Story of Yanxi Palace, Chapter 13: Embroidery Work

Smack!

“Ow!” A young palace maid rolled off the kang in pain.

Two senior palace maids held candlesticks; the flickering candlelight cast Aunt Fang’s face in shifting patches of light and shadow, making her look half demon, half ghost. She kept swinging the disciplinary ruler in her hand, striking the maid on the floor, all the while cursing furiously: “I told you to keep quiet! I told you to keep quiet!”

“Stop hitting me, Auntie, stop! It hurts! Please stop!” The maid curled up, hands protecting her head, sobbing and pleading. “I don’t want to either, but I can’t control snoring! Ow, ow!”

While she was being beaten, the other palace maids all lay on their sides on the kang, not daring to move a muscle. The two senior maids holding rulers paced in front of the kang, their eyes scanning like butchers selecting lambs for slaughter.

“Palace rules: no noise while sleeping. If one day you’re attending the master at night and make a sound, not only will you be beaten to death—I’ll be punished along with you!” Aunt Fang’s ruler fell mercilessly again and again on the young maid. “If you can’t fix it, I’ll beat you until you can!”

Aunt Fang struck her for a long while until—at last—perhaps tired out, she stopped. After catching her breath, she planted one hand on her hip and said coldly to all the maids:

“Get up. Time to work!”

Everyone looked incredulously toward the window. Outside, the sky was pitch black, like a pool of ink. If you stretched out your hand, it would surely disappear into the darkness; you wouldn’t even be able to see how many fingers you were holding up.

“Aunt—Auntie, it’s only the third watch,” one young maid couldn’t help saying. “The embroidery workshop doors aren’t even open yet…”

But one glare from Aunt Fang silenced her instantly. She scrambled off the kang in a hurry; in her haste, she stumbled and nearly fell.

In an instant the dormitory filled with the rustling sounds of everyone hurriedly dressing. Fearing that the slightest delay would earn them a thrashing, they all rose at top speed.

“Auntie, I’m ready.” Jinxiu always loved to come first in everything, and this time was no exception. She was the first to finish dressing, then trotted over to Aunt Fang and said obediently, “Are we heading to the embroidery workshop now?”

“The embroidery workshop doors aren’t open yet—what would you do there?” Aunt Fang replied coldly.

Jinxiu was stunned. “Then we…”

“The work in the embroidery workshop is work. Doing work for me is also work.” Aunt Fang swept her gaze around the room. “Who is Wei Yingluo?”

Everyone turned to look at Wei Yingluo in unison.

“That would be me.” Wei Yingluo stepped forward calmly, expression unchanged.

Aunt Fang gave a signal with her eyes to the two senior maids she had brought. One of them immediately stepped forward and shoved a thick stack of clothing into her arms.

“Momo Zhang says your embroidery is the best. Embroider appropriate seasonal patterns on all the collars, cuffs, and hems. I want them by dawn!” After giving the order, Aunt Fang raised her hand and pointed at the remaining young maids one by one:

“You seven—split into two groups. You, you, you—you three go heat water, prepare soap and towels. I want to bathe at dawn. The rest of you, clean the courtyard. Every single floor tile had better be shining. Move!”

Everyone hurried to their tasks.

Jixiang had been assigned to attend Aunt Fang—a duty that, on the surface, was a good one: lighter than sweeping the courtyard, and it gave her a chance to speak directly with the aunt in charge of them. Jinxiu, who had also been assigned to the same group, was already grinning from ear to ear.

But Jixiang couldn’t smile at all. In her eyes, Aunt Fang was no different from a fierce tiger or wild beast. Attending her bath felt about as safe as pulling teeth from a tiger.

“Don’t pull such a long face.” Wei Yingluo’s gentle voice suddenly sounded softly beside her ear. “Learn from Jinxiu—smile more. You look very cute when you smile.”

“I could never learn from her,” Jixiang muttered, pouting. Then she looked up at Wei Yingluo with open admiration. “Sister Yingluo, you’re amazing. How did you know Auntie would come back?”

If not for Wei Yingluo’s earlier reminder, the one who would have just received the beating would almost certainly have been her.

Jixiang also had the habit of snoring. The reason she wasn’t caught by Aunt Fang was that, after listening to Wei Yingluo’s words, she was so frightened she couldn’t fall asleep. She remained awake until Aunt Fang returned once more.

Wei Yingluo laughed. “A new official lights three fires upon taking office. Even if no one were snoring, she’d find some other pretext to beat someone—just to make us fear her, so that from now on we wouldn’t dare disobey her… All right, go quickly. Don’t keep Auntie waiting too long.”

She watched with a smile as Jixiang hurried away, then shook her head with a chuckle and lowered her gaze to the clothes in her hands.

Someone skilled in embroidery could take a person’s measurements with just a glance. Upon close inspection, these garments were exactly the right length for Aunt Fang to wear—it was obvious she was abusing her position, making the little palace maids under her alter her personal clothes for her own benefit.

Perhaps so as not to steal the spotlight from their mistresses, the palace maids’ clothing was all kept plain and simple. In this regard, there wasn’t much difference between senior and junior maids. The several sets of clothes in her hands were the same: pale, subdued colors with hardly any patterns to be found no matter how much she turned them over.

“Women love to dress up prettily—even the women who enter the palace are no different,” Wei Yingluo thought to herself. “No—in a place filled entirely with women, the competition between women becomes even fiercer.”

Picking up needle and thread, Wei Yingluo embroidered a string of wisteria flowers along the collar and cuffs of the garment. The wisteria vines twined gracefully together, exuding the calm elegance of a mature woman. In an instant, this ordinary palace maid’s robe was elevated to a higher level. The design suited Aunt Fang’s status perfectly—neither as flamboyantly luxurious as peonies nor as ostentatiously grand as herbaceous peonies, so it wouldn’t risk overshadowing the mistresses.

She embroidered so thoughtfully that even someone as nitpicky as Aunt Fang couldn’t find a single fault.

Aunt Fang turned the garment over and over in her hands for a long while. Finally her gaze settled on the wisteria flowers at the cuff. Her delight was plain to see; she stroked them fondly for quite some time, yet her voice remained cool and detached:

“Not bad embroidery. Do the same for the rest of them—different patterns for each.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Wei Yingluo replied obediently. “Shall I do it now?”

Aunt Fang glanced at the sky. She would have liked Wei Yingluo to start embroidering right away, but even abusing her authority had its limits. Regretfully, she shook her head. “Go have your meal first. After eating, head to the embroidery workshop to work.”

Wei Yingluo pursed her lips into a small smile. “Yes.”

Aunt Fang left carrying the robe embroidered with wisteria. Judging from her eager expression, she was clearly impatient to change into it at once and go show it off to her sisters.

“Look at that—someone’s latched onto a real golden thigh again,” Jinxiu muttered darkly to the other little palace maids behind her back. “What a born good slave. If we want to live comfortably, we all have to learn from her.”

Jixiang couldn’t stand to hear such talk and was about to confront her when Wei Yingluo held her back.

“Yingluo-jie, she’s talking about you like that—aren’t you angry?” Jixiang fumed.

Wei Yingluo smiled. Her time was far too precious to waste on someone as insignificant as Jinxiu.

“Jixiang, can you do me a favor?” Wei Yingluo asked.

“Just say it,” Jixiang replied without even asking what the favor was.

“I won’t be going to breakfast. Could you bring me a steamed bun?” Wei Yingluo said. “I have something to take care of—I’ll head to the embroidery workshop first.”

At this hour, the embroidery workshop was like a person in deep sleep—perfectly still and utterly silent.

Wei Yingluo didn’t idle either. She gently swept the fallen flowers in front of the door into a neat pile with her broom. Wisteria bloomed at the entrance of the embroidery workshop; the ground was covered in petals of every shade of purple, deep and pale, and even the broom picked up a faint floral fragrance.

“Why are you here so early?” a voice asked from behind her.

Wei Yingluo paused her sweeping, turned, and smiled. “Good morning, Momo Zhang.”

This meeting had been carefully planned in advance.

Momo Zhang worked in the embroidery workshop. She was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. By skipping breakfast and waiting at the door, Wei Yingluo was certain to catch her.

Of course, she would never say that out loud. Instead, Wei Yingluo smiled and explained:

“Today is my first day working in the embroidery workshop. I was afraid of being late, so I came early.”

Old people always like children who follow the rules, and Momo Zhang was no exception. On her usually stern, almost unapproachable face, a rare trace of a smile appeared: “You’re a child who understands propriety.”

Wei Yingluo certainly did understand propriety.

For the next half month, she rose early every day to embroider clothes for Aunt Fang—wisteria and autumn orchids, carp and bluebirds; the patterns never repeated. As soon as the sun began to rise, without even eating breakfast, she would pick up her cleaning tools and hurry to the embroidery workshop.

Some people tried to imitate her, but after four or five days they gave up.

“She’s truly born to be a servant,” Jinxiu said to others. “I could never learn to be like her.”

She couldn’t learn—and didn’t want to—because there were no visible benefits.

Although Wei Yingluo worked privately for Aunt Fang every day, she still received beatings from Aunt Fang’s board. Though she swept and cleaned in front of the embroidery workshop before dawn each day, Momo Zhang showed her no favoritism. The workload assigned to her was the same as everyone else’s—sometimes even a little more.

Many people secretly laughed at Wei Yingluo behind her back: working so hard yet gaining nothing—what was the point?

Yet Wei Yingluo continued on her own path, indifferent to the gossip. She persisted in this routine day after day. Though she received no tangible rewards, the way Aunt Fang and Momo Zhang looked at her grew softer and softer—especially Momo Zhang, who in her spare moments would even chat with her about everyday things.

Wei Yingluo always listened quietly, occasionally offering a comment or two, or asking one or two harmless questions. Seeing how well-behaved and sensible she was, Momo Zhang would casually answer her.

“Momo, would red or green be better for this part?”

“Red. Red is more festive.”

“Momo, for the handkerchief for Noble Lady Yu, would embroidered golden carp be better, or orchids?”

“Golden carp. It’s more auspicious.”

“Momo, compared to Wei Yingning’s embroidery, whose is better?”

“Yingning’s is better.” Momo Zhang answered out of habit. Only after the words left her mouth did she pause slightly and stare at the girl in front of her—Wei Yingluo.

Wei Yingluo smiled back at her.

One full month—every meeting, every seemingly casual question and answer—had all been leading to this one moment: to make Momo Zhang answer her next question instinctively, without thinking.

Momo Zhang stared at Wei Yingluo for a long time before slowly saying, “I misheard. I don’t know anyone named Wei Yingning.”

STORY OF YANXI PALACE CHAPTERS HOME