“This servant would never dare.” Manager Liang raised his head slightly. Seeing Pei Ruozhu sipping her tea with unhurried composure, the unease in his chest deepened.
He had prepared a ready explanation in advance. “The estate is small and the land is scarce,” he said. “And yet there are over twenty tenant households — more than twenty of them — leaving each household with only three to five mu of land. In good years, the annual grain levy can be met at three sheng and nine dou per mu, but in lean years, the tenants often put in written pledges and carry debts forward… The Empress, in her benevolence, has always been compassionate toward the tenants and tended not to press the matter.”
Pei Ruozhu paid no attention to this. She called for someone to take the ledgers away and have them carefully put in order.
Manager Liang’s gaze followed the ledgers. A flicker of anxiety crossed his face.
“Does Manager Liang know of the Iron Tablet Proclamation issued by the court?” Pei Ruozhu asked.
Manager Liang struggled to conceal his distress, but could not hide the unsteadiness that crept into his voice. “To answer the mistress — this servant can read little, and has not had the occasion to know of it…”
“The Iron Tablet Proclamation states that, beyond the tenant households designated by imperial grant, no unauthorized persons may be taken on as dependent tenants — and those who violate this are to be prosecuted. The Empress gifted me a hundred mu of farmland, and the deed names no more than eight households. As for the additional dozen or more households beyond that — from where did they come to attach themselves here? Was this by order of a distinguished person, or something you arranged on your own authority?” Pei Ruozhu’s voice turned sharp as she put the question.
Deceiving those above while exploiting those below — this manner of scheme she had seen more than enough of in the palace.
The scheme was clear enough: Manager Liang, trading on his position as overseer of an imperial estate, had quietly purchased private farmland of his own, taken on tenant farmers, recorded those tenants as part of the imperial estate’s rolls, used the imperial estate’s resources to sustain them, and then had those very tenants work his own private fields — collecting from both sides at once.
If Manager Liang claimed it was “by order of a distinguished person,” that would amount to slandering the Empress. If he admitted “it was on my own authority,” that was the crime of deceit and concealment.
Either way it went, it was a grave offense.
Perhaps things had come too easily to him for too long — Manager Liang had never imagined that this new mistress, outwardly seeming so gentle and delicate, would move with such sharp and decisive precision.
Manager Liang fell to his knees, knocking his head to the floor and begging for mercy.
“You were formerly a household servant belonging to the Empress’s estate. For the matter of unauthorized tenant enrollment alone, it is true I cannot deal with you directly. However…” Pei Ruozhu said in an unhurried tone, “if you happen to have committed other unsavory deeds, and the county yamen were to look into them, that would no longer be something within my power to influence.”
Manager Liang collapsed where he sat.
Estate managers were something of a law unto themselves within their manors, and their reputations were seldom good. On the milder end, they might abuse their authority and bully the common people; on the worse end, they seized land, defiled women, or falsely accused innocent people of crimes.
Whatever fate awaited Manager Liang depended entirely on what he had done over the years.
Pei Ruozhu had someone escort Manager Liang away to “rest comfortably,” then called for Chang Zhou — now the estate’s steward, Zhang — and said to him: “Steward Zhang used to follow at Second Brother Huai’s side and has picked up a great deal of skill along the way. I have a matter now that I need Steward Zhang to attend to.”
“I am entirely at Third Young Miss’s disposal.”
Pei Ruozhu instructed Chang Zhou to look into Manager Liang’s affairs and find out how many unclean dealings he had his hands in. “Whatever violates the laws of Da Qing,” she said, “send it to the county yamen to deal with.”
“Yes, Third Young Miss.” Chang Zhou withdrew.
No matter how much sway Manager Liang had wielded behind the scenes, he was at his core a household servant — and one who had already been transferred into Pei Ruozhu’s name.
With Pei Ruozhu having dealt with him, the estate became considerably cleaner.
She released the dozen or so tenant households not listed on the deed, returning to them the farmland Manager Liang had encroached upon. It was, in its way, an act of virtue.
The warmth of spring brings drowsiness. In the afternoon, Pei Ruozhu reclined against the daybed with her eyes closed, though sleep did not come — after years in the palace, she had developed the habit of resting with her eyes shut while remaining attuned to every sound around her, and even when resting she slept lightly.
The smallest sound would bring her fully alert.
Concubine Shen came into the room on soft, quiet steps. Pei Ruozhu woke.
“Did I disturb you?”
“Not at all.”
Pei Ruozhu answered, shifting her position to make room for her mother to sit beside her.
Mother and daughter leaned close together.
“Moments like this always feel like they are never enough,” Concubine Shen said, holding her daughter’s hand.
“Then your daughter will stay right here and keep you company, Little Mother.”
“Silly girl.” Concubine Shen used the moment to broach the real subject. “One day, you will marry and leave… Your father worked hard, building his merits and petitioning for a reward to bring you out of the palace — all so as not to let these years pass you by.”
“Your daughter understands.”
Yet after so many years, she had grown accustomed to thinking and acting entirely on her own, making all her own decisions. Now that she was out of the palace and the subject of marriage had arisen, the prospect of finding someone to truly know and rely upon felt, somehow, difficult to adjust to — there was not yet a space inside her for such a person.
Li Shuisheng had seemed steady and diligent on the surface, warm to others in manner — but was in truth feeble and irresolute, incapable of making his own decisions. The Anyuan heir had taken one look and let desire drive him, abusing his position and scheming together with the Minister’s household to corner her, until she was forced into the palace as a servant girl. The Anyuan Prince’s household had deliberated at length, seeking to use her as a pawn in a marital alliance to gain leverage over the Jingchuan Earl’s household…
These bitter experiences could not simply be erased, and they made her unable not to choose with care.
“Though the world holds nothing perfect,” Pei Ruozhu said, “that is no reason to accept what is wrong. The path your daughter worked so hard to avoid — she will not walk it again. If in the end she still ends up married into a household like the Li family or the Yan family, what was the meaning of those difficult years?”
Concubine Shen could only feel helpless and heartbroken for her. She smoothed the stray hairs from her daughter’s brow and said: “You must at least be willing to look — to consider this one or that one — before you can know whether among them there is someone good and right for you. You earned this chance for yourself… And your father and mother are open-minded and gentle in their ways. In this world, for a woman, that is already something extraordinarily rare.”
She then offered a suggestion: “Your mother feels that Madam Yang has shown real sincerity. Her husband holds the rank of Junior Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and her eldest son is a few years younger than you — three years, to be precise — which is of no real consequence. If you are at all inclined, you might ask your younger brother to look into it.”
Madam Yang had sent three calling cards, all of which the grandmother had declined on grounds of ill health. Compared to the others, she had indeed shown remarkable sincerity.
For Concubine Shen to have voiced such a suggestion, she must have already made discreet inquiries of her own. A household of scholarly tradition, a mother-in-law who valued her, two families rising steadily in standing — Pei Ruozhu’s life would only grow better as time went on.
Still, Pei Ruozhu showed little enthusiasm. But seeing the trace of hope in her mother’s expression, she replied: “If Madam Yang sends another card, then I suppose I might as well meet her.”
“I’ll go and tell your grandmother right away.” Concubine Shen said, her face brightening.
Turning to the matter of the Earl’s household servants, Pei Ruozhu said: “Little Mother, I keep feeling that the servants in the household are not as diligent as before — a certain slackness has crept in. Is it possible that, having just come out of the palace, I am simply being too exacting?”
“They have grown considerably slack, I’m afraid.” Concubine Shen sighed. “Your grandmother is getting on in years; your mother is not in the household; I am only a concubine, and my word carries little weight; your younger brother is half-grown and absorbed in his studies… Naturally, they are taking advantage of the moment to be idle.”
Pei Ruozhu understood. Thinking back to the matter of Manager Liang, something began to take shape in her mind.
The following day, Pei Ruozhu went to call on her grandparents. She began by recounting a matter from the palace —
Some years earlier, Imperial Consort Zheng of Wan’an Palace had borne the Emperor a son, and the Emperor had rewarded her with several dozen qing of imperial farmland in the south of Daxing County. He had named the estate “Wan’an Palace Manor” — a mark of exceptional favor. Not long before Pei Ruozhu left the palace, a matter connected to the Wan’an Palace Manor had been brought before the Emperor himself.
Someone had submitted a petition accusing Imperial Consort Zheng of failing to oversee the manor properly, of allowing her household servants and estate managers to commit abuses — driving hundreds of tenant households to the edge of starvation and destitution until they fled in desperation. Among the estate managers was the son of Imperial Consort Zheng’s own wet nurse, who had run rampant throughout the manor, seizing women by force as concubines and bed-servants — well over thirty of them in total — and had even been involved in deaths from the violence of his takings.
The Emperor found such conduct deeply abhorrent, and sent men to investigate. The evidence bore out every allegation. The rogue servants were flogged and punished, as was only to be expected. Imperial Consort Zheng was implicated as well and faced reprimand, and the Emperor’s anger caused his favor toward her to diminish greatly.
Pei Ruozhu said to her grandparents: “Father and Mother are not in the capital, and the management of household affairs has grown lax, with servants taking liberties and slacking off. If things are this way right under one’s eyes, how much worse must it be at the various estates out in the countryside? I fear the estate managers there have been watching the neighboring great households and picking up the same bad habits — abusing their authority and running roughshod over everyone on the estates.”
She continued: “Every consort’s estate in the palace was subjected to a thorough inspection, and anyone found in violation was dealt with accordingly. Once the court has a moment’s breathing room, it will likely move through the estates near the capital one by one. Father is at the height of his career in office, and both younger brothers have deep learning and great futures ahead of them — they will inevitably attract the envy and schemes of petty people. If something were found at the Earl’s household estates, and someone used it to spread the accusation of hoarding wealth and exploiting tenants — the charge of cruelty and lack of virtue — even the innocent would find it difficult to clear their name. It would be better to let your granddaughter lead an inspection now. Wherever there are violations, we hand those over to the county yamen proactively; we then replace them with people of reliable character and put proper oversight in place — cutting out the problem at the root.”
Having lived among the consorts in the palace, where the art of undermining and finding fault with one another was endlessly refined, Pei Ruozhu had long since trained herself to anticipate trouble before it arrived, always thinking one step ahead.
The old master and old mistress listened, and finding Pei Ruozhu’s thinking thorough and sound, gave their ready approval, praising her as clear-headed and perceptive.
Pei Ruozhu moved swiftly. She called together the family of Steward Shen and the family of Steward Zhang, and told them: “Steward Shen used to follow my father, and Steward Zhang used to follow Second Brother Huai. I am asking both your families to come with me and conduct a thorough inspection of the estates. Do not let familiarity or prior acquaintance soften your hand — investigate strictly and correct what you find.”
Darkness exists even close at hand, and as upright as the Earl’s household was, certain unpleasant matters had still found their way into the estates. Within a matter of days, five estate managers and seven or eight household matrons were exposed — some had unlawfully raised the rents on tenants, others had pressured tenants into marriages against their will, and others still had gathered bands of idle ruffians to run gambling operations for illicit profit.
After the matters were filed with the county yamen, those involved were sold off without exception.
No sooner was one matter resolved than another arose.
In those days, rumors began to circulate among the aristocratic circles of the capital: that Pei Ruozhu was “repackaged goods being sold at a premium,” and “a commodity waiting for the right price.” Whoever had started the rumors first dredged up the old affair of Li Shuisheng, saying that at the time, when the Earl’s household had fallen on hard times, even a minor functionary’s family from the south of the city like the Li family had been unwilling to take a concubine-born daughter of the Earl’s household in marriage — and that it was only this predicament that had driven Pei Ruozhu to enter the palace selection for female officials. Now, barely five years later, what was she but a lady-in-waiting returned from the palace — and a concubine-born daughter at that — and yet here were so many families eagerly seeking her hand in marriage? Was this not as much as admitting that even a minor official’s household had considered her beneath them? And wasn’t the Earl’s household quite something, to have turned a daughter who couldn’t be married off into a prized and sought-after match in the space of one departure and one return?
Rumors collapse before those with sense; whoever was spreading these stories was either a fool, or had a clear and deliberate aim — to harm the Jingchuan Earl’s household, to harm Pei Ruozhu.
With “Li Shuisheng” and “entering the palace” both being invoked, those who had been privy to the details of those years were no more than the Pei family and the Anyuan Prince’s household. If the source was not the Prince’s household, who else could it be?
Pei Ruozhu made inquiries and learned that Yan Chengzhao had already boarded a ship south, and that the Anyuan Prince had returned to the Rear Army Headquarters to oversee the training of troops. With a cold laugh, she said: “There is not a single capable person left to manage the household, and they still dare to pick fights and make trouble at this moment?”
Concubine Shen’s face was drawn with worry as she said to Pei Ruozhu: “With these rumors spreading outside… your marriage prospects…”
Pei Ruozhu replied without concern: “Anyone who cannot see through such crude and shoddy rumors is not someone who would come seeking this match in the first place. That suits me perfectly well.”
The Anyuan Prince’s household had estates and gardens far larger than the Pei family’s — dozens of qing of land, with well over a hundred estate managers overseeing it all, placed under the supervision of the heir and his wife. Pei Ruozhu simply did not believe there was nothing unclean to be found in those estates.
Without troubling herself over the rumors, she quietly sent people to investigate the Anyuan Prince’s official estates. The results did not disappoint her. According to the records, the Prince’s official farmland should have amounted to sixty-three qing and thirteen mu — yet within the estate’s bounds there were in fact over a hundred qing of land. The excess had naturally been obtained through seizure of private farmland and the forced enrollment of the dispossessed as tenant farmers. Beyond that, bridges had been built within the estate grounds without authorization, checkpoints established, official seals privately carved, and road tolls levied without sanction. As for the estate managers running roughshod and doing as they pleased within their domains, that went without saying.
After more than a month, the rumors gradually faded. And at just this time, the court ordered the Shuntian Prefectural Yamen and the Court of Judicial Review, together with the Board of Finance, to conduct a strict investigation into all imperial and official estates in the area surrounding the capital, in order to restore proper order.
Pei Ruozhu seized the opportunity and had everything she had gathered disclosed — evidence or not, at the very least word spread from mouth to mouth through the capital, and the common people were filled with indignation.
The Shuntian Prefectural Yamen and the Court of Judicial Review had not yet decided which household to begin with. Now, with the Anyuan Prince’s household walking straight into the blade, they followed the natural opening and chose to launch the investigation with the Prince’s official estates.
The timing caught them entirely off guard. The Anyuan Prince was away from the capital and had no one to intercede at court on his behalf. The Anyuan heir fumbled through the inquiry in a panic. Within the estates themselves, everything was in disarray, laid bare for all to see.
Just as the rumors outside had described — the common people on the estates had been drained to the last drop.
What followed was a wave of censure memorials from the remonstrance officials, flooding in from every direction, declaring that the Anyuan Prince’s household, as a collateral branch of the imperial family permitted to remain in the capital with active military appointments, had already been shown extraordinary favor. Yet they had been insatiably greedy, condoning their household servants and estate managers in seizing private farmland to enrich themselves.
The Anyuan Prince was summoned back by the Emperor. The Emperor said: “Our beloved lord is no longer young. The business of training troops may be left to the younger generation. From this day forward, remain in the capital and attend properly to the management of the Prince’s household estates. There must be no further disgrace to the imperial family’s reputation.”
“Your servant… obeys the imperial command.”
The Anyuan Prince had been removed from office ahead of his time. The heir held no official post. The eldest grandson was still a child. Yan Chengzhao had already petitioned to establish a separate household… With the generation already in decline and no one to inherit, for the Anyuan Prince’s household to have any hand in military affairs again — to lead troops or oversee their training — would be exceedingly difficult from this point forward.
In the warming days of late spring when the fields were being sown, Pei Ruozhu went to her small estate to look in on the planting.
The farmland was well situated — lying right along the riverbank, so drawing water for spring planting and summer irrigation was easy and convenient.
Eight tenant households working a hundred mu of good land, each with a dozen or so mu — so long as there was no locust plague, they could certainly pay their full rent and still have enough to keep an entire family fed.
Finding everything in order, Pei Ruozhu was preparing to leave when the newly appointed Manager He came to report: “Mistress, Manager Li from the estate downstream has come to see me. He says their paddy fields sit slightly above the river level, which makes drawing water inconvenient, and he is asking permission to channel water through our estate from upstream. This servant has come to ask for the mistress’s guidance.”
“Which household’s official estate is it?”
Manager He replied: “Mistress, it belongs to the Nanping Earl’s household.”
One of the aristocratic families of the capital.
Pei Ruozhu looked out beyond the manor gate, where a plain grey-blue carriage with no ornamentation was parked outside. The middle-aged man standing by the horses was likely Manager Li himself.
Having come all this way and yet not stepping down from the carriage to enter and speak, Pei Ruozhu surmised that the person seated inside was not a woman from the household.
She asked: “If we agree, will it affect our harvest?”
Manager He replied: “There will be some loss of nutrients to the soil, though it will not make a great deal of difference.” He added: “Their master has offered three fen of the autumn harvest as compensation.”
Pei Ruozhu thought it through. The Nanping Earl’s household had most likely had their eye on this arrangement for some time — they had simply not dared to draw water through this estate while it still belonged to the Empress. Now that the estate had passed to a new mistress, they had come to negotiate.
Their offer of three fen was generous. Pei Ruozhu did not hesitate long, and replied with equal generosity: “Agreed. Tell them — good faith above all else; there is no need to draw up a written agreement.”