Chapter 015

Chapter 15: Wait, Your Turn to Panic Comes Later

Du Sheng swallowed hard: “…”

You Bing Yue, furious, pointed and said: “Stop spitting nonsense. Du Sheng is just an ordinary servant. Half a month ago when I met him, he was being bullied by the steward. How could someone like him skim silver?”

Yu Zhi Yi tilted her head and asked mildly: “Are you sure he was being bullied by the head steward? Or was it because he was too greedy, the head steward could not make the accounts match, and wanted to pry open his mouth to recover the stolen funds for Chancellor’s Manor?”

After speaking, she felt the sweetness still clinging to her tongue and drank a sip of tea to wash it down.

Chancellor Du put away his mood for watching a show. At first, the juicy gossip between You Bing Yue and Du Sheng had caught his ear. Now that he heard Du Sheng might truly have wronged the manor, he had no heart left for jokes.

He gave a crisp order: “Someone, bring the head steward here.”

Soon, the head steward arrived at the wall, confused.

Chancellor Du asked directly: “Du Hai, did you seek out Du Sheng half a month ago?”

The head steward straightened and answered at once: “Master, I found many mismatches in accounts under Du Sheng’s hand, so I wanted to ask him what was going on. But just as I had men take him away, Miss You rushed in, kicked us all aside, and warned that if we bothered Du Sheng again, she would make us pay.”

You Bing Yue’s tone was frosty as she said: “A group of strong men bullies one person. Anyone with a bit of justice would step in, right?”

The head steward looked aggrieved and said: “I explained that it was because Du Sheng’s hands were not clean and I needed to check him, but Miss You would not listen.”

Madam Yao slapped the table and said: “This is serious. Why did you not report it?”

The head steward hunched, even more upset, and said: “Madam, the manor was busy preparing the young master’s wedding at the time, and… and after that, Du Sheng was assigned by the young master to work at Moon-Viewing Pavilion. I thought the young master had chosen to overlook it, so I did not dare pursue it.”

Du Zi Heng frowned and said: “This is not settled. We cannot conclude Du Sheng truly did wrong.”

Yu Zhi Yi yawned and said, clearly ready to end this and go to sleep: “There is a hidden compartment under his bed boards. In it are deposit slips from Hui Feng Bank. Take the stubs to the bank and you will see how much he has skimmed over the years.”

She continued, practical and neat: “As for witnesses, the butcher where he often buys meat, the cloth shop where he often buys fabric, and the shop boy at the sundries store he frequents, all can testify. Ask them for the prices he paid and compare them to the prices he reported to Chancellor’s Manor.”

Chancellor Du waved a hand, and men hurried off to investigate.

About two hours later, the searchers came back. They brought accounts and the stewards from those shops.

Du Zi Heng checked them himself.

After a long look, he set the books down, his face dark as iron.

Except for the sundries shop, which kept no books because it was a tiny business and the owner could not read, all the other places had ledgers. They showed that the cloth shop’s price for Chancellor’s Manor was fifteen wen per foot for coarse cloth, one bolt totaling one thousand four hundred eighty wen; and fifty wen per foot for fine cloth, one bolt totaling four thousand nine hundred fifty wen. The butcher’s price for the manor was ten wen per jin of meat, and seven wen per jin if it came with bone.

But the manor’s own ledger kept by the head steward showed something else: twenty wen per foot for coarse cloth and fifty-five for fine cloth. Pork was listed at fifteen wen per jin, and twelve wen if it came with skin and bone.

Of course, prices rise and fall with the seasons and other factors. The only thing that never changed was the gap: no matter the item, Du Sheng always padded five wen per unit.

Chancellor’s Manor made clothes by season for everyone. There were over a hundred male and female servants in the manor alone, not counting the farm hands on the estate. If those were included, the number reached two hundred. Even if one garment used only two feet of cloth, the five-wen gap meant ten wen stolen per garment. For two hundred people, that was two thousand wen. Three sets per person each season meant six thousand wen per season, over twenty thousand wen stolen a year from cloth alone.

Food was just as shocking. People eat daily, and a grand household like Chancellor’s Manor served three meals, not two like poor families. With more than a hundred people to feed, and with Chancellor Du and Madam Yao being kind, they could not let the servants eat meat all the time, but they still made sure there was meat at each meal. The kitchen bought nearly a hundred jin of meat a day, not counting banquets or the master’s midnight snacks. At five wen pocketed per jin, Du Sheng skimmed nearly five hundred wen each day from meat alone, more than ten taels in a month.

Du Zi Heng slapped the ledger against Du Sheng’s face and said, livid: “Bold servant. Chancellor’s Manor has not treated you poorly. Even as a houseborn servant, your monthly pay is two taels, higher than many small household heads. Yet you were not satisfied and dared to steal from your master’s household!”

Yu Zhi Yi yawned again and said lazily: “Young master, do not rush. Wait until we fetch what he hid in his cabinet, then you can rush.”

Soon the servants who had searched Du Sheng’s room returned, each wearing a strange look.

A bad feeling rose in Du Zi Heng’s chest.

One servant held a stack of drawings. Du Zi Heng snatched them, and the world went dark for a moment. Every drawing was of You Bing Yue. In those pictures, she wore the light gray narrow-sleeved dress she had on when she first entered the manor, not the black outfit she wore now. That gray dress had been torn by accident and thrown away. Yu Zhi Yi had never seen that dress, so she could not have used it to frame anyone. Du Zi Heng did not doubt the drawings were real. They could not be planted so perfectly after the fact.

His face twisted with rage as he thought: [So this dog of a servant truly covets my woman.]

He snapped an order, voice cold as ice: “Guards, throw this shameless dog of a servant into the dungeon!”

The Water Dungeon was where the Du Clan punished guilty house slaves. It was dark and wet, with ankle-deep water standing on the floor year-round. Even without torture, a person grew raw and itchy after only two days. Stay longer, and sores would bloom all over. House slaves who entered rarely came out whole.

Du Sheng panicked and cried out: “Young master, spare me! I truly know I was wrong!”

You Bing Yue had been shocked when she saw the drawings, but she recovered quickly. Hearing his pleas, she frowned and said nothing.

Yu Zhi Yi tilted her head and asked, puzzled: “Did you not say you cannot kill house servants at will? What is the young master doing now?”

Du Zi Heng felt as if an invisible hand had slapped him across the face, the sting burning hot.

You Bing Yue snorted and said: “Soft-hearted kindness does not apply here. He committed a grave wrong, so he must be punished.”

Yu Zhi Yi nodded, agreeing in part, then asked evenly: “So, in your eyes, does the Yamen not exist?”

You Bing Yue stiffened: “?” [Who sends a servant from a Chancellor’s Manor to the Yamen? Is this woman out of her mind? What an act, pretending to be a pure, righteous little white flower.]

Seeing her thoughts plain as day, Yu Zhi Yi said calmly: “From start to finish, I never said we can kill house servants at will. Those words were yours. I only said I can handle them. There is a big difference between handling and killing. Young Master Du, the top scorer in the provincial exam, can tell the difference, right?”