Chapter 4 — Rebirth

Dou Yan could not tell whether it was jealousy or envy; the blood rushed to her chest, and she felt as though she were being tossed on a stormy sea. She feared that if she looked at her son one moment longer, she would do something she would live to regret.

"Give the tally to the heir," she instructed Cuileng. "Pass on my word: from now on, not only the heir's household, but also the Second Master's and Yin-jie'er's affairs, are all to be managed by Madam Zhu."

"Mother!" Wei-ge'er lifted his head, sensing something extraordinary in the air.

"Madam, you must not!" Madam Zhu's voice was shrill with alarm, her face turning ashen in an instant.

After all, she was a woman of her own choosing — and perceptive to the core.

With her watching over the children, those insidious tricks could be kept at bay.

Dou Yan closed her eyes and waved her hand. "I am tired and wish to rest. All of you, withdraw."

"Madam!" Tears in her eyes, Madam Zhu began to kowtow to Dou Yan with a thud, thud, thud.

Wei-ge'er looked at Madam Zhu in bewilderment.

Dou Yan waved her hand again and turned her back.

"Madam, rest assured — even if I must give my life, I will care well for the young master and the young ladies," Madam Zhu murmured. She kowtowed once more, then withdrew together with Wei-ge'er.

The room fell quiet, with the cold desolation of a place vacated, its people gone.

Grief welled up in Dou Yan's heart.

If Wei Fan had been more capable, willing to shoulder the responsibilities of a man, why would she — a woman of the inner chambers — have stepped forward to manage the household affairs of the Wei estate? And why, in doing so, would she have overlooked the strangeness in her two children?

If her mother-in-law had shown the two grandchildren a little more care, instead of forever fretting over prayers and offerings to the gods, why would the two children have come to regard Madam Zhu — a woman of no blood relation at all — as their closest kin?

Or had she simply chosen the wrong person from the very start?

Had Madam Zhu been greedy and grasping, a snob who fawned on the high and trampled the low, coarse and rude, fond of gossip and stirring up trouble, her two sons would never have pined for her so.

But then, how could she ever have allowed such a person to remain at her sons' side, to teach them?

She did not even know whom to blame!

At such moments, Dou Yan would think of her mother, who had died so young.

She had been so small — how could her mother have borne to leave her all alone and go?

If her own mother had lived, to teach her how to be a wife and how to be a mother, would she have suffered so much, taken so many wrong turns, and would her children not have grown so estranged from her?

There was no answer to that.

Dou Yan felt a weariness seep through her whole body.

She covered her head with the quilt and buried herself in a vast, silent dark.

Hazy and indistinct, she heard a rising and falling of sobs. She tried to open her eyes and look, but her eyelids seemed to weigh a thousand catties, and she could not lift them. Then Wei Fan was weeping softly at her ear: "If you go, what will become of me?" And after a while the voice became Madam Guo's: "Rest assured — Wei-ge'er is my grandson-in-law. Whatever happens, I will keep him safe and sound."

Am I dead?

Dou Yan struggled to open her eyes and found herself sitting on a heated kang. Sunlight fell on the snow piled in the courtyard and, reflecting through the windows pasted with Korean paper, filled the room with a dazzling whiteness.

A pretty young woman with a red mole at the corner of her mouth sat opposite her, playing cat's cradle with her. Four or five maids, ranging from ten to fifteen years of age, sat around before the kang doing needlework.

They all wore padded jackets of fine cotton and skirts of coarse cloth, some with dainty silver earrings, some with silver hairpins — plain in attire, yet betraying a young girl's quick wit and gentle heart, so that one could not help but smile at the sight.

Dou Yan did not recognize a single person in the room, yet felt a deep warmth toward them all.

Back in her maiden home in Zhending County, in winter, the serving women of the household had dressed just so.

So she had slipped into a dream again.

Dou Yan giggled, slid down from the kang, and tried to see what the little maids were sewing — but her feet could not reach the ground, and she was left dangling at the edge of the kang.

The little maids pressed their lips together and smiled.

The pretty young woman hurried to help her down, murmuring all the while: "What does the Fourth Miss want? Just tell your wet nurse! Your wet nurse will fetch it for you."

So this was her wet nurse!

Dou Yan could not help but laugh.

Her former wet nurse had been a plump, white steamed bun; this one was a delicate flower on a branch. She wondered what the next one would look like.

She pattered over to the little maids doing needlework, and suddenly realized she had shrunk a great deal — the tables, chairs, and stools that had once seemed so ordinary to her were now more than twice her height.

Ha! What a meticulous dream this was!

The little maids doing needlework all raised their heads and smiled at her kindly.

The older ones among them were stitching shoe soles; the younger ones were knotting cords. Every hand was deft and practiced — one could tell at a glance they were well used to such work.

A piercing cold wind blew in.

Dou Yan looked up and saw the warm curtain lifted, as several maids ushered a woman inside.

Everyone in the room rose to greet the woman, addressing her as "Seventh Madam."

Dou Yan stared at her, dumbstruck.

She was no more than eighteen or nineteen, of middling height, slender and delicate, with a long oval face, willow-leaf brows, and a small cherry mouth. She wore a brocade overcoat in peach red with a hidden vase pattern, which set off her snow-white skin—a flower lovelier than the blossoms themselves.

This, then, was her mother!

She herself looked nothing at all like her mother.

She was tall and shapely, with an oval face, long brows sweeping toward her temples, full red lips, and snow-white skin. When her gaze turned slightly sharp, there was a daunting air of spirit about her—she was cast in the same mold as her father. When she had first married into the Jining Marquis's household, to make herself seem more gentle, she had trimmed her long brows and painted them into willow-leaf shape, and spoke to people with her eyelids half lowered, and thus could feign three parts of her mother's delicate beauty.

Her mother came over smiling.

She could see her more clearly now.

Her mother's face was white and luminous, like the finest jade, without the slightest flaw, lovely beyond words.

She bent down and tweaked Dou Zhiwei's nose, teasing, "Shouyuan, what is it? Don't you know your mother anymore?"

Shouyuan?

Was that her childhood name?

She had never known she had such a childhood name.

Tears came on her all at once.

She flung her arms around her mother's legs.

"Mama, Mama!"

She wept like a helpless child.

"Ai ya ya!" Her mother sensed none of her sorrow, and asked the wet nurse with a laugh, "What's come over Shouyuan? Crying for no reason at all?" There was not the least doubt or reproach in her manner toward the wet nurse—plainly she trusted her completely.

"She was perfectly fine just now." The wet nurse was perplexed as well, and could only say, "Perhaps it's seeing you come? A daughter sees her mother, and cries whether there's cause or not."

"Is that so?" Her mother lifted her onto the heated kang. "This child—she's soaked my skirt through with her crying."

Dou Yan was struck dumb.

Shouldn't a mother be most worried about why her child was crying? How was it that her mother was most worried about her skirt...

Was she—was she really her own mother?

She stared wide-eyed.

Two glistening tears still hung on her little face.