Chapter 5

When Qi Qian'er was tricked by Madam and sold to the old woman in her last life, she couldn't read so much as half a character — yet Madam claimed she knew her letters and her figures.

Never mind reading — back then, to count a few hundred copper coins she'd stack them in piles of a hundred, and only once she had ten piles would she find a cord and string them into one string of cash.

And she was hardly alone. Ask all through Qingfeng — how many men could even count?

Even a mistress of a household like Madam Wang had only a few years' schooling. She'd learned the abacus off the family's bookkeeper in earlier days, could read half a page of a letter, and sometimes still had to ask someone else what it meant.

These years were nothing like the golden age to come. A person who could read was a rare thing — a woman all the more so.

Pitiful Qi Qian'er, bought in her last life for ten strings of cash and fifty jin of grain — all because she knew her letters and figures.

The old woman had paid the literate-girl's price.

That money hadn't come easy to the old woman. The grain was scraped straight out of their own lives; the cash was the pension the higher-ups had granted when Scabby's father died.

When she got home and found she'd been had, the old woman took to her bed in a rage. Mean and stingy her whole life, and cheated this badly — you can imagine the life Qi Qian'er led after that.

However hard she worked, however dutiful she was, it was endure, endure — and only after more than ten years, when the old woman finally died, did she feel she could breathe, could sleep an easy sleep in the middle of the night.

And even then, though she could sleep, Qi Qian'er no longer knew how. Her heart wouldn't settle; she'd break a single long night into eight stretches of sleep, and to her dying day never knew the taste of a sweet night's rest.

Remembering it all made Qi Qian'er's heart ache — but for the child she longed for, the one bound to her very heart, she was willing to come back and suffer it all again.

Of course, she wasn't afraid now. Now she knew her letters and her figures — hand her an abacus and she could work through ten ledgers in a day.

For half a lifetime spent on Quanhou Street, no one had troubled her — her standing and seniority were what they were, and Scabby had left her a fair few mu of land to see out her old age.

Back then the lower officials couldn't afford to live in Yanjing, so their households, old and young, were settled in new Qingfeng city. By the time Quanhou Village had come to be called Quanhou Street, the neighbors on every side were minor official families, and it was from then that she began to widen her horizons.

In her later years she went out and mixed in society, and the women she kept company with were all the wives and mistresses of official families. By then she'd learned how to carry herself, picked up this and that odd trick, gained the experience of a lady who sat at the head of a household — but still, unreconciled at heart, she'd gone and earnestly found a teacher and read a good many books. And what use was it?

You grow older and older, and by the time you understand everything, it's just about time to die.

Hearing the girl could read, the old woman's mind stirred hard. She came tottering over and looked Qi Qian'er up and down. She had an old hand's eye, after all, and no matter how she looked she couldn't make Qi Qian'er out for the child of a scholarly house — the girl looked more like the small daughter of some ordinary suffering family. So she pressed the question in earnest: "You say this little girl can read?"

Qi Qian'er kept her head down and said nothing.

Madam Wang started, her heart wobbling though nothing showed on her face, and nodded firmly: "Isn't she just! Not a great deal, mind, but enough to make out an ordinary storybook. Now, Old Mistress..." Afraid the old woman would dig to the root of it, she turned the talk aside and said low: "I'll not hide it from you — look how these few years of upheaval have gone. Think about it, Old Mistress: girls this grown and still alive today — how many are there left, would you say?"

At that, the old woman suddenly thought of the hamlet behind her — batch after batch of women remarrying with children in tow, households cobbled together the second time around — and it was true, come to think of it, that she hadn't seen a near-grown girl in a while.

Disaster natural and man-made, famine and starved corpses everywhere — when an ordinary family fled, the first they'd give up was sure to be the girls.

Not that there were truly none — thin girls like this, there were some — but ones who could read and count, those there really weren't.

The old woman reckoned to herself: things were settling now, and a grown girl was sure to become a dear commodity. When her sons and grandsons came back, there'd have to be someone to warm a kang, wouldn't there? But who to give her to? This girl... mm, best give her to Scabby.

Poor Scabby of hers. His uncles and elder cousins each had at least a couple left to their households, each with someone by them.

Only this boy — father, mother, brothers all dead — left alone with a cold stove and no home to speak of.

At that thought the old woman lifted her eyes, put on an even more finicky, more scornful air, and sniffed at Madam Wang: "And what if she can read? You can't eat it or drink it."

Madam Wang was no fool — half a lifetime dealing with tenant wives and estate stewards. Hearing the old woman run the girl down like that, her heart settled.

She smiled and said: "Well — if that's how you see it, then never mind... Ah! It's only that my old home is so far, two or three thousand li, and I'm afraid the child won't hold out on the road... I can't bear to part with her either. Never mind, never mind! Married off so far away — from now on, if trouble comes to her husband's house, we her own family couldn't lend a hand anyway..."

As she spoke she pulled Qi Qian'er back the way they'd come, and Qi Qian'er let herself be dragged.

They'd gone only a few steps when the old woman called out loudly behind them: "Ai! Ai! Hold on a moment... this — this girl of yours, what'll you trade her for, in the end?"

Madam Wang stopped and turned, held out her palm, and said, brazen as anything: "Old Mistress, this girl of mine — I'll want a hundred jin of fine grain and twenty strings of cash... She's a girl who can read, mind, who knows her letters."

---

In the wounded-soldiers' camp, Doctor Cheng was in a rush with his two medicine-boys, so busy he could have used his feet for hands, when Meng Wanquan — the one short an arm — came running up outside the tent.

Meng Wanquan trotted into the tent, cast his eyes about the room until he found Doctor Cheng, came over, and — never minding whether the man was busy — took hold of him and hauled him off.

Doctor Cheng, somewhat put out, shook his arm free after a few steps and scolded: "You scamp — why aren't you out there minding those precious goats with the old woman? What are you dragging me off for? Go on, go on! Don't let someone else make off with the old lady, or see how you'll answer to Commandant Chen."

Meng Wanquan's coarse face split in a thoroughly sleazy grin. He heh-hehed a few times, then said: "Just so you know, Doctor — the old lady's bought Dasheng a wife, and she wants you out there to draw up the papers!"

At that Doctor Cheng's look changed on the instant. He wrenched free of Meng Wanquan and barked: "The old woman doesn't know any better — are you a fool too? Only yesterday the higher-ups gave clear orders that for the time being no official or officer may buy or sell people. Pulling a stunt like this at a moment like this — isn't that ruining Commandant Chen's whole future?"

Meng Wanquan choked, and with his one arm slapped himself across the mouth: "My mistake, my mistake! Listen to me — it's not buying a person! I know well enough there's no buying people just now. Doctor Cheng, the old lady's taking a betrothed wife for Commandant Chen — she's asking you out to stand witness and write the marriage papers, that's all."

Doctor Cheng, half believing: "Truly?"

Meng Wanquan nodded and nodded: "Truly! Truly! I'd never lie to you. They've settled the price over there — oh! the betrothal gift, I mean. Come along quick, and be so good as to bring the stiff hemp-paper and the ink-box, we'll need them presently."

Doctor Cheng let himself be pulled along again, asking as he went: "How much did the old woman put up for the bride?"

Meng Wanquan answered: "Fifty jin of coarse grain and ten strings of cash."

Doctor Cheng was astonished: "How much?!"

These days, how much was the ration for even the gravely wounded in the camp? A few taels of coarse grain a man to hang on to life. Fifty jin of coarse grain? That was the price you could walk into Qingfeng and trade for five nimble, decent-looking kitchen-women.

The old woman never came home empty-handed — she'd pick up two lumps of dog dung and store them away — and she could bring herself to pay a price like that?

"That's the figure! Ten strings of cash! Fifty jin of coarse grain."

"She's not been cheated, has she?"

"No! How could she be — that old woman's canny as a monkey. The girl, well — they say she can read."

Now Doctor Cheng understood. That made sense of it.

In the whole wounded-camp, close to a thousand souls all told, plus the four or five hundred dependents who followed the camp, there were maybe two or three who could read and write — and all of them men.

Learning the girl was literate, Doctor Cheng grew oddly grave. As he walked he said, with conviction: "If — if she really can read and write, then the old woman's got herself a great bargain."

Meng Wanquan thought so too, and said enviously: "Isn't that the truth!"

In a world of disaster and chaos, people were no different from livestock — sometimes worth less.

To buy a single ox you still needed a broker, a brokerage, the yamen — three sets of paperwork. But buying and selling people now was cash in one hand, person in the other, and done.

Oh — and silver and copper were no good now. It all came down to grain. Whoever had grain in hand was a first-rate household, a first-rate somebody.

And the old woman was one with grain.

The two of them strode out to the big willow beyond the infirmary camp, where by now the dependents, come at the news, stood ringed three deep.

Doctor Cheng was a hasty sort of physician with no great guile. When he arrived, Madam Wang called over Huo Yunrui — Qi Qian'er's legitimate elder brother — to speak with him.

Huo Yunrui was a young master who'd properly passed the child examinations and seen something of the world in Yanjing. In the old days he'd never have thought much of a man like Doctor Cheng — for all that everyone called him "Doctor," an army healer who tended the wounded was, by the old reckoning, an artisan, and a medical artisan ranked among the low.

Now, for fifty jin of food, he had no choice but to put on a smiling face, bend his backbone, and make conversation with the man.

Getting the respect he wanted, Doctor Cheng gladly agreed, played the matchmaker, and wrote out the marriage contract in duplicate. He watched the three parties press their handprints to it, and the thing was done.

Madam Wang was a sharp one. She sent Huo Yunrui over to the wheelbarrow to fetch a fine ink-stick sealed in waxed paper, to thank Doctor Cheng for his matchmaking.

At this, Doctor Cheng warmed to the family all the more, and even the thin-haired little girl looked pleasing to his eye.

Thin hair was no matter — with this old woman she'd never go hungry, and a few days' feeding would put her to rights.

Once it was all settled, he said kindly to the Chen family's old woman, Old Madam Chen née Wu: "Old Mistress, you've got yourself a fine granddaughter-in-law here."

A wish off her heart, Old Madam Chen looked at the dependents ringed three deep, her face a very picture of pride, a picture of smugness — yet her mouth never let up, and she said, all disdain: "Ai, what a scrap of a girl she is — a rack of ribs without two taels of meat to scrape off. Look at her, can't carry on a shoulder or lift with a hand! I'll have to spend good grain fattening her up. Hah — it's only a family like ours. Go and ask around, Doctor Cheng — it's only that my heart's too soft to leave her be."

She pointed at Qi Qian'er, then at her family: "Their old home's three thousand li off. If I didn't buy this girl, she'd starve to death halfway there for sure."

These words set Doctor Cheng openly curling his lip.

The new nobles now were thick as ox-hairs, and for their sons' and grandsons' sake there were plenty of freshly-capped officials holding out heavy money to wed a literate girl from a great house, to prop up their faces.

Never mind that even in peacetime such a girl was hard to find — with the market as it was now, the old woman had plain got a bargain and was crowing about it too.

Doctor Cheng had taken a liking to the Huo family, and now, seeing the thin girl fallen into the hands of an old woman like this, he pinched the ink-stick in his hand again — a piece from the Hanqing workshop, handed down for centuries, worth thirty strings of cash in the old days, a thing a physician at a little apothecary would never once have dreamed of owning.

The gift weighed in his hand — he couldn't take it for nothing, could he? So Doctor Cheng stroked his straggly beard and spun a line: "Old mother, a good bride taken in can make three generations prosper. Think about it — your house is on the rise now, and from here on you'll carry official rank. In all your dealings, at home and abroad, if you want to keep face you'll need someone who can read and write. Isn't that so?"

And that was exactly how Old Madam Chen saw it. These few years the family had lost so many; and just when there were posts to rise into, they'd taken a beating for it. Her whole brood of boys had swallowed losses in silence — military orders, commands, they understood none of it, and what the higher-ups meant they could never puzzle out. Truly a litter of piglets straight out of the pen, walking the world in human skin, every one of them a fool beyond all bounds.

From now on things would be different for the family — at least there'd be someone who could read. The old woman glowed inside, and looking again at Qi Qian'er's little narrow eyes and thin wisps of hair, found her a hundred, a thousand times more pleasing.

Pursing her lips, tickled pink, she said to Doctor Cheng: "May your good words come true, Doctor. From tomorrow I'll have this granddaughter-in-law of mine read me the whole almanac, every single day."

That said, the old woman even waggled her neck and, smug as could be, tossed off to the dependents on the other side: "Anytime you've something on at home, come to my house to ask the almanac — ah! don't you go standing on ceremony with us!"

The women all said yes to that, and burst out laughing again.

Madam Wang, seeing her son tying up the grain sacks over there, and with something guilty on her mind, glanced about and pulled Qi Qian'er off to a quiet spot.

Once it was safe, she took a pair of silver ear-studs from her sleeve and pressed them into Qi Qian'er's hand, then folded the marriage contract neatly and gave her that too.

Qi Qian'er held the marriage contract and did not move, and Madam Wang's eyes reddened again. For once she stroked Qi Qian'er's head and said, softly: "Good girl. Do you remember the name your brother gave you?"

Qi Qian'er nodded. She'd had this same treatment in her last life — her elder brother, to lend the look of a scholarly house, had written her a surname onto the marriage contract.

Huo Qiqian.

"Good, so long as you remember!" Madam Wang pursed her lips, still uneasy at heart, and gripped Qi Qian'er's hand: "Seventh girl, you're blessed! Far luckier than I ever was! Look at this family — you can see they're different. Look at how that old woman's got herself up — new nobility! From now on, just serve her well and good days will be yours. Have you got that?"

Qi Qian'er nodded again, wooden as ever.

Madam Wang pressed her lips, and had to coax her with a smile besides. She pointed at the marriage contract: "You keep this safe, now. This is a proper, above-board document. If one day they don't want you, with this paper you'll be in the right wherever you go."

And that was just how it was: even though that blockhead thought it of no account, the old woman had meant to fob her off as a bondmaid — and if Doctor Cheng hadn't stepped in and laid down the law, there was no telling where she'd have ended up.

Qi Qian'er, without a word, tucked the marriage contract into her sleeve.

Seeing her do it, Madam Wang let out a breath and said with a smile: "Ai! That's the way. These next few days, put on a bit of an illness — say you're missing us, that you can't bear to be parted from us. Be sharp about it, understand? If you give the game away, I won't let you off, understand?"

A stab of pain shot up her arm, and it riled Qi Qian'er, who'd meant to hold her peace. Still trying to dupe her, even now?

Long past patience with being pushed around, Qi Qian'er crooked her arm, lifted her yellow-thatched head high, and stared at Madam Wang with glittering eyes: "Madam? At a time like this — who is it you still think you're fooling?"

Madam Wang started, and stood there dumbstruck.

Qi Qian'er sneered: "Take a look at who that old woman is. Look where we are. The gentlemen standing over there carry blades! And the blade at his waist has drunk its fill of human blood!"