Palace maids were burning mugwort in the inner hall to fumigate the beds.
Yang Wan held Yi Lang on her knee, entertaining him with small magic tricks until he giggled for quite a while.
The wet nurse came to call him several times, but he was unwilling to leave her and eventually fell asleep in Yang Wan’s arms.
Consort Ning sat nearby peeling chestnuts for Yang Wan, saying she noticed Yang Wan liked nuts, so she had ordered several more jars for her today.
Yang Wan ate one of the chestnuts Consort Ning had peeled, and seeing her push over another large handful, didn’t say anything more. She took the child from her arms and walked behind the screen.
Yang Wan looked at the chestnuts before her, trying to recall Consort Ning’s life story.
The details of Consort Ning’s life were unclear, and there was no definite record of which year she died, only that she was the mother of Emperor Jinghe Zhu Yi Lang, and later seemed to have made some mistake and was rejected by the emperor. After Emperor Jinghe ascended the throne, he didn’t even grant her a posthumous title.
Yang Wan opened her notebook, resting her chin in thought for a while, before finally turning to a new page and adding Consort Ning’s name – Yang Shu.
After writing, she sat quietly in the lamplight for a while, propping her chin.
She recalled Consort Ning saying, “Wan’er, don’t walk this path in the palace with someone like that, you won’t be happy in the end.”
After careful thought and considering her appearance and temperament, she suddenly found it difficult to write.
If she had a passionate spectator’s attitude toward men’s conquests, then for these women in history who were like herself, she felt compassion born of shared fate.
So she simply stopped writing without adding anything more, closed her notebook, and looked out the window.
Beyond the green gauze, the clouds had scattered and stars had emerged, making it quite clear and bright.
Time passed quickly to the fourth month of the twelfth year of Zhenning.
In late spring, the apricot blossoms had just fallen, covering the ground. When the rain washed them away, they flowed into every corner of the imperial city.
The reconstruction of the Hall of Supreme Harmony had entered the roofing stage, but the Liuli Factory in the suburbs couldn’t deliver the tiles. When the Ministry of Works went to investigate, they discovered a eunuch named Wang Shunchang at the Liuli Factory. Though it wasn’t an especially big case at first, the final investigation shocked the entire Ming court. This man had supervised the Liuli Factory for ten years and had embezzled over two million taels of silver – equivalent to a year’s revenue for the court during the Zhenning era.
The officials of the Six Ministries who were still waiting for court relief grain nearly stoned Wang Shunchang to death on his way to the imperial prison. However, the internal palace maintained strict silence about this matter, with managers everywhere gathering their subordinates to sternly order that no one was to privately discuss Wang Shunchang’s corruption case.
On this day, as the Inner School was about to dismiss, Deng Ying sat at the lecturer’s seat clarifying doubts about a young eunuch.
Yang Wan sat at a window seat, head down and writing furiously.
Deng Ying took advantage of a break to glance at her. She wasn’t on duty today, so she wasn’t wearing the palace service uniform.
She wore a lotus-colored dress with a moon-white short coat over it, her hair adorned only with a silver pearl tassel hairpin. Under her arm was the little notebook she often wrote in, her wrist hanging loose as her brush tip moved swiftly. Occasionally she would pause, tapping her chin with a bent finger, and after figuring something out, her brush would flow smoothly again.
It was a fine spring day, and a kingfisher preening its feathers perched on a branch outside the window.
After setting down her brush, Yang Wan picked up her cup for a drink of water, then leaned on the window, feeding nuts wrapped in silk to the bird.
When she noticed Deng Ying watching her, she smiled, resting her face in her hand.
“Keep going with your discussion, I’ve finished what I needed to write today.”
The eunuch was only seven or eight years old, too young to misunderstand their relationship.
He turned and bowed to Yang Wan: “This servant can’t understand what the lady official writes.”
Then he looked at Deng Ying, “Can the teacher understand it?”
Deng Ying shook his head with a smile.
“These are just my scribbles, you shouldn’t learn from them. Study well with your teacher, what he teaches is true wisdom.”
Hearing this, the eunuch nodded at Yang Wan, then said, “Teacher, my mother says all eunuchs are unfortunate people. My family is poor – if they hadn’t sold me to the palace, my younger brothers wouldn’t have survived. No one in my family can read, let alone study. Teacher, you’re like us, so how did you become so learned?”
Hearing him finish, Yang Wan stood and walked over to the eunuch, gently pinching his nose.
“Hey, you little one, you don’t even know how to compliment people properly.”
The child squirmed, “Don’t pinch my nose! They say all the lady officials from the Department of Palace Affairs are the most courteous, how could you…”
“What did you say?”
Yang Wan was caught between letting go and not letting go.
Deng Ying closed his book with a smile, “So you do have times when you’re at a loss for words.”
Yang Wan let go and stood with her arms crossed, looking down at Deng Ying, “He’s young, I won’t take it seriously, and you shouldn’t either.”
Deng Ying handed a handful of nuts to the eunuch, smiling as he answered the earlier question, “Teacher used to be a scholar.”
The child received the nuts joyfully, hiding them in his sleeve, then looked up to ask, “Why would a scholar become a palace servant like us?”
“Because the teacher made a mistake.”
“Oh…”
The eunuch’s eyes suddenly dimmed.
Deng Ying raised his arm and pushed the book to him, “Go now, remember to review tomorrow’s lessons.”
“Yes, teacher.”
Yang Wan watched the nuts the child inadvertently dropped as he left, pressing her lips together.
“Why did you tell him the truth?”
Deng Ying walked to the door, bending down to pick up the fallen nuts one by one.
The pale green palace robes touched the ground, and that scarred hand appeared before Yang Wan’s eyes once again.
After picking them up, he stood and looked in the direction the child had run off to, saying casually, “They will find out eventually.”
“After they know, they won’t see you as one of their own anymore.”
“Why?”
“…”
This was a study about the opposing identity stances between the Ming Dynasty’s eunuch group and the scholar-official group.
Being in the midst of it, Deng Ying couldn’t possibly step outside to understand this issue. Yang Wan felt that telling him directly would be like mental torture.
So she pressed her lips together without saying more, walking to the window to sit down again.
Unexpectedly, just as she sat down, she heard the muffled sound of beating from the courtyard outside the Inner Study.
She was about to push open the window to look when she heard Deng Ying say to her: “Come here, Yang Wan.”