Chapter 3

The apothecary was small: a shop at the front, only two rooms behind. Xiao Chengke's compensation would have been enough to buy it. But I accepted only the capital, drew up a loan agreement, and arranged to repay him from each month's profits.

He looked at the agreement.

“This is compensation, not charity.”

“I've already accepted a house and money. With this shop, I want to know whether I can stand on my own.”

“As you wish.”

He stamped it with his private seal, then added a clause: No interest; Su Tang may decide the final repayment date herself.

I pushed it back.

“Strike out the last part.”

He looked up.

“Your Highness, business debts must be paid.”

He picked up the brush and crossed it out.

On opening day, Physician Lu sent a signboard. Xiao Chengke did not appear. He sent more than ten medicine cabinets.

They were all different sizes. Set together, their uneven heights looked dreadful.

The guard who delivered them explained quietly, “His Highness doesn't understand these things. He told the carpenter to copy the residence dispensary. It's been in use for decades. The cabinets weren't all made at once.”

I did not send them back.

Ugly they might be, but they were sturdy.

I named the apothecary Huichun Hall. At first, the neighbors did not believe a young woman could treat illness. They came only for a little mugwort or dried tangerine peel. Later, Physician Lu held consultations there two days a month. Gradually, women began coming to me with ailments they found difficult to discuss with male physicians.

After winter arrived, an epidemic broke out in the south of the city.

It was not particularly severe, but the poor could not afford medicine. Huichun Hall offered free consultations for five days in succession, and our supplies quickly ran out. Too busy to eat, I fell asleep over the counter for an hour. When I woke, a black cloak covered me.

Xiao Chengke sat by the door, labeling packets according to my prescriptions.

He was used to a sword. With a brush, he was hopelessly awkward. His characters for mulberry root bark wandered all over the page.

I went over and took the brush.

“A wrong medicine label can kill.”

“Physician Lu has checked them. I'm only doing the writing.”

A bowl of hot porridge stood at the corner of the table. He said a guard had bought it on the way. But when I lifted the lid, there were sour bamboo shoots inside, something I had mentioned only once in passing.

“Does Your Highness happen to pass Huichun Hall as well?”

He lowered his head and went on writing.

“Today, I happened to.”

After that, he happened to pass every day.

He never entered the consultation room. He stayed in the outer shop, carrying medicines, keeping order, or writing down dosage instructions for old people who could not read. When someone recognized him and knelt, he changed into a guard's old clothes and came through the back door.

On the night the epidemic passed, I was so tired I could not fit the key into the lock.

He took it, locked the shop for me, then crouched.

“Get on. I'll carry you home.”

I meant to say that men and women should keep their distance. The words reached my lips but never came out.

On his back, I could smell the herbs lingering in his collar. His steps were steady. Near the busy streets, he deliberately turned into a quiet lane to spare me people's stares.

“Xiao Chengke.”

It was the first time I had called him by name.

His steps paused.

“Yes?”

“Will you come tomorrow?”

“If you don't send me away.”

I rested my forehead against the back of his shoulder.

“Then come.”

He did not answer, but his steps quickened a little.

I closed my eyes, remembering how I had begun looking toward the door at dusk, how hoofbeats made me instinctively straighten my hair. The person I waited for had long since become more than someone willing to help.

But liking him and agreeing to marry again were different things. I had only just learned to stand on my own feet. I did not dare step through another household's gate so soon.

Half a year later, Huichun Hall had hired two apprentices, and I had repaid thirty percent of the loan.

One evening at closing time, an unremarkable blue-roofed carriage stopped outside.

Xiao Chengke stepped down in dark-blue everyday robes, with only one guard beside him. His wound had long since healed, but as soon as he entered, he clasped his wrist and said the old injury hurt again.

I asked for his hand and took his pulse.

It was steady and strong. Nothing was wrong.

“If you only want to see the shop, there's no need to pretend to be ill.”

He withdrew his hand, not at all embarrassed at being caught.

“I came to buy medicine.”

“What kind?”

He looked around and pointed at the candied fruit on the counter.

“That.”

“It's for children taking medicine. Not for sale.”

He put down a silver ingot.

I pushed it back, selected the smallest piece, and handed it to him.

“Only one.”

He took it but did not eat.

“Su Tang, there's something else today.”

I waited.

“Mother has been urging me to choose a consort again. I told her there was already someone I wished to marry.”

I slipped the medicine-cabinet keys into my sleeve.

“If you're about to mention compensation or a debt for saving your life, you can leave now.”

“Neither.”

“And I won't be a secondary consort.”

“My principal consort.”

I still shook my head.

He rolled the candied fruit between his fingers and asked why.

“I've only lived for myself for half a year. It isn't enough yet. Besides, marriage still sounds like trouble to me.”

There was something else I did not say.

Precisely because I liked him, I feared that one day my feelings would become another reason for someone else to decide my life.

He was quiet for a moment, then put the fruit in his mouth.

“So sour.”

“It's for children to take after bitter medicine. Of course it's sour.”

He swallowed with a frown, then rose to leave. At the door, he turned.

“May I still come to buy candied fruit?”

“Bring enough copper coins.”

He nodded and left without asking how long he must wait.

As the door curtain fell, I hurried to the window to watch his carriage disappear, my heart tender and aching.

I had refused the marriage, not him.

Fortunately, he understood.

7.

After proposing, Xiao Chengke still came once a month to buy candied fruit.

Sometimes he stayed for a cup of tea. Sometimes, seeing me busy, he left two coins on the counter and went away. He did not raise marriage again. Nor did he assume that because I liked him, I must eventually agree.

I visited his residence often too.

When his old injuries troubled him, I treated him with acupuncture. When an imperial order sent him out of the capital to suppress bandits, a letter arrived every ten days to tell me he was safe. There were no declarations of love. Only how many li he had traveled, that the food was too salty, that his wound had not reopened.

My replies told him which herbs had arrived, whose child had recovered from a fever. I always ended by reminding him to drink less.

Then communication from the front stopped.

For two months, I waited, sending an apprentice to the city gate every day for news. When Xiao Chengke returned, it was past curfew. Still, I stood beneath the gate with a lantern.

At the sight of him riding out of the darkness, I forgot I had said I would never entrust my whole life to anyone. I ran through the puddles toward him.

He dismounted. When I threw my arms around him, he stiffened, holding his hands raised for a long time, not daring to lower them.

“Su Tang, may I hold you?”

“Ask again, and I'll let go.”

Only then did his arms tighten.

The gate guards were stealing glances, but I did not hide. In that moment, I was only grateful he had returned safely.

What I truly feared was loving someone and losing myself.

He did not hurry me to prove anything.

He only rested his chin on my head.

“The apothecary is still open. The loan agreement is still there. Loving me doesn't stop you from being Su Tang.”

Half a year later, Song Yanchu escaped from exile.

He did not enter the city. He stopped me on the public road outside.

I had gone to an estate to collect herbs. On the return journey, a wheel became stuck in mud. The driver went to a nearby village for help, leaving me beside the carriage.

Song Yanchu emerged from behind dry grass, his clothes ragged, his right leg dragging.

I scarcely recognized him.

He recognized me at a glance. His lips trembled.

“A Tang.”

I backed toward the carriage shaft, feeling for the medicinal powder in my sleeve.

“I mean no harm.” He raised both hands. “I only want to see you once.”

He took out a cloth bundle. Inside was the half-pendant I had returned to him. The jade was cracked, bound together with coarse thread.

“I've dreamed of you every day all these years. If I'd recognized you sooner, if you hadn't come early, we'd have been married.”

“If I hadn't come early, you'd have taken another woman into that room.”

He bowed his head.

“I know I was wrong.”

After the Third Prince's fall, he said, he had suffered every hardship in exile. The men who once flattered him had broken his leg. The vice minister's daughter had long since married. He had nothing left but the jade.

“Come with me. We'll go back to Qingshi and open an apothecary again. I'll do whatever you say.”

He spoke earnestly and waited for my nod, as though we could still return to ten years ago.

I took a copper whistle from my purse.

He recognized it as an alarm whistle used by Prince Jing's guard. His face slowly grayed.

“You married him?”

“No.”

“Then why are you still working for him?”

“The authorities issue these to merchants who often go outside the city to gather herbs. The local patrol will come as soon as they hear it.”

I raised it to my lips.

Song Yanchu lunged.

I flung the powder into his eyes and stepped aside.

With his bad leg, he crashed into the wheel. I did not grapple with him. I blew the whistle, climbed onto the carriage shaft, and drew the short blade hidden beneath the seat cushion.

Clutching his eyes, he groped in the mud for the fallen pendant.

The patrol arrived quickly and pinned him down.

As they led him away, he was still shouting that I was his fiancée, that we had a betrothal document and our parents' command.

The patrol captain recognized me.

“Mistress Su, is that true?”

“The betrothal was canceled a year ago. The Capital Prefecture has the record.”

They gagged him and put him in the prison cart.

A second escape, compounded by assault on the road, meant he would never leave that harsh place for the rest of his life.

I picked up the cracked jade from the mud, looked at it for a moment, then threw it into the roadside ditch.

Back in the city, Xiao Chengke was waiting at Huichun Hall.

When I entered, he was scolding the apprentices for not telling him where I had gone.

Seeing the mud on my hem, he rose at once.

“What happened?”

I told him Song Yanchu had been caught.

He wanted to send someone to question him. I stopped him.

“Let the patrol deal with it according to law. There's no need for you to intervene.”

He studied me. Only after making sure I was unhurt did he sit again.

“All right.”

I took the account book from beneath the counter and pushed the final page toward him.

“The shop's capital is fully repaid. Please give me the loan agreement.”

He drew it from inside his robe, neatly folded. He must have carried it for a long time; its edges had worn soft.

I checked the seal, then tore it up before him.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I put a piece of candied fruit on the counter.

“Has your mother been urging you to choose a consort again?”

“Yes.”

“Then bring a matchmaker tomorrow.”

He sprang up so quickly that his knee struck the table. For a long time, the pain left him speechless.

I could not help laughing.

Bracing himself against the table, he asked, “Su Tang, have you thought it through?”

“I have. But I have three conditions. Huichun Hall must remain open. I must still be free to go out and treat patients. No one in your household may interfere with my accounts.”

“Weren't there three?”

“I haven't thought of the third yet. Leave it owing for now.”

He did not immediately rejoice. Instead, he asked, “Is this because you saw Song Yanchu today? Are you afraid I won't wait any longer?”

“No.”

I went to him and took his hand.

“Because when he appeared, my first thought wasn't fear of him, or memories of the past. I only wanted to get back to the city and tell you I was safe.”

His fingers tightened, then quickly relaxed, afraid of hurting me.

I smiled and held him more firmly.

“This past year, I haven't been waiting to forget someone. I've been learning to believe I can love you and still be Su Tang.”

He took two copper coins from his sleeve and laid them on the counter, then picked up the candied fruit.

This time, he ate it slowly. It still made him frown with sourness.

The next day, the matchmaker from Prince Jing's residence arrived punctually.

She brought a long list of betrothal gifts. At the top lay a blank sheet, already stamped at the signature with his private seal.

I took a brush and wrote my third condition.

“Whatever happens in the future, you must never decide for me what I should sacrifice to save someone else.”

After reading it, Xiao Chengke pressed his thumbprint beside the words.

The wedding was set for the sixth day of the sixth month.

Afraid I might suffer any indignity, the empress dowager personally asked the emperor to bestow the marriage. The decree stated clearly that I would enter the residence as principal consort and that Huichun Hall would remain mine. Before the imperial clan, Xiao Chengke also promised never to take a secondary consort or keep concubines.

On our wedding day, the bridal procession wound through more than half the capital.

Huichun Hall's neighbors crowded the streets. The two apprentices wept until their eyes were red, yet still remembered to run after the sedan chair, calling that I must come back to see patients in three days.

Riding ahead, Xiao Chengke actually turned and answered.

“Don't worry. I wouldn't dare keep your Physician Su away.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

By night, the bridal chamber was finally quiet.

He stood before me for a long time before asking, “May I lift your veil?”

Behind the red silk, I laughed at him.

“You've asked three times.”

“Today is different.”

“How?”

“From today, you're my wife. That gives me even less right to assume your consent.”

I lifted the veil myself, took his hand, and set the ceremonial veil-lifting rod back on the table.

“Then let me ask you once. Xiao Chengke, will you be my husband?”

His eyes reddened at once.

“I will.”

I rose on tiptoe and kissed him.

He stood rigid for a long moment, still not daring to hold me. I had to draw his hands to my waist.

“You needn't ask about this again.”

He lowered his head and looked at me. Only after making sure I did not draw away did he tighten his arms around me.

The red candles burned all night.

After we married, I still went to Huichun Hall every day to see patients. If court ended early, he came to fetch me. If it ended late, he sent a note saying exactly which food box held my dinner.

Sometimes he still pretended his wrist hurt, sitting before me to demand a piece of candied fruit.

After taking his pulse, I always scolded him.

“Your Highness, you're getting worse at pretending to be ill.”

He never argued. He simply left his hand on the pulse cushion and waited until I had seen the last patient.

In the winter of our second year, the capital saw its first snow.

I locked the apothecary. Xiao Chengke fastened my cloak and took my hand as we climbed into the carriage for home. A meal was already warming inside, along with a packet of sweet candied fruit he had specially ordered.

He tried a piece first. Once he was sure it was not sour, he held it to my lips.

I bit off half and put the rest into his mouth.

“Let's go, husband.”

He held my hand and told the driver, “Home.”