Chapter 1

On my wedding day, my future mother-in-law brought a crowd to block my bridal sedan.

She declared that I was no virgin and unfit to enter the Pei household.

I lifted the curtain and glanced at the scarlet wedding procession stretching for miles behind me.

Pei Jinghe's stepmother had her eye on my dowry.

Whatever I said or did today, the verdict would be the same: I'd lost my virtue before marriage.

All I could do was sigh.

“Madam Pei, I was wrong to catch you and Jinghe sneaking around together. But whatever your faults, you shouldn't drag my name through the mud. The truth is, I'd be quite happy to see the two of you together.”

She pointed at me and swore.

“Say one more word and I'll tear that mouth of yours apart!”

“I know being caught has upset you. But you are the lady of the Pei household. Do try to preserve a little dignity.”

I'd made it up.

Could she prove otherwise?

Madam Pei's maiden name was Jiang.

At my words, her face went from white to red, then red to green. It was more colorful than the embroidery on my wedding gown.

The spectators lining the street stopped laughing.

They looked from Madam Jiang to Pei Jinghe on his horse.

No doubt they were all silently calculating the difference in their ages.

At last, Pei Jinghe could sit still no longer.

“Shen Zhiwei, have you lost your mind?”

Resting a hand on the sedan door, I answered in perfect earnest.

“No. I'm telling you what I saw with my own eyes.”

“When did you see it?”

“When did your mother see me lose my virtue?”

He opened his mouth.

I waited.

No answer came.

I didn't hurry him.

When it had been my turn to face a false accusation, they hadn't given me nearly so much time to think.

Madam Jiang ordered the two older servants behind her forward.

“What fine breeding the Shen family gives its daughters! Such filth the moment you open your mouth. If you still want to enter the Pei household today, come down and let the midwife examine you. If you're still pure, I'll accept you as my daughter-in-law for the sake of our families' friendship.”

The wedding attendant beside my sedan was too frightened to lift her head.

But I understood now.

She meant to announce in the middle of the street that I wasn't chaste, then make me undress to prove that I was.

And who would decide the result of the examination? Her own people, of course.

Besides, she'd said she would “accept” me.

As though the Pei threshold were cast in gold and I ought to crawl across it if necessary.

“An examination is quite possible.”

Delight had barely flickered in her eyes before I continued.

“But you, Pei Jinghe, and I should all be examined. You can be checked for an affair with your stepson, he can be checked for an affair with his stepmother, and then it will be my turn. Once we're all declared pure, we can perform the wedding bows together. Perfectly fair.”

Someone in the crowd burst out laughing.

Madam Jiang lunged at me.

She'd barely taken two steps when the sound of a wooden prayer block rang out behind her.

Tok, tok, tok.

My stepmother, Madam Zhou, came down the street with the dowry ledger in her arms.

My younger sister, Shen Mingzhu, walked beside her, tapping a wooden prayer block with one hand and counting prayer beads with the other.

When she was young, Madam Zhou had been too timid to go near a knife, let alone a chicken.

Managing the large Shen household after marrying my father hadn't made her much braver.

Protecting her daughters was another matter.

She planted herself in front of the sedan, shielding me completely.

“Whose mouth did you say you were going to tear apart, Madam Jiang?”

Knowing she was my stepmother, Madam Jiang hadn't thought her worth taking seriously.

“Your Shen girl has no virtue. I'm disciplining her for you.”

“Her name is Shen. It's not for a woman named Jiang to discipline her.”

Madam Zhou's fingers were still trembling as she spoke.

She thrust the dowry ledger into the wedding attendant's hands, then turned and shouted at the drivers.

“Turn around. Back to the house. If so much as one chest goes missing, you'll answer to me.”

All sixteen dowry carts turned at once.

Madam Jiang panicked.

“We haven't settled the marriage yet! You can't take the dowry away!”

Madam Zhou looked back.

“If the bride isn't fit to enter, why should her dowry stay? Are the chests purer than she is? More worthy of crossing the Pei threshold?”

I sat back down in the sedan.

Mingzhu leaned close and whispered, “Sister, did you really see Madam Jiang and Pei Jinghe doing that?”

“No.”

The tapping stopped.

“Making things up like that will get your tongue pulled out after you die.”

“Then say a few extra prayers.”

Her brows drooped miserably, but she still ordered the maids to keep an eye on the dowry carts.

Just as my sedan turned, a man rushed out of the Pei gate.

He dropped to his knees in the middle of the street and loudly declared that he'd met me in secret three times.

This time, even the prayer block fell silent.

His name was Zhao Er.

He wore a new set of plain cloth clothes, but the ease with which he knelt suggested he'd been practicing the night before.

“I dare not conceal it. Last year, in the third month, Miss Shen met me privately at a country residence south of the city. She even gave me a gold bracelet.”

Madam Jiang immediately had a servant help him up.

“Zhiwei, I meant to cover this up for you, yet you turned around and attacked me. Now the witness is here. What have you to say?”

I asked Zhao Er, “Which day of the third month?”

“The eighteenth.”

“What time?”

“In the afternoon.”

“What was I wearing?”

He looked at Madam Jiang.

She snapped, “Who remembers clothes in the middle of such filthy business?”

“He remembers that we met three times, but not what I wore. Evidently, the number of meetings mattered more than I did.”

Sweat sprang out on his forehead.

I was about to go on when Mingzhu edged over and tugged my sleeve.

She wasn't looking at his face. She was looking at his shoes.

“Sister, the soles are red.”

It hadn't rained in the capital for days. The streets were covered in pale gray dust.

Yet there was red mud around the edges of Zhao Er's shoes, not quite dry, with two small bamboo leaves stuck to it.

The alley behind the Pei house had just been resurfaced with red earth. A little clump of bamboo grew there too.

The maid who'd delivered the wedding fruit yesterday had mentioned it in passing. She'd said the path dirtied one's shoes and warned today's dowry bearers not to use the back alley.

I told the crowd, then asked Zhao Er, “Did you come out of the Pei house through the back gate this morning?”

“No!”

“Then you must have met Madam Jiang secretly among the bamboo. She even gave you new clothes.”

He sprang to his feet.

“Nonsense! Young Master Pei gave me the clothes!”

The entire street fell silent.

Pei Jinghe's face was now even more colorful than his stepmother's had been.

Realizing what he'd let slip, Zhao Er turned to run.

A Shen driver flicked his whip. It caught Zhao Er neatly around the leg.

As he fell, a purse rolled out of his robe.

A small character for “Pei” was embroidered near its opening.

Pei Jinghe hurried to explain.

“All our servants use those purses. It doesn't mean I gave it to him.”

“Quite right.”

I nodded.

“A purse proves nothing. Just as a man kneeling in the street and spouting nonsense proves nothing.”

He froze.

I gave him no chance to reply.

“But on the eighteenth day of the third month last year, I wasn't south of the city. I went with my grandmother to Yun'an Temple for the first anniversary of my mother's death. The visiting monks, the twenty-odd people who accompanied us, and the temple's donation register can all attest to that.”

“Zhao Er, before you chose a date for your lie, didn't Young Master Pei teach you to consult the almanac?”

He lay flat on the ground, no longer daring to raise his head.

Madam Jiang still tried to put all the blame on him, calling him a money-grubbing scoundrel who'd come to extort them.

Mingzhu had already picked up the purse.

She tipped out five taels of silver and a pawn ticket.

The silver was nothing remarkable.

On the back of the pawn ticket, however, were two lines telling Zhao Er to come to the alley behind the Pei house at the Chen hour—between seven and nine that morning—to collect the rest of his payment.

The handwriting was ugly.

I recognized it.

It belonged to Pei Jinghe's personal servant.

Three months earlier, the same servant had delivered a love letter for his master.

Pei Jinghe's poetry had been poor enough. His servant's handwriting was worse.

After reading it, I'd thought master and servant each had a failing of his own. Quite a suitable pair.

Madam Jiang snatched the pawn ticket and stuffed it into her mouth.

She chewed so frantically that she nearly choked to death.

A woman selling flatbreads at the roadside had been watching for some time. Suddenly, she slapped the tool in her hand down on her basket.

“That man said a few words, and you wanted to examine the bride's body.”

“Now the purse, the clothes, and the paper all turn out to come from the Pei house. Why isn't anyone examining Young Master Pei?”

Several women nearby spoke up too.

They didn't necessarily like me.

They'd simply realized that if a man's word alone could make a woman undress for an examination today, their daughters might be next tomorrow.

A woman holding a child asked Madam Jiang, “You say an examination can prove she's pure. If you've paid off the midwife, where is Miss Shen supposed to seek justice?”

Madam Jiang told her to mind her own business.

The woman held her child closer.

“I have a daughter too. Today, I'm making it my business.”

Madam Zhou turned to look at her.

She said nothing, merely instructing the steward to take down the names of the two shopkeepers who'd just offered to testify.

Someone willing to leave a real name after the crowd dispersed was worth more than ten insults hurled at me in the street.

Mingzhu began tapping again.

“Mother, hurry up and pray. She's eaten something so filthy, she may not live to reach the magistrate.”

Madam Zhou glared at her, but quietly murmured a prayer herself.

I told the driver to take Zhao Er and the purse to the Capital Prefecture, and invited two shopkeepers we knew along the street to act as witnesses.

Pei Jinghe blocked my sedan.