The Empress Dowager Returns South
On the ninth day of the first lunar month in 1128, the north wind from Huining Prefecture blew like a poisoned knife through the crowded crowds in the square. Emperor Taizong of Jin had deliberately chosen this anniversary of the death of the Han dynasty. He vented all his resentment over Zhao Gou's ascension to the throne on his mother, Consort Wei, completely crushing the dignity of the Southern Dynasty imperial family beneath the drifting snow.
As Concubine Wei stepped barefoot onto the snow, she heard the sobs of the imperial family members behind her. She stared down at her frozen, purple toes and suddenly remembered the floor heating system in the Bianjing Palace. Every December, the palace maids would fill a brocade bag with charcoal to warm her embroidered shoes, the pearls on the toes gleaming softly in the warm air.
"Go!" The Jin soldiers yanked the rope, and the sheepskin collar around her neck suddenly tightened. On the altar in the distance, Emperor Taizong of Jin was holding up a jeweled wine jar and laughing.
As Concubine Wei was forced to crawl on her knees, she heard the excited whistles of the Jin soldiers all around her. Children threw snowballs, which hit her bare back and exploded into icy mud. Farther away, several Jin civilians pointed at her.
"Look! This is the mother of the Southern Song emperor. She could endure such humiliation and crawl on the ground. The Southern Song royal family has lost all face."
The rope yanked violently, and Wei stumbled and fell. When her cheek hit the snowdrift, she tasted the smell of mud mixed with horse manure.
She curled up in the snow, shivering violently, when she suddenly felt the broken jade bracelet on her wrist. It was the betrothal gift she had personally removed from her wrist as a gift to her daughter-in-law at Zhao Gou's wedding. Now, the jade bracelet was shattered like the mountains and rivers of the Song Dynasty. The sharp broken edge sliced through her fingertips, and drops of blood spread across the white snow, a striking resemblance to the ghostly crimson red that had graced the ground when Kaifeng fell in the first year of the Jingkang reign.
After the "Sheep Leading Ceremony", she and other women of the royal family were thrown into the laundry house by the Jin soldiers like garbage. There was never a night watchman's ringing here, only the beating of a gong.
Every night, when the gong sounded three times, it was time for the Jin soldiers to change shifts and seek entertainment. Wei Shi learned to hide in the dye vat when the second gong sounded. The vat filled with indigo would cover her body odor, leaving only a pair of eyes staring at the starry sky through the foam.
One day, Wei was pressing the last blood-stained Jin army robe into the icy river. The water, red as blood, flowed over her frostbitten and festering wrists, causing her excruciating pain.
"Madam Wei, good fortune has come!" The headmistress suddenly kicked open the gate, and the horse manure on the toes of her boots splashed onto her freshly washed robes. "General Zongxian has specifically requested you to come to his residence!"
The mallet slipped from her stiff fingers and drifted away with the current. Wei stared at the woman's fawning, wrinkled face, a humming in her ears. For four years, ever since she was taken from Qingcheng Village to this laundry, she had knelt daily on the frozen riverbank, scrubbing the war clothes stained with Song soldiers' brains. The Jin soldiers often splashed filth on her freshly hung clothes, forcing her to wash them again until she fainted.
"Hurry up and wash up!" The old woman pulled her up roughly, took out half a box of fishy sheep oil ointment, and smeared it on her chapped face.
Wei, letting herself be manipulated, glanced across the riverbank. Several daughters of the clan who refused to marry Jin were being tied to wooden stakes for public display, whipped to a bloody pulp. Suddenly, she shuddered. Empress Xing, who had jumped into a well the previous month, was pulled out, her body tangled with seaweed.
As the carriage rolled through the streets of Huining Prefecture, she clutched the window frame tightly. The aroma of roasted lamb wafted from outside, mingling with the drunken singing of the Jin people. She suddenly remembered the half-wheat cake that Princess Roufu had secretly slipped her last winter. Her hands were covered in chilblains, yet she still smiled and said, "Please bear with it for now, Concubine Xian. I believe that Brother Nine will come to rescue us soon..."
This wait lasted for four years.
Wei followed the servants into the mansion, and Wanyan Zong
Xian was feasting. Sitting on a leopard-skin couch, the red-bearded Jin general was surrounded by women, with a Han girl kneeling at his feet, serving him wine. She was wearing a replica of the Bianjing palace dress.
"Come here!" Zong Xian waved the dancer away and looked at her with a drunken look on his face. "I heard that you are the mother of the Southern Dynasty Emperor..."
Wei stood frozen on the scarlet carpet, like an object, letting Wanyan Zongxian hurl down obscenities in front of the servants. She dared not resist, staring intently at the sword at his waist. The hilt was inlaid with a night-shining pearl, clearly the "Cang Hai Yue Ming" (Bright Moon Over the Sea), a treasure from Huizong's inner treasury.
A slender figure suddenly appeared from behind the screen. A girl with loosely tied hair held a wine jug. The hem of her dark blue palace skirt was stained with mud, but her voice was as clear as a jade chime: "General, the pear blossom spring warmth you requested is here."
Wei's respiratory arrest.
The moment the girl raised her head, the flowers on her forehead were as bright as blood. It was the Lantern Festival in the first year of the Jing Kang period, and she had personally applied the "Taipingsu" makeup for Roufu!
"Emperor..." Wei choked as she tried to speak. Roufu, as if she didn't recognize her, poured wine with her drooping eyelashes. Her hand trembled slightly, spilling the wine onto the corner of Zongxian's robe, earning her a slap in the face.
"Even the wine isn't good!" Zongxian grabbed Roufu's hair and laughed, "You're not as tactful as Concubine Xian!"
Wei saw blood oozing from the corner of Roufu's mouth, but she forced a devilish smile: "The general is right." The eyes that once reflected the misty waves of Bianjing now looked like two dry wells.
When the banquet was over, Zongxian threw a set of Jurchen clothes over and said, "Put them on! I'll take you to the hunting grounds to serve you tomorrow."
Wei was shoved into the side courtyard, clutching her clothes. The night wind blew the accumulated snow against her face, and she suddenly heard a soft voice calling, "Xianfei..."
In the moonlight, Roufu stood at the end of the corridor, holding a lantern. Her cheeks were scarlet with finger marks. "When they forced me to serve Zongxian... they said they would make your suffering less."
The sound of the night watchman came from afar, and Roufu suddenly stuffed an oil-paper bag into her hand: "Eat it quickly! This is the mutton I hid from the banquet." The warm oil seeped into her palm, and Wei suddenly vomited. She remembered the plate of roasted human liver at the banquet just now.
"Swallow it!" Roufu pinched her chin, tears falling on her face. "Ninth Brother has ascended the throne... We must live to see the day we return home!"
In the distance came the sound of the night watchman's clapper. Roufu hurriedly tied her belt and turned back into the numb slave girl. She took one last look at Wei, her eyes fixed on the Jin people's clothing:
"Tomorrow's hunting grounds... Please bear with me, Concubine." The lantern drifted away, leaving a trail of lonely footprints in the snow. "I heard that an envoy has arrived from the south... He's watching."
Wei sat slumped in the snow, the mutton wrapped in oil paper gradually freezing, like a frozen blood stain. She suddenly tore at her Jurchen robe like crazy, pearl buttons scattering everywhere. Finally, with trembling hands, she picked up each piece and put it on.
The bronze mirror reflected a strange woman returning from the north, her hair frosted. Only the nails, severed in the laundry, still held traces of the spring mud beneath the walls of Bianjing.
Wanyan Zongxian's tent was much warmer than the laundry house, but Wei was woken every night by the stench of goat, and she half-believed she was still wearing the leather collar.
Roufu slept in the corner of her tent, constantly crying out in her dreams, "Ninth Brother." Zhao Gou was Huizong's ninth son. Once, Zongxian returned drunk and heard her mumbling, only to burst into laughter: "Your ninth brother is embracing a beautiful woman in Lin'an! How could he have forgotten his mother and sister in the north?"
Wei silently twirled her Buddhist beads. She had learned to make milk tea the way the Jinren did, to kneel and offer kumis to Zongxian when he was angry, and even to coax his two sons in Jurchen, who had grown up drinking her milk but calling others mother.
Not long after, Wei heard the news that Roufu had escaped.
That morning, Wei was standing in front of the mirror, putting on a golden hairpin that Wanyan Zongxian had just given her. The design of the hairpin, which was shaped like a falcon with spread wings, hurt her scalp.
Wanyan Zongxian's personal guards kicked the door open and sneered, "Madam, do you know where Princess Roufu fled to?"
Wei slowly pursed her lips. The woman in the mirror had a rosy complexion, but her voice was eerily steady: "The princess and I have always been at odds. If I had known she harbored such evil intentions, I would have poisoned her food with arsenic."
Upon hearing this, the guards dispersed, spitting.
At night, Wanyan Zongxian returned to his mansion with mud on his boots. Wei warmed up a pot of kumis for him and brought it to him.
"I led my men after her today, but Roufu had already escaped into the Black Forest." Zongxian sneered as he drank his kumis. "There are beasts roaming there, so I'm afraid she's already been fed to the wolves."
She suddenly smiled and snuggled into Zongxian's arms: "Don't be angry, General. I have just learned a Zhezhi dance..."
As the candlelight flickered, her sleeves fluttered, the golden bells on her wrists jingled, and her waist curved like a willow branch in early spring. Over the years, she had already figured out Wanyan Zongxian's preferences. Among all the concubines, she was the oldest, but also the most favored.
In the late autumn of the third year of Shaoxing, she gave birth to Zongxian's second son.
In the spring of the twelfth year of Shaoxing, the Jin envoy suddenly delivered a handwritten letter from Zhao Gou.
"The Emperor wishes to welcome the Empress Dowager back to the throne." The envoy knelt and sobbed, "He has already ceded Tang and Deng prefectures, and increased the annual tribute of silver and silk by 50,000 each..."
On the day of departure, a heavy atmosphere enveloped the Huining Prefecture Posthouse. Wanyan Zongxian stood before Wei's carriage, his figure still imposing, but his eyes were complex and unreadable.
He waved his hand to dismiss his attendants, took a step forward, and said in a low, hoarse voice, "This time, we will truly be separated by the north and the south."
Wei sat upright in the carriage, her hands clenched, her knuckles white from the strain. She stared straight ahead, not daring to look at him, much less the child in the distance, held by her wet nurse. She tried to maintain the dignity of the Southern Dynasty Empress Dowager, but her voice inevitably trembled. "Zongxian... Sir, after so many years of... care... for you, I bid you farewell."
Wanyan Zongxian heard this distant address, a bitter smile playing on his lips. "Take care of me? In your heart, I'm just 'Master', the enemy who abducted you, not…" He paused, unable to utter the rest of the words. She wasn't just his concubine, but the Queen Mother who would soon be welcomed back to the Song Kingdom.
He took a deep breath, and his tone became firm, but with a hint of powerlessness: "Zhao Gou is filial and willing to spend a lot of money to bring you back. The Southern Dynasty has fine clothes and delicious food, and will not treat you, the 'Virgin of Chastity', badly." He emphasized the word "chastity", as if mocking, or self-mocking.
Wei's body trembled slightly, and her nails dug deeper into her palms. "The emperor... he has his own considerations."
Wanyan Zongxian suddenly leaned over, approached the car window, and lowered his voice. His forced toughness instantly collapsed, revealing suppressed reluctance and pain: "What about the child? Our child... Can you really let him go? He was crying and looking for you just now..."
Wei's tears almost burst out. She bit her lips tightly and tasted a hint of blood. She couldn't look back or answer.
Seeing her stone-like silence, the last glimmer in Wanyan Zongxian's eyes dimmed. He straightened up, regaining the stoic demeanor of a noble commander, and his voice turned icy: "That's all. Since you've chosen your Southern Dynasty and your honor, then so be it. From now on, you'll be on your own."
After saying this, he turned abruptly, no longer looking at her. His fists were clenched tightly, and his shoulders were trembling slightly. He was reluctant to part with not only the woman he had been with for many years, but also the unspeakable relationship that was destined to be crushed by history, and the mother that his ignorant child was about to lose forever.
He waved his hand, signaling the start. The axles creaked as the carriage slowly set in motion. He stood with his back to the receding carriage, frozen in place like a stone statue. Only a faint, suppressed sigh seemed to carry on the wind, shattered by the early spring breeze of Huining Prefecture.
As the carriage drove through the streets of Huining Prefecture, Wei heard a heartbreaking cry from behind: "Mother... Mother!" Wei lifted the curtain and saw her two-year-old son, the Golden Man, chasing after the carriage, his tiny hands clutching the Buddhist beads she had dropped. She watched as the wet nurse hurriedly carried the crying child away, the sound of the beads snapping drowned out by the clatter of the wheels.
She lowered the curtains, her nails digging into her palms as tears finally poured down. She bit the back of her hand, trying not to let her sobs be heard outside the carriage. At this moment, she was no longer Wanyan Zongxian's concubine, but the Empress Dowager of the Southern Song Dynasty, and she was responsible for upholding the dignity and prestige of the Southern Song imperial family.
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