Bound Beneath the Eaves

Shen Wuyou first met Gu Heng beneath an old locust tree in the snow. He dug up a piece of broken jade and pressed it into her hand. “You looked like a swallow caught in the rain, so I wanted to give you an umbrella.” Since her father’s death, he was the first person to give her something without conditions, without saying, “You’ll have to pay me back someday.” At the time, she was the impoverished eldest daughter born to a concubine in the Yongchang Earl’s household. Her father had just died, her mother was gravely ill, and her aunt looked her over like a piece of merchandise. She told herself she was a rain-swallow, destined to fly away once the rain stopped. She mustn’t grow attached to the warmth of the roof tiles. But Gu Heng was different. He was Chang’an’s most notorious playboy. His father called him a hopeless case, and his stepmother saw him as a thorn in her side. But Shen Wuyou saw through him. “You’re the most shameless man in Chang’an, and the smartest, too.” When she had nowhere else to turn, she went to him. Her aunt wanted to send her off as a concubine to a sixty-year-old prince. She searched through all her belongings: three taels of silver, an old calligraphy scroll, and a piece of broken jade. She got straight to the point. “Young Master Gu, do you want a wife?” He married her. On their wedding night, he slapped a stack of banknotes onto the table. “Whenever you want to leave, you can.” She thought it was a transaction. He thought so, too. Until Chang’an fell, and he clutched her hand, saying, “I can’t live without you.” Until she found him beneath a pile of corpses and knelt in the bloody mud, pressing down on his wound. Many years later, they watched the swallows return to their courtyard. He said, “You once said you were a rain-swallow. But you’re not.” “Then what am I?” Gu Heng turned to look at her, just like the fool who had dug up that piece of jade in the snow. “You’re the one I waited twenty-five years to welcome home.”