Wang Xi nodded. If the cook didn't suit, she'd be replaced. Simple as that. But the kitchens of the Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion were none of her concern. She had her own household to manage, and she intended to keep it that way.
She had already sourced two in-laws skilled in Sichuan cooking.
Still, Madam Hou's goodwill deserved acknowledgment. Wang Xi had Bai Zhi, the maid who kept charge of her clothes and jewelry, bring out a gold-inlaid jade bracelet and send it to Madam Hou in return. For Madam Pan, a pair of silver bead earrings. Sister Pan left the courtyard in high spirits, bowing her thanks the whole way to the door while Sister Wang saw her out.
Wang Xi then told the little maid to keep the two shad in the large water tank beneath the grape rack outside.
The maid tending the flowers and fish in her yard had never kept shad and was worried the new fish would disturb the goldfish already in the tank. She enlisted two other girls to help, fished the goldfish out carefully, moved them to a separate vessel, and settled the shad into the big tank.
Wang Xi changed into a narrow-sleeved jacket of red plain Hangzhou silk and took a green bamboo branch to the tank. She dangled the leaves over the water. The shad went for them immediately, snapping at the foliage with surprising aggression.
She watched them and thought of the man in the bamboo grove, moving through the trees with a sword.
Who was he? That courtyard, judging by its position, looked to be on the west road of the Princess Royal's Mansion. Though not necessarily.
When she had first arrived, her father and eldest brother had gone to considerable trouble to learn the layout of the Yongcheng Marquis's estate and the surrounding properties. Fuzuo Street originally held three great households side by side: the Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion to the west, the Zhenguo Duke's Mansion to the east, and between them the former residence of Liu Ziyong, Grand Secretary of the Dongge and Minister of Rites under the late emperor. In the twenty-seventh year of Yongkang, Liu Ziyong was implicated in an imperial examination fraud. His home was searched and his family scattered. The mansion sat empty and decayed until the current emperor ascended the throne. The emperor then presided over the ceremony remarrying Princess Baoqing to Chen Yu, Duke of Zhenguo, and reopened a new mansion for the princess. The Zongren Mansion acquired the old Liu estate from the surviving descendants and converted it into the Princess Royal's Mansion. What had been three properties on the left side of the street became two.
Her father had also managed to obtain rough layout drawings of each residence.
They weren't precise, but they were close enough. The real reason he'd gone to the trouble was his fear that she might arrive at the Marquis's Mansion confused and be taken advantage of.
She had found the reduced floor plans oddly charming and had asked her father to sketch their own home too, so her two nephews wouldn't lose their way inside it. Her father had stared at her with an expression caught somewhere between fury and grief, then tapped her forehead with one finger.
"What kind of daughter maps her own house so anyone can read it? If that fell into the wrong hands, a thief would know exactly where everything is. What if someone saw how much you're worth and decided to take you? Are you not afraid?"
She had laughed.
Her father still spoke to her as though she were three years old.
She knew perfectly well why those house plans were considered sensitive. Otherwise, why would they be so difficult to obtain in the first place? She simply wanted to understand the scale of the place she had lived in for over a decade. After all these years, she still could not work out why her father's Guanshan Residence appeared to the east when she stood in the main courtyard, and to the south when she stood in the Tingtaoxuan pavilion at the back garden.
She remembered pouting and arguing back: "Then how do you dare send people to gather information about the Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion, the Princess Royal's Mansion, and the Zhenguo Duke's Mansion? That's far more dangerous. If someone learns our layout, at worst they steal some things. If they learn the layout of a house like those, it means assassins."
Her father had clutched his chest. "Who took you to a teahouse to listen to those storytellers again? In a peaceful age, with calm rivers and quiet seas, where exactly do you imagine assassins are coming from? Read fewer of those picture books."
Wang Xi had said nothing. Whenever it concerned her directly, her father was convinced every person alive was either a swindler or a threat.
Her eldest brother had saved her. He had come to discuss something with their father that afternoon, quietly pulled her aside afterward, and murmured: "Come to my house tonight. I'll show you the layout of our home."
She had been delighted and rewarded him with a plate of shredded beef with light shadow, which she claimed she had made herself, for him to eat as a snack.
The memory made her smile. She turned from the tank and called across the courtyard: "Bai Shu, we're going to the study."
Qingxue Garden was a yard of less than five acres. Flowers and old trees filled most of the space, leaving only two proper residential sections, five main rooms, and a handful of side rooms to actually shelter people. The lady of the house had looked at Wang Xi's small retinue and concluded the yard would do. The footmen were assigned to the outer courtyard.
Wang Xi had thought it cramped. A few days after settling in, she had gently raised the matter with Madam Tai. Two small kitchens were added in the far corners of the courtyard. A well was dug. The flower hall in the garden behind the main room was converted into a study. The alcove off the main room that had previously served as a small study was cleared out and given over to her clothes and jewelry. That freed the back storeroom for her trunks.
Even so, the senior maids of Atractylodes shared a room, and the junior maids serving them shared another. It had taken Aunt Wang's careful reasoning to talk her out of raising the ceiling in the back room: "In the capital, space is simply scarce. Princess Baoqing herself had to squeeze her new mansion between the Zhenguo estate and the Marquis's walls."
Wang Xi sighed. The Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion had its own difficulties. Unlike her family's home, where the Emperor was far away and the streets felt boundless, here even her nine-year-old second nephew would wander off and get lost without someone beside him.
Inside the study, she asked Bai Shu to retrieve the floor plans of the three mansions.
Bai Shu went off smiling. Wang Xi felt a small, quiet satisfaction. Her father had refused to let those plans leave his house, so she had asked Bai Shu to copy them by hand and tucked the copies inside the purple sandalwood frame of her white jade chessboard.
Bai Shu returned quickly. Wang Xi spread all three plans across the wide writing table.
The Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion and the Zhenguo Duke's Mansion had both been built according to official court specifications: symmetrical, upright, and dull. The Princess Royal's Mansion was different. Narrow at the south end and deep to the north, it was shaped something like a blade-coin. Its main courtyard extended far enough northward to reach the rear garden of the Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion. That back garden occupied several acres in the second hutong behind the Marquis's estate.
She studied the three plans together and arrived at a conclusion. The courtyard where the sword dancing had occurred sat beside Liuyin Garden in the northeast corner of the Marquis's back garden. It was the most interior courtyard of the Princess's Mansion, with the Princess's own back garden directly behind it.
Remote. Tucked away. Quiet.
Wang Xi rested her chin in her hand and thought.
Her eldest brother had told her the princess had no surviving children from her first marriage. After wedding Chen Yu, she had given birth to one son: Chen Luo. The boy was a favorite of the emperor's uncle. At twelve years old he had been appointed deputy commander in the Tengxiang Guard, the imperial personal guard, holding a fourth-rank military office. He had also been granted the title of Imperial Walking Officer and the privilege of carrying his sword into the imperial presence.
A boy that blessed would not be living in the quietest, most forgotten corner of any mansion.
If Chen Luo resided with the princess, his courtyard would be close to her main hall, not pressed against the northeast wall.
Chen Ying, the duke's eldest son from his first wife, was even less likely. He had no reason to live in his stepmother's household at all, princess or not. The distinction between men and women aside, the Zhenguo Duke's Mansion on the same street was double the size of the Marquis's estate, divided into three roads east, west, and center, with an additional garden wrapping its eastern and northern sides. The old duke's sons had divided the inheritance when their father died and each gone his own way. Chen Ying had an enormous estate of his own. Why would he crowd into the Princess Royal's Mansion?
So it was neither of the Chen sons.
A relative of the princess herself?
The thought arrived and she let out a sudden, undignified laugh.
The princess's male relatives were either princes or vassal kings. Princes could not leave the palace. Vassal kings could not enter the capital. Neither could be living in her courtyard.
Bai Shu looked up sharply. "What is it? You look so pleased with yourself."
"Nothing, nothing." Wang Xi waved her off, not wanting to give Bai Shu anything to tease her with later.
A knock at the door.
She gestured to Bai Shu to put the plans away, then raised her voice: "Come in."
It was Aunt Wang, and the two Sichuan cooks who had joined the household a few days earlier.
Aunt Wang smiled. "How would you like the shad prepared?"
Wang Xi considered for a moment. "What is happening over at Madam Tai's table today?"
Her father had told her everything about the true nature of her connection to the Yongcheng Marquis's household before she had left home. His exact words: "Don't try to sort out the grievances of your elders. You can't, and it isn't your place. I tell you this only so you won't feel uncertain when you arrive. Our family owes theirs nothing. You are owed the same treatment as any daughter or young lady of their house. If they are kind to you and you find it comfortable, stay on a while for your mother's sake, to honor her filial duty to her own mother. If they treat you poorly or say something you find insulting, regardless of what title their family holds, pack your things and move out. Stay in the capital until your mother feels you've been away long enough, then come home. No one gets to make my daughter feel small."
She had felt helpless hearing it, and fond.
No one in the family spoke openly of her mother's history. But she and her second brother had known the shape of it since they were small. She had long since reasoned through it: if her mother had not lived through those earlier years, she likely would never have married her father. If she had never married her father, Wang Xi herself would not exist. By that logic, what had happened had led to something good.
As for the people inside the Yongcheng Marquis's Mansion, she had never met them. They did not visit. She carried no warmth for them and no bitterness either.
What she had not expected was the moment she actually stood before Madam Tai. She had seen her mother's face in the lines of that old woman's expression. When Madam Tai held her and wept, something shifted. Perhaps no one had come through that old story cleanly. Perhaps her grandmother had not been as cold or unfeeling as the silence around her name had always implied. The blood between them became suddenly real, no longer just a title on a document. Especially later, when the Grand Lady took her to the temple to fulfill an old vow, lit incense at the Taoist shrine, and spoke plainly: Marry someone you yourself can choose. Never find yourself as I did. I married above my station with too little dowry, and after that, my husband's neglect became the ceiling of my life. I lost the right to decide even the marriages and fates of my own children.
Wang Xi had listened and had not asked about the past. She had not needed to.