Minglan was draped over the side of the carriage, retching out the last of what her stomach had to offer, then flipped herself over onto the soft cushioning of the bed-carriage and lay there in a heap. Grandmother Sheng lovingly stroked her small face. In just a few days, Minglan’s perpetually baby-soft roundness had rapidly begun to melt away. Grandmother Sheng had never doubted that her plump little granddaughter would eventually grow willowy — she had simply guessed the ending without guessing the process.
Little Minglan’s carriage sickness was of the ground-heaving variety. She was seeing double of everything, calling out to Nanny Fang and addressing her as “Grandmother,” and telling Old Zhang the coachman that Nanny Cui had grown a beard. Grandmother Sheng was greatly pained by this and spent the entire journey with Minglan cradled in her lap so she could sleep.
On the day of the commotion at the Yu residence, the moment Minglan returned home she was placed under house arrest by Grandmother Sheng, along with a ban on outings and a punishment of copying Buddhist scriptures. Grandmother Sheng asked: did she know what she had done wrong? Minglan nodded honestly: yes — she had been too showy about it.
She went on copying scriptures right up until the day of departure. She never had another chance to see Yan Ran, as the Yu residence was being kept under close guard, nothing going in or out. All that was known outside was that Yan Ran had fallen gravely ill, and that the proposed marriage to the Gu family had been “postponed.”
Seeing the black storm-cloud expression on Grandmother’s face, Minglan had not dared to offer any defense. It was only after boarding the carriage, when Grandmother saw how badly Minglan was suffering from the motion sickness and softened somewhat, that Minglan ventured to mumble her case between bouts of retching: “…Grandmother, please think about it — do you really think your granddaughter would be foolish enough to simply blunder in?”
In her previous life, the head judge she had worked under — after many years of experience handling cases of people thrown into black-site kilns — had arrived at one remarkably profound conclusion: some things that look very safe are actually very dangerous; some things that look very dangerous are actually very safe.
First: she had done a good deed without leaving her name. As long as the Yu household servants did not go blabbing about it, Man Niang could be scolded for half a day without ever knowing who her scolders were. Besides, this was not an affair that reflected well on the Yu household — they would certainly keep a lid on it. And even Man Niang’s performance, right alongside Minglan’s, would not be allowed to leak through the servants. Moreover, the Sheng family was about to move away, while Elder Yu’s family was staying in Dengzhou for retirement. Once they reached the capital, or wherever Sheng Hong was posted next, the matter would be irrelevant.
Grandmother Sheng’s expression did not change: “Why did you need to step in at all? When all is said and done, that was the Yu family’s affair.”
That remark struck precisely at the heart of it. The thin, childish face of Minglan — growing ever more delicate in illness — went suddenly still. After a long pause, she sighed, in the manner of someone far older than her years: “To be born a woman in this life is to keep a constant watch over one’s words and conduct, never giving others the slightest handhold to use against you. And yet… what sort of life is that to live? Every step bound by propriety, every word measured against decorum. From the moment you open your eyes in the morning to the moment you lie down at night — every hour spent calculating advantage and consequence. Your granddaughter truly dislikes living that way. It is nothing but enduring one empty day after another, like a puppet of wood. Your granddaughter wants, just occasionally… just that one time… to be able to do what she truly wants to do, to say what she truly wants to say… Grandmother, Minglan knows she was wrong.”
Minglan lay in her grandmother’s arms, her spirits very low. If one were honest, it was less that she had acted out of a desire to show off, and more that she had recognized a kindred spirit. When she saw someone like Yan Ran — whose grandfather was still alive and well — whose father would nonetheless be willing to sacrifice a daughter’s happiness for the sake of social advancement, she could not help but wonder: what about herself? If one day her own father found it advantageous to sacrifice a daughter’s marriage, would Grandmother Sheng be able to make the final call on her behalf? In this world, a girl’s fate was as rootless and adrift as a water lily. And yet — for the sake of a life of security and comfort — must one sacrifice every quality and principle, enduring and yielding and even resorting to falseness and cunning?
Grandmother Sheng too fell quiet, stroking Minglan’s fine, dark hair where it had come loose from its pins, soft as raven feathers. Truth be told, Grandmother Yu had later come personally to offer her thanks, praising Minglan warmly — saying she had a heart that rushed to another’s aid, a true spirit of chivalry, and that Yan Ran was lucky to have such a friend in her life. Grandmother Sheng also knew that the matter itself had caused no lasting damage — she had only wanted to temper Minglan’s edge a little, so that in the future, that sharpness would not wound her.
Since Minglan had already confessed her fault and served her punishment, and since her reform had been in good progress, Grandmother Sheng lifted the news blackout:
Yan Ran’s marriage prospects had turned around after all. Elder Yu had a longstanding ailment of accumulated phlegm. On the day of the great disturbance, when he had coughed up a mouthful of blood mixed with congested phlegm, it had, in a paradox of misfortune, helped to clear a blocked meridian. After his recovery, Elder Yu moved swiftly and decisively, with the speed of thunder in his ear, and arranged a new marriage for Yan Ran through an old friend and former associate. The match was not brilliant — not compared to Hualan’s — but it was far from disastrous — certainly compared to being married to the second young master of the Gu family.
The prospective family lived far away in Dali, Yunnan — from the distinguished Duan family of that region, some several-times-removed legitimate grandson, considerably older than Yan Ran. By all accounts he was a decent man. The reason he had not yet found a match he was satisfied with was a leg injury: he had broken his leg as a child and could not walk with ease, and so could not enter officialdom.
This time, Elder Yu was completely resolute. He struck fast and without mercy — ordering his son to send money immediately for the trousseau, threatening that any further protest would result in the ancestral hall being opened and the son expelled from the family register. By the time Minglan departed on her journey, the Duan family had just received the formal betrothal gifts from the Yu family.
“…That’s actually good,” Minglan told herself, making a determined effort to find the bright side. “Even without an official post, there’s medicine, trade, property management — so much he could do! As long as he is good to Yan Ran Sister, that’s what matters most.” Thinking of Yan Ran finally escaping the snare, Minglan cheered up and clapped her hands: “Now the Ningyuan Marquessate has to go looking for a match all over again — the matchmakers of the capital must be doing excellent business!”
“They need not look further,” Grandmother Sheng said, in a weighted tone. “Yan Ran’s father has already promised her younger half-sister. Once she comes of age, she will be married over.”
Minglan was stunned into silence. A wave of righteous indignation surged through her — she could have clenched her fists and gone out to run laps of the yard, or hurled a few bitter curses at the heavens. But after a long moment, a wave of dizziness and nausea came over her instead, and she turned her head away, reaching for an empty basin to retch into.
Southward, ever southward. The carriage wheels rolled on. The late August air in the north was cool and refreshing, the sky high and the blue vast. Minglan’s carriage sickness remained faithful and constant. To help pass the time and lift her spirits, or perhaps because being away from home lifted everyone’s mood, Nanny Fang began telling Minglan stories: “Young miss, don’t blame Grandmother for punishing you — she did it for your own good. A woman who wants to live well in this life — the path to it is a wide and complicated one.”
Taking advantage of Grandmother Sheng resting in the other carriage, Nanny Fang sat in the carriage watching over Minglan — smoothing her blanket, fluffing her pillow — and chattered on at a comfortable, easy pace.
Nanny Fang’s gift for theory was somewhat limited, but she made up for it with decades of firsthand experience and real-life examples. According to her hard-won wisdom, a woman’s fate in this life came down to three things: the luck of one’s birth, the turn of one’s fortune, and the skill of one’s own hand. Possess any two of those three, and a woman could pass her days in peace and comfort.
Take Grandmother Yu as an example. In her early years she had been born to a distinguished family of Shandong scholars — warm parents, strict principles, a very good lot in life. The husband she was matched to was her father’s favorite pupil, who felt deep gratitude toward the teacher who had recognized and cultivated him in his poverty, and who had honored him further by giving him his daughter. He remained devoted to Grandmother Yu for the entirety of their lives. Even as his career prospered and soared, he did not change — husband and wife were steadfast companions until white-haired old age. Grandmother Yu’s fortune, too, had been very good.
With both of those in hand, Grandmother Yu had no need of any particular fighting ability. One could say that she had never truly faced great storms or hardship — she had never needed to scheme or maneuver. She was a fortunate soul raised in a greenhouse. Which is precisely why — as Nanny Fang noted — she could not manage Yan Ran’s stepmother, and sometimes Elder Yu himself had to step in to discipline his daughter-in-law.
“Ah — but what does it matter if you lack skill, when a person is lucky enough in birth and fortune?” Nanny Fang sighed with feeling.
Minglan was rapt — this was better than any storyteller.
“It seems that having good parents truly matters a great deal! If your mother and father are good, that’s already more than half the battle!” Minglan reflected sincerely, with genuine admiration for Grandmother Yu’s parents and their eye for a son-in-law. But Nanny Fang did not quite agree: “That’s not entirely so, either. Yan Ran Miss lost her mother when she was barely born, and her father’s heart was never in the right place — yet she has Elder Yu and the old madam watching over her. If she has some ability of her own, she can still build a life for herself. The worry is… that she might take after Grandmother Yu too much!”
“Is that so?” Minglan rejected vague theorizing and demanded concrete examples.
Nanny Fang cheerfully held herself up as the case study — and there was not a little pride in it as she told the tale.
She had been born to a poor and struggling farming family. Her father was chronically ill. Before she was seven years old, she had not eaten a single proper meal. Her mother, at her wits’ end, sold her to a trafficker, who later sold her into the household of the Yongyi Marquessate. Her lot in life, one had to say, was not kind at all.
But once inside the Marquessate, she had been diligent and honest, and was soon selected to serve beside the young lady of the household. From there, through sheer determination and unflagging effort, she mastered writing, calculation, embroidery, and household management — serving her mistress with a whole heart and never a divided mind. In the end she rose to the position of First-Rank Senior Maid to the eldest daughter of the Xu household. When she later came as part of the bridal retinue into the Sheng family, Grandmother Sheng arranged for her to marry a household steward. Together they left servitude and made their own way in the world. In time, their family was prosperous and their descendants many: one son had passed the county examination and opened a private school; another ran several shops; a third had purchased land and become a small landlord.
“Nanny has truly had good fortune! A good person truly does meet good reward,” Minglan said, growing ever more alert the longer she listened.
Nanny Fang smiled gently and shook her head: “Being good alone is not enough. When I knew I was likely to be sold, I worked day and night and saved up a few coins of my own to give to the trafficker, begging him desperately to sell me to a good household. I was fortunate — he turned out to be an honest man, and through that good luck I had the chance to meet Grandmother. It was because I was willing to take on more than my share of the work in the Marquessate that the old Marquess and his wife took notice of me. And in the end, it was because I pushed my husband to go out and make something of himself that our children have good lives today. As for me now — I serve Grandmother one day at a time, keeping her company and giving her someone to talk to. When I am too old to go on, I’ll go home and hold my grandchildren!”
After her husband died in middle age, she had seen her children all settled, and not wanting to leave Grandmother Sheng alone, had re-entered the Sheng household to serve — saying she wished to honor the bond between mistress and servant to its end. Her children and grandchildren were deeply filial, and came every year and every holiday begging her to come home and enjoy her old age in comfort. Nanny Fang simply would not go.
Minglan was astonished. Here was a living, breathing model of hard-won success! The admiration she felt looking at Nanny Fang was very real indeed. She had started with an unkind lot, but through fortune and skill, she had built a life that was a triumph.
Nanny Fang was not, as a rule, a talkative woman — she spoke carefully and measured her words. That she had been chatting on like this for days told Minglan that this was intended for her ears. She, too, had not had a fortunate birth: a father who did not cherish her, a mother lost too soon, and a concubine’s daughter to boot. But her fortune had been good — she had received her grandmother’s love and care. That, however, was not enough. She needed to rise to it herself.
The warm reception of her audience seemed to inspire Nanny Fang, and she told stories every day — one thing leading to another, a whole treasury of old tales and glimpsed histories, told to Minglan like serialized installments. While she spoke, Danju stood guard outside the carriage curtain — no idle visitors permitted. Some parts were told in detail, with Nanny Fang offering her own commentary along the way. Other parts were left deliberately vague, for Minglan to work out on her own.
Pressed by Minglan’s persistent questioning, Nanny Fang finally sighed and said: “…People say our Grandmother is formidable — that she kept her husband from taking concubines, that she was always fighting and threatening. But think about it — your father exists just fine, doesn’t he? Where Grandmother truly lost out was this: she had the reputation of being fierce, but in truth no one’s heart was kinder than hers! She was honest and straightforward, always taking her disputes directly to the master — but she never thought to guard against the underhanded scheming of the lowly and petty. It cost her her son… and broke her heart.”
Recalling those old events, Nanny Fang let out a long sigh, and tears came to her eyes. She then caught Minglan’s arm and said: “Grandmother was also angry at you for stepping in at the Yu residence — but it was out of care. You must know: a woman’s true strength must live in the heart. To show it on the surface is to invite trouble — people will slander you, and in the end it won’t even help. The more truly capable she is, the less it ever shows on her face!”
“I truly know I was wrong,” Minglan said quietly. And this time, she meant it.
Seeing that Minglan had understood Grandmother’s good intentions, Nanny Fang’s spirits lifted and she began enthusiastically telling Minglan about a model example: “That young lady — well, she’s not so young now, she must be getting on in years — she was not exceptional in family background or looks, and her husband was not as talented as your grandfather. He was the wandering sort, too. Yet she, all these years, has kept that man of hers well in hand — not a single concubine’s child to speak of! I hear that now in their old age, the few old concubines are nowhere to be seen, and the old husband and wife are apparently very much at peace with each other and quite happy.”
Minglan was deeply wistful at the thought. It must have been due to the bad luck of talking behind people’s backs — because within a few days, she came face to face with this very woman whom Nanny Fang had spoken of with such glowing admiration.
The carriage reached the Jing-Jin river crossing, where they had to disembark and board a boat to continue south by water. They happened to encounter the He household, also making their way south to Jinling by the same vessel. When He’s Grandmother pulled back the curtain to look out and spotted the mark of the Sheng family’s carriage, she sent someone over to make inquiries. The two groups exchanged a few words, and without any need for a blood oath or formal verification, two old women who had not seen each other in nearly half a lifetime fell into each other’s arms, laughing and weeping at once.
He’s Grandmother’s hair was still jet black, her figure full and rounded, her complexion rosy and hale. Her face was well-lined — but almost entirely with laugh-lines. She smiled broadly at everyone she met, her nature warm and open. She took one look at Minglan, declared her adorably pretty, pulled her close and kissed her on the cheek several times, and then pressed a weighty little sachet into her hand as a first-meeting gift — inside it, a generous quantity of gold nuggets and a pair of white jade peace pendants.
Minglan was stunned speechless on the spot. She had expected this legendary woman to have the manner of one of those grand and imperious matriarchs. Instead she turned out to be the picture of a cheerful, easygoing country grandmother. By all accounts she was only two years younger than Grandmother Sheng — yet she somehow looked a full decade the junior.
“Nanny, are you sure you have the right person? She doesn’t seem like it at all,” Minglan clutched the sachet, her earlier convictions already wobbling, and whispered to Nanny Fang when no one was around. Nanny Fang beamed and whispered back: “If someone only puts on a good face but is rotten and vile inside, it doesn’t just chip away at virtue — it’s exhausting to keep up for a lifetime. Look well at this old madam, young miss — this is what real skill looks like. Living her days bright and cheerful, never letting anything fester in her heart. She will outlast them all!”
He’s Grandmother was wonderful company — the moment Grandmother Sheng saw her, she began laughing freely. Grandmother Sheng decided on the spot that the two families would share a boat.
“Old sister, I was waiting to hear those words! I set out in such a hurry this time that I didn’t arrange a boat in advance.” He’s Grandmother clapped her own chest in relief, then turned and called out: “Quick — go and call Young Master Hong back. Tell him we have a boat now! Tell him his grandmother came through — one look around and she found herself an old sister with a boat!”
Everyone in the room laughed heartily. Grandmother Sheng gave her a good mock-scolding slap: “A grandmother already, and still this undignified! Don’t let her corrupt my little granddaughter, you incorrigible old thing!”
Minglan, who had just finished her most recent round of sickness and was beginning to revive somewhat, sat nestled close beside Grandmother Sheng, chiming in helpfully: “Grandmother is known to be twice as effective as one ordinary person.”
He’s Grandmother laughed so hard she leaned back, and then pulled Minglan in for another kiss, teasing Grandmother Sheng: “Your child is wonderful — she might as well be my own granddaughter. While my own wretched little offspring is the very spit of you — that same air of dignified reserve!”
While they were still talking, a matron from the He household entered and announced respectfully: “Seventh Young Master has returned.” He’s Grandmother said quickly: “Good — have him come in and pay his respects!” The curtain lifted, and a tall, slender young man stepped calmly inside, bowing low in greeting. Grandmother Sheng quickly called for someone to help him up. When he raised his head, Minglan finally got a clear look at him.
A young man of fourteen or fifteen: a fair complexion, straight brows, clear eyes — not as beautiful as Qi Heng, but possessed of a deep and unmistakable scholarly quality. His bearing was composed and dignified. Despite the He family’s easy wealth and comfort, he was dressed only in a plain and simple smooth silk robe. Save for a piece of green jade suspended at his waist on a decorative cord, he wore not a single ornament. Once introductions of seniority and kinship had been exchanged, everyone took their seats.
“This is your Sheng Family little sister — Little Ming.” He’s Grandmother made the introduction with her usual informality, using the nickname Grandmother Sheng commonly called Minglan at home. “And this is my grandson Hong’er — a few years older than you.”
He Hong looked at the little girl sitting beside Grandmother Sheng — exquisitely pretty as a carved jade figurine, eyebrows curved and eyes bright with a sweet, artless expression, yet visibly frail and looking rather unwell. Before he had quite thought about it, he said: “Little Ming younger sister — please do not eat too many of those preserved plums. They are hard on the spleen and stomach.”
Minglan was caught entirely off guard by being addressed. She froze for a moment, looked at the box of preserved plums she was holding, looked at Grandmother Sheng, looked back at the young man, and was suddenly aware of the faint, clean scent of herbs and medicinal herbs that hovered around him. She said, in a bit of a daze: “These were meant for you — to help with fatigue… ah. In that case, you’d best not eat them.”