The Crown Prince's Man
When the caravan arrived at the gates of Shanyang City, Governor Zhu took a golden tray from a servant's hands and hurried after the Prefect toward the carriage.
Bai Jinchi did not dismount, so the Prefect and Governor Zhu bowed to her first.
"We have yet to offer our congratulations on your investiture as Commandery Princess," the Prefect began. "This is a congratulatory gift that Xiaguan has prepared for the Zhenguo Commandery Princess and the Gaoyi Commandery Princess. It is nothing of great value, but it comes from the heart—please, do accept it!"
Governor Zhu smiled and stepped forward, raising the golden tray high above his head.
"I will accept Governor Zhu's sincerity in spirit only. Take the gift back with you!"
Bai Jingyan's voice drifted out from within the carriage.
The Prefect, seeing Bai Jingyan lift the curtain with a hand like fine jade and reveal only half her face, hastened to bow. "We pay our respects to the Zhenguo Commandery Princess."
"On the way back to Shanyang we passed through several counties, and I heard that bands of bandits have been snatching even children of late. Has such a thing happened in Shanyang as well?"
At Bai Jingyan's question, Governor Zhu stepped forward and spoke. "Zhenguo Commandery Princess, it is true that bandits descend from time to time to burn and plunder, but no one has ever come to the magistrate's office to report a lost child."
The Prefect glanced once at Governor Zhu, then addressed Bai Jingyan. "Nothing of the sort has occurred in Shanyang, but... according to the rumors circulating, every account of children taken by bandits has proved true. The bandits grow more brazen by the day."
Bai Jingyan nodded, and her gaze shifted to Governor Zhu as well. "Even if no such thing has happened here, Governor Zhu, you are a regional official charged with governing the people. You must attend carefully to their condition."
"Commandery Princess, I will bear your words in mind. Xiaguan will go at once to survey the people's circumstances! Not a single child must go missing in Shanyang—not one."
Governor Zhu answered with unwavering conviction.
"Good. Very well."
Bai Jingyan raised the curtain fully and continued. "Thank you for coming out to greet us. I have been weary from the journey and intend to go straight to the Bai Manor, so you may both return."
As the carriage wheels began to roll again, Dong Zhengzhen opened her eyes. She rose, rubbing her swollen eyes, and asked Bai Jingyan, "Sister, are we in Shanyang now?"
"Yes, we've arrived. You'll be able to see your mother soon."
Bai Jingyan smiled as she looked at her cousin. "I'll have Chun Tao boil a few eggs. I'll have to draw the swelling out of your eyes with them, I think."
Dong Zhengzhen touched her puffy eyes, and her nose stung with guilt. "Sister..."
"It's all right. Remember our promise? Once we reach Shanyang, you must not cry—no matter what. Your mother will worry. Understood?"
Bai Jingyan took a handkerchief from the carriage drawer and handed it to her.
Dong Zhengzhen clutched the handkerchief tightly and dabbed at the tears that had not yet fallen. Then she spoke with solemn courtesy. "Sister, I will never make my aunt worry. I swear it."
"Good."
Bai Jingyan nodded.
Lady Dong had heard the news that Dong Zhengzhen would be coming to Shanyang, but she had no idea why. Fearing her mother would worry, Bai Jingyan had deliberately kept the reason from her.
When word came that a niece from her natal family was coming to see her, Lady Dong had been beside herself with joy. She had ordered Nanny Jin to prepare and set aside a pleasant garden courtyard, and had even assigned temporary maids and servants to it.
Third Madam Li, hearing that Bai Jingyan's party had arrived, had come to Lady Dong so that they might go out to greet them together.
By the time the carriage reached the gates of the Bai Manor, everyone had come out to welcome them—Lady Dong, Third Madam Li, Fourth Madam Wang, and Fifth Madam Ji, who held little Bai Wanjing in her arms.
"Mother! Eldest Aunt! Aunts!"
Bai Jinchi leapt down from her horse, dropped to her knees, and performed a fist-and-palm salute. "Bai Jinchi has returned safe and sound!"
Chun Tao had come out long before and was waiting at the foot of the manor steps. The moment Bai Jingyan's carriage came to a complete halt, she approached it to help her mistress down. Then, seeing Dong Zhengzhen step out of the carriage behind Bai Jingyan, she greeted her with delight. "Second Young Miss, I trust you have been well?"
Dong Zhengzhen, a smile still trembling on her lips, nodded to Chun Tao and then looked up the manor steps to bow in salute. "Aunt, Third Aunt, Fourth Aunt, Fifth Aunt!"
"Mother, Aunts!"
Bai Jingyan knelt as well and offered her greeting. "Bai Jingyan has returned safe and sound."
Dong Zhengzhen hurriedly steadied her. "You've returned—that's all that matters! Safe and sound, that's all that matters!"
Lady Dong came down the steps, caressing Bai Jingyan's face, and took Dong Zhengzhen's hand. "But why are your eyes so red?"
"On the journey, I told her stories of the war, and she did nothing but cry."
Bai Jingyan answered with a smile.
"That's right! I swear our cousin must be made of water!"
Bai Jinchi chimed in from the side.
"What happened to your hands?"
Lady Dong caught hold of Bai Jinchi and stared at her hands.
"It's nothing, Aunt!"
Bai Jinchi hastily hid her hands behind her back—but before she could get them all the way there, Madam Li seized them in one motion. Tears streamed down her face.
"I'm fine! It's really nothing!"
Bai Jinchi, no doubt scolded often by her mother, found the sight of her weeping like this strangely unfamiliar.
Madam Li glared at her daughter and pushed her forehead back hard with her palm. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, but she swallowed them all. If a child went off to war, how could she come back without a wound?
Children who returned from the front lines unscathed simply did not exist. That they had come back with their lives at all was blessing enough.
"Third Aunt, it's all right. The imperial physician gave her a salve. He said that if she applies it properly, even if a scar forms, it will barely show."
Bai Jingyan comforted Madam Li, who nodded.
"Enough standing about out here—let's all go inside!"
Lady Dong took Dong Zhengzhen's hand, wiped her tears with a handkerchief, and smiled as she nodded.
As the family bustled noisily inside, Nanny Jin spotted Nuo Ping instructing servants to carry in Dong Zhengzhen's luggage. She hurried down the steps to receive the nannies and maids of the Dong family who had accompanied her.
When Dong Zhengzhen's maid Haiying was nowhere to be seen, Nanny Jin paused, glancing once at Dong Zhengzhen as she entered the manor. But she asked nothing more, and with a smiling face guided the Dong household's servants inside.
The family gathered and plied them with questions about the war. Since Bai Jingyan refused to put Bai Wanjing down, Fifth Madam Ji laughingly called for a nurse to take the child, then urged Bai Jingyan and Bai Jinchi to go in and rest.
Madam Li dragged Bai Jinchi back to her own courtyard and had bathwater prepared. Then she examined her daughter's body from head to toe, checking that she was hurt nowhere else.
Lady Dong, unwilling to leave Dong Zhengzhen alone, led her to the courtyard that had been prepared in advance. Chun Tao followed Bai Jingyan toward Bayun Courtyard.
Chun Tao chattered away the entire walk without pausing for breath. First she asked whether Bai Jingyan had been hurt anywhere, then she told her of the quarrel that had broken out in the household of the clan patriarch, Bai Qihua.
Nanny Dong was waiting at the entrance with the servants of Bayun Courtyard. Seeing Bai Jingyan approach from a distance, the maids hurried forward to greet her, then took her hands and looked her over anxiously from head to toe. "Eldest Young Miss, you've been all the way to the Northern Border—is your health sound? You're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
All this while, Chun Tao and Nanny Dong had spent their days sick with worry, terrified that something might have befallen Bai Jingyan.
The Northern Border battlefield was nothing like the Southern. In the south there had been the Bai Family Army—but when Eldest Young Miss had gone north, she had taken a mere twenty Bai family guards with her.
"Not a scratch on me. Fit as can be!"
Bai Jingyan smiled at Nanny Dong, took her hand, and walked with her toward Bayun Courtyard.
"You and Chun Tao must have had a hard time while I was away."
"Eldest Young Miss!"
"Eldest Young Miss!"
The maids of Bayun Courtyard greeted her with beaming faces.
One of them babbled that Nanny Dong had risen at the crack of dawn to make the snacks Eldest Young Miss loved best—and that there was chilled plum soup in the kitchen, kept on ice just for her, so wouldn't she like to sneak a few sips?
Bai Jingyan's constitution ran cold and she generally avoided cold foods, but in summer she did sometimes steal a few mouthfuls of the iced plum soup. As long as she didn't overindulge, Nanny Dong would pretend not to see.
"Yes, I would!"
Bai Jingyan laughed and nodded.
"The bathwater has been kept hot the whole time. Eldest Young Miss, will you bathe first and then eat, or eat first and then bathe?"
"Bath first."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Only upon returning to a place with family and loyal retainers did it truly feel like coming home. Bai Jingyan watched fondly as Nanny Dong and Chun Tao bustled about.
After her bath, Bai Jingyan changed her clothes and sat down at the table to unfold the letter Bai Jinxiu had sent only recently. Chun Tao stood behind her, arranging her hair.
The letter said that Liang King and Liu Yafu were to hold their wedding ceremony.
Word had spread that someone had seen Liu Yafu seeing Liang King off at the gates of the residence of Minister of Rites Wang—her maternal grandfather—and that the two had even behaved with evident intimacy.
But what Bai Jinxiu had heard from the other ladies was quite different: that Liu Yafu had thrown a violent fit, swearing she would marry Liang King over her own dead body.
Liu Yafu had lost her chastity. Old Lady Wang, her maternal grandmother, had fainted from fury again and again, while the Wang daughters-in-law cursed behind her back at the girl who refused to marry. The Wang household had been struck by scandal, and the reputations of all its daughters were now in danger of ruin—yet Liu Yafu had stubbornly held out to the very end, refusing to marry. Small wonder the ladies were beside themselves.
Old Lady Wang had pressed her: if she would not marry Liang King, who else would take a girl whose chastity had been sullied? No one even knew who had violated her, did they not? Under Old Lady Wang's relentless persuasion, Liu Yafu had finally accepted reality. Now Han King would return from Nantao to the capital and settle the marriage between the two, and they would hold their wedding before long, the letter said.
It added that after the incident had come to light, all traffic between the Liang King Estate and the Wang residence in Gugu Lane had ceased. Since it was now impossible to discern what exchanges, if any, took place between the two households, they would need to wait and watch a while longer.
Bai Jingyan was not the least surprised by the rumor that Liu Yafu had escorted Liang King out of the residence—for the one who had spread that rumor was Bai Jingyan herself.
And yet... had Liu Yafu truly lost her chastity?
In truth, the likelihood was slim.
Anyone sent by the Crown Prince would have knocked both Liu Yafu and Liang King unconscious. And Liang King was hardly a man to be swayed by an aphrodisiac. Given even the smallest opening, he would have realized the moment he laid eyes on Liu Yafu that he had walked into a trap—would he really have lingered in the Wang residence, waiting to be slandered?
Absolutely not.
Unless... someone acting on the Crown Prince's orders had deliberately defiled Liu Yafu's chastity?
Bai Jingyan burned the letter.
The Crown Prince was the very last person who would want Liang King and Liu Yafu to wed. Surely, then, he had never given any order to ruin her chastity.
And yet the person who had placed Liang King and Liu Yafu in the same room was unquestionably the Crown Prince's man.
Could the Crown Prince's man have lost his head over a beautiful face?
That, too, would have been an utterly reckless thing to do.
Getting to the bottom of this would take considerable effort. Bai Jinxiu was with child, and Bai Jingyan did not wish to burden her with the matter. Instead, she sent a letter to the Grand Princess, asking her to entrust the investigation to Wei Zhong.