The hearing of Li Fujie’s case did not go smoothly.

The presiding judge was supposed to be Zhù Ying — but then there was also Leng Yun, who had taken an extremely keen interest in the case. He claimed he would not interfere with her conduct of the proceedings, yet he had pulled up a chair and placed it right beside the magistrate’s bench and was staring fixedly at the proceedings in the hall. Behind him were aides and personal attendants — thankfully he had not brought along every single one of his serving staff.

Once he took his place, the Southern Prefecture supervising official also arrived and seated himself fixedly staring from the other side.

Zhù Ying conducted herself as normal. The runners of Fulu County’s yamen could not help but feel tense, and their formations were a few degrees less orderly than usual.

Then came the parties involved.

Neither the plaintiff nor the defendant was from Fulu County. Some people knew who Huang the Twelfth was, but Li Fujie was completely unknown to anyone here. Nor could many people explain the backstory or the full grievance between them. Most of the onlookers had come simply because there was a case to watch.

News of what had been happening in Sicheng County of late had been filtering through vaguely — through official families, traveling merchants, and others. Cases like this one, where the poor brought suit against the rich and there was a real chance of justice being done, were exactly the sort of thing the people most loved to watch. They came with anxious hearts and deep hopes for the outcome.

The mood among the gentry who had also come to observe was far more complicated. Lin Weng knew the most and said nothing. Among the rest, many were parents of county school students, and knew slightly more than the average person, though only of things like the “clearing of concealed land and households” type of work. Those who were held in higher confidence, like Gu Tong, had been doing the work of “collecting complaints.” Work like the “imitation official hall” would not have been assigned to these students, yet it was precisely the charge most likely to alarm the higher-ups.

The local gentry all had some degree of irregularity when it came to taxes. Zhù Ying had been sparring with them year after year, trying to get them to give up a little more. The gentry, for their part, knew these things were not quite legal, but were reluctant to pay the full amount. A constant back-and-forth. Hearing that such heavy-handed action had been taken, they all felt deeply unsettled.

When the case began and the plaintiff and defendant were brought in, the onlookers reacted either with exclamations of surprise or with inner sympathy.

Huang the Twelfth was a fat local landowner. After a month in jail, his belly had shrunk a little, though he remained fat. His face was stubbly, his eyes looked larger than before, and the most conspicuous thing about him was his prison garb.

The sight of Huang the Twelfth in prison clothes would have been enough to make Sicheng County’s jaws drop.

On Li Fujie’s side, her whole family were the plaintiffs. Though they had been housed at the county yamen as well, they wore no prison clothes — just plain cotton. Worn and patched, all of it, though Li Fujie alone was dressed a bit more decently. From the eldest to the youngest, the family looked in far better spirits than Huang the Twelfth.

The moment the two sides came face to face, Li Da lunged forward at Huang the Twelfth: “Pfah! You animal! You’ve got what’s coming to you!”

He had led Zhù Ying to raid Huang the Twelfth’s estate, and he felt this case was as good as won. Unlike those occasional yamen officials who would pretend to be good people, extract every useful word from you, and then turn on you and beat you, this was different. The whole Huang estate had been seized — what could possibly go wrong now? If he didn’t seize this chance, he’d never win his case, and all the suffering his family had endured over the years would have been for nothing!

The opening alone was pure spectacle!

In the crowd of onlookers some were tense, some cheered, and the noise was as festive as a temple fair.

Zhù Ying brought the gavel down, and Tong Li quickly directed the runners to separate the two sides. Li Da was being held by two men and still straining to kick at Huang the Twelfth. Huang the Twelfth, after a month in jail — having passed through fury, anxiety, fear, and struggle — was at last getting a chance to speak. He cried out loudly: “Injustice!”

He had been detained on Leng Yun’s orders, and Leng Yun gave a contemptuous snort.

Zhù Ying brought the gavel down again: “Silence!”

Once order was restored, Zhù Ying called on the plaintiff to make their statement.

Li Fujie still gave the main account. She started out fairly organized, but with the atmosphere of the moment and seeing hope in sight for the first time, with so many onlookers all around, her emotions grew more and more agitated. She would say two sentences about the case, then curse Huang the Twelfth in five: from “not a real man,” “can’t even father a son himself,” to “ancestors lacked virtue, serves him right to have no descendants” and the like.

The two counties were geographically close, and though there were slight differences in dialect, they could more or less understand each other. The people watching found her scolding quite satisfying, and the focus of the crowd shifted from the case to the tongue-lashing. What the case was about, what the truth was — many people were starting to forget.

Zhù Ying had to interrupt her: “Stick to the case!”

Huang the Twelfth had started by protesting his innocence. But a man who hears his concubine call him “not a real man” in open court will inevitably lose his temper. He dropped his cries of injustice and began to shout: “Shameless wretch! When have I ever mistreated you? I gave you food and clothing — and this is how you repay me with this kind of behavior…”

“Without you, I could still eat and dress myself — it’s because of you that I can’t even be a full human being!”

Li Fujie’s mother saw her daughter being publicly humiliated by this man and rushed forward to join in the scolding. The invective of a village woman carried fewer inhibitions; Huang the Twelfth accused Li Fujie of low character and said her family was using the lawsuit to extort him. Li Fujie’s mother went straight for the jugular and delivered a killing blow: “Some bastard-born, cut-off wretch, come from I don’t know where!”

Both sides immediately abandoned the case and moved to personal attacks, exchanging a stream of words unfit for polite company. The onlookers cheered enthusiastically. The public hearing had turned into a theatrical performance.

Leng Yun’s grasp of the dialect was not good enough for him to understand all of this. The local dialect’s terms for certain concepts were so different from the standard Mandarin of the capital that they could effectively serve as a secret code.

Zhù Ying beat the long table until it rang out, and the runners with their clubs restored order with considerable effort.

Both sides having been subjected to a minor penalty, the scolding stopped. Li Fujie continued her account, but as she spoke she could not resist goading Huang the Twelfth: “The best soil in the world is useless with shriveled seed.” She had clearly mastered the art of stomping on Huang the Twelfth’s sorest spot. Huang the Twelfth on his side provided a dense accompaniment of “shameless wretch.”

When she finally finished, Zhù Ying called on Huang the Twelfth to give his account.

Huang the Twelfth fell back on his same old story — he had a contract deed as evidence, and the fact that Fulu County lacked the physical evidence did not mean no evidence existed. If she couldn’t produce evidence, the case should be transferred to Sicheng County.

Li Da heard this and was ready to laugh. He opened his mouth to address Huang the Twelfth — he always started any response to the man with “pfah” — barely got the first sound out before Zhù Ying’s gaze landed on Tong Li, and Tong Li moved to shut him down first.

Zhù Ying then asked Li Fujie whether she had any evidence. Of course Li Fujie had no evidence, but she knew how to weave a story. She said: “My lord, please do not believe him. The county yamen of Sicheng County was fed and watered by him from top to bottom — who there wouldn’t take his side? And does what he’s done stop at this? There’s San-Niang’s family in the compound — they owed him one shi of rent and in two years it ballooned to ten shi, and San-Niang was given as payment for the debt! And then there’s Sun Si from the east end of the village — when watering their fields he blocked the irrigation channel so that the water only flowed to his own land. When Sun Si quietly broke open the channel, he accused Sun Si of stealing his water and had the man beaten to death…”

Zhù Ying brought the gavel down: “Speak to the matter at hand!”

On the actual charge, there was genuinely nothing to show. Li Fujie had, after all, spent several years with Huang the Twelfth. Huang the Twelfth’s position was: “She wanted to bleed money from me to support her family. I paid. But her family was never satisfied — that’s why this lawsuit happened. Otherwise, after all these years, I have a son — why would it have come to this? Why would it have come to this?”

Those listening began to murmur amongst themselves: “A wife supplementing her mother’s family is common enough — and how much more so for a concubine!”

Li Fujie did not flinch: “Pfah! Your son wasn’t born by your official wife, was he? He calls the Lin woman ‘mother’ and calls Lin-whatever his maternal grandfather — what does that have to do with my family, the Lis?”

Hm, she simply refused to acknowledge it.

“You woman — one day as husband and wife is worth a hundred days of grace. Even if you won’t acknowledge me, how can you deny your own son?”

The two of them talked themselves further and further into absurdity. Some in the audience shifted from righteous indignation to sheer entertainment. Leng Yun, who had said he was here to watch Zhù Ying hear a case, could no longer contain himself and asked quietly: “Could it be that… this scoundrel was truly guilty of crimes and misconduct, but did not actually wrong this particular woman? He does acknowledge that the son is hers…”

He looked at Li Fujie’s whole family — poor, thin and worn. Li Fujie herself was not particularly good-looking. He looked back at Huang the Twelfth — not handsome, but a white, plump man with an air of comfortable living, which made him feel more like “one of us.”

Zhù Ying let out a soft breath: “My lord, Li Fujie has no evidence — but we do.”

“Oh? You have that?”

Zhù Ying said: “I’ll produce it now.”

The two whispered together briefly. The supervising official nearby was sitting very uncomfortably. By his reading of Zhù Ying, she absolutely would have something up her sleeve. But he had not been involved in this case at all, and yet the outcome would still have something to do with him — dereliction of duty.

He glanced at Zhù Ying. She said to him: “Be at ease, my lord. This case will certainly be decided.”

She brought the gavel down once more: “Bring it!”

Zhong Tai had quietly removed himself — he much preferred going to audit the accounts of Huang the Twelfth and Sicheng County over standing up in front of a large crowd. Xiang Le came forward carrying a register.

Zhù Ying said: “Read.”

Xiang Le opened the page marked with a folded corner and read: “On such-and-such year, month, and day — gave such-and-such official such-and-such sum, a gold bracelet; gave village headman such-and-such person such-and-such sum, one jar of wine, one shi of rice — to establish the body contract for Li Niang. Contract price: such-and-such sum.”

Zhù Ying drew out a counting rod and placed it squarely on the table.

Huang the Twelfth’s face changed color! Then immediately he cried out: “My lord, does this not prove that I paid in full with a proper contract?”

Li Da, hearing this, cursed loudly: “Pfah! Your thugs took our hands and pressed our fingerprints by force! Why else would you pay them that money?”

Huang the Twelfth kowtowed: “My lord — three lords — paying gratuities to matchmakers is not against the law.”

Leng Yun asked Zhù Ying: “What is the argument here?”

Zhù Ying said to Xiang Le: “Read.”

Xiang Le turned to another piece of paper and read: “Huang the Twelfth’s son, so-and-so, born on such-and-such year, month, and day.”

Others had not yet caught the implication, but the female jail wardens heard it and understood first: the date of the contract and the child’s age did not match up! The woman was seized first; the child came later; and the contract deed was drawn up last of all.

Zhù Ying drew out another counting rod and placed it beside the first. The gentry onlookers watching on the side, seeing this, shifted from sympathy for Huang the Twelfth to contempt. They thought they understood: the county magistrate intended to deal with Huang the Twelfth because of his attitude. He was being dishonest! He was in for a beating.

Huang the Twelfth still tried to struggle: “She was originally a servant. The contract was made later, after the son was born.”

Zhù Ying said: “Bring them up.”

The head steward was dead, but the second steward was still alive, as were the yamen clerks who had handled the matter. Since Zhù Ying was now acting under Leng Yun’s order overseeing Sicheng County, these had all passed into her hands. Tong Bo escorted them in, and the two sides confronted each other directly. Neither the second steward nor the clerk had yet been beaten. Seeing Huang the Twelfth there in his prisoner’s clothes, all desire to protest or tell a story drained out of the second steward. He said plainly: “The reason was that Master Huang…”

He raised his hand and slapped himself hard across the face: “The reason was that Huang the Twelfth had committed so many misdeeds but had no son. That day he forcibly took Li Niang. He had not paid much attention to her at first, but when he heard she was with child he said she should stay. After the son was born, he said: His official wife could not have a son, and neither could the other two concubines — only she could bear him a son, so it was her destiny to bear his children. She could never be released. When Li’s family came asking for her, he ordered the head steward to go to the county yamen and buy off the process, have a false contract drawn up. Once the yamen put its seal on it, what was false became official.”

The clerk also kowtowed repeatedly: “This subordinate failed in his oversight. They said Li’s family had been paid, and this subordinate assumed that with all of Huang’s wealth he would not be lying about a small amount of money, and there were witnesses, so the contract was issued.”

The village headman named as witness on the contract also kowtowed: “This subordinate was wrongly accused! Looking at Huang the Twelfth’s wealth, and seeing how the woman’s son was already born and would grow up to be a rich man — how could the family not be willing? So I agreed to serve as witness.”

Zhù Ying drew out a third counting rod and laid it alongside the others, then said: “You are not good people either. If even official government documents cannot be trusted, what document in this world is trustworthy? Well?”

Leng Yun had seen enough and was satisfied: “Why are we still talking to them? Sentence this man now!”

By this point the onlookers all understood — Huang the Twelfth had truly committed the crime of abducting a woman, and it was a revolting business. Lin Weng, amid the surge of commentary, buried his head as low as it would go, wishing he could find a crack in the floor to disappear into.

Huang the Twelfth still tried to argue. Zhù Ying first picked up one of the counting rods: “Twenty blows of the paddle.”

After twenty blows, Huang the Twelfth was so ashamed, furious, and stunned that he could no longer put up any defense — only one line: “How can you treat me this way?”

Zhù Ying then ordered the village headman and second steward to receive “twenty blows each,” and the Sicheng County clerk “forty blows.”

Once the beatings were done, she announced the judgment. The forcible abduction of Li Fujie was established. She ordered Li Fujie returned to her family. She also calculated on the spot: Li Fujie’s wages at the time of her abduction had been fifty coins per month, which was not negligible for the time. This was multiplied by twelve months and by the number of years, and the amount was deducted from Huang the Twelfth’s estate. Even so, this came to only a few strings of coins. She also calculated the losses and hardships the Li family had incurred over the years in pursuing this case, and deducted a further twenty strings of coins from Huang’s estate as compensation. The Li family’s travel expenses back to Sicheng County, and their food and lodging costs in Fulu County, were also to be deducted from Huang the Twelfth’s estate.

In all his life, Huang the Twelfth had never suffered like this. In his heart he seethed. He lay on the punishment bench, rolling his eyes upward and staring at Zhù Ying with venomous hatred: Just you wait! Once I get back I’ll transfer my household registration back to Sicheng County, and as for twenty strings of coins — I won’t give even twenty copper coins!

But to his surprise, the judgment was not yet finished — the surprise came next. Zhù Ying had been settling things for the victim first; she had not yet passed judgment on the defendant. The defendant Huang the Twelfth: first, forcible abduction; second, rape; third, bribery; fourth, forgery of documents; and now, lying in open court to obstruct the proceedings — combining these several charges warranted a sentence of exile to three thousand li.

Huang the Twelfth thought to himself: I’ll sue you! I’ll sue you!

He still had money; his property was still intact. Even if it cost him a thousand strings, he would fight this case to the end. Even if officials protected each other, he did not believe they could cover the sky with one hand all the way to the imperial court. He would have his wife go to the capital to plead the case there.

Zhù Ying let out a soft breath: “Come!”

Tong Li and Tong Bo stepped forward: “Present!”

“Go and seal the Huang family accounts and first get the money for Li’s family.”

Huang the Twelfth was stunned: “You dare?!”

Leng Yun had been watching the whole time. He had been watching with enjoyment, only occasionally adding a quiet word to Zhù Ying. He had truly managed not to interfere. But now seeing Huang the Twelfth still defying them, Leng Yun said: “Still daring to bellow in open court and threaten a court official?! Give him another twenty!”

The runners glanced at Zhù Ying. She said: “He seems to have plenty of breath left in him — he can take it.” She picked another counting rod from the tube and tossed it down. The runners accordingly gave Huang the Twelfth another twenty. In a county yamen, the paddle was applied to bare skin regardless of wealth or poverty. The kind of thing that happened in clan halls — where a young master would have a leather pad stuffed down his trousers to cushion the blows — did not happen in a proper government court.

Huang the Twelfth was once again “humiliated,” and could not understand for the life of him why his estate was being sealed. In his whole life he had never suffered so. He lay there with his eyes rolling white, glaring at Zhù Ying with malice: You call yourself a clean official? You just want more than the usual bribe, that’s all!

“Ha ha ha ha!” The onlooking commoners burst into laughter and pointed at him, saying what a fool this one was — Magistrate Zhù had never done anything of the sort. When the laughter died down, someone boldly spat at him.

The runners deliberately looked the other way.

Zhù Ying said: “Take Huang the Twelfth into custody. Court is dismissed!”

Huang the Twelfth howled: “Why am I still being held?”

Leng Yun had already lost interest in him. He pointed to the two counting rods on the table: “What are those for?”

Zhù Ying said: “He still has two sessions of beating outstanding.”

“What?”

Zhù Ying said: “In one court session, he lied three times. Twenty blows does not settle that. The twenty blows afterward were ordered by you for bellowing in court — that is a separate charge.”

She kept her ledger very clearly indeed. Leng Yun’s expression froze for a moment, and then he burst out laughing: “How neat you keep your accounts! I wasted so many years — if only I hadn’t spent my time in the Court of Judicial Review running around with those people and had watched you hear cases instead, it would have been far more entertaining! All right, you can all stop kowtowing.”

The Li family, once they saw that Huang the Twelfth had gotten what he deserved, all kowtowed in unison.

Zhù Ying said: “Get up.”

Leng Yun still had not gotten his fill. He asked: “What do you plan to do about the private court of punishment case? Are you free now?” He wanted to watch more.

Zhù Ying said: “But you must be going, my lord. What is there to watch about a case? The wrangling and writing that comes afterward is the real bulk of the work.” As she spoke, she walked down from the bench and helped Li Fujie’s mother to her feet.

The old woman said: “Magistrate, you have done justice for the people — may you be blessed with rank and honor for ten thousand generations.” Not a trace remained of the uninhibited scolding she had been doing to Huang the Twelfth earlier.

Zhù Ying said: “Stop kowtowing — it’s not worth all this. And don’t just stand there, the rest of you — comfort your parents and help them home properly.”

Li Da and Li Fujie and the rest were still kneeling and kowtowing: “It’s just a few kowtows — in the past we’ve knocked our heads until they bled and no one cared. Doing it now is well worth it.”

Leng Yun followed along to speak with Zhù Ying about the case, and watching the family’s heads going up and down all around him he felt a little dizzy: “Do you really need to do all this?”

Li Fujie said: “We are not ungrateful people. You have driven away that animal — otherwise, even if I had been sent home, our whole family would only have been fleeing for our lives. You don’t know what kind of tyrant he was in Sicheng County! Everyone feared him; no one dared help us.” Only now that the verdict was in did the delayed fear catch up with her. Even a county magistrate with a just heart, had he been slightly careless and simply ruled for her to go home — what might Huang’s influence have made of things for the Li family? Hard to say.

Zhù Ying had the runners help everyone up and said: “If you can wait, come with me to Sicheng County in a day or two.”

Leng Yun made a puzzled sound: “Hm?”

Zhù Ying said: “In the back office, my lord. Court dismissed.” She also had someone see to the supervising official’s rest, but the supervising official said: “If Prefectural Governor Leng is not tired, how dare I say I am?” and insisted on following them into the back.

……

Back in the record room, Leng Yun sat down and asked: “You’re going to Sicheng County again?”

“There are so many complaints against him there. He needs to be taken back to Sicheng County to be tried. Magistrate Qiu is a court-appointed official — there is also the matter of receiving bribes and the like, which damages the dignity of the court; he and the other yamen officials can be tried openly, but not publicly interrogated. Cutting their ties to Sicheng County and trying them in Fulu County is more appropriate. Huang the Twelfth has held sway in Sicheng County for many years and his intimidating presence is very strong — the people need to see him in a certain state before they will no longer fear him and before they will be able to rebuild their trust in the court.”

Master Dong, listening from nearby, thought to himself: At last there is a person with clear thinking who is willing to speak honestly to the lord. Those at the Prefectural Governor’s compound are not necessarily unclear-headed — but they are unwilling to say what they know. Actually at the beginning they had been willing to speak, but subordinates advising their superiors get into the habit of holding something back, or of deliberately leaving small imperfections so the superior can point them out and the aide can say “as the lord rightly noted” — a fine way to curry favor. When giving advice to Leng Yun, Leng Yun could not spot the flaws, so they began to take things more and more lightly.

Leng Yun said: “That’s true! I’ll go to Sicheng County with you.”

“Won’t you go back to preside over the autumn harvest, my lord? You only just arrived — during the harvest it’s not just about tallying accounts; the granaries need your eyes, and so does the road the grain carts will travel. At that time every county and prefecture in the circuit will have grain carts converging on the capital…”

Leng Yun waved this away: “I’ll go and put on a show for you, add some weight to proceedings, then come back.” He very much wanted to watch Zhù Ying hear more cases — ideally just like today, with a rising and falling dramatic arc, the plaintiff and defendant making a spectacle, the onlookers providing atmosphere, the presiding official commanding the whole scene, and the defendant having each defense and lie slapped back with evidence. The best part of all was those three counting rods!

Zhù Ying said: “Very well. Please return to the Clear Breeze Tower first, my lord. I need to prepare here as well — deal with the accumulated official business — and in three to five days we will set out.”

Leng Yun said: “Good!”

Zhù Ying did not ask what Leng Yun planned to do about the Prefectural Governor’s office’s official business. For a diligent person there was a diligent way; for a lazy person there was a lazy way. For Leng Yun, doing a bit less might actually be better. She still had a supervising official to deal with. After weighing the situation, the supervising official concluded that Zhù Ying was the main driving force; a person who actually had ideas was not going to readily show their hand to him. He had no choice but to follow along with Leng Yun — whatever happened, he had to attach himself to the right side.

Zhù Ying meanwhile stayed behind to handle official business. Assistant Magistrate Guan cautiously approached: “Magistrate, this Huang the Twelfth…”

Zhù Ying gave a short laugh: “You didn’t take any of his gifts this time, did you?”

Guan’s legs went soft and he sank to his knees: “I would not dare, I would not dare.”

Zhù Ying helped him up: “What are you afraid of? Come, there is work to do. None of this involves our Fulu County.”

“Yes, yes.”

Guan made his report; Zhù Ying gave her instructions and sorted things through. She quickly finished the most important documents, noticed how late the hour had grown, and told Guan to go home as well. Then she herself went back to the rear quarters.

There in the rear quarters, Xiao Jiang with her servant, together with Lady Qi, were keeping Zhang Xiangu company. Zhang Xiangu saw Zhù Ying come in: “Well? How did it go?”

Zhù Ying said: “Judgment delivered.”

Zhang Xiangu said: “I’m not asking about that! I’m asking when Huajie can come back! Goodness, she’s a woman alone, and you sent her all the way there — do you think I don’t worry? Your godmother was worrying about her when she left. You…”

“She has Xiang An with her, and I also assigned jail wardens to accompany her. The female inmates at that compound need someone to look in on them.”

“Never mind that, just bring her back soon. She’s not like you — you’re tough, she can’t take it.”

“I know.”

Xiao Jiang, seeing Zhang Xiangu’s worried look, said: “Magistrate, why not let me go in her place?”

Zhang Xiangu said: “That doesn’t seem right either.” She glanced at Xiao Jiang’s feet and felt this would not do.

Zhù Ying said: “What’s the point of switching? All that extra trouble? I’ll be heading back there myself in a few days. All right, no more of that. Magistrate Qiu is still waiting for me to interrogate him. Eat quickly — we’re holding a night interrogation.”

Zhang Xiangu was startled: “You can now interrogate a county magistrate?”

In the days at the Court of Judicial Review, officials of any size had passed through Zhù Ying’s hands — she had even managed to get the better of a prime minister once. When she had come to Fulu County, she could only deal with officials lower in rank than her within her own county.

Zhù Ying said: “Governor Leng issued the order.”

“Oh, oh, then let’s eat.”

Zhù Ying always ate very fast. By the time she set down her chopsticks, Xiao Jiang, Lady Qi, and Zhang Xiangu had not even eaten half; only Jiang Zhou was nearly done. Zhù Ying said: “Take your time, the rest of you…”

Cao Chang, at the inner gate, called out: “Magistrate, Lin Weng requests an audience.”

Zhù Ying wiped her mouth: “I’ll go see him. You all eat slowly.”

Lin Weng had come directly to the rear quarters, bringing his wife and daughter to plead for mercy. Lin Balang had been dispatched to Sicheng County and was participating in the accounting of Huang the Twelfth’s affairs, which gave Lin Weng a feeling that there might still be some hope. His son-in-law had been sentenced, but he hoped to ask Zhù Ying to be lenient and leave the Huang family estate intact for his daughter. The three of them had discussed it, and Lin Shi said: “I said all along — I was willing to put up my own money to give Fujie a proper sendoff and be done with it. It was that man who refused! And now look! Now that he’s in jail and has no say, I am free to act. I am willing to give Li’s family fifty strings of coins to get this case settled early. Have the seals removed from the gates so we can live in peace.”

Lin Weng thought this was workable. He had inquired and learned that the yamen officials in Sicheng County had also been arrested, and thought to himself: this is a struggle among the powerful; the son-in-law is only collateral damage and can still be spared.

In remote localities, the common people — rich or poor — often did not understand many things. Even those who had passed through the “imitation official hall” in Sicheng County did not know this constituted a crime. Li Da did not understand what “private court of punishment” meant as a criminal charge; in fact, none of the villagers knew how to make use of this. Otherwise, had someone found a way to file a complaint to, say, Prefectural Governor Lu, Huang the Twelfth would have been dead at Prefectural Governor Lu’s hands long ago.

Since no one thought to publicize this, and since Zhù Ying had not gone out of her way to announce this particular item of information, no one attached much importance to it or said anything about it. The talk in the village was all about Huang the Twelfth and his big measures going in, small measures coming out, his bullying and assaulting. Lin Weng had therefore not given the charge of “private court of punishment” a second thought. These sorts of charges — even if Huang the Twelfth were sentenced to death, they would not warrant confiscating the estate.

After watching the hearing today, Lin Weng had concluded that the sealing of the accounts was probably just to preserve evidence. Now that the man had been sentenced, and Huang’s family had money, enough of it could change a death sentence into exile. Admit fault, accept the penalty, reduce the severity — get the case closed quickly and get on with life. Let the powerful figures above fight their battles among themselves; it had nothing to do with him.

The three of them came with this hope in their hearts and went to find Zhù Ying.

Zhù Ying sat in the study room. The three of them entered and knelt down.

Zhù Ying said: “What is all this?”

Lin Weng said: “We beg the magistrate’s compassion.”

“Want to seek a divorce? That can be arranged. File a complaint and I will rule on it. You will get every item of your dowry back.”

Zhù Ying knew that this Lin Shi had likely not been entirely blameless in the Huang household — but she was a woman who had married into Huang the Twelfth’s household; what power did she have? Lin Shi was at least clearheaded. Zhù Ying had no desire to make things difficult for her, nor did she want to be too harsh with the county’s gentry.

The three of the Lin family stopped prostrating themselves and looked up at her in astonishment: “Mag — Magistrate? That — that’s not what we…”

Zhù Ying said: “She’s still attached to that creature?”

Lin Shi said: “I have already married him…”

“That is why we are talking about divorce,” Zhù Ying said. The case of Huang the Twelfth was not yet closed, and she could not reveal details to Lin Shi, but she still hoped Lin Shi would take the chance to divorce Huang the Twelfth and be done with it. That much was within her authority.

Lin Shi still kowtowed: “Would that not be utterly heartless and faithless? I beg the magistrate’s compassion.”

Zhù Ying asked Lin Weng: “And you?”

Lin Weng had a flash of insight: “About my son-in-law’s crime…”

“That is not for you to inquire about.”

A sense of foreboding rose in Lin Weng’s heart. Zhù Ying never played games — what she said she would not reveal, she would not reveal; what she could say, she would say directly; what she said would always come to pass. “Not for you to inquire about” sounded deeply wrong.

Lin Weng said: “I have only this one daughter! Ah… I beg the magistrate’s mercy. She is only a woman, she understands nothing — she has been caught up in this disaster through no fault of her own. It is I who failed as a father in not making better arrangements.”

Lin Shi said: “Father?”

Lin Weng pushed his daughter toward his wife: “You two go home. Magistrate, I will go home and immediately file a complaint for divorce on my daughter’s behalf.”

Lin Shi was not yet willing to accept it. Lin Weng’s wife was also very hesitant. Lin Weng, desperate, stood up and pushed the two of them out toward his own servant: “Take them home!”

He himself turned back and apologized to Zhù Ying: “I acted rashly just now — please forgive me, Magistrate. A parent’s heart…”

He wept with great feeling. Zhù Ying asked: “If parents love their children, how did you end up picking someone like that for your daughter? Have more discernment in the future.”

Lin Weng’s sense of foreboding deepened; he sobbed and said: “It was not greed for his wealth — it was so she would marry someone whose property would not be divided among brothers.”

“I see.” Zhù Ying said. She looked at Lin Weng with mild interest: he had eight sons — if the property were divided, she thought… well, that was something.

Zhù Ying said: “I understand your meaning. You need not go on crying here. An official court does not take instruction from you as to its course of action. Just do what you need to do.”

Lin Weng had no choice but to turn and kowtow once more, and asked: “And my youngest son, Balang?”

Zhù Ying said: “I have arrangements for him.”

……

The Lin family’s commotion had pushed the night interrogation back a little further.

The night interrogation was of the Sicheng County yamen officials, held in Fulu County’s county office. They had been housed in the space that Li Da and his family had previously occupied, making them neighbors with Huang the Twelfth. The county yamen’s jail was not as large as the Court of Judicial Review’s prison, and private cells were few. Zhù Ying knew it was impossible to entirely prevent them from coordinating their stories, so she put the officials one to a cell, Huang the Twelfth alone in a cell, and the others together on communal sleeping platforms, and assigned jail wardens to watch them and ensure they did not huddle together and whisper.

Leng Yun had eaten and drunk well and came to observe the night interrogation.

Magistrate Qiu was brought in first.

His face was ashen: “I know the law and the regulations — I was derelict in my duties.” Whatever he might be thinking internally, he knew he could not take a hard line on this point. With the “imitation official hall” standing right there, any argument was useless. Better to admit to the lightest possible charge of “dereliction of duty” than to be labeled “complicit” or “willfully negligent.”

The same went for the matter of “bribery” — the county office had received the money, and he would also only admit to “dereliction of duty.” After all, it was not something he had actively demanded.

Whether it was Leng Yun, Zhù Ying, or the supervising official — all of them understood what he was trying to do. Leng Yun said: “Still not coming clean — looks like he wants a beating!”

For all that the principle of “punishment does not extend to the scholar-official class” was generally observed, it was also a matter of the presiding official’s disposition and mood. Leng Yun’s mood was obviously not pleasant, and he made a meaningful look at Zhù Ying.

Zhù Ying said: “We are all colleagues in the same court. If Magistrate Qiu says it was dereliction of duty, then let it be dereliction of duty. You are still an official — please write your own account of events. I will have writing materials prepared for you. What do you say?”

Magistrate Qiu said: “Good.”

Leng Yun looked at her again. Zhù Ying had Magistrate Qiu taken away, and then interrogated the other officials one by one. With the officials, she also had them “write their own account of events.” With the clerks she showed no mercy whatsoever — they were brought in and given twenty blows first.

Leng Yun’s spirits lifted: “Speak!”

Zhù Ying said: “Wait! Bring me counting rods.”

She had a bundle of bamboo rods brought in and had them each draw one, with whoever drew the red rod in each round receiving the beating. She asked questions, and for any answer that did not hold up, the person with the red rod took the beating. After one round, they drew again. Anyone who refused to draw had Zhù Ying draw for them. Sometimes her questions had nothing to do with Huang the Twelfth — she might suddenly ask what a given person did on a particular day, or even ask which foot they had stepped through the door with just now.

Leng Yun was both fascinated and puzzled: “What is this meant to accomplish?”

“To break up any coordinated story,” Zhù Ying said. With Huang’s family having tipped off Sicheng County, rather than her people coming to draw them away separately, Sicheng County’s yamen staff had had more than enough time to form a common front. If they had designated one person to take all the blame, with the others saying it was all that person’s doing — “your wife and children will be looked after” — then the most the others would face would be trivial charges, and they would be back to tormenting the common people before long. In these cases, usually the accountant or steward type would step forward to bear the capital charge.

“Back in the day, Shao Shuxin was nearly exiled and died, playing exactly that role,” Zhù Ying explained to Leng Yun. “Not that he was willing, mind you. But here — where clerks hold their positions for generations and all live in the same area — it is easier to find ‘willing’ ones.”

So first, do not interrogate — just beat, and beat by drawing lots. It was clearly unreasonable. If there was a coordinated story, it would be disrupted; they would constantly have to switch out who was taking the punishment. Keep it up long enough and someone would open up. If there was no coordination, well, they had still taken money that should have gone to the court and not done the court’s work — getting beaten for that was no injustice, was it?

Do the work or take the beatings — pick one.

Of course, the ledgers seized from Huang’s family and the county office could establish part of the charges. But everyone knew that certain things were never going to appear in the official accounts of the county yamen. Time was also tight, and Zhù Ying’s plan was to get all these oral confessions before the officials had finished writing their own accounts, so she and Leng Yun could write a comprehensive and airtight memorial to court before anything else arrived.

She could not allow Magistrate Qiu and the others’ own accounts to reach the capital first — even though the timing of sending those was in her control.

Leng Yun once again lamented having wasted his youth at the Court of Judicial Review, and watched the night interrogation with excitement.

Then the amusement drained out of his expression.

The clerks, beaten enough and unable to withstand Zhù Ying’s relentless “game,” never knowing whose turn it would be for the next board, were like mice trapped by a cat — it felt less like anything was being proven and more like she was just trying to beat them to death! The first to crack were the young ones with elderly parents, who broke down sobbing and confessed, wanting only for it to be over.

What they confessed began to fill Leng Yun with unease. Things like: “When the lord was due to make a rural inspection, we arranged things beforehand — anyone who might file a complaint was pushed to the back. We only arranged for gentle and kindly-looking elders, or sweet-talking children, or docile couples, so no matter what was asked of them they would say things were good.” Or: “When visiting a certain place, we would arrange a drinking banquet. If the lord got angry and said he wanted simplicity, we would arrange a clean household and set it up with food and wine in advance.”

It was how they had hoodwinked Leng Yun: the subordinate officials did to Magistrate Qiu what they had done to Leng Yun. Give him all the appearances, settle the accounts on paper, and keep what lay beneath hidden from him.

Leng Yun had several capable aides; Magistrate Qiu had no one comparably capable. Leng Yun had Zhù Ying, someone who actually did things; Magistrate Qiu had no such person. Magistrate Qiu understood day-to-day administration a little better than Leng Yun, but what was the point of the official role if things were going smoothly enough, with the superior above not raising objections? Better to just maintain the status quo. He issued policies too — when to begin spring planting, when to bring in the autumn harvest, when to collect taxes. He followed those policies; everything was orderly. He took over from his predecessor’s established setup, managed the county accounts, oversaw the revenues and the granaries, ran things with apparent competence. He simply never directed his attention to anything beyond the account books. When nothing unusual happened, everything in Sicheng County ran smoothly. When something went wrong — it became exactly what it was now.

With the first cry of cocks outside, Leng Yun stood up and stretched: “What’s next?”

Zhù Ying said: “Keep a close watch — don’t let any of them take their own lives. Tell them that it’s Huang the Twelfth’s private court of punishment that has come to light. From what they were saying just now, only Magistrate Qiu knew about it — the others did not.”

Leng Yun said: “Won’t they all push everything onto Huang the Twelfth?”

Zhù Ying held up the thick stack of confessions: “That is why we interrogated first. Now have them match what they said against the ledgers. Once the matching is done, tomorrow I’ll pass judgment on the divorce, and then we go to Sicheng County.”

“Divorce?”

Zhù Ying told him about Lin Shi’s situation. Leng Yun said: “You’re soft-hearted.” Generally speaking, a man who did not treat his own wife and children as full people could only be counted as half a person — so if a husband was beheaded, the wife and children would typically face exile or be made into government slaves. They were generally not executed alongside him. Leng Yun’s wife had been a special case. Zhù Ying wanted to give Lin Shi a thread of survival, and Leng Yun saw nothing wrong with it.

The two chatted briefly as the sky gradually lightened. Leng Yun said: “Very well — let’s set out the day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The next day, Zhù Ying received Lin Weng’s complaint seeking a divorce for his daughter. It was written on the grounds that the son-in-law was “incorrigibly violent,” had addressed him with abusive language, and had “struck” him, and requested a divorce on the basis of “yi jue” — the “severing of the bond.”

Zhù Ying glanced at it, and without holding a public hearing simply approved the judgment.

Lin Weng received the approved divorce document and walked out of the county yamen in a daze. Once home, he pulled out the dowry list, had servants take it to the county yamen, and requested Zhù Ying to return the dowry as well.

Zhù Ying received his note and said: “Understood.” Lin Shi had brought no land with her dowry, but she had brought maidservants, and some valuables. Zhù Ying sent people to make an inventory and found that some items were not in Fulu County but should be at the Sicheng County Huang estate. Zhù Ying had originally thought to say “take the equivalent in cash,” then reconsidered and told Lin Weng to bring his sons, his daughter, and their servants to the Sicheng County Huang estate to carry out the handover in person.

Lin Shi’s two daughters were so frightened they wailed and cried. Lin Shi sat on the bed in a daze, holding both daughters, with a small boy crying on her shoulder behind her. She was a capable woman, not particularly kind-hearted, but not small-minded either — and at this moment she was completely at a loss. The Huang estate had been seized. She strongly suspected the government was simply seizing wealth under the guise of law, in which case there was nothing to be done, and she should even be grateful that Zhù Ying had not taken her and her children down as well.

But what now? What came next?

Outside, a drum was sounding — an officer was publicly announcing: Huang the Twelfth had set up a private court of punishment and harmed the people. The evidence was confirmed; he would be transported back to Sicheng County for a public trial shortly!

Lin Shi quickly wiped away her tears, ran to the street to look, and there was her once-imperious husband, locked inside a prison cart. The cage was very tall; he just barely fit standing up inside it, his head poking out over the top, exactly like a ruffian put in a standing cangue in a courtyard.

Lin Shi’s vision went dark and she fainted.