“No, but either they don’t believe it, or they wish to scare you. It doesn’t matter. Your uncles will be able to do nothing, and it says much that no one has warned them. This will happen unless you act quickly.”
A cloud covered the sun, and Xiaoting shivered. He was right. Xiaoting had misjudged, and now it looked like her family would have to pay for her errors. She could see her husband’s triumphant face once he found out. A cruel, small part of her, the part that had absorbed his insults and gibes for so many years, the part that had been forced to beg him to keep her workshop and to apologize through swollen lips for having only daughters, wished she could allow this to happen to see him trembling and prostrate before the officials.
However, she had to think of her children.
She eyed Zheng He distrustfully. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you helping me?”
“Friendship.” He smiled at her cynical look. “We are intertwined, for better or for worse. I helped your uncles at court. Should the Huas fall, it will be a shadow on me.”
“You’re the emperor’s favorite,” she said.
“The Yongle emperor will not last forever, and who can anticipate the whims of the Son of Heaven?”
“No,” she said slowly, thinking it through. “You would survive even if tainted with more than a shadow. Tell me the truth.Friend.”
Zheng He traced his fingers along a bamboo strut used to hang pots. “You will make me a perfume in thanks. One of yours.”
“You wish to find your true love?” Xiaoting kept her voice neutral.
“I’ve had all I can desire, save this. Even eunuchs have hearts.”
She pretended to consider her options to save some face. Finally, she said, “Protect my uncles at court. Make sure we have safe passage out of the city, and find a place for us near enough to Nanjing that wecan get the supplies we need but distant enough to be safe.”
“I have a compound far to the east of the city on the river.” He gave her an impish grin that looked incongruous on his big body. “I’ve been looking to sell for some years.”
Xiaoting sighed. “Admiral.”
“It’s suitable,” he assured her. “I’ll tell my servants to prepare it for your household.”
She nodded. Zheng He was not the kind of man to take advantage of a simple house sale. “I’ll check with our astrologer for an auspicious day to travel.”
“Speed is your friend now, and you need to move faster than jealousy and fear.”
She bit her cheek. “That’s very fast indeed. I’m sure the astrologer would agree tomorrow is a good day.” After all, an inauspicious day to travel was better than a summons.
“I will have some servants accompany you,” he said. “Can you be ready at dawn?”
She thought of the hundreds who made up the household, and packing their belongings, and the family’s. The fight she would have with her husband, who acted as if he were the one who brought in the money for the gardens and the silks. Then she gave a decisive nod. “Yes.”
The admiral turned to leave, then looked back. “My payment?”
This time Xiaoting laughed. “Delivered after I see how suitable this compound you’re selling me is.”
“Then I expect the best, because you’ll be pleased.”
The moment he left, roaring out for his servants to ready his horse, Xiaoting sent a maid to summon the girls. They came, chattering and red-cheeked from their time outdoors, and she watched them with fond eyes, glad they’d had one last happy memory there. She had hired the best landscapers and artists in Nanjing to create the garden. It was like a poem, complete with vistas and a pavilion, where they put on theatricals in warm weather for the household and guests. Shehad based it on Aiai’s description of the Peony Goddess’s realm and named it the Garden of Everlasting Aroma.
“Everlasting,” she muttered. “Except for my judgment.” She had no time for self-recrimination, not when there was so much work to be done. Anyway, her husband would be happy to point out her missteps, on the journey and thereafter. She looked at the flowers clutched in the girls’ hands. She would gift the garden to the emperor, Xiaoting decided. If it assuaged some of his covetousness and made him better disposed to the Huas, it would be worth the sacrifice. Better to give him the mansion as well.
“Ma’am?” asked Liaobing. Petals rested in her hair, but now was not the time to berate the girl for untidiness.
“Pack it up,” she said, indicating the shelves and the workshop. “All of it. Quickly, before nightfall.” Xiaoting would inform her mother once the girls were at work. It was more important to act than to endure endless debate with the others in her household over the best action to take.
“Everything?” repeated Liaobing. She might be messy, but the girl was the workshop’s best perfumer and the apprentices’ unofficial leader. “What’s going on, ma’am?”
Xiaoting sighed. “It’s time for us to move on.”
This time, she would be more careful. Power and safety dwelled together with secrecy. In her hurry to make the Huas invincible, she had made them vulnerable. In her eagerness to demonstrate their power, she had made them powerless. Regret coursed through her as she looked at her workshop, where generations of her ancestors had toiled and experimented, refining their craft and learning their power. All gone, thanks to her misjudgment. She had moved too fast and too openly, and trusted too easily.
