Chapter 438 — Amusing
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
Dou Yan clicked her tongue in secret, and could not help counting herself lucky that she had followed Song Zhi's arrangements and kept her hands off Song Han's marriage. Otherwise she, as Song Han's sister-in-law, would have—
—lost face all the way to Daxing and back!
She turned to Gan Lu, who was directing the maids and serving women in packing. "The Second Master's auspicious hour is at the hour of the Rooster. After we return tomorrow, all of you are to stay inside Yizhi Hall and not come out. If anyone asks, say you are looking after Yuan Heng."
Tomorrow was Song Han's wedding. Her excuse of the child being too small for her to help could just barely be fobbed off, but to also plead no time to attend Song Han's bowing ceremony in the hall—that would never wash.
After discussing it with Song Yan, she had decided they would return to the residence first thing in the morning.
Gan Lu smiled and assented, then set Fu Feng to packing Yuan Ge's two little quilted wraps into a camphor-wood chest carved with the Five Bats Bearing Longevity.
Gu Yu came to visit Yuan Heng.
Dou Yan was surprised. "Does he know the heir is not here?"
Ruotong smiled. "He knows. He says he has come to see Yuan Heng."
That being so, she could hardly turn him away.
Dou Yan had Ruotong bring Gu Yu in.
Gu Yu had brought the child a pinwheel, along with a rattle-drum and other little toys, every one of them exquisitely made. The pinwheel especially stood a full three feet tall and was carved with eighteen arhats, each holding a pinwheel in his hands; give it a breath, and all eighteen would spin at once with a great whirring of wind—plainly no ordinary piece.
Dou Yan thanked him again and again.
Gu Yu laughed. "Workmanship from the Imperial Workshops. Not bad, eh?"
Dou Yan always felt Gu Yu was like a child starved of affection, caring intensely what others thought of him. So she smiled and praised him. "Not merely not bad—it is a marvel of craft. You have gone to too much trouble."
"It is only that I have nothing to do," Gu Yu said carelessly, though a smug look he could not quite hide played about his brows. "As it happened, one day I ran into a man from the Imperial Workshops delivering an album to my concubine mother, and on the spur of the moment I had these things made for Yuan Heng. They are very crude. Another time I shall have some proper amusing things made for him."
Dou Yan nodded with a bright smile and was about to withdraw, but Gu Yu called her back.
He said hesitantly, "Sister-in-law, has something happened that I do not know about? I was at the Yingzhen ducal residence today as well. Feng Shao and the others—not one of them was willing to go and press the bride's family for the trousseau gifts; it was only when Uncle himself named Song Duo and a few others that four men were scraped together. My brother too made the excuse of entertaining the uncles and elders who came to offer congratulations, and stayed the whole time in the small parlor in the front courtyard… And you, sister-in-law, have been staying with Yuan Heng in the Yunqi Temple alley all this while… The Old Madam Lu and Princess Ninghuai did not go either… Nothing like when my brother married, when men in great red court robes came and went, and the ladies had all assembled the day before the trousseau pressing; the house was hung with lanterns and colored silks, the din of voices never ceased, and strings and flutes played without pause… Now even the maids and pages, when they smile, show no joy; of the sixty tables of casual feast, only some twenty-odd are filled, and more than half stand empty…"
Dou Yan was greatly taken aback.
By the look of it, word that Song Han might be a bastard born of a concubine had gotten out, and some people, priding themselves on their station—
Some things were like that: everyone else knew, and the person concerned did not.