The actions of the Zhou sisters and Old Lady Guan had thoroughly offended Dong Shi.
She had locked herself in her inner chamber and cried for a full two days. Only when she heard that Cheng Lu had returned did she finally grasp at this lifeline and rush straight to the main hall.
“Dalang, Dalang, something terrible has happened, something terrible!” Her eyes had already swollen to the size of walnuts, and she could barely see anything. She pushed away the personal maid supporting her and rushed toward the figure in deep blue robes standing in the center of the hall. “Your father, your father has gotten into trouble!”
According to the rules of Yuelu Academy, students from other regions could arrange their own schedules for returning home. However, just before the New Year, he had been asked by a professor at Yuelu Academy to help compile a collection of examination essays from three years prior. He wasn’t released until after drinking Laba porridge. Fearing he would miss the ancestral worship on New Year’s Eve, he had traveled day and night to rush back. Who would have thought that before he could even steady himself, his mother would come charging out in a panic, shouting something about “father getting into trouble.”
His father had been dead for ten years—what trouble could there possibly be?
Cheng Lu was exhausted, hungry, and cold. He had no patience left to deal with Dong Shi.
“Mother, can you please be more composed?” he said somewhat impatiently. “Whatever you have to say, can’t it wait until I’ve changed my clothes and had some hot tea?”
“You, you haven’t changed clothes yet!” Dong Shi stammered and quickly stood properly. Thinking of those troubling matters, she wanted to cry again, but her tears were like a dried-up well—they wouldn’t flow no matter what. Yet her eyes ached with a gritty pain. Still, she wiped at her eyes with her handkerchief and said, “Dalang, you have no idea what your father did behind our backs. Now look what’s happened—when he was alive, he never cared for us mother and son, and even in death he continues to bring disaster upon you…”
“Mother!” Cheng Lu’s face turned iron-blue as he roared, “Do you realize what you’re saying? In front of all these serving maids and servants. Do you want any face left in the future?”
Dong Shi’s expression showed fear and cowering.
Cheng Lu ordered her personal maid with a stern face: “Lianxiang, help Madam back to her room.”
Lianxiang trembled with fright and hurried to support Dong Shi.
But Dong Shi didn’t obediently follow the maid back to her room as she had in the past. Instead, she grabbed Cheng Lu’s sleeve, half pleading and half terrified: “Dalang, come over as soon as you’ve changed clothes. I have something urgent to tell you.” Then, thinking that her son might not have even eaten, she added, “If you haven’t had your meal yet, have the maids bring it to my room. I’ll talk while you eat. This matter is very important.”
Her son had always favored his father. If he heard bad things about his father from the servants’ mouths, she feared that when her son felt heartbroken, he wouldn’t even have anyone to comfort him.
Cheng Lu frowned and grunted in acknowledgment. After Dong Shi left the hall, he instructed Zhao Dahai: “Quickly take all the local gifts we bought from Changsha Prefecture and deliver them to each household in Jiuru Lane. Tomorrow is Little New Year—any later would be inappropriate.”
Zhao Dahai repeatedly acknowledged the order.
Cheng Lu took the young servant Song Qing back to his inner chambers.
Moxiang didn’t know when Cheng Lu would return, but since entering the twelfth month, she had been cleaning Cheng Lu’s side wing room every day, just as when he was home. Now, upon receiving word that Cheng Lu had returned, she hurried out to greet him.
Seeing that although he hadn’t given advance notice of his return, the room was spotlessly clean and tidy, and even the painting in the central hall had been changed to an appropriate “Auspicious Snow Heralds a Prosperous Year,” Cheng Lu was quite satisfied. He nodded slightly and rewarded Moxiang with five taels of silver.
Overjoyed, Moxiang efficiently ordered the maids to bring water in to serve Cheng Lu as he washed. She also had a young maid inform the kitchen that Cheng Lu had returned and to prepare food and wine that he liked.
Cheng Lu remembered his mother’s words.
Although his mother was sometimes unreliable, she was someone who cared for her children. Knowing he had just returned, if it wasn’t some major matter that had completely flustered her, she wouldn’t have asked him to come to her room to talk even though she knew he hadn’t eaten.
Could something really have happened with Father?
As the thought flashed through his mind, he spat, “Bah!”
His mother was confused, and he himself was following suit, actually saying the same thing as his mother!
He thought for a moment and said to Moxiang: “Set the meal in Madam’s room. I need to speak with Madam.”
Moxiang respectfully acknowledged.
After Cheng Lu finished washing and changed into a celadon-colored Huhang brocade robe, she served him as he went to Dong Shi’s room.
Dong Shi immediately sent away all the maids and servants around them both. Grasping her son’s hand, she couldn’t help covering her eyes as she wailed dryly: “Your father, that man who won’t do good even in death…” She told Cheng Lu how the Zhou family had discovered that Lanting had falsely transmitted Zhuang Shi’s last wishes, and how the Zhou sisters had uncovered that Cheng Bai and Xinlan had conspired to murder Zhuang Shi.
But before Dong Shi could finish speaking, Cheng Lu had already exploded in fury, roaring at her: “Who told you such nonsense? Father was such a good man—how could he have conspired with a lowly maid, and a maid married to a merchant at that! Others may lack brains, but must you join them? What have you been doing at home all day? I work so hard to support this household, not so you can parrot others’ words and slander my father!”
Dong Shi was so frightened by her son’s ferocious expression that she went limp in her chair. If not for the backrest behind her, she would have surely fallen to the floor.
Cheng Lu looked at his mother’s state with both pity and disgust.
He rubbed his temples and said wearily: “Fine, Mother, I shouldn’t have shouted at you. But what you’re saying is too absurd. Don’t do this again in the future. I think you’re too idle. If you’re really that bored, go to the temple more often. Like Old Madam Guo, chant sutras, copy scripture and such. Stop believing every rumor you hear!”
Dong Shi was illiterate—how could she possibly copy scripture?
But at this moment, Cheng Lu had forgotten this fact, and Dong Shi had also forgotten it.
Seeing her son’s expression soften, her strength gradually returned. She began crying to Cheng Lu: “Dalang, I’m not talking nonsense. I really am not talking nonsense… Those two maids have already been sent to prison.”
Cheng Lu froze.
Dong Shi told Cheng Lu everything about how she had gone to the Cheng family to plead for his future prospects. Finally, grasping her son’s hand, she said: “If you hadn’t come back, I wouldn’t have known what to do. If others find out about your father’s affairs, think about it—will you still be able to become an official? What will happen to our household? Won’t your ten years of bitter study have been for nothing? You haven’t even married yet!”
Cheng Lu’s face turned deathly pale. “Mother, are you saying that you went to beg Zhou Shaojin, and not only did she refuse to let us off, but she also berated you?”
“Yes!” Dong Shi now found everything about Zhou Shaojin disagreeable. Afraid that her son’s feelings for Zhou Shaojin wouldn’t fade, she exaggerated: “The things she said were truly awful! If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed those words came from Zhou Shaojin. Even a marketplace shrew would have more breeding than her…”
Cheng Lu wasn’t really listening to what Dong Shi was saying. His expression was somewhat dazed.
Of course! How could the Cheng and Zhou families let him off so easily?
So they had a backup plan all along!
They probably didn’t even know who he was yet, did they?
If they wanted to pin this on him, it wouldn’t be so easy.
If the Zhou family really had sent those two maids to the magistrate’s office on these grounds, he needed to quickly get his hands on those maids’ confessions. He would see if he could find any flaws between the lines.
Cheng Lu was someone who acted immediately upon deciding. He called out loudly for Song Qing, only then realizing that his mother was still gripping his hand and rambling on about Zhou Shaojin’s faults.
He quickly said to his mother: “Don’t worry about this matter anymore. I have my own plans. Just remember that Father was a good man, and those words are all slander from people with ulterior motives.”
But Dong Shi, who had always obeyed her son, was quite doubtful this time. She stammered: “This time, I’m afraid it’s not just rumors. I heard that Xinlan admitted that your father gave her a complete set of pure gold hair ornaments. Xinlan’s husband also confirmed that the wretched maid really did have such a set of pure gold ornaments. At the time she said they were a gift from Zhuang Shi, so her husband didn’t become suspicious…” At this point, she couldn’t help grinding her teeth. “If your father hadn’t died early, he probably would have already taken that worthless thing as a concubine…”
Cheng Lu didn’t like hearing his mother speak of his father this way. He interrupted Dong Shi with displeasure: “Didn’t I tell you? Those are all lies! The Zhou family is making it up!”
Perhaps it was the set of pure gold ornaments that provoked Dong Shi. She pressed for details: “What benefit would the Zhou family gain from doing this? I don’t think the Zhou family is spreading rumors!”
Cheng Lu was quite annoyed at his mother’s stubborn refusal to understand. He said coldly: “Can’t you see by now that the Zhou family is trying to strike back at your son in retaliation?”
“Why would they want to retaliate against you?” Dong Shi was stunned. “You haven’t done anything to wrong the Zhou family, have you?” Before she finished speaking, she exclaimed “Oh my!” and quickly said, “Could it be that the Zhou family blames you for falling in love with Zhou Shaojin? But that doesn’t make sense either. If that were the case, the Zhou family could just marry Zhou Shaojin off to someone else. Why go to such lengths to offend you? Is the Zhou family afraid that after you achieve success and prominence in the future, you’ll turn around and settle scores with them?”
Facing such a mother, Cheng Lu felt quite helpless. He reluctantly told his mother about the grievances between the Cheng and Zhuang families.
Dong Shi stared at her son in shock, unable to recover for a long while.
When she finally came to her senses, unable to contain the fury in her heart any longer, she pointed at her son’s nose and shouted: “When did you find out? Why didn’t you tell me? You knew perfectly well that Zhou Shaojin is Zhuang Liangyu’s daughter, yet you still wanted to marry her? How did you have the face to make me go to the Cheng family to propose? If you marry her into our household, what would that make us? Aren’t you afraid of people pointing fingers at you in the street, saying that both father and son are shameless—the father fancied the mother, the son fancies the daughter, letting others trample all over our family’s dignity…”
Cheng Lu felt deeply powerless.
“Mother, please lower your voice, won’t you? Aren’t you afraid that walls have ears and someone will overhear?” He said in a compromising tone, “I only just found out too. Otherwise, why would I have thought of marrying Zhou Shaojin? Now that you know the reason, stop believing those hearsay rumors. I already have scholarly credentials now, and I don’t need to rely on the Cheng family for everything anymore. From now on, you should just stay peacefully at home and be your proper Madam!”
Dong Shi was half-believing and half-doubting.
Cheng Lu could no longer spare attention for her.
He needed to find a way to get someone to obtain Xinlan and Lanting’s confessions.