The Nine Songs of Nan - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The more I thought about it, the less I could stand it. I sat up, took the umbrella from the corner, and walked out. I thought I would gather her bones and move them somewhere out of the rain. To be battered by wind and rain even after death-how pitiful.

After all, it had been three years, I thought.

When I reached the ruins, I nearly screamed, because a pitch-black figure was sitting on the ground amid the rubble.

I stood in the covered corridor, staring over in shock and uncertainty, but no matter how I looked, I could not make it out clearly. Just then, lightning flashed across the horizon, and the sky suddenly flared bright. I clapped a hand over my mouth. That dark figure… was the Eldest Prince.

He sat among the ruins, clutching those charred black bones tightly in his arms, his eyes closed, his face seemingly without any expression at all.

Rain came crashing down from every direction. He was soaked through, rainwater streaming down his handsome, expressionless face, making one wonder whether tears were mixed in with it.

Was this still our Eldest Prince, the one who killed decisively and was cold and ruthless?

I turned and left, pretending I had seen nothing.

Early the next morning, I saw him again-aloof as ever, his clothes fresh and clean, his face expressionless as he ordered Shen Zheng’s remains to be burned to ash. For a moment, it almost made one think that the man who had held Shen Zheng’s bones in the ruins last night and wept had been nothing but my imagination.

But I knew it was not. He had always been good at hiding and disguising things.

In truth, Shen Zheng had always been frail. She was sickly, and every day I wondered if she was about to give out. The very night she came to the Jurchen, the Eldest Prince tormented her brutally for an entire night.

The next morning, the Eldest Prince remained dazed and distracted for a long while. In the end, he ordered me, “Go and check on her.”

His words were brief, but I understood what he meant.

When I went to the room, Shen Zheng had not yet risen. White bed curtains hung down layer after layer, and I kept lifting them until I reached the innermost layer. The bedding was in disarray. She was covered with a thin quilt, and the exposed shoulder beneath it was as fair as congealed cream, mottled with bruises of blue and purple.

When she saw me, she pulled the thin quilt higher, then smiled weakly at me. “Auntie, could I trouble you to prepare some hot water for me? I would like to bathe.”

She could barely stand. I had meant to watch coldly from the side, but in the end, I could not bear it, so I helped her bathe.

After that, the Eldest Prince had me remain by her side to take care of her.

He called it taking care of her, but at the beginning, it was still surveillance. After all, she was one of the Han people, and a member of the Shen Family besides. Who knew what she might do?

To be honest, I did not like her at first. But the Eldest Prince was very interested in her. I thought it was because there had never been a woman like her by his side before, and also because he wanted to find himself some amusement.

There happened to be nothing going on during that period. He toyed with this young lady of the Shen Family like a cat that had caught a mouse, teasing it at leisure. In any case, he had plenty of time.

The Eldest Prince humiliated Shen Zheng several times.

Once, at a banquet in the army, he had Shen Zheng play the zither to liven things up, as if she were some dancing girl. Among the military commanders seated there, almost every one of them had suffered losses at the hands of the Shen Family.

Everyone was in high spirits. Their bloodthirsty, wolf-like gazes were fixed firmly on her, all of them impatient to watch her make a fool of herself.

But Shen Zheng sat there in the middle of the banquet and played an entire piece without the slightest change in expression.

Then Wuda laughed and asked the Eldest Prince, “Didn’t Shen An say that everyone in the Shen Family had hard bones? But from what I see, this southern barbarian of the Shen Family has bones that are rather soft.”

The Eldest Prince laughed too. His tone was casual as he raised an eyebrow and asked in return, “Oh? How can you tell whether they are soft just by looking? Could it be that Wuda does not want to try for himself?”

Everyone burst into laughter. But the Eldest Prince calmly poured himself a cup of wine and slowly drank it down, steady as a mountain. He did not look as though he were joking, so as the laughter went on, people gradually stopped laughing.

Wuda swallowed and asked, “Does the Eldest Prince mean that?”

The Eldest Prince said nothing.

As I have said before, Shen Zheng was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. And Wuda, as a man, had little else to his name-but he was exceedingly lecherous.

He glanced at Shen Zheng, then lifted the bowl of wine in front of him and drained it in one gulp. At last, he laughed and said to the Eldest Prince, “Wuda thanks Your Highness for the reward.”

He set down the wine bowl and walked over to Shen Zheng. With effortless ease, he caught her around the waist and lifted her sideways into his arms, carrying her toward the felt tent at the back.

Instinctively, I looked at Shen Zheng’s face. She was cradled in Wuda’s arms, one hand around his neck, but her dark eyes stared straight over Wuda’s shoulder at the Eldest Prince.

Calm. Silent. There was no panic, no desperate struggle. She seemed to have accepted her fate just like that, quietly and without a sound.

I thought of her eldest brother, Shen An, who had defended Yumen Pass to the death for forty-five days before being shot full of arrows outside the pass. Even in death, he had never knelt. His backbone had been unbending. We Jurchen hated him, but we also respected him.

Yet this sister of his was like a strand of dodder, soft and yielding. I turned my eyes away, unable to keep watching.

Once Wuda had carried her into the felt tent at the back, the main tent returned to laughter and conversation. Someone even asked the Eldest Prince, “Your Highness, after Wuda has had his turn, can I go try her too?”

The tent burst into raucous laughter, filled with the filthy, knowing looks men exchanged among themselves.

Amid the clamor, I looked at the Eldest Prince’s expression. He was leaning lazily against the back of his chair, idly playing with the wine cup in his hand. But faint as they were, I still caught a few of his glances drifting toward the tent in the back.

Dark, heavy, unreadable.

The scream rang out at that exact moment. Everyone could tell it was Wuda. The Eldest Prince shot to his feet and headed for the rear tent, and I followed behind him.

When the curtain was lifted, Wuda stood in the middle of the room in disheveled clothes, screaming in agony. His right hand covered his left eye, blood streaming nonstop through the gaps between his fingers. A hairpin was buried viciously in that left eye.

Shen Zheng sat on the bed at the back, wrapped in the quilt. Her outer robe had been torn, but her inner garments were intact. Her dark eyes watched this farce in silence.

For some reason, I actually breathed a sigh of relief.

Wuda was in such pain that he howled and lunged forward, wanting to kill Shen Zheng. It was the Eldest Prince who stopped him, gripping Wuda by the wrist.

How strange. Shen Zheng had stabbed a Jurchen commander, yet the Eldest Prince did not seem especially angry. It was the first time I had ever seen him smile with such delight.

He glanced at Shen Zheng, then said unhurriedly to Wuda, “Haven’t you already tried her? Well? Are her bones soft or hard?”

Later, everyone else withdrew from the tent. Only the Eldest Prince and Shen Zheng remained. I saw the Eldest Prince walk over and sit down at the edge of her bed, raising a hand to stroke Shen Zheng’s face.

He asked her, “Why did you never use a hairpin to stab me?”

In truth, even if Shen Zheng had wanted to stab him, she likely would not have succeeded so easily. The Eldest Prince was not Wuda. He was agile and alert. Though that was not certain either. In matters of the bedchamber, once a man lost himself, who could say for sure?

But Shen Zheng gazed at the Eldest Prince. Her words came slowly, but clearly. She said, “I came on behalf of Daliang for this marriage alliance, Your Highness. By the customs of Daliang, I am your wife. I belong to you alone.”

Every time I recalled that scene afterward, I could not help thinking that the more beautiful a woman was, the better she was at lying. When she coaxed someone, she truly left no flaw behind.

But the Eldest Prince was clearly pleased.

He brushed Shen Zheng’s hair from the side of her face and tucked it behind her ear, then asked in a low voice, “You belong to me alone?”

There was an unmistakable smile in his voice, as if he were amazed, or perhaps amused by her courage, or by how calmly she said it.

But in the end, he said nothing more. He merely nodded, affirming her words. “Good. You belong to me alone.”

After that, the Eldest Prince never brought her out to attend banquets like this again.