Elio’s Notes: The title borrows from a verse attributed to Li Yu and preserved in the Quan Tang Shi: “A wan face, once ill, is hard to restore; at dawn in the hall, to rule as sovereign brings me shame.” The novel takes the first half of that line for a chapter centered on Ehuang’s worsening condition.
The next day, because the Empress had been unwell for many days and remained low in spirits, Nüying was summoned to the palace to keep her company.
She was bewildered when she saw palace attendants arrive at the Zhou residence to fetch her, unable to make sense of it, and spent the entire journey uneasy. The servants, who knew nothing of what had happened, were far more relaxed. “Why is Second Young Miss so listless today? Her Majesty has been missing you terribly.”
She had no answer.
＊
After entering the palace, she should by rights have first gone to pay respects to the Emperor. Unfortunately, after Piaopeng reported her arrival, he returned saying that His Majesty was tired from the grand banquet he had held for the ministers the night before and that Nüying should go directly to see the Empress instead.
Nüying relaxed slightly. She knew how furious Li Yu was over what she had done that day. She wanted very much to see him, yet she was also afraid.
Fallen blossoms must return to their roots in the end; outside the hall, paired lovebirds were already flying wing to wing. The carriage entered Fengque Palace. The same melody from the score still sounded within, scattered and sparse, yet somehow extraordinarily desolate. Nüying went inside and saw Ehuang cradling her instrument and beckoning to her. The smile was the same as always, and the gentle, doting gaze Nüying had known since childhood had not changed in the slightest even now. She had not seen her elder sister for many days and suddenly realized how terribly thin Ehuang had become. An indescribable feeling rose in her heart. Now that she truly saw Ehuang stripped of her former stately radiance, Nüying found herself far less pleased than she had imagined she would be.
She bent in greeting, but Ehuang rose and came over to take her hand. “There is no need for that.” She led Nüying to sit on the cushioned couch. Glancing at her sister’s expression, Nüying assumed Ehuang still knew nothing of what she had done and felt the matter no longer worth worrying about. “You look very well today, Sister. Nothing like what the palace servants made it sound. Father even told me to make absolutely sure you do not overexert yourself again.”
Pain tightened inside Ehuang. She looked at Nüying as calmly as ever. “Are Father and Mother well?”
Nüying answered with perfect obedience. “Very well. Everything at home is fine. Brother-in-law… ah, His Majesty has shown Father great favor and looked after the family generously.” Ehuang smiled and nodded. “So long as everyone is well.” Her gaze traveled over Nüying from head to toe. “Nüying, do you know whether this illness of your sister’s can truly be cured?” Nüying fell silent for a moment, wondering what she meant. “It is only a minor illness. Do not say such things and frighten me.” Smiling brightly, she let her eyes wander and noticed the magnificent long gown Ehuang wore today. “That dress is beautiful.”
Ehuang lifted one sleeve, amused by her childlike fascination. The kingfisher feathers at the cuff trembled softly. Nüying touched them with the tip of one finger, envy rising at once. Before her stood a woman in splendid robes, her eyes quiet yet her face full of indulgent affection. “There are plenty of rare things at home too. Why are you acting like some silly girl who has never seen anything before?”
Nüying avoided her eyes, but her hand lingered over the sleeve. “It looks especially extraordinary on Sister. Of course it could never resemble an ordinary dress.” Ehuang asked lightly, “Do you like it?” Nüying nodded in answer. Ehuang then pointed toward her peerless Shaocao pipa. “And that?”
Nüying froze slightly. Then her usual quick cleverness returned. She reached for the score. “I will stop teasing Sister. Let Nüying look over the score with you.” She did not want the subject to continue and tried to skip past it entirely.
But Ehuang neither moved nor took the score. “Besides these things, Nüying, what else do you want?”
The figure in bright green before her abruptly lost every trace of a smile.
Her eyes looked very much like Ehuang’s own. Ehuang studied them carefully and found them utterly unreadable.
Nüying asked, “What does Sister know?” In an instant, her expression no longer resembled that of someone her age.
“None of that matters. What matters is that I want to know what else you want.” There was a trace of pity in Ehuang’s tone. It was the same way she had treated Nüying as a child after their father scolded her for some bit of mischief, stroking her forehead and quietly coaxing her. What is it that you want?
Nüying looked at her elder sister, lofty and splendid in sumptuous robes, truly beautiful beyond compare. “Is Sister pitying me? Or do you still think, just as before, that I am a little girl who needs other people to discipline her in everything and bestow everything upon her?”
Ehuang shook her head with a bitter smile. “So that is what you have always believed.”
“Yes! I have always believed it. I have always had to lift my head and envy you. You were the Crown Princess. You are the Empress!”
The sorrow in Ehuang’s eyes could no longer be hidden, yet her face remained calm. She held out a hand. “You want those fine-sounding things outsiders praise so much? Come sit beside your sister.”
Nüying stubbornly turned her face away. “They are not important. But as long as you possess them, no one outside will ever speak of me. So long as you are here, I will always be a little girl, forever trailing behind you!”
Her bluntness actually allowed Ehuang to relax. “Then what if your sister gives all of it to you?”
Nüying laughed, mocking Ehuang and mocking herself. “You know what I truly want. You cannot give it to me.”
Ehuang’s voice was very soft as her fingers turned the pages of the score. “Why… can I not? Human hearts are the easiest thing in the world to change, especially when he is the Emperor.” The words sounded utterly unlike Ehuang’s usual way of thinking. Nüying looked up at her. “Sister, did that sachet truly confuse your mind this badly? You would never have spoken this way before. You were… a woman as proud as a phoenix.”
Ehuang continued to toy lightly with the fragmentary score. “Even the proudest person has moments of disappointment.”
“Disappointed in me? I have never once believed I could live up to anyone’s expectations. You alone already fulfilled every expectation there was!” All the pressure Nüying had buried inside suddenly burst free. She stared at the phoenix-like woman before her and clenched her fingertips. “People say you have gone mad, but look at you… A crude, undignified word like mad could never have anything to do with you!”
Ehuang smiled. “I am mad. You did very well, only not quite well enough. A little sachet is still only a child’s trick. There are many things neither of us knows. Nüying, you still have kindness in your heart.”
Tears were about to spill from Nüying’s eyes, but she forced them back. Her green clothes perfectly set off the tender bloom of her youth, yet Fengque Palace was so stifling that even flowers seemed unable to put forth new shoots.
＊
Ehuang sighed. “Do not cry. I do not blame you.”
The fleeting pain in her sister’s eyes made Nüying furious beyond restraint. She shot to her feet, snatched the score from Ehuang’s hands, and hurled it to the floor. “Sometimes I truly wonder whether your illness is real or not! This score is obviously wrong. There is no way you could have failed to notice, yet you hold it every day as though it were some treasure!” The words burst from Nüying in her pain. Shocked by what she herself had said, she stepped back twice and stared blankly at Ehuang. “I…” Ehuang, however, showed no surprise. “There is indeed something wrong with it. This is not proper music. Perhaps someone altered it. It works much like your sachet. Play it often enough and it can worsen a person’s injuries and illness, drive them toward madness and collapse.”
Nüying gripped the table in panic. “I… this was not me…”
Ehuang shook her head. “I know it had nothing to do with you.”
“How could that be? I only thought it was not the real Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance. I never imagined it could hurt anyone.” Nüying was deeply shocked. She genuinely could not understand who besides herself would dare harm her elder sister. Then something suddenly occurred to her, and her heart jolted. Her voice began to tremble. “Sister… who gave you that score?”
Ehuang raised a hand and tucked the hair at her temple behind one ear, then reached for a dark gold plate patterned with peonies beside her. It held some of the pastries she ate from time to time, Cloud-Mist cakes. Smiling, she beckoned Nüying over. “Your brother-in-law likes these best. Come have one?”
Nüying could no longer hold back her tears. She collapsed into the chair in alarm. “Sister, who gave you that score?”
With perfect elegance, Ehuang picked up a small piece of pastry and placed it in her mouth. She smiled, and it was as though the peach blossoms of the third month fell around her, just as the man in blue-green had once said to Nüying: one smile as the veil fell, unforgettable for a lifetime. She finished it slowly, then quietly gave her answer. “Your brother-in-law gave it to me.”
＊
Nüying clapped both hands tightly over her mouth.
Ehuang was still smiling beautifully. “Shh. It is all right. Come eat Cloud-Mist cakes with Sister, all right?”
Trembling, Nüying accepted one. Crumbs showered over her clothes. She put the cake in her mouth and tasted nothing at all. Suddenly she looked up at Ehuang. “Have you… gone mad?”
Ehuang rose to fetch a comb and began carefully combing her hair. “No.”
“Your illness?”
“I am not ill. Of course it cannot be cured.”
“When did it begin…?” Nüying pressed, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. The strands of hair passing through the wooden comb trembled with her. Ehuang patted her back in comfort. “When… when did it begin?” she murmured almost to herself. “I truly did suffer a terrible shock. I never suspected your sachet either, and perhaps I really was affected by it. At first I genuinely could not control myself, but the day you fell into the water at the Eastern Palace and took that thing back, I recovered.”
Nüying sucked in a breath. Ehuang continued. “Then only a few days later, he brought this score back for me. Tell me, why was it so perfectly timed? I had only just recovered, and then I was expected to play music that could drive a person to madness. So, Nüying… tell me. You and he…”
Nüying abruptly pulled away from her and backed aside, shaking her head again and again. “I did not. I truly did not. I do not know what Brother-in-law did.”
“That day at the Eastern Palace, he appeared at exactly the right moment. At first I thought you meant to push me into the water, but when you saw him suddenly appear, you let go and fell in yourself to win his sympathy. But now that I think about it, the two of you…” Nüying continued shaking her head. Ehuang went on in the same unruffled tone. “He did not expect you to panic that day and snatch the sachet back, did he? So afterward he gave me this score. At this point, what is there left to hide? Nüying, tell me. What did your brother-in-law say to you?”
Nüying’s thoughts were a tangled mess. She knew there was something wrong with the score, but she had only thought it was fake. She had never imagined anything beyond that. And Brother-in-law… The words he had spoken to her that day after discovering her scheme still sounded at her ear. Someone so refined and elegant, how could he…
“Sister, you may choose not to believe Nüying, but why do you not believe him?”
Ehuang frowned, and at last sorrow showed openly on her face. “It is not that I do not believe him. I simply no longer believe myself. Perhaps you are still too young to understand.” Even the proudest phoenix could someday grow exhausted beyond endurance. She believed him. What she no longer believed was how much she herself still mattered to him.
Once, she too had stood proudly at his side and looked out over the splendor of mountains and rivers.
And today? In truth, who was right and who was wrong no longer mattered. Husband. Younger sister. And… that person. Whether any of it was true or false, somehow she herself seemed to be the outsider in all of it.
Nüying gradually calmed. With extraordinary certainty, she told her, “Sister, Nüying truly did have thoughts I should not have had, but from beginning to end this matter had nothing to do with Brother-in-law. I do not know what is really wrong with that score.” She spoke with earthshaking conviction, almost as though swearing an oath. She did not care how the rest of the affair truly stood. The image of Li Yu in her heart had always been faint, clear, and restrained, and she did not want anyone to shatter that color.
“If you say it was not him, then it was not him.” Ehuang drew her into an embrace, just as she had when she herself was still an unmarried girl and Nüying had been far too young for today’s sharp tongue, only a gentle child who leaned obediently against her. Ehuang kept stroking her hair. “The palace is so vast, yet in the end it still is not my home.”
“In the end?” Something in the words struck Nüying as strange, but Ehuang ignored the question and continued. “Tell me. If your brother-in-law truly wanted your sister to become a madwoman, would you still dare love him?”
Without even thinking, Nüying answered, “I would.”
Ehuang smiled. “You have far more courage than I do.”
“I simply trust him.”
Ehuang patted her gently. “Trust him… There is some truth even in what outsiders say. He truly does lodge easily in other people’s hearts, yet no one has ever… lodged in his.” Then another thought came to her, and regret touched her expression. “Perhaps someone has. Unfortunately, it is not me.”
Nüying leaned into her embrace, suddenly feeling as though she had returned to childhood. Her eyes drifted half closed. “Sister, no matter what happens, at least I will try.”
“There is no need to try for too long. I have pretended for so long, deceiving everyone and deceiving myself. Perhaps in a few days I truly will go mad.” Ehuang smiled, her voice soft with reassurance. “Your sister will give everything to you. Human hearts in this world are impossible to fathom. Whether it becomes regret or not, that is something you should experience for yourself.”
Nüying had grown tired. She closed her eyes and rested against her elder sister, feeling utterly safe. Her eyes still ached unbearably after crying and sleep was already overtaking her. She could no longer make out exactly what Ehuang was saying and only nodded faintly.
“Sleep.” Ehuang drew a brocade quilt over them both. “When you were little and Father beat you, you always cried and cried. Every time, you insisted on sleeping beside me before you would settle down.”
Perhaps Ehuang had been stifled for too long with nowhere to release it, or perhaps she truly no longer cared. She spoke softly for a long time to the sleeping Nüying. “I never imagined that one day I would pretend to be mad and foolish simply so I could remain beside him. It was not because I felt no despair. It was only that for a while he was suffering so badly. The Eastern Palace, the Crown Prince, affairs of state and war, the succession… there were too many things. I knew perfectly well that he did not want to face all those burdens. So if he gave me this score because he wanted me mad, because he wanted me to forget what he had done that day, because he wanted to bury what happened in the side courtyard, then I chose to follow his wishes. I would stay mad. I would say nothing more. But now everything has finally settled, and I am simply too tired.”
Ehuang’s chest rose and fell, yet no tears would come. “I know everything, but I will not think about it anymore. Whatever the truth of this score may be, it is all over. Since Li Congjia no longer exists in this world, then from this moment onward… neither does Ehuang.”
Nüying slept deeply. In her dream, an aloof figure spoke with firm resolve. “I want you to understand. Ehuang is the last person I intend to protect. No matter what she becomes, even if today her illness can never be cured, even if she hates me, resents me, or goes on being mad, she is still the way she looked when I met her at seventeen: one smile as the veil fell, a startling grace in the mortal world.” The pond in the Eastern Palace was not deep, yet it was as hopeless as his eyes. And so that day Nüying had taken the sachet back, whether from the final scrap of mercy left in human nature or because she had realized everything was futile. In the end, she had taken it back. “Sister…” Nüying called unconsciously, her brows drawing tight. Ehuang looked down at her and smiled gently. “Sister has always believed you would be a good child.”
＊
This mortal life was too bitter. “Li Congjia.” She repeated the name over and over. She could not cry again. Ehuang’s tears belonged only to Li Congjia.
＊
Nüying left the palace toward evening. The sisters looked at one another with nothing left to say. Ehuang continued completing the score. After countless revisions and exhausting all her care upon it, she had finally restored the song of that flourishing age in its first rough form. Ehuang never again mentioned any of the entanglements among the people involved. She said only that in three days the score would be completely finished.
＊
Li Yu ordered a memorial submitted to Song requesting that the late Emperor be buried with the rites of a sovereign.
As usual, the Prince of Jin had barely reached the hall when he saw Wang Ji’en approaching him with a smile and bowing his head in greeting. “Your Highness may need to wait a little. Right now…” He lowered his voice and glanced inside. “His Majesty is not in a very good mood.”
The Prince of Jin thought briefly and understood the likely cause. “Another memorial from Jiangnan?”
“Yes. I do not know the details.”
Everyone among the Emperor’s close attendants knew that the word Jiangnan could not be mentioned lightly. The slightest mistake could provoke imperial fury. The last time, His Majesty had shattered the imperial table. Who knew whether next time it might be someone’s head? As a result, whenever some new matter concerning Jiangnan arose, the ministers privately hesitated to seek an audience on their own. Even Wang Ji’en found it strange. His Majesty was ordinarily calm and clear-minded, yet whenever this matter was involved he seemed unable to control himself.
Hearing Zhao Pu’s voice from inside, the Prince of Jin decided not to enter after all. “Find out exactly what happened today.” Wang Ji’en bowed his head and answered that he would. The Prince of Jin turned and left.
＊
When Zhao Pu finished reading the memorial from Jiangnan, Zhao Kuangyin asked, “Who wrote it?”
“The courtier Xu Xuan.”
He gave a cold laugh, reached out to take the memorial of succession, glanced over it twice, then folded it shut and tossed it aside. “What does Chancellor Zhao think?”
Zhao Pu bowed and replied, “This subject believes Your Majesty should approve the Ruler of Jiangnan’s memorial, as a gesture of benevolence and reassurance.”
Zhao Kuangyin still wore that mocking smile. “We should indeed approve the Ruler of Jiangnan’s memorial. Unfortunately, this memorial was not written by the ruler himself.” He lifted it with the tip of his brush and flicked it to the floor with a slap, anger burning inside him. Li Congjia, so this is you deliberately refusing to face me directly. Fine. Then I will force you to write it with your own hand.
“Send Our decree back to Jiangnan. Since the former ruler had already submitted, there is no reason he should be buried with the rites of a sovereign. This is a grave matter. Have the Ruler of Jiangnan personally submit a memorial to demonstrate his sincerity.”
＊
When the reply reached Li Yu, all he could do was smile bitterly.
Of course. That was exactly Zhao Kuangyin’s temperament. He had clearly made up his mind not to let Li Yu off easily. Li Yu dismissed everyone and shut himself inside the hall for half a day without putting brush to paper. He watched the ink being ground, drying, then ground again, and understood the matter perfectly well. This concerned his imperial father’s dignity. Willing or not, he had to write.
He calculated perfectly that I would have no choice but to bow my head.
Fine.
By dusk he finally picked up the brush. Thinking any further would change nothing. Li Yu no longer possessed the standing to meet Zhao Kuangyin as an equal. Publicly or privately, neither of them could ever return to that tree again.
＊
The handwriting was the same as ever, gaunt in form yet vigorous beneath the surface. Zhao Kuangyin recognized it at a glance. Holding the memorial, he was unexpectedly overcome by a moment of melancholy. It almost seemed as though the faint fragrance of red sandalwood drifted between the strokes. “Among my father’s sons, this subject is truly ashamed of his lack of talent. Since leaving the schools, my heart has remained distant from profit and rank. Sheltered by the care of my father and elder brothers, I delighted in passing my days at leisure. I longed to follow the traces of Chao Fu and Xu You, and from afar admired the lofty righteousness of Boyi and Shuqi…”
Elio’s Notes: The memorial quoted here is historical. It is the opening of Li Yu’s Memorial to Song Taizu Upon Accession, preserved in the Quan Tang Wen. The named figures Chao Fu and Xu You, and Boyi and Shuqi, are traditional exemplars of withdrawal from worldly power and principled refusal.
June was nearly over.
Song issued an edict recognizing Li Yu as Ruler of Jiangnan and permitting the late ruler to be buried with full imperial rites.
＊
Fengque Palace glittered with pearls, extravagant beyond measure. Ehuang carefully arranged the score she had finished reconstructing, and once again remembered what that man had once said to her in the side courtyard of the old residence, when she had uncovered that strange, icy-cold bottle. Zhao Kuangyin’s tone had been arrogant beyond restraint. “If I told him to kill you, and in return I would let him go, do you think he would do it?”
She had not believed it then.