Life is so long. There is always one person who becomes the resting place of your soul.

It is the way of things — in youth one clings to one’s parents, and then after taking a wife that attachment shifts. The person who becomes closest to you is the one who shares your bed, the one with whom your feelings run deepest. During these two days of confinement, he had had great stretches of idle time to look back over his past — from his years as a young soldier training in the army, to his plans for the future as a grown man. What remained after all that was a longing for this wife of not many months. Though they had not spent much time together, and there had been no grand passion before the wedding — before it they had met only three times, and what stirred in him then could not even be called liking, at most a natural, matter-of-fact warmth that arose when he learned the marriage was to take place.

And yet this arranged marriage — it could certainly be called arranged — had let him taste sweetness and delight. He was a man of still waters that run deep, but when it came to this young wife, he had never hidden his ardent, fervent love for her. Perhaps, in the eyes of those who express their feelings more openly, such deep feeling seems too restrained. But for him, it was already quite unguarded.

He was glad she had returned his love. In the time of his difficulties, she had worked tirelessly on his behalf, and when there was nowhere left to turn, she had given up everything to come to his side. She did not say it, but he knew all of it, had known it all along. And his heart welled up all the more with a heavy, settled gratitude — grateful for his fortune in meeting such a virtuous wife, such a soft and understanding companion.

Both were reserved. Hearts that beat as one were expressed in no more than a shared glance.

Yun Pan looked at him with a smile. He had said he missed her — that was the best comfort for all the longing she had carried through these two days.

She studied him carefully. Flowing emotions rose and moved across his features as she looked, and as she looked, her eyes filled with tears. She had come in time — he was still well. She had every confidence that in the days ahead she would be able to care for him properly.

She stretched out a hand toward him. “My lord, hold me.”

He came and embraced her, bending slightly so that his lashes rested close by her ear, and said with a touch of grievance, “The sovereign has stripped me of my title. I am no longer the Duke of Weiguo. It no longer suits you to call me ‘my lord.’ Find me a different name.”

Yun Pan half-closed her misty eyes and thought for a moment. “Then I’ll call you ‘my husband.’ You like to hear me call you ‘my husband,’ do you not?”

He said, “That is good, as far as it goes, but still not intimate enough. Just call me by my name — call me Ji Fu.”

In this world and age, women lived in dependence on their men. Between husband and wife there was no equality of standing — husband and master, he was both. In truth he was never content with this arrangement, but previously, bound by his position, and uncertain of what she thought, the pet name had remained one-sided: he would call her by her small name, but she seemed never to have called him by his in any real sense. The more she maintained this reserve, this deferential distance, the more he thirsted for that closeness and meeting of souls. Now all his burdens had been stripped away, his title gone — surely she could at last let go of those worldly conventions and be with him like an ordinary husband and wife?

Yun Pan fixed her gaze on him. Her luminous eyes were filled with adoration. At first the two characters felt difficult to utter — though she had spoken his childhood name to others before, doing so now so deliberately and earnestly felt like a first time altogether.

She looked a little flustered, faltered for a moment, then finally parted her lips and called out softly, “Ji Fu.”

He laughed with a boyish delight. “I didn’t hear it clearly — say it again.”

She flushed and raised her voice. “Ji Fu!”

He was satisfied. His face held a look of contentment, and he held her close and said, “Wonderful… just like this is wonderful.”

They were locked up together — what was wonderful about it? But Yun Pan understood what he meant. To steal half a day of leisure from an overfull life — his past had been too constrained, and being shut away in this place cut off from the world had, strangely, washed away the noise and agitation within him. He had become simpler, truer.

In the cold and bare room, the small oil lamp cast their shadows onto the wall — thin and long, reaching to the ceiling.

To those on the outside, the situation felt taut and urgent, as if at any moment they might be plunged into towering waves. But from within the eye of the storm, the waters were still. There was something to be tasted here — the simple peace of being present in this moment. Perhaps it was the reunion, too. Where the other person is, there is home.

They lingered together for a time. Then Yun Pan extricated herself from his arms and set to work: she added two blocks of charcoal to the brazier, poured water into the copper kettle and hung it over the coals. When the water boiled, half would be for making tea, half for washing up.

The two of them huddled around the brazier for warmth. There was only one chair, so one of them sat there and the other sat on the bed. A life like this had been unimaginable before, yet now it seemed to have a flavor all its own. Both were cheerful enough about it — with a companion, life no longer felt lonely.

Fortunately there were two cups. Yun Pan took out the dried Huaju red she had brought and brewed him a cup, then began to tell him quietly what was happening on the outside: she told him how a woman had come to the estate — the favorite concubine of the Duke of Chuguo. “Madam Liang is willing to testify on your behalf and enter the palace to accuse the Duke of Chuguo.”

He listened with an expression of calm. He lowered his eyes and said, “If she were to go to the palace and accuse the Duke of Chuguo, it would not help me — it would plunge me into an even more desperate situation. And all of the Duke of Chuguo’s previous plans would be overturned entirely, which would mean everything buried in place these years would come to nothing, and my being confined here would be rendered pointless as well.”

So it was fortunate that she had not agreed to Huiying’s proposal. And yet from what he said, she glimpsed a hint of something more. “Being placed under confinement here — was that not originally part of your own plan?”

Li Chenjian looked a little awkward. After a moment he nodded. “I did in fact go along with the circumstances. Even without Li Yujian’s frame-up, I had already intended to defend Elder Brother and anger the sovereign into temporarily stepping away from this contest.”

Yun Pan was quiet for a moment, and then suddenly felt that all her anguish on the outside had been, in a way, somewhat wasted.

She shot him a reproachful look. “You found that amusing, did you? Have you thought about how you plan to get out?”

He was still entirely at ease, and smiled. “There will always be a way.”

So then — when he had told her to wait until the spring flowers bloomed, those words were not empty. She had known he would not speak false, and yet when things broke out, she had still fallen into panic.

But that only made it all seem more genuine, and it helped round out the story he was telling. Now, however, she had a new concern. She still thought of Huiying’s readiness to give her life, but she could not say it too plainly — so she went at it sideways: “That Madam Liang is a woman of great loyalty. She would sooner offend the Duke of Chuguo and give up all hope of returning, than see you falsely condemned and refuse to come to your rescue.”

She said this with a slight sourness; it was not a pleasant feeling at all. He heard it, but he did not expose her. He only explained, as if by chance, “She is a pitiable person. Her father was once an official in Xizhou; he offended a superior, and the entire family was convicted. She was conscripted into a military camp to serve as a camp entertainer. We were among her first patrons. At the time I felt sorry for her; she was also quite handsome. So I had my deputy commander, Fang Gan, rescue her, and over several years she was trained and guided. Only this winter, when cold weather set in, did I arrange for her to make her appearance in the capital. It was a transaction of mutual benefit — she wanted wealth and comfort, I wanted her use. Neither of us owed the other anything. I only did not expect that at a critical moment she would step forward to testify for me. Though it was a little rash, that sense of justice is still worth genuine gratitude.”

Yun Pan understood from what he said: he had no other intentions toward her. It was she who had been petty and small-minded — faced with a beautiful woman willing to go through fire and water for her husband, her instinct for vigilance had been running rampant.

Embarrassed, she picked up the copper kettle and refilled his cup. And she could not help probing a little further. “The day the world settles and is at peace, how do you intend to provide for her? When you think about it, she is rather pitiable too — what woman willingly gives up her purity to please a man she does not care for?”

He was unmoved. There was a strange, cold edge in his detachment. “Before arranging for her to play her role in the Bian River entertainments, I asked her intentions three times. There was no coercion from beginning to end; everything was of her own free will. Since she agreed of her own accord, she must do the work faithfully. When the storm has passed, I will give her a generous compensation and ensure she has everything she needs for the rest of her life.”

But he seemed not to understand a girl’s heart. When life and death hang in the balance, duty and money are not enough to make someone stake their very existence. Only some private, unspoken attachment — the kind no one else knows of — can ignite that courage in a person and drive her to fulfill, at the cost of her life, everything that has been entrusted to her.

“But she really is beautiful,” Yun Pan said, with complete sincerity. “More beautiful than any girl I have ever seen. If her father had not been convicted, if her family’s fortunes had not collapsed, she would surely have had a glittering future — marrying a worthy young man she could love.”

A question like this, put to an ordinary straightforward man, would likely produce the answer that great beauty is the greatest burden, and that being beautiful does not guarantee that all in life will go well. But Li Chenjian was not such a man. He perceived at once the small anxiety behind her words, and replied with perfect seriousness: “Is she beautiful? In my eyes, she does not compare to you. The day of the Youzhou earthquake, I saw you for the first time, and Madam’s beauty struck me with wonder for a long while. Compared to you, Madam Liang is merely acceptable in appearance — useful enough for the purpose, and nothing more.”

Yun Pan finished listening and smiled shyly. She knew he was telling a bold-faced lie, and yet what woman does not take pleasure in such sweet words?

Knowing her husband harbored no other feelings for that woman was the greatest comfort of all. Yun Pan turned to climb off the bed and go fill the water, and as she did she glanced back at him with a smile. “It was not for nothing, my coming in to keep you company.” Love is refined and deepened through precisely this kind of mutual testing and mutual flattery.

He smiled with a contented air. He rose, paced slowly to the doorway, and looked out. The snow was falling in a vast, hushed expanse — great flakes descending from measureless heights, the effect dramatic and formidable, yet when they settled on the face, there was no pain at all, only a cool and weightless nothing. A strange thing.

From inside, Yun Pan called out to him, “It’s getting late. Let’s wash up and go to bed.”

He answered her, raised a hand, and closed the door.

With conditions as difficult as they were, things could not be as they were in ordinary times — even hot water had to be used sparingly. Yun Pan unfolded a cloth from the bundle and fashioned it into a makeshift curtain, hanging it across one corner. They washed up on either side of the curtain. The one who finished first got into bed to warm it, so that the one who came in later would not feel as if they were crawling into an ice cave.

Depending on each other for everything — it was a singular kind of experience. Every piece of fur and padded clothing they had was piled on top of the bedding for warmth. The two of them pressed closely together, and he said, “I could not sleep the past two nights. Tonight I should be able to sleep well.”

Yun Pan curled into his arms. Under the quilt, their bare feet wriggled against each other for warmth. She said, “I haven’t slept properly for two nights either. Tomorrow we can sleep in late — no need to be up at the fifth watch to attend court. I suppose that counts as a silver lining.”

Since things had come to this, might as well look for the good in it. And in truth, Li Chenjian had worked hard for years on end; even on rest days, there had never been a single day he could spend quietly at home — if it was not official business at the department, it was a banquet invitation from colleagues. Yet now, affairs of governance were no concern of his. The rounds of wearisome social obligations had vanished. There was no morning bell to drag him from bed; he could wake when he woke naturally. When he thought of it this way, he discovered that this period of confinement was, in fact, not entirely bad.

The only real difficulty was the material deprivation. The charcoal they burned now was no longer the finest red sandalwood charcoal — ordinary black charcoal would pop and spark, and sitting too close to it, they found their robes had been scorched through in several places before they even noticed.

But there was a simpler happiness too. After they rose midday and washed up, and ate the lukewarm broth sent in from outside, they crouched in the courtyard to sweep the accumulated snow and build snowmen. Yun Pan built an old grandmother cooking in the kitchen, with a ladle under her hand, and rolled eight fat white round dumplings beneath it. Li Chenjian built a second-rank official, complete with a gold fish pouch at his waist and a winged headpiece, the two wing tips each half a foot long, which trembled and swayed in the northwest wind as the figure stood in the courtyard.

Neither of their creations was particularly skillful. Even so, the two of them tucked their hands inside their sleeves and stood under the eaves for quite some time, gazing at the snowmen with satisfaction. Fine snow drifted down from the sky above, slipping into their collars with a chill. The desolate courtyard, with these two figures in it, seemed somehow to come alive even in hardship.

They smiled at each other, content at heart. After standing a while they went back inside for a cup of hot tea. Li Chenjian, who seemed to have arrived early at the kind of retired life that comes after leaving office, moved a reclining chair to the side of the doorway, draped himself in a great fox-fur cloak, and let his feet sway slowly back and forth, watching the snow fall in silence.

Yun Pan, with nothing else to do, began to think about how to make their three meals more nourishing.

The same food as the guards received was, for people who had grown up on the finest mountain delicacies, little better than chewing on wax. Even under ordinary circumstances, as long as there was a hot bowl of gruel or broth to drink, that was already a comfort. When the guard came to deliver the midday meal, Yun Pan asked him if he could bring some rice and flour — and perhaps some brushes, ink, and paper as well.

The guard was reluctant, but having received so many benefits from them, he could hardly refuse. He said, “Madam, please wait. I will come back to deliver the evening meal, and by then I will find a way to bring what you need.”

Yun Pan agreed with pleasure, and waited eagerly through the long afternoon until at last the courtyard gate opened again. The round-bellied guard stepped heavily through the door, opened the food box — inside was wrapped a set of writing instruments in oilpaper. He reached into his front, pulled out two small bags of rice and flour, then crouched down and shook open his trouser leg, sending a cascade of black charcoal clattering to the ground. He straightened up with the air of a man who has done a fine deed, grinning broadly and saying, “You two make use of this first. When it runs out, I’ll find a way to top it up.”

This was true aid in a moment of need. Li Chenjian bowed his hands toward the guard. “No words are sufficient thanks for such a great kindness — I will certainly repay it in the days to come.”

The guard, never having received such thanks from a person of rank, let out a startled sound and promptly shrank down three inches, waving his arms in hasty return courtesy. “Oh, the Duke must never speak this way — it would be the death of me. There is little enough I can do for the Duke, truly.” Then he gestured as he smiled, “Madam asked for rice and flour, which of course means a cooking pot is needed. I brought the food in a clay pot on purpose — once you’ve eaten, the pot is right there for making porridge.” With that he gave another bow and retreated outside.

Yun Pan looked at all these things, and a tremendous satisfaction rose in her heart — a joy surpassing anything she might have felt at holding a chest of banknotes. So much charcoal — used carefully, it would last three to five days. And these two bags of rice and flour — though she had no idea how to cook with them, she could experiment. By morning there might be a steaming bowl of porridge to drink.

Li Chenjian put away the writing instruments and came to watch her set about the cooking. She was crouching there in distress. “Does this rice need to be washed?” she said, and went to scoop a ladleful of water, then pinched a single grain of rice between her delicate fingers and scrubbed it carefully in the water.

Li Chenjian, who had at least spent time in the army, watched her washing rice grain by grain and could not help but laugh. Here truly was a girl whose hands had never touched the necessities of household work — food and clothing had always been prepared and delivered by servants. She had no idea how any of it was done.

“Eat first,” he said. “After we have eaten, I’ll teach you.” He washed his hands, set out the food, and passed her the chopsticks.

Yun Pan was still reflecting, “No wonder the kitchen maids have such a difficult job — so much rice, and it would take forever to wash it like this.”

He served some food into her bowl. “Actually, it is not as hard as you think. The rice that comes from husked grain is not dirty — there is no need to wash grain by grain.”

Yun Pan blinked slowly. “Is that so…”

Later, watching him wash the rice — scooping water into the clay pot, plunging a hand in to scrub for a few strokes, the white grains sinking to the bottom while the murky water was skimmed off easily, a few changes of water until it was clean enough — she began to waver again, and stared at the pot. “There are just the two of us, and there’s so little rice — will it be enough?”

Li Chenjian said it would be. “Too much rice and it turns into cooked rice instead of porridge.” In truth, he was cooking for the first time and was not entirely sure, but he had to maintain his dignity in front of his wife. He said confidently, “Let me make a pot first, and you shall taste my cooking.”

Yun Pan immediately looked at him with great admiration and sat herself in front of the brazier to watch with interest. As the porridge cooked, he told her about his years in the army — how to prepare a freshly caught roe deer or other game, for instance, explaining with great authority that fresh meat must have salt rubbed into its surface, and once all the blood has dripped away, it roasts much better.

Anyone of such broad experience would surely make a bowl of porridge with no difficulty whatsoever. Yun Pan even took careful mental note of each step, already dreaming that the next morning she would be able to make breakfast for him with her own hands.

The result… the theory was impeccable; the execution left something to be desired. Too little water was added, and there was a risk of the bottom burning. Seeing it beginning to scorch, Li Chenjian made a decisive judgment and poured another ladleful of water in, then continued to simmer.

Yun Pan maintained a composed smile and said kindly, “Let’s wait a little longer. No rush — once it’s done, we can have it as a late-night snack. I still have dried chives, pickled eggplant, and hot melon strips right here.”

So husband and wife both fixed their eyes on the clay pot, watching the water inside gradually come to a boil, the lid beginning to clatter up and down. Li Chenjian quickly grabbed a cloth to hold it, lifted the lid — but the porridge seemed to have no intention of settling down. The boiling liquid surged up and spilled over, pouring down onto the charcoal beneath. Thick smoke billowed up at once.

The fire was drowned. Smoke and the smell of burning spread quickly throughout the room. The two of them fled outside as if their lives depended on it — a moment later and they might have been choked to death inside.

They looked at each other. Li Chenjian said they had had a narrow escape. “If we had burned the room down, the sovereign might well have thought we had faked our deaths and escaped.”

Yun Pan said that would not do. “The bodies would still be there. Two charred human shapes and he would know we had truly died.”

Sighing and feeling a little sheepish, he said with remorse, “I apologize — I’ve implicated you… I had not imagined cooking would be so difficult.”

Yun Pan rubbed her hands together and said wholeheartedly, “When we get back, give the kitchen maids a raise.”

He nodded. “As we should.”

Fortunately, by the latter half of the afternoon the snow had finally stopped, and brilliant stars appeared at the top of the sky. The smoke had not yet cleared from the room, so the two of them stood with their arms tucked in their sleeves, admiring the scene outside. They found that the expanse of white silver on the ground beneath the arc of the Milky Way was, in its own way, quite beautiful.