Chapter 3
The family who engaged me were the Jiangs of the capital.
They had two daughters: the elder, Jiang Mingzhu, was sixteen; the younger, Jiang Bao’er, thirteen.
Their mother had died of illness three years earlier. Fearing a stepmother might mistreat his daughters, their father, Jiang Xiechuan, had not remarried.
Before I met the girls, the mild, courteous master of the house clasped his hands and repeatedly warned me, with a trace of apology:
“My elder daughter is quiet and steady. I don’t worry much about her.
“But my younger girl is spoiled. I’m afraid she’ll require more of your care.”
I nodded slightly.
“A girl having some spirit isn’t a bad thing. Better than being made of clay, for anyone to mold as they please.”
The moment I finished, the beaded curtain in the corridor clattered violently.
Jiang Bao’er had been eavesdropping. Hearing her father speak ill of her, she was displeased.
For three days in a row, she claimed to be ill and refused to come.
“Please don’t take offense at my little sister, Aunt Feng. You may laugh at me for saying so, but I don’t want to enter the palace. Still, it would be best if I were chosen. Bao’er has such a temper. I’m afraid she’d get into trouble there.”
Hoping she would be the one to enter the palace, Jiang Mingzhu studied etiquette and its rules with great diligence.
“…Aunt Feng, I heard that Their Majesties were childhood sweethearts?”
Jiang Mingzhu made no effort to hide her envy.
“They say His Majesty was neglected when he was a prince. Her Majesty was a princess’s study companion then and could go about the palace. She often brought him food.
“She even risked her life to keep watch at Canglu Palace, afraid someone would harm him while he was young. She tested every bite and every bowl of porridge for poison before giving it to him.
“After ascending the throne, he remembered their old affection, and at last they married.”
I let out a helpless little laugh.
Jiang Mingzhu was going to be disappointed.
“If you enter the palace, never mention childhood sweethearts before Her Majesty, and don’t discuss His Majesty’s past.”
Puzzled, she asked:
“Why?”
Because all those stories about Xu Wanzhen and Rongqi’s childhood romance
were really memories of Rongqi and me.
I had been in the palace for six months then, washing clothes in the laundry bureau.
Ten sunless winter days in a row delayed a task for Noble Lady Chun.
I didn’t yet understand the palace’s rules, and offered an explanation with an apologetic smile: the sun had not been out.
A senior maid from Noble Lady Chun’s household slapped me and sentenced me to kneel in the long avenue for eight hours.
It was a day of heavy snow. Beneath my knees, the snow melted and froze again.
Four hours passed. I had lost all feeling below my waist.
Then the palanquin of Rongqi’s mother, Noble Consort Rou, passed by. Taking pity on me, she kept me at Canglu Palace to sweep and tidy.
But my good fortune didn’t last long.
At the Lantern Festival the following year, for some unknown reason, Canglu Palace lost the emperor’s favor overnight.
Noble Consort Rou and Rongqi were confined there together.
The consorts who bore a grudge against her seized their chance to trample on her, transferring away the maids and eunuchs.
At lunchtime, all of Canglu Palace was silent as a tomb.
Carrying thin porridge and steamed buns, I knocked cautiously on the door.
I was frightened. The emperor had just ordered the deaths of two maids who attended Noble Consort Rou closely.
The bedchamber was cold as an ice cellar. Rongqi knelt beside the bed, guarding his mother warily like a young animal.
He was filthy and thin, nothing like the plump, fair child who had once nestled in the consort’s arms.
Seeing the food in my hands, he remained watchful, but swallowed involuntarily.
“Who are you? Why haven’t you left?”
I knelt and raised the food above my head.
“Your servant Feng Chun’er. Three months ago, Her Highness saved me in the long avenue.”
Rongqi feared the food was poisoned and dared not eat.
Only after I bit into a bun and took a mouthful of porridge did he venture to touch it.
Kneeling beside the bed, he held out the porridge and begged softly:
“Mother, please eat. Rongqi isn’t hungry.”
Shadows blurred the bed curtains. The person behind them showed no sign of life.
The emperor refused to see her one last time. Noble Consort Rou was hastily dressed for burial and laid to rest.
Rongqi clung to a maid’s legs, refusing to let them take his mother away.
“Her Highness wasn’t happy here. Let her go, Your Highness.”
Rongqi loosened his hands in a daze. Seeing me, he grasped at me as though I were his last hope.
“Sister Chun’er, take me to Father! I have to ask him! Mother suffered so many wrongs! There must have been so many misunderstandings!”
My legs hadn’t healed from the punishment I received for defending myself in the avenue. I held Rongqi back.
“Your Highness, misunderstandings and wrongs don’t matter.”
How could Rongqi fail to understand that?
He simply hated being unable to do anything.
That night was the Awakening of Insects, and thunder and rain shook the capital.
Canglu Palace was a lone boat tossed in the downpour. The motherless young creature hid in my arms and wailed for a very, very long time.
Long enough for his tears to soak my clothes and their salt to seep into my heart.
Rongqi feared both darkness and thunder. He clutched the hem of my clothes, making me promise again and again, even in his sleep.
Sister Chun’er would never leave Rongqi.
When the emperor summoned him, Rongqi was frightened and angry, uncertain what his father intended to do with him.
I washed and combed him a little, then straightened his clothes.
“Did Noble Consort Rou say anything before she died?”
Rongqi said that only a few days earlier, his mother had still been cursing his father’s faithlessness and the consorts’ schemes.
I smoothed the loose hair on his forehead and noticed the scorched-tail qin zither beneath the window, the one his mother had often played when she attended the emperor.
“Remember, Your Highness: before she died, Her Highness stroked that qin and wept. She said nothing at all.”
Rongqi nodded, only half understanding.
He cried easily, and he was clever.
When he learned his father wished to banish him to Yongzhou, a thousand li away, Rongqi understood the distant look that came over him at the mention of the qin. He neither begged nor complained.
He merely lifted his face, his eyes reddening.
“Is Yongzhou very far away? Will Qi’er still be able to see Father?”
I think it was then that Rongqi understood what sort of road lay before him.
On the forty-ninth day after Noble Consort Rou’s death, Noble Lady Chun was promoted to Consort Chun, and Rongqi was placed in her care.
Consort Chun disliked him and mistreated him in private.
His food was sour. His clothes were thin.
But I would save my own food for him.
By taking apart the winter clothes the palace issued and dividing their cotton padding, I could just about keep two people from freezing to death.
To survive, Rongqi had no choice but to please Consort Chun. Later she fell ill, and the imperial physician prescribed dew as an ingredient in her medicine.
In the late autumn, swallowing his humiliation, he could kneel all night on the observatory terrace and devoutly pray for a dish of dew for her.
I was the one who stayed awake beside him, breathing warmth onto my hands all night.
Even Aunt He, who had always been kind to me, sighed and advised me before she left the palace:
“Chun’er, clever servants choose a good master. You’ve already repaid the kindness you owed. You ought to think about your own future.
“Go back to Suzhou one day, marry into a good family, and live in peace. Stop dreaming of things beyond your reach.”
Aunt He didn’t know I had made plans.
When I first came to the palace, I thought I would save my wages for several decades, wait for permission to leave, and buy a little house as Aunt He had. I would get a rosewood bed, then a little table with room for a dish and a bowl of soup. I would never again have to sleep on a shared bed where I couldn’t stretch my legs, or sit on the steps with a bowl in my hands to eat.
I had never dreamed of anything beyond my reach.
It was only that Rongqi had cried so miserably that day. In him, I saw myself at thirteen, abandoned by my parents, frozen in the snow until it left me with a lasting ailment.
I had cried just as hard then. People passed along the road, but not one reached out to wipe my tears.
Yet saving money was so difficult. I washed more clothes than anyone else and took in mending.
One serious illness of Rongqi’s would swallow up a rosewood bed’s worth of money.
I kept a little account book in secret. I wrote down rewards and wages, but whenever the entries reached the name “Rongqi,” another year of labor came to nothing.
Rongqi saw the book and snuggled closer to me with playful insistence.
“The empress is arranging marriages for my brothers. But I owe you so much, Sister, I’ll have to sell myself to you to pay my debts.”
“Is there a girl you like, Your Highness?”
“They don’t fancy me, and I don’t fancy them. Rongqi will only ever love you, Sister.”
That word, love, made my heart tremble for no reason.
When nobody was near, he always called me Sister.
He was seventeen already. At that age, saying he loved me was so unfair: half a declaration, half a joke.
It could count as a promise, or count for nothing at all.