To Be A Virtuous Wife novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Elders Sit

The clan elders sat at noon in the hall of ancestors, nine old men in dark robes on a raised bench.

They had been dragged from their breakfasts and their tea, and they did not look pleased.

Yuwei stood in the center of the floor with her hands folded.

Her hair was neat, her robe was blue-grey and plain, and she had slept for exactly one hour.

The prince stood a pace behind her.

Across the hall, Zhiqing knelt in white mourning cloth with her hair loose, weeping prettily into a handkerchief.

Beside her, Lady Tao sat in a carved chair with pearls at her throat and a faint, sorrowful frown.

"This is a grave charge," said the eldest of the elders, a bald man with a white mustache. "Entering the ancestral shrine at night. Disturbing the tablet of a former Princess. It is sacrilege."

"It is," Zhiqing said, and sobbed. "I found the tablet moved with my own eyes. I only went to pray for my aunt's health, and I found thieves."

"You saw them?"

"No. They were hidden. But who else would do it? She has been looking for something ever since she came. She was in the account room, and then there was the fire. And now this."

"A moment," said the prince.

His voice was quiet, and the room stopped.

"My side consort went to the shrine alone at midnight. To pray for my stepmother's health, she says. The shrine has no lamp but one, which the keeper fills at dusk. She carried her own lantern and her own key."

"I had a key," Zhiqing said faintly. "The Dowager gave it to me."

"Why?"

"For devotion."

"I see." The prince bowed slightly to the elders. "My wife will answer the charge."

Yuwei stepped forward.

"Elders. I did enter the shrine last night, with my husband, at his invitation, using his own key. We moved the tablet of the former Princess. I want to say it plainly, because you will hear it anyway."

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