Volume One, Chapter 11: You Are Unworthy to Call Me Grandfather

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Before the Xie family ancestral tombs in the countryside, Zhiqiu and Nanny Li helped Xie Jiaoyue arrange the offerings. The meager offerings had been secretly taken from the kitchen by Nanny Li.

Zhiqiu had bought the paper money, incense, and candles for Xie Jiaoyue with her own monthly allowance.

Xie Jiaoyue had meant to give her the plain hairpin in her hair, but Zhiqiu refused to accept anything from her.

Thinking about it carefully, that was understandable. If someone saw her wearing the hairpin in the residence, she would surely have a difficult time. Better not to accept anything from her and invite trouble.

“Miss, hurry and finish paying your respects so we can return. It’s cold—be careful not to catch a chill.”

Xie Jiaoyue placed the lit incense and candles before the grave, then knelt on the ground, her eyes lowered.

“Step back a little. I would like to speak with Grandmother.”

A trace of hesitation crossed Nanny Li’s eyes, but in the end she said, “Miss, do hurry. If we return too late, Madam will blame us.”

Xie Jiaoyue raised her eyes halfway and looked at the tombstone before her.

“I only have a few words to say. If you’re worried, you can watch me from a distance.”

She did not really understand why Madam Xie watched her so closely.

In her eyes, the Chancellor’s household was still glorious and powerful. She had long since asked for nothing more, and it was impossible that she would again use her body to beg anyone for help.

But perhaps Madam Xie did not think so. In her eyes, Xie Jiaoyue was a daughter who despised herself and a defective person.

Xie Jiaoyue wondered whether Madam Xie had people guarding her because she feared that someone else might discover the flaws in this imperfect daughter.

Nanny Li sighed. “Then keep an eye on the time, Miss. Zhiqiu and I will wait for you beside the carriage.”

Only after Nanny Li led Zhiqiu away did Xie Jiaoyue struggle to rise. Her knees had gone stiff with cold, like two hard pieces of wood joined together. No matter how she tried, they remained rigid and powerless.

From a distance, Zhiqiu watched her struggle to stand. After hesitating, she took a step forward, but Nanny Li caught her by the arm.

“Don’t go.”

“Miss…”

A trace of pity flashed through Zhiqiu’s eyes. This had once been the Second Miss, born to wealth and privilege.

In the past, the Second Miss traveled in a large carriage made of carved rosewood, accompanied by two first-class maids and two nannies. Even the coachman was the finest in the household.

Even when the young lady went alone to pay her respects, she had to inform the household two or three days in advance. The servants would prepare the best pastries, dried fruits, paper money, incense, candles, and a prayer mat.

How could things have become so wretched that she did not even have paper money or incense and candles, and could only kneel on the bare, freezing ground?

Zhiqiu watched the once proud and aloof Second Miss stagger to her feet and sway toward the tombstone. With her sleeve, she wiped the cold stone again and again.

“Nanny, what mistake did the Second Miss make? Why won’t Madam forgive her?”

Zhiqiu wondered what the Second Miss could possibly have done for Madam to reduce a daughter she had once cherished so deeply to this state.

She knew that the household still had carriages reserved for its masters.

Even if the Third and Fourth Misses’ carriages were gone, the Second Young Master and the Little Young Master still had theirs.

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The Second Miss’s carriage was still there as well.

“Before one’s parents, what mistake could a child make that cannot be forgiven? It is only that the young lady refuses to admit hers.”

Nanny Li looked at the slender figure in the distance, so frail that she seemed liable to be scattered by the cold wind at any moment.

“She and Madam are too alike—both too stubborn, neither willing to swallow her pride and seek reconciliation. That is why things have come to this, leaving both sides wounded.”

Zhiqiu did not understand what Nanny Li meant. She only knew that the Second Miss had been wronged.

In these brief four days, she had already seen the injustice the young lady had suffered.

She had been beaten with thorny rods, knocked against them until she bled and fainted, punished by being made to kneel in the ancestral hall, and forced to travel even outside the residence in a servant’s carriage.

Zhiqiu did not believe Madam could fail to see what the young lady had endured.

What Madam saw was only that the young lady had displeased her.

*

“Grandmother, I’ve come to see you.”

Xie Jiaoyue carefully wiped the dust from the tombstone with her sleeve.

“Grandmother, it must be terribly lonely here. No one to talk with you, no one to drink tea or play chess with you.”

“Come to think of it, we never finished that game of chess…”

Every word Xie Jiaoyue spoke came with difficulty, as though each had to be forced up from her lungs and throat.

“Actually, I’ve already thought of how to resolve that game. I simply never had the chance to tell you…”

“And the oleanders in front of your room—I never had the chance to tell you that although the flowers are beautiful, their sap is poisonous. It would be better to replace them with slender bamboo…”

Xie Jiaoyue spoke of every small detail from three years before. Throughout these three years, everything concerning her grandmother had replayed again and again in her mind. She had thought of it, longed for it, and tormented herself with it over and over.

As she spoke, Xie Jiaoyue fell silent. She lifted her eyes to the tombstone so close before her, as though she had finally made peace with herself.

“Grandmother, you must hate me.”

The words that followed lodged in her throat. She could not open her mouth, and her heart hurt as though it were about to burst.

She had caused her grandmother’s death.

Her grandmother must hate her.

Without her, that kind and gracious old woman would have lived to a ripe old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren.

The one who should be lying here in the cold was her.

She was the one who should have died.

She should have died the moment she left Xu Huaiyang’s room.

If, at that time, she had picked up her self-respect, her sense of dignity, and the honor of the legitimate daughter of the Xie family—if she had not yearned for the spring beyond the capital, nor for the beauty of Jiangnan—

If she had not clung fearfully to life, but had faced death without regret that day, then Grandmother would still be alive, and her mother and younger sister would still love her.

Bright red blood stained the blue-green sleeve, glaring against the cloth.

The strength drained from Xie Jiaoyue’s body. The broken roof tile clenched in her palm slipped from her weakening fingers and fell to the ground.

Grandmother, I have come to atone to you.

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“What are you doing?”

At the sound of that familiar voice, Xie Jiaoyue slowly raised her head and saw an old man dressed in vermilion official robes.

His eyes were sharp and shrewd, and an air of authority surrounded him.

“Grandfather.”

Xie Jiaoyue forced herself to sit upright and look at him.

The Chancellor glanced at the attendants beside him. “Pull her away. Don’t let her blood soil A Li’s resting place.”

A Li was his grandmother’s maiden name.

At his words, two young attendants hurried forward and dragged Xie Jiaoyue away.

“Miss!”

Blocked to one side, Zhiqiu and Nanny Li could only watch as their young mistress was hauled aside and then thrown into the roadside weeds like a piece of refuse.

Zhiqiu quickly shoved away the attendant in front of her and hurried into the weeds to help Xie Jiaoyue up.

“Miss! How are you? Are you hurt—blood? Why is there blood?”

Zhiqiu reached out to lift Xie Jiaoyue’s sleeve, but Xie Jiaoyue caught her by the wrist.

Her refusal was unmistakable.

“Miss…”

Zhiqiu looked up at her in disbelief. After a moment, she choked out, “How could you be so foolish?”

Nanny Li came over as well and stared at the blood on Xie Jiaoyue’s sleeve.

“This blood…”

Her brows drew tightly together as she looked at Xie Jiaoyue, suddenly at a loss for words.

She sighed. “Miss, once a person is dead, everything is over.”

Xie Jiaoyue said nothing. She looked toward the old man in vermilion brocade robes in the distance.

Through her blurred vision, she could vaguely see him kick over the offerings she had brought and replace them before the tombstone with more abundant and better ones.

Even the ashes of the paper money that had already burned away were scattered beneath several harsh kicks from him.

Xie Jiaoyue’s hand tightened inside her sleeve. Leaning on Zhiqiu’s arm, she rose to her feet, bloodshot threads hidden in her eyes.

“Grandfather, why…”

“You are not worthy of calling me that.”

The Chancellor looked at her coldly. “You are merely a nun from Qingjing Nunnery. I brought you back only for the marriage alliance with the heir. I hope you understand your position clearly. You should know what you may think and what you may do.”

Xie Jiaoyue lifted her eyes to him. Her slender, weakened body staggered back a step.

She was not worthy of calling him Grandfather.

But she had gone to Xu Huaiyang to beg for his sake.