Chapter 11 — The Stepmother

Dou Yan's feelings were complicated.

If this woman who had appeared out of nowhere was her stepmother, and her mother intended to make something of the woman's background, she was likely to be sorely disappointed.

Her stepmother's family name was Wang; her given name was Yingxue, and she was a daughter of Wang Xingyi.

Wang Xingyi, courtesy name Yousheng, was a native of Nanwa Township, Lingshou County, in the Northern Directly-Ruled Province. He passed the imperial examination in the jichou year, the thirty-sixth year of the Zhide era. He first served as a secretary in the Ministry of Personnel, and was later promoted to vice director of the Carriage and Horse Department of the Ministry of War. During this period the Mongol Altan Khan several times led troops across the northern frontier, and Shi Duanlan, the Marquis of Changxing, then commander-in-chief stationed at Datong, petitioned to open horse markets as a means of pacifying him. Wang Xingyi submitted a memorial, "A Request to Abolish the Horse Markets," in which he argued strenuously that Shi Duanlan was guilty of "ten inadvisabilities and five absurdities." Chen Dong, a eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial empowered to sign edicts on the emperor's behalf, shielded Shi Duanlan, whereupon Wang Xingyi impeached Chen Dong in a memorial entitled "Five Treacheries and Fifteen Crimes." In the fourth year of Yongming, Wang Xingyi was sentenced to a hundred strokes of the court staff and cast into the death-row prison. Because he refused in prison to write a letter of repentance and endured every torment rather than submit, he became famous throughout the scholarly world. After Chen Dong fell ill and died, and through the many efforts of his patron—Zeng Yifen, Grand Secretary of the Grand Secretariat and Minister of Personnel, and others—Wang Xingyi's sentence was commuted in the sixth year of Yongming to exile in Xining Guard.

In the years that followed, the Mongols continued to raid the frontier, and the horse markets were destroyed.

In the fourth year of Chengping—the third year after her stepmother had married into the family—Wang Xingyi was recalled to office on Zeng Yifen's recommendation.

He was first appointed magistrate of Xintai County in Shandong, then transferred to a secretaryship in the Ministry of Justice, then to a vice-directorship in the Ministry of Rites, then to the Ministry of War's Bureau of Military Selection—four posts in the space of half a year.

By then ten years had passed since his exile, and he had lived through two reigns.

Thereafter Wang Xingyi rose steadily, and by the time Dou Yan fell ill he had accumulated offices up to Grand Secretary of the East Hall and Minister of Rites, standing at the very pinnacle of subjecthood.

The Wang family had originally been a minor clan of Nanwa, tilling the fields and reading books for generations. After Wang Xingyi's downfall, his wife, née Xu, sold off the family property entirely in order to save her husband. After his sentence was commuted to exile, the Wang family's eldest son, Wang Zhibing, attended his sick and failing father to Xining Guard, while Wang's wife kept house with the eldest daughter-in-law, née Gao, who had been married in less than a month, the second son, Wang Zhishao, and the daughter, Yingxue. Since the family had no fixed property, Gao of her own accord sold off her dowry and realized three hundred taels of silver, of which thirty were used to buy four mu of good farmland to live on, and the rest to relieve the food and clothing needs of Wang Xingyi and Wang Zhibing, far away in Xining Guard. Their days were exceedingly hard.

There were those as noble and public-spirited as the Gao family, and there were those as profit-minded as the Lei family, into which Wang Shuying had married.

In the eighth year of Yongming, when the Lei family saw that Zeng Yifen had been forced to retire and that there was no hope of Wang Xingyi's restoration, the fourteen-year-old Wang Shuying had her betrothal dissolved.

Wang Shuying set her jaw and simply sold off the Lei family's betrothal gifts; then, with one of Gao's maidservants acting as front, she went into the business of buying up raw cotton. Only thus could the bottomless pit of Xining Guard be sustained, and only thus did Wang Xingyi live to see his recall.

So when her third aunt told her mother that her father had already sent men to fetch that woman to Zhending, and that after consultation with her eldest aunt she had decided to meet the woman at the eldest aunt's estate, Dou Yan had burst into loud weeping and clutched at her mother's skirts, refusing to let go.

Her mother, forcing down her anger, coaxed her.

Her third aunt, however, saw an opening and smiled: "This is just as well. If anyone asks, we need only say we brought Shouyuan to her eldest aunt's estate to play."

Only then did her mother relent, and she went off with her third aunt to the eldest aunt's estate, absent-minded all the way.

Her eldest aunt was already waiting at the inner gate.

She took her mother's hands and looked her up and down, then nodded approvingly: "I was afraid you wouldn't be able to handle it. Now it seems I was worrying over nothing."

Her mother wore a full-sleeved jacket in bright red patterned with the vase and persimmon-calyx motif that marked the principal wife. Her black hair was dressed in a falling-horse chignon, with a single peony ornament of lotus-seed-sized pearls pinned beside it; between her frost-white wrist and the crimson cuff, a bracelet of emerald jade ran bright and vivid as a ribbon of spring water. She was stately and refined without losing an air of opulent dignity.

Her third aunt chimed in: "Seventh Sister-in-law has always known how to dress herself up, but today she is especially beautiful."

A faint bitter smile rose at the corner of her mother's mouth and quickly vanished.

She bent her knee in a salute to her eldest and third aunts: "In today's business, I must ask my two sisters-in-law to help me."

"Of course," her eldest and third aunts said in unison, pushing her mother forward, their eyes bent on her with the tenderness of a mother's own, "We won't let Seventh Brother run wild."

Her mother's expression settled a little.

Her eldest aunt smiled and took Dou Yan into her arms: "Shouyuan, the camellias behind my house are all in bloom. Will you take the maids later and cut a few sprays for me to put in a vase?" But her gaze went straight to Tuo Niang and Xiangcao, who had followed along.

Dou Yan threw her arms around her eldest aunt's neck: "I want, Mother, I want, Eldest Aunt, I want, Third Aunt..." She wept loud enough to shake the heavens, giving her eldest aunt quite a fright.

Her mother hastily took Dou Yan back, blushing with both shame and vexation: "I don't know what's come over the child. These past few days she follows me at every step, and the moment I step away she cries and gives everyone no peace..."

Her eldest aunt sighed at this and stroked Dou Zhiwei's hair: "The old people used to say that mother and daughter share one heart. This child is clever; she knows what bitterness is in your heart, and she is afraid."

These words set her mother's tears flowing, and she held Dou Zhiwei all the tighter.

"Then let her come with you," her third aunt said with feeling. "She is still small, after all."

Her mother murmured an assent.

The party passed through the main hall and went to the flower hall in the rear courtyard.

Snow was falling thick and fast, and the plum blossoms on the branches were in brilliant bloom.

A woman with a graceful figure, wearing a small jacket of rose-red, stood straight as a rod by the window, lending luster to the cold plums beyond it.

Dou Yan's heart clenched.

It was her stepmother!

That figure she would never forget!