Maid Xiao Chun - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My young lady treated me very well. Before marrying the Third Prince, she gently asked me:

“Xiao Chun, among the guards, stewards, coachmen… in His Third Highness’s Estate, which one do you want to marry?”

Terrified yet resolute, I shook my head. Her expression changed drastically, and she slapped me across the face.

“You wretch, do you want to have your face prepared to become a concubine?”

Clutching my swollen right cheek, I knelt on the footboard where I usually kept night watch and answered bitterly:

“My lady, I do not wish to marry a guard, steward, or coachman of the Prince’s Estate, and I would never presume to become Highness’s concubine. I only want to live a life of my own.”

Some of the fury faded from my young lady’s wide, almond-shaped eyes. With a trace of contempt and incomprehension, she asked:

“How strange. Instead of enjoying the good days in the estate, do you want to marry some peddler or common laborer outside and quarrel endlessly every day over a few measures of rice?”

I fell silent for a moment, then suddenly raised my head and stared at her. She no longer seemed able to overlap with the person in my memory who had taught me that “women are born with dignity and should strengthen themselves.”

“The life Xiao Chun wants has no marriage in it, only myself. Xiao Chun does not want to leave one estate only to be locked into another.”

And those words were what my young lady had said to me when she was seven.

That year, when she was seven, my young lady fell into the water. After she woke, her temperament changed greatly. When I knelt, she became frightened and uneasy, muttering, “Everyone is equal, hurry and stop kneeling to me.”

My young lady treated me very well. She secretly changed my permanent indenture contract into a life deed. She said, “Don’t call me my lady anymore. Just call me Menglan.” I was three years older than my young lady, so she called me Sister Xiao Chun. She let me read and write with her, and more importantly, she taught me to understand reason.

“Xiao Chun, what do you want to do after you leave the estate?”

At that time, ten-year-old me was slightly stunned. After thinking for a while, I answered, “When I leave the estate, I’ll be twenty. Naturally I’ll have to hurry and marry, find a guard, steward, or coachman who doesn’t look down on me, and marry him. That would be a very good life.”

Miss Menglan held my hand and said solemnly, “Xiao Chun, don’t be locked from one estate into another. You must live your own life.”

But the young lady now sat high above on the embroidered bed, looking down at me with a disdainful gaze, pondering whether what I said was true or false.

Her cold fingers, fitted with finger armor, traced across my face.

“Xiao Chun, don’t say such treasonous impiety again.”