Suddenly a faint sound of muffled weeping reached them.

Nanny Tao, walking ahead, paused in her step.

Fifth Miss had already recovered herself, and stood before the curtain with a smile: “Nanny, this white jade hand ornament is truly beautiful — is it carved from a single piece of white jade?”

Nanny Tao turned around, and the gaze she directed at Fifth Miss held undisguisable surprise and admiration: “This piece is indeed carved from a single block of white jade! So Fifth Miss has an interest in such things.” As she spoke, she led the two of them toward the curio shelf in the western room. “There are also some jade objects displayed on this side — Fifth Miss may admire them at leisure.”

A deliberate gesture, to give them a moment of distraction.

Fifth Miss smiled: “Thank you, Nanny. I shall take the opportunity to broaden my horizons.”

Eleventh Miss smiled faintly to herself.

The more actively Fifth Miss engaged, the safer she herself would be!

She stood with Fifth Miss before the curio shelf examining the various jade ornaments and porcelain pieces displayed within. Nanny Tao, meanwhile, had one ear inclined toward the sounds coming from the eastern room.

All three of them were somewhat distracted.

Fortunately this state of affairs did not last long. A young girl dressed in a red silk jacket and blue-green sleeveless robe — clearly a maid — came from the western room: “Nanny Tao, the Madam says please invite the two young misses to come inside.”

The moment to meet Luo Yuanniang — who held the power to shape their futures — was at hand. Though neither Fifth Miss nor Eleventh Miss let anything show on their faces, both hearts gave an involuntary lurch at the same moment.

Nanny Tao at once responded with a “yes,” and with a smile invited the two of them into the western secondary room.

Eleventh Miss lowered her eyes, following propriety, and accompanied Nanny Tao around the screen and into Yuanniang’s bedchamber. She then cast a quick glance to the right, as one naturally would in any bedchamber.

The red-curtained bed, hung with the ornate silver hook of a full-bloom flower, held a woman of about twenty-five or twenty-six, her expression weary, reclining against a large ginger-yellow bolster pillow embroidered with green foliate sprigs. She wore a small jacket of slate-blue satin embroidered with white magnolia blossoms, and her raven-black hair was neatly coiled into a round bun, with a red-gold honey-wax drop-pendant hairpin at her temple. Her pallid face was alarmingly thin, yet her dark eyes were bright and luminous. She gazed at the First Madam seated at the edge of the bed — the corners of whose eyes were still reddened — with a face full of the joy of a mother and daughter reunited after a long separation.

This was Luo Yuanniang…

Eleventh Miss was somewhat taken aback.

She had imagined it countless times… expecting to see a cold and haughty woman, or a stern and composed matron, or perhaps a figure of mournful expression but sharp, penetrating eyes… She had not expected to encounter a Luo Yuanniang who was this gentle, and even carried a touch of girlishness.

“In the blink of an eye, so many years have passed.” An unfamiliar voice, carrying a note of warmth and laughter, sounded in her ear. “The little girl who used to trail after me has grown into such a tall and graceful young lady!”

“Elder Sister!” Fifth Miss, walking ahead of Eleventh Miss, suddenly choked and sank to her knees. “I… I have missed you so much… I still remember the twisted sugar candy you brought back from Hangzhou for me!” By the end, she was already weeping softly.

Eleventh Miss, seeing this, immediately knelt as well, head bowed and hands at her sides, the very picture of gentle obedience.

“Get up, get up — the floor is cold!” The warm voice took on a playful note of fondness. “You are both grown women now — why do you still behave just as you always did, crying at the drop of a hat, kneeling at the drop of a hat…”

Maids came forward at once to help them to their feet.

Eleventh Miss did not move, watching Fifth Miss from the corner of her eye. Only when Fifth Miss had risen did she rise as well.

“Come, sit beside us for a while — we sisters should have a good talk.”

With these words, a maid brought over embroidered stools and set them at the bedside.

Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss rose and gave their thanks, then stepped forward to formally kowtow in greeting as sisters. Before they could kneel, attentive maids had already placed padded cushions beneath their knees, and once they had completed their obeisance, maids immediately came forward to help them to their feet.

The maids moved without sound and with swift reaction.

Eleventh Miss was inwardly impressed by how well-trained Yuanniang’s maids were, as she and Fifth Miss settled themselves half-perched on the embroidered stools at the bedside.

Maids offered tea and refreshments.

Yuanniang then smiled as she took stock of her two younger sisters: “Fifth Sister was always beautiful from childhood — she is just as I imagined her to be. This is my first time meeting Eleventh Sister. That delicate pointed chin is quite reminiscent of Fifth Yiniang. But this hair — that takes after me: jet black and thick.”

Hearing herself mentioned, Eleventh Miss’s color rose, and she lowered her head and murmured something, no one quite catching what she said, looking altogether shy and flustered.

“What do you mean she takes after you?” The First Madam laughed. “That takes after their grandmother.”

Yuanniang’s lips curled slightly, and everyone laughed along, and the room filled with a few degrees more warmth and animation.

Yuanniang instructed the maid at her side: “Come, take out the two carved red-lacquer boxes from under my pillow.”

A maid dipped down obediently and felt beneath Yuanniang’s bolster, producing two round boxes roughly the size of a palm.

“Elder Sister does not know what you both like, so I thought I still had two jade pendants that might be presentable, and had someone bring them out.” She indicated for the young maid to present the carved red-lacquer boxes to Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss. “One for each of you — wear them for fun!”

Yuanniang spoke modestly, but neither of them took those two jade pendants for anything so ordinary. They rose to accept the boxes with proper ceremony and grateful thanks.

“Open them and look,” Yuanniang smiled. “See whether you like them.”

Both Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss were slightly startled.

What manner of thing was it to unwrap a gift in front of the person who gave it…

The First Madam was also from the side saying “open and look — it is your elder sister’s little token of affection.” The two of them hesitated no longer, and each opened the box in their hands.

Warm and translucent, flawless white, with a luster like congealed fat — one glance told you it was the finest white jade.

Both pieces were about an inch square. One was carved with plum blossoms on a branch — the motif known as “joy reaches to the eyebrows.” The other was carved with bats holding a pomegranate in their mouths — the motif of “many sons and abundant blessings.”

What did this signify?

Was it to be drawn by lot?

Which one had she drawn — “joy reaches to the eyebrows”? Or “many sons and abundant blessings”?

Eleventh Miss looked at the “many sons and abundant blessings” pendant in her hand with a feeling somewhere between laughter and tears. Fifth Miss, however, looked as elated as her pendant suggested — joy seemed to have reached her very eyes.

“Thank you, Elder Sister!” Her smile reached all the way to the depths of her eyes. “I love it very much.”

Eleventh Miss nodded, echoing Fifth Miss’s sentiment: “It is truly beautiful.”

Yuanniang smiled and gave a gentle tilt of her head: “As long as you both like it!”

Her words had barely fallen when a maid from beyond the screen spoke with respectful deference: “Madam, Zhun Ge has come!”

Yuanniang’s face immediately brightened: “Bring him in quickly!”

At once a tall and well-rounded woman came in carrying a small boy dressed in a great-red cut-silk ten-pattern cloak, followed behind by two maids with bright eyes and white teeth. But everyone’s gaze fell entirely on the child.

His complexion was fair, his features refined — he was as lovely as a figurine. His frame appeared to be that of a child of two or three, and his eyes carried a quality of frailty and timidity that spoke at a glance of a constitution marked by deficiency.

“Zhun Ge!” The First Madam’s eyes filled with tears as she moved forward with open arms to hold him.

But he turned his head away and buried himself in the arms of the woman carrying him, the small golden bracelets with their tiny bells on his wrists jingling chaotically.

The First Madam’s expression stiffened slightly.

Yuanniang was already offering an apologetic explanation: “He is a little shy with strangers!”

The First Madam murmured with a trace of embarrassment, tugging gently at Zhun Ge’s clothing: “It is my fault for coming to see him so rarely.”

The woman holding Zhun Ge smiled: “The blame is only our young boy’s young age.” She then shifted Zhun Ge and dipped into a curtsy: “Zhun Ge pays his respects to his maternal grandmother!”

The maids all addressed Zhun Ge as “Zhun Ge’er,” yet this woman called him simply “Zhun Ge” — she must be Zhun Ge’s wet nurse, Eleventh Miss surmised.

She was still thinking when she saw the First Madam smile without a trace of resentment, then take a red-lacquered gold-painted box from Nanny Xu and hand it to Zhun Ge: “This is a gift from your grandmother upon meeting you. An inkstone. Save it for when you are older.”

The maid who had accompanied Zhun Ge stepped forward and curtseyed to the First Madam in thanks, accepting it on his behalf.

Yuanniang then pointed to Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss: “Zhun Ge, this is your Fifth Auntie, and this is your Eleventh Auntie!”

At his mother’s voice, Zhun Ge immediately lifted his head, looked briefly at Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss, then buried his head back in the woman’s arms. But Fifth Miss and Eleventh Miss dared not be negligent and quickly stood up.

The woman, still holding Zhun Ge, murmured “Zhun Ge greets his Fifth Auntie” and “Zhun Ge greets his Eleventh Auntie,” dipping into a curtsy for each of them in turn.

Both replied “please do not stand on ceremony” and shifted slightly to the side to receive the bows.

Fifth Miss then drew a peachwood good fortune tablet from her sleeve: “This is a tablet that was personally blessed by the Head Abbess Huizhen of Ci’an Temple when I was transcribing the Blood Sutra and making offerings there. A little token on meeting Zhun Ge!”

Eleventh Miss offered a set of great-red all-over-gold-patterned garments embroidered with emerald-green bamboo motifs, complete with shoes and socks: “Hand-sewn — a small token of regards.”

The maid who had accompanied Zhun Ge smiled and stepped forward to thank Zhun Ge’s aunts on his behalf, accepting both.

Everyone seated themselves again, and the maids changed the tea.

The woman then carried Zhun Ge toward the front of Yuanniang’s bed and was kneeling to pay her respects when Zhun Ge suddenly lifted his head and gazed at Yuanniang, and called out “Mother” in a small, needing voice.

Yuanniang’s face immediately softened tenfold: “Put him here beside me!”

The woman hesitated briefly, then set Zhun Ge down at Yuanniang’s side.

Zhun Ge rolled about for a moment, then burrowed into his mother’s embrace.

“Zhun Ge, gently now!” The woman who had been carrying him watched the child in trepidation. Yuanniang smiled and stroked her son’s soft hair: “It is all right.”

The woman seemed about to say something more, but Yuanniang had already turned her head to speak with the First Madam: “Why did you not invite your daughter-in-law and Mu Ge as well? Zhun Ge is so fond of playing with Mu Ge!”

The First Madam smiled: “I had gifts from our hometown sent over first thing to your Second Uncle and Third Uncle’s families, and was worried they might send people back with return gifts, so I asked her to stay and help manage things at home.”

Yuanniang then said with a hint of gentle reproach: “Mother really — in that case, why not wait and come another day? Father is out visiting friends, Elder Brother has to go to the Imperial Academy for his studies. With all of you gone and the younger sisters all brought out as well, leaving your daughter-in-law to stay home alone with the little one — that is hardly ideal.”

“I know you want to be the beloved daughter-in-law who pleases everyone, but do not go blaming me in the process.” The First Madam laughed. “I asked her about it, and she said your health was weak, and Zhun Ge had just recovered from catching a chill two days ago, so she was afraid that everyone coming at once would disturb you and Zhun Ge, and that she would wait until Zhun Ge was better before bringing Mu Ge to visit.”

Yuanniang laughed then: “Mother, do not blame me — who else but your own daughter could speak so directly to you? Who else would dare?”

Hearing this, the First Madam’s eyes reddened.

Yuanniang saw this and quickly said: “You have made the rare journey to Yanjing — tomorrow I will have Father accompany you to see a little of the sights. Bring me back a few skewers of candied hawthorn berries.”

The First Madam’s face turned a little pink, and then, as if to cover something, she gave a soft “tsk” of amusement and laughed: “Look at you — what kind of mother are you? Still pining for street-sold candied hawthorn. I shall go tell your mother-in-law directly, and have her make you ten or twenty skewers to eat until you are sick of the sight of them.”

Yuanniang covered her mouth with a laugh: “Mother-in-law’s candied hawthorn is delicious. And the ones you buy from the street for me are delicious too.”

The back of the hand covering her mouth was knotted with blue veins like that of a woman of eighty.

The First Madam looked on and felt a pang in her heart.

After so many years of waiting, the wealth and prosperity they had hoped for had finally come — and yet her daughter’s health… She thought too of the Xu Household’s fine food and silk, and that her daughter managed the household with everything she could want, so there was no question of going without such a mere trifle of food. Speaking this way was only her daughter’s way of playing the child before her own mother. The daughter who had been more precious than a jewel in her own home had become another family’s daughter-in-law, and even to say a kind word about her own mother, she had to bring her mother-in-law into it… Grief surged within her, and her tears could no longer be held back.

Yuanniang’s own eyes grew red as well.

Whatever ways she found to make her mother smile, her own illness was like a thorn lodged in her mother’s throat — even when left undisturbed it caused pain, let alone when that thorn had been prodded…