This time Lu Wenyin’s fifteen days of confinement had cost her a great deal of face, and she knew it clearly herself — which made her all the more determined to reassert her authority. She had clawed her way out of the inner quarters of the Lu household, where she and her sister, with no brothers between them, had done no small number of unsavory things to help their mother hold her position and bring down the concubines. The ruthlessness had been honed in those years. In her view, the supposed sisterhood among the Flower Festival ladies, the bonds forged through hardship together — it was all false, nothing more than aligned interests. Take those women from the Northern Garrison households: if the Grand Princess hadn’t helped them divide their assets and separate from their husbands, would they have been so united in seeking divorce? Most would have gone right back to forgiving their husbands and fighting the concubines, quite possibly betraying each other in the process, and they’d have gone their separate ways long ago.

She judged others this way, and naturally applied the same standard to her own followers. She didn’t for a moment believe Yang Qiaozhen and Sun Minwen were truly loyal to her — they were simply in awe of her, afraid of her, and saw advantage in following her to lord it over the other ladies. That was all.

So upon her release from confinement, the first thing she did was to assert her authority in no uncertain terms.

The Apricot Blossom Banquet had passed, and she had no Flower Festival banquet to host. She had no desire to go to Yang Qiaozhen or Sun Minwen’s homes and help them host — that was the sort of thing Han Yueqi’s kind would do, spending freely to support Wang Yuwei with no thought of gain, waiting until she was thoroughly betrayed once, and then she’d learn her lesson. Lu Wenyin also knew she couldn’t yet make inroads on Wang Yuwei’s side, and could only set the thought aside for now. She would first reclaim her own standing, and so she hosted a banquet of her own, without waiting for the Flower Festival schedule — using as her pretext the death anniversary of her late mother. With filial piety as her justification, no amount of lavishness or display could be faulted. The Chen family’s greatest advantage was exactly this: they were at the height of their glory and flush with gold.

So on the ninth of the month, before dawn, Lu Wenyin rose early. At that hour, Chen Yaoquing had only just come home from a night of drinking and carousing and fallen into bed. A man woken in the middle of sleep after a night of indulgence is always at his worst temper — the slightest noise setting him off in a rage. So Lu Wenyin crept out and went to the outer room to have her hair dressed, and called in the maidservant who had accompanied Chen Yaoquing the previous night to question her.

“He was at that hussy’s place on Apricot Street again?” She opened with this.

The maidservant was half afraid of her and half full of resentment, and curled her lip: “Yes, young mistress. If you’ll forgive me — who knows what spell that woman has cast over the young master? This whole month, he’s been utterly besotted with that strumpet, throwing money around like it’s nothing. We servants can’t help feeling wronged on the young mistress’s behalf.”

Lu Wenyin paid no attention to any of that. She only gave a cold smile at her reflection in the mirror. The hairdressing woman, for some reason, had been staring fixedly at the back of her neck, and when Lu Wenyin caught her eye, she started in fright, dropping the jade comb. It shattered in two on the floor.

“You clumsy fool!” Lu Wenyin’s personal maid, Qiao Ling, was a fierce-tempered girl and immediately came over to slap the hairdresser across the face. The hairdresser said nothing, picked up the broken comb, replaced it with a wooden one, and continued.

“Young mistress, don’t worry — however much that creature tempts him, the young master will always come back to you,” said Qiao Ling, leaning in to offer comfort when she saw Lu Wenyin’s mood darken. “These last ten days or so, the young master and young mistress have been so lovingly devoted…”

“You little creature, picking up bad habits too.” Lu Wenyin tsked, though her expression lightened somewhat. She leaned in and spoke quietly to her trusted servant, Old Nanny Lu: “Send two more people to that creature’s quarters — I’m not afraid of not finding something to pin on her. The young master is acting foolishly, ignoring so many good people of his own household and spoiling that upstart outsider so extravagantly…”

“Men will always value the wife less than the concubine, and the concubine less than the stolen affair,” said Old Nanny Lu soothingly. “Young mistress, don’t worry — once the young master gets older and settles down, things will be fine. You just wait, once this old servant finds something on that little hussy, we’ll wait until the young master goes to Jinzhou, then go to the master and mistress that same night, find a human trafficker, and sell her off — out of sight, out of mind.”

Lu Wenyin resolved her domestic troubles, then dressed herself in sumptuous splendor and went to receive the ladies who had come to attend her banquet. Naturally the table was set with an extravagant spread sparing nothing. Yang Qiaozhen, ever ready to flatter, gushed: “After all, it’s only Mistress Lu’s banquets that are truly singular in the capital — every dish on the table is a tribute item, things others can’t even lay eyes on. What Apricot Blossom Banquet or Spring Welcome Banquet — not even half of what this banquet offers…”

Lu Wenyin knew perfectly well it was empty flattery, but hearing it was still pleasant. This season was not the season for shrimp or crab, but the court ladies favored a kind of dried crimson shrimp, said to be the finest thing for the complexion. Lu Wenyin had treated the full table of ladies to some, and the maids were bringing out gold basins for washing hands. Lu Wenyin was still talking to Sun Minwen: “I’ve heard that the more of these crimson shrimp one eats, the fairer the skin grows. A pity they’re only caught in autumn and winter — once the season passes, the shrimp have no roe left.”

“It must be difficult for those fishermen, catching shrimp in autumn and winter,” said Sun Minwen.

“What does it matter — as long as the palace wants them, our household will never run short,” Lu Wenyin said carelessly. She noticed Qiao Ling staring at her arm. “What is it?”

“Oh — Mistress Lu, what is this on your arm?” Yang Qiaozhen exclaimed. Being the closest of all to Lu Wenyin, she reached over and pushed up her sleeve, and what she saw on Lu Wenyin’s arm — white as lotus root — was a patch of red sores. To call them a rash was the polite version; the sores were circular, each one heavy at the rim and lighter in the center, resembling copper coins.

“These don’t look like the kind of rash you’d get from eating shrimp,” one sharp-tongued lady blurted out. “They look like coin sores.”

Coin sores was not a polite term — it was associated with venereal disease. Yang Qiaozhen immediately rushed to her defense: “Don’t talk nonsense! You have coin sores! Mistress Lu is a person of gold and jade — what filthy thing are you saying? Shut your mouth!”

The lady who had spoken turned crimson and fell silent. Though Yang Qiaozhen had defended her so vehemently, she herself did not touch Lu Wenyin’s arm again. Even Qiao Ling’s eyes slid away. It was Lu Wenyin herself who, stone-faced, pulled her sleeve back down.

The disturbance had ruined the banquet, and it could only be brought to a hasty end. Lu Wenyin, her expression like still water, went directly into the inner room with Qiao Ling, closing the door behind her. The other maids, servants, and matrons outside exchanged glances, not daring to speak. From within came instructions: “Bring two more lamps.”

The lamps were brought, but the door remained closed. The head housekeeper steeled herself and went to knock — only after a long while did Qiao Ling open the door a crack to receive the lamps, and by her expression she had been frightened out of her own soul. She reached out to take the lamps, and the head housekeeper hurried to let go, nearly dropping them in her haste.

“Wretched thing!” Qiao Ling snapped, then seeing the head housekeeper shrink back with fear in her eyes, knowing exactly what the woman was afraid of, Qiao Ling said through gritted teeth: “It doesn’t mean what you think it does. When it turns out to be nothing at all, I’ll make sure the young mistress has your skin for presuming.”

She scolded them and went back inside, closing the door again. The assembled household stood outside in the bright-lit room, uneasy and anxious.

After a long while, the door finally opened again. This time Lu Wenyin was fully dressed and composed, seated in her chair. She summoned Old Nanny Lu and said: “Nanny, go find me an experienced woman — one with genuine knowledge.”

She put great weight on the words genuine knowledge. Old Nanny Lu understood immediately, and hurried to say in a low voice: “Young miss, don’t worry — I’ll go at once.”

Not long after, Old Nanny Lu returned, leading a middle-aged woman carrying a medicine box, who arrived in haste. By now the news had spread to most of the household servants, but Lu Wenyin’s authority was too formidable, and they all pretended not to know — watching the woman follow Old Nanny Lu into the inner room, all of them on tenterhooks. The room inside was utterly quiet; then after a long while, the sharp crack of a slap rang out.

Not long after that, the middle-aged woman came out with her head lowered, following Old Nanny Lu. A maidservant who attended at the side door later reported that she had watched the woman be escorted out through that door by Old Nanny Lu, who gave her a sum of money but also frightened her with several stern words not to let the matter spread outside, or she would be hauled before the magistrate.

By this point, every servant in the Chen household knew what the situation was, and there was no small amount of sighing. Their own young mistress, who usually cut such a magnificent figure — and yet, here she was, fallen into this sort of trouble. One could only pity the lot of women: as they said in the plays, do not be born a woman in this life — a hundred years of joy and sorrow, all at another’s discretion.

The lower-ranked servants might speak freely among themselves, but the higher-ranked ones still had to go and report. They could only steel themselves and enter, where they found Lu Wenyin draped in a robe and seated on the bed, her eyes red — as though she had been weeping — the fierce, commanding air of her usual self entirely absent. Old Nanny Lu nearby was sorting through a heap of medicinal herbs. Qiao Ling was dispirited and subdued.

“Young mistress, the doormen came to report the monthly tips — all the New Year visitors have been accounted for, and the Lantern Festival tips have been reported, but there are two remaining parcels of tips—” The head housekeeper was mid-sentence in her forced report when she saw her young mistress leap abruptly to her feet and rush toward the bedroom on the side wing.

That was where the young master rested — a place where ordinarily, before noon, not even the sweeping women dared go near, and the young mistress herself had told the manservants to clear away the birds’ nests from the trees outside so the birdsong wouldn’t disturb the young master’s sleep. Such devoted conjugal affection…

But Lu Wenyin at this moment came charging into the bedroom with fury, with no thought for any of that, and grabbed Chen Yaoquing up out of sleep, flailing at his chest.

“You heartless wretch! You wander out every day seeking your pleasures, dragging home whatever filthy diseased thing you pick up, and passing it on to me — how am I to face anyone after this?”

She wept and struck and accused all at once. The surrounding matrons and maids were alarmed and rushed over, pulling them apart. Chen Yaoquing, bewildered, but as the sole heir of the Chen family and thoroughly indulged all his life, with his father’s power to shield him in any outrage — unable to remember a single thing he had ever genuinely been held to account for — instinctively threw himself into the offense regardless of reason or right. He shoved Lu Wenyin away and prepared to hit her, saying: “Are you mad? What’s come over you?”

But Lu Wenyin hadn’t come looking for him merely to vent. She had a plan — she had come to break him completely right now, while there was no other option. Seeing that he still dared to be angry, she hurled herself against him, grabbed his lapels, and made her scene: “Come on then — hit me. Kill me. After you’ve ruined me like this, you still can’t bring yourself to finish it? Kill me and be done with it, if you think you’re able — and don’t think my sister won’t come and demand payment in blood from you!”

He was not afraid of anyone else, but Lu Wanyang was another matter. Chen Yaoquing both respected and feared her — not just because Wanyang was strikingly beautiful and he had not been without certain appetites, but Wanyang was utterly unlike Lu Wenyin: where Wenyin was fierce, her methods were at least familiar to him, the same things he had seen his own father’s concubines deploy. But Wanyang had a coolness to her, a dignity not to be violated — and the two sisters stood together solidly. He had tested her several times and each time come off badly. He had given it up.

So the mention of Lu Wanyang cut him down three full inches. The surrounding maids and matrons also came to intervene, but they pulled them apart rather than blocking him — instead they tried to soothe Lu Wenyin, saying: “Young mistress, please calm yourself — perhaps there has been a mistake. Better to properly call a physician to take a look, and it may well turn out to be nothing at all. Don’t wrongly accuse the young master.”

Lu Wenyin sat on the edge of the bed, weeping and scolding. The commotion had long since disturbed Madam Chen, who was besotted with her son and had always felt a certain resentment toward the daughter-in-law who ran such a tight ship. Hearing that she had dared to quarrel with her own son, she came rushing over — but of course she could not openly berate her daughter-in-law, as this was now a proper family of standing, and the Lu family was a respectable household too. Though it did not match the Chen family’s splendor, Chen Yaoquing’s own behavior left a good deal to be desired, and if it really came to a dispute, she might not win. So she only said: “What is all this now? Just done with confinement, and now fighting again? Are you two trying to be the death of me?”

Lu Wenyin had been waiting for exactly this. She immediately pulled up her sleeve and thrust her arm before the woman’s face, the full patch of circular sores on display, giving Madam Chen a considerable fright.

“Mother, you must stand up for me.” Lu Wenyin immediately grabbed Madam Chen’s hand and wept. “My husband doesn’t know what filth he’s been picking up out there — and he’s passed this sickness on to me. What is to become of me? How am I ever to show my face again?”

Madam Chen was badly shaken — she wanted to pull free, but couldn’t very well do so. A matron of more experience immediately came forward to intervene, saying: “Young mistress, please, no need for this — it’s nothing but a rash. We’ll have a physician sent for at once. The emperor holds the master in high favor — the imperial physicians are all available to our household. Just the other day, for the mistress’s cough, three imperial physicians were summoned. The young mistress hasn’t been through anything like this before — be careful not to make a spectacle of yourself…”

Lu Wenyin only wept, still clinging to Madam Chen’s arm, saying: “And what spectacle am I afraid of now? Today I was hosting a gathering for my mother’s death anniversary, called all the ladies together, and they all saw me like this. How am I to appear in the capital for the rest of the Flower Festival Season? The servants are all gossiping too — it will have spread before long.”

“Nonsense — our household doesn’t have servants so reckless as to spread idle talk. If there are any, drag them out and beat them to death — give their families a few taels of silver and be done with it.” Madam Chen, frayed by all the weeping, said savagely. The surrounding maids and matrons heard this and felt their blood run cold.

“There, child.” Madam Chen had been brought fairly close to heel by Lu Wenyin’s earlier efforts, and could only force herself to swallow her revulsion and comfort her. “Don’t worry — I’ll have the household sealed off at once, and not allow the servants to gossip. As for those ladies, I’ll warn them myself. Your father’s position is such that even the Shen family must defer to him — who would dare say a word against our family and see what happens.”

Gradually Lu Wenyin was soothed enough to stop. Still refusing to release Madam Chen’s hand, she took a moment to wipe away her tears, smoothed her hair with one hand, and the surrounding maids and matrons were quick to come forward and style it for her, offering soft words of reassurance.

Lu Wenyin paid them no attention, and said only to Madam Chen: “Then Mother must promise me — she will see that my husband ends all those outside entanglements once and for all. No more consorting with the pleasure quarters, and those kept women he has elsewhere must all be dismissed. A sickness this foul being brought into the household — if it is bad for my health, how much more so for my husband’s.”

She had played her final card. Chen Yaoquing immediately could not hold himself back. “And how do you know it didn’t come from you?” he shot back. “For all I know, you got it yourself.”

Madam Chen was already being gripped and pressed on all sides, frazzled and hot, and when she heard these words her temper snapped. She wheeled on Chen Yaoquing: “You wretched child — listen to what you’re saying. Your own wife — where would she get such a disease, if not from you passing it on? What are you saying?”

Ladies are acutely sensitive to accusations of chastity — it is the very foundation of their place in the world. Upon hearing this, Lu Wenyin was on her feet at once, flinging herself at Chen Yaoquing, grabbing hold of him. She had made up her mind to break him today, come what may. Since the illness had been discovered before everyone’s eyes, there was no hiding it within the household anymore — better to endure the humiliation and wring something useful from it. She crashed into him, clutching his lapels, and made her full scene: “If you say that, my husband — then where do my children and I stand? Since I married into your family, I have kept to the three obediences and four virtues, never failed in a wife’s duties — if my husband says such a thing, then what becomes of us…”

She wept and railed, and Chen Yaoquing, who had fallen asleep the previous night in his silk sleep-robe, wore a garment both light and thin, easily torn. In the tussle between them, there came the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping — a great rent, baring half his torso above, and along his side and back, a shocking spread of those same red circular sores, vivid to the eye.

Every person in the room was seized with alarm. Lu Wenyin also froze. It was Madam Chen who, with all her years of experience — Chen Daren’s rise having been steady and brilliant, and Madam Chen having “seen the world” along with him in her own way — who recovered first. Her expression darkened, and she said: “Quickly — send for the physicians. Physician Lin, Physician Zhong. Go to Huanghua Lane in the Southern District — Old Physician Zhong who retired last year lives there. Get him at any cost. Bring the household manager. Take a sedan chair. Seal the household completely. Anyone who dares breathe a word of this — beat them to death immediately.”

This news, though alarming enough to shake the rafters, was still the sort of thing that could be contained. Though the capital’s servants were always exchanging tidbits and passing around gossip, that was only for trivial matters. For truly serious affairs, no one dared be the one to spread the word — especially when a master had been roused to genuine fury. They were all servants, their indentures in their master’s hands. Beat them to death was said in anger, but to have truly given offense was to be caught between wishing to live and wishing to die.

Moreover, the Chen household’s treatment of its servants was known throughout the capital as the harshest of any noble family. Generous with rewards, yes, but brutal with punishments. The capital’s established families said privately that this was the behavior of upstarts — fresh into their wealth and power, not knowing what to do with their own importance, so they ground men underfoot to express it: the men spending extravagantly outside in nightly revelry, the women tormenting servants at home and throwing their weight around. But that was only said behind their backs. When they actually encountered Lu Wenyin, who was not deferential to the last degree, calling out “Young Mistress Chen” respectfully and throwing in a few compliments — all things considered? There was genuine envy there. At her age, already seated in the second chair among the capital’s young mistresses, with Master Chen still in his prime and wielding power, Chen Yaoquing being worthless aside — she had a son and a daughter at her knee. Wealth and splendor for the rest of her life was secure.

Madam Chen roused herself to real fury, with Lu Wenyin pursuing her own private grievances alongside, and between them they swept Chen Yaoquing’s outside women clean. Madam Chen’s preference was to sell them off or send them to the country estates so they were out of sight. But Lu Wenyin would not hear of it — she sold off only one, the quieter-natured one who had generally kept her head down. The other two: one had quarreled with her over the young master’s affections, one had whispered things into Chen Yaoquing’s ear against her. Using Madam Chen’s authority as cover, she had both of them thrashed savagely. The dancing girl had her legs broken and was left bedridden, hovering between life and death. The other, a strong-spirited one called Xiyun, was stripped publicly in the courtyard under the pretext of medical examination. This girl had been raised pretty from childhood, pampered and fussed over in preparation to be offered to someone powerful; she had learned music and chess, painting and poetry, and was waited on by several maids and matrons herself, addressed as “young miss.” She had never endured humiliation like this. At midnight she hanged herself.

Xiyun had been unyielding — Lu Wenyin had brought her capable matrons, a team of manservants bearing down on the courtyard like ravenous wolves, reducing the maids and servants of that little courtyard to howling and wailing. Xiyun was dragged out, barely clothed, while a loyal maid clung to her, sobbing. Rather than weeping herself, Xiyun looked at Lu Wenyin — and burst out laughing.

“What are you laughing at?” Lu Wenyin demanded.

“I’m laughing at the mistress’s confusion,” Xiyun said, looking at her. “The mistress thinks she is driving me out today — but I see her as nothing more than bones in a tomb. The mistress and I are alike — we are both to be pitied.”

“Insolent wretch — how dare you insult the mistress!” Qiao Ling was immediately shouting. “Someone come and slap her.”

The matrons duly came forward, beating Xiyun’s mouth bloody until she could no longer speak.

The imperial physicians, for all their skill, were perhaps overly cautious — using cinnabar-derived compounds too freely, and mercury as well. The coin sores faded quickly enough, but the medicine was too harsh and hot in nature. Lu Wenyin and Chen Yaoquing moved to sleep separately in the inner room, and she lay there through the night, unable to sleep — for some reason, no matter what she tried to think of, her mind kept returning to the image of Xiyun’s face, bloodied, wearing that desolate smile directed at her.

Before this, she could have had Qiao Ling share her bed for company. But after the coin sore incident, Lu Wenyin had seen through the maid’s fear and the impotent resentment the girl didn’t dare express. To think that girl had been coyly exchanging glances with Chen Yaoquing over the serving of tea — and for something like this, she was frightened to this degree. Clearly, she was good for nothing.

Not that Lu Wenyin particularly cared whether Qiao Ling was sincere. In the internal battles of the Lu household, she had understood this truth from an early age: while you have power and money, sincerity will be yours in abundance. But when you fall from grace, what will a servant’s sincerity accomplish for you? It would never be like the Ye sisters — keeping a whole courtyard of attendants and living wretchedly on. Ye Qinglan, who had been the talk of her season, now reduced to a faded old flower, waiting out her years as a spinster. Thinking of that gave Lu Wenyin a rush of satisfaction.

Once this wretched coin sore was cured, she would still be the formidable Young Mistress Chen, at the height of her influence. And this episode had given her the opportunity to clean out all of her husband’s kept women — she had installed a few obedient ones of her own choosing to keep a watch on him, so he would not go bringing filth home again.

Lu Wenyin considered herself meticulous, her plans watertight, her calculations without flaw. Though she had been up all night, she dressed herself carefully, jeweled ornaments placed just so, the full splendor of brocade and silk. She sent for the young miss, and together they would attend the Han family’s Peach Blossom Banquet. Of late she had been at the storm’s center, and so she had been deliberately keeping some distance from Wanyang — Wanyang was an unmarried young miss, and it would not do to tarnish her name by association.

If there was any sincerity left in Lu Wenyin at all, it was reserved only for this younger sister of hers.