“The First Lady? Don’t mention her to me,” she said with a gnashing of her teeth. “Your First Lady is worse than a sadistic scorpion spirit.”
“Mistress Sun, our First Lady is kind and honest, and always reasonable. How can you curse her like that?”
“What do you know?” Meiniang replied angrily. “Kind and honest, you say? Well, I say that her heart must have steeped in a vat of black dye for twenty years, and that one drop of her blood would be enough to kill a horse!”
“What did the First Lady ever do to you?” Chunsheng said with a little laugh. “This is like a mugger getting angry instead of his victim, or a lack of tears from a child that has lost its mother but wails from one whose mother is still alive.”
“Get out of my sight!” Meiniang demanded. “I’ll have nothing more to do with anyone in that yamen.”
“Mistress Sun, does this mean that your concern for Laoye no longer exists?” Chunsheng said with a supercilious grin. “If you no longer care about Laoye, does that mean you no longer care about his queue? And if you no longer care about his queue, does that mean you no longer care about his beard? And if you no longer care about his beard, does that really mean you no longer care about Laoye himself?”
“I said get out of my sight! Laoye, Shaoye, what difference does it make? What could his death possibly mean to a commoner?” Despite her tone of voice, tears continued to flow.
“Mistress Sun,” Chunsheng said, “you might fool others, but not me. You and the Magistrate are so close you might as well be one person. Break the bone, and there’s still meat attached; tug on the ear, and the cheek twitches. But enough of that. Don’t pull back on the reins now. Get ready and come with me.”
“I will not step foot in that place as long as your First Lady is there.”
“But, Mistress Sun, she has ordered me to come for you.”
“Chunsheng, don’t treat me like a circus monkey. How could I face someone who did what she did to me?”
“Apparently, Mistress Sun, someone has done something terrible.”
“Do you really not know, or are you just pretending?” Meiniang asked in anger. “They used a whip on me in that yamen of yours!”
“What are you saying, Mistress Sun?” Chunsheng was clearly shocked. “Who would dare use a whip on you in the yamen? We who work there see you as the Second Lady. We try our best to get on your good side. Who in his right mind would dare to even threaten you with a whip, let alone use it?”
“That First Lady of yours, that’s who. She had someone give me fifty lashes!”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for proof,” Chunsheng said as he moved to look under her clothes.
Sun Meiniang knocked his hand away. “Don’t get fresh with me,” she said. “Aren’t you worried the Magistrate would chop off your grubby paw?”
“You see what I mean, Mistress Sun, you do have feelings for him. All I did was stick out my hand, and you stopped me by bringing up his name. The truth is, the Magistrate is seriously ill this time, and the First Lady has no choice but to invite you, our Living Bodhisattva, to work your magic. Think for a minute—would she be doing this if there were any other path open to her? Even if she did order someone to use a whip on you, why is this so surprising? Sending me for you is an admission of defeat. This hill is the excuse you need to ride the donkey, so what are you waiting for? If your ministrations speed up the Magistrate’s recovery and set him on the road to health, even the First Lady will praise you for having performed a great service. What was once hidden will be out in the open; the private will be made public. That, Mistress Sun, will usher in good times for you. But it is your decision. Are you coming or aren’t you?”
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8
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Dog meat basket in hand, Sun Meiniang pushed open the door to the Western Parlor and spotted a slightly pock-scarred woman with dark skin and a downturned mouth seated in an armchair. Meiniang’s heated body abruptly turned icy cold, and the elation with which she had arrived was suddenly coated with frost. Dimly she sensed that she had fallen into another trap, one also engineered by