Chapter Twenty-One: Wedding Woes
Is the famously tomboyish princess of the South Land truly ready for marriage?
Cloaks of thick fog stretched out their hazy folds, softly blurring his vision. Dimly from above, the faint sounds of voices formed words in a familiar tongue, yet nevertheless, he found himself struggling to decipher each syllable spoken. As his groggy mind made feeble efforts at swimming back into consciousness, he slowly opened his eyes and blinked against the sudden invasion of candlelight.
Sun Ce groaned and sat up, rubbing at his strangely sore head. His features worked themselves into a questioning look, when he realized that most of the officers of Wu were hovering around him and peering anxiously at his face.
"What happened?" the Little Conqueror wanted to know, pushing away strands of dark russet hair which had fallen into his eyes.
His answer came promptly, when Sun Quan raised an eyebrow before replying in a dry tone, "You fainted, and I had to take your place in the brother versus groom tournament!"
Sun Ce brightened up as he remembered the duel, conveniently glossing over his own embarrassing conduct upon finding out that the bratty pageboy, "Ren Er," was none other than his own little sister.
"Oh, right, the tournament! How'd we do against Lord Liu Bei and Ren—ah, Little Sis?" he asked eagerly.
In response, Sun Quan heaved a mournful sigh. After fidgeting around for a couple of seconds, he finally coughed up the answer: "Look over there."
Sun Ce obeyed, turning his head in the direction his younger brother had nodded toward. He promptly caught an eyeful of a bare-chested Zhou Yu getting his torso bandaged up, while at the same time trying to discourage the overzealous nurse from ripping the rest of his clothes off—specifically, his pants—just to make sure that poor little Gongjin hadn't gotten any other boo-boos.
With a grimace, Sun Ce turned his eyes away from the spectacle. His headache was killing him…Apparently, when he'd fainted from the shock of seeing Ren Er unveil the Sol Chakrams, both of his tonfas had managed to accidentally topple onto his forehead.
Or, perhaps, seeing the curious smirk on Sun Quan's face, it hadn't been an accident at all.
Sun Ce shook his head as if to clear it, while remarking in an effort to find the silver lining in this stormy matchmaking cloud, "Well, at least our troubles are over now—by fighting alongside Lord Liu Bei, the little brat is showing that she's consenting to this marriage alliance!"
Xiao Feng, or Phoenix, had been chosen as captain of Sun Shang Xiang's elite female bodyguards for many solid reasons: among the lady warriors of Wu, she was second only to her princess in her fighting prowess. She was also well-versed in battle tactics and could recite whole passages out of The Art of War from memory, and, at age twenty-two, was the oldest officer out of the entire unit.
Not included among the reasons for her well-earned promotion, however, was a single drop of understanding of the more feminine arts.
Under the stilted, uncertain leadership of Phoenix, Sun Shang Xiang's bewildered bodyguards could be found darting from one room to another in the princess's courts. Some were gingerly trying to pick up pieces of the bridal attire without ripping the delicate silk, others frantically ran about in search of all the strings of pearls that would make up the elaborate feng huang(1) headdress. The unluckiest of the troop, banished to the palace gardens to gather the showiest, most fragrant flowers, could be heard grumbling and cursing out loud each time they pricked their fingers on one feisty little thorn or another.
The princess herself sat before her mirror, still dressed in the uniform of a humble pageboy. Reaching up with one hand, she carefully undid the scarf that had been knotted tightly around her forehead, keeping any telltale locks of short auburn hair in check. One of her little troopers brought over a bronze basin of water and set it in front of her, and she proceeded to scoop a handful of the cold liquid and applied it to her face. Under the cleansing powers of water, Ren Er's dusky façade magically vanished, to be replaced by the smoother, fairer features of Sun Shang Xiang.
Meanwhile, her fighting handmaids started gathering uncertainly around their young mistress, each armed with such alien weapons as brocades and perfumes and hair ornaments dangling with strings of tiny, perfectly carved rubies.
"Princess, I apologize in advance," Phoenix spoke up boldly.
And then, at her crisp hand signal, the bodyguards under her command moved forward to transform Sun Shang Xiang into a suitable bride.
Tomboys all, these promptly proceeded to do an even worse job of dressing up their mistress than she herself, masquerading as Ren Er, had done to Liu Bei. Sun Shang Xiang winced when she felt a jade chai being stuck inexpertly into her too-short-for-ornaments hair, but was able to shake off the stab of pain due to her training as a warrior.
However, there was one sensation that she wasn't able to dismiss with quite so much ease.
"I think the red robe is on backwards," she observed, at the same time that one of her bodyguards, struggling to find a suitable place to stick a feathered hair ornament, accidentally stomped on the princess's feet.
Phoenix frowned, and looked up from where she'd been struggling to figure out how to tie a particularly complex, flower-shaped knot.
"Which red robe?" the young captain asked.
"One of the seven or eight layers that you just piled onto me," Sun Shang Xiang replied, somewhat testily.
This only drew a helpless shrug of the shoulders from Phoenix, before she hastily untangled her fingers from the string that she'd been trying to weave into a blossom for the past fifteen minutes. A quick comparison between the portrait of a perfect bride and the flesh-and-blood bride seething before her provided little help; as far as the captain's inexperienced eyes could tell, no piece of garment appeared out of place.
"Su Lin." She motioned over another bodyguard, and when the latter appeared, Phoenix plucked up one of Sun Shang Xiang's majestically flowing sleeves. "Does this look like it's been put on backwards?"
The equally tomboyish Su Lin responded with a blank look.
"What does it matter, anyway? The majority of the guests will be men, and save for General Zhou Yu, none of them will be able to tell the difference," she pointed out helpfully, at the same time trying to light some incense and nearly burning her eyebrows off in the process.
As Su Lin screeched and hopped back, Phoenix returned her attention to the troublesome wedding dress, holding up the sleeves and critically examining the embroidery to determine whether it truly was on backwards. Sun Shang Xiang also craned her neck for a better view of her figure, virtually hidden underneath excessive layers of satiny scarlet.
"I think you're ready," Phoenix told her young mistress, hastily setting about smoothing out any wrinkles in the latter's flowery wedding ensemble.
Seconds later, the unmistakable sound of ripping silk rang out across the room.
Liu Bei choked and began coughing, as two hoyden bodyguards of Sun Shang Xiang's got so carried away with burning incense that soon the entire room was virtually puffing with fragrant smoke. It was just the Shu king's good fortune to have gotten twin sisters Jing Mei and Ying Mei as his attendants. Ren Er had excused himself shortly after the duel, and Xi Tian had retired to follow his generals to the location of the wedding ceremony and prevent their accidentally ripping, burning, or mangling their delicate brocade garments to shreds during the short walk there.
To take the place of Liu Bei's first two valets, Phoenix had generously drafted for him two replacements whose pitiful lack of knowledge of all things feminine—even by Sun Shang Xiang's standards—had gotten them kicked out of the bride-to-be's court.
Thankfully for Liu Bei, the rapidly approaching noise and din of festive music soon signaled his departure from his chamber for the wedding location itself…and his rescue from the two incompetent handmaids. The noble leader dropped polite bows at Jing Mei and Ying Mei, who, with their incessant incense burning, had almost ensured his death by asphyxiation before he could even meet his bride. Then, tugging his clothes into place, Liu Bei escaped out of his court.
He was promptly met by a parade of garish dancing lions and dragons. Firecrackers shot off into the night sky, exploding into bright stars of color. Overexcited small children everywhere laughed shrilly and recklessly threw rice, red beans, candied peanuts, and even their own hair ornaments and other such trinkets into the air. Before Liu Bei could blink from astonishment, a tidal wave of well-wishers had swarmed about him to escort him to his wedding.
Among this eclectic mob of musicians, children, and guests were the two princes of Wu, with Zhou Yu following closely at their heels. Sun Ce recklessly straight-armed people out of the way in an effort to force out a safe path for the groom-to-be, and soon enough, the trio managed to rescue the hapless Liu Bei, lost in a sea of costumed bodies and wafting incense.
"We'll have to hurry; Pop's been waiting for hours, and my mom's already expecting her first grandchild!" Sun Ce hollered into Liu Bei's ear.
Liu Bei, his senses assaulted by the combined cacophony of merry wedding music, firecrackers going off, and the gleeful screams of children, could barely make out a word of what Sun Ce had just bawled out.
"Excuse me?" he shouted back apologetically.
"We have to hurry!" Sun Ce repeated.
"I'm sorry; I can't hear you!" Liu Bei yelled.
"Hurry, my mom's expecting her first grandchild!" Sun Ce yodeled unconcernedly.
Unfortunately for the twenty-six-year-old prince, however, a dead silence abruptly settled over the noisy guests immediately after the words "mom" and "grandchild" left his lips.
While Sun Ce blushed, the crowd pulled apart, neatly and respectfully making way for a newly-arrived vehicle—a red bridal sedan, resplendent with the brightest jewels of the South and decorated with the phoenix and the dragon, symbolic of marriage and unity.
Sun Shang Xiang had arrived. Granted, she was a little bit tardy for her own wedding procession, and the rows of handmaids helping her out of her palanquin did look like they were sweltering to death beneath their varicolored silks and satins…but at least the bride was now present.
Just to make sure she really was the princess of Wu, however, and not some male stand-in, Zhou Yu swept the crowds with a discreet look to make sure Lu Xun was among the guests present.
1. Phoenix, a symbol of marriage, among other things, in the Chinese culture.