Bomen’s next visit to Hundred Flowers House marked the fourth consecutive week of his consistently arriving on the morning of the sixth day. Dan'er grew anxiously ecstatic: she was establishing the first constant in her new variable life. Another server had been available to wait upon his party this time and Dan'er was content to loiter behind one of the darkwood pillars, watching Sister Lianhua feed osmanthus cakes into the new magistrate’s fat face.
When her shift ended Dan'er marched past the northeast wall hung with paintings and calligraphy, back behind the corner stage set with the twenty-five-stringed guzheng, and up a set of side stairs to the mezzanine. Gauze-screened lattice doors lined three sides of the upper floor, half a dozen of which were propped open, offering glimpses into House maidens’ private lives. Under the glow of gently swaying paper lanterns a few Sisters chatted with neighbors or hurried along walkways to relieve their counterparts below.
Dan'er proceeded to the center room of the central hallway and stood before the sole pair of solid double doors. She knocked politely and announced herself.
A pause, followed by a pained muffled scream startled her a half step back. But the Madam bid Dan'er enter before she could reconsider.
Dan'er stepped into Madam Mudan’s personal quarters, conscientiously closing the door in her wake. She stood in an ornately furnished but selectively cluttered antechamber lit by raised oil lamps. A wooden folding screen with painted phoenixes-in-flight partitioned the space from the bedroom, behind which a murmur of low voices emanated, cut through by another stifled cry that began as a scream but waned into moaning.
“Bring some wine over,” the Madam directed unseen.
Fear lanced by curiosity, Dan'er poured white wine from a jar situated on a nearby table and carried the cup around the screen. She was confronted by a familiar flush-faced, grimacing woman. Sweat-dampened, translucent white underclothes hung inappropriately askew from her plump body. Strands of black hair escaping a top knot plastered her forehead. Thick pink lips contorted in a rictus around her fabric gag. The woman was crouched in a half squat, trembling pale legs bare under a raised skirt, torso suspended by a long rolled cloth that looped under her arms to a crossbeam above. She met Dan'er’s eyes and turned away in embarrassment.
It took a moment for Dan'er to realize the Sisters Chahua and Meihua were also present, bereft of accessories and dressed in drab server browns similar to her own. Their naked faces contoured by flickering firelight, the maidens were gripped by an intensity that underscored their natural beauty with sharp vitality. Sister Chahua held the woman around the waist and kept her skirt lifted while Sister Meihua knelt at the woman’s bare feet among straw and blankets, face tilted up between her legs.
Madam Mudan stood beside a chair, fanning a heavily-breathing man balanced on its edge. Dan'er recognized Doctor Deng and–finally–the trussed up woman as his wife.
“Drink some wine, Doctor,” the Madam instructed, taking the cup from Dan'er’s bewilderment-frozen hands. “Then relieve Sister Chahua in supporting your spouse.”
Without waiting for confirmation Madam Mudan left the dazed man and guided Dan'er by the elbow back to the antechamber. “The midwife fell ill,” she said by way of explanation. “You’ve come for the embroidery assignment, however.”
Still trying to reconcile what she’d seen with what she’d been told, it took Dan'er a moment to pivot with the topic change. But the Madam operated in perpetual forward motion and expected no less from her subordinates. As a result, House maidens were continuously self-improving and attaining new flowers. For Dan'er this meant her needlewoman’s hands were saved from washing dishes, and supplemental income to pay for personal project necessities, such as Bomen’s cakes.
Madam Mudan led Dan'er to a writing desk opposite the wine table. She indicated the light gray pifeng adorned with chrysanthemums draped across the chair back. “Sister Juhua has earned more blooms: blue for voyeurism and purple for scene play. Three blossoms per color: positioned left, right, and center for a total of six. You can do three tonight and three tomorrow. I don't want hurried, shoddy work.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Dan'er acknowledged, picking up the robe.
“Now, let’s discuss your future.”
And Dan'er’s inhaled breath suddenly caught in her chest.
She had been waiting for this moment ever since the Madam plucked her family from bitter inhospitable streets nearly three months ago. The threat looming over her head every borrowed day finally striking.
“Have we outstayed your hospitality?” Dan'er asked crisply. Her efforts to suppress dread and panic rendered her words dry and brittle. Her heart pounded.
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“It is your future I wish to discuss,” the Madam repeated obscurely. “Harming Bomen will not benefit you. Nor us, for we’d be losing a generous tipper,” the Madam added this last statement offhandedly, tucking a few stray hairs back into her gold carapace of a cap.
“But my father must be avenged.”
“Don’t be fooled by glorified vengeance stories,” Madam Mudan advised. “They’re just another flavor of happily-ever-after, wherein the aftermath is never imparted. Continue this path and you’ll either waste your life chasing a dream, or succeed and be left unmoored and hollow, having built nothing for your future and wondering how you became so old.”
Dan'er fingered the cool silk in her hands while thoughts churned furiously. “But what kind of daughter would I be if I stopped?”
“You could be a successful one.”
The cadence of background moans noticeably changed then, growing faster and more insistent. Excited exclamations from the others followed. Madam Mudan turned her face towards the screen but kept her eyes trained meaningfully on Dan'er when she raised her voice and instructed: “Push with the pressure!”
“I can’t succeed if I don’t clear my family name,” Dan'er persisted. “It’ll taint me wherever I go.”
“Then make a new one. Go to the capital where no one knows you. Forge a fresh identity. Marry a high official.”
“I see a head!” Sister Meihua declared abruptly from the birthing room.
“Better yet, become one yourself,” Madam Mudan continued keenly. “Impersonate a boy, as girls your age are wont to do. Take the civil service exams. Before your hips get too wide and your breasts too big. Make a name so grand we even repeat it here in Xian County.”
“Shoulder through!” Sister Meihua reported.
Dan'er shook her head at the preposterous proposition even as she chuckled quietly at its audacity. “With my luck I’d be fortunate to marry a butcher and fade into obscurity,” she murmured, noncommittal.
And the Madam’s face unexpectedly darkened.
The formidable elder took a step forward, lowered lips to Dan’er’s right ear. “Listen to me my dear,” Madam Mudan began, managing to sound at once reassuring and threatening. “You will strive, you will thrive, and you will do whatever it takes to acquire the influential position for which your upbringing prepared you. Because you owe me enormous favors, girl. And I intend to collect.”
Dan'er kept her expression neutral. After all this time she was finally getting used to the Madam’s volatile moods, if still unable to predict them. The proprietor of Hundred Flowers House burned uncontrollably between smoldering nurture and blistering exploitation towards her underlings. However, in direct contrast to Dan'er’s late mother’s steady cold indifference, Dan'er found it hard not to want to please someone who cared.
Inexplicably, amid the backdrop of strained grunts and tense directions Dan’er felt herself quicken, felt her own months-long grief crown. She frowned, attempting to hold back tears when the words rushed out: “I can’t believe the town denounced him so quickly. After everything my father’s done for this place. All he ever wanted to be was a hero.” Her wet hardened eyes met the Madam’s stony glistening ones and she stated with unequivocal certainty: “They could've helped him. He didn't have to change.”
Gasps from the other room, followed by the doctor fretting, “Is that too much blood? That's too much blood, isn't it?”
Madam Mudan took a step back and relaxed her demeanor. “Not all sires are cut out to be fathers,” she stated tenderly. “Not all officials are cut out to be leaders.”
“And what will happen to my father if I leave?” Dan’er demanded, blinking fiercely, for to wipe away tears seemed somehow a weakness.
The Madam shrugged. “Take him with you. Hide him under your bed. Stuff him in a chest. He’s just a doll now. No longer with human needs that must be considered.”
Dan'er shook her head, horrified. “He wouldn’t want that.”
They were interrupted by a novel sound, fragile and mewling. Intrigued despite herself, Dan’er accompanied Madam Mudan back to the bedroom where the sour metallic smell of lochia hung in the air. A dark red, de-corded infant wriggled in Sister Meihua’s hands, greasy and blood-laced. She handed it over for inspection.
Madam Mudan pressed and turned the wrinkled protesting newborn with an expert’s sure fingers. Her only comment–directed at its sweating, nervous sire–was: “It’s a girl. Do you wish to keep it?”
Doctor Deng, holding his semi-conscious wife up by the waist while Sister Chahua attempted to extricate her limp arms from the cloth harness, replied simply but firmly: “Yes.”
As Sister Meihua retrieved the infant for bathing, the Madam pontificated: “It is not our place to say what a father would want.”
An innate mulishness kept Dan'er after Madam Mudan departed for evening duties. She stood aside, watching the Sisters meticulously gather sodden blankets and wet straw for burning before the foul fluids could seep through the floor to entice demons. The afterbirth and dirty bath water collected in a bowl would be buried in the morning when most infernal scavengers slept.
When she felt appropriate time had passed, Dan'er carefully approached the new family. The mother sat propped up in the Madam’s daybed, lower body covered by a thin quilt, weakly sipping water from a cup. Doctor Deng sat in a chair at her elbow, gently rocking his swaddled daughter with a look of quiet contentment.
“Doctor Deng, may I ask a question?” Dan’er ventured politely.
The doctor hummed acquiescence.
“On the last Distribution Day, Bomen said he felt unwell and didn’t appear at the public vault. He stayed confined to his rooms for weeks after. Did you attend to him?”
Doctor Deng shook his head, his face aglow with fatherhood. “No,” he replied serenely. “He never called for me.”