Riding the Long Wind – Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Liu Yuru guided Su Wan in with measured, unhurried steps, her bearing composed in a way that would not have looked out of place in any household of standing, despite growing up in a modest merchant’s home. It was something she had learned carefully over years of visits to the Ye family, who held themselves to a high standard in all things.

She could feel Jiang Rou’s eyes on her, and she did not raise her own. She stood quietly behind Su Wan, exactly as propriety required.

Jiang Rou smiled and exchanged warm pleasantries with Su Wan for a little while, then said: “I almost forgot to mention the main reason I came today. I am here to deliver the land deeds and property deeds from the betrothal offer. Strictly speaking, betrothal gifts go to the bride’s family, to be kept for the use of her brothers and male relatives. But Yuru has no brothers from her mother’s side. And we were also aware that the size of our offer would make it difficult for you to assemble a matching dowry. So we went ahead and had all the farmland and shopfronts registered directly in Yuru’s name. Whatever you send her with in terms of gold and silver is entirely at your discretion.”

“What?” Zhang Yue’er’s head came up sharply. “You registered the deeds in Yuru’s name?”

Liu Xuan’s expression had gone strange too. Jiang Rou’s face did not change. Su Wan and Liu Yuru both sat very still.

After a moment, Zhang Yue’er recovered enough to force a smile. “Madam Jiang, you must be joking. Yuru has two younger brothers. How can you say she has no male relatives?”

“Brothers?” Jiang Rou looked genuinely puzzled, her expression shifting into something that suggested she was embarrassed to have made an error. “I apologize. I had understood that the Madam had only one daughter and had not taken any other children under her care. Are there other children of the Madam’s?”

“There are not.” This time it was Su Wan who spoke. She was not a woman who was good at bending things, and while her childlessness was the wound she carried closest to the bone, right now she found that Jiang Rou had said exactly what needed saying. She kept her face still and said calmly: “I have no other children under my care.”

Jiang Rou looked toward Zhang Yue’er with an expression of polite confusion. Liu Xuan cleared his throat. “My two sons are by Concubine Zhang.”

At that, Jiang Rou looked down and lifted her handkerchief to her lips, appearing to suppress a laugh, then appeared to suppress it again. The expression on her face as she did it made something move in the chest of everyone in the room, and especially in Zhang Yue’er, who felt for a moment quite certainly that Jiang Rou was laughing at her.

Liu Xuan also felt the heat of it on his face, though Jiang Rou had said nothing at all. He simply felt, without being told, that he had made himself ridiculous.

“Master Liu,” Jiang Rou said, lifting her head and smiling pleasantly. “In the proper order of things, a man of standing does not leave his inheritance to children born of a concubine. In any household of any distinction, even when the principal wife has no son, the correct course is for the principal wife to choose a child from among the concubine’s sons, adopt that child formally under her own name, and raise him as a legitimate heir. This is simply… Yuru is the eldest legitimate daughter. Her standing is of a different order entirely.”

The words landed on the room like a stone in still water.

Everyone there knew the state of the Liu household. It had been known for years, and no one ever said anything about it, because people did not usually make a point of commenting on other people’s domestic arrangements. They might whisper among themselves, but they kept it quiet.

This was the first time anyone had said it to their faces. Not a single person in the room could object. This was Madam Gu. This was the wife of the wealthiest man in Yangzhou. What could they do?

Liu Yuru lowered her head and kept her face still and the laughter inside her.

It was the first time she had thought, even for a moment, that marrying into the Gu family might not be entirely without its compensations.

She had never seen a woman sit so completely at ease, drinking her tea, while she methodically and thoroughly made her father and her stepmother look like fools.

Su Wan’s hands were trembling slightly. She felt something she had not felt in a very long time, a clean and unexpected sense of satisfaction.

By then Zhang Yue’er had regathered herself. “But even if we are not registering it in a son’s name, surely it should go into the master’s name! If you put the deeds in Yuru’s name, that is no different from taking the gift back with you!”

“Concubine Zhang,” Jiang Rou said, turning toward her with a pleasant smile, “that is precisely the second matter I wanted to raise. If we were to register the deeds in Master Liu’s name, I would of course need to know what dowry you were planning to send with Miss Liu.”

“So the dowry for your own birth daughter is also something you help manage?”

Jiang Rou asked the question with a smile, her eyes barely containing their amusement. Liu Xuan had finally had enough. He said in a low, sharp voice: “Madam Gu is speaking. Who gave you leave to open your mouth?”

Zhang Yue’er went completely still. She had never once heard Liu Xuan speak to her that way, and the shock of it made her mind jump immediately to his recent habit of going to Su Wan’s rooms. Something had shifted between them, something she could not quite name but did not like.

She had sailed smoothly through the Liu household for over a decade. She swallowed the sting of it, turned her head away, and said nothing.

Liu Xuan, seeing her quiet, was glad of the peace. He cleared his throat and said: “My wife, since you are the one managing things, please speak with Madam Gu directly.”

Su Wan said a proper word of thanks to Liu Xuan, then turned to discuss the matter with Jiang Rou.

Su Wan was not a greedy woman. She thought over the Gu family’s betrothal gifts and named a figure for the dowry. It was not a lavish amount, but together with the farmland and property deeds that would go under Liu Yuru’s name, it made for something that looked respectable enough. Jiang Rou left in good spirits.

The moment she was gone, Zhang Yue’er erupted. “That is essentially nothing! We are sending silver out the door and getting what back? Is this a marriage or a charity?”

“Stop it,” Liu Xuan said, his head aching. Zhang Yue’er had grown louder and more grasping over the years, everything reduced to silver and copper, nothing like Yunyun, nothing even like Su Wan at her quietest. The comparison had been forming in his mind without his quite meaning to make it.

He turned to Su Wan with a frown. “My wife, I have to say, that number, you should have pushed for more.”

“My lord,” Su Wan said gently, “fighting over money is only money. But what we would lose is the Liu family’s standing. You have a future ahead of you. It would be a shame to leave a stain over something so small. And as for the money itself, please do not worry. I will contribute from my own dowry to make up whatever Yuru needs.”

One woman haggled over every coin for herself and her sons. The other thought of her husband’s reputation, then offered her own savings to fill the gap. The difference could not have been clearer.

Liu Xuan found himself wondering, not for the first time recently, whether he had been walking around blind all these years.

He felt unsettled the rest of the afternoon.

That night he stayed in Su Wan’s rooms again. With Yunyun there to serve, he ate and drank well and settled back comfortably, and then let out a long sigh. “How is it a person can be one way one day and entirely different the next?”

Yunyun said softly: “When a woman truly admires a man, everything she does is done with him in mind.”

She left it at that. But Liu Xuan heard exactly what she meant. If someone was not thinking of him, then everything she did was for herself.

He sat with that thought, and it was not long before it clarified itself fully. Zhang Yue’er had not been fighting for the Liu family’s money. She had been fighting for her own and her sons’.

The realization settled over him like cold water.

When he woke the next morning and saw Su Wan’s fragile, worn face, the guilt came down on him so heavily he could barely speak. He cleared his throat and said: “Wan, do not draw from your own dowry for Yuru’s things. The Liu family is not so poor as that. I had already set money aside for her. You send it along.”

Su Wan protested several times, which only made him feel worse. By the time she finally relented and accepted, Liu Xuan was both relieved and somewhat chastened, consoling himself with the thought that at least the Gu family’s betrothal gifts had been substantial. By any measure, the Liu family had come out ahead.

And so, after all the back and forth, Liu Yuru’s dowry was finally settled. The wedding day was close now.

Gu Jiusi had been locked in his room for several days at this point and was beginning to feel he had lost his mind. He sat by the door every day tapping it rhythmically, repeating in a flat and hollow voice: “Let me out. Let me out.”

Liu Yuru, for her part, had also shut herself in her room, because she was afraid that if she wandered outside she might be tempted to run.

Though of course she knew she would not actually run. Where would she go?

The betrothal gifts had been accepted. The wedding date was set. The embroidered mandarin duck bedsheets had been finished. There was no undoing any of it.

Still, every time she thought about marrying Gu Jiusi, every time that dream came back to her, she felt like she could not breathe.

The night before the wedding, she slept lightly and slipped back into the same dream, the one where the Gu household was sacked and destroyed. This time she was no longer watching from the crowd. She was being dragged out through the gate herself, and she heard Wang Rong’s voice, slick with contempt: “You used to act so above it all when I wanted you. Look at you now. Ending up in a brothel just like the rest.”

Liu Yuru jolted awake with a cry, drenched in cold sweat.

She lay in the darkness looking at the embroidered bed hangings, and felt a fear about marrying Gu Jiusi that seemed to reach all the way down to her bones.

Outside, lanterns were already being lit. People were busy pasting red paper characters on the walls and doorframes.

Yin Hong came in and smiled when she saw Liu Yuru sitting upright already. “You woke up before I even came to call you.”

She came closer and frowned slightly. “Miss, what is it? Your forehead is covered in sweat.”

Liu Yuru blinked and let her breath come back to her.

It was a dream. Just a dream. She told herself this carefully, the way you might talk someone back from the edge of something. Only a dream.

But she was still frightened.

She had never put stock in omens or strange visions. Only this dream was too vivid and too specific for her to shake off the way she wanted to. And she had been right about Fan Xuan.

Yin Hong saw the blankness in her eyes and laughed gently. “Miss, are you just very nervous?”

“I am fine.”

Liu Yuru shook her head. She drew a long breath and made herself still.

Marrying Gu Jiusi could not be undone. She was not going to let one dream, however troubling, give her grounds to destroy an arrangement that was already made. She was not that reckless.

So she sat up, and let her maidservants help her dress in the wedding clothes she had laid out long ago. She had embroidered every pattern on them herself, stitch by stitch. When she had been doing it, she had been thinking that if she could just marry Ye Shi’an, he might compliment her handiwork.

Ye Shi’an.

She looked at herself in the bronze mirror and did not know why, but the name brought a sudden and quiet grief rising into her throat.

It did not feel like a name. It felt like seven years of her life.

From the age of eight, from the moment she first understood that her future would depend on who she married, she had carried that name in the back of her mind like a fixed point. There had been calculation in it, certainly, and practicality. But there had also been something softer and more genuine underneath. She had never spoken more than a handful of words with him. He had left for the White Egret Academy when she was twelve, her baby teeth barely all in, and she had never seen him again as a young woman. She was not even certain whether what she felt was love for Ye Shi’an or love for the hope she had shaped in his image. But either way, he had been the one she held onto longest, and the one she had taken most seriously.

And now she was letting go.

The letting go had come too suddenly. Now that it was here and real and undeniable, she felt the tears rise before she could stop them, a quiet and formless grief that had nowhere to put itself.

Su Wan had risen early to help her dress her hair. She came in and saw her daughter sitting before the mirror, jaw clenched, crying silently, and felt as though something had cut through her.

She wrapped her arms around her. “I know,” she said, her voice rough. “I know everything.”

To have worked so hard for so long toward the life she wanted, only to have it taken from her at the last moment, and replaced with the one person she had least wanted. Su Wan knew exactly what this felt like. She was a mother. Of course she knew.

And what could she do about it?

If Liu Yuru had been a son, any of this could have been pushed back against. But she was a daughter, and the world offered daughters very little room to push back.

Su Wan held her and wept harder than Liu Yuru did. Liu Yuru quickly sniffled and patted her mother’s hand. “Mother, it is all right. Do not be sad. They say a bride has to cry a little on her wedding day for luck. I am just doing it for luck.”

She wiped her face and forced a smile. “Come, let us do the makeup. It is fine.”

Watching her daughter do this, Su Wan felt the ache sharpen. She gripped Liu Yuru’s hand. “I know,” she said again.

She knew. She had always known.

Her daughter, so considerate and so careful, had always taken everything onto herself. Where other children cried freely in their mother’s arms, Liu Yuru had learned early to find a corner and cry quietly so Su Wan would not worry. She had been doing it since she was small.

And now, even something as crushing as this, she was swallowing it whole and smiling.

But she was her blood. How could she not know?

“Mother cannot do much for you,” Su Wan said, her voice worn thin. “But Yuru, you do not have to protect me right now. If you want to cry, cry. I will not worry.”

“Mother, there is nothing to cry about on a wedding day,” Liu Yuru said, with the same gentle smile. “I am just going through the ritual.”

They talked as Yin Hong finished her makeup and helped her into the wedding dress, pinned on the phoenix crown, and finally lowered the red wedding veil over her face. Then Liu Yuru sat and waited for Gu Jiusi to come and collect her.

She waited a long time. Then someone outside called out: “They are here, they are here.”

Liu Yuru tensed. She twisted her handkerchief in her hands. A moment later, the front gate crashed open with a sound like someone had kicked it in. Then came Gu Jiusi’s voice, tight with poorly contained fury: “Get up and let us go.”

Liu Yuru said nothing.

She thought: does he think he is herding cattle?

Gu Jiusi was about to snap at her when Gu Langhua’s voice came from somewhere nearby, quiet and even: “Jiusi.”

That single word was enough. Gu Jiusi remembered the beating he had received that morning, and the maidservant who had been strung up in the courtyard as an additional warning. He closed his eyes for a moment of private suffering, walked over to Liu Yuru, and held out one end of the red silk cord. “Hold on. Follow me.”

Liu Yuru said nothing. She knew Gu Langhua and Jiang Rou were present, and she was willing to show them this much respect. She took the cord and rose to her feet, stepping out of the room behind him.

Gu Jiusi walked ahead. He was not happy about any of this, but he glanced back and noticed that Liu Yuru was wearing the veil and probably could not see the ground very clearly. A girl tripping and falling on her way out the door on her own wedding day would be gossip that circled Yangzhou for months. And whatever else she was, she was going to be his wife. Whether he acknowledged it or not, everyone else would.

He gave a small, reluctant sound and said, low and brief: “Step up. There is a threshold.”

Liu Yuru paused.

Then, quietly, she smiled behind the veil. Some of the anger went out of her.

She stepped into the wedding palanquin. Gu Jiusi let the curtain fall behind her and mounted his horse.

The palanquin lifted. Music swelled around it, gongs and drums and wind instruments mixing together into a wall of noise. Liu Yuru sat inside the swaying box and felt, as she had never felt in any moment before this one, the absolute clarity of an ending. Her life as Miss Liu of the Liu household was over. Something else was beginning.

She thought at the time that what was beginning was her life as Madam Gu. She had no way of knowing, not yet, that what was beginning was something far larger than that.

At fifteen, Liu Yuru sat in that palanquin, half mourning what she was leaving behind and half dreading what lay ahead. And then, through the surrounding noise, she caught a voice calling out: “Young Master, slow down!”

There were many young men of good family in Yangzhou who might be addressed that way. She could not have said why, in that instant, her heart lurched and began to beat faster.

Her hands trembled. She found herself desperately wanting to lift her veil. She wanted to look outside. She needed to know whether the young master being called to was the one she had thought about for seven years.

She had first grown into the consciousness of herself as a young woman at thirteen. She was fifteen now. Ye Shi’an had left for the White Egret Academy when she was twelve, her features still soft and childish. She had never seen him through a young woman’s eyes. And yet he was the whole of her girlhood.

She had been careful and proper every day of her life. She had never once stepped outside the lines. But in that moment something rose up in her, and she lifted her veil with shaking hands, and reached out to pull the palanquin curtain open just a crack.

In that same instant, a horse came cantering past. A young man in white with a jade crown, his wide sleeves catching the air, carrying with them a faint clean scent of plum blossoms that drifted past her face. She saw his features clearly, and even after five years, she recognized them at once from the line of his jaw, from the stars in his eyes.