Chapter 93

The heart-stirring silk strings gave way to a plaintive, plain bamboo flute. Qi Qian'er got to know a whole circle of household mistresses and made a fair showing of herself.

She knew too that one funeral-wail had spoiled her name. But the two household mistresses above her in the Chang house had names no better. This was the one house in all Yanjing with women who actually took a blade to their husbands.

So the houses that could stomach Chai-shi were mostly big-hearted themselves. The old saying puts it well: like gathers with like, people sort by kind. They were all much of a big-hearted sort, so they made easy company.

With the Chang matriarch's introductions, Qi Qian'er did get to know a few madams she took a liking to.

She held her patience and put on a look of pleasure to hear the flute out. She let the Chang servants bring a few trays of peonies to choose from, and since she was no hand at flower-arranging, she took a pink one to hold for the season.

When the flower-bearing servants withdrew, the household mistresses read the moment. Each found a flower-viewing pretext and went off.

Qi Qian'er was about to take her leave and go down too, but Chai-shi caught her hand fast and signed at her again and again with her eyes.

Qi Qian'er was a little startled. She waited till no one was near, then looked at Chai-shi and asked: "Foster-mother, was it some matter you wanted me for today?"

At that Chai-shi flushed red in an instant. A long while later she stammered: "Qian'er, ah, your foster-mother wants to ask you, in your house, aren't there still a few younger brothers who haven't taken wives?"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Just so. The fourth brother's wife has only just come in, and I'm asking round on every side. There are three left at home now, all well grown, and I mean to get their marriages done this year come what may."

Chai-shi had known it long since. When Qi Qian'er had finished, she gripped her hand tighter and said, rather pressing: "And, and I wonder, how old are the little generals this year?"

Qi Qian'er thought: "None of them young. Yougui's twenty-three, Erdian and Si'er are both twenty. Those two can't even remember what month they were born, so they just go by the old sabers' rule and name it at a guess." Here she smiled and put her head to one side: "Don't tell me the flower-feast Foster-mother's held today is to play a Red-Thread match for my brothers?"

Chai-shi was already abashed, and now teased by the little wife, she flushed redder and stumbled for words. At last the matriarch, smiling all the while, put in: "My child, don't laugh at your foster-mother. It's all the fault of that good-for-nothing foster-father of yours. He's sunk a whole houseful of your foster-mother's girls..."

There were no outsiders here, so the old lady now told the root of it in a low voice.

Today had indeed been long planned. Pan Baqiao had married in last month, and the two of them, mother and daughter-in-law, feared to miss the good chance. So they'd kept it from the house's two young wives and held this flower-feast.

For one thing, the old Earl's lady and Chai-shi wanted to find Chang Lianfang a fitting young lady of matched standing. For another, it was for the nieces of Chai-shi's own house.

The reason the Chai girls could not be married off went back a long way. To tell the root of it, you had to start from the Earl of Chang, Chang Mianshen. In the first year, when the Emperor made his great enfeoffments, the Earl, coarse man though he was, had a fine thread of thought. He reckoned the meritorious officials would be heavily used at first, but to keep wealth and honor for long without earning the ruler's dislike, a man had to have some flaw. You couldn't be flawless.

This one too had heard too many old storybooks. The old fellow turned it over and hit on the play of a crude, foolish, hen-pecked husband, and pulled his own mother and wife in to act it out with him.

Later, sure enough, the Emperor's favor grew and grew. Whenever there was rebellion to put down, it was the Earl he sent, and he never guarded against him at all. But it wronged his brother-in-law's marriageable girls, who came into their flower-season and still no one would ask for them.

Who, well-fed and idle, would raise a good son only to hand him to the old Chai house for blade-practice? Look what a figure the Earl of Chang was, a founding officer of full martial skill who'd fought countless campaigns, and even he still went to court with black eyes. The Chang house's play was sung to the end, and they got all the good of it.

But the fault it feigned showed up too, in the family. Chai-shi's brother was a proper Deputy Surveillance Commissioner of the fourth rank, yet the eldest girl at home was nineteen now, and the matchmakers who came to the door were all of a low sort not worth considering, even a widower among them. It shamed Chai-shi so she couldn't go home to her own people. Her natal house was held back by the favor the Chang father and son enjoyed, so they said nothing plain, but let a little grievance show. So poor Chai-shi didn't dare go home at all.

Hadn't the Emperor, after the New Year, decreed rank on a hundred and more merit-officers? This band of little lords in Guard Lane had come into view, not to be slighted, every one a solid official post in his own right. Chai-shi turned it over and thought them wonderfully fitting. So she'd called Qi Qian'er to make the match.

It wasn't that no one in Yanjing had an eye on Si'er and the rest. Those with an eye on them were past counting.

What did they lack now, in hand or on their persons? Just for the one thing that a bride could come in with no parents-in-law to serve and could keep house at once, no end of people came to broach a match. But Si'er and the rest were honest, and to whoever came they said the same thing: my sister-in-law rules at home.

And say what you will, from Zhang Wanru to Pan Baqiao, every wife Qi Qian'er had found them was a good one.

Funny to tell, the Chang matriarch told the root of it full of guilt, but never once spoke of her son's sour scheme. Instead she went roundabout: it was all her fault, all her fault for forcing her daughter-in-law to keep the good-for-nothing Earl in hand. Who'd have thought it would drag down her daughter-in-law's own family too.

She'd no sooner said it than from the far-off stage came a line of song: ...pity me, a lonely forlorn soul, and thinking on it, how sad and lost I am...

The whole room went blank a moment, then all laughed together.

Chai-shi listened close a while, then asked out the door: "Which house's young lady chose this one?"

The woman outside said a name. Chai-shi looked at her mother-in-law and shook her head, smiling: "That sort of nature won't do."

The old lady nodded, smiling: "Just so. Young as she is and already pitying herself. No good, no good..."

But Qi Qian'er, off to one side, bent her head and pondered. A long while later she asked: "And how many unwed nieces does Foster-mother's house have?"

Chai-shi flushed, and slowly held up four fingers.

Qi Qian'er didn't care to take the whole thing on her own back, so she agreed for now, meaning to go home and have someone quietly ask around. If the girls were of good character, anything would do. If their character was flawed, then even a dowry of gold and silver mountains wouldn't make her take it.

As for taking a blade to one's husband, hmph, what right is there in this world for a man to beat his wife? If that Scabby is good, well and fine. If he's not, one slap and she'd send him into Baiquan Mountain so deep he couldn't dig himself out, believe it or not.

Qi Qian'er turned it over in her mind. She sat in the Peony Court till afternoon, then left early with Pan Baqiao. On the way home, passing the Qingfeng gate, their carriage was ringed by a swarm of little beggars. Qi Qian'er lifted the curtain, and someone pressed a wad of cloth into her hand.

When the little beggars had scattered, Qi Qian'er held the cloth wad the whole way home. Only when Pan Baqiao had got down did she open it and look at it by the light outside the carriage.

It was Xin Bo, asking to meet her tonight at the old place outside Qingfeng.

How many days had the old thing been dodging her? He'd stirred himself to come out at last.

She rubbed the cloth to ash between her fingers, lifted her skirt, and got down. She Jixiang came over, his face all screwed up, to tell her the old lady had invited old Madam Jiang to stay a while at the house.

It was a clear-sky thunderclap right on the head. Qi Qian'er looked at She Jixiang, hardly believing it. She Jixiang nodded helplessly and sighed: "Madam, go and see, quick. Even if you hadn't come back I was about to send someone to fetch you! The old house has swept out the west wing for her now, but she's no mistress who should be lodged in a west wing, madam. Think quick what we're to do!"

This was a slip that could bring the whole house's heads down.

Qi Qian'er steadied herself against the wall beside her and sighed a long while. Then she said helplessly: "Since, since the old dowager doesn't want her tracks known, we'll just play dumb. Anyway... no one can blame someone who doesn't know, isn't that so?"

She Jixiang's heart too had cracked and healed itself over several times. He nodded at last: "Ai, I've sent to the capital to tell the master too. You go over and keep an eye first, our old lady... ai!"

This was too bold by half.

Qi Qian'er steadied herself and stood in place a good while. Then she took up a basket of fresh-cut peonies and went with Siyue toward the old house. She'd gone but a little way when she heard, again, the fisher-drum and old three-string instrument you only get in the country.

She listened close to the words. It was the play The Xiang Consort's Couch.

Qi Qian'er's legs went weak on the spot.

Pitiful. A woman who'd lived two lives and seen so much of the world, and with all her experience she could never have dreamed her own old lady would lure the palace's own dowager to the house to hear The Xiang Consort's Couch.

The Xiang Consort's Couch was a filthy book not fit to be mentioned at the table. It told of a scholar bound for the exams who passed through a small village and stopped the night because of rain. Deep in the night, as he trimmed his lamp and read, a young widow came to pour out her lonely, forlorn heart...

Qi Qian'er stood a good while, a hand on her shaking heart, and looked at She Jixiang, her eyes all disbelief.

She Jixiang said, much troubled: "Answering the madam, there was no harm meant. At the lane-mouth our old lady saw a pair of blind folk, husband and wife, with an old fiddle on their backs. Our old lady, kind-hearted, said to let them come to the house and sing a few days, first to give them some full meals, and second to ease the old ancestor's dull hours. Those who go lane to lane earning that bit of coin, what good scripts could they know? For good singing, people hire the famous Yanjing masters..."

"Say no more!" Qi Qian'er cried low. She put a hand up to push at her own chin, forced out a bit of a smile, then walked on toward the old house on weak legs.

What she didn't see was She Jixiang looking after her and thinking, I deal all the time with the tenants on the manor, that's how I know these filthy books, but the little madam of the house is how old? How does she know this Xiang Consort's Couch?

How could he know that in that other life Qi Qian'er had been a widow so long she'd grown a little wild? She'd quietly grown fond of such filthy tales, gathered a band of widows to meet in private, and quietly bought the filthy books and read them.

She'd even given a verdict on them, that the filthy books were the true stuff of human life, and the talent-and-beauty romances all so much scentless wind.

So poor Qi Qian'er came to the old house gate, and heard it clearer now. Inside they were just then singing: ...the rain drips on the curtained room and the lonely couch, the dim guttering lamp lights the cold window, pity me, I too was my house's cherished girl, fair as jade, as orchid, as lotus... and now the cold rain and frost beat on this sorrowing body of mine...

Ah ah ah, and after this comes your brother, aching for you, calling you off to one side, to that private place to play...

Qi Qian'er cleared her throat and gave a few dry laughs at the gate, then shoved the great door wide with all her strength and swept in grandly, laughing loud: "Ha ha, aiya! Granny! See what fine thing I've brought you!"

In the court the silk strings stopped. The blind couple listened close, and a set of old widows who knew nothing of the truth looked round at Qi Qian'er together, a little startled.

That's right. In this court our old lady was an old widow, old Madam Jiang a living-widow, big-bellied Lu-shi a former widow, and Lü-shi and Yang-shi widows in mourning.

There was no telling how the old lady had gathered them, but there they were, a whole merry courtyard of widows. Even Qi Qian'er the newcomer had been a widow in her last life.

Qi Qian'er made a show of surprise, looked all round, then laughed again: "Aiyo! So many of you here?" And she turned and chided She Jixiang: "How could you not tell me we'd honored guests? This is far too rude!"

She Jixiang, sheepish, made as if it were too late to apologize: "Answering the madam, you got down from the carriage and took the flowers straight to find the old lady. There wasn't time."

Qi Qian'er stepped forward, put herself before the blind singers, and made her courtesy to the round-cheeked, fair-skinned Dowager Jiang, whose eyes were red just then over the young widow's grief: "Aiyo, my Bodhisattva, how could you spare us and light our house with your presence?"

The words pleased her, and the Dowager Jiang pursed her lips and smiled at once. All her life she'd been careful and small with everyone, and this first visit to a dear old sister's house had left her ill at ease inside.

For she had not a shred of a dowager's airs, chiefly because none had ever been raised in her.

The old lady said, rather embarrassed: "You child, don't profane the Bodhisattva. What sort of Bodhisattva am I..."

She hadn't finished when the house's own trouble-making ancestor gave a cold snort: "What? You don't want it?"

My own ancestor, that word of yours leaves no way out at all for a hundred generations of your children. In all the thousands of years there's been no one before you who brought the Emperor's own birth-mother home to hear a filthy book.

Qi Qian'er's heart and liver and lungs all twisted into one knot, but she couldn't let it show. She had to say, smiling: "Want it or not, listen to you! I'd, I'd want it to death!"

She reached out and shook the Dowager Jiang's arm a few times, took a red peony from the basket and set it in her hair, then leaned her own face in beside the old dowager's neck for the house's trouble-maker to see: "Look, now here's a true granny and granddaughter, both of the one good looks. Isn't it so?"

At that the whole courtyard laughed.

It was hard won, to have turned the talk off the filthy book, and yet our old lady had to twist it back. There she was, sour as vinegar with jealousy: "Hmph! If that's how it is, you two go be close off to the side. This lone old woman's very busy. It's a fine book, and I've only heard the opening. Get away quick, you're in the way of my listening."

Qi Qian'er drew a breath, then at once flopped onto her shoulder, whining: "Granny, you don't love me anymore?"

The old lady stayed cross: "Hmph, I can't afford to dote on you. You heartless little thing, after all the fine rice and flour I raised you on, you turn out such an ingrate. And still you want doting? I've no shortage of folk to dote on me."

Qi Qian'er made a show of temper, and threw herself onto the old dowager to play the darling: "Granny Jiang, look at my granny, so small-minded..."

And as she spoke she kicked back with her foot at the eunuch Qiu, who stood behind as if none of it touched him.

The eunuch Qiu was kicked into a stagger. He steadied himself and glared at Qi Qian'er, at a loss.

Qi Qian'er turned and saw his blameless face. She set her heart hard and said loud: "Granny, the truth is, the truth is... today I came meaning to talk over some weighty matters with you."

The old lady started: "Weighty matters?"

Qi Qian'er nodded hard, looked round, and shot Lu-shi a flying glance. Lu-shi caught it at once and rose, smiling: "Oh, the house has weighty business, we'll come again tomorrow. Mark the place in the book, and we'll hear the rest tomorrow."

That said, she led the way out. Qi Qian'er let out a breath and looked at the others, and this time they knew what it meant.

When all had gone, a sweating She Jixiang saw the blind couple out again. The Dowager Jiang made to go too, but Qi Qian'er said: "Aiyo, my old Bodhisattva, you mustn't go. You're no outsider to our house, and this matter really does need talking over with an experienced elder like you."

The Dowager Jiang had been at others' beck all her life, and never thought that at the Chen house she'd be so prized. Glad at heart, she sat up straight and took Qi Qian'er's hand: "Truly talk it over with me?"

Qi Qian'er nodded like a pestle pounding, and the old dowager said uncertainly: "Then, then will I do?"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "You will! You'll do wonderfully!"

But what was the weighty business to be talked over? Qi Qian'er's eyes rolled a few rounds. She looked at the puzzled old dowager, thought of Xiaoxian Garden that day, and said at last: "Old Bodhisattva, didn't I take the Earl of Chang's card today?"

The Dowager Jiang thought. An earl? She knew a great heap of earls, three of them surnamed Chang, so she asked: "Is it the Chang of our old Shaoshang, or one of the earlier Changs?"

The house's own trouble-maker put in at once: "Elder sister, the Shaoshang Chang, to be sure. Our house is foster-kin with theirs, even. Their Little Flower calls me foster-granny."

The Dowager Jiang was more muddled still: "Little Flower?"

Someone carried a stool over for Qi Qian'er. She turned to look: it was the eunuch Qiu Le, his head all cold sweat.

She Jixiang had pulled him out for a good explaining, and he'd been frightened near to death, half his life startled out of him. His heart shook still.

Never mind the others. If the palace ever learned of today's affair, he the chief steward might keep his life, but not one of the attendants round about would. A dowager of the realm roaming out, hearing a filthy book under cover of worshipping the Buddha, and there's no wall in the world that doesn't let the wind through. He'd been gelded as a boy, and for all the peril he'd lived through, he still didn't even know what The Xiang Consort's Couch was.

The eunuch Qiu, full of thanks, carried the stool himself for the little woman who'd saved him. He gave her a thumbs-up and helped Qi Qian'er sit with his own hands. Once she was settled, Qi Qian'er said: "Ai, Granny Jiang, you don't know, Little Flower is the milk-name my granny carelessly gave Chang Lianfang, and it's landed him in trouble. These years, however Lianfang carries on, a whole body of fine skill, they still call him Delicate Flower. He's an elder, so the house can't say a thing about it, but behind their backs he's wept to me more than once."

The Dowager Jiang was blank. A long while later she asked: "Chang Lianfang's called Little Flower?"

The old lady turned and gave a snort: "What, is Flower no good? He was born good-looking to begin with. And what a small name it is, Little Flower, so small even Lord Yama won't bother to take him. But for this name I gave him, believe it or not, he'd have come to grief on the battlefield long ago."

The Dowager Jiang heard it out, and her two uncommonly guileless eyes slowly filled with a smile. Then she laughed out, chuckle on chuckle, till at last the tears came from laughing.

The old lady saw her laugh and, rarely feeling so put out, reached over to pat Qi Qian'er: "You little brat, you're an outward-fetching pup through and through, letting her make sport of us for nothing. You, you say your weighty business, quick!"

Qi Qian'er, awkward inside, made a show of smiling by way of apology, then said at last: "Ah yes, the business, the business. Old lady, didn't the Chang house ask me to Xiaoxian Garden to view flowers today? Well, my foster-mother Chai-shi says she'd like to give her three nieces to our Si'er and the rest for wives."

This was a pretext found under duress, but the old dowager, it turned out, took it to heart. She asked in earnest: "Three?"

They were speaking of weighty business, and the trouble-maker at the side led it crooked again: "How is it foster-mother is already at this, at this hour? The rites aren't half done, no incense-table set out, where's the sense in being so casual? And the wives she'd give our Si'er, are their houses well-founded? What rank is Little Flower's uncle?"

What could Qi Qian'er do but coax her: "Granny, it's a matter of a little sooner or later. A few days' early calling is nothing."

The old lady grew unwilling: "That's not how it's said. Before it was nothing, but this year my heart's not easy. Take that Bao-shi of their house, what sort is she? Look at all the trouble she finds you day in and day out, worse than a country lout. I've half a mind not to be kin with their house at all. Eyes as small as that, a house that scrabbles after every melon and date, not an ounce of largeness in her. Made foster-kin, she'd count as your sister-in-law, and then, living under her roof, how hard that would be for you."

Now here was one who truly ached for her, caring nothing for others' wealth and rank, only afraid she'd come off the loser.

Trouble made was trouble made, she'd have to catch it all in the end anyway. Qi Qian'er took the old lady's hand and smiled: "Granny! It's all right, I've never come off the loser."

At that the old lady turned smug in a blink, and cocked her head to boast to the Dowager Jiang: "Elder sister, it's no boasting of mine, this brat's a fierce one. Against that Bao-shi of the old Chang house, hmph! Ten of her wouldn't be enough for my grandson's wife to handle..."

There's no telling what you've to be so proud of. Who in this world doesn't love a virtuous, gentle, mild woman?

Qi Qian'er let go and patted her brow, and was about to explain, when she heard the Dowager Jiang say, smiling: "That's the good of it. Fierce is good, I like a fierce one."

Half her life she'd been all yes and no, unable even to lose her temper when she wished to. So she took Qi Qian'er's hand all the more fondly: "Good child, you did right to bring such a matter to an old one first. Since you've asked me, I'll speak then. Only I don't know if what I say is right."

Qi Qian'er nodded quickly: "Old Bodhisattva, you're a timely rain. We come from outside, and you know well what sort of house we were before. Of the doings inside the great Yanjing houses we truly don't know the first thing. In name Si'er and the rest call me sister-in-law, but a life's great matter done wrong once is half a lifetime's grievance. I want just such a wide-seeing, experienced elder as you to point the way."

At this the old lady too nodded away at the side: "That's the truth of it, elder sister. I've lived in this lane getting on two years, and own but the one true kinswoman in you. What do I know? Ask me, after all this time, when to water the fields I know, but how deep the water runs inside these houses, how would we be clear on that?"

The Dowager Jiang saw them ask in earnest. She laughed and straightened her back at last: "My child, then, then if you put it so, to my mind, to take the old Chai house's three girls all at one go, this matter, I think, won't do!"