Moonlight in the General’s Household - Chapter 1

1.

That very day, my brother smashed down the Cui family’s gates. Soon the whole capital was talking about the ferocity of our household.

The noble young ladies who had planned to come and laugh at me no longer dared show their faces.

My fiancé hid for three days, then sent someone with a letter breaking off the engagement.

Without even reading it, my brother tore it up. In its place, he posted his own “confession of wrongdoing” on the Cui family’s gate.

It read: The Cui family has failed to raise its son properly. My young sister was deceived into trusting a beast. I hereby repudiate this husband on her behalf. Neither party owes the other anything further.

I stared, speechless.

“Brother, can we really do that?”

He kept a straight face.

“Your sister-in-law wrote it.”

At that moment, she came down the covered walkway carrying a bowl of bird’s-nest soup, coughing delicately twice.

“Yun’er, a young lady mustn’t make a fuss. Be demure.”

My head was pounding.

“Sister-in-law, with that divorce letter plastered on the Cui family’s gate, won’t the censors tear Brother to pieces in court tomorrow?”

She stirred her soup leisurely with a white jade spoon.

“They’ll be impeaching your brother, not you. What are you worrying about? Men have thick skin. They’re there to take the blows, open and underhanded alike.”

She blew on the soup and took a small sip.

“Besides, the bigger the fuss, the better. We’ll make ourselves so humble that they have nowhere left to go.”

Just then, the gatekeeper hurried in.

“General! Madam! The Cui steward is outside making trouble with more than a dozen servants! They’ve brought the broken gate planks and are accusing our household of abusing its power. A whole crowd has gathered to watch!”

My temper flared.

Cui Yun was the one who had cheated, yet his father had the nerve to send people over demanding justice?

I snatched a door bar from the corner and charged off to fight.

My sister-in-law caught my sleeve before I could get away.

“Where are you going? To break their legs?”

She shook her head in disapproval.

“How crude. A young lady trading insults in the street? Most uncivilized.”

Then she turned to our steward.

“Fetch the old bloodstained battle robe the General wore when he was gravely wounded in Mobei last year. Then have the kitchen chop two jin of onions. Fresh ones.”

The steward stood there, baffled.

My brother was equally lost.

“Yue’er, what do you need onions for? Do you fancy stir-fried lamb with scallions tonight?”

She shot him a look.

An hour later, our gates swung wide open.

The Cui steward was standing below the steps, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Come and see, everyone! The Cui family is an upright family of civil officials, with generations of unblemished conduct! General Lu thinks his military achievements entitle him to smash down our gates without asking a single question! Such contempt for human life! Such tyranny!”

The onlookers pointed and murmured.

Then my brother emerged in that ragged old battle robe, dried bloodstains still visible on the fabric.

Supported by two maids, my sister-in-law pressed a handkerchief hard over her eyes, sobbing so fiercely she could scarcely breathe.

“Steward Cui, ours is a military household. We truly aren’t clever with words.”

Her voice was anguished. She swayed as though she might collapse.

“My husband went to war at fifteen. He earned this residence fighting for our country, at the cost of wounds and illness all over his body. Yun’er lost her parents as a little girl. He has been both father and mother to her. All he wanted was for her to marry into a good family.”

As she spoke, she pressed the handkerchief, soaked in onion juice, firmly against my brother’s face.

He had been bristling with anger. The fumes turned his eyes scarlet in an instant, and tears streamed down his face.

Clad in that bloody robe, the towering man—eight chi tall—sobbed so hard he could barely speak. It was a devastating sight.

The crowd fell silent.

What overbearing tyrant? Here was a blunt soldier who had given his all for the country, bullied speechless by men who wielded brushes instead of swords.

The Cui steward panicked and rushed to defend his master.

“Madam Su, don’t slander us! Our young master was merely drunk at the banquet. That woman threw herself at him!”

Leaning against my brother’s shoulder, my sister-in-law dabbed at her eyes.

“Yes, the young lady’s surname is Lin. She’s Master Cui’s distant cousin. I hear she has been living with the family for quite some time. When Master Cui got drunk, he didn’t go to a side room to rest. He went straight to Miss Lin’s bedchamber—and thoughtfully bolted the door behind him.”

“He holds his liquor remarkably well. Didn’t even lose his way.”

The crowd burst into laughter.

Every trace of color drained from the steward’s face.

My sister-in-law sighed and patted my brother’s chest.

“Never mind, Husband. They’re learned men. Their brushes can kill. We soldiers must admit defeat. Go on, kneel and kowtow to Steward Cui. If the worst comes to the worst, our Yun’er can cut off her hair and become a nun.”

My brother’s eyes stung too badly to open. At her words, he made as if to kneel.

A third-rank Defender of the Realm, kneeling to a servant in the street.

If his knees actually touched the ground, the Censorate would come down on the Cui family so hard that nine heads apiece wouldn’t save them.

The steward fled with his men, too terrified even to take the planks.