They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: The Laba Banquet
The prefect gave a banquet every year on the eighth of the twelfth month, and this year he wanted noodles.
Miss Hua had put in a word with his steward, kindly, and my mother had sent me with the dough and the big copper pot.
It was a great deal of money, and we could not say no.
Chengzhi could not come.
He had begged to, and his mother had refused, and when he said he was well enough she had said "Not yet," in a voice that ended it.
So I stood at a table in the prefect's garden in my best apron, pulling noodles for forty scholars.
The snow came down on the persimmon trees.
The tables were laid out under a red awning.
The prefect sat at the head of the middle one, with the salt merchant at his right hand.
Ruolan sat beside her father with her fingers folded in her lap.
On the other side of her sat Bai Zhiyuan, in a new robe of dark blue silk.
I had not seen that robe before.
"My friends," the prefect said, when the porridge had been served and the noodles cleared. "Before the music, a little learning. Zhiyuan, you have prepared something."
"Only a trifle, my lord," Zhiyuan said, and stood.
The garden went still.
He bowed to the prefect, to the merchant, and to Ruolan, and then he began to recite.
"A river does not ask the bank for leave to rise."
I was standing with a bowl in my hand.
I stopped.
"It rises because the hills have given it rain, and the rain was given by the sky, and the sky asks nothing. Let the man who sits by the water learn to read its color."
I knew that voice in my ear.
Not Zhiyuan's voice, but the rhythm underneath it, short and plain, then long and rolling.
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