Yuan Niang caused Tong Shi to miscarry?

Shiyiniang was greatly astonished.

Even back in the days of the small courtyard, she had already noticed that the relationship between Xu Lingyi and Yuan Niang had reached a state of knife-against-blade, water-against-fire — completely irreconcilable.

A marriage reduced to this could not be the fault of any one person alone.

The Xu Lingyi of those years had achieved great things and stood in a position of high authority and power. The former would have made him confident in his own conduct — for this, after all, was precisely what had brought him success. Such a man would never doubt that his character or methods had any flaw or deficiency. And the latter meant he was surrounded by those who flattered and deferred to him, who in most circumstances would bend entirely to his preferences, allowing him to act as he wished without needing to consider anyone else’s expression. With such habits long ingrained, how would he have been willing to make concessions, to step back, to put himself out?

She had come into this marriage without any hope.

In a society where the husband was the absolute ruler of the wife, the only way not to drown in such a marriage was to adapt to him herself — he would never be the one to adapt to her.

Yet the way things had developed was somewhat beyond her expectations.

Xu Lingyi was not a petty or small-minded man. Though he spoke very little, if one said something reasonable, he was willing to listen.

She had always been quietly puzzled as to how his marriage to Yuan Niang had arrived at such a state. What irreconcilable rift had come between Xu Lingyi and Yuan Niang…

Could it be that the death of the pregnant Tong Yiniang was the root of it all?

The thought had barely surfaced before she immediately detected a large gap in Yi Yiniang’s account.

Setting aside Yi Yiniang’s current position and motivations entirely — just considering the circumstances of those days: Xu Lingyi was back at his ancestral home, his future uncertain, and Yuan Niang had no children of her own. By all common reasoning, the concubines carrying heirs would have been the ones protected by the entire household — for bearing a child was not merely a matter of Xu family succession; if Xu Lingyi had met with some accident during those three years of mourning, Yuan Niang would at least have had someone to depend on. In that turbulent and uncertain time, why would Yuan Niang have chosen to make a move?

Moreover, there had been Wen Yiniang and Qin Yiniang at the time as well. By comparison, though Wen Yiniang’s origins were also humble, they were still higher than those of Tong Yiniang and Qin Yiniang, who were both of bondmaid stock. If it was merely a matter of establishing authority, it would have made more sense to target Wen Yiniang — why single out only Tong Yiniang?

Shiyiniang suddenly recalled the time Xu Lingyi had spoken in his cups about feeling he had wronged Tong Yiniang…

Her thoughts felt scattered and unruly.

A possibility she had long overlooked began to press its way insistently to the surface.

Perhaps Tong Yiniang had held a particular significance for Xu Lingyi — and it was for this reason that Yuan Niang had been unable to tolerate her?

Shiyiniang found herself looking over at Yi Yiniang.

What she saw were two eyes, flushed red with urgency.

The sight jolted her like a bucket of cold water poured over her head — a chill that went through her to the bone.

What moment was this, and how had she allowed herself to speculate so wildly on nothing more than a few words from Yi Yiniang?

She reined in her emotions and quickly restored her reason.

Qin Yiniang was a bondmaid by origin — how could she have, right under the sharp and capable eyes of Nanny Tao, stirred the waters and brought about Tong Yiniang’s death? And how had she then managed to shift the blame onto Yuan Niang, who was already managing the household at that time?

A household full of servants and concubines of every faction and stripe — was there truly not a single trace of evidence?

And then there was the matter of the considerable standing Xu Lingyi had granted Qin Yiniang over all these years… Shiyiniang felt Yi Yiniang’s words were well worth scrutinizing.

“Yi Yiniang!” She regarded Yi Yiniang — now held at bay behind Hupo — with a faintly skeptical expression. “There is no need to try to take advantage of my youth and suppose I know nothing of those days and so speak however you please. My elder sister was broad-minded and generous by nature. And at that time, the Xu household was in a precarious and turbulent state — why would she go and harm a concubine…”

“Fourth Madam, I did not deceive you, I truly did not deceive you,” said Yi Yiniang, growing agitated at Shiyiniang’s skepticism. “Qin Yiniang herself told me this to my face!”

That Qin Yiniang, who told not even her own close attendant Cui’er the truth about things — would she have told Yi Yiniang of her own doings from those years and handed her a hold over herself?

Shiyiniang was deeply skeptical.

People in this world found it hardest to bear loneliness and isolation, and always sought some way to comfort themselves. Perhaps there truly was such a bond between Qin Yiniang and Yi Yiniang.

“I have said it before,” she continued, unhurried, “what you say must be backed by solid evidence to be credible.”

Seeing Shiyiniang’s expression soften slightly, Yi Yiniang’s heart leapt with a flicker of hope, and she said quickly: “Madam, think — if Qin Yiniang had not harmed Tong Yiniang, how is it that Qin Yiniang has been quietly keeping a perpetual lamp burning for Tong Yiniang at Ciyuan Temple for more than a decade? And why does she have a ritual performed every year during the Ghost Festival to pray for Tong Yiniang to be reborn, praying that the Bodhisattva will allow her to be reincarnated — and this without fail, year after year for decades? And every time we spoke of Tong Yiniang, she would go silent…”

These were things Shiyiniang did not know in full detail.

Yet they could not prove that Qin Yiniang had harmed Tong Yiniang.

“I have heard that Tong Yiniang entered the household two years before Qin Yiniang,” said Shiyiniang slowly, “and that after Qin Yiniang came to serve the Marquis, it was Tong Yiniang who took her under her wing — the two were extremely close. Tong Yiniang died a sudden and tragic death. Qin Yiniang’s hope that Tong Yiniang might be reborn quickly and find release from suffering, as a fulfillment of their sisterly bond, is not beyond reason. How can one say from this alone that Qin Yiniang killed Tong Yiniang?” And then: “You say Qin Yiniang once told you this herself — what were the exact circumstances? How did Qin Yiniang cause Tong Yiniang’s death, and how did she shift the blame to my elder sister? I imagine you know it all quite clearly. You had better explain it to me in detail — otherwise we will all just keep going round and round without a single thing that holds up to scrutiny.”

“I — I — I…”  Yi Yiniang’s gaze wavered.

Qin Yiniang was not the sort of person who trusted anyone but herself — how could she possibly have told Yi Yiniang any of this, thereby giving her something to use against her? If it had not been for the fact that Yi Yiniang had no children of her own, that the Third Madam treated people harshly, and that she had wanted to build up a nest egg for herself — she would not have been moved by Qin Yiniang’s offer of several hundred taels of silver to introduce her to the Daoist woman Zhu. She had originally thought that given Qin Yiniang’s careful and cautious nature, the matter would absolutely not be discovered — who could have imagined that Qin Yiniang would be so brazen as to act herself and go frighten the Young Master directly? And so things had come to this…

Now that everything had come to light, if she did not find a way to act, even if Xu Lingyi spared her life out of brotherly consideration and sent her to Shanyang, given her history with the Third Master, the Third Master would likely deal with her personally to give Xu Lingyi an account of things. Her only hope now was to stoke Shiyiniang’s animosity toward Qin Yiniang — so that when she shifted the blame onto Qin Yiniang, Shiyiniang might put in a word for her with Xu Lingyi. Given Xu Lingyi’s respect for his principal wife, perhaps she might still have a thread of hope.

Qin Yiniang had never said any such thing to her. How then could she produce solid evidence?

Yi Yiniang broke into a cold sweat.

In her desperation, she suddenly remembered something.

“Madam!” Like a drowning person clutching at a single piece of driftwood, she rallied herself. “The child Tong Yiniang lost was a boy!”

Shiyiniang’s face showed surprise.

This was something she was hearing for the very first time.

“A boy?”

In the most urgent time for the Xu family to have a son, a male heir had been lost through a miscarriage…

“That is correct!” Yi Yiniang, seeing Shiyiniang’s reaction, felt her heart fill with hope again. “If you do not believe me, you may ask the old dowager. The old dowager was there at the time. Second Madam also knows — she was there too. If Tong Yiniang’s child had been safely born, it would have been the eldest — where would there have been any place for Qin Yiniang? Qin Yiniang did this precisely because of that. Yes — that is exactly why she harmed Tong Yiniang.” Yi Yiniang spoke with growing certainty. “Qin Yiniang also pretended to show signs of a threatened pregnancy herself, and that is precisely why the old dowager sent her to Second Madam’s quarters, to be looked after personally by Second Madam.”

“At that time, Tong Yiniang was only four months along,” said Shiyiniang, watching her steadily. “How would Qin Yiniang have known the child was a boy?” And then: “If I recall correctly, the Third Madam was also with child at the time — and where was Yi Yiniang then? Doing what? Surely she had not stopped attending on the Third Madam? How would someone from the Third household have known the affairs of the Fourth household so clearly?”

Yi Yiniang’s temples were damp with perspiration.

“I — I heard it from our Third Madam,” she said, stumbling over the words. “The Third Madam said it was because of this that the old dowager always harbored some dissatisfaction toward the late Fourth Madam. She felt the late Fourth Madam had been shortsighted, narrow-hearted, without the capacity to accept others — that she only looked out for her own small household rather than the good of the whole family…” At this point she suddenly noticed Shiyiniang give a faint smile. Something flashed through her mind and she instantly felt she had said the wrong thing. She lost her tongue. “No — no — the old dowager, the old dowager’s regard for the late Fourth Madam, it was still — it was still quite good. She had all those who knew of Tong Yiniang’s punishment at the time dealt with, and later accompanied the late Fourth Madam in seeking physicians far and wide — and it was all that effort that eventually led to the Fourth Young Master being born…”

The scattered information in Yi Yiniang’s incoherent, self-contradicting words was revealing a great deal.

Shiyiniang’s mind raced. She gave a quiet “oh,” and cut her off coldly: “By what you have just said, it would seem my elder sister did indeed punish Tong Yiniang at some point, and Tong Yiniang’s miscarriage was directly connected to this?”

Another wrong thing said!

Yi Yiniang wished she could bite her own tongue off.

“It was not a punishment of Tong Yiniang,” she said in a fluster. “It was setting rules — establishing proper conduct for the concubines!”

“Utter nonsense,” said Shiyiniang, her expression sharpening, her gaze turned cold and cutting. “Setting rules for conduct could cause a child four months along to be lost? What manner of rules were those? Why was Wen Yiniang unharmed? Why was Qin Yiniang unharmed? Why was it only Tong Yiniang’s child that was lost?”

Yi Yiniang felt her heart pounding with alarm.

This Fourth Madam — they had had little direct dealings before, and she had not expected her to be so difficult to handle. These things that could not be explained clearly were best brushed past quickly — otherwise, to keep going round and round on this matter, where would it ever end?

Even as she weighed this in her mind, she was already crying out her grievance aloud: “Fourth Madam, Wen Yiniang was a properly elevated concubine who entered the household through proper ceremony. From the very beginning she was set up in the west wing of the rear courtyard, with maids and matrons assigned to wait on her — she was quite different from Tong Yiniang and Qin Yiniang, who were of bondmaid stock. Though Tong Yiniang was later elevated to the rank of concubine, she still shared the warm side-room with Qin Yiniang. It was only when she was with child that she and Qin Yiniang together moved to the east wing of the rear courtyard. Then, once three months had passed, she was made to stand at attention inside the room just as she had done when she was a bondmaid. These things, if others do not know, Nanny Tao would. Even if Nanny Tao hem and haw and refuses to say the truth outright, there is still Wen Yiniang — she was living in the west wing at the time. No one would know it more clearly than she!”