Incomprehensible
Bai Jingyan followed Mama Jin into the front hall at a brisk pace. Lady Dong was taking tea with the Crown Prince. Catching sight from the corner of his eye of a frail woman in white being helped in by her maid, the Crown Prince set down his teacup.
"Eldest Daughter Bai."
"I pay my respects to Your Highness the Crown Prince."
Bai Jingyan bowed with her eyes lowered.
"I have been ill, and failed to offer my congratulations when Your Highness became master of the Eastern Palace. I beg you to forgive the oversight."
Though Bai Jingyan looked pale and delicate, she could not entirely conceal the brilliance of her striking features.
Far from slighting her, the Crown Prince returned her greeting with even greater courtesy.
"I know full well this is not a place for someone of your station. I only wish for the capable and talented people of Great Jin to join hearts and lift the empire together. I must hope you will stand by me and guide them toward what is right."
Bai Jingyan turned slightly to accept his courtesy, then asked in a low voice, "Your Highness, you have come because of the departure at mid-month?"
"You have only just recovered from a grave illness, Eldest Daughter. I wonder whether your strength will hold for such a long journey."
The Crown Prince gave Lady Dong not the slightest hint that he wished her to withdraw, and so she did not stir from her seat.
Bai Jingyan lifted her head and looked at him. His reason for coming today was obvious. He wanted to know whether her body had fully recovered—whether she would be well enough to depart with him at mid-month. And no doubt he also wished to ask, in some manner or other… more precisely, in exactly what capacity she intended to march south with him so that every last scrap of military merit could be handed over to him.
"Do not worry, Your Highness. I will manage. It is only that traveling to the Southern Border as a woman would present many difficulties. So I intend to dress in men's clothing and attend at your side as a member of your staff. What are your thoughts on that?"
"That sounds best."
When he heard such a definite answer, the Crown Prince smiled brightly, as though the worry that had been weighing on him had simply melted away.
"Then rest and take care of yourself, Eldest Daughter. I have brought you a tonic of the very finest grade—I hope it helps your recovery, if only a little."
He doesn't ask a single thing about the campaign in the Southern Border?
Bai Jingyan bowed her head. With her gaze fixed on the deerskin shoes the Crown Prince was wearing, she spoke calmly.
"Your Highness, today my second sister Jinxiu returns to the Zhongyong Marquis Estate. She intends to shoulder everything there alongside Jin Lang. No amount of persuasion from the Bai household can stop her.
"There is not a single man left in the Bai family now. So I, Bai Jingyan, presume to call you uncle, my lord. Uncle—could you see my second sister as far as the Zhongyong Marquis Estate? Jinxiu needs someone to lend her reputation and dignity. Only then will the two young ladies of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate not torment her. Our family's men are all dead, but if she knows she has the protection of an uncle among her kin, they will feel at least some fear—and then nothing will ever again threaten Jinxiu's life."
If they wanted the military merits, she would gladly give them up—but she thought they ought to give the Bai family something in return, at the very least.
Bai Jingyan humbled herself as far as she could, appealing to the bonds of kinship to ask for his help for Bai Jinxiu. Only what was both reasonable and heartfelt could not be refused.
And indeed, the Crown Prince agreed at once, with easy generosity.
"My house and the Bai family are kin to begin with. With all the Bai men gone, I am as good as a true elder brother to the Bai daughters! A trifling request like this—I should help, of course. Do not worry, Eldest Daughter. As long as I stand, your second sister will never suffer humiliation."
Since Bai Jingyan was still weak so soon after waking, she could only see Bai Jinxiu off as far as the entrance of the residence.
"Elder sister, the wind is cold. Come back inside!"
Bai Jingyan gripped Bai Jinxiu's hand with all her strength. Once they parted today, there was no telling when they might meet again. The sisters' eyes reddened.
"Go on, now."
Bai Jingyan said in a small voice.
Bai Jinxiu nodded, then turned to look at Lady Yu, who was dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. And she bowed deeply to Lady Dong.
"Aunt Dong, I entrust my mother to your care."
"Such a good child. Get up now!"
Lady Dong helped Bai Jinxiu to her feet and patted her hand gently.
"Go, and don't you worry."
For all her worry over her daughter, Lady Yu's gaze drifted to Bai Jingyan, standing there on her frail strength. Bai Jingyan had personally asked the Crown Prince to escort Bai Jinxiu to the Zhongyong Marquis Estate, and she meant to use the military merits earned in the Southern Border to secure a first-rank honors ladyship for Jinxiu. When Lady Yu recalled this, her heart felt as though it were being torn apart.
That was a place where the odds of survival were vanishingly slim. Every one of the Bai family's men had lost their lives there. If, by some terrible chance, Bai Jingyan did not come back, how could she ever live out her remaining years in peace?
"Mother, I'm off!"
Bai Jinxiu offered her final farewell and climbed into the carriage. Then, with eyes still hazy with tears, she looked at her elder sister one last time before bowing her head and withdrawing inside.
That day, Second Daughter Bai Jinxiu rode in the Grand Princess's own carriage, escorted by the Crown Prince himself and seen off by Third Daughter Bai and Fourth Daughter Bai as she returned to the Zhongyong Marquis Estate. When the people heard the news, they spared no praise, declaring the Bai family honest and true.
Couples were like birds sharing a single wood—when hardship struck, they scattered in every direction. Ordinarily, if trouble arose in her in-laws' house while her own family was holding a funeral, a wife would naturally flee to her parents' home and hide there to escape calamity. More than that, Second Daughter Bai had been so persecuted by the two young ladies of her husband's house that she had nearly lost her life. When she had left the Zhongyong Marquis Estate before, she had done so in full view of everyone.
Yet now, no sooner had the Bai family's funerals ended than Second Daughter Bai returned to the Zhongyong Marquis Estate without the slightest delay. Such virtue, people said, truly deserved to be honored.
The two young ladies of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate learned that when Second Daughter Bai had returned, the newly invested Crown Prince himself had escorted her. They heard, too, that at the estate gates he had addressed Bai Jinxiu as his sister, and had even charged the estate's soldiers to look after Bai Jinxiu and everyone at her side.
At that rumor, the two young ladies' hearts filled with dread. The younger one in particular cowered on her bed, trembling so violently that no soothing from Mama Wu could calm her.
"What are we to do now!"
Huddled in the corner of the bed, First Daughter Jin kept shaking, tears welling in her eyes as she looked at Mama Wu.
"When Bai Jinxiu comes back, we're… we're finished, aren't we?"
Mama Wu, holding a bowl of chicken porridge, wept silent tears.
"Don't be afraid, my lady. There's nothing to fear. The Bai family prizes its reputation—they won't harm you."
"It's because they prize their reputation that their reputation is good! Before, my sister and I—"
Unable to finish, First Daughter Jin clutched her youngest brother tightly and sobbed.
"Father is dead, and there's no one left to protect us. They're certain to take their revenge! If only Mother were still alive. Mother could have protected us!"
While every servant in First Daughter Jin's quarters trembled in anxiety, not knowing what to do, another imperial decree came down. At that decree, First Daughter Jin very nearly fainted.
The Emperor's envoy stood outside the gates of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate with the decree in hand and proclaimed that Bai Jinxiu was to be invested as a first-rank honored lady.
After escorting Bai Jinxiu to the estate, the Crown Prince—fearing she would be mistreated—had explained the situation to the Emperor the moment he entered the palace, and the Emperor had issued the decree.
The people lavished praise on the Crown Prince for keeping his word, and expressed their respect for the Emperor, calling him a sovereign with a benevolent heart who understood human feeling. Then the people remembered how Bai Jinxiu had nearly lost her life in the Zhongyong Marquis Estate.
That thought chained on to the next, and the next, leading straight to the Jinde Trading House and the Southern Border grain affair. People surmised that Jinde must have long conspired in secret with Prince Liang and Yu Huanzhang to destroy the Bai men. What else could explain it—how else could a man have dared stand by and watch while his own daughter, married into the Jin family, was so brazenly tormented?
Zhong Yong of the Jinde Trading House was already dead, but his infamy drifted across all the land under heaven. Prince Liang's reputation, plainly, could be no better. To glut his own selfish desires, he had toppled the pillars of the nation—the pillars of Great Jin—and left loyal souls to lie buried in the Southern Border. Because of it, Great Jin had been forced to lower itself, sending envoys to Nanyan and Xiliang to beg for peace. What a humiliation!
Anyone with even the slightest discernment could trace the chain of cause and effect when they set Yu Huanzhang's betrayal beside the Southern Border grain affair. So how could Yu Zhen, Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, in possession of both witnesses and physical evidence, fail to resolve that case?
And yet there was one question Yu Zhen could not untangle, no matter how he turned it over. It was the same for the princes eyeing the throne—though the Emperor himself was the supreme target. When the combined armies of Nanyan and Xiliang had stormed the borders of Jin, the Bai family had committed its entire army and driven back the enemy for the sake of the nation. However mad Prince Xin was for military glory, could he truly be so witless as to massacre the Bai generals before the war had even been won?
Prince Xin had been in the Southern Border at the time, too. If everything had truly followed his orders, as Prince Liang claimed, did Prince Xin never once consider that he himself stood in equal danger, that he might lose his life there in the south?
And if Prince Liang had pinned the crime on Prince Xin merely to escape the affair himself, then why—why would he do such a thing? Even if Prince Xin died in the Southern Border, the crown would pass not to Prince Liang but to the Emperor's own heir. That much was obvious!
Incomprehensible. Utterly incomprehensible!
Yu Zhen sat in the dim lamplight of the Court of Judicial Review's prison, listening to the screams of Dongji under torture, his thoughts refusing to stop turning.
"My lord, this servant has fainted."
At the report of the interrogating officer, Yu Zhen flexed his fingers, tapping the table twice, and spoke slowly.
"Throw water on him and wake him. Continue the interrogation."
"Everyone outside is talking about the Crown Prince's kindness, Madam! Our young lady has become a first-rank honored lady at such a tender age. Not even in the capital have they ever seen such a thing!"
Though the servants offered their congratulations, Lady Yu did not look particularly pleased.
Lady Yu knew all too well how her daughter had come to receive a first-rank honors title. It was a rank Bai Jingyan had traded for—bought with her own life by marching to the Southern Border.
Lady Yu's eyes reddened. Then, remembering her niece's parting charge, she pressed a fistful of handkerchief hard against her chest.
"Go and fetch the heart-guard mirror I had made for Xiaoya before the festival. Bring it here."
The heart-guard mirror—the bronze plate fastened over the breast of one's armor as a charm of protection—had been made by Lady Yu for her son. But before he could be sent to the Southern Border, her boy had left this world.
When Mama Na had carried the finished mirror in a few days earlier, Lady Yu had been so overcome with grief that she wept for a long while. Then she had told Mama Na to lay it back in its box.
Bai Jingyan would soon have to leave for the Southern Border. Lady Yu could do nothing for her—this aunt of hers was too powerless to help in any way. So she resolved to send the heart-guard mirror along with her, and pray that heaven and earth, every god and spirit, would keep her safe.