Chapter 4

Kneeling in the courtroom, I smoothed my skirt.

“Your Honor, there is something I wish to ask. Can words unsupported by evidence be used to condemn a woman as unchaste?”

The courtroom fell utterly silent.

Madam Jiang stared at me. At last, she understood why I'd carried the dispute all the way from my bridal sedan to this court.

But she didn't dare answer that question for me.

7.

The prefect questioned her first.

“Shen Zhiwei accused you of having an affair with your husband's son. You say she has no evidence. Is that correct?”

“Of course!”

“Then when Zhao Er accused Shen Zhiwei of unchastity, was there anything beyond his word? Physical evidence? Letters? An eyewitness?”

She had no answer.

Zhao Er's statement lay on the desk.

He said the Pei servant had coached him on the three locations where the supposed secret meetings had taken place. He'd been given new clothes and five taels in advance, with fifteen more promised once the deed was done.

Madam Jiang had wanted him to appear after the bridal sedan was stopped, making the crowd believe the Peis had possessed evidence all along.

At first, Pei Jinghe denied it.

The clerk produced the note on the back of the pawn ticket, the record of his payment to the servant, and the agreement from the old house. At the sight of his own thumbprint, his shoulders sagged.

“I only wanted Zhiwei to entrust her dowry to Mother. I never really meant to ruin her.”

I couldn't help asking, “Accusing me of unchastity in the street and finding a man to claim he was my lover doesn't count as ruining me? What would?”

“Once you were married into the family, we would have cleared your name.”

“How?”

“We'd say Zhao Er had mistaken you for someone else.”

“Hundreds of people heard him. Were you going to knock on every door and tell them he'd made a mistake?”

Pei Jinghe fell silent.

He'd only thought about smearing my name, never about how to clean it.

Perhaps he had thought about it. Perhaps he'd simply decided my reputation was worth less than six dowry chests.

The prefect next examined the nighttime intrusion at the old house.

Pei Jinghe insisted there had been an agreement.

I presented the complete dowry inventory. Every dowry chest had a painted mark, a wooden tag, and a number. The six red chests at the old house had none of those things. Nor did the agreement authorize him to climb the wall around midnight, much less bring a group of burly men to force the back gate.

The neighborhood headman, the neighbors, and the watchmen testified in turn.

The evidence was simple.

The complication was Pei Jinghe's conviction that because I'd once wanted to marry him, my belongings would sooner or later be his. Taking them a night early didn't count as taking them at all.

The prefect found him guilty of entering a private residence without permission and gathering men to seize property. Since no one had been injured, he sentenced him to twenty strokes of the heavy rod and ordered him to pay for the damage to the old house. He also referred the case involving Zhao Er for further examination.

For bribing a witness and publicly slandering another person, Madam Jiang was fined and ordered to submit a written apology to the Shen family. The paper she'd swallowed hadn't saved her. Zhao Er, the Pei servant, and her trusted attendant had all confessed.

The prefect didn't rule that from this day onward, no one in the world might gossip about women.

He wrote only this in his judgment: Zhao Er's paid statements could not be admitted as evidence; Madam Jiang, having used them to destroy another person's reputation, must make amends.

It wasn't a stirring declaration. But it was more useful than a hundred comforting words in the street.

The judgment bore an official seal. I could keep it safely at the bottom of a chest. If someone brought up Zhao Er again, I wouldn't need to argue. I'd only have to ask them to write down their name and come with me to the Capital Prefecture to reopen the case.

Many people liked to whisper. Very few were willing to sign and put their thumbprint to a statement in court.

When we left, the woman who'd been holding a child was waiting below the stone steps. She pressed a basket of eggs into Madam Zhou's hands. Her own daughter was to marry next year, she said, and she wanted a copy of the dowry inventory we'd used.

Madam Zhou refused the eggs but agreed to make her a copy.

Two more women approached.

One asked who should keep the marriage contract. The other wanted to know whether a bride could entrust the deeds to her dowry land to her mother-in-law.

I couldn't answer everything.

One victory didn't teach a person all there was to know about the law and household affairs. I asked them to leave their addresses. I would reply after consulting a legal adviser.

Mingzhu stood beside me, taking notes. At the third woman, she looked up.

“Sister, didn't we come here to fight a lawsuit?”

“We've fought it.”

“Then why are we taking on so much more?”

I looked down at her list. After the third name, someone else handed over a slip with an address.

“Write them down for now.”

To protect the other young men of the clan, the Pei elders sent word to the Ministry of Personnel themselves, withdrawing Pei Jinghe's recommendation.

Master Pei hurried back to the capital from his posting.

He didn't come to the Shen house. He only sent his steward with replacements for the swapped betrothal gifts and the compensation money. He also sent Madam Jiang to an estate outside the city, stripping her of the household keys and account books.

The steward told me all this when he brought Master Pei's handwritten compensation letter. I didn't see Madam Jiang leave the house myself.

Before she went, however, she had someone bring me a message.

A woman values her chastity above her life, she said. By cornering her like this, I was trying to kill her.

I sent a message back.

“When she used those very words to corner me, did she remember that I had a life too?”

That was the only remark in the whole affair that sounded cruel.

The rest of the time, I was busy counting things.

The missing gifts were replaced. The old house's gate was paid for. The Peis even paid the bonuses for the fright suffered by the sedan bearers and wedding attendant. Bailiffs escorted Zhao Er back to the very spot where he'd spoken and made him repeat his story—this time admitting he'd been paid to lie.

The crowd was much the same.

Some believed him. Some didn't.

Mingzhu stayed angry for half a day and wanted to go from house to house explaining.

Madam Zhou stopped her.

“Their mouths belong to them. Can your sister sew up every mouth in the capital? Keep the papers that matter. Recover what belongs to us. If anyone dares say it to our faces, we'll ask whether they're willing to testify in court.”

Mingzhu was still indignant. “What if they say it behind our backs?”

“Grow as many extra ears as you like. You still won't hear it all.”

Madam Zhou rolled up the judgment and put it in Mingzhu's arms.

“Keep this safe first. And don't get chicken grease on it.”

Mingzhu had no choice but to carry it away.

I followed her. I no longer sent anyone to ask what people were saying in the streets. If someone really dared say it to my face, I'd simply invite them to sign their name in court.

When everything was over, Madam Zhou lit three sticks of incense in the prayer hall.

One for me, one for Mingzhu, and one for herself.

I asked what she'd done to trouble her conscience.

“When the Pei steward brought the compensation,” she whispered, “I added two taels to the cost of repairing the gate.”

“Was the gate made of huanghuali rosewood?”

“Ordinary elm.”

“Then you certainly need to pray.”

She glared at me, then pressed a bunch of storeroom keys into my hand.

“This is your dowry. From now on, manage it yourself.”

8.

For the first two months after the broken engagement, the number of people proposing marriage at the Shen house fell by more than half.

Among those who remained, some found roundabout ways to ask whether I really was pure.

I didn't get angry.

I asked them to produce proof of their own purity first.

Usually, once that was said, the matchmaker didn't return the next day.

Madam Zhou worried at first, then came to terms with it.

“Saves tea.”

Father returned from his post and heard the whole story. Furious, he wanted to take men to smash the Pei gate. Madam Zhou laid the court judgment and compensation letter before him and told him not to cause more trouble.

“They've already paid for our gate. If you smash theirs, we'll have to pay them.”

He looked at me for a long time, then said only, “Better not to marry him.”

He transferred a small courtyard house south of the city into my name. It had been part of the dowry my birth mother left me; until then, the Shens had collected its rent on my behalf. Father said the rent was to come straight to me from now on. No one else was to handle it.

I didn't move out.

Madam Zhou said it was up to me, but behind my back, she had the entire roof repaired and even replaced the kitchen. Mingzhu went to see it and reported that there were two sets of bedding and three sets of bowls and chopsticks.

“Mother's afraid you'll be lonely living alone, but she's too embarrassed to ask you to stay.”

I didn't expose her either.

I cleared out the front room of the courtyard house and opened it on the fifth day of every month.

Most visitors were women facing difficulties before or after marriage. Some had dowries withheld by their husbands' families. Others were being forced to prove their purity because of a baseless rumor. Some simply wanted help understanding what their marriage contracts said.

I didn't pass judgment for them, nor did I teach them to spread rumors.

I showed them my documents, my dowry inventory, and Pei Jinghe's acknowledgment of what he owed. I told them which papers needed copies, which promises shouldn't be made only behind closed doors, and which debts mustn't be carelessly dismissed with, “We'll all be family sooner or later.”

Where I wasn't sure, I invited an officer versed in the law to answer.

Madam Zhou handled the food. Mingzhu took down names.

And tapped her prayer block as she wrote.

The first visitors were alarmed by the sound and asked whether we performed rites for the dead as well.

“No,” Mingzhu explained. “It's mostly to earn merit for my sister.”

Within days, I overheard two women in a cosmetics shop saying the eldest Shen daughter was not to be trifled with. Her own little sister followed her around tapping a prayer block every day, afraid she wouldn't be reborn as a human.

I went home and asked Mingzhu whether she'd started that rumor.

She hugged the prayer block.

“People have eyes of their own. What's it got to do with me?”

I asked no more.

Six months later, Madam Jiang's birth family couldn't pay its gambling debts and came begging to the Peis.

Master Pei refused to keep covering the losses, so the Jiangs went to the country estate and made a scene. Madam Jiang prized her dignity above all else, yet now her own relatives exposed her humiliations day after day.

After recovering from his injuries, Pei Jinghe shut himself away with his books, hoping for the next round of recommendations. But anyone in the capital who might have written him a letter took one look at the court judgment and refused.

I hadn't sent anyone to gather this news.

The Pei aunt in brown occasionally came to sit in the little courtyard, always bringing her own melon seeds. She said life had become much easier for the Pei daughters-in-law since Madam Jiang left. At least they no longer had to report the exact times they left and returned whenever they visited their parents.

I listened and left it at that.

One day, Mingzhu suddenly asked whether I'd soften if Pei Jinghe came to apologize.

I was checking another woman's dowry list.

“No.”

“Just like that? You knew him for seven years.”

“That's exactly why I don't need to think. He knew me for seven years and still thought ruining my reputation for six dowry chests was a profitable bargain. If I spent another seven years waiting for him to become a better man, then there really would be something wrong with me.”

Mingzhu nodded and added a line to her book.

I leaned over to look.

Sister can still be saved. No extra prayers needed.

Before winter, the repairs to the courtyard house south of the city were finished.

I still lived with the Shens and only went there on the fifth of each month. We put up no signboard and charged poor women nothing. The legal adviser's fees, paper, and ink were paid for out of the Pei compensation money.

Whenever Madam Zhou took money out, she first asked how much remained.

Only after learning it would last three years did she breathe a sigh of relief.

“And after three years?” she asked, flicking the abacus beads.

“If people are still coming, I'll pay for it with my rent.”

She pushed the abacus aside and began chanting again.

“Mother, you're praying even when I spend my own money?”

“It's not about the money.”

Mingzhu closed the register. “Then what are you praying for?”

Madam Zhou looked at the women waiting in the courtyard to have their accounts checked, then at Mingzhu, who was helping someone write a petition.

“Each of you is more full of schemes than the other these days. I'm afraid the Buddha won't remember which is which, so I may as well pray for you both.”

Mingzhu handed me a prayer block.

“Sister, take care of your own next life.”

I tapped it twice, decided it was noisy, and gave it back.

This life already kept me busy enough.

If I really couldn't be human in the next one, I wanted to be the threshold of the Pei house.

The next time someone carried another woman's dowry inside, I'd trip him first.

And if he still wanted to lecture anyone about rules, I'd tell Mingzhu to bring her prayer block.

And give it a good, hard pounding.