MBSB C2

Chapter 2 — I Want the Mute Too

Du Siqing was woken by a sound like ghosts wailing. Dazed, he remembered he had married. He reached across the bed and touched only cold cloth. That woke him fully.

Yesterday might have been a millet dream. The little beauty pretty as a fairy might have been his own invention. But the great wash of red before his eyes could not be faked. His little husband could not have sprouted wings and flown away.

“Young Master! I thought you… you would never wake again! You nearly frightened me to death.” Mo Qi was sprawled by the bed, crying as if his own mother had died, tears and snot in a mess.

Du Siqing was somewhat disgusted. “Shut up. Anyone who didn’t know better would think my soul had returned to its own memorial hall.”

“I said the Young Master is blessed by heaven. Those fortune-tellers talk nonsense. Our Young Master is still here, whole and alive! Next time I see them I’ll beat them hard! No—hang them up and beat them, so they don’t talk our Young Master’s luck away!”

Mo Qi chattered without end. Du Siqing had no strength to stop him. He lifted his hand several times and still could not catch the boy standing too far off. He pressed his forehead and listened, deflated, and only in a gap managed to cut in: “Where is my husband?”

“Ah? When I came in I didn’t see him. Don’t tell me he thought the Young Master was done for and slipped away.” Mo Qi was indignant. “What kind of people are these? I knew Wang Yingmei meant no good. She found some boy from who-knows-where and stuffed him into the Young Master’s room…”

That timid little quail of a boy, run away? More likely he had fallen into some den of tigers and could not get out.

Du Siqing’s face darkened. “Go find him. Now.”

“Yes, yes!”

At that moment Lu Li was kneeling in the Du family’s main hall. On the high seats sat the stepmother Wang Yingmei and the father Du Heng. Tears hung on Lu Li’s cheeks. He gestured hard, trying to explain how things had come to this. No one understood him. Or they did not want to. They only pressed invented crimes onto him.

Wang Yingmei sat slantwise, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, voice soft and weak. “Husband, I thought Lu Guo’s eight characters were good, that he could bring luck to Siqing, that Siqing might even recover. I never imagined they would send a defective little mute. The Lu family has gone too far.”

Du Heng’s face blackened with rage. The Du family had standing in the city. They had never suffered such humiliation. He slammed the table. “Why haven’t the Lus arrived yet?”

A page trembled. “The Lu household said… said the clinic is busy. They have no time.”

“Husband, is this not too much? All my painstaking care—if it had been Lu Guo who married in, Siqing might already be walking. A boy who can take his brother’s place in marriage cannot be a good one. How can such a person stay at Siqing’s side?” Wang Yingmei kept fanning the fire.

Du Heng took it in. The look he turned on Lu Li was no longer kind. He judged this a calamity that would harm his son. “Send this boy back to the Lus. We do not want such a husband. If they do not bring Lu Guo, I will make them pay.”

Lu Li was terrified. His small face went paper-white. His lips opened and closed and nothing came out, not even a cry. His slight body shook and shook. With nothing to lean on, he swayed on the edge of collapse.

If he went back he would truly die. Lu Li kowtowed without stopping. The thuds landed in the heart. His forehead flushed red. Tears rolled into his hair and stuck there. Several nannies came to drag him. Back and forth they pulled until he was curled on the floor, hauled along with no dignity at all.

“Father.”

Du Siqing stood in the doorway. His voice was clear and cool, and warm.

He was half-reclined in a wheelchair. Mo Qi pushed him in, looking ill and frail.

“Siqing.” Du Heng strode forward and looked him over from head to foot. The color was not good, but there was spirit in him, and he had been willing to come out. Du Heng was overjoyed. “Siqing, your body…”

“Thank you for worrying, Father. I am well enough. I meant to come on the first day of the marriage to offer tea to Father and Second Mother. I did not expect my husband to be summoned first.” A thin smile sat on Du Siqing’s face. His gaze fell on Lu Li on the floor. His brows drew tight. “What is this? Do servants drag their masters? Father, Second Mother—I do not think our house has such a rule.”

“Siqing, you don’t know. This is not your original husband. The Lus switched heaven and earth.” Du Heng pointed at Lu Li.

“The one who bowed with me in the hall is he. The one who shared the wedding chamber with me is he. Father says he is not my husband. How is he not?” Du Siqing coughed several weak times. The pallor of his face took on a little color. Du Heng was too worried to speak.

Wang Yingmei startled, then echoed Du Heng. “Siqing, they cheated the marriage. He is defective. How can such a person remain in the Du house?”

Du Siqing caught his breath, braced on the chair with little strength, and looked at Wang Yingmei. The tone was light. The force was not. “I am defective too. Should I also be driven from the Du house?”

In the whole family, Du Heng hated most that anyone should call Du Siqing’s body defective. He glared hard at Wang Yingmei. She dared say no more.

“Mute or not, substitute bride or not, he is Du Siqing’s husband now. There is no reason to drive him out.” Word by word, the voice was not loud, but it struck the ground and sounded. His resolve was plain.

Du Heng understood. Substitute or not mattered less than his son’s body. The fortune-teller had said the boy would not live past twenty, and here he sat whole before his father. That said enough. Lu Li would do. Whichever Lu boy it was—so long as his own son lived.

Du Siqing wheeled himself to Lu Li and helped him up. “Today we should offer tea to Father and Second Mother. Mo Qi.”

Mo Qi brought tea and poured a cup each for Du Siqing and Lu Li. Du Siqing made as if to kneel. Du Heng stopped him, face full of pleasure. “Aiya, no kneeling, no kneeling.” He drank a sip and pulled out thick red envelopes for both their hands.

When it was Wang Yingmei’s turn her face was iron-green. She had not thought these two would truly make a peaceful marriage. She had not prepared a red envelope at all. Under so many eyes she could not give nothing, so she took off the jade bracelet she had only just put on her wrist.

“My husband rose too early today. It kept me from sleeping well as well. Cough, cough… from now on we may rise later. I hope Second Mother will be forbearing about the morning and evening greetings.”

Wang Yingmei smiled before Du Heng could speak. “What are you saying, Siqing? Morning and evening greetings are no great matter. If they can be excused, excuse them. Looking after you is what matters most.”

Du Siqing was satisfied at last. “Father, I am tired. I will take my husband back to Changle Court first.”

“Yes, yes, good, good. Hurry and see the eldest young master and his husband back properly!”

Back in Changle Court, Lu Li’s head was a fog. Somehow he had gotten up. Somehow he had offered tea. Somehow there was silver. Somehow a plain white jade bracelet had appeared on his wrist.

He stared at Du Siqing. Du Siqing blinked at him. It was only an instant. Lu Li thought he had seen wrong.

“The Young Master must be hungry. I had the small kitchen add two dishes.” Mo Qi set them out one by one. “No—where is the pigeon soup! I went to the market at dawn for that pigeon, picked the biggest and fattest! Those black-hearted people even greed after the Young Master’s food. I’m going after them!”

Mo Qi stormed off to the kitchen. Du Siqing beckoned Lu Li. “Come eat.”

From yesterday through noon today he had not taken a grain of rice. Lu Li’s stomach was protesting too. Only hunger was ordinary for him. Even when there was food they did not let him eat his fill, afraid it would delay the work. Over time he had stopped treating hunger as a matter.

He did not dare eat the meat. He cupped a bowl of white rice, took two bites of greens, and squatted in the corner, scooping rice with effort, like a cat or a dog, so long as the belly was filled.

Du Siqing was stunned. Even in famine years he had not seen the like. For the boy to act this way, who knew how much torment and grievance he had taken in the main hall. They had frightened him into this. Resentment rose again. His liver ached with it. Blood rolled. He beat his chest and stamped for a good while.

“However you were in your own home, be that way here. In Changle Court there are not so many tricks for tormenting people.”

Lu Li still did not move. He stayed squatting in the corner, only looking at him timid and weak, and quietly wiped the grains at the corner of his mouth and licked them in.

Du Siqing understood all at once.

Yes. If he were a darling, a heart’s flesh, how would they be willing to marry their boy to a cripple like him? How would they raise a pretty child so thin and small, clearly starved? How would white rice be wolfed down as if it were rare delicacy? The one who had been substituted for was surely the child in favor. The one before him had been thrown out at will.

What kind of family was this? The tightness in Du Siqing’s chest grew worse, a smothering that would not let him draw breath. Even paralysis had not made him this angry.

Since he had been paralyzed he had been sunk in gloom, caring for nothing, getting by, a living man already half dead—alive would do, dead would be clean.

The people of Changle Court were snobs. In time they stopped putting their hearts into the work. In food, drink, and clothing it was not yet too much: yesterday a meat dish missing, today a new robe gone. Du Siqing had shut one eye and let it pass. Only Mo Qi still held a stubborn breath.

Now the one holding that breath was Du Siqing. He shouted at Lu Li: “Get up. Come sit down!”

The man’s face was too frightening. Lu Li stood in a daze, bowl in his hands, and sat on the chair. Small hands gripped the chopsticks, not knowing what to do.

Du Siqing piled meat into Lu Li’s bowl until it was a mountain. He pointed at it. One order.

“Eat.”