Three Years as His Stand-In, Then He Went Mad After I Died

In the third year of my marriage to Crown Prince Xiao Jinghuai, he brought a young woman back from the frontier. She had a vermilion mole between her brows, exactly like mine. Xiao Jinghuai said, “A Wan is frail. Copy the scriptures for her and pray for her health.” I copied three hundred volumes of Buddhist scripture until my fingers were raw and the bone showed. He said, “A Wan is afraid of the dark. Keep watch for her at night.” I stood in the winter wind for three years, and it left me with a lifetime of illness. He said, “A Wan likes pearls from the Eastern Sea. Give her the finest pair from your dowry.” I smiled and handed them over. “As you wish, Your Highness. They are only worldly possessions.”

Then, one day at a palace banquet, I heard him murmur drunkenly from behind a screen, “If He Niang were still alive, she would be about her age.” I lowered my eyes to the inside of my wrist. There was a birthmark there, identical to the one on He Niang, the late empress. So three years ago, when he recognized me among the dead, it was only because I looked so much like the woman he had loved and lost to drowning. I smiled and burned all three hundred volumes of scripture that very night. In the glow of the flames against the palace walls, I disappeared without a trace, taking that birthmark with me.

Later, Xiao Jinghuai went mad searching every inch of the land for me. At last, amid the misty rain of Jiangnan, I walked in my wedding dress toward another man's bridal sedan. He knelt before a procession of wedding gifts stretching ten miles, his eyes bloodshot. “He Niang... no, A Yun, look back at me once.” I did not even pause. “Your Highness has mistaken me for someone else. I am Shen Yun, and my husband's surname is Xie.”

The legitimate son of the Xie family, whom he had sent away to marry for political reasons, was now my husband.

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