Dispirited
On the road back to the residence after the palace banquet, the Grand Princess still could not shake the tension of what had happened moments before. Gripping Bai Jingyan's hand tightly, she raised her voice at her.
"Have you lost your mind? You're usually so calm and capable—why couldn't you hold your temper today? If you speak that way before the Emperor and truly enrage him, your life will be worth no more than a fly's! If something happens to you too, how am I supposed to go on living?"
Lanterns hanging at the four corners of the finely crafted elm-wood carriage swayed back and forth, so that the interior brightened and darkened in turn.
Bai Jingyan lowered her head to hide her reddened eyes. Her words today had been spoken deliberately, for the Emperor to hear. She had wanted the suspicious Emperor and all the people of the realm to know that the virtue of the Bai family—men who bled and staked their lives on the battlefield for the Great Jin and its people—was far too noble for an Emperor whose head held nothing but treacherous schemes to ever match.
That truth, those words, had been lodged in her chest like a sharpened blade that could pierce her throat at any moment. If she did not spit them out, the torment would drive her mad.
Seeing Bai Jingyan with her head bowed, refusing to answer, the Grand Princess felt her eyes ache and her throat tighten.
"I know I hurt your heart when I asked whether you harbored thoughts of rebellion. There's nothing wrong with you except—your unbending stubbornness is exactly like your grandfather's. But A-Yan, the imperial house is this old woman's home, and I am an Imperial Princess! My blood flows in your veins too! Anyone in the Great Jin may harbor rebellion, but not my descendants! Do you understand me?"
The Grand Princess's heart, which sought to protect the imperial house, had to be the same as Bai Jingyan's heart, which sought to protect the Bai family. So how could Bai Jingyan not understand her?
And yet the Jin imperial house had rotted long ago. Those who wielded power and pursued nothing but profit, the court officials riddled with conspiracies and schemes—rotten to the very root. Gleaming on the surface, festering within, until the stench of decay rose from them.
Only by overturning the realm and handing imperial power to one truly worthy could this nation survive. For a country whose insides had rotted through, that was the only path left.
"I asked if you understood me. Did you? Answer me!"
When the Grand Princess pressed her with a raised voice, suffocating despair and weariness crashed over Bai Jingyan all at once. The bitterness was more than she could bear.
She had grown up at her grandmother's side from earliest childhood, taking her very first steps with the Grand Princess's hand clasping hers.
Her first characters, too, had been taught with her grandmother guiding her hand.
When fever burned her body, her grandmother had held her through the night without a moment's sleep, kneeling before the altar and praying that she would give up ten years of her own life if only Bai Jingyan might be spared and kept safe.
Her grandmother was the person who had shaped her entire life, someone whose importance could not be measured.
Once, there had been nothing the two of them could not say to each other. But now they shared the same purpose from different positions—holding hands even as they guarded against each other. The person she could lean on most stood right beside her, yet felt impossibly far away.
Bai Jingyan was afraid. Afraid that if things went on like this, blood kin would waste their strength watching each other and drift further and further apart—afraid of becoming someone whose very presence was unpleasant to behold.
A heart gone cold would not be warmed even by the fire in a brazier. Bai Jingyan bowed her head, brimming with anger, and opened her mouth.
"I understand!"
Scattered familial affection and aching sorrow tangled together. That long, thin thread of contradictory feeling made a person far more dispirited than any vengeful enemy clawing and biting for the kill. It was like flaying flesh with a dull blade—a pain that robbed one of appetite and sleep alike.
Her throat blocked, the Grand Princess could only hold Bai Jingyan in her arms a long while later, tears brimming in her tightly closed eyes, full of tender pity. Standing between nation and clan, she was swept up in a nameless anguish that left her unable to move in either direction.
In her youth, the Grand Princess had loved Bai Weiting, a handsome and dashing young general. On the night before the late Emperor's marriage decree was issued, her father—the Emperor who cherished her most—had charged her with reddened eyes. He had permitted her to marry down to Bai Weiting, Crown Prince of the Duke of Zhenguo, not only out of her own longing, but with the intent that she watch him from his side. Since the supreme military authority of the realm had been entrusted to the Zhenguo Duke Estate, someone had to watch over it for the Jin imperial house—to nip in the bud any thoughts of rebellion from a family that held such power.
So the Grand Princess had married into the Zhenguo Duke Estate and become a woman of the Bai family. She bore and raised the Bai heirs, yet never once forgot her charge.
She could not stand by and watch the granddaughter she had staked her whole life on raising—the granddaughter she loved most—harbor thoughts of rebellion.
Each lost in her own thoughts, the two of them did not exchange a single word, a single syllable, for the whole of the journey back to the residence.
On the day the palace banquet ended, the streets and alleys of Dadu, the wine houses and taverns along every thoroughfare, were filled with talk of the Bai family of the Zhenguo Duke Estate. Even the young dandies who spent their days in feasting and extravagance launched into heated debate about the Bais.
Even scions given to mischief like Lu Yuanfeng declared that the nobility of the Bai family ought to be taken as a model.
Since the founding of the dynasty, wherever war had flared, the loyal and valiant Bai army had been there. The people of the Great Jin had grown so accustomed to this that they took it for granted. The Zhenguo Duke Estate was, in effect, the blade of the Great Jin—regarded from the start as something born to defend the nation and protect its people.
But when they heard the words the Bai family's Eldest Young Lady had spoken before the Duke of Zhongyong's residence, of how she had disciplined the second young master of the Duke's estate before the Manjiang Tower, and of how she had declared at the state banquet that she wished only for the Bai men to return home safe—the people realized at last that none of it was a matter of course.
They understood, for the first time, that the Bai men who had written the legend of invincibility were flesh and blood like any other—that they had mothers who bore them and fathers who raised them, and that someone, somewhere, waited with all her heart for their return.
And yet, for the sake of the Great Jin and its people, those men had no choice but to gamble their lives on the battlefield.
It was as if layer upon layer of veils had been stripped away in a single morning, revealing the loyalty passed down through the generations of the Zhenguo Duke Estate. As people looked upon the estate anew, their awe grew only deeper.
When a servant in charge of the Zhenguo Duke Estate's purchases went out to buy goods, the shopkeepers within the city and the farmers beyond its walls, as if by prior agreement, refused to take the estate's silver. Some farmers even sent fresh fruit to the residence every day. When the purchasing steward reported this to Lady Dong, she found herself in a difficult position indeed.
"Madam, the farmers and the shopkeepers are all standing at our back gate, falling over one another to send goods to the residence. What are we to do?"
Steward Yu bowed his head, eyes lowered, as he asked Lady Dong.
Lady Dong lifted her teacup, considered a moment, and answered.
"Accept the goods and pay market price in silver. Tell them the Zhenguo Duke Estate is content to live on His Majesty's stipend and the taxes of the people—and that we must never, under any circumstance, accept even the smallest thing without proper payment."
She set down her teacup, hesitated briefly, then added:
"Tell Steward Xue as well. Impress upon him, firmly, that no one from the Duke's estate may accept so much as a single item from the people. If anyone dares defy this order, beat him to death on the spot—you need not report it to me first!"
Though the Zhenguo Duke Estate's reputation now rang far and wide, the slightest misstep could turn it into a hidden trap, drawing down an even greater calamity in days to come. Having served as matriarch of the Zhenguo Duke Estate for so many years, Lady Dong could see precisely where its interests and dangers lay.
Watching the physician apply medicine to Bai Jinxiu's forehead, Lady Yu thought of the scar the wound would leave on her daughter's skin, and her heart ached. She left Qingzhu Courtyard with reddened eyes, and before she had taken more than a few steps, Mama Na came hurrying over, her face bright.
Mama Na bowed respectfully and spoke up.
"Second Madam, wonderful news! A rumor has been spreading outside since early this morning—that the very evening the palace banquet ended, the Duke of Zhongyong sent his wife, Lady Zhang, to the Jingxin Nunnery to live as a nun! I sent someone to find out more, and it's true! Our young lady will never again be persecuted by her mother-in-law!"
Those who went to the Jingxin Nunnery were all women awaiting punishment. Once sent there, they could never return to the residence, and some, worn down by suffering, departed for the world beyond.
When Lady Yu heard the news, she cried out that it was deeply satisfying, and marveled that heaven had at last lent a hand.
"Mama Na, lay out a proper table. Today I'm having lunch with Eldest Sister—we owe her a real word of thanks for all her help!"
At the meal, Lady Yu opened her mouth with a smile.
"Just thinking of how Lady Zhang has paid her debt in full leaves me feeling light as if I'd drunk a whole jug of hot wine. I could manage five bowls of rice without breaking a sweat!"
Fifth Madam Ji, rubbing her belly, chimed in with a laughing face.
"Second Sister, the one to thank isn't heaven but Eldest Sister. If she hadn't shown such kindness and called off the servant girls' grievances, Lady Zhang would never have been punished so severely. Do you think it's easy for a censor to drag down the Duke of Zhongyong? Without Sister's help, the whole affair would have been glossed over and forgotten."
"Second Sister prepared this delicious spread because she wanted to thank Eldest Sister—it certainly isn't for our sake. We're just the sideshow here, that's all!"
Third Madam Yi covered her mouth with her handkerchief as she said it, laughing.
Her spirits lifted, Lady Yu told Mama Na to bring wine. She filled the cup to the brim and conveyed her gratitude to Lady Dong.
"Our son-in-law moving into the new household, the matter of Lady Zhang—Eldest Sister, you've truly been through so much!"
"What's family for, if not this?"
Lady Dong drank her wine in good spirits and sat down beside Lady Yu.
"Once Jinxiu enters her new household, she'll be its matriarch. No one will be able to torment her anymore—so you can set your mind at ease."
At the mention of Bai Jinxiu, Lady Yu's eyes suddenly reddened, and she nodded.
In midwinter, snow like goose feathers settled gently upon the old mansion, lending its charm an added grace.
Fourth Madam Wang gazed out the window at the drifting snow, her eyes reddening as she sighed.
"I wonder how the children in the Southern Border are faring. Might they come home before the festival…?"
"My dear, they have the Crown Prince and their father with them—they'll be fine. A man must weather hard experience before he can accomplish great things."
Even as she said it, Lady Dong, too, worried for her own sons.
The Liang King had not attended the palace banquet. But the following day, opinions in Dadu were sharply divided over what Bai Jingyan had said there, and so the Liang King learned of everything that had taken place.
As the fame of the Bai family and Bai Jingyan climbed higher by the day, the Liang King grew uneasy.
The Bai name had risen so far that even his father the Emperor had deigned to ask about the drowning of the Bai Eldest Young Lady's maidservant. The Emperor had even gone so far as to tell the Duke of Zhongyong to deal with the matter properly.
Rumor had it far and wide that the Duke of Zhongyong had sent his wife, Lady Zhang, to the Jingxin Nunnery on the very evening of the banquet—on the pretext that she must reflect upon her sins, beg forgiveness, and offer prayers.
When the dispatch from the Southern Border arrived, if the hearts of the people turned toward the Bai family, his father might well be unable to lay a hand on the Zhenguo Duke Estate.