Married to the Emperor's Fiercest General, Who Is Terrified of Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Six Pork Buns
The scholar makes his terrified husband sit, look at him and eat; the general mouths the next line of a poem he claims never to have read.
Wenxuan was still kneeling by the box when someone knocked on the door.
He shoved the lid down, kicked the box under the bed, and sat on the quilt with his heart in his throat.
"Come in," he said.
An old man in a grey steward's coat came in with a basin of hot water and the face of a man expecting a funeral.
He looked at Wenxuan, and at the bed, and at Wenxuan again.
"You're alive," he said.
"I am."
"Not a mark on you," said Dai.
"Not one."
The old man put the basin down and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
"Forgive me, Young Master. I'm Dai. I've served the General since he was a boy. All night I've been standing in the yard with a rope."
"A rope?" said Wenxuan.
"To cut you down, if it came to that."
Wenxuan decided it was better not to ask.
"Where is the General now?"
"In the stable, Young Master," said Dai. "He's been brushing the same horse since midnight."
"Is the horse well?"
"The horse," said Steward Dai, "has never been so clean."
Wenxuan washed his face and dressed slowly.
He put on the plainest blue robe he owned, because the house was plain and he did not want to look like a guest.
Then he went to the dining hall, sat at the head of the long table, and waited.
The hall was as bare as the bedroom.
One table, ten chairs, a bowl of cold millet porridge, a dish of pickled radish, and nothing else.
"Is this what he eats every day?" Wenxuan asked.
"Every day, Young Master. In the army it's worse."
"Bring pork buns," said Wenxuan. "Hot ones. And an egg dish, and soy milk, and whatever fruit the market has."
"The General doesn't..."
"Today he does."
The steward ran.
The general appeared in the doorway just as the first basket arrived.
He had washed, and his hair was wet, and he had put on a clean dark robe buttoned all the way to the throat.
He stood there looking at Wenxuan.
"Sit," said Wenxuan.
The general sat, on the chair at the far end of the table, as far as he could get without being outside.
"Closer."
He moved one chair down.
"Closer than that. I'm not going to throw the porridge at you."
He moved to the chair on Wenxuan's right, and sat so straight that the wood creaked.
Wenxuan put a pork bun on his plate.
"You promised to look at me," he said.
The general lifted his eyes.
They were dark and steady, and for one breath the whole fearsome weight of him settled on Wenxuan's face.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Then the red came up from his collar, and his eyes dropped to the bun.
"That was three," Wenxuan said. "I counted. Tomorrow, five."
"Yes," said the general.
"Eat."
The general ate a bun in two bites.
Wenxuan put another on his plate, and their fingers touched on the rim.
The general looked at the bun for some time.
Then he ate that one too, with his gaze on the table the whole time.
He ate six, and a bowl of the egg, and he drank two cups of soy milk.
Wenxuan watched him do it.
He was a very large man who ate carefully.
The scars on his hand were thick and pale across the knuckles.
Wenxuan thought about the paper under the bed, soft as cloth.
He picked up his own chopsticks.
"I wrote something once about the army granaries," he said lightly. "In a provincial exam, when I was sixteen. Have you ever read it?"
The general's chopsticks stopped in the air.
"No," he said.
It was a very bad lie.
Even Steward Dai, standing at the wall with the soy milk pot, closed his eyes.
"The closing poem is the only good part," said Wenxuan. "'Where the grain sleeps, the soldier sleeps...'"
He stopped, because he was watching the general's lips.
The general's lips were moving.
He was saying the next line, very quietly, without sound, and he did not seem to know he was doing it.
Wenxuan put his chopsticks down.
Something warm and unfamiliar turned over under his ribs.
He told himself it was the tea.
"You have an excellent memory," he said.
"I have no memory at all."
"Then you're an excellent liar."
"I'm a terrible liar," said the general, almost desperately, and then clapped his mouth shut.
Wenxuan laughed.
He couldn't help it.
It came out of him loud and bright, the first real laugh since the emperor's announcement.
The general looked up, startled, and held his eyes for a full five seconds before he remembered himself.
That was two more than the promise.
Wenxuan noticed, and kept it.
A sharp knock at the outer gate cut the moment off.
Steward Dai went out, and came back with a roll of yellow silk in both hands and the face of a man holding a snake.
"A summons from the palace," he said. "For both of you, today, at the hour of the horse."
"Why?" said the general.
Dai unrolled it.
"His Majesty wishes to take morning tea with the newly married couple," he read. "And to see how they look."
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