Ancestral Worship
The anniversary of Empress Xiaoyi's death was approaching. The Ministry of Rites submitted the arrangements according to established precedent. Xiao Lin read two lines before setting them aside. The arrangements were the same as in previous years-His Majesty would perform the rites at the Hall of Ancestral Worship, all officials would wear plain clothing for three days, and the crown prince would bow from afar in the Eastern Palace. It was the same every year; the Ministry of Rites' tired routine did not change so much as a punctuation mark. Xiao Lin buried the memorial beneath the others, took out a blank sheet of paper, and wrote a few words.
"The crown prince shall accompany me."
When it reached the Ministry of Rites, the minister stared at those words for a long time, thinking he had misread them.
"Might I ask, Eunuch Liu, does His Majesty mean-"
Liu An stood in the reception hall of the Ministry of Rites offices, his fly whisk resting over his arm, his expression perfectly composed.
"His Majesty wrote it himself. His meaning is all there. You need only follow his instructions, Minister."
The Minister of Rites looked at those four characters again. There was no precedent in the current dynasty for allowing a four-year-old crown prince to accompany the emperor into the Hall of Ancestral Worship to perform the rites. The crown prince was young and, by custom, was not required to make offerings in person. Besides, even adult imperial princes were not necessarily permitted to enter that hall. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, then swallowed it back. He remembered what the Minister of Works had said over drinks last month-"Something's been off about His Majesty lately. If anything comes up, don't ask too many questions. Just do as he says." He had taken it for drunken talk then. Now he thought otherwise.
The fifteenth day of the fourth month, the Hall of Ancestral Worship.
Before dawn, Xiao Huaijin's nurse pulled him out from under his covers and dressed him in plain white mourning clothes. Rubbing his eyes, he asked her why he had to wear white. His nurse crouched to fasten his sash and softly told him that today was the anniversary of his mother's death, and that he was going to kowtow to her. Xiao Huaijin froze for a moment, then looked down at his white clothes and reached out to feel the plain edging of his cuff. He knew his mother had a spirit tablet in the Hall of Ancestral Worship. He had seen it from a distance. Only from a distance. No one had ever taken him inside.
"Nanny, what did Mother look like?"
His nurse's hands paused before she finished tying his sash and smoothed its creases.
"Your eyes and brows look the most like Her Majesty's."
Xiao Huaijin asked no more questions. He straightened his collar himself, checked his reflection in the mirror, then stood obediently by the door to wait. A sliver of fish-belly white had just appeared on the horizon. An early bird was calling from the parasol tree in the Eastern Palace, and he rose onto his toes to look toward the Hall of Mental Cultivation.
This was Xiao Huaijin's first time entering the Hall of Ancestral Worship. The hall stood on the eastern side of the Forbidden City, only two palace gates away from the Eastern Palace. Yet in all his four years, he had never walked inside. He stumbled as he crossed the threshold. Xiao Lin reached out to steady his shoulder, his hand lingering there for a moment before moving away. Inside, candles burned brightly. Portraits of the imperial ancestors hung on both sides, and Empress Xiaoyi's spirit tablet stood at the very front on the eastern side. His nurse led Xiao Huaijin by the hand to kneel on a rush cushion. He knelt with his back very straight-before coming, he had promised to behave. Standing beside him, Xiao Lin accepted three sticks of incense from the ritual official, lit them, and placed them in the incense burner. Then he stood up, stepped back, and stood to one side.
"Kowtow to your mother."
Kneeling on the cushion, Xiao Huaijin braced his little hands against the floor and solemnly kowtowed three times. When he finished, he raised his head and looked at the characters on the spirit tablet, not all of which he could read, and called in his childish voice, "Imperial Mother."
The hall was quiet. No one had told him what to call her.
He called again, "Mama."
Xiao Lin turned his face away. The movement was so quick that those beside him only saw him turn slightly to the side. He watched the daylight brighten outside the hall. A glimmer flashed in his eyes, hidden by the hanging strands of his ceremonial crown. He bent down, lifted Xiao Huaijin from the cushion, and carried him out of the Hall of Ancestral Worship. At the doorway, he paused without looking back.
"From now on, I will bring the crown prince here every year. The Ministry of Rites need not submit the arrangements again."
The Minister of Rites bowed low, on the verge of breaking into a sweat.
"As Your Majesty commands."
Shen Mingzhu learned of it early the following morning. Her personal palace maid knelt beside the dressing table and recounted everything that had happened at the Hall of Ancestral Worship. Shen Mingzhu drew her eyebrows before the bronze mirror, her hand steady throughout. Only when she finished did she set down the eyebrow pencil.
"How many times has His Majesty seen the crown prince lately?"
"Your Highness, His Majesty teaches the crown prince to write in the imperial study every afternoon. It has been many days in a row now. A new low table has been added to the imperial study, specifically for the crown prince."
Shen Mingzhu examined herself in the mirror, then picked up the eyebrow pencil again to touch up the end of one brow.
"I see. You may go."
After the maid withdrew, she returned the eyebrow pencil to her dressing case, her movements so slow that every step seemed deliberately drawn out. Then she picked up her comb and began combing her hair. One stroke, two, three. On the fourth stroke, a tooth caught on a strand of hair. She tugged hard, removed the broken strand from the comb, and held it between her fingertips for a while before throwing it into the wastepaper basket beside the dressing case.
The crown prince was only four. A great deal could change with a four-year-old child.
She did not say those words aloud. But the eyes in the mirror were not smiling.
That afternoon, in the imperial study, Zhou Rucheng sat in a grand armchair in the eastern side chamber, Xiao Huaijin's writing from that day spread before him. Xiao Huaijin sat at the low table, swinging his little legs, a piece of osmanthus cake pinched in his hand. He took a bite, and crumbs fell onto the paper. He hurriedly wiped them away with his sleeve. Zhou Rucheng did not hurry him, leafing through the stack of practice sheets until he stopped at the last page. Two little figures were drawn in the corner, one big and one small. The bigger one had a curved line at the corner of his mouth. The drawing was different from the writing-the characters had been copied from a copybook, but the child had drawn the picture himself. Zhou Rucheng held up the sheet and asked whether he had drawn it. Xiao Huaijin stuffed the last bite of osmanthus cake into his mouth and nodded, his cheeks bulging, saying that one was his imperial father, and this one was himself.
Zhou Rucheng returned the sheet to the desk, smoothed it flat, and secured each of its four corners with paperweights. Then he opened the Three Character Classic again to a passage they had not yet covered. Xiao Huaijin lay over the low table, his head tilted as he watched the hands turning the pages-those old hands were covered in wrinkles, their nails cut very short, their knuckles slightly bent. Suddenly, he asked a question.
"Grand Tutor, did you teach Father too?"
Zhou Rucheng said he had.
He asked again, "What was Father like when he was little?"
Zhou Rucheng's page-turning hand paused. He remembered the little prince lying on the ground in the cold palace, tracing characters with a twig, the youth who had ordered him to get out of the capital on the very first day of his reign.
"His Majesty studied very hard as a child."
Xiao Huaijin blinked and pressed, "Harder than me?"
Zhou Rucheng looked across the low table at the four-year-old child and answered, "You study harder than His Majesty did, Your Highness."
Xiao Huaijin lowered his head and wrote another character, then looked up and said, "Then I'll study even harder than Father from now on. That way, Father will be happy."
Zhou Rucheng said nothing. He had taught Xiao Lin for thirteen years and witnessed all that young man's anger, stubbornness, and loneliness. He had never seen Xiao Lin happy. He did not know whether Xiao Lin would be happy, but he knew this four-year-old child was running toward a place where even the goal might not exist.