Chapter 7

I held my little chest, my thoughts in turmoil.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked the madam.

She lit her pipe. After a long while, she breathed out smoke, turned to me, and smiled. “Xiaoqiao, twenty years ago, I wanted to kill someone too.”

The madam said she had a name of her own.

Hanyue.

“No one ever asked. Everyone just called me Mother. After a while, even I forgot there had ever been a person called Hanyue. Until you came.”

Smoke hung in the cramped carriage, unable to disperse.

I usually hated it when customers smoked. The smell was thick and choking, but I could only endure it.

Today it was just as thick, just as choking. I drew in two deep breaths, letting it fill my lungs, and somehow grew calmer.

“I used to be just like you. Spineless. Timid. All I had was a pretty face. My stepmother sold me to a brothel. Apart from receiving customers, I spent my days staring into space. I thought the rest of my life would pass that way.”

“Then a scholar appeared. His name was Zhao Ruyuan. He spent freely. If a girl caught his eye, he’d keep her for a whole month. Everyone called him Master Zhao. The girls said that if he redeemed you, even life as his concubine would be a life of luxury.”

“I was pretty, but I didn’t know how to charm customers. Madam didn’t like me. I didn’t even have a room of my own. I shared with several other girls. When a customer chose one of us, we went to a guest room.”

“Master Zhao had chosen all the others. Each one came back with more jewelry. Gifts from him—he was always generous. After hearing so much about him, I grew curious. One day, I went downstairs to deliver drinks, and someone stopped me. He was handsome and clean-looking, his eyes curving when he smiled. He said he liked me and wanted my company. That was Master Zhao.”

“I was with him for a year and a half. He said I was different from the others. I didn’t want anything from him. I was always quiet and obedient. He said, ‘Hanyue, why don’t I redeem you? You could bear me a child.’”

“I’d known since I entered the house that women in our trade weren’t allowed to get pregnant. But I looked at Zhao Ruyuan, and my heart gave in. I secretly stopped taking the medicine and conceived his child.”

“He gave the house a great deal of money and had me moved into my own room. I no longer received other customers. So even when he wasn’t there, no one noticed I was pregnant. Madam only found out when I was more than six months along and could no longer hide my belly.”

“We sent him a message. He said he was busy and sent more money, asking Madam to take good care of me. He’d come to redeem me soon. I waited and waited. By the time I was almost due, he still hadn’t come.”

“But since he’d paid, Madam took it on herself to find a midwife. The child was born. A girl. Fair and clean, with his brows and eyes, my little nose and mouth.”

“When the baby was a little over half a month old, Zhao Ruyuan finally came. But the moment he saw me, he frowned. ‘Why have you put on so much weight?’ ‘You’re nowhere near as pretty as before.’ ‘Hanyue, your face was the most valuable thing about you, and now you’ve ruined it.’ He wouldn’t look at me again. He turned away and saw a fresh-faced girl who’d just arrived.”

“So he redeemed her instead. Said she was like a pure lotus and shouldn’t be sullied in a place like that.”

The smoke in the carriage grew thicker. Hanyue coughed until tears came to her eyes.

“Watching him leave, I hated him. For the first time, I wanted so badly to kill someone. But I was a coward. I didn’t dare. I was only a brothel woman, with no power, no influence, no one behind me. I could only swallow it all.”

“What happened to the child?” I asked.

“She was taken away,” Hanyue said with a smile.

“Not long afterward, Madam Zhao came. She smashed up half the house and screamed in the madams’ faces. Zhao Ruyuan had actually brought a brothel woman home—he’d disgraced her. They explained that the girl he’d taken had never received customers. The woman he’d slept with—me—was still in the house. Then Madam Zhao rushed at me and snatched the baby away. I never heard another word about her.”

It hurt to listen. “Do you miss her?”

Hanyue shook her head. “No.”

Then she said, “Missing her won’t help. If she’s dead, that’s that. If she’s alive, at least she isn’t growing up in a brothel. You can’t make a decent life here.”

“So you stayed for good?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’d had a child. My looks had faded. No customer asked for me anymore. But I still had to live. Little by little, I endured my way to where I am now.”

As we spoke, the carriage left the town.

“This is as far as I can take you,” Hanyue said.

“Today I was afraid you’d kill him, but part of me hoped you would. Once he died, I felt so much lighter.”

“Live well from now on. Anywhere is better than here.”

I got down and watched the carriage turn away. Hanyue lifted the curtain, and smoke drifted out.

I breathed in hard, but could barely smell it anymore.

I stopped watching the carriage, turned, and walked home through the night.

Home was still far away. I wondered whether our two fen of land was still there.

I reached home at daybreak.

The village was gone. Only scorched wasteland remained.

Following my memories, I found our house. It was rubble.

Our two fen of land was overgrown with weeds half as tall as a person.

At Yifang House, I’d heard there was war and chaos outside. Tribes were invading from beyond the border, while the imperial city was busy fighting over the throne. Ordinary people suffered. Bandits and marauders roamed everywhere. Any village might be massacred on any day.

I just hadn’t imagined it would be mine.

Suddenly, it all seemed absurd. What were people living for?

I sat on the ridge between the fields and remembered that year, tending the land with Mother and my brother. He had said life was going to turn sweet.

Sweet?

All I tasted was salt.

Without my noticing, tears had begun to fall.

Mother was right. How could life ever be sweet?

Every time we tried to make it a little better, we struggled and struggled. I’d never met Father. My brother was dead. Mother was gone.

My sister-in-law and I had gone into a brothel. Now I had come back alone, and she was still there.

The land was gone too.

I sat on the ridge until dark. I pulled up some grass and twisted it into rope, wetting it with water. I used to be good at that. But after years without hard labor, my hands were soon covered in scratches.

I didn’t feel the pain. I kept twisting.

At last, I gave it a hard tug. It was strong enough.

I hung the rope from a tree. As I struggled to fit myself into the loop, an arrow flew past, scattering my hair. The pearl hairpin fell to the ground.

A rider came galloping toward me.

“There’s still someone here?” he exclaimed.

I turned to look at him. Mounted on his horse, his expression was hard to make out. He only seemed very tall.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Trying to die.”

“Why?”

“Life is too bitter.”

He thought for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll take you to have some sweet soup. It’s sweet.”

“Don’t die. What a waste. Are you from this village? Why not work for me? I promise you’ll have sweet soup every day. As sweet as you could want.”

I didn’t die that day.

I drank a bowl of sweet soup, so sweet it was cloying.

I met a man who said his name was Wu Zheng, a trusted man of Prince Wei’s.

He said that instead of dying, there were many things I could still do.

Many things that would make being alive taste sweet too.