Song Lan left the Council of State hall and went, as promised, to Pifang Pavilion to find Yu Suiyun. He had not yet entered when he heard the sound of shattering porcelain. A servant came to report that the Noble Consort had been throwing a tantrum earlier, but hearing that His Majesty was coming, had retreated behind the curtain to tidy her appearance.
Song Lan let out a sigh and made his way along the covered walkway. When he entered and saw the disorder inside the pavilion — hair ribbons scattered all over the floor — he paid them no mind and stepped over one without a care. They were the dull red color that drains all vitality — soiled, they could still be given away to someone else.
“All of you, out.”
At his word, the attendants scrambled out of the door at once. Song Lan kicked aside a shard of porcelain on the floor and looked toward the silhouette behind the bead curtain on the opposite side, calling out: “Do you know what you have smashed? A kiln piece from Juntai, a superior-grade ware crackled in sky-blue — is this something you should be throwing around for noise?”
Yu Suiyun sobbed behind the bead curtain: “If Your Majesty finds me tiresome, just say so — why go about it in such a roundabout way?”
Song Lan, hearing her words, softened his tone: “I heard your arm was injured, and came at once to see you. Stop making a scene — come out and let me have a look.”
Hearing these words from the young Emperor, the girl behind the screen stopped her crying at last, and picking up her skirts, came running over and threw herself into Song Lan’s arms: “I thought Your Majesty wouldn’t come today.”
Yu Suiyun was a few years younger than Song Lan still, at the age for innocence and coquetry, and having been raised as the youngest daughter of Yu Qiushi with every conceivable extravagance, she was inevitably a little willful.
Song Lan offered a few casual words of comfort, and Yu Suiyun had already turned her tears into laughter, beginning to prattle on to him about certain dishes that didn’t suit her taste. His fingers passed over the jade ornament in her hair, and he found himself inwardly drawing a long, deep breath of relief.
This sort of simplicity and directness — it made him feel at ease.
He looked through a few memorials at Yu Suiyun’s desk; she took no interest and flitted about the pavilion like a butterfly, busy arranging things here and there.
Not until dinner did she pull him with great enthusiasm to share the meal, and watching him eat the sweet congee she had made with her own hands, she smiled with curved, crescent eyes: “Does Your Majesty like it?”
Song Lan replied casually: “Made by Suiyun’s own hands — how could I not like it?”
Yu Suiyun propped her chin in her hands and looked at him, struck by a sudden fancy: “This year Qingming and Shansi fall close together. I hear that for the Qingming outdoor memorial rites, Your Majesty and the Empress will perform the sacrificial ceremony together with the court ministers, and the following day is the Shansi spring hunt. Might I be permitted to go along?”
Song Lan was somewhat surprised: “You wish to accompany the imperial procession?”
Yu Suiyun said: “Being confined to the palace grounds all day is rather stifling. Besides, Father will also be there — I could take the chance to see him.”
It was not at all unusual for consorts to accompany the imperial procession. Yu Suiyun was simply rather lazy by disposition and had always been inclined to decline such things, making excuses each time. Now that she raised the matter on her own initiative, Song Lan thought it over and in the end agreed.
The Great Yin observed a holiday of three days before and after Hanshi. The following day happened to be the start of the break. Song Lan spent the midday meal at Pifang Pavilion, putting off his departure in every possible way; only with great effort did he finally extricate himself and return to Qianfang Hall.
Yu Suiyun watched his figure disappear at the entrance of the garden, and at last shed the expression of sulking charm from her face. With a touch of weariness, she returned to her seat and poured a strong cup of tea.
She sat in the front hall and looked out — overcast the day before the rain, overcast again today, dim and heavy-skied.
For some reason, her thoughts suddenly drifted back to the quarrel with her father before entering the palace.
She had been young then and refused to enter the palace; she made a scene at home, saying that her father wanted to sell her into the gilded imperial city without any consideration for the ties of blood. Yu Qiushi was so enraged upon hearing this that he slapped his hand heavily on the table beside him.
“The gilded imperial court? You know it is gilded — then you should know that everything your father does is for your own good! I have endured scorching fire and struggled for years to secure what you all have today. And in your mouth, this becomes the price of selling your own children? Very well — you are fifteen now. Things I never said to you before, today I will lay out clearly.”
Yu Suiyun had never seen her father fly into a rage before and was somewhat frightened. She reached out to pour him a cup of tea from the pot nearby, but was too timid to hand it over, only muttering: “I only said I didn’t want to be a Son of Heaven’s concubine…”
Yu Qiushi walked over, seized the cup of tea and drank it down, and at the sound of her words gave a cold, continuous laugh: “You don’t want to be a Son of Heaven’s concubine — that’s not all that’s behind it, is it?”
Yu Suiyun dared not make a sound. So Yu Qiushi softened his voice and spoke to his daughter from the heart: “You were born and lived for many years in Huizhou. After you came back to the capital, you arrived just in time for our Yu clan’s golden era — you have never known a single hardship, wherever you go people rush to attend on you, and wherever you are you hear nothing but praise. Do you know where all of this comes from?”
He pressed his temple, and slowly said: “Your father and the former chief minister were examination classmates. He merely benefited from his forebear’s connections, won ten parts of the late Emperor’s favor, and was set up as a model for civil scholars while serving as tutor to the Crown Prince. Three generations of the Su clan as Grand Councilors — how magnificent! Back then, your father was merely an unremarkable secretariat drafter, a teacher in the Academy for Princes whom the princes turned and forgot. During the Jiangnan salt case, your eldest sister’s husband’s family was implicated — your father had no power or leverage, not a word could he say, and she was dragged down by her husband’s family in the prime of her youth and threw away her life for nothing.”
Yu Suiyun had been raised in the Yu ancestral home in the peach groves of Huizhou from a young age. Her eldest sister was ten years her senior, and she had only caught a distant glimpse of her once before she was sent away — the memory was faint.
But she knew that this departed eldest sister was the wound in her father’s heart, and she had never dared go near that subject. She could only console him: “Father is now second only to one, with power and standing equal to the greatest — he is no longer the person he was.”
Yu Qiushi glanced at her and tapped the table with a bent finger: “Do you think, from then until now, what path do you think your father has walked? Suiyun — just after you were born, your father sent you off to Huizhou, and it was truly because your father was afraid! Afraid of empty hands, afraid of being unable to protect you, afraid that blood and flesh would be lost in this battlefield of light and shadow. Only after establishing a firm footing did he dare bring you back — yet the path being walked now, is it truly so much easier than it was?”
“But Father is the current Emperor’s teacher,” Yu Suiyun said, puzzled. “I have heard that when the Emperor was overlooked in the Academy, it was Father who saw his potential as a hidden dragon and gave himself wholeheartedly to supporting him. Now His Majesty and Father are lord and minister who know each other’s hearts — that too is a fine story.”
“A fine story?” Yu Qiushi said with self-mockery. “I too have thought — if I and His Majesty could have the kind of bond that Su Wenzheng the Grand Councilor had with Emperor Ming, and obtain the posthumous title of ‘Wenzheng’ as the legacy of a lifetime — that would secure for our Yu clan a glory spanning several generations. But unfortunately, His Majesty is not Emperor Ming, and between him and me—”
With shrewd perception, he did not continue in that direction. Instead he said: “Our Yu clan is one of the great founding families of the Great Yin — looking back, I cannot count how many civil officials and military commanders it has produced. Yet before I rose to the position of Chief Councilor, the family had nearly come to ruin. ‘The virtue of a virtuous man will not endure beyond five generations’ — with this mirror so near before me, how can I fail to plan ahead?”
He seized Yu Suiyun’s hand and gripped it tightly. She did not pull away and could only listen as her father said with great seriousness: “I support the young Emperor — and though we mutually depend on each other, at the end of the day I walk with fear and trembling, like floating duckweed with nothing to anchor it. But if you enter the palace and give birth to the Emperor’s son, everything will be different! My — our Yu clan — needs a tie of blood and flesh bound even more closely to His Majesty. While His Majesty’s wings are not yet fully grown and the inner palace is still sparsely populated, if you go in, win his favor, and bear him an heir — your father’s future at court, our family’s glory — all of it will have hope.”
Yu Suiyun could not argue back in the moment and could only weep: “But His Majesty and the Empress are so deeply devoted — how could I intrude?”
“Deeply devoted? That is only a surface devotion,” Yu Qiushi’s face broke into a cold, eerie smile. “You need not worry about that. How many more years can the Empress rest easy? Right now, it is merely that all parties have something to fear — when His Majesty first came to the throne, he borrowed the Empress’s imperial sword and the support behind her; he had no choice but to be exclusively devoted to the central consort, and also used this to hold me in check. But as times change, certain old matters are too unpleasant to bring up — and in His Majesty’s heart, can he not have his misgivings?”
At that point he abruptly fell silent, let go of his daughter’s hand, rose, and stood looking down at her from above: “Suiyun, it is not that your father does not cherish you. If you enter the palace and win His Majesty’s deep affection, that will be your golden shield. You have been raised in simplicity and happiness since childhood — when the day comes that His Majesty has more consorts and concubines in the palace, who knows whether you will have any ground to stand on. If you go now, the Empress is broad-minded and will not trouble you — this sheltered nest of the Chief Minister’s mansion cannot raise you to your full stature. Go see for yourself what true darkness of night looks like.”
Having said this, Yu Qiushi turned and left, not wishing to speak further with his daughter. Yu Suiyun, tears blurring her vision, chased after him and called: “Father, does your daughter truly have no other way?”
Yu Qiushi did not turn to look at her, and said coldly: “If you are hard-hearted enough — if you can strip away every bit of your wealth and splendor around you and go to your beloved with nothing left — and if he is willing to accept you, willing to cast off his official post and wander the world with you, your father will not stop you. I will remove your name from the family register and treat it as if the Yu clan never had this daughter. But if he will not, if you cannot bear to give it up, if you still harbor even one part of filial regard for your parents’ raising — then stay home properly and await your marriage in good order.”
He lifted his foot and left, not another word. Yu Suiyun, weeping, fell to her knees, knowing that every word her father had said was true, and knowing her beloved would never abandon his post and title. She could not stop herself from trembling all over, as if plunged into a pit of ice.
Two years in the blink of an eye…
“Noble Consort—”
Yu Suiyun drew back her thoughts and looked up to see it was the inner attendant who had entered the palace with her from the family residence. She gave a small smile: “Playing the coquette and throwing a tantrum — that is truly the act men love best.”
The inner attendant carried over a fresh cup of tea and said softly: “Today, His Majesty will surely go to the Empress next — speaking of which, the Empress is not someone who throws tantrums. A clay figure of wood — yet Noble Consort always says the Empress is shrewd. Why does she not act this way? His Majesty had over a decade of sentiment with her to begin with — if things were truly to come to a head, he might well scatter the entire inner palace for her sake, and then Noble Consort would not have needed to enter the palace in the first place.”
“If the Empress threw tantrums, she would not be the Empress,” said Yu Suiyun, blowing at the floating foam on her fresh tea. “She holds great power in her hands now — what is the harm in being close yet distant? Furthermore — your Emperor, he rather relishes it.”