Chapter 126 — The Song Family

The main residence of the Yingzhenguo Mansion stood on the central axis of the estate: a compound of five bays and four courtyards, with the front court, the main hall, and the reception pavilion of the Yingguo Mansion in front of it, and a small garden with a family shrine behind. Coming out from the Yizhi Hall where Song Yan lodged,

he stepped into the courtyard and saw his mother standing on the stone steps—tall and slender, elegant and composed, with a faint, almost imperceptible streak of fortitude and pride between her brows—gazing absently at the camphor tree in the corner of the yard.

The sachet in Song Yan's hand suddenly seemed to him a leaping flame, searing his palm.

That camphor tree had been sent by his eldest uncle from Fujian for his mother's twentieth birthday. Back then it had been no taller than a man; now it reached the eaves.

"You've come!" Lady Jiang greeted her son with a smile and settled onto a stone stool beneath the grape trellis.

The vines had only just put forth buds, and the bright spring sunlight filtered through the sparse branches onto her face. In hair that had once been black and lustrous, a few silver threads now showed.

A pang of sorrow gripped Song Yan. While the maids were busy pouring tea for them, he stepped behind his mother, set his hands on her shoulders with a smile, and said affectionately, "Mother, you have white hairs now—shall I pluck them out for you?"

Lady Jiang smiled with pursed lips. Looking at the long silver strand in her son's fingers, she said, half with feeling and half with contentment, "You're about to take a wife—it's time your mother grew old!"

For all his steadiness and reserve, Song Yan was still only a thirteen-year-old boy. His face flushed at once, and he protested, embarrassed, "Mother!"

Her son's rare discomposure pleased Lady Jiang. Smiling, she asked, "How old was that girl you met in Zhending?"

Anyone who could leave her son at a loss for words must be a bold, careful, clever girl.

"Why do you ask that?" Song Yan's face grew redder still, and he cried in protest, "She's already betrothed!"

The moment the words left his mouth, mother and son both fell still.

The wind passed over the grape trellis, and the tender green buds trembled in the spring breeze.

Song Yan was mortified.

His mother had only asked out of curiosity—how had he come to blurt out such a thing as though possessed?

At the thought, his face burned, and he grew all the more uncomfortable. "Mr. Yan suggested I make the acquaintance of Wei Fan, and I thought it a good idea as well. I was just wondering how to mention it to Zongyao and find a way to get to know the man."

Lady Jiang smiled a knowing smile.

She felt a faint regret, yet knew that to say more would be to sully the girl's good name.

Song Yan, however, could not keep his countenance. He looked this way and that and said, "Where is Father? Why don't I see him?"

"He's gone to the Third Princess's residence." She followed her son in changing the subject. "Your father dares not ask the Crown Prince to intervene, for fear of implicating him, so he means to have the Third Princess sound out the Emperor's mind." Here her spirits sank. "I have already discussed it with Mr. Min. Since the Emperor has sat on the memorials pleading for your eldest uncle and issued no reply, we must ask those who once served under your eldest uncle to submit memorials impeaching him... Only those who have been too close to us of late had best not come forward, lest the Emperor grow suspicious... What I fear is that the Emperor has already made up his mind, and that nothing we do will avail..."

The Third Princess, Enrong, was a daughter of the Empress Shen, the Emperor's eldest daughter by his principal wife,

and her consort, Shi Chonglan, was the younger brother of the Marquis of Changxing, Shi Duanlan. He and the Duke of Yingguo had grown up together and were the closest of friends.

But would such a thing do any good?

Better to grease the palm of Wang Yuan, the grand eunuch at the Emperor's side!

So Song Yan thought, nodding absently.

All at once the mood turned heavy and still.

Song Yan pressed the brocade sachet in his palm, and only after a long while mustered the courage to call out, "Mother." He lowered his voice. "There is something I must tell you..."

"What?" Lady Jiang raised her head, the lingering bewilderment still in her eyes—plainly she had not caught what her son had just said.

Song Yan drew a breath and was about to repeat himself when his mother, her spirits suddenly roused, said gravely, "I am thinking of seeking for you the hand of your cousin Hanzhu, your second uncle's daughter. What do you say to that?"

His eyes went wide. Then slowly his lips pressed tight.

Lady Jiang sighed inwardly, and her voice, governed by reason, came out somewhat cold: "I know that since childhood you have been close to your cousin Xiexiu, your fourth uncle's daughter. But Xiexiu is a child of a concubine. Our Jiang family may not care for such things, but your father sets great store by legitimacy, and that is the first gate you will never pass. Your second uncle died young, leaving behind your cousin as his only blood. The other cousins have fathers and brothers to look after them; she alone was orphaned in infancy, alone and friendless with no one to rely upon..."

Song Yan lowered his head slightly.

Cousin Hanzhu loved Yin Zhi, the nephew of his eldest aunt's natal family, who trained in the martial arts at the Jiang household.

His grandmother and eldest aunt both knew. His eldest aunt had therefore packed Yin Zhi off to his eldest uncle's camp, telling him, "The girls of our Jiang family do not marry cowards. If you want Hanzhu, bring military merit as your betrothal gift."

When Yin Zhi left, he had given Cousin Hanzhu a golden hairpin—and it was through Song Yan that he had asked him to deliver it.

But in the face of life and death, what did such tender attachments matter?

Sunlight fell upon his face, and his long lashes cast a shadow upon his eyelids.

"A matter of marriage ought, by rights, to be decided by one's parents," he said softly, gentle as the spring breeze upon the cheek. "I will do as Mother says!"

That this son, who had had a mind of his own since childhood and had never suffered himself to be led by others, should suddenly say such a thing cut Lady Jiang to the heart, and the words she had meant to speak died on her lips, leaving her with a sense of something lost.

Sensing her sorrow, Song Yan took his mother's hand. "Mother, I do not feel wronged," he said to comfort her. "Cousin Hanzhu is fine indeed—she can bend a bow from the saddle and write in cursive with her feet on the ground. If she marries into our house, you will have a companion... I will tell Father that it was I who set my heart on Cousin Hanzhu, and then he will not object." As he spoke, he broke into a bright smile for his mother.

That smile was radiant and bright, like the newly risen sun, without a trace of shadow.

Lady Jiang's tears fell pattering down.

None of this was worth shedding tears over!

Song Yan pressed his lips together and drew out the brocade sachet he had clutched in his palm all this while. "Mother, Xu Qing brought this just now..."

Jiang Shi was taken aback, a bad feeling stirring in her heart. Before Song Yan had even finished speaking, she had already snatched up the brocade pouch.

A slip of paper no more than two fingers wide, yet it weighed a thousand catties.

Jiang Shi read it once, rubbed her eyes, and read it again. Only then did she raise her head to look at her son, her face already deathly pale. "Is it true?" Her voice was hoarse, her gaze somewhat unfocused.

Song Yan steeled himself and nodded.

Jiang Shi felt the world spin around her; she scarcely knew where she was.

A burst of playful noise drew nearer and nearer. Her younger son's still-childish voice came through clearly: "Hurry up, hurry up! I want to show Mother!"