Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The bitter irony was that Mother Consort barely knew how to read, yet they still managed to conclusively brand her as unfaithful.
With just a few words from Noble Consort Lan before Imperial Father, my maternal grandfather’s family in faraway Jiangnan-people I had never met, who made their living selling pastries-was condemned to extermination along with all three branches of their kin.
Not one person was spared.
When Mother Consort received the news, she coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her life was nearing its end.
With great difficulty, she raised a hand and wiped away the tears streaming from the corners of my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I have to leave you all alone in this world, Jia’er.
“In our next life, let us be an ordinary mother and daughter. I’ll watch you grow up and see you married, with children of your own all around you.
“Live well. Don’t… don’t think about revenge.”
Then she was gone.
Still burdened with disgrace, her body was rolled in a tattered mat and dumped in some mass grave.
The next day, Chu Song came to see me after I fell ill.
He stroked my head and said, “I mishandled this matter. As your elder brother, I owe you an apology. Fortunately, your eyes and features closely resemble Imperial Father’s. Otherwise, the matter involving your birth mother might have implicated you as well.”
I went rigid. “Mother Consort was innocent.”
First Imperial Brother sighed. “Jia’er, there are far too many innocent people in this harem-in this realm.”
“Focus on recovering. I’ll see that your birth mother receives a proper burial and have plenty of spirit money burned for her every year during the Qingming Festival. Keep your spirits up. You still have a long road ahead of you.”
He brought me many fine things, including over a hundred jin of silver-thread charcoal and a thousand-year-old ginseng root.
Although I resembled Imperial Father, the rumors in the palace never ceased.
Whenever the servants saw me, they whispered among themselves. Some even said to my face that I was a bastard Mother Consort had conceived with some unknown man.
What I remembered most about that winter was the bone-deep cold.
Not even glowing silver-thread charcoal could warm my heart.
Perhaps the lives of the lowly were simply worth less.
Xiao Liu brought me good food and drink every day. By the thirty-sixth day after Mother Consort’s death, I had mostly recovered.
Burning spirit money was forbidden inside the palace, so I made a bell with my own hands and inscribed it with Mother Consort’s name and date of birth.
According to a Jiangnan custom, if a bell was hung high enough on the thirty-sixth day after someone’s death, it would summon the departed soul into one’s dreams.
There was an ancient tree in the Imperial Garden said to be a thousand years old. I intended to hang the bell from its branches.
But in the palace passageway, I ran into Chu Yao, surrounded by a grand entourage.
She poked her head out of her sedan chair and looked at me with disdain. “After the filthy thing your birth mother did, if I were you, I would have hanged myself long ago. Turn around and keep your face out of my sight. The very sight of you disgusts me!”