maidservant

Chapter 3: Red Lantern, White Lantern, In a blink of an eye, my son is gone
Five-year-old Yu Jie'er lay on her lap, and the golden bells on her wrist jingled as she ate from the bowl of ice.

Gan Tang stared at the ice stains in the cracks between the floor tiles and thought of the girl in Nuyi who choked to death on some sour berries.

"Can you comb your hair?" The melon seed shells that the Third Aunt spat out stuck to the hem of Gan Tang's clothes.

She bent down even lower: "I can do double spiral buns and hanging cloud buns, and I can also wrap gold thread around pearl flowers."

In fact, I only know how to do the most basic double bun, but last night I secretly watched the hairdressing nanny braiding Yu Jie'er's hair and forced myself to memorize the technique.

The servants' room in the west courtyard was filled with the smell of mugwort, and four maids were fumigating mosquitoes.

The one in the apricot-colored bodice threw over two quilts: "The two bunks on the south side."

Gan Tang touched the coarse cotton wool at the corner of the quilt, which was ten times warmer than the straw in the servants' room.

The maid named Gan Sui handed over half a piece of fragrant soap and said, "Wipe the sweat off your face and fumigate the master carefully."

Miss Gan Sui seemed to have something on her mind, but she was quite nice to the newcomers.

As the night wind carried the fragrance of lotus flowers and seeped into the window lattice, Gan Tang counted the hours. Gan Qing's breathing became increasingly heavy and light.

Gan Tang was thinking about going to bed, but then he smelled the faint bitter scent of medicine on someone's clothes. Could it be that one of his masters was ill? "Forget it, I won't think about it for now. I still have work to do tomorrow."

The next day, as the morning light dyed the window paper red, Gan Tang felt the straw grasshopper beneath her pillow. The thing she had woven the day her father was taken away had accompanied her through six gates, as if it held a power that had seen her through life and death.

At this moment, the sound of porcelain breaking came from the front yard, followed by Gan Sui's chuckle: "Sister Yu threw the medicine bowl again."

Miss Yu is the third young lady in the mansion. Above her are Miss Yan Zhen, born to the eldest wife, and Master Yan Lie, born to the second concubine. These three young ladies are the most noble in the mansion.

Although Miss Yu was a concubine's daughter, she was the most favored by the Third Concubine, and everything she ate and used was of the best quality.

----

A new red felt carpet was laid on the blue brick floor of Yushu Courtyard. Gan Tang followed Gan Sui for a few steps.

When the Third Aunt was pregnant, four large green-glazed vats were added to the backyard to raise red carp for Miss Yu to see.

Gan Tang was staring at the sun swaying on the water when he was suddenly stuffed with a painted pottery jar.
"Katydid~" Miss Yu was making a fuss about catching katydids again.

Gan Tang nimbly caught a katydid for Miss Yu, who jumped for joy and played with Gan Tang all day.

"Can you play cat's tangle?" The five-year-old girl held up a colorful ribbon wrapped with gold thread, and the golden bells on her wrists jingled.

Gan Tang knelt in the shadow of the pomegranate tree, modified the rope trick his sister had taught him, and turned out a fat ingot.

Miss Yu giggled and rushed over, and the two little tufts of hair on top of her head rubbed her chin, making it itchy.

Seeing Miss Yu's joy, the Third Aunt assigned Gan Tang to her as a maid. This was Gan Tang's first mistress, a naive little girl with a good life but bad luck. Years later, Gan Tang often cried for her at night.

Doctor Zhang came to take the pulse three times a month. Gan Tang waited in the corridor with a copper basin. He saw that the handkerchiefs that the old doctor put on the wrists of the third concubine were embroidered with golden peonies. The third concubine's pregnancy really made Master Yan happy and he was very fond of it.

The wind blew into people's necks. Gan Tang squatted on the stone steps to teach Miss Yu how to read.

The tracing book given by Madam Zhou had "happiness, longevity and health" printed on it, but the young master insisted on using cinnabar to draw a turtle.

"This is for my brother." Miss Yu slapped the rice paper on her knees, and the ink smudged into a red ball.

The Third Aunt leaned against the soft pillow and chuckled, "What childish fun!" She turned and asked the maid to fetch a box of glass beads for them to play with. She only wanted her children to live a happy life, so she didn't want Miss Yu to be overly dignified and reserved. That day, Gan Tang was assigned to watch the night. Miss Yu clamored for a story, so she spun the hardship of life in the slave station into a story about a rabbit spirit's adventure: "The little gray rabbit climbed three mountains and finally found a treasure chest containing carrots."

The young master finally fell asleep until the moonlight shone through the scarlet gauze window and fell onto the brocade quilt.

----

On the day of Bailu, Doctor Zhang came with newly prepared pregnancy-maintaining pills.

Miss Yu insisted on trying it, so Gan Tang had no choice but to swallow half of it. A bitter taste rose in her throat, but she had to smile: "Look, sister, I can grow taller after eating this."

In fact, the root of my tongue was numb. I went back to my room and drank three buckets of well water to suppress the nausea.

At the Mid-Autumn Festival banquet, Miss Yu rewarded her with half a jujube paste mooncake. Gan Tang ate it in the side room with cold tea, and surprisingly, there was a whole walnut kernel in the filling.

Gan Sui ran into her and laughed at her: "You're like a hamster." Suddenly, he stuffed a bag of pine nut candy into her hand and said: "Madame Zhou found this in the cabinet. Don't let my sister see it."

The sweet scent of osmanthus in Yushuyuan overwhelmed the musty smell of the slave inn. She counted the shadows on the window lattices in the moonlight and listened to Miss Yu giggling in her dream. The golden bells tinkled softly as she turned over, just like the faded copper bracelet on her sister's wrist.

This day is so good, it seems unreal.

An accident broke the silence.

That day, Miss Yu had just written the third stroke of the Chinese character "安" (An) when a commotion came from the main hall.

Gan Tang's hand trembled as he saw Madam Zhou's cloud-shaped shoes trampling across the messy ground. The hem of her skirt was stained with brown medicine stains. She shouted at her, "Take my sister to the warm room and lock the doors and windows!"

Then, the screams of the Third Aunt tore through the autumn rain, and Gan Tang hugged Miss Yu and hid behind the eight-treasure cabinet.

She tightly covered the golden bell on the young master's wrist, and the dripping sound of the copper clock was mixed with the breaking of porcelain outside.

"Is mother playing the cup-smashing game?" Miss Yu raised her face and her eyelashes brushed across Gan Tang's scabby chilblains.

When the midnight drum mixed with thunder rolled over the roof, Lord Yan Jing and his wife entered the yard.

The nine-phoenix hairpin on the eldest lady's temple dazzled everyone. She pointed at the kneeling medicine boy and cursed, "How could musk be mixed with the candle?"

Gan Tang pieced together her fragmented memories from the past few days and recalled that during the Ghost Festival, she saw Gan Sui throwing an ash bag of incense into an abandoned well. Could there be something shameful in that ash bag?
She held Miss Yu's hand and found that her palm was sweaty, and a withered lotus flower was soaked through Gan Tang's cuffs.

Nanny Zhou came back from her investigation, and the hem of her skirt was stained with a piece of evil-repelling grass from the lintel of the delivery room.
"Oh, sister, just have some Poria cocos cake first." The old woman's hands were shaking so badly that icing sugar fell on the lotus flowers on the dressing box.

At three quarters past three in the morning, heavy rain extinguished the incandescent lanterns in the corridor.

The blood dripping from the midwife's arm meandered and twisted on the floor tiles.

Seven days later, Gan Tang was drying the young master's belongings when she smelled something strange. Miss Yu suddenly emerged from the moonlit cave, holding a cloth tiger with one eye missing. "Sister Tang, Mother said my brother has turned into a star." Gan Tang, unsure of what to say, simply took the tiger and helped mend it. Her sewing skills were excellent, and her work looked as if it were real.

On the day of Frost's Descent, the gilded incense burner in Third Aunt's room was replaced with agarwood.

In the following months, Gan Tang would hear words from time to time that she could not quite understand.

Just like "The safflower in the medicine residue must not have been prescribed by Doctor Zhang.", but Nanny Zhou only muttered half of it, never telling the whole story and not allowing anyone to ask.

(End of this chapter)