Chapter 9 — The Maid

For more than a year after Aunt Ding entered the household, her belly gave no sign, and Dou Zhiwei's legitimate grandmother grew deeply anxious. By chance she heard tell of a Cui family on the Dou estate's farmland who had borne eight sons and two daughters, every one of them surviving. With too many mouths to feed, they had already given two sons away as live-in sons-in-law to other families, and now they meant to trade their fourteen-year-old eldest daughter for a wife for their third son.

Dou Zhiwei's legitimate grandmother took this as the will of Heaven. She had seen the Cui girl—tall and sturdy, powerfully built, yet with features that were not without a certain delicacy—and without so much as consulting Dou Zhiwei's grandfather, she laid out two hundred taels of silver and had the Cui girl carried in through the gate.

Ten months later, Dou Zhiwei's father was born.

The child had barely passed his hundred-day celebration when Dou Zhiwei's grandfather summoned Dou Zhiwei's legitimate grandmother and, pointing at the babe still in swaddling clothes, said, "You will raise this child yourself. Do not let that Cui woman, who cannot even read a single character, ruin him."

And so Cui was packed off to the Dou family's little farmstead at Dongji Village, which had barely a hundred mu of land to its name, and there she remained until the day she died.

So in essence, Cui had always been a village woman.

In the years Dou Yan lived with her, Cui not only took her to water, pick insects from, and weed the vegetable plot behind the house, but also taught her how to tend the crops, how to raise chickens and fatten pigs... In Cui's words: "Once you can wait on the fields, you'll never starve, no matter where you go!"

Growing up in such surroundings, Dou Yan knew when to sow in spring and when to reap in autumn, when to plant vegetables and when to hatch chicks; she could even read the winter's weather and predict the year to come. She was less like the daughter of a family of generations of officials than like the daughter of a country squire.

She had first met Tuo Niang shortly after her tenth birthday. The grown-ups were all busy with the spring plowing; her grandmother and the steward had gone out to the fields, and she stood with a few maids under the elm in front of the house, watching the village children pick elm buds.

A caterpillar dropped onto Dou Zhiwei's shoulder and gave her such a fright that she caught it up and went chasing the maids with it, and everyone shrieked and shoved at one another until the whole lot of them were in an uproar.

Tuo Niang came from nowhere and charged over like a madwoman, beating and chasing her maids, crying, "She is a young lady, a Dou young lady! How dare you show her disrespect? I'll beat you to death, I'll beat you to death..."

Thinking of all this, Dou Yan grew somewhat agitated.

After her stepmother entered the household, the people who had served her mother were either sold off for being too junior, or set free by the stepmother on the grounds that they had earned merit in serving her mother, or sent back to her uncle's house; no one told her anything about her mother. Even her doting grandmother had said to her more than once, "One must look forward. What use is there in asking after all that? You should be thinking more about how you will live your days, about how to win your mother-in-law's favor once you marry into the Jining Marquis's household."

No one knew the terror in her heart.

How had her mother died?

Why did everyone keep it so dark and silent?

Hu, the trusted old nurse of her stepmother, Madam Wang, said that her mother had died because she had borne a daughter...

Did that not make her her mother's killer?

Was that why she had been sent away to her grandmother's here in the countryside?

While her mother lived, had she ever disliked her? Had she ever regretted giving birth to her?

As she grew older, she grew ever more afraid to ask.

Her mother's death had become a wound in Dou Yan's heart that would never heal.

It was Tuo Niang who told her the truth, and who, when confronted with her grandmother's interrogation, retorted, "I don't know about all those lofty principles. I only know that it was Wang who killed the Seventh Madam, that Wang is the Fourth Young Miss's enemy, and that the Fourth Young Miss must not take her mother's murderer for a mother! What you are doing is no help to the Fourth Young Miss—it harms her, it brands her as unfilial!"

Dou Yan still remembered the shock on her grandmother's face.

Afterward her grandmother said nothing at all, and kept Tuo Niang at the farmstead.

How many people had attended her mother in those days, and yet after eight years of searching, the only one who had found her was Tuo Niang—the only one to speak up for her was Tuo Niang!

Her character needed no explaining.

Dou Yan could scarcely move a step now, and she badly needed someone who would do her bidding in all things.

There was no one better suited than Tuo Niang!

At this, Xiangcao, against Shuangzhi's objections, took it upon herself to fetch Tuo Niang.

Tuo Niang gazed at Dou Yan in bewilderment, constrained and betraying a touch of nervousness, and called softly, "Fourth Young Miss."

The Tuo Niang of this moment—young, ruddy, her gaze meek and shy—was a different person from the haggard, unkempt woman in Dou Yan's memory.

A bitter ache rose in Dou Yan's heart.

She asked Tuo Niang, "Do you... know... me?"

"I know," she said in a small voice. "On the way here just now, Xiangcao told me. You are the Seventh Madam's daughter, the Fourth Young Miss of the Dou family."

So long as she knew she was the Seventh Madam's daughter, that was enough!

Dou Yan smiled and nodded, held out her arms for Tuo Niang to carry her, and said, "We... go... to the Hall of Crane Longevity. Shuangzhi... lead the way."

Tuo Niang took Dou Yan in her arms without a moment's hesitation, but Shuangzhi was very hesitant. "If by any chance..."

"I... want... to go!" Dou Yan glared at Shuangzhi.

Shuangzhi gave a sheepish laugh.

Xiangcao, at her side, hurried to put in, "And me? Fourth Young Miss, what about me?"

A person cannot have only one kind of person about her. Sometimes a strength turns into a weakness, and a weakness into a strength.

"Come along," said Dou Xin.

Xiangcao answered "Yes" in delight and led the way in front.

Now Shuangzhi had no choice but to go as well.

The group made its way to the Hall of Crane Longevity.

A young servant stopped them at the gate: "The Old Master has said no one is to go in!"

Tuo Niang looked at Dou Yan anxiously.

Shuangzhi was at a loss, on the verge of saying "I told you so."

Xiangcao, however, stepped forward with a smile, greeting the servant as "brother" in a teasing, bantering way: "We've been sent by the Seventh Madam to bring the Fourth Young Miss inside..." Then she cast a wink toward the Hall of Crane Longevity. "Isn't there a commotion going on in there? That's why we've brought the Fourth Young Miss over. If you don't believe me, brother, why not go in first and announce us?"

The servant stopped insisting and let them through the courtyard gate.

Shuangzhi whispered, "You're far too bold! What if he really does go ask the Seventh Madam for instructions..."

"He won't!" Xiangcao said with a confident smile. "We don't dare go near the Hall of Crane Longevity—so why would they dare?"

Dou Yan nodded inwardly.