CH 60

Once women left their maiden rooms to get married, they went their own ways.

So when Ye Zhao revealed that she was a woman, all of Liu Xiyin’s hopes shattered. Even if she schemed to break up Ye Zhao and the vixen, the world would not allow her and Ye Zhao to stay together. So she had to seduce the vixen first, endure humiliation for the sake of her purpose, and marry into the house of the prince of Nanping; after that, her plan was to disregard her husband. Then she would be able to live harmoniously with her lover in the back courtyard harem, lie beneath the same red blankets, and stay forever together in conjugal bliss.

She’d thought, at first, that this pampered man of a vixen was no more than a lowlife aristocrat, who would fall into her trap with the slightest seduction. But even though he was given to appreciation, he wasn’t obsessed, and she tried three or four times without succeeding. She had had to engineer another kind of crisis and publicly behave in a way that made him take her in as a consort for the sake of her reputation. Once she had sweetly separated the couple, she would propagate rumors and ingratiate herself to Consort Dowager An. She was prepared for any eventuality; the vixen only had to say the word and accept her as his concubine. But the divorce letter, a single sheet of paper, had ruined all her plans.

Liu Xiyin, on the brink of despair, was crying so much that she almost couldn’t breathe.

Xia Yujin collapsed in his grand tutor chair, limp. There were black spots dancing in front of his eyes and he couldn’t articulate a single word, his mind blank. Only the word “vixen” went round and round in his mind.

Ye Zhao was dumbstruck, lost in the earth-shattering revelation. After a long time, she asked, “How did it come to this?”

“Don’t you like me?” Liu Xiyin asked sorrowfully.

Ye Zhao nodded.

Though Liu Xiyin wasn’t as stunning as she was now when they were children, she’d been a fair little girl, clever and sensible but very tenacious deep down and obsessed with the things that she liked. In the process of learning how to dance, she was quite brilliant and rebellious. When she was beaten by her father, she lay in bed, her tears flowing freely, but she never uttered a word and she never admitted her wrong. Ye Zhao admired her toughness and, for the longest time, put her first in her heart and amused herself by holding tight onto her.

“Didn’t you kiss me?” Liu Xiyin asked again.

When Ye Zhao was young and dissipated, she considered herself a man outside of her home. Following her noble friends’ examples, she learned to take liberties with women and Liu Xiyin, who blushed easily, was an easy practice target. And every time she was taken advantage of, she turned embarrassed and shy, angry and sulking. Because she wasn’t a man, Ye Zhao’s elders had never been very aware of it, nor did they particularly care about it. They firmly dragged her over to lecture her a few times, and forced her to apologize and make it up to her cousin.

“Didn’t you promise to marry me?” Liu Xiyin asked once more.

Ye Zhao stiffened. She stalled for a long time, and guiltily replied, “You were only a child then, that was only a joke. I…”

She finally remembered herself at twelve years old. Eight-years-old Liu Xiyin was lying in bed, recovering from the beating she’d received for dancing, so Ye Zhao sneaked in to distract her. She’d seen her cousin agitated and constantly crying, concerned about the injuries on her back from the staff and fearing that they would leave marks.

“What’re you crying about?” Ye Zhao asked her, puzzled. “It’s just a small wound and not even on your face. Who’s going to see it?”

Sobbing, Liu Xiyin replied, “Mother said that my husband won’t want me if it scars.”

Half wishing to cheer up her cousin, half indifferent, Ye Zhao flippantly said, “If that man doesn’t want you, then forget him. At worst, I’ll marry you.”

Liu Xiyin stared at Ye Zhao for a long time, astonished. “You’ll still marry me if I become ugly?” she tentatively asked, having stopped crying.

Ye Zhao, who was trying hard to learn libertine ways, had just been confessed to by her favorite cousin. Brain empty, she patted her chest and immediately replied, “I will!”

Was this right?

She looked at the concern in Ye Zhao’s light glass-colored eyes and the smile on her face, brighter than the sun, which illuminated the dark bedroom.

Feeling troubled, Liu Xiyin quickly lowered her head and hugged the brocade quilt, her face boiling.

Since that day, her feelings propped up madly like weeds in the spring, impossible to stop now that they had sprouted.

Every time she remembered her face, her own would flush and her pulse would quicken, even if she didn’t dare look too much.

Her mother said that the most important thing for a woman was to find herself a good husband.

She was convinced that she had found the best husband in the world.

Never, in this life, and until the end of time, will I marry anyone else but you.[1]

Her paternal grandmother took her along to her paternal uncle’s house, to sweeten her temper with her fellow cousins.

She cried the whole trip in her carriage, and no one could cheer her up.

The city in the Northern Desert had fallen, and both her parents died. She and her grandmother escaped by chance. She cried herself hoarse in the mourning hall, barely twelve years old, in her plain white garments. Ye Zhao didn’t come to see her. Before she left to march the army out on campaign, she merely sent someone to deliver Liu Xiyin a letter, which read: I will avenge your hatred.

Holding that letter, she wiped dry her tears.

The war in the Northern Desert was already as bitter as the asura realm. Soldiers all wagered their lives. She had no time for tears.

Ye Zhao — ah, Ye Zhao…

Always walking the earth, dining on wind and dew, did your hunger ever abate?

In this world of ice and snow, water running along your silver armor, were your winter clothes sufficient?

Through the mountains of corpses, the rivers of blood, were you safe and sound?

Mustering her courage, she visited every lady’s room in every house, every courtyard, and asked for their help with her soft words, laying out her arguments, moving their feelings, calling to their reason. She took the lead by selling off her dowry for military supplies and provisions, sending cart after cart to the front. She lit up her oil lamps, picked the needle and thread she wasn’t familiar with, and toiled days and nights sewing winter clothes. She sent them all to the barracks, from those with crooked stitches and uneven sleeves to the beautiful and neat ones, each piece padded thick with cotton wadding. She did all this to share Ye Zhao’s worries and relieve her burden.

Every time she received a military report from the Northern Desert, her heart rose up in her throat. She ate without tasting the food, unable to sleep soundly at night, in fear of receiving the worst news. When she heard that Ye Zhao had been wounded to the back and had collapsed, seriously injured, her whole body went numb. She hated that she couldn’t rush to the battlefield and fight at her side. But she knew that Ye Zhao wouldn’t like it. How insignificant was a child’s love in the face of a cruel war? She could only keep strong, and quietly support her by sending her the best pieces of silk and medicine to tend to the injuries. On a corner of the silk handkerchief, she embroidered: I give my lord this embroidered handkerchief. One stroke is thread, the other is thread as well,[2] a show of her deep affection. When Ye Zhao received it, she replied with a short note, which read: I’m fine. Your handkerchief is very beautiful, thank you. Holding the note, Liu Xiyin felt so happy that she didn’t sleep for seven or eight nights.

When the war settled down, her eldest uncle, who knew her feelings, said that Liu Xiyin, the best of daughters, was worthy of the Great General and decided that he would fix hers and Ye Zhao’s marriage. She thought her long-cherished wish had come true. Unexpectedly, it did not last; her uncle changed his plan, and had her aunt choose a husband for her among the local young men of talent.

She did not agree.

Her aunt stammeringly tried to persuade her. “No one knows when the war will end. I’m afraid you’ll end up an old maid. You should marry someone else.”

“I will wait, no matter how long!” Liu Xiyin declared grandly.

Her aunt falteringly tried to persuade her. “Besides, the army is in dire straits. Who knows what tomorrow holds? And she… She isn’t a good match for you.”[3]

“In life I, Liu Xiyin, shall be Ye Zhao’s wife!” Liu Xiyin pledged to the sky. “In death, I shall be the ghost of Ye Zhao’s wife. If she lives, I will marry her! If she is injured, I will tend to her! If she dies, I will be her widow for the rest of my life!”

However her uncle and aunt argued with her, in the end they had no choice but to let it go.

In the courtyard, the peach trees bloomed and withered, withered and bloomed, the flowers blossoming and fading.

The young lass had become a young woman.

She firmly believed that her husband would return from the battlefield when the hostilities stopped. Mounted on his white horse, its four hooves treading on snow[4] and speeding like lightning, he would come to her house. With peach blossoms raining down around his horse, he would softly pull her by the hand and, with the brightest smile, say, “I’m back.” And then, the bridal sedan, the oboe and the trumpets, and he would make her his wife. They would stay together for the rest of time, never to be separated.

Everyday she looked to the north, in foolish wait, with foolish hope.

She waited for a month, then another. She hoped for a year, then another.

She only waited.

One careless word; a lifetime of hurt.

That poem almost did me in.

[1 ↑] The original Chinese uses the character 卿 qīng, which was used as a term of endearment between spouses.

[2 ↑] A reference to a folk song collected by Feng Menglong in the late Ming dynasty in his Mountain Songs《山歌》. I could not find a translation of this particular song even though I found some for other folk songs compiled by Feng Menglong, so I slapped something up myself. I was helped by this Zhidao Baidu thread. Roughly, the whole thing goes:

[3 ↑] He (他) and she (她) are pronounced the same way in Chinese (tā). In the following dialogue, Liu Xiyin and her aunt both use “she.” I don’t think either of them is supposed to know that Ye Zhao is a woman yet, so I think it’s only to reflect the readers’ point of view (with knowledge that Ye Zhao is a woman) rather than what the characters know, since Liu Xiyin will refer to Ye Zhao as her “husband” in a few paragraphs. Or it’s a mistake.

[4 ↑] This is what Taxue’s name means.