I will,” His Majesty said. “I promise I will return soon.”

On the afternoon of the second day after His Majesty departed, I could no longer rise from bed. For days, I had forced myself to swallow food through the nausea. I feared that if His Majesty learned how ill I was, he would not let me have peace even as I died, so I deceived him with smiles each day.

I had suffered too many wounds over the years, not only to my body but also to my heart. After years of illness, I knew my own condition well. Once the things I had forgotten returned, my mind often grew muddled until dream and reality became indistinguishable. I knew then that no medicine could save me.

Before I slept, I told Ah Ruo happily, “Ah Ruo, last night I dreamed of my father and brothers. I have not seen them in my dreams for more than ten years. I am going to meet them now.”

Ah Ruo fought back her tears.

I rubbed my cheek against her hand. “Ah Ruo, you have been so good to me. Thank you. After I am gone, tell the old servants that I buried forty taels of gold beneath the leafy tree in our courtyard in Yin County. They should divide it among themselves. I will have no use for it.”

Tears clung to Ah Ruo’s lashes. “My lady, is there anything you wish me to say to His Majesty?”

I considered it. “Tell him the ugly words on the writing desk are for him.”

They were the characters I had struggled to write the day before, when he came to say goodbye.

They read—

“A realm of bleached bones. There can be no return.

My youth was given in error. Life after life, may we never meet.”

May I never see Liu Liang again in this life, the next, or any of the countless lives beyond.

Speaking so many words at once exhausted me. I closed my eyes.

In my dream, pale sunlight filled the courtyard and the leafy tree rustled softly.

I pushed open the door and cried to the white-robed young man, “Husband, I have been terribly wronged!”

My husband sighed and wiped away my tears.

“Look at our Wanniang. Why are you crying?”

The time I shared with my husband

would remain forever on this day,

and never move forward again.