A Robe to Share - Chapter 2

And so, three months after moving into the palace, I turned fifteen.

During that time, Zhong Ze had visited me only once, bringing warm clothes and a little white dog.

In his words, he had no idea what a fourteen-year-old girl might like, so he might as well give me something alive. It could run around the inner palace with me.

He came again on my fifteenth birthday. At the sight of the dog, which had grown considerably, he frowned in thought for a good while. “Do they grow that fast?”

Holding the dog in my arms, I nodded cautiously.

Zhong Ze looked from the dog to me and ordered a heap of birthday cakes and sweets to be brought in. “Take a lesson from it. Don’t let people think I’m mistreating you. You’ve been here almost a year and haven’t put on any weight. You have got a good deal darker, though.”

How was I supposed to get fat when I spent every day racing around the palace with the dog?

“Is there anything you’d like for a present?” he asked after having lunch with me, slowly wiping his mouth.

“…C-could I try the date-paste cake from the imperial kitchens?” I remembered the little plate of it tucked into the bottom of the maids’ meal boxes whenever their food was handed out.

Its fragrance could travel for miles on the wind. I would hide in my hall and drool.

“They won’t let you have any?” Zhong Ze didn’t even lift his eyelids.

“No, no! It’s… I didn’t dare ask… I only ever saw it in the maids’ meal boxes…”

Only then did he lean back in his chair and frown at me. “You’re their mistress. If there’s something you want to eat, tell them. Understand?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely sure I did. Satisfied, he rose and turned to give instructions. “Find two maids who are good at sweets. Have them report to Zhaohua Hall’s private kitchen tomorrow and make her whatever she wants.”

Barely had Zhong Ze left when a crowd of maids arrived at Zhaohua Hall carrying pastries. At their head, the chief eunuch held a box of gold and silver jewelry. He bent toward me with a smile. “My lady, I’ve brought a sample of every sweet the imperial kitchens make. Pick whichever you like, and I’ll send you a maid who can make it. These are His Majesty’s birthday gifts to you. May you enjoy blessings, long life, peace, and good health.”

I happily accepted the jewelry, the sweets, and the maids.

And then…

I spent the whole night whimpering with toothache.

The emperor had been in a bad mood lately.

I could tell because he kept coming to the inner palace every three days.

When Zhong Ze was in a good mood, he never came back here. One day he’d be playing with a bird; the next he’d be out for a stroll. When he had nothing else to do, he would drag a group of elderly ministers whose bones were practically falling apart out hunting.

According to Qilan, Zhong Ze wasn’t much of a hunter, so he fitted in perfectly among the old ministers and did wonders for the vanity of those men, all over fifty.

After every hunt, harmony reigned at court. Even the most talkative minister from the Ministry of Rites would keep his mouth shut for the day, thoroughly content.

…I suspected Zhong Ze might be doing it on purpose.

When he was unhappy, he liked to eat.

We were rather alike in that respect.

For instance, he ate my breakfast, my lunch, and my after-lunch dessert all by himself.

I stood beside him swallowing my saliva and wondering when this exalted personage might finally leave.

“What are you staring at? Sit down and eat.”

He pointed to the other side of the table.

“I… er, I wouldn’t dare, Your Majesty. The rules say I mustn’t…”

“I never even had a matron teach you the rules.” With a chicken drumstick between his teeth, he shot me a sideways look. “If you don’t sit down, you won’t get anything. No breakfast, no lunch, and don’t think you’ll be able to snatch any dinner from me, either.”

Was he an emperor or a bandit?

I plopped down opposite him.

The hall filled with the sounds of our enthusiastic eating.

Smack, smack. Slurp, slurp.

Contentment hung in the air.

“Your Majesty… has something been troubling you lately?”

One afternoon, I finally couldn’t stand it any longer. Rubbing my aching wrist, I asked.

“Finished? Have you finished?” Zhong Ze gave me a sidelong glance. “Finish copying out the characters you got wrong before you start worrying about me.”

Worrying about you was hardly my idea!

I couldn’t help grumbling to myself.

For the first few days of his bad mood, Zhong Ze had merely come to the inner palace to steal my food. Then things escalated. He started grabbing a book and teaching me to read.

As he watched me read, swaying his head, he would complain, “I’ve never met anyone who knew so few characters. Listen to what you’ve done to this book. Mangled it.”

“My father died when I was little. After my mother remarried, my stepfather wouldn’t let me study, either. He said a woman without learning was a virtuous woman.” I wanted to argue, but my nerve failed me, and I could only speak timidly.

With an oat crisp in his mouth, Zhong Ze went still. Then he frowned and said nothing more.

After that, he often came to supervise my studies for half the day. His tongue remained as sharp as ever, but he never mocked me again.

My sixteenth-birthday present was a weasel-hair writing brush. Zhong Ze didn’t seem to care whether I liked it. He, at any rate, was delighted.

His delight resulted in a great deal of copying homework.

If the palace hadn’t treated me absurdly well, I might have suspected it was short of scribes.

Of course, much as I loathed Zhong Ze’s methods, I had to admit that, unlike his hunting, his calligraphy and painting were among the finest in the land.

Apparently, before the empress set out to perform her heroic deeds, she had remembered to pinch a few works he hadn’t stamped with his seal from the imperial study to sell.

The following year, among the birthday tributes from around the country, Zhong Ze found one of his own paintings, now covered in a jumble of elaborate seals. His face contorted.

Then, all smiles, he halved the presenting official’s salary. The poor man still had no idea why.

I guessed he wasn’t angry that the empress had stolen his work, or that an official had offered his own painting back to him. He wasn’t even angry about the mess of fancy seals.

The problem was that the official had stamped his seal right over the little poem Zhong Ze had inscribed on it.

Fine, I admit his poetry wasn’t very good, either. But making such an obvious attempt to cover it with a seal was going a bit far.

Fortunately, Zhong Ze did have some self-awareness where poetry was concerned.

So, despite a ferocious scolding from the Minister of Rites, he summoned the Crown Prince’s Grand Tutor, who was so idle he had taken to keeping fighting crickets, and set him to teaching me literature and history.

When the Grand Tutor first heard he was to teach a consort in the inner palace, he shook his head like a rattle drum.

Zhong Ze wasn’t annoyed. He smiled amiably. “Grand Tutor, if you’re waiting for a crown prince, you may be waiting until your next life. For the next few decades, crickets will be your only company. Crickets on your walks. Crickets at your meals. Crickets cradled in your hands when you go to bed. When King Yama sees you, he’ll say, ‘My, what an obsession.’ No telling what he’ll have you reborn as…”

The Grand Tutor glanced at the cricket in his hand, which had lost two legs in a fight, and began nodding like a chicken pecking grain.

Scholars really did think in the strangest ways.

Defying the proper order? Absolutely not.

But if it meant being human again in the next life, suddenly anything went.

Rather interesting, really.