The blue-glazed spoon with its winding branch-and-flower pattern clinked a few times against the white porcelain bowl. Slices of lily bulb and pear swirled around the bowl, and two wolfberries floated atop the clear square-cut ice — in such scorching weather, the mere sound of the ice clinking was enough to make one’s mouth water.
Xiaonan Mountain was always colder than Yanjing, yet also hotter than Yanjing. Yanjing had Baiquan Mountain blocking the wind, frost, and rain, so it stayed comfortable — but Xiaonan Mountain was nothing but a bare earthen slope, unable to block anything at all.
It was only mid-May, yet already there was a hint of the coming summer heat.
A hand with light calluses lifted the white porcelain bowl, pressing the spoon against the ice as she drank a few mouthfuls of the broth. The heat in her body dissipated at once, and Miss Huang let out a sigh of satisfaction, then said to Huo Qiqian, who stood to the side: “Seventh Sister, would you like a bowl?”
A bowl of iced lily bulb and pear cost twenty coppers. Huo Qiqian knew the bride was simply being polite, so she smiled and declined with thanks: “I wouldn’t dare! Miss, please enjoy it yourself. Someone as rough as me isn’t fit for such fine things — besides, my stomach can’t handle anything so cold.”
Sallow-faced, thin and small in build, with sparse hair and rather plain looks, yet with bright, gleaming eyes, Miss Huang smiled and drank the rest of the broth, then lifted a handkerchief embroidered with magnolias to dab her mouth. With a rather reserved bearing, she instructed Matron Zhu: “I’ll rest a while.”
Then she said to Qiqian’er: “I’m troubling you, sister — please help gather up my things. We set off tomorrow, and I’m not at ease about it.”
This Matron Zhu had only arrived at Xiaonan Mountain half a day ago — she was a household matron sent by the family in Jindian to receive the bride.
She hadn’t come alone, either, bringing along two young maids who looked like they understood nothing at all.
Huo Qiqian nodded at Miss Huang and gave her a wink.
Once the two of them had exchanged this silent understanding, Miss Huang found a small wicker basket, carefully wrapped the washed bowls and spoons in cloth, and packed them away with great care.
These were just ordinary porcelain pieces available on any street corner, yet they were the only physical belongings she had brought from her natal family — tableware her late mother had bought for her while still alive. Now only eight mismatched pieces remained.
Matron Zhu, feeling nervous, smiled awkwardly and gave a bow that was neither quite proper nor improper, then carefully stepped forward to help Miss Huang lie down, lowered the bed curtains, and tiptoed quietly out of the room with Huo Qiqian.
Once outside and a few steps away, Matron Zhu let out a long breath and said to Qiqian’er: “Oh my, no wonder our master insisted on marrying a young lady from a distinguished family — my goodness, with all these particular manners, I don’t even know where to put my hands and feet. Seventh Sister? Why don’t you come to my quarters — though this is our first time meeting, sisters, we hit it off right away…”
“I have some matters to attend to. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
Hearing this, Huo Qiqian’s mouth twitched, and she didn’t quite know what to say, so she simply gave a vague reply and turned to slip away as well.
This matron from Jindian understood nothing at all, and was so full of chatter that it seemed she feared people might mistake her for mute. She had barely sat down before, without anyone even asking, she’d already reported her entire family lineage along with the neighborly relations of eight whole streets.
Someone meant to be a proper household steward would never behave this way.
Parting ways with Matron Zhu, Qiqian’er circled around the side courtyard of the post station and took the small path to the guest rooms next door. As soon as she entered, she saw Bai Ying also busy tidying up.
Seeing her come in, Bai Ying smiled and said, “Scared her off?”
Huo Qiqian smiled. “Scared her good. Frightened that matron half to death — she didn’t know how to curry favor anymore, just rambled on about a bunch of nonsense in circles, and I chased her right out.”
Bai Ying, recalling how Miss Huang had held up the bowl, couldn’t help but want to laugh. “Poor thing, it’s not easy for her either.”
Huo Qiqian climbed onto the kang, leaned against the bedding, and thought for a good while before saying with a smile, “Mm, it’s not easy. But that girl really is something. Her days from here on out — they won’t turn out badly.”
Bai Ying nodded, tying up four or five pairs of sinew-soled boots, and thinking of what that Miss Huang had accomplished, sighed as well: “Ah, if anyone in that family had a shred of conscience, she’d never have been forced into scheming like this. If you don’t fight for yourself, what else can you do? Even at its worst, it could only end up this bad.”
Huo Qiqian nodded deeply in agreement.
The bride sleeping in this side courtyard of the post station was surnamed Huang, given name Qiao’e — a woman of pure Yanjing bloodline. Her family’s ancestors had never produced any great officials, but thanks to some far-sighted forebear, they had settled and remained in the city of Yanjing.
Becoming an official in Yanjing was difficult, but securing a minor clerical post was easy enough — as long as one was literate and knew the basic laws and regulations, one need not worry about earning a living from a government post.
Going back several generations, the men of the Huang family had, by virtue of this local advantage, always served as minor clerks in the Ministry of Works. They could be called a family of officials and clerks, of sorts, and had accumulated no small amount of money — their residence was even located in the western part of Yanjing.
Chen Dasheng had arranged for Huo Qiqian to accompany the horse caravan of the Hongpeng escort agency at Xiaonan Mountain, to escort this Miss Huang on her journey to marry into Jindian — precisely because this bride’s wedding procession was remarkably easy to blend into.
She had come out with only three hundred strings of cash as her compensation and dowry combined — truly having nothing much at all — and even had to pay her own way with the escort agency’s carts to Jindian. Huo Qiqian’s role as household matron therefore drew no particular attention.
As for the story of this new bride Huang, it takes a bit of ink to tell properly.
How to put it — Huang Qiao’e’s luck had been poor. Her parents had died ten years ago, on that chaotic night in Yanjing. That night, her father had been attacked by bad actors while at the Ministry of Works and died on the spot.
Her mother, shocked into illness, lingered in bed and before long also passed away, leaving behind Miss Huang and her two older brothers.
Miss Huang was fourteen that year. She herself hadn’t expected that, because of the dowry worth several hundred strings of cash her parents had left her, her two brothers and two sisters-in-law would go to such lengths to prevent her from marrying. It was truly an unbearable ten years, and by the end of last year, the family had even wanted her to become a nun.
Clerical posts in government offices were typically passed from father to son, and since her father had died so suddenly, her two brothers never managed to inherit his position at the Ministry of Works. The family’s fortunes gradually declined.
Worst of all, her mother, while alive, had been formidable and never treated her two daughters-in-law with much warmth, and old grudges had built up. Once their parents-in-law were gone, the sisters-in-law took charge of the household but dared not provoke their own husbands, so instead they took out their resentment on their innocent young sister-in-law.
All sorts of rumors spread through the streets — that Miss Huang had an ill-fated temperament, that she was infertile — whatever the gossip, it all originated from within the Huang family itself.
No family looking to take a bride would fail to quietly inquire about her character, and clearly, Miss Huang’s reputation didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Just from the calluses on Miss Huang’s hands alone, one could tell how difficult and tormented her days had been.
But what her brothers and sisters-in-law could never have imagined was that even at twenty-four, this young woman had never given up on the idea of marrying. She had endured with remarkable patience, spending ten full years gathering evidence, until finally she went to the government matchmaking office and lodged a complaint: I am already this old, and my brothers and sisters-in-law still won’t let me marry.
This violated the law, and the government matchmaker had jurisdiction over it.
Officers came to the house to inquire: your family’s daughter is already twenty-four — why haven’t you arranged a match for her? And what about the years of fines owed for this? Why haven’t you paid them?
Yanjing wasn’t like the countryside — if any family there had an unmarried daughter of age, the authorities would know at once, and even if they didn’t, someone would report it.
So many outsiders passed through Yanjing daily, and the Huang family lived in the western district, where many official families resided — not a place one wanted to provoke, and for the sake of reputation, no housewife there went about gossiping from door to door.
When the officials came to question them, her brothers and sisters-in-law had their excuse ready: it wasn’t that they hadn’t arranged anything — it was that their sister had a hidden ailment, and marrying her off would only harm the other family.
That excuse might have worked in the past, but they hadn’t counted on Miss Huang having already prepared for this. She produced prescriptions from more than a dozen renowned physicians at famous medicine halls across Yanjing.
Malnourishment and physical weakness, yes — but any talk of a “hidden ailment” was pure nonsense.
With officers at the door, her brothers and sisters-in-law grew frightened and sought out respected neighbors to mediate. But once these prescriptions came out, in front of everyone, the brothers and sisters-in-law could no longer deny it, and had no choice but to sheepishly agree to the matchmaker’s arrangements and consent to marry their sister off.
But Miss Huang no longer trusted her own family. She knelt before the matchmaker and begged her to take charge of the matter herself. The matchmaker did have a duty to arrange marriages for older unmarried women, but matches that fell to the matchmaker’s office rarely turned out to be good ones.
The matchmaker asked Miss Huang what kind of match she wanted.
Miss Huang said: someone of matching social standing, and as far from home as possible — nothing else mattered, so long as he was in good health.
This was a clever answer. The Huang family had, for generations, been minor clerks in government offices — so “matching social standing” simply meant another minor clerk somewhere.
As for wanting to be as far away as possible and only requiring good health, this too left the matchmaker plenty of room to work with.
The matchmaker went back, and before long had arranged a match for Miss Huang.
It was said that a clerk in the Aicheng government office in Jindian had lost his wife. He didn’t ask for great beauty — only a woman of clean reputation from Yanjing would do. If no unmarried young lady was willing, then a widow of lesser standing would also do, even a widow with a daughter already — as long as she was a woman of Yanjing.
This clerk had refined tastes despite his ordinary circumstances — from the very start of his life, his parents had arranged for him to marry a woman from Yanjing.
That had been during the chaos and unrest of some years back; the woman had ended up stranded there, and he had taken her in.
A woman from Yanjing was nothing special within Yanjing itself, but out here in a border town like Jindian, whenever there was a gathering and he brought his wife along, he had only to open his mouth and say, “My wife — she’s from Yanjing!”
How dignified that felt.
This clerk wanted to marry another woman from Yanjing but had little money to offer. He asked the matchmaker, and could offer at most thirty strings of cash as betrothal gift.
Thirty strings of cash meant something in Jindian, but in Yanjing it was nothing at all. Even marrying into an ordinary family on the streets of Yanjing would cost twenty or thirty strings — so why bother marrying someone so far away for the same price?
And so this “good match” from the Jindian clerk sat with the matchmaker for a full three years without success. Who could have guessed that it would turn out to be exactly what fate had prepared for Miss Huang?
Matching social standing, good health — though a widower, his late wife had never borne children, so marrying in, she would be able to take charge of the household from the start.
Miss Huang naturally wanted to marry. Her brothers and sisters-in-law, resentful as ever, simply took the betrothal gift and sent the girl on her way.
She truly left with nothing but the clothes on her back and eight pieces of porcelain.
But what no one could have anticipated was that this young woman had, layer by layer, laid a trap for her brothers and sisters-in-law all along.
Once free, she went straight back to the government office to file another complaint. She didn’t accuse her brothers directly — she accused outsiders in the family, claiming her two sisters-in-law had stolen her dowry.
A lawsuit involving several hundred strings of cash — and she had in hand the dowry list her parents had left behind. She hired a well-regarded litigation consultant and found the right approach, and the two sisters-in-law were taken in for questioning.
Her sisters-in-law, seized by the officers, hadn’t even reached the courthouse before they’d wet themselves. Once the magistrate opened the hearing, before he’d even asked a single question, they blurted everything out, each blaming the other.
The household fell into chaos. The next day, relatives and elders from both the Huang family and the in-laws’ families came to negotiate, arguing that family shouldn’t tear itself apart so shamefully — better to endure and let it go, since blood ties run deep no matter what.
But Miss Huang said: my reputation is already ruined, I’m already of age, and now I have no dowry left at all. I’ll fight this to the bitter end if I must, and see the Huang family produce two virtuous wives in return — otherwise, the Huang family’s future will be finished for good.
Even at this point, she never spoke a single ill word against her two older brothers. But by then, her brothers had already been beaten black and blue by their wives’ own relatives, and with three or four children apiece in each household, and their mothers hauled off by the authorities, life had become unbearable.
There was simply no way to go on living like this.
A single woman standing alone against her natal family and two in-law families, negotiating between them — the difficulty of it was beyond what outsiders could imagine. In the end, Miss Huang secured two hundred strings of cash in returned dowry from her sisters-in-law, plus another hundred strings in compensation from the in-laws’ elders, to have her declare the whole affair a misunderstanding and let it go.
Miss Huang took the compensation and left her family home. Out of sympathy and a wish to protect her, the government office sent word to her husband’s family that the bride’s natal family members were in poor health and couldn’t withstand a long journey, asking them to send someone to fetch her — and so Miss Huang was quietly sent to Xiaonan Mountain to await her marriage.
Normally, no one would bother following up on a lawsuit like this, but the reason Miss Huang received such consideration was because she had handled everything so thoroughly. Both her parents were gone, she had suffered so much — some young women with such delicate, sensitive natures would have simply hanged themselves with a rope.
But who pities the dead? What does it have to do with the living? At most people cry a few tears — the dead cannot argue back, and any blame at all can be heaped upon them.
This woman simply refused to die!
She had truly endured hardship for ten long years like someone lying on brushwood and tasting gall, fighting for everything rightfully hers, and in the end had even managed to act with grace — preserving her natal family’s reputation while leaving her sisters-in-law’s families a way out, and giving her nieces and nephews a path forward in life.
Her two sisters-in-law had, in the courtroom, accused each other of the theft.
That charge, too, was settled as fact.
And with Miss Huang’s apparent kindness in being willing to step forward, forgive, and speak reasonably with everyone, accepting the repayment while letting her sisters-in-law go home — this conduct aligned perfectly with the sense of righteousness prized by officials at every level of the government, and so they looked after her case thoroughly, to the very end. When Chen Dasheng learned of this matter, he took the opportunity to arrange an identity for his wife through it.
These days, any jianghu figure entering Jindian found it costly and troublesome.
As for whether it was truly a wrong done to her or not — that’s a matter for later. A person only lives one life; who knows where anyone’s karma will land.
The Huang family had long been in decline, living off what remained of their former means, and this settlement payment had come from selling the ancestral home through a broker in Yanjing.
Once this person left from the western district, returning would be harder than reaching the heavens.
Moreover, with such a large sum from selling the ancestral home now in their pockets, her two brothers — already poor at managing anything, let alone protecting the family’s wealth — were bound sooner or later to be swindled out of it by someone.
Miss Huang had calculated human nature and human hearts down to the very last detail.
Compared to her past life, Huo Qiqian admired such a woman more than anyone — she knew how to resist, and would never simply submit to fate.
Bai Ying smiled. “If it were me, with the money already in my pocket, I’d just sell it off once we reached Jindian — why bother going through all this trouble here at Xiaonan Mountain?”
Qiqian’er smiled, closed her eyes to rest for a moment, and before long a worker outside came to report that the shopkeepers from Xiaonan Mountain had arrived.
The side courtyard where Huo Qiqian was staying had an empty room set aside specifically to hold Miss Huang’s dowry.
As people entered the empty room, they opened the old lacquered chest decorated with a magpie-and-plum-branch design that Steward Sun’s pawnshop had collected, and Huo Qiqian, holding the ledger, went over the items with the shopkeepers one by one.
There were jackets, coats, and skirts made of gray squirrel fur, rabbit fur, and sheepskin.
There were plain silks and aged silks for single-layer garments, gauze skirts…
There was also fine cloth, solid-colored silks in various colors — two bolts each — lacquerware, pewter ware, and a set each of porcelain bearing the marks of old established Yanjing shops.
There were matching sets of miscellaneous wood furniture, plus thirty pieces of silver jewelry inlaid with gold. Two sets of bed curtains embroidered with magpie-and-blossom and hundred-child motifs, and six sets of padded bedding and quilts to fill it all out.
Piecing all these odds and ends together, it added up to a full eighteen carrying-poles’ worth of dowry.
That clerk had offered a betrothal gift of thirty strings of cash, and Miss Huang had prepared exactly thirty strings’ worth of goods in return — not a single copper more.
Though the goods had been purchased at Xiaonan Mountain, once carried into Jindian, they would be called Yanjing goods.
That was exactly the cleverness she had planned for.
Miss Huang still had over two hundred strings of cash remaining, but she had no intention of spending it, nor of letting it be known.
She had no natal family to return to; this money was the only thing she had to rely on. So she had it converted into small gold fish-shaped pieces and sewn them into the lining of her undergarments.
As the shopkeepers delivered the goods, Huo Qiqian checked each item against the list, and once counted, had Bai Ying wrap them in red cloth and tie them with red string before placing them in the chests.
Miss Huang knew how to handle people well — as soon as the goods arrived, Steward Sun came with a red paper dowry list already cut and prepared, sitting down to write out the dowry inventory for the young woman item by item.
After all, there were still more good-hearted people in this world than not.
Everyone was busy in a flurry of activity, and it wasn’t until the sky had grown hazy with dusk that Qiqian’er finally carried a large vermilion lacquer tray, covered in red cloth, to Miss Huang’s room.
Miss Huang, lost in thought again, stood up upon seeing Huo Qiqian and bowed in greeting. “You’ve gone to so much trouble for me again, sister.”
With Matron Zhu no longer present, her manners were quite proper and thorough.
Huo Qiqian smiled and urged her, “Enough of that, come now. There are outsiders around, after all — from tomorrow on, you’ll need to keep up appearances. You’ve already worn yourself out enough as it is, no need to exhaust yourself further with such formalities and give yourself away — that would only give that chattering matron something to gossip about. I could tell right away she’s the talkative type.”
Having said this, she set the tray down on the bed and waved Miss Huang over: “Come look, see what this is.”
Miss Huang hesitated, then walked over and opened the red cloth, and froze at once.
Beneath the cloth lay a complete set of grand red wedding robes embroidered with cloud-and-phoenix patterns, and on top of it several sprigs of red velvet flowers, along with a gleaming golden phoenix hairpin.
This was no ordinary bride’s garment — most brides wore something embroidered by their own hands, but this had clearly been purchased from an embroidery shop in the capital.
Miss Huang, startled, was about to ask when Qiqian’er spoke first: “Don’t ask me — I only arrived yesterday myself. Steward Sun asked me to tell you: the officials in the capital said they couldn’t give you justice in this case, but they urge you, whatever you do, not to carry this bitterness and resentment with you for the rest of your life — that would only be foolish.
They want you to live your life well. And since you have no parents either, they wanted to show their regard — so each of them contributed one string of cash to put together a wedding garment for you.”
She had barely finished speaking when Miss Huang began to cry…
Early the next morning, Matron Zhu was also up bright and early, lurking furtively by the post station gate like a thief, watching the workers carry out Miss Huang’s eighteen red-ribboned carrying-poles of dowry.
She watched, clicking her tongue in astonishment, then asked Qiqian’er in a sly, hushed voice: “Seventh Sister, tell me — with a dowry this large, this young lady doesn’t have some kind of problem, does she?”
Huo Qiqian glanced at her, gave a snort, and lowered her voice as well: “What problem? There’s no problem at all! It’s just that her parents died, and she was left with a useless brother and two heartless sisters-in-law, that’s all. And just look how shameless it is — her father-in-law gave thirty strings of cash, and she matched it exactly with thirty strings of dowry, not a copper more. What kind of person does that!”
Hearing this, Matron Zhu was utterly amazed. “What, matching what you’re given coin for coin, and that’s called shameless? Well now, you Yanjing folk really are something. This is already excellent, if you ask me! I don’t even know what virtue my old master accumulated to deserve this — he really struck it lucky, and still not satisfied? I’ll tell you, back where we’re from, the young master’s family only has this much standing to begin with!”
Huo Qiqian, mixing truth and fiction, finished putting her off, and when the time came, she helped bring out Huang Qiao’e from the courtyard, dressed in her cloud-and-phoenix wedding robes with the bridal veil covering her face.
The moment she stepped up into the carriage, Huang Qiao’e let out a soft sob. Qiqian’er patted her on the back. “Now, miss, from this day on, your life only goes upward. You mustn’t shed any more tears — it’s bad luck.”
Huang Qiao’e froze for a moment, then turned and knelt in a proper, formal bow of farewell to Yanjing before climbing into the carriage.
Their group traveled alongside twenty carts of medicinal goods bound for Jindian, with the merchant carts leading the way and their party following behind.
The new bride rode in her own carriage, while Huo Qiqian shared a carriage with Matron Zhu.
Once the carriages and horses were moving, Matron Zhu settled in and said to Huo Qiqian with a face full of regret: “So we’re really off now? Seventh Sister, this is rather sudden — everyone at home said, since I was coming all the way to Yanjing, I should at least go see the Golden Throne Hall where His Majesty the Emperor lives. My goodness, and it’s still hundreds of li away.”
Huo Qiqian smiled and comforted her: “There’s nothing to be done about it. If your family had only allotted a bit more, or if you’d been willing to spend more time waiting, why would we need to wait around here? Wouldn’t it have been far more dignified to set out properly from a residence in Yanjing?”
Matron Zhu looked a bit embarrassed, and being someone without much guile, she couldn’t help but blurt out: “Ah well, Seventh Sister, this isn’t really my fault — to be honest with you, I’m not even really from that household. I’m actually from Master Chen’s household under the Ordnance Bureau of the Provincial Administration Commission.”
Huo Qiqian was startled at this, and before she could ask further, the woman continued: “My master and mistress aren’t outsiders to your family either — actually, my mistress is your master’s cousin, on his mother’s side. It’s just that… you know how your household’s former mistress was, sickly and half-dead all the time, spending the family into ruin on medicine. Your master never got around to arranging anyone to look after things, so after searching high and low, the family sent me instead…”
Seeing that Huo Qiqian’s expression had darkened, she quickly added some reassuring words: “But don’t you dislike him for it — I’ll tell you, he’s changed positions now! He’s about to go serve under one of the Tan family’s own masters! I’m not exaggerating to you, the family spent a great deal of money to make that happen. Just endure a few hard years, and your young mistress will have good days ahead.”
Huo Qiqian’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
Matron Zhu beamed. “Really — I’ll tell you, here in Yanjing it’s the Emperor who has the final say, but in our Jindian, it’s the Tans who call the shots. No matter who you are, once you’re there, you can’t get anywhere without them!
Now, I know your master’s superior is just a minor branch relation, but it still counts for something, being connected to the Ordnance Bureau…”
She curled her hand into the shape of a copper coin, looking envious. “At most two years, and you’ll have a proper three-courtyard mansion set up in Aicheng, easy — commanding servants left and right will be nothing. By then, when your young mistress comes out, even her carriage will be made of gold…”