Tainted
The chieftain and the clan elders watched as Bai Jingyan climbed back into her carriage. And when they saw Bai Jinchi following the Prefect and his party toward the government office, they approached the chieftain with anxious hearts and began pressing him with one question after another.
"Chieftain, what is the Commandery Princess doing right now? Is she planning to punish the young men of our clan?"
"Is she truly going to drive the boys out of the family? But they are the very root of our clan line. If they cut every child away from us, nothing will remain but old men like ourselves — then what becomes of our clan's future? Are we expected to lean on the women of the Bai family in Dadu?"
The clan elders all nodded their heads in agreement. One elder stepped forward and spoke with grave courtesy.
"Chieftain, if a woman enters the ancestral hall, calamity will befall our entire clan. She must never be allowed inside."
The chieftain's face had gone an ashen blue. He struck the ground hard with his staff.
"Enough! All of you, be silent! Barred from the ancestral hall — that is what would invite calamity! Go home and make your preparations, now!"
Bai Jingyan took ten guards from the Bai estate and ten from the Crown Prince's household and headed straight into the city to fetch Anang.
The lavish carriage drew every eye as it passed through the city gates. It rolled down the busiest street in Shayang before turning toward a remote quarter in the east, and finally drew to a halt before a badly weathered old house.
"Eldest Young Miss, we've arrived."
One of the guards, who had accompanied Nuo Ping to see Anang before, spoke to Bai Jingyan inside the carriage.
At his words, Chun Tao lifted the carriage curtain and helped Bai Jingyan step down.
Shayang was nowhere near as prosperous as the capital, and the homes of the common folk were old and shabby. The two small door panels had lost every trace of their lacquer, and the threshold was worn through at its center, the faded wood showing bare where countless feet had worn it hollow.
A persimmon tree planted in the courtyard stretched its branches over the wall. The house was dilapidated, but the little yard beyond was neat and tidy, kept with evident care.
Bai Jingyan stood at the entrance with Chun Tao, watching a guard knock at the door.
Before long, a woman of about thirty opened it, a small child held against her chest.
At the sight of so many people packed before her door, the woman asked uneasily, "Honored ones... who might you be looking for?"
The guard bowed at the waist and answered. "Madam, I am a guard of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess's estate. This is the Commandery Princess herself. She has come to see Anang. Where is the old woman who was caring for her?"
At the news that a Commandery Princess had come for Anang, the woman's composure shattered. She set down the child she was holding, then froze, unsure whether she should kneel or offer a bow of greeting.
"There's no need for that. Is Anang inside?" Bai Jingyan asked.
The woman kept her head bowed, her face drained of color, and blindly grasped the hand of the child standing beside her. Twisting her body awkwardly, she answered, "That is... a relative of Anang's came and took her away."
Bai Jingyan's brow furrowed. She regarded the woman, who could not even lift her head, with cold eyes.
"What relative? The Bai family paid you silver specifically to look after Anang."
The woman's face went blank, as though her soul had fled. Bai Jingyan continued in an even, unhurried tone.
"Anang's mother drowned, and the Bai clan bears a share of the blame for it. Shall I summon the Prefect and have him come take Anang himself?"
The woman trembled from head to foot and dropped to her knees with a thud. Her mouth gaped open, but she could not say where Anang had gone.
"Speak. Where is Anang?"
Bai Jingyan's voice was as calm as a windless lake — yet beneath that calm ran a current of menace.
"Commandery Princess, I beg your forgiveness. My mother-in-law took Anang in, but my husband feared the Bai clan would come looking for her, so that very day he sent her to his own house. We never coveted the silver, I swear it. The money the Bai family sent, and the silver the guard gave us later — we gave it all to Anang and told her to take it home with her."
Whether terrified by the look in Bai Jingyan's eyes or not, the woman spilled out the whole of it.
"When my mother-in-law learned of it, she flew into a rage and beat my husband with her staff, ordering him to bring Anang back at once. But he couldn't find her. He waited at the entrance for a full day and night, and Anang never returned — he's still out searching for her now. But no matter how he looks, he cannot find her, and my mother-in-law has fallen ill from worry. She's bedridden and grieving to this very moment!"
The woman spoke through a voice thick with tears. The frantic rush of her words did not sound like a lie.
Bai Jingyan was angry, but she understood — the woman had feared disaster would fall upon her own household.
They went next to Anang's house. Seeing the main gate locked, Bai Jingyan ordered a guard to climb over the wall and look inside.
He made a circuit of the courtyard: the inner door stood open, and half-eaten steamed buns sat in the pot above the stove. The family's chicken was still alive — whoever had left had not gone far.
And yet the woman had said they waited a full day and night, and Anang never came home.
Bai Jingyan clenched her fist.
Anang, lovely as she was, had been left an orphan with no mother to shield her. Worse, she could not speak — should she fall into the hands of a wicked person, she could not even cry out for rescue. And rumors were already spreading that she had incurred the Bai clan's displeasure. Who knew what ill intentions might stir because of it?
They say human nature is fundamentally good, but Bai Jingyan believed nothing in this world was as dark and treacherous as the human heart. For a small, helpless child with no one to lean on, the world was a place where danger lurked at every turn.
Anang had now been missing for two days. No one could say what might have happened to her in that time.
Bai Jingyan stood with her fist clenched, deliberating for a moment, then turned to the Bai guards with eyes gone dark and issued her orders swiftly.
"Leave one man at Anang's door. He is to wait, and the moment she returns, report to me at once. Send word to Zhan Yu that I need two detachments of the Crown Prince's household guards. Tell them to move in squads of five, ringing gongs, and search Shayang City for Anang."
Bai Jingyan drew a breath and spoke faster still.
"Search the pleasure quarters first, every alley and back lane. Shout it through the streets — that Bai Jingyan, the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, is searching for Anang. Tell them that anyone who brings Anang safely to the Bai ancestral hall by the hour of Wei this afternoon will be rewarded with a thousand taels of silver.
And tell them this as well — if Anang is not found before the sun sets, I will find whoever is holding her myself. Let it be known that whoever has hidden Anang has made an enemy of me, and the calamity will reach even their family."
Anang was a beautiful child, and with no family to protect her, if someone had taken her by force, the pleasure quarters were the likeliest place she would have been dragged. Bai Jingyan hoped that whoever harbored ill intent would be frightened by the wrath of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess and hand the girl back quietly.
"Yes, Commandery Princess!"
Bai Jingyan climbed into the carriage and closed her eyes. The fury boiling inside her against the clan would not be suppressed. An ordinary, unremarkable branch of the Bai family had been reduced to this because of one badly chosen chieftain. Not a shred of the Bai family's spirit remained in them — the whole clan had rotted through.
They had done wrong and, far from admitting it, had provoked the government office and thrown a young child into the river without a moment's hesitation. Beasts who valued human life no more than a blade of grass — they were beneath even that! Long ago they had lost the ancestral teachings of the Bai family, the proud bones of the Bai bloodline.
Only now did Bai Jingyan begin to understand why her grandfather had forbidden the Bai family's children born of concubines from ever meeting their birth mothers — why they were raised instead at the side of the principal wife. Now the reason was as clear as day.
If their mother was a concubine, the only skills they would learn were the tricks of winning favor in the rear courtyard. Children who saw and heard such sordid things from their earliest years naturally inherited a base and cunning nature.
Their characters would inevitably be warped by mothers who lived for nothing but a master's affection. Vicious habits seeped slowly into the children themselves. A foul nature steeped into them in childhood would shadow them for a lifetime and pass down through generation after generation — and the children they bore and raised would sink ever deeper into decline as the years went by.
Even after being moved under the principal wife's care, a nature schooled in wickedness did not easily change.
The chieftain of the Bai clan had to be replaced. The whole clan needed to be scoured clean, top to bottom.
"Eldest Young Miss..."
Chun Tao knew Bai Jingyan was worried about Anang, and tried in a small voice to comfort her. "Anang will be all right. Young Miss, please don't worry so much."
"To the ancestral estate."
Bai Jingyan's expression had gone dark as she gave the order.
Chun Tao passed the instruction to the driver. "To the ancestral estate."
When word spread that Bai Jingyan would be coming to the ancestral estate, the old steward Grandfather Gao gathered the Bai household and servants and waited at the entrance of the estate.
Grandfather Gao had come to the Shayang ancestral estate along with the first shipment of goods Nuo Ping had sent.
In the days when Bai Weiting, the late Duke of Zhenguo, still lived, Grandfather Gao returned to Shayang early every year to make preparations. Because he had managed the silver sent to the clan, even the servants of the Shayang estate honored and stood in awe of him.
From the moment he arrived in Shayang, Grandfather Gao had been in constant motion — and his methods were merciless and resolute. Of the stewards who had managed the ancestral estate in Shayang, he broke the legs of every one who had sworn allegiance to another master, and sold their families off outright.
The servants who had taken no such oath had their legs broken as well before being driven from the estate. Then he sent a warning throughout Shayang City: should anyone employ the servants he had cast out, or their families, it would be taken as making an enemy of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess's estate.
The old servants and maids who had sworn false allegiance were also put through a round of reckoning, meted out with savage methods — beaten to death or sold away. And he let it be known to every human trafficker in Shayang City that the Bai estate would be hiring fresh servants. He made the affair so loud that all of Shayang came to know of it, swift and unstoppable.
Grandfather Gao had the ancestral estate scrubbed spotless before Bai Jingyan's party returned.
As it happened, the traffickers were scheduled to bring servants to the estate today. With the Eldest Young Miss having returned as well, Grandfather Gao intended to have her review them when the time came.
He stood with the stewards and loyal servants who had come from the capital before the imposing entrance of the ancestral estate, waiting for Bai Jingyan's carriage to appear.
From far down the road, the Commandery Princess's carriage came slowly into view, and color rose in Grandfather Gao's face. Leaning hard on his staff, he hurried down the steps with the stewards and servants behind him.
Curious townsfolk halted in their tracks and stood staring, dumbstruck, at a carriage rarely seen in Shayang City.
When the carriage came to a full stop, Grandfather Gao approached it, supporting himself on his staff. As Chun Tao helped Bai Jingyan down, the old man steadied himself on his staff and sank to his knees in a deep bow.
"This old servant greets the Commandery Princess."
The Bai stewards and loyal servants who followed behind Grandfather Gao all stepped forward and bowed as one.
"We greet the Commandery Princess."
Bai Jingyan had told them to address her as Eldest Young Miss, but with so many townsfolk gathered to watch, and this being Shayang besides, the servants observed every last formality owed to a Commandery Princess.
Grandfather Gao reasoned that if even the Bai family's own servants failed to pay Bai Jingyan proper respect in public, the clan's young men would seize on it as an excuse to slight their Eldest Young Miss and withhold all deference.
How could Bai Jingyan fail to recognize his devotion? Grandfather Gao was doing his utmost, even now, to uphold her dignity.
Bai Jingyan stepped toward him and helped the old man to his feet.
"Rise, please. You are an elder — there's no need for so deep a bow."
Grandfather Gao's face creased into a smile, and he asked softly, "Eldest Young Miss, was the journey safe and untroubled?"
Word had reached him that bandits plagued the roads, and when he learned that Bai Jingyan and Bai Jinchi were traveling with only each other, he had not been able to set his worry down for days on end.
"Set your mind at ease. Two full detachments of the Crown Prince's household guards came along — the journey was perfectly comfortable."