◎Reputation◎

“You?”

A trace of anger flickered across Zhou Tan’s face. He stepped forward, astonished. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“Officials of the fifth rank and above, and their relatives, may beat the Passage Drum without being subject to court flogging beforehand,” Qu You said calmly. “I’ve already decided to take Zhi Ling as my sworn younger sister, and to come forward and seek justice for her and the others. Does the Great Yin Code permit this?”

“You are my wife—do you have any idea what storm this will bring down on you if you do this?” Zhou Tan slammed a hand down on the table beside him. “A lady of an official household, a woman with an honorary title from the court, exposing herself publicly to seek justice for—do you care nothing for your reputation, even if it’s technically within the rules?”

Qu You looked at him, somewhat surprised, and said slowly, “I thought Lord Zhou was not the sort of man who cared about reputation.”

“You had Yan Wuping accuse Peng Yue precisely so his crimes—forcing good women into prostitution, all his wrongdoing—would be exposed and reach the Emperor’s ears, didn’t you? Now that Yan Wuping’s path is blocked, the only option left is to accuse him directly. The whole capital is already fixated on the fall-from-the-tower case—isn’t this exactly what you wanted?”

“If I’d wanted you to accuse him directly, why would I have gone to all this trouble arranging things through Wuping?” Zhou Tan said angrily. “Must you always act on whatever thought crosses your mind?”

“Don’t worry—I’ll have Bo Ying spread word beforehand that I’m doing this partly to embarrass you,” Qu You said, having already worked the whole plan through in her mind. “I come from a family of scholar-officials with a reputation for integrity. Lowering myself to seek justice for the common people might well earn me a good name rather than a bad one. And it conveniently lets you distance yourself from me in the public eye—it won’t interfere with whatever you’re trying to accomplish.”

Qu You walked a few steps closer and took the petition—the one that had belonged to Yan Wuping—from his hands, then turned and left without hurry. Zhou Tan stood where he was, watching her retreating figure, opening his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.

A figure in black quietly appeared behind him, wearing a full bronze-gilt mask, his voice deliberately disguised—rough, hoarse, unpleasant to hear. “My lord, why not just tell her plainly? I suggested to you before, when Miss Yan first went missing, that since your wife is already acquainted with the women of the Fragrant Heart Pavilion, she’d make the best candidate to beat the drum. You refused—out of concern for her reputation.”

The sky was gradually darkening. Zhou Tan closed his eyes. “A woman’s reputation is such a fragile thing. It can’t simply be fixed by calling her the descendant of a scholarly family, or saying she pleaded on behalf of the people. Those titled ladies and noblewomen will still have to associate with her afterward… Do you have any idea what it feels like to be endlessly gossiped about, held in constant ill will?”

The black-clad figure fell silent, then asked, “Then why not say this to your wife yourself?”

Zhou Tan shook his head, swaying slightly on his feet before catching himself against the doorframe. The black-clad figure instinctively moved to steady him, but forced himself to hold back, only saying, “Take care of yourself, my lord.”

Zhou Tan, not noticing the gesture, only said wearily as he removed his official cap and walked to the table, “What’s the point of saying any of this?”

The black-clad figure said, “Why would it be pointless? Look at the Ren family—you sacrificed so much, spent nearly your entire fortune, to save Lord Ren Pingsheng, and yet you forbade anyone from telling them. If you had simply told the Ren family’s eldest son one word of the truth, would he really hold such a grudge against you now…”

“There’s no need to say such things again.” Zhou Tan lifted his gaze to him, his eyes heavy and dark, then suddenly softened into something like helplessness. “What my wife is doing is a great kindness. As for the women of the Fragrant Heart Pavilion—Boss Ai has gone to considerable trouble for their sake. It isn’t convenient for me to appear myself, but once this matter is settled, I will go and thank him in person.”

The black-clad figure bowed his head in acknowledgment, then noticed Zhou Tan pick up his brush and begin writing something on the table. “Since things have come to this, Black Robe, there is one more matter I need you to see to.”

The figure said, “I await my lord’s instruction.”

In the fifteenth year of Yongning, Qu Shi—wife of the Vice Minister of Justice, daughter of a court historian—beat the Passage Drum on behalf of a sworn “younger sister” of lowly status, accusing Peng Yue, Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, of abusing women and forcing them into prostitution. Alongside her knelt all forty-one women of the Fragrant Heart Pavilion, as well as Yan Shi, held at the Ministry, and the deceased Gu Shi, victim of the fall-from-the-tower case, filling the street before the imperial court with kneeling figures.

The court and the common people alike were shaken; public opinion boiled over at once.

Every passerby on Imperial Court Street that day stopped to listen to Qu Shi’s accusation before the Passage Drum. Her voice, steady and resolute amid the rhythmic beating of the drum behind her, somehow moved the listeners to tears without their quite knowing why.

The woman surnamed Gu, who had fallen to her death, had been born in the first year of Yongning, the daughter of a farming family from the capital’s outskirts. When she refused to become Peng Yue’s concubine, her parents died in a single night. Peng Yue then forced her into his possession, imprisoned her at the Fragrant Heart Pavilion, held her younger brother’s life over her head as leverage, and after officials had used and discarded her, she was subjected to abuse by coarse men of North Street—until, finding life worse than death, she took her own life at the Fanlou tower.

The woman Qu You had taken as her sworn sister had originally been born to an official’s household, but after her family was implicated in scandal and she was sent to the Bureau of Music, she had suffered much the same fate as the woman surnamed Gu. Because of her fierce, unyielding temperament, her leg had been injured and left permanently, slightly lame.

…

Qu You stood before the Passage Drum, reading almost calmly through the words she had recorded, one by one, over the preceding days. Zhi Ling struck the drum behind her, again and again, as if trying to release every year of grief and injustice all at once.

The words themselves needed no dramatic delivery from her—they carried a bloodstained power of their own.

Today, she stood here to sound a thunderclap on behalf of these humble women whom no one ever bothered to ask about, to demand: where is the justice that heaven is said to uphold?

Beyond the weeping passersby, some scholars, moved to anger, bit their fingers on the spot and wrote poems in blood on their robes, vowing to see this through to a resolution.

Of course, it was Bai Shating she had specifically invited to lead that particular display.

The news spread through the court and beyond; memorials poured into the palace gates from the Censorate like falling paper. Though Emperor De did not grant an audience directly, within half a day he issued an edict ordering the Three Judicial Offices to thoroughly clear up the case and provide an answer.

The Ministry of Justice and the Censorate moved swiftly, investigating in full detail how Peng Yue had conspired with various officials to trade in flesh and money through the Fragrant Heart Pavilion—implicating sixty-one officials, great and small. Peng Yue was taken into the Ministry’s prison, awaiting sentencing on an appointed day.

Qu You invited Yan Wuping to dine at the same small noodle shop where she and Bo Ying had eaten before. Yan Wuping had been released the very day Peng Yue was imprisoned. For convenience, the two of them dressed once more as men.

A storyteller had already composed new lyrics about Qu You’s righteous act of accusing an official on behalf of brothel women. The hall listened raptly, cheering from time to time.

Yan Wuping looked up and exchanged a smile with her. “Lord Zhou has been so busy lately—why isn’t my lady at home tending to him?”

“He… doesn’t need me to tend to him,” Qu You said after a pause, biting off a noodle. “By the way—you weren’t hurt at the Ministry, were you? I was a little worried that once your identity was exposed you’d be of no more use to him, and he wouldn’t bother taking special care of you in the cell.”

“My lady… why would you think such a thing?” Yan Wuping blinked, looking at her with a rather odd expression. “This whole matter, originally, was me who sought out Lord Zhou—”

Before she could finish, the chatter around them drowned out her words. Though Qu You’s beating of the Passage Drum had won praise from many scholars and refined gentlemen, in this era it was, in the end, considered unbecoming of a woman’s virtue. “Didn’t they say the Vice Minister’s wife comes from a family of scholarly integrity? And yet she’d throw away all sense of propriety like that.”

Such talk was widespread, especially among the women of the inner households. The original owner of this body had once enjoyed both beauty and a fine reputation, and those who resented her had finally found something to gossip about endlessly.

But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t truly of this era to begin with—why should she care for its notions of reputation?

Qu Jiaxi had come to see her in secret, saying that Qu Cheng had flown into a rage at home, calling her behavior improper and reckless, saying she had disgraced the Qu family’s good name, and telling her not to come home for a while.

What a laughable thing, “good name”… There were plenty of so-called men of scholarly integrity who colluded with men like Peng Yue.

Qu You found herself lost in thought. In this era, scholar-officials valued their moral integrity above life itself—and yet the “men of integrity” she had actually met cared for nothing but empty, hollow fame. Even Zhou Tan, for all his coldness and detachment, had at least done real, tangible good—petty and underhanded as some of his methods might be, at least he was honest about it.

“What do you mean, propriety befitting an official’s wife—she’s just a woman in the end, where would she get such nerve? A brother of mine who’s worked at the Zhou residence told me in secret—turns out the Vice Minister was taken to the Fragrant Heart Pavilion by that Peng Yue fellow, and got himself tangled up with one of the women there. Peng Yue wouldn’t let her go, so he resorted to this underhanded scheme, forcing his own wife to speak up for her!”

“What strange rumor is this—is that really true?”

“Absolutely true! If her husband hadn’t forced her into it, what woman would willingly do something so shameless, so exposed?”

“Well, if that’s the case, the wife’s quite the pitiable one. I always heard the Vice Minister betrayed his own teacher and friends—now it turns out he’s a hypocrite and a lecher too. No surprise at all.”

Yan Wuping turned around, her pretty face flushing red with anger. Qu You, meanwhile, sat utterly frozen. Her hand trembled, and the coarse white porcelain teacup beside her slipped and shattered on the ground into several pieces.

What an outrageous, baseless rumor… Was this how all those unsavory stories about Zhou Tan’s reputation had come to be?