Chapter 3: Settling Accounts

The State Wine Monopoly was permanent law of the Great Song Dynasty: to brew and sell wine, one required the Emperor’s license.

To sell wine, one need only win a Revenue Bidding Contract and pay taxes according to law.

To brew wine, one depended on the court.

The wine monopoly’s taxes and profits were matters of state; regulations varied wildly from place to place. But to do the brewing business, one could not escape taking part in the revenue bidding every three years to win the right. Beyond that lay several more gates: first the wine yeast, then the wine workshops—all, in the end, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Revenue, Left Section.

And the one who presided over it had always been surnamed Shen.

For various taxes there was also the Wine Bureau’s Overseer Official, formerly often held concurrently by local prefects. Since the Late Empress Dowager’s passing, every Overseer Official was either a Taizhou native, a fellow townsman of the Shen Family, or a protégé of the Shen clan’s main line. Anyone who had not bowed through that gate was transferred away within two years.

One to oversee, one to manage: the State Wine Monopoly was thus locked fast in the hands of the Empress’s own kin. Jiang Man had known a woman presided over these matters in Lin’an—she had simply never imagined it was her.

“Come to think of it, I don’t know what to call you.” Shen Wen seemed unbothered, setting down her half-cup and looking at Jiang Man again. “Your father and brother—what do they usually call you?”

No one had ever asked Jiang Man such a question. “To answer Female Scribe Shen, I have only a humble name, not worth mentioning.”

Shen Wen studied her a moment, something deep in her gaze. Jiang Man’s feet trembled slightly, but she did not speak.

What a truly reckless person. She was an unmarried girl—even a matchmaker entrusted with an inquiry would not dare ask so bluntly. Was it because she was the Empress’s niece, high and mighty, that she could so trample upon a girl of the inner chambers?

“Have you a courtesy name?” Shen Wen pressed.

Jiang Man knew she could no longer refuse to answer, and said softly, “There was… meant to be one.”

Last year, after her hairpin ceremony, her father had begun planning the matter. Her brother had drafted four or five candidates; with the father willing, the elder brother could not overstep. In autumn a letter had come from Pingjiang: the name was decided. Jiang Man had looked forward to it, yet held back, never opening the letter.

She had meant to save it for the new year, to be revealed together with her brother.

“What,” Shen Wen’s eyes moved slightly, “even that cannot be said?”

Jiang Man curtsied. “I dare not. The name was chosen by my late father and sealed in a letter—I do not know it myself. The letter is on the desk just there. If the Scribe would step this way…”

Shen Wen had already taken the letter from among the stacked documents. “This one?”

Jiang Man’s heart tightened; head bowed: “It is.”

The sound of the seal being broken was slow in coming. Jiang Man’s eyes crept upward—and the letter was already being held out to her.

Their eyes met. Shen Wen’s gaze rested lightly on hers.

Jiang Man took it, and broke the seal after all.

Jiang Rao’s hand was bold and unbridled, like dragons leaping. Seeing such vigorous running script again, Jiang Man could hardly believe that she and her father now dwelt on opposite sides of life and death.

“Xiaojiu.” Jiang Man paused. “My courtesy name is Xiaojiu.”

“Jiang Xiaojiu.” Shen Wen considered a moment, a hint of a smile about her. “Your father was an amusing man—a wine merchant who gave his only daughter a name like that.”

“I also have a brother, born of the same mother. He is away, sitting for the examinations.”

Shen Wen nodded slightly, rose, made as if to steady Jiang Man by the arm, and said abruptly, “Your clothes do love the snow, it seems. Your outer robe is soaked through and you say nothing of changing. Take it off and warm it by the fire a while.”

How improper a remark!

Anger flared in Jiang Man. Though she stood straight, she gathered her sleeves and bent her knees. “I am a decent family’s daughter nonetheless. I wear heavy mourning and dare not set it aside—much less change my clothes before strangers. I ask Female Scribe Shen to weigh her words!”

Shen Wen’s brows lifted. “A fine decent family’s daughter. What, have I offended you?”

“I would not dare.”

“Would not dare?” She stepped close all at once, nearly forcing herself before Jiang Man’s eyes. “Haven’t you already done the thing you dare not do?”

Jiang Man retreated two steps. “I have failed the Scribe’s kindness, and beg pardon.”

In the quiet room, only the crackle of charcoal.

Shen Wen was silent a long while, then said flatly, “No need.”

That banana-red skirt was dazzling in its brilliance, the long gown trimmed in gold, magnificent. Jiang Man in her coarse hemp could hardly reproach her disregard for propriety.

And how could she? The woman stood exalted, had delivered her from today’s peril, and was the Jiang family’s creditor besides. What could Jiang Man possibly say?

Debts must be paid—it was the way of heaven and earth. Jiang Man wanted only to settle the accounts quickly and see this flamboyant, brightly-dressed woman out of her family’s gates.

Two knocks sounded at the door.

“Young Miss, the accountant and I have arrived.”

“Come in.” The speaker, however, was Shen Wen. Her attendants followed behind Jiang Yun and the rest; Shen Wen beckoned with her right hand, and at once someone produced a thick sheaf of promissory notes.

Shen Wen took them and handed them to Jiang Man personally. Since the woman did not stand on ceremony, Jiang Man could hardly take offense; she accepted them in silence.

“Look them over carefully. If any are forged, produce it now.” Shen Wen took her seat, left hand propping her chin, languid. “Bring in that kinsman of yours.”

“Yes!”

Second Master Jiang entered, mumbled a greeting to “Female Scribe Shen,” and stood to one side. Seeing him so respectful, Jiang Man felt he was another person entirely. Thinking of today’s ordeal, and of the two servants he had struck down at a stroke, a dull ache spread through her chest.

Never mind the servants—today he had beaten and berated even her, playing the master of the Jiang family to the hilt. When Jiang Ling returned…

Her brother’s whereabouts unknown, coupled with Second Master Jiang’s cruel words in the main hall—Jiang Man could not help but fret.

Today’s farce had been resolved, but once Female Scribe Shen departed, the waves would surely rise again.

What was she to do?

“Grind ink for him.” Shen Wen drew out a stack of pre-cut Hardened Yellow Paper and slapped it on the desk. “Second Young Miss Jiang. You will read out.”

“Yes.” Jiang Man exchanged a look with Jiang Yun; he nodded, stepped forward, took the paper, and sat at the narrow side desk.

The very first promissory note was for a thousand strings, borrowed in the eighth month of last year, to be repaid in full by the first month of the coming year with two hundred strings of interest. Signature and seal were both Jiang Rao’s. Jiang Man checked it several times over, then said slowly: “On the second day of the eighth month of the Jiayin year of Baoyou, my late father, with Cao Xing as guarantor and witness, borrowed one thousand strings of copper coin from Shen Wen of Pingjiang Prefecture, to be repaid with interest as one thousand two hundred strings by the first month of the Bingchen year of Baoyou. The note is in my late father’s own hand. Confirmed without error.”

The Accountant flipped a few pages and quickly found the entry, nodding to Jiang Man and Jiang Yun.

Jiang Yun dipped the brush and wrote carefully. “Recorded.”

Four more promissory notes followed, each matching entries in the outer ledgers—some borrowed in Pingjiang, others in Jiaxing, Quzhou, and elsewhere. The sums were enormous; not one fell below eight hundred strings.

Jiang Man found it strange. These entries were tightly clustered in date, all in ready cash, all guaranteed by Cao Xing. Cao Xing ran another wine workshop in Jiankang; the Jiang and Cao families had been friendly for years and their dealings had lately grown close—indeed it was the Cao family who had helped transport her father’s body home.

The Shen Family was vast and powerful. Though the lender named on the notes was Shen Wen, she would not necessarily have handled them personally. That Shen Wen claimed never to have known Jiang Man’s father was entirely plausible.

But that people of the Wine Guild had traveled out together to conduct wine business—her father had never once mentioned it.

All these places lay within Liangzhe. In last year’s revenue bidding, the Jiang family’s bid had not been high; of all Liangzhe East and West they had won the wine-selling rights to only one site, in Lin’an. Jiang Man remembered it well—Jiang Rao had come home sighing over it at length. With no need to travel, why would her father have gone all the way to Quzhou with Cao Xing?

And why in ready cash?

At the sixth document, Jiang Man froze.

It was a duplicate of her family’s land deed.

She handed it to Jiang Yun to examine; the two looked at each other, and neither could speak. Jiang Man flipped further—among the final papers was a duplicate of the deed to this very house. The Jiang family did not live in the ancestral home, but it was still the roof under which the family had lived. How could the deed be pledged to another?

Wordless, Jiang Man passed the duplicates to the Accountant and asked in a lowered voice, “Are these genuine? Is there such a pledge in the ledgers?”

The Accountant nodded silently.

The family’s property was held under an Unregistered Deed, never filed with the authorities—there was only the one copy, and whoever held the deed held the law’s favor. Jiang Man knew where such precious documents were kept, but before this room full of people, she had no way to verify them.

In her daze, Jiang Man’s eyes met Shen Wen’s.

The woman was still languid, chin propped on one hand, half-reclined in her chair, as if awaiting a good play.

“Female Scribe Shen, may I ask,” Jiang Man curtsied, “the land deeds and house deed my late father pledged—are they now in your hands?”

Shen Wen looked at her and nodded slightly.

Jiang Man stood a long moment in silence, then drew a deep breath. “Let us settle the accounts.”

Second Master Jiang, standing in the corner, had worn a dreadful expression for some time now. Catching Jiang Man’s eye by chance, he even shot her a furtive look of hatred. Jiang Man did not know what to make of it. She stood on the brink of ruin—was she now, in his heart, supposed to apologize for the collapse of his fine schemes?

The Accountant’s fingers moved across the abacus far more slowly than usual, occasionally lifting his head to pass her a covert glance.

She understood: play for time.

The taxes were crushing, the wine business was hard, and carrying debt was the norm. Payments from the retail wine taverns and licensed wine retailers could not be collected quickly; the bulk of their assets lay tied up in grain and stored wine.

So long as the business endured, money would keep flowing in—but all these debts fell due in the first month of the coming year. One debt pressed down hard on one end of the scale; what could Jiang Man place on the other to balance it?

All accounts, in the end, must be tallied. Jiang Man glanced at the frozen abacus and felt the great hall collapsing about her.

Fifty-seven thousand strings.

In the Chunyou years, Jiang Man’s mother had passed away, leaving a will that bestowed her dowry on Jiang Man. It was when Zheng Kui was inspecting the armies of the various circuits and the court disbursed great stores of provisions; her father had added to the bequest and bought ten Blank Ordination Certificates to serve as Jiang Man’s future safeguard.

Those certificates could now fetch roughly five thousand strings. If her gold and silver jewelry were sold as well, counting what remained in the inner household, she might scrape together eight thousand strings.

The household’s grain stores were thin. Though the various wine workshops held rice and wheat, all of it was earmarked for the great brews due in summer. If she sold it off now to cross this immediate crisis, no wine would be ready by summer, and the Jiang Family Wine Workshop would stand at death’s door.

And how much grain could they sell anyway? With the year’s end at hand, the brewing rice in the storehouses came to less than five hundred shi. Hauled off at market price to pay debt, it would fetch barely sixteen thousand strings and change.

That sixteen thousand was the money of killing the hen for her eggs.

Jiang Man looked silently at Shen Wen.

Assets falling short of debts—with what was she to repay her?