A Bond Between Ladies

My surname is Bai, and my given name is Ci. I grew up in Wutong County, a small county in the Kingdom of Chao Cai. I came to the capital, Chao, because of a friendship between girls formed long, long ago. The first time I met Wang Qing, I was not yet sixteen. I was still young then. I missed home, but not desperately so. Yet after that one meeting, the entire capital became dull to me. The excitement I’d felt when I first arrived was gone. He sat in the seat of honor, wearing a deep blue robe, a jade belt around his waist, and white jade ornaments at his collar. His blue-green cap rested at his side, while a pure white silk sash lay curled across the desk. He looked down at me from on high. At that moment, I felt terribly wronged. The man before me was my husband, yet he sat high above me in the seat of honor, interrogating me as if I were a criminal and treating me like some wicked woman who used the Wang family’s reputation to bully others. I had simply not trusted those two young gentlemen, and I also thought it would be embarrassing for the young mistress of the Wang family to get lost outside, so I’d pretended to be a distant cousin of the Wang family...