MFMH C83

Chapter 83 — Sending Letters

He looked particularly stupid, especially easy to fool. Shen Yanbei ground his teeth, itching to pry open Prince Jinyang’s skull to see what was inside.

Running out of grain and medicine would be bad enough, but to stage theatrics for his benefit? The woman who wept over the corpse of an elderly man who could have been her grandfather acted well—if it weren’t for the shoddy prop, he might have believed her grief was real. The crowd actors who later wailed upon seeing them were less convincing; their sobs were dry and not a single tear fell.

Where things are abnormal, something’s off. Shen suspected the earthquake’s devastation might not be as severe as Prince Jinyang had reported.

If it wasn’t that bad, then why did the prince stage such a pitiable show for him?

Thinking of Prince Jinyang’s not-so-hidden ulterior motives, two things came to Shen’s mind immediately—money and people.

The court allocated relief silver; later the taxes and corvée for Liuyang Prefecture would be reduced. That wealth would ultimately flow into the prince’s hands. As for the dead—if the prince added certain people to the list of victims, he could simply hide them away. With money secured, grain accounted for and people concealed, half the scheme would already be accomplished.

Shen frowned. He disliked the prince, but he had to admit the prince’s scheme was clever. He even factored in human lives as a resource.

If he were the kind of person chasing promotion at all costs, he would accept this spectacle without probing, fully cooperate with Prince Jinyang, stage a triumphant relief operation, then return to the capital to claim credit and advancement.

A young official who had jumped from a sixth-rank Hanlin compiler to an academician and been named imperial commissioner would naturally fear being discredited. Faced with such an opportunity, most would avoid rocking the boat—precisely the result Prince Jinyang desired.

Tsk tsk—he’d been bold, but Prince Jinyang hadn’t foreseen another possibility: that the commissioner might expose the scheme and report the prince’s misdeeds to the emperor, earning twofold merit.

Shen picked at a stray vegetable leaf, anxiety knotting his brow. He turned to the Liuyang prefect, the man Prince Jinyang had assigned to shadow him, and asked, “The city looks bad. What of the outlying villages? How severely have the fields been affected?”

The prefect was a fourth-rank official; he straightened in Shen’s presence and replied with a measured tone: “The countryside is vast and sparsely populated; conditions are better than inside the city. Still, the crops have suffered seriously; the autumn yield will likely decline sharply.”

Prince Jinyang had recruited children of local officials into his inner household to strengthen ties; the prefect’s youngest daughter had become one of his concubines.

Liuyang’s governance had become a network of vested interests tied to the prince. Everyone bowed to his orders, and they were united in fooling the imperial commissioner.

“Are you planning to inspect the countryside, Master Shen?” the prefect asked.

So this had all been prepared in advance. Shen replied, “I intend to.” Even suspecting what he’d seen might be a staged illusion, he had to inspect in person to measure the extent of the fakery.

“It’s still early. You’ve traveled far—perhaps wash up and rest, let the heat dissipate before going?” the prefect suggested. It was summer; the sun was harsh, and roads were bad after the quake. No one wanted to travel around at midday.

“All right.” Shen agreed and was shown to a relatively intact lodging to rest.

When Prince Jinyang learned where Shen had taken lodgings, he nodded and ordered, “Keep him watched. Don’t let him see things he shouldn’t.”

“Yes.” The prefect answered cautiously. Seeing the prince in good spirits, he risked a personal query: “Is the princess well?” Though an outsider, he could not help asking about the prince’s household because his daughter had married into the prince’s estate; every time she complained to her mother, the princess would harry the concubines. If the princess were ill, she might stop troubling his daughter for a while.

Prince Jinyang’s expression hardened when the prefect uttered “princess.” Deep down he would have preferred that the princess were ill—or better yet, gone—so he could marry another consort.

When the emperor announced Gu Changfeng’s appointment as heir of the Duke of Zhen’s house, Prince Jinyang had been stunned. Wasn’t the heir dead? How could he now be named heir?

He felt uneasy, and when he heard the imperial edict to recruit troops with pay, a cold premonition rose within him. Then the emperor publicly decreed that the heir should lead the levies to the frontier for training.

Instantly he felt regret and unwillingness.

He had once spread rumors that Gu Changfeng admired him, hoping to use public pressure to force Gu Changfeng into his arms. Fate laughed: Gu Changfeng had apparently died in an accident. Reluctant to forgo the power the Duke’s house offered, he married Gu Qingyao because she adored him and looked exceptional. But soon after, the Duke fell ill and died.

Thus he had married someone who conferred him no real advantage.

How unbearable. If Gu Changfeng had lived and later commanded significant forces, they could have shaken the capital between them.

But thoughts like those were useless now. He told himself that although Gu Qingyao could not bring him material gain, she preserved his face and sheltered his secrets; because she loved him so, he swallowed his resentment.

Then he received news the Duke’s second son had died—good riddance. He gave no thought to that child. But Gu Qingyao raged, accused Gu Changfeng of revenge, and confessed in a fit that she and her mother had plotted to prevent Gu Changfeng’s marriage. The prince seethed at the confession.

Soon after, a child was presented to him as the princess’s biological little brother; though the prince had thought that second son dead, here was a child claimed as kin. When he prepared to have the child expelled, Gu Qingyao and her mother fought to keep him. The prince toyed with the idea of selling the child into servitude in his household. Gu Qingyao blew up, he slapped her to show who was in charge.

The Duke’s widow had been imprisoned by Gu Changfeng previously; the prince assumed the Duke’s house could no longer benefit him, and Gu Qingyao seemed useless besides her beauty. Yet she kept making trouble.

Lately he had been turned frantic by staging scenes to fool the imperial commissioner. Just then his servants reported Gu Qingyao’s recent madness—she nearly beat Consort Su to death.

Consort Su was the niece of the prefect of Qinghe County, Su Jingheng. The prince was planning to borrow rice and medicine from Su Jingheng on the pretext of the quake; he couldn’t let Gu Qingyao murder her. He hurried back and slapped the madwoman twice to knock her back to her senses, then summoned physicians for Consort Su. The doctor declared Consort Su pregnant.

At the thought, a rare sincere smile crept across the prince’s face.

He, Zhao Mu, knew well how to please women, but no one had yet borne him a child. Now, perhaps Consort Su’s condition was the fruit of his recent attentions. Joy shifted into a darker hunger—if Gu Qingyao loved him so deeply she might willingly bear him children, what other use did she have?

The prince’s household erupted in chaos. He wanted Shen Yanbei to report back to the capital, but the commissioner was under watch and could not move freely.

In the afternoon Shen toured nearby villages with the prefect. Shen’s face grew more grave with each stop.

Some fields were flooded; some collapsed into landslides; some buried by mud. Houses had collapsed; frightened women and children lived under makeshift thatch, eating thin vegetable soup. Wailing infants cried for milk while young mothers tried to soothe them. Able-bodied men dug through ruins for any salvageable sprouted grain.

White papers fluttered; lamentations filled the air.

Overall, conditions were better than inside the city, but the staged atmosphere of widespread, showy misery made Shen uncomfortable. He calmed the villagers, explained that the emperor cared, had allocated one hundred thousand taels of silver, and that Prince Jinyang would distribute rice and medicine soon. He added that grain and medicine were being requisitioned from nearby prefectures and would be delivered imminently.

The touring prefect felt something off in Shen’s words but said nothing.

Shen instructed people about proper disposal of corpses and boiling water to avoid disease, then moved to the next village.

In this way the whole prefecture heard that Prince Jinyang would soon distribute rice, medicines, blankets, and other goods. Eager townsfolk even camped outside the prince’s mansion waiting to know when supplies would be handed out.

Prince Jinyang seethed at himself—why had he borrowed relief supplies from elsewhere and then let them arrive late? He was caught between a rock and a hard place: he could release the private stores he had hoarded for raising his own troops, but that would undermine his ability to provision secret forces. He was torn, twitching with irritation.

By the time Shen had toured Liuyang and surrounding counties for days, the prince felt he had already shown him sufficient scenes of destruction. Shen drafted two letters to be expedited to the capital.

Of course the prince’s men intercepted those letters.

Prince Jinyang grew sullen as he read the letter addressed to Zhao Yu. Shen had not faithfully played the role of docile imperial commissioner; he attempted to probe for the truth. But the whole prefecture was the prince’s doing, and Shen had not succeeded.

The prince tore open the letter. His face hardened into murderous intent.

If Shen had written anything he shouldn’t have, the commissioner could be left to a fatal infection.

He read: “The people of Min Prefecture and nearby counties suffer grievously; many require medical aid. After many calculations, I fear that one hundred thousand taels will not suffice…”

Prince Jinyang’s gaze fixed on that line. He read on: “I petition the court to allocate an additional one hundred thousand taels to rescue the people. I beg Your Majesty to approve.”

He read that sentence aloud and then threw up his head, laughing: “Heaven helps me! Heaven helps me!”

He read the whole letter again, confirming that Shen’s plea was primarily a depiction of the disaster and a request for further funds. His mood brightened as he opened the other letter.

The envelope was addressed to “Mr. William.” The prince frowned as he read. Half the letter was written in foreign script. Shen had, it seemed, written to a foreign priest asking for spiritual solace—the foreign character resembled religious scripture.

The prince had seen those high-nosed, deep-eyed foreigners in strange robes with cross-shaped ornaments preaching some gospel in the capital.

This imperial commissioner was truly too bookish: he believed in piety and foreign faiths. How foolish!

He sneered, resealed the letters, had them dispatched, then ordered half of the hidden supplies released to distribute to the victims. The court would later send down more silver; he would replenish the stores set aside for his private forces. He needed to silence the people first.