Chapter 55: The Old Prince Next Door 8

On New Year’s Eve, it was time to make dumplings.

Su Huandan looked over the ingredients currently in the house. There really was not much variety. As for fresh vegetables, there were only napa cabbage and radishes. There was no sign of potatoes. Su Huandan did not actually like potatoes anyway, so whether they were available or not was not an issue.

There were plenty of dried vegetables, but those were best for stuffed buns, braised pork belly, or added to red-braised pork. They soaked up grease and cut through the richness. One bite of dried vegetables saturated with fat tasted absolutely amazing.

But when it came to dumplings, Su Huandan would only accept dried radish filling, and it had to be paired with fatty pork to taste good.

Did they have much fatty pork at home?

“There used to be quite a lot, but it was all rendered into lard,” the cook said. She thought to herself that the Duke of Yi Household next door had sent over five jin of vegetable oil, but that was being saved for making pastries and dressing cold dishes. The rest of the time, as the mistress of the house, what you mostly ate was still lard.

There was very little vegetable oil to begin with. The Duke of Yi Household had so many mouths to feed, so the amount they could spare for you was even less.

Everyone said the Duke of Yi Household took such good care of their own madam.

But in truth? The things sent over here were all leftovers from what their own household had already eaten and used, the kind they could have sold off anyway. They had plenty of it, so sending a little to their own madam was a convenient way to polish their reputation.

Su Huandan: …

So she had been mistreated?

“Isn’t that the truth? No one dared tell you before, but now that all the servants’ indenture contracts¹ are in your hands, of course we want what’s best for you, Madam.” Only with our contracts in your hands would we servants dare genuinely think for you and make plans for you.

“Setting everything else aside, just look at Concubine Qiu. She’s supplied with poultry every single day, chicken, duck, or goose, always something different. She gets two jin of pork every day, and beef and mutton on rotation too, one jin every three days. She also gets two liang² of vegetable oil every day.” After saying that, the cook studied Su Huandan’s expression before continuing.

“As for your allotment, you get one chicken every five days, one fish every five days, and two jin of pork every five days. For vegetable oil, you get five jin for the entire year. Beef, mutton, duck, and goose, you only get those on holidays. If it wasn’t the New Year, then even if you wanted beef or mutton, you wouldn’t get any. People in the estate all say you’re eating a vegetarian diet to pray for Fourth Master’s blessings, and that eating less meat is actually helping you.” Dressing up mistreatment in such elegant words was standard practice among powerful households.

Especially after you were widowed, you did not even have a single copper coin in stipend silver³.

And the servants who followed you had their indenture contracts out of your hands. They ate poorly, wore too little, and gained almost nothing. Under those circumstances, being betrayed was inevitable.

How did Su Huandan feel after hearing all that?

Even if that Concubine Qiu had not made a move against the original owner, sooner or later the entire Duke of Yi Household would have driven her to death.

It was only a matter of whether she died earlier or later.

Tsk tsk. You really would not know until you saw it up close. Ancient times truly looked cruel everywhere you turned.

“Will the ingredients we have at home last us until spring, when the wild greens come up?” There was no point thinking about anything else yet. Filling their stomachs came first.

“That won’t be a problem. The other madams may not have been given much else, but there’s enough dried vegetables here for us to eat for three years,” the cook said, and Su Huandan smiled.

“Then we’ll pair the dried vegetables with the meat in the ice cellar. If there’s anything left over, we’ll think about it after the New Year. Once the first month is over, the butcher shops outside will surely reopen, right? With the silver I have on hand, even if we do nothing at all, we’ll have enough to eat for a lifetime.” Time to make dumplings. Napa cabbage and pork filling, radish and beef filling. It was New Year’s Eve today, so no dried vegetables. They were going to eat fresh food.

The cook went back to the kitchen to prepare the dumpling fillings, and she even said to the girl tending the stove, “Our madam used to be like a living corpse all these years. Now she finally seems like an actual person.”

On Su Huandan’s side, they split into two groups. She, the cook, Xia Chan, and the stove girl made dumplings together in her main hall, while everyone else made dumplings in the kitchen.

Since it was New Year’s Eve and the dumplings had meat in them, the servants could eat their fill, and everyone was delighted. The atmosphere in the little courtyard immediately turned lively.

Prince Chen’s Estate next door, however, was quiet as the grave. Prince Chen wore a long face. Since his health was so poor, he could not go join the festivities in the palace, and he was unhappy.

Because of his frail health, Prince Chen had never managed affairs. As a result, his daily entertainment was listening to all sorts of gossip.

He actually quite liked going to the palace. Those imperial consorts stirred up trouble all day long. One finished performing, and the next took the stage. It was lively.

Unfortunately, he could only stay in the palace for a stretch during the summer each year, when the weather was warm.

In winter, he truly just holed up at home for the season.

With no entertainment to watch, Prince Chen could only make some for himself.

“Go. Send one of the rough-working old women from the Duke of Yi Household back to Duke of Yi… just one!” What exactly was Prince Chen trying to do?

Gui Xi nearly burst out laughing. Was he planning to send back one person every day as a reminder to Duke of Yi that the servants in his household who had committed wrongdoing still had not been dealt with?

But who punished servants during the New Year?

Wouldn’t that usually wait until after the holiday?

Since the prince himself could not have a good New Year, he wanted to stir things up so no one else could either, was that it?

But if they actually did this, they would get cursed out terribly.

“Your Highness, the palace will probably be sending people over with rewards soon. Looking at the maidservants sent this year, which courtyard should they be placed in?” Gui Xi’s words successfully interrupted Prince Chen’s urge to disgust Duke of Yi.

“They’re sending more again? Once those women are sent here, I have to spend money feeding them, and they can’t even bear children, so I’m just raising them for nothing?” In his earlier years, Prince Chen had still been capable of sharing a bed with women, but now he truly no longer had that ability.

The only difference between him and Gui Xi now was that one had the parts and the other did not.

Gui Xi nearly teared up hearing that.

“Then this servant will place them in Autumn Wind Courtyard.” After all, they were a reward bestowed by the Empress Dowager. They could not refuse them, so they could only support them.

Prince Chen was already thirty-three. In this era, that counted as old. Other men his age were already grandfathers, yet Prince Chen did not have a single son or daughter.

It was not that the palace had never tried to bestow marriages on him, but his own prince knew perfectly well what condition his body was in. He did not want to bring home a woman he could neither beat nor scold, and who would be constantly in his sight, just to offend his eyes.

Having a woman with an official status planted right in front of him, would that not be a constant reminder that he could not produce children?

So the Empress Dowager began sending him palace maids every year, always choosing the kind with figures said to be favorable for bearing children. She had even declared that whoever could give Prince Chen a child would be granted the position of secondary consort⁴.

But after all these years, his prince still had no children.

“No. I’m unhappy, so why should anyone else be happy? Send someone to the Marquis of Ruyang Estate to find the Marquis of Ruyang and ask him for me whether he’s gone so poor he’s trying to scheme his way into a widow’s braised meat recipe. As for the Duke of Yi Household, you go personally and return the woman. Send one old servant woman back, and ask Duke of Yi on my behalf whether a court-appointed noble lady⁵ is someone a mere concubine can beat or kill at will. Make a big show of it.” After Prince Chen said that, Gui Xi was stunned.

Your Highness, what you did this time was really too irritating.

“If you think I’m irritating, then say so. I did do something bad, so what? Even when I do wrong, I do it out in the open. How am I anything like those two families? Since when does bullying a young widow make a man? Every last one of them is hypocritical beyond belief. If you ask me, the young widow next door ought to remarry. She’s still young, she should have a child, then she’ll have someone to rely on in the future.” The moment Prince Chen mentioned children, his eyes reddened again.

Gui Xi hurried to comfort him. “Your Highness, this servant will go take care of it right away. Please don’t be upset. When I get back, I’ll go next door and ask what they’re having for New Year’s Eve dinner.”

The prince is feeling awful. Better get something tasty to cheer him up.

Translator’s Notes