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Zhao Yen did not want to read, it was too shameful.
“Better let this prince do it in your stead.”
Wenren Lin let out a laugh, making as if to rise, and said, “Your Highness’ little eyes are turning about, only thinking of how to muddle through.”
“No, no! I will do it myself.”
Zhao Yen had no way out, and had to rise and sit behind the desk. With one hand propping up her scarlet burning cheek, and one hand pressing down the scroll, she began to stammeringly read aloud in a thin mosquito-like voice.
Her eyelashes half drooped, quivering slightly with the bold and vulgar words, casting down long shadows like the light flutter of butterfly wings.
Wenren Lin shifted the gauze lamp closer to her book, so that the bright light clearly illuminated every tiny word, then dragged a chair to sit leaning at her side, his right leg crossed over his left, a length of straight, slender official boot showing from the dark lower garment.
His features were immersed in the shadow of the backlight, his gaze deep and calm, supervising even more attentively than when in the Chongwen Hall.
When she finished a certain passage, Wenren Lin would reach out to turn the page for her, skipping over the parts unnecessary to know, flipping to the designated text.
At times when she read to a certain sentence, he would lightly and gravely interrupt Zhao Yen, raising one or two questions.
When Zhao Yen stammered and could not answer, he would again explain to her one by one in a slow, deep voice.
At first, Zhao Yen thought Wenren Lin’s actions carried some private grievance, deliberately making things hard for her, and so she was somewhat angered and ashamed.
Later she discovered it was not so.
When Wenren Lin taught, he was extremely serious. On his handsome face there was not the least bit of frivolity or impatience. From whatever angle one looked, he was only transmitting the Way, imparting knowledge, and resolving doubts.
He was thus so upright and stern, that Zhao Yen’s continued shame and anger seemed somewhat self-indulgent. Therefore she also restrained those improper fancies, and forced herself to calm down.
Once she cast aside her sense of shame, Zhao Yen came to realize that what was said in the books indeed had things of worth. For example, that during menstruation one must not share the bed, what preparations should be made before and after the act, that over-drinking medicine would cause coldness of the body and infertility…
As she read further, what had once been muddled and ignorant all became suddenly clear.
Yet she had always been good at drawing inferences. Having understood more, she again gave rise to some discontent.
“Clearly the matter of wind and moon1Wind and moon (風月): a euphemism for romantic and sexual matters. is between two people, yet why is it that the one who suffers is always the woman?”
Zhao Yen knit her brows, not even knowing to whom she was complaining. “Childbearing and preventing children, the one whose body is harmed is always the woman. The man bears nothing at all…”
Hearing this, Wenren Lin slightly lifted his eyes.
Irresponsible coupling was nothing but a burden, which was why he had not touched women these many years. Yet the little princess who broke his principle of more than twenty years was now full of disdain and complaint.
“It is indeed not very fair. The more feeble and weak a man is, the more he must bind women to seek self-esteem.”
Wenren Lin picked a grape from the fruit plate. “However, there also exist methods of pleasure without taking medicine, only that men, long used to being above, are unwilling to bend down and yield.”
One did not know whether he had misunderstood Zhao Yen’s meaning, or was doing so deliberately.
The cold-white slender pad of his finger rubbed the crimson grape, turning it, then squeezing it, and suddenly asked: “Does Your Highness wish to learn?”
“……”
Zhao Yen instinctively felt it was not anything good, and quickly shook her head like a rattle-drum, “No, no need.”
Looking at her manner of politely declining, Wenren Lin unexpectedly chuckled.
After all, she was still young, not understanding the subtleties within. Slowly then.
The night was as deep as water, the hall tranquil. Zhao Yen closed the scroll, lifted the cooled tea at her side, and sipped lightly to moisten her throat.
Seeing that Wenren Lin had not spoken for a long time, Zhao Yen then raised her eyes from behind the cup, closed the book and said: “This one is finished.”
Her voice carried a faint weariness. She unconsciously licked her moistened lips and added, “The night is already deep, the hour of curfew is about to arrive, will Prince Su not return to his residence?”
Having spoken, she realized this was superfluous. Wenren Lin still had Hegui Pavilion to go to, and was not bound at all by the curfew.
Wenren Lin’s gaze moved away from her lips, glistening with moisture, and he said: “I cannot return to the prince’s residence. Lodging at the Eastern Palace will also suffice.”
Zhao Yen was startled.
Wenren Lin, taking advantage of the moment, placed the peeled grape into her slightly parted lips, rose to draw away the scroll pressed beneath her palm, and said with satisfaction: “That is enough for tonight. Your Highness, go bathe.”
Zhao Yen could not see through the deeper meaning of Wenren Lin’s words, but had no choice but to comply. She rose and pushed open the hall door.
In the cleansing chamber, Liuying had already ordered hot water prepared. Zhao Yen soaked within, pondering the truth or falsity of Wenren Lin’s words, “Lodging at the Eastern Palace will also suffice.”
The Eastern Palace now was not firmly rooted. The court officials weighed the times and measured circumstances, their attitudes subtle. Even Pei Sa, who was the Crown Prince’s companion reader, did not live in the Eastern Palace. If Wenren Lin lodged there, such a favoring gesture would undoubtedly be announcing to the officials his choosing of sides…
But would Wenren Lin truly do this?
Such a man as he, would he be willing to bow beneath another’s skirts?
Zhao Yen found it hard to believe. The rising steam made her thoughts surge into chaotic confusion. She curled her knees to her chest, sinking half her face into the hot water, leaving only eyes and nose above the surface.
After the bath, Zhao Yen returned to the bedchamber draped in an outer robe. Sure enough, the figure of Wenren Lin was not in the round chair behind the screen.
The cool night breeze of summer surged into the hall, lifting the hanging gauze, blowing the scrolls on the desk into a constant rustling of turning pages.
Zhao Yen hastily walked over, and before some strange scene could be revealed on those pages, she pressed them down at once, stuffing them wholesale into the low cabinet by the bedside.
That sentence of Wenren Lin’s was indeed only teasing her, was it not?
Zhao Yen leaned askew onto the couch, uncertain whether what she felt was relief, or something else.
Outside the Eastern Palace, the carriage of Prince Su moved slowly along the palace walls.
The carriage swayed, Wenren Lin sat with one hand resting on his knee, his posture steady as a rock.
He lowered his eyes, lightly rubbing the pad of his finger. Upon it still lingered a trace of sticky sweetness, indistinguishable whether it was the juice of the grape, or the fragrance of the young girl’s soft lips.
When the carriage entered the deserted street, Cai Tian, who sat at the front with a blade in hand, looked about to the left and right, then lifted the curtain and slipped inside, presenting Wenren Lin with a small piece of timber.
He reported: “The nanmu2Nanmu (楠木, nánmù) is a precious hardwood native to China, valued since ancient times. for the rebuilding of the Zhaixing Monastery has already been delivered into the Northern Park by the Ministry of Works, all as Your Highness foresaw.”
The lamplight inside the carriage was dim. The dark-brown timber, held in Wenren Lin’s cold-white fingers, gave off a faint decayed odor.
A gorgeous chill spread in Wenren Lin’s eyes. With force between his fingers, the timber crumbled into fragments.
The nanmu, for which the court had spent an immense sum, had indeed been exchanged for old waste wood soaked in water.
The next day, in Chongwen Hall.
The sun baked the palace tiles white. Inside the hall, bamboo blinds were half-rolled, forming barriers that shut out all the waves of heat outside. Incense burned in beast-shaped censers, and within the hall only the clear and sonorous voice of Zhou Ji expounding the Rites of Zhou was heard.
The Rites of Zhou encompassed all things, yet Zhou Ji did not need to hold a scroll. With broad citations and comparisons, he expounded the essential meanings of the “Offices of Heaven” section one by one.
Zhou Ji’s teaching style, like his sitting posture, was upright and rigid. At his side, Pei Sa had already grown bored, doodling and scribbling upon the paper. Zhao Yen, though able to understand more than half, under the heat and fatigue inevitably felt drowsiness surge up.
She had been forced to “study” under his gaze until late into the night, and indeed had not slept well.
When the lecture reached “Rites are the foundation of the state; if abolished, the state perishes,” Zhao Yen suddenly opened her eyes and said slowly, “That also depends on what kind of ‘rites.’ Some laws of ritual were produced in accordance with the needs of the dynasty at that time. For example, the rites established by the scholar clans served to safeguard the interests of the scholar clans. After hundreds or even thousands of years of succession, they may not suit the present political situation, and thus cannot
be blindly inherited. Even within the Rites of Zhou it also stresses ‘suitable to the time’ and ‘suitable to the place.’”
She was weary, yet in speaking for Zhao Yan, she was also speaking for herself, voicing what was in her heart. But her words made Zhou Ji pause slightly.
He thought of the news he had probed a few days ago at the residence of Assistant Minister Shen, thought of the unexpected death of his junior fellow disciple Shen Jingming, and could not help but lift his gaze toward the “Crown Prince.”
Sunlight filtered through the bamboo blinds at the window, slicing into countless narrow bands of light and shadow. A strip of that shadow happened to fall just at the corner of Zhao Yen’s eye, covering that tiny mole as fine as a gnat’s leg.
The face before him suddenly became incomparably familiar and distinct.
The wind stirred the bamboo blinds, the shadow faded, and a thread of sunlight fell across, and that faint red mole surfaced again.
Zhao Yen at last perceived Zhou Ji’s gaze.
“Why is Instructor Zhou looking at Gu so?”
Zhao Yen asked with a smile, curious at his rare moment of absentmindedness.
Zhou Ji’s eyes were steady, and he spoke honestly: “What Your Highness just said is very much like a certain old acquaintance of this subject.”
The smile at the corner of Zhao Yen’s lips faintly diminished.
Footnotes
1
Wind and moon (風月): a euphemism for romantic and sexual matters.
2
Nanmu (楠木, nánmù) is a precious hardwood native to China, valued since ancient times.
