Oh, she knew all about rooms! How every object becomes intimate: a favourite vase where one arranges and re-arranges flowers, never content with the result; or the silken covers of a divan, its colours and textures; sounds, too, maids on their rounds clattering buckets, splashes of dripping rain, the silence of snow.
One became sensitive, just as she had learned the rustling language of the mulberry tree behind Father and Mother’s house as a little girl. A wise tree, witness to a dozen generations. Each autumn Mother had sold its leaves to a silk-worm merchant.
Lu Ying listened to Dr Shih’s house. It was a quiet, achingly dull sort of place. In the room next door Lord Yun was muttering. The fat apprentice could be heard whistling as he visited the storeroom they used for chamber pots. No doubt they sold the household waste to a dung merchant. Anything for a little
cash
. This brought an unpleasant idea. Henceforth she would throw her own into the canal beneath her window, even though it was illegal, because the common people used it for drinking water. No one in this place must ever conceive of her as like them.
Lifting the curtain a little, Lu Ying looked out furtively. On the opposite bank of the canal, a girl with absurdly large jade mountains was yawning and stretching outside Ping’s Floating Oriole Hall. The girl offended her, though she could not say why.
Lu Ying let the curtain fall and returned gracefully to her seat. One’s deportment must be ineffably elegant. One should act as though being constantly observed. In the Pacification Commissioner’s mansion, there had been enough spy holes to make that probable, day or night.
She resorted to her favourite cure for low spirits.
The porcelain pots and jars of cosmetics were half-empty, though she contrived a hundred ways to spare them. When Lu Ying first came to Apricot Corner Court, following Dr Shih in a hired carriage, her supplies of make-up had seemed plentiful.
After all, it would not be long before Wang Ting-bo summoned her home. Everyone knew he could not live without her. She could recall a thousand instances of power, it was why people feared her. But days became a week, then a month, and her stock seemed less secure.
Lu Ying held back from a letter requesting fresh supplies, though Wang Ting-bo could hardly refuse. She understood the situation perfectly. In a moment of weakness he had made an absurd oath, manipulated by that fox-fairy of a First Wife.
Given his position, a decent interval must pass before her recall. After all, he was no use to anyone if he failed to maintain his standing. She had been willing to smile obediently and play along, for a while.
Thirty days into her banishment, the joke tasted vinegary. Lu Ying found herself walking up and down a room crowded with boxes of clothes and knick-knacks. So little space, one could hardly find the most necessary things. Every dawn brought the certainty of a summons back to Peacock Hill. She dressed and applied make-up, sure the evening would find her in his company. When that happened, Lu Ying was determined to be gay and delightful, to disguise reproach, to pour joy through his eyes and mouth. After that, how his wife and scheming nephew would pay! She had learned all their harsh tricks now.
If only Wang Ting-bo possessed more virility, more essence of
yang
! Despite First Wife and half a dozen concubines he had only managed a single son. When she returned to Peacock Hill, everything would change. Reputable magicians and doctors would be consulted until boys were conceived one after another. . .
In the meantime she must wait. Dragging hours became an enemy one could only oppose with frustration. She was used to loneliness. Was not everyone alone? But however hard Lu Ying tried to avoid the fact – and indeed she struggled – Wang Ting-bo had assigned her to a mere doctor, a quack lacking even a degree from the Imperial Medical Academy. It was incomprehensible. And the petty neglects she suffered! To be obliged to eat when Dr Shih’s household ate, even if that meant a tray brought to her room. (She refused to accept food under any other circumstances). And what food it was!
Her pride felt like a delicate painting lying in scraps on the floor. But the more she suffered to maintain Wang Ting-bo’s face, the greater would be her reward.
So she applied make-up to feel better, painting her own face white, paying particular attention to her neck. Soon she was pale as a ghost. The mirror revealed a strange, frightened mask.
Grief rather than beauty.
Lu Ying turned to her eyes, darkening lashes and lids with blends of kohl, traces of rouge. The eyes in the mirror blinked.
She tried several smiles. Broad and thin, decorously amused, a saucy arch of the lips. Her expression reverted to hardness and she made it playful again. Rouge brought life to her cheeks, followed by a reckless dose of fragrance.
For a long while she stared at her reflection. Then she paced up and down, waiting for Wang Ting-bo’s knock on the door.
The make-up might summon him like a spell or charm.
At once, she felt a thrill of power. He would re-discover her loveliness and gasp! She almost heard him swearing to divorce his wife and make her. . . she dared not think what.
Lu Ying grew aware tears were ruining her perfect make-up.
Always she had been stupid! Clever, dainty women wrote noble letters or poems to express their grief at being abandoned. She was stupid, walking up and down this tawdry room. Then Lu Ying realised she must remind Wang Ting-bo of her existence.
She must send a splendid present. A fine gift to rekindle the joys he had abandoned.
Lu Ying heard a boat passing on the canal beneath her window. A voice called out in gentle mockery and oars creaked.
It was the spring-water seller returning; his wares soon sold in the market place. Oh, she must not surrender to the loneliness enveloping her like fog! Too easy to grant intimacy to someone comforting.
The brightness of day softened into evening, then night, until she was forced to wash away her precious mask, for it made her skin itch.
*
A headache woke Lu Ying from painful dreams. She had been back on Peacock Hill, obliged to bow while First Wife admonished her in an exasperated drawl. Her heart beat quickly until she recognised the plain room in Apricot Corner Court and she rubbed a throbbing pulse on her forehead.
Lu Ying recalled this was a doctor’s house. Well then, let him practise his trade. She had plenty of money for a fee. Wang Ting-bo had filled a whole lacquered box with
cash
before she left the palace.
As ever, preparations were necessary. An hour later, Lu Ying shuffled into the corridor on silken slippers, wincing extravagantly. At once she encountered the doctor’s father, a fine-looking old man, furtively creeping down the steep staircase from the tower room. He looked uneasy, then puffed out his chest.
‘My fellow prisoner is well, I trust?’ said Lord Yun.
Lu Ying massaged her forehead without touching the skin, in case it smeared her make-up.
‘I do not know if Lord Yun finds me quite well,’ she said, pouting.
She knew the story of his rescue from the Mongols and remembered glimpsing the old man’s saviour, the one they called Captain Xiao, a most attractive fellow, stronger and broader chested than the doctor who so closely resembled him.
But Lu Ying had never favoured military types – though she suspected their simplicity might be intriguing.
Lord Yun seemed not to have heard.
‘I have been spying out the extent of our prison,’ he whispered. ‘It is a remarkably common place.’
Then he examined her in a way she found unpleasant.
‘I know how to make a lovely lady better,’ he said. ‘But Bayke will not allow it.’
She bowed, remembering the warning that Lord Yun’s mind was not whole, and shuffled to Dr Shih’s shop. Here, Madam Cao was filling out a ledger of accounts. There was no sign of Dr Shih.
‘Madam Cao,’ she said, plaintively. ‘I would not interrupt you, except for my extreme discomfort.’
Cao blinked at her, a brush laden with ink poised above the ledger. Reluctantly, she laid it on the wooden rest.
‘Is Dr Shih available for a consultation?’ Lu Ying asked.
‘He’s occupied at the North Medical Relief Bureau.’
‘Oh.’
The name meant nothing to her guest, as Cao evidently realised, for she said: ‘It is a place for poor people when they are sick.’
Lu Ying considered such an idea.
‘How do they pay for their medicine?’ she asked.
‘They don’t. It is done by charity.’
‘How strange.’
She recollected the vanished days before she joined Wang Ting-bo’s household. There had been nothing like that in the village. When poor people fell sick they either died or recovered.
‘So who pays the honourable doctor for his services?’
‘The Prefecture, though I can assure you, it’s little enough.
My husband does the work because he likes to see people happy. Even low people.’
Lu Ying detected a hint of reproach in Madam Cao’s voice.
It reminded her of First Wife.
‘How strange,’ she repeated, with an edge of coldness.
Cao lifted her eyebrows.
‘What is your extreme discomfort?’ she asked.
‘I will await Dr Shih’s return,’ said Lu Ying, haughtily. ‘Pray inform him that I am indisposed. Naturally, I will pay his usual fee.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m sure my husband will not require it,’ said Cao. ‘You are our Honoured Guest.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ replied Lu Ying. ‘Let the usual fee apply.’
She turned away, intent on regaining the safety of her room.
Cao said more gently: ‘Miss Lu Ying, tell me what troubles you, and perhaps I can suggest something. Is it a woman’s complaint?’
Lu Ying hesitated.
‘I have an insufferable headache,’ she said. ‘My temple. . . it is as though there are lights.’
Cao’s expression softened. She sighed, as if at a private thought.
‘I’m sure you have every reason for it. Sit down and I’ll bring something I myself find helpful. Perhaps little red sister has come? If the tea does no good, Dr Shih can help.’
Lu Ying sat stiffly. This simple woman had read the situation exactly. She awaited Cao’s return, eagerly watching people pass on the street. Some looked interesting and she wondered where they came from, what they sought. Her headache was much improved by the time Madam Cao returned with a steaming pot. She drank the infusion cautiously. It tasted coarser than she had expected. Soon a sense of well-being filled her body.
Cao watched, her eyes stealing down to Lu Ying’s slippers, then took a cup herself.
‘I feel surprisingly better!’ announced the girl.
Indeed, she felt disturbingly at ease. If Wang Ting-bo came upon her now, he would gain the shameful impression that somehow she belonged here.
‘Pray tell me how much
cash
is required?’
Madam Cao regarded her curiously.
‘Miss Lu Ying, when do you intend to leave our house?’
The girl looked away in confusion. She understood what troubled the plain woman before her, with her bent nose and absurd feet. The reason was all too familiar. She could have her husband any time she chose. Lu Ying would have laughed at the irony, but she was used to maintaining a bland face. So ridiculous a situation! And horribly demeaning. A cruel impulse inspired her next words. Yet it was Wang Ting-bo’s wife she wished to punish, not Madam Cao.
‘I would be most appreciative if Dr Shih took my pulse,’ she sighed. ‘I imagine he takes one’s pulse very sweetly. His touch must be gentle.’
Now Madam Cao looked alarmed.
‘A lady always appreciates the attentions of a diligent doctor,’ continued Lu Ying. ‘Especially one dedicated to one’s welfare.’
Cao responded by taking up her brush and dipping it into the ink-slate. The neatness of the ledger mocked Lu Ying. She could barely write, apart from her signature. It seemed their interview was at an end. She left awkwardly and Madam Cao did not look up from her task.
*
Instead of the shifting street glimpsed through the window of Dr Shih’s shop, Lu Ying was confronted with stacks of shiny, lifeless boxes. Her feelings were uneasy as she closed the chamber door. One might possibly describe her behaviour as faulty – though it had felt pleasant to be superior. That way she might remember who she truly was. But Lu Ying knew she had offended Madam Cao and regretted it. The doctor’s wife reminded her of Mother. Yet Dr Shih was a handsome man and he had every right to admire her, whatever his wife might think.
Sleepy from the bitter tea she had drunk, Lu Ying lolled on the divan. It had once stood in the Pacification Commissioner’s mansion. Memories clung to it, traces of perfume, vanished words. . .
Lu Ying had first passed through Wang Ting-bo’s gatehouse a year before her ceremony of hairpins. A great honour, denoting his wish that she receive a thorough training before entering concubinage.
The time before that was vague. Her father had held a lowly position in the Waterways Bureau, assisting the local sub-commissioner for fords and bridges. His duties often took him away from home. Mother said he had been unjustly overlooked for promotion.
Blessings eluded him in other ways, too. Although Mother delivered half a dozen daughters, no son had been forthcoming.
Yet Lu Ying always knew herself to be valuable as any son.
People could not help glancing at her and often marvelled over Father’s good fortune. Such a daughter, they said, would attract splendid wedding gifts.
Only Mother did not seem to appreciate her worth. She kept Lu Ying out of sight, forcing her to mind her sisters because she was the eldest. Nevertheless, it was Mother who bound her daughter’s feet, and though it was painful, Lu Ying felt proud.
None of her sisters’ feet were bound. That honour belonged to her alone.
Father would return every few weeks. Apart from complaining about his superiors, he often talked about a child’s duty to provide for her parents – just as he had cared for his own in their old age. Lu Ying rolled her eyes when he could not see.
‘You shall come with me to the village,’ he announced one day. ‘The Sub-prefect is to hold an examination.’