Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Before she was married, my eldest sister had once had everything. She was the envy of all the young ladies in the inner chambers.

She had a father.

Our father was the Chief Grand Secretary, a trusted minister of the Son of Heaven who came and went from the Wenhua and Wuying Halls.

She had an elder brother.

Our legitimate elder brother was a Hanlin Academy Shujishi. Once he gained enough experience to enter the Grand Secretariat, his future would be limitless.

She had talent and beauty, and a fiancé born into a meritorious noble family.

The heir of the marquis manor and the legitimate daughter of the Chief Grand Secretary-everyone called it a match made in heaven.

Aside from the early death of her legitimate mother, my eldest sister’s life seemed to lack nothing at all.

And yet, she still resolutely hanged herself.

It began with a flood that seemed to have nothing to do with us.

When I was still a year and a half away from my coming-of-age ceremony, the Yellow River flooded, leaving hundreds of thousands of common people displaced.

When the young ladies of the imperial capital heard of it, they gathered in twos and threes to donate money and goods for the disaster victims, and to pray to the gods for blessings.

But my eldest sister believed that donating money and goods could only solve a temporary hardship, while praying to the gods was even more absurd.

She had my second sister and me cover for her and secretly went to one of our farmsteads.

Using the river beside the farmstead, she tested her ideas again and again, and finally came up with a method to control the floodwaters.

Overjoyed, my eldest sister wrote a summary of her water-control strategy into a memorial and asked Father to submit it to His Majesty.

Father did submit a memorial, and His Majesty was very pleased.

Only, the name signed on that memorial was not my eldest sister’s.

It was my legitimate elder brother’s.

Father was praised throughout court and country, and even received a plaque personally inscribed by His Majesty that read, “A Fine Teacher of Sons.”

My legitimate elder brother earned credit for flood control and was promoted from the Hanlin Academy to the Ministry of Works as a vice minister.

Only my eldest sister…

After all her painstaking effort, all she received was a set of pure-gold hair ornaments inlaid with gemstones.

No matter how precious gold and silver jewelry might be, it paled before the chance to leave one’s name in history.

That day, sharp arguing erupted from Father’s study, followed by the sound of a vase shattering.

In the end, the farce concluded with my eldest sister being slapped several times by Father and ordered to kneel in confinement in the ancestral hall.

My second sister and I feared Father, but we were also deeply worried about our eldest sister. So we secretly tucked away some pastries and food, then slipped into the ancestral hall to see her.

My eldest sister looked frighteningly haggard.

Her cheeks, once bright and full, had sunk deeply, giving her face an inexplicable, desolate sharpness.

Before my second sister could hand her the pastries, my eldest sister’s bony hand clamped tightly around her wrist.

“Father said literary talent is no affair of women.”

“Could it truly be that I was wrong?”

“Was I wrong to read so many books? Wrong to study the words of sages? Or wrong to offer a strategy to control the flood?”

“Father also said that at home, a woman obeys her father.”

“He said that if my summary can pave the way for the men of the family in their official careers, that is already the greatest glory I could ask for.”

“Second Sister, Third Sister, do you think so too?”

Question after question came from my eldest sister’s mouth.

Each one was more grating than the sound of a blade cutting into flesh.

My second sister did not know how to answer. She could only weep as she held out the pastries wrapped in oiled paper.

My eldest sister did not take them. Her misty, heavy eyes stared at my weeping second sister and at me, still too ignorant to understand.

After a long while, she murmured softly, “Second Sister, Third Sister, take care of yourselves.”

I did not hear the farewell in my eldest sister’s words.

Neither did my second sister.

When we left the ancestral hall, my eldest sister’s faint sigh sounded behind me, like a prophecy already fixed on a spirit medium’s tongue.

“Water lilies on the lake are born never to bend…”

That very night, a night-patrol matron discovered that my eldest sister had hanged herself from a beam in the ancestral hall. Only then did my second sister and I realize the truth.

That hurried meeting had been the last time we would ever see her.

The tablets in the ancestral hall were filled with the names of the Li family ancestors and the principal wives who had married into the Li Clan.

My eldest sister’s body lay all alone before those tablets, covered with a layer of white cloth.

Father and my legitimate elder brother frowned as they discussed my eldest sister’s funeral arrangements, as well as how to continue the marriage alliance with Changping Marquis Manor.

According to funeral rites, since my eldest sister had died unmarried, there was no way she could be buried in the Li Clan ancestral grave, nor could she enter the Li Clan ancestral hall.

Trembling with fear, my second sister suggested to Father, “Father, the Li family still has a farmstead in the countryside…”

And so my eldest sister was buried by Father and our elder brother beside the farmstead in the countryside.

Right next to the little river where she had researched her water-control strategy.

I always felt that if my eldest sister’s spirit was watching from above, she should have been very satisfied with this resting place.

If there was any flaw in its perfection, it was that my legitimate elder brother insisted my eldest sister’s name must never be revealed.

“She died young before she could be married. That is already enough to invite gossip. For the sake of the Li family’s good name, it would be best not to carve her given name on the tombstone,” my legitimate elder brother suggested to Father.

And so the name Li Ling, which had originally been meant for Eldest Sister’s tombstone, became the words Eldest Daughter of the Li Family.

When she was alive, she had possessed everything.

But after she died, she could not even leave her name behind in this world.

Second Sister gazed from afar at the servants adding earth to the grave mound. Her expression was frightened, and the hand gripping mine went cold in an instant.

In a small voice, she told me, “Third Sister, if one day I should also…”

“Please embroider the words Li Shao on a sachet for me, then secretly place it in my coffin.”

“I don’t want to be like Eldest Sister, leaving not even a name behind.”

Li Shao was Second Sister’s given name.

The ill omen in Second Sister’s words made my hair stand on end.

But no matter how I pressed her or tried to comfort her, Second Sister answered me with silence.

After discussing it, Father and my legitimate elder brother decided that the marriage alliance between the Li family and Changping Marquis Manor ought to continue.

They sent a letter to Changping Marquis Manor, asking about passing the marriage down to Second Sister.

The Marquis of Changping soon wrote back, saying everything would proceed as before.

This marriage alliance had barely been preserved. It was merely that the daughter being married out had changed from Eldest Sister to Second Sister.

It did not affect the Li family’s cultivation of power at court.

Father and my legitimate elder brother both let out long sighs of relief.

As for Second Sister’s own wishes…

Aside from me, who was in the same position as Second Sister, not a single person in all of Li Manor cared.

The decisions and exchanges of interest made by men were not something two mere women like Second Sister and me could question or resist.

On the surface, Second Sister embroidered her wedding gown as if nothing were wrong.

But in the end, tears still rolled down her cheeks and fell onto the glaringly red peonies on the bridal dress, spreading into round stains of water.

I knew what weighed on Second Sister’s heart.

The Li family was one of the foremost refined and noble families in the imperial capital.

Every year during the Lantern Festival and the Shangsi Festival, the invitations asking Eldest Sister, Second Sister, and me to attend elegant gatherings could bury the tea table.

Second Sister was reserved by nature and had never liked such occasions, so she would casually set most of those invitations aside.

Except for those from Fifth Miss Jiang.

When Eldest Sister Li Ling was still alive, she once told me with absolute certainty:

“Second Sister likes Fifth Miss Jiang.”

I did not understand what liking someone meant.

I only knew that whenever Second Sister saw the frank and straightforward Fifth Miss Jiang, her eyes seemed as if they would overflow with honeyed water.

Even the tone she used when speaking was not as calm and even as it usually was.

It was sweet and cloying instead.

Fifth Miss Jiang seemed to like Second Sister very much as well.

Because the way she looked at Second Sister was the same lingering, tender way Second Sister looked at her.

Unfortunately, after Eldest Sister was gone, the betrothal to the Heir of the Marquis of Changping fell upon Second Sister.

To make absolutely sure nothing went wrong, Father and my legitimate elder brother stationed nearly every strong and sturdy old maidservant in the household around Second Sister’s embroidery tower to keep watch.

All the invitations Miss Jiang sent to the door were intercepted outside the embroidery tower as well.

During the half year Second Sister spent waiting to be married, the sentence the old maidservants said to her most often was, “Miss, you must follow the rules.”

What were rules?

At home, obey your father. Once married, obey your husband. If your husband dies, obey your son.

These three sentences truly were the most powerful weapons in the world, I thought.

Only, only… why were these rules only for women to follow? I wondered again.

Before I could think through these questions, the wedding date was already close at hand.

Piece after piece of dowry was prepared and carried into the embroidery tower in an endless stream.

Second Sister had no strength to resist. She began slowly withering away.

At first, she was listless and dispirited. Then, at last, she fell ill in bed and could not keep down even water or rice.

I could not truly do anything for Second Sister, so I could only go to the kitchen every day and make soups and broths that were easy to digest, hoping she might eat a little more.

Sometimes Second Sister would take a few bites, but most of the time, she would have me carry them out and divide them among the maidservants.

The person lying on the couch had grown as thin as a plum tree in winter, cold and frail. Only her gaze remained resolute, fixed always on the world beyond the embroidery tower window.

I did not know what Second Sister was looking at, or what she was waiting for.

Until she spoke softly, as if asking me, and yet as if talking to herself:

“I wonder how Ah Yuan is doing…”

Jiang Yuan was the given name of the fifth young lady of Jiang Manor.

She was also the person Second Sister loved.

There was nothing I could do about my stubborn Second Sister. I took out my private savings and said many pleasant things before I finally managed to move the cook in charge of purchasing for the small kitchen, asking her to help inquire about Jiang Yuan.

The cook came and went in a hurry, but she brought back news like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

Jiang Yuan was dead.