Chapter 3
Edward Quan ·
Mother did not lose her composure over her sudden rise in favor.
She simply had someone give me a little warm water, then asked the doctor to check whether I had been hurt in the fall at the riding grounds.
The doctor examined me carefully and praised me again and again.
“The eldest young miss has excellent bone structure and abundant vitality. A rare, fortunate child.”
Grandmother beamed. Bending toward Mother, she apologized.
“The fortune-teller deceived me these past few months. You've suffered.”
Mother looked at her. Her voice was still gentle, but for the first time, she did not lower her head.
“If you truly love this child, Mother, there's something you should investigate.”
“What is it?”
Holding me more securely, Mother raised her eyes.
“Why did that fortune-teller happen to be wrong about my daughter?”
The room went quiet again.
Concubine Qiao's face turned white.
As soon as Grandmother had recovered, she had ordered the fortune-teller seized. She even had the city gates sealed overnight to prevent his escape.
6.
The fortune-teller had worked for the Gu family for years.
His predictions about marriages, unborn children, and good or ill fortune had rarely been wrong. At first, Grandmother was reluctant to have him beaten.
I pouted.
Grandmother instantly slammed the table in distress.
“Don't spare him! Beat him until he tells the truth!”
Several guards pinned the fortune-teller to a bench. Wooden paddles came down one after another.
At first, he gritted his teeth and refused to admit anything.
“The child was hidden inside her mother's belly. What's so strange about one mistaken prediction?”
Grandmother sat beneath the covered walkway with me in her arms.
For every excuse he made, she ordered five more strokes.
Father's face darkened too.
“Did someone pay you?”
Blood stained the fortune-teller's trouser legs. At last, he broke down and cried out, “Concubine Qiao came to me!”
She immediately denied it.
“A wandering fraud, accusing anyone he can now that he's about to die! My lord, you mustn't believe him!”
The fortune-teller frantically fumbled inside his robe.
With trembling hands, he pulled out several banknotes issued by the Gu family's bank. Their serial numbers and dates were clearly recorded.
“Tong… Concubine Qiao gave me all of these. She said that if I declared the lawful wife's baby ugly, she'd give me twice as much once it was done.”
Grandmother slapped the banknotes into Concubine Qiao's face.
“What do you have to say now?”
Qiao crawled to Father, sobbing, and clung to his legs.
“I was only afraid Mingzhu couldn't compete with the lawful wife's child. I never meant to kill anyone!”
At that moment, Mother lifted her veil, revealing the scar that had marked her face for years.
“And what about my face?”
Father froze.
Even Concubine Qiao stopped crying for a moment.
Mother explained that when she had saved Father all those years ago, her face had not been disfigured. She had only suffered a small graze on one cheek.
Using the delivery of medicine as her excuse, Concubine Qiao had come every day to dress Mother's wound herself.
Instead of healing, it had grown steadily worse, ulcerating until it left pits and scars across her face.
Mother had always thought she was simply unlucky.
Only when she smelled saffron at the riding grounds, then saw the fortune-teller's banknotes, had she connected the two incidents.
The doctor brought an old medicine bottle from Concubine Qiao's room to examine. Sure enough, it contained a powder that corroded the skin.
Qiao still tried to defend herself. Wasn't Mother alive and well? At worst, her face was a little harder to look at.
Those words destroyed her last way out.
Before, Grandmother could claim that she had despised Mother because she had been deceived.
Now she knew a concubine had nearly schemed the Gu family's lawful wife and legitimate daughter to death. Furious, she hurled away her walking stick.
“Write a letter of repudiation! Hand Qiao over to the authorities!”
Father went pale and did not move for a long time.
Qiao sobbed and called him her husband, begging him to spare her for the sake of the daughter she had borne him.
I held my arms out to Father.
He instinctively picked me up.
Grandmother immediately urged him to write. If he kept protecting Qiao, she said, he would be driven out of the Gu family too.
The letter was soon handed to the officers.
As Concubine Qiao was dragged from the courtyard, she was still wailing that she had been wronged.
Gu Mingzhu remained in the household, cared for by a wet nurse.
No one spoke of her as a heaven-sent blessing anymore.
Mother did not ask for favors.
She only asked Grandmother for an itemized account of the charcoal and monthly allowances withheld from her remote courtyard over the years.
An examination of the ledgers revealed that Concubine Qiao had pocketed more than half Mother's allowance.
Even the moldy coarse rice had been deliberately taken from the refuse stores.
A supervising serving woman also confessed that withholding charcoal in winter, throwing water over Mother at dawn, and making her run laps in the snow had all been Concubine Qiao's private orders.
Grandmother's attendants knew those orders broke the household rules. But because Qiao was favored, they had pretended not to see.
Mother did not cry when she heard.
She simply had the accounts office repay every withheld allowance to the old servants in her remote courtyard. Then she handed over each woman who had laid hands on her that day to the authorities.
She would no longer wait for anyone's kindness.
She told the accounts office to record every debt, then had everyone involved dealt with under the family rules and the law.
When the maids brought the restored charcoal to her old courtyard, Mother checked its weight herself. Then she had it divided between the two elderly servants who had endured the cold with her in years past.
Closing the ledger, she told me, “Remember what people have given you. But remember what they owe you too.”
“You can't settle both in the same account.”
Grandmother replaced all the supervising serving women and made Father apologize to Mother in person.
Mother said only one thing.
“I don't ask to be liked. I only ask that from now on, no one sacrifice my child's life or mine to please someone else.”
Grandmother agreed again and again. She even handed Mother the keys to the family's storeroom herself.
At my one-month celebration, the elders of the clan took one look at me and raised no objection to the choice of heir.
Grandmother publicly amended the family genealogy.
From then on, I was the Gu family's heir.
7.
Sixteen years later, there was still a long queue outside the Gu family's cosmetics shop.
I sat upstairs trying out a newly made lip rouge.
Over the years, Grandmother had entrusted half the business to Mother and had me learn the other half.
Father gave me anything I asked for. But he still never dared face Mother alone.
After years of care, the scars on her face had faded considerably. And she no longer walked with her head bowed.
I revised the shop's formulas, specializing in cosmetics for different skin tones.
Whenever the season changed, girls from all over the capital waited outside for our new products.
At first, Mother did not understand color blending, so she helped me record the customers' comments every day.
Some found our powder too pale.
Some had facial scars.
Some broke out in red rashes every summer.
Unlike the Gu family of old, we did not praise just one standard of beauty.
We tailored our formulas to different skin tones and individual concerns.
On the day we first sold a powder designed to cover scars, Mother studied the ledger for a long time.
At last, she said only, “If I'd had a box like this when I was young, perhaps I could have held my head high a few years sooner.”
I told her, “People with scars were never the ones who should have hung their heads.”
Mother smiled and tapped my forehead. Then she turned and told the workshop to make smaller boxes for girls who could not afford a full-sized one.
Fang Yin pushed her way in from outside and slapped an invitation onto the table. There was going to be a beauty contest in the city. Was I going?
“No.”
I stirred the rouge with a silver spoon.
“Why stand on a stage and let people judge me from head to toe when I can sit here collecting silver?”
Fang Yin said this one was different.
The empress wanted to find a match for the Crown Prince. The girls selected could attend a palace banquet.
I was still uninterested—until she mentioned that several hundred young ladies from noble families would be taking part.
I looked up.
“Several hundred?”
“At least.”
Now that was a fine place to sell new products.
I had just told the manager to prepare small sample boxes when Gu Mingzhu pushed the door open.
She was not ugly. But after years of being compared with me, even her pretty features had acquired a perpetual scowl.
She glanced at the invitation on the table and sneered.
“This is still a selection for the Crown Prince's bride. You don't even have the right status.”
She was certain I was merely a merchant's daughter.
However wealthy the Gu family might be, it could not compare with families who held official posts.
Fang Yin was about to argue when I stopped her with a raised hand. Then I took the rouge box Gu Mingzhu was carrying at her wrist.
It was a new product that had not yet gone on sale. The underside was marked “Trial.”
Gu Mingzhu flushed and said she had only borrowed it to try.
After all, sooner or later, she would have a share of everything the Gu family owned.
I entered every cosmetic she had stolen in the allowance ledger, including the scented powder from last time, and sent the whole account to the accounts office.
“You—!”
“Mother and I run this shop. If you want something, pay for it first.”
She hated nothing more than hearing me mention Mother's authority. Before slamming the door, she threw one last remark over her shoulder.
“When I become Crown Princess, the first thing I'll do is shut your shop!”
Far from being angry, I prepared twenty more boxes of lip rouge.
On the day of the contest, a long platform had been built beside the lake. Fine carriages and spectators crowded around it.
The other girls were busy playing music and painting. I took my assistants around, handing out paper swatches of lip color.
Before half the day was over, I had taken more than a hundred orders.
Fang Yin laughed at me for seeing nothing but money. I was about to reply when people suddenly pushed forward behind us.
The steps were so crowded there was nowhere to put my feet. My sole slipped, and I tipped over the railing.
A hand caught my arm just in time.
Amid the press of people, the Crown Prince steadied me. He let go only once I had my balance.
An odd silence fell around us.
Then countless whispers began.
Looking at the sample box in my hand, the Crown Prince asked why I had come to a beauty contest to sell cosmetics.
“Your Highness is choosing a bride. I'm choosing customers. We needn't get in each other's way.”
He could not help laughing. Then, before the empress and all the noble young ladies, he held out his hand to me.
“I think I've found a suitable Crown Princess.”
8.
The whole gathering erupted.
In the crowd, Gu Mingzhu nearly snapped the round fan in her hands.
The Crown Prince waited for me to give him my hand.
But I did not.