The Palace Night Banquet
Bai Jingyan looked down at the terrified Chunyan and asked, her voice perfectly level.
"Tell me everything you said about me to Prince Liang. Every last detail, right here and now. Otherwise, not even an immortal could save you."
"I—I only... I told Prince Liang what Eldest Young Lady likes, and about her childhood..."
Chunyan wept, her voice shrinking and scraping lower with every word, as though the guilt itself were dragging it down her throat.
"Say it properly. Not a single thing left out."
Bai Jingyan lifted her teacup again and drank, unhurried.
It was not that she was being cruel for cruelty's sake. In her past life, Prince Liang had known everything about her — there was nothing he did not know. Where the scars lay on her body, which of them itched when rain fell; he had catalogued every last detail of her life. If, in this life as well, he used what Chunyan had told him to defile her innocence, Bai Jingyan would have no defense left, not even with a hundred mouths.
She had to settle this decisively, here and today. Only then could she cut off whatever filthier schemes Prince Liang might attempt, and leave no trouble festering behind.
White-faced and sobbing, Chunyan poured out everything she had said to Prince Liang and to Dong Jil.
When she heard that Chunyan had even told a man outside the family that Bai Jingyan had been wounded on the battlefield — down to the fine detail that her shoulder ached whenever the weather turned overcast or it rained — Old Madam Jin shook so violently with fury that her hands trembled. At last she lost her composure entirely, strode forward, and slapped Chunyan across the face.
"Guards! Drag this low-born creature out and beat her to death! Now! How dare she spread word of Eldest Young Lady's private affairs beyond these walls!"
Even Lady Dong, always the soul of composure, could not suppress her rage. Her vision went black, and she very nearly collapsed where she sat.
"Eldest Young Lady! Eldest Young Lady!"
Chunyan threw her arms around Bai Jingyan's legs.
"Eldest Young Lady, spare me! I've told you everything, exactly as it was! Eldest Young Lady, please spare my life!"
"Drag that woman out! Don't let her soil Eldest Young Lady's clothes!"
Lady Dong's teeth were chattering. She wanted to tear Chunyan apart on the spot.
"Mother."
Bai Jingyan shook her head gently at Lady Dong, then lowered her gaze to Chunyan and asked,
"What else did you tell Prince Liang?"
"Nothing! Truly, there's nothing more..."
Chunyan shook her head, weeping.
After a long while, Bai Jingyan set down her teacup and called for Chun Tao.
"Chun Tao."
At hearing that Chunyan had revealed even Eldest Young Lady's most private matters to Prince Liang, Chun Tao was trembling with barely contained fury. Her face drained of all color, she knelt where she stood.
"Yes, Chun Tao is here."
"The day you knelt before me and pleaded on Chunyan's behalf, I promised to spare her life. So today I will let her live — which means the debt she owed you for saving her is now paid in full. But sparing her life does not spare her punishment. Give Chunyan fifty strokes of the heavy rod and demote her to a third-rank maidservant. And I'm docking half a year of her monthly silver allowance as a fine. Does that satisfy you?"
The question had been meant for Chun Tao.
She bowed her head deeply. Overwhelmed by shame and guilt, she answered through her tears.
"Eldest Young Lady, please punish me as well! I never should have pleaded for that treacherous, black-hearted creature!"
Bai Jingyan raised Chun Tao up and took her hands in hers.
"You are loyal, and you have a sense of honor. It is precisely people of such character who belong to our Zhenguo Duke Estate."
Then Bai Jingyan turned her gaze back to Chunyan — a gaze cold enough to pierce bone.
"Chunyan. Will you accept this?"
Chunyan was shaking uncontrollably, a wretched sight. She hurriedly bowed to Bai Jingyan.
"Thank you for sparing my life, Eldest Young Lady! Thank you!"
Chunyan was dragged out and punished before the assembled household. Each time the thick, heavy rod came down across her flesh, she shrieked in agony, unable to bear the pain. Before long, blood had soaked her clothes crimson, and Chunyan fainted where she lay.
The old servant and five hired hands who had taken Prince Liang's money to carry his messages looked on at Chunyan's fate, their souls departing their bodies. Trembling in terror, they begged for their lives.
Chunyan's betrayal weighed on Lady Dong's chest like a stone. Gritting her teeth, she gave her orders.
"Steward He. Deal with them according to the rules of the estate. Not one of them is to be let off."
Steward He stepped forward and dealt with the five money-grubbing servants. Their legs were broken, and the four household servants and one hired hand — along with their entire families — were sold off to human traffickers.
It was the end of the year, yet Lady Dong, wife of the Crown Prince of the Zhenguo Duke Estate, purged every servant connected to Prince Liang's household and reorganized the estate from top to bottom. Some were beaten and severely punished, others sold outright; even a few of the stewards were casualties.
Lady Dong replaced her stewards without hesitation, and the gates of the Zhenguo Duke Estate grew stricter than ever.
She understood one thing with absolute clarity: the front gate was the first gate any intruder had to pass. There could never again be an incident like this one.
Prince Liang waited on and on at the side gate. Inside the wall, the estate had grown noisy, and when Dong Jil saw the gatekeepers and gate servants replaced, he could bear it no longer and called out for someone to come. No one opened the gate.
After several watches had passed, someone came to report to Prince Liang that the estate had sold off a number of its servants. When he saw them carried out drenched in blood, his heart clenched in an instant. Judging that he would not get to meet Bai Jingyan today, he ordered Dong Jil to remain behind and turned back for home.
"Stay here. Contact Chunyan by any means necessary and find out what happened at the estate."
"Yes, I will do as you command."
Dong Jil nodded.
Even after returning home, Prince Liang paced restlessly. Dong Jil reported that every gatekeeper and gate servant at the estate had been replaced, and that though he had pressed silver into outstretched palms and begged to see Chunyan, not one soul dared accept the money. The Crown Prince's wife of the Zhenguo Duke Estate, it was said, had been overhauling the entire residence, and no one wanted to invite trouble amid such tension.
Prince Liang closed his eyes. He would have to think of another way.
That evening, Chunxing took over Chunyan's duties. Standing meekly at Bai Jingyan's side, she reported that the Judicial Bureau of the Capital had sent Madam Zhang Fengchun, wife of Marquis Zhongyong, back to her home once more.
"They say that when the case was closed, the maidservants who had been sent along as part of the wedding dowry had their slave registrations annulled after death. And since they died while still legally registered as slaves, Lady Zhongyong was judged innocent of any crime, and the household was released."
Listening to Chunxing's report, Bai Jingyan set a stone down on the weiqi board and nodded.
"Understood. Go see to your duties."
The moment Chunxing withdrew, Chun Tao came in with the rims of her eyes red. Chunxing left through the inner room.
"Eldest Young Lady, let me tidy your bed for the night."
Chun Tao sniffled.
"How is Chunyan?"
Bai Jingyan asked.
Tears fell from Chun Tao's eyes, one after another. Her guilt was eating her alive. She was so ashamed that she would rather have dashed her head against the floor and died on the spot.
"The physician says she'll need at least half a month of rest. The matron who administered the punishment must have gone far too easy on her. She ought to have broken both her legs for this — that wouldn't have been the least bit unjust...!"
Bai Jingyan found her utterly endearing like this. She patted Chun Tao's hand and said,
"No. I'm no longer angry, so you stop tormenting yourself over it. Even if you hadn't pleaded for her, I wouldn't have killed Chunyan. She still has her uses. Look after her well. And keep what I'm about to say to yourself."
Chun Tao blinked back her brimming tears. When she heard that Eldest Young Lady had kept Chunyan alive because she would be useful later, her spirits lifted at once, and she nodded.
"Don't worry, Eldest Young Lady. I'll never let it show. Chunyan will never suspect a thing."
When Chun Tao had heard that Chunyan had told Prince Liang every last one of Eldest Young Lady's private matters, even the last shred of sympathy she had harbored for the woman had vanished. Anything Bai Jingyan asked of her, she would follow without a second word.
Bai Jingxian and his mother, shut away in Qingming Courtyard, heard the news that day: the estate had sold off the households of five servants — nearly forty people in all.
Bai Jingxian's mother sat frozen in fear, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief that never stopped moving.
"If I'd known it would come to this, we should have just stayed quietly in that other mansion. At least there we could live as masters, even if only in name. I thought that once we came to the estate we would live in comfort and pleasure — and instead they beat you half to death before we'd even set foot inside, and now they've posted guards all around us like we're prisoners. In a household that flies into a rage and has people beaten or killed at the slightest provocation..."
"Enough! Mother, enough!"
Bai Jingxian was in agony from the rod he had received. Lying face-down on the sickbed had grown tedious to the point that his skin crawled with restlessness. His eyes suddenly turned vicious.
"Just wait until I've healed. Then we'll see who laughs last."
A few days earlier, the Emperor had showered Jin Lang with rewards and an imperial commendation, loudly praising him as a model for the sons of the great clans. With that, every noble house in Dadu shut its sons indoors and put them to their books.
Business at the taverns, teahouses, gambling dens, and pleasure houses of the capital withered by the day. Even the idle young lords who had known nothing but a life of amusement now had to endure their days of misery at home.
Then, at last, a night banquet was held in the palace, and only then were the sons of the capital allowed to gather openly once more, each lamenting to the others how stifling his confinement had been. Jin Lang, attending the banquet like the rest, listened to the grievances and complaints of the young lords he usually kept company with, greeting each of them in turn with a smiling face as he drank the penalty cups and offered his apologies.
Bai Jingyan entered following the Grand Princess and was seated to the lower right of the Emperor and Empress. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess, seated directly across from them, rose at once to pay their respects to the Grand Princess, while Bai Jingyan stood composed at her grandmother's side and bowed in greeting.
In the third month of the sixteenth year of the Xianjia era — that is to say, next year — the Crown Prince would be formally invested as heir and enter the Eastern Palace. And the first case he took up upon his investiture had been the trial of Bai Weiting, Duke of Zhenguo, for treason.
When Yu Huanzhang's testimony and the correspondence between the Duke of Zhenguo and King Nanyan, found in the Bai household, were presented as evidence, the guilt of the Bai family was sealed in the Crown Prince's own hands.
Later, the Crown Prince memorialized the throne, asking that the women of the Bai family be shown leniency — and received a stern lecture from the Emperor for his trouble, after which he was confined to the Eastern Palace to reflect on his error.
Back then, Bai Jingyan had resented him bitterly for that ruthless verdict. But looking back on it now, with the evidence so airtight, even a crown prince would have been in an impossible position.
Bai Jingyan steadied the Grand Princess into her seat. When she lifted her head, her eyes fell on Xiao Rongyan, seated just behind the Crown Prince. At the sight of him — a calm expression, a faint smile, inclining his head toward her — Bai Jingyan's hands tightened. She lowered her head and settled into her seat with perfect poise.
Had Xiao Rongyan received her message?
Seated directly behind the Crown Prince as he was, the Crown Prince clearly regarded him as someone of importance.
"Chun Tao."
Bai Jingyan turned her head slightly, covering her mouth with her handkerchief, and asked in a low voice,
"Your uncle delivered the letter properly, I trust?"
Chun Tao answered from where she knelt at her side, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Have no fear, Eldest Young Lady. My uncle sent a beggar to wait outside the Ministry of Revenue and had him hand the letter to the official. He confirmed the beggar placed it directly into the official's hands. And his own identity was well concealed."
Chen Gengsheng was a man she could trust with her life. In her past life, Xiao Rongyan had come to her aid time and time again. This time, she hoped she could be of some help to him in return.
When the grand eunuch raised his voice to announce the arrival of the Emperor and Empress, the old grievances of the Bai family surged up in Bai Jingyan's mind, and she bit down hard on her teeth. Then, supporting the Grand Princess as they rose, she bowed to welcome them.
Prince Liang, gravely wounded not so long ago, had recovered considerably — and perhaps because of it, the Emperor's mood seemed unusually bright.
Once all were seated, Bai Jingyan raised her cup with the rest. As she watched the Emperor lift his goblet high and proclaim righteousness, virtue, and peace throughout the realm, the clear light in Bai Jingyan's eyes deepened once more.
Xiao Rongyan found himself intrigued. In Bai Jingyan's gaze as she looked upon the Emperor of Jin, there was not a trace of reverence — only a smooth, unruffled composure. He thought of the eight-character message the official had passed to him before he entered the palace for the banquet.
A trap lies at the palace banquet; a schemer hides in the Crown Prince's residence.
Xiao Rongyan raised his cup and drained the wine in it alongside the Emperor of Jin. Turning the empty goblet in his fingers, he lifted his head, met the Crown Prince's smiling gaze, and answered that smile with one of his own.