Chapter 123 — The Bluebird

Dou Yan gazed at the two tall magnolias before the main house, and the world seemed to have changed around her.

She smiled at Suxin. "Come, let's go see Great-aunt Cui."

Suxin's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, settled back into place. Smiling, she caught Dou Yan by the arm. "Good miss, you'd best wash up and change first! Just look at the state of you—if Great-aunt Cui sees, she'll only fret again."

Dou Yan looked down and saw several spots of mud splashed across her lilac embroidered shoes.

She could not help laughing at herself. With Ganlu's help she took a hot bath, wrung her hair dry, and only then changed her clothes and went to her grandmother's rooms.

Honggu had already been told of her coming, and stood waiting at the door with an umbrella.

Seeing Dou Yan, she curtsied with a beaming smile and asked after the farm. "Well? Are the crops salvageable?"

"We can only pin our hopes on the autumn corn now," Dou Yan said, and went with Honggu into the main room.

Her grandmother sat on the heated kang by the window. From the tone of the conversation she already understood what had happened, and she asked about how badly each household had been hit, how it had been handled, and what the villagers were saying.

Dou Yan answered everything one by one, though of the Song affair she said not a word.

Her grandmother praised her roundly. "...I never imagined you had such a gift for farming! And you handled this matter well. When the rain lets up, remember to tell Chen Sou that every household is to receive ten dou of cornmeal—let them get through these next few months first, and we'll speak of the rest after."

"Chen Sou had urgent business and has gone to the capital," Dou Yan said—the story she and Chen Yanzhou had agreed upon beforehand. "In his youth he received a kindness from a friend. That friend has now fallen on hard times, and Chen Sou hurried off to help. I'm afraid he won't be back in Zhending until autumn."

Her grandmother suspected nothing; she only worried that Chen Yanzhou had left in such haste. "It must be no small matter, then. Shouyuan, you should write a letter to your father. Even if he cannot help, having an acquaintance there will steady his nerve." Then she asked, "Did you give Chen Sou a parting gift? Who is attending him? He is a man of advanced years—you must see that he is well looked after."

Her grandmother's kindness was utterly genuine, without a trace of pretense.

Dou Yan marveled at it inwardly and smiled. "Rest easy, Grandmother. Everything has been arranged; Chen Sou will not be put out."

In truth the departure had indeed been hasty, and because he had gone off with Song Chuyi, Chen Sou had set out alone with only the ten taels of broken silver and twenty taels in silver notes that Dou Yan and the others had scraped together. It was fortunate he had left a few changes of clothes at the farm; otherwise he would not even have had a clean shirt to his name.

Song Yanli ought to have taken on the burden of Chen Sou's food and clothing.

Dou Yan thought this with indignation, yet she still feared Chen Sou might suffer hardship. When Duan Bing went to the accounting office to draw silver, she instructed him, "Find a way to send Chen Sou a thousand taels in silver notes."

She had lived in the capital for over a decade and knew well that life there did not come cheap.

Duan Bing agreed. On Dou Zhiwei's instructions, besides buying tonics suited to Old Master Tan's tastes, he also purchased several scrolls of calligraphy and painting and a few rare old books and sent them to Tan Manor.

Old Master Tan, now past seventy, heard that Dou Yan had sent someone to inquire after him. Stroking his snow-white beard that reached his chest, he chuckled heartily and said to his grandson, Tan Juren, "This Fourth Miss Dou is a curious one."

Tan Juren merely smiled along at his side.

Old Master Tan then asked about the child.

"I had the child carried to Baoding overnight. As for the wet nurse, I had Young Master Mei take her back with him. When the time comes, we will simply say that the Shi Ba family bore twins," Tan Juren said. "If the Jiang family survives this calamity and asks for the child back, we will say the child died young. If they do not survive, I will have Shi Ba and the others return in two years. By then the child will be two or three years old, and even a few days' difference in age will not show. If anyone truly suspects something, we will say one was born easily and the other with difficulty—that will fend them off. After all, not all twins look exactly alike."

Old Master Tan nodded in satisfaction. Twirling his beard, he sighed. "You always complain that the rules laid down by the Xuanming Sect have blocked your prospects. But look at the Jiang family—glory and riches, oil poured on the fire—and what came of it? The whole pot was carried off in one go! They could not even keep their own flesh and blood..."

Tan Juren's old face flushed at once. He said in a low voice, "Grandfather, are we truly to do nothing about the Jiang family's affair?"

"Every peck and every draught in this world is ordained by Heaven," Old Master Tan sighed. "Even if we wished to intervene, could we? If one man's death could buy the lives of an entire family, then he would not have died in vain."

Tan Juren thought of that figure—drinking from great bowls, striking his sword and singing as he roamed, casting a disdainful eye over the world—and suddenly felt his vision blur.

※※※※※

Dou Yan, too, was thinking of the child—though she was wondering whether, in her previous life, that child had lived or died.

If only she had paid more attention to the Song affair back then!

Then she might know just how far she ought to deal with the Tan family.

With a fierce tiger lying couched at one's side, how many could sleep easy?

Ignorance breeds fearlessness. If not for Song Yan, how would she ever have known of the Tan family?

What a headache!

Dou Yan bit savagely into the plum in her hand. With a crisp crack, half of it was gone.

Sulan came skipping and bouncing into the room.

"Fourth Miss, I have good news and bad news," she said, blinking her small eyes at Dou Yan. "Which would you like to hear first?"

Dou Yan handed her a plum. "Bad news first, then the good."

Sulan giggled. "The bad news is—Lord Wang has been impeached. They say he forced buyers to sell, that his private conduct is unseemly, that he indulges his children in bullying others with their power..."

She had thought it was the Duke of Dingguo who had been impeached!

Dou Yan was a little disappointed. "Did they say what he actually did?"

"No," Sulan said with a smile. "But I hear he was roundly cursed, and even the Emperor has issued an edict demanding an explanation."

Dou Yan pursed her lips. "Then I suppose your so-called good news is that my fifth uncle has been made a Grand Secretary of the Grand Secretariat?"

"How did you know?" Sulan's eyes went wide.

"That's hardly difficult to guess," Dou Yan said listlessly. "If anyone else were impeaching Wang Xingyi, they'd have laid out every offense one by one instead of tossing around vague accusations and empty charges the way it's being done now. Whoever it is must be afraid of dragging the Dou family into it. And now that even the Emperor has issued an edict demanding an explanation, true or false, the Grand Secretariat will surely bar him from entering it just to avoid suspicion. You said there's good news—if it isn't that my fifth uncle has been made a Grand Secretary, what else could it be?"

"Miss, you're amazing!" Sulan said, her face full of admiration.

"Amazing or not," Dou Chi said airily, "if you were like me, you'd be just as amazing yourself."

"But not everyone can be like you, miss!" Sulan gazed at Dou Yan enviously. "No matter how much sun you get, you never turn dark. I can hide indoors all day and still can't get any paler."

Dou Chu was stunned for a moment, then burst out laughing.