The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 1 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Fingers

Upon returning to the Jade Pavilion, Maomao found herself subjected to scrupulous nursing. She was changed into fresh clothes and thrown into bed, not in the cramped room she usually occupied, but in a much larger spare room made up with a proper bed. After a bit of rest on this new silk bedding, Maomao thought of the straw mat on which she usually slept and felt like she had ascended from a bog into the clouds.

“I’ve taken medicine, and there’s nothing wrong with me physically,” she protested. By medicine she meant the emetic, but there was no need to say that.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You should have seen the minister who ate that food. I don’t care if you did get the stuff out of your system, there’s no way you’re fine and dandy,” Yinghua said, pressing a damp cloth to Maomao’s forehead with concern.

Stupid, stupid minister, Maomao thought. She wondered if he had really managed to get it all out with the first medication he was given, but her curiosity wasn’t going to win her freedom here. She resigned herself to this fact and closed her eyes.

It was an agonizingly long day.

Maomao must have been more tired than she thought, because it was almost noon when she woke up. That wasn’t good for a lady-in-waiting. She hopped out of bed and changed, then went looking for Hongniang.

No, wait. First...

Maomao went back to her own room to find the face powder she always used. Not the whitening powder everyone else was so concerned with, but the stuff that created the freckles on her face. Using a polished sheet of bronze as a mirror, she tapped the spots around her tattoos with her fingertip, paying special attention to the ones above her nose.

I’m absolutely not going out without my makeup again. It was just too much trouble to explain. It crossed Maomao’s mind that she could just pretend she had used makeup to hide her “freckles,” but the idea only embarrassed her. She would probably be expected to react like a blushing virgin every time somebody mentioned it.

Maomao’s stomach was rumbling, so she had one of the leftover mooncakes for a snack. She would have liked to wipe down her body, but she didn’t have the time. She made a beeline for where the others were working.

Hongniang was with Consort Gyokuyou, watching over Princess Lingli. She hardly looked away from the rather mobile young lady, moving her so that she stayed on the carpet, or supporting chairs so they wouldn’t fall as the princess used them to try to stand up. She seemed quite precocious.

“My sincere apologies for oversleeping,” Maomao said with a bow.

“Oversleeping? You should have taken the day off.” Gyokuyou put a hand to Maomao’s cheek, looking worried.

“Hardly, milady. If you have need of me, please call,” Maomao said—but she knew full well that she was rarely given any serious work to do and would probably be left alone.

“Your freckles...” Gyokuyou said, fixing immediately on the one thing Maomao least wanted her to notice.

“I feel much better with them. If milady doesn’t mind.”

“Yes, of course,” Gyokuyou said, letting the matter go much more readily than Maomao had expected. Maomao gave her a probing look, but Gyokuyou said: “Absolutely everyone wanted to know who that lady-in-waiting of mine was. I thought the questions would never end!”

“My apologies.”

Maomao suspected people didn’t look favorably on a serving girl who declared the presence of poison and then simply left a banquet of her own volition. Privately, she had even fretted over whether she would be punished for it, and she was relieved to discover no reprimand was forthcoming.

“At least with those freckles, people won’t recognize you right away. That might be for the best.”

Maomao had thought she’d been more subtle than that, but maybe she was wrong. Where had her mistake been?

“Oh, and something else. Gaoshun came by this morning looking for you. Will you see him? He looked like he had time on his hands, so I set him to weeding outside.”

Weeding?

True, it was the Emperor’s favorite consort dispensing the task, but then, Gaoshun was no serving girl. Or perhaps he had taken on the job voluntarily. Maomao had the impression Gaoshun ranked reasonably high in the hierarchy, but he also seemed something of a soft touch. She could see any number of ladies-in-waiting falling hard for him. She especially had the sense that Hongniang’s eyes lit up when Gaoshun was around. The chief lady-in-waiting was thirty or so, and despite her good looks, her considerable competence had the side effect of scaring off potential suitors.

“Might we borrow the sitting room?” Maomao asked.

“You may. I’ll have him summoned immediately,” Gyokuyou said, taking the princess from Hongniang, who left to go call Gaoshun. Maomao had been just about to follow her, but Gyokuyou stopped her with a hand, and directed her to the sitting room instead.

“Master Jinshi sends this, with his regards,” Gaoshun said promptly when he entered the room. He placed a cloth-wrapped package on the table. Maomao opened it to discover a silver bowl full of soup. Not the stuff Maomao had sampled, but the dish from which Consort Gyokuyou had been about to eat. He had refused her yesterday, but in the end, had been kind enough to provide it. He was being polite, but this was also, Maomao surmised, an order to investigate.

“Please don’t eat it,” Gaoshun said with a distinct look of concern.

“Perish the thought,” Maomao replied. But only because silver promotes rotting. Oxidized food was never tasty.

Gaoshun didn’t seem to realize she had her own reason for not drinking the soup. He watched her doubtfully. Maomao stared at the bowl, careful not to touch it directly. And she was staring at the bowl, not at the contents.

“Learning anything?” Gaoshun asked her.

“Did you touch this with your bare hands?”

“No. I only took out some of the contents with a spoon to ascertain whether they were in fact poisonous.”

Then he had wrapped it in a cloth to bring to Maomao, apparently leery of touching a bowl full of poison.

That caused Maomao to lick her lips in anticipation. “All right. Wait here a moment.” She left the sitting room and went to the kitchen, rifling through the shelves looking for something. Then she went back to the room in which she’d been sleeping earlier. She ducked her head toward the fancy bed, splitting the cloth at the seams and pulling out some of what was inside before going back to where Gaoshun was waiting. To his eyes, she was simply carrying some white powder in one hand and soft-looking padding in the other.

Maomao balled up the padding and dusted the powder—flour—on it. Then she tapped it gently against the silver bowl. Gaoshun peered at her curiously. “What’s this?” he asked, observing the marks that appeared on the bowl.

“Traces of human touch.”

Human fingers easily left prints on metal. Particularly silver. When she was young, Maomao’s father had daubed dyes on vessels she wasn’t supposed to touch, to stop her from getting into mischief. Her little trick with the flour just now was a stroke of inspiration born of that old memory, and even she was surprised how well it had worked. If the flour had been a little finer, the prints might even have been easier to make out.

“Silver vessels are always wiped down before use. They would be worthless if they were cloudy, after all.”

Several different sets of prints were evident on the bowl. From their position and size, it was possible to guess how the bowl had been held.

Even if the exact patterns of the prints aren’t quite visible.

“This bowl has been touched...” Maomao said, but then she stopped.

Gaoshun was too perceptive to miss the way she came up short. “Yes? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” There was no point clumsily trying to keep secrets from Gaoshun. Even if it would render her little charade of the day before meaningless. Maomao let out a small sigh. “This bowl has been touched by four people in all, I would guess.” She pointed to the differing patterns in the white dust, careful not to touch the surface herself. “One doesn’t touch the bowl while polishing it, so we can presume the prints belong to the person who doled out the soup, the one who served it, the Virtuous Consort’s food taster, and one more unidentified person.”

Gaoshun turned an intense look upon her. “Why the food taster?”

Maomao wanted this to end quietly, but it would all depend on how this taciturn man reacted. “It’s simple. Because I suspect the food taster deliberately switched the bowls.” She knew perfectly well what her mistress could and could not eat, and had changed the bowls on purpose. With malice aforethought. Maomao set the bowl down, an unpleasant look flashing across her face. “It’s a form of bullying.”

“Bullying,” Gaoshun repeated as if he couldn’t quite believe it. And who could blame him? For a lady-in-waiting to do such a thing to a high-ranking consort was unthinkable. Impossible.

“I see you aren’t certain,” Maomao said. If Gaoshun didn’t appear to wish to know, Maomao had no inclination to tell him. She didn’t like to speak from assumptions, after all. But she might have to, if she was to explain why the fingerprints of the lady-in-waiting were on this bowl. Maomao decided it would be better to give her honest opinion than to make any half-baked attempts to throw Gaoshun off the scent.

“Would you let me in on what you’re thinking?” Gaoshun asked, his arms crossed as he studied her.

“Very well, sir. Please understand that this is ultimately just speculation on my part.”

“That’s fine.”

To begin with, consider the unusual situation of Consort Lishu. She had become the concubine of the previous Emperor while still very young, and soon found herself becoming a nun when he died. Many women, especially the rich ones, were taught that it was their wifely duty to commit themselves totally, body and spirit, to their husbands. Though she may have understood the political reasoning, Lishu must have found it appallingly unvirtuous to be married to the son of her former spouse.

“Did you see what Consort Lishu was wearing at the garden party?” Maomao asked. The Virtuous Consort had been attired in a gaudy pink dress that seemed well above her station.

Gaoshun said nothing, suggesting her reputation was poor in the circles he ran in.

“It was... somewhat gauche, shall we say?” Maomao offered. But Consort Lishu’s attendants, for their part, had all been wearing clothes that were mostly white. “In any normal situation, the ladies-in-waiting would have collectively convinced their mistress to wear something more prudent, or else they would have coordinated their outfits with hers. Instead, what they did made Consort Lishu look like a clown.”

A lady-in-waiting was there to support her mistress. This was something Hongniang had drilled into Consort Gyokuyou’s other women. Yinghua had said something similar during the banquet. Something about wearing subdued clothing to make their mistress stand out all the more. With that in mind, the argument with Consort Lishu’s ladies-in-waiting about clothing took on a new aspect.

The Pure Consort’s ladies-in-waiting were reprimanding them for their unconscionable behavior.

The callow Lishu was at the mercy of her serving women, who must have flattered her and insisted the pink dress would look good on her. There was no doubt in Maomao’s mind. In the rear palace, all around were enemies; the only people one could trust were one’s ladies-in-waiting. And these had betrayed that trust to humiliate their mistress.

“And you believe they further switched the food purely in order to make Consort Lishu’s life more difficult?” Gaoshun said tentatively.

“Yes. Though funnily enough, it saved her.”

Poison came in many varieties. Some were quite strong, but showed no immediate effects. In other words, had the bowls not been switched, Lishu’s food taster would still have shown no ill effects, and the consort would probably have drunk the soup, presuming all was well.

I think that’s enough speculation for today. Maomao picked up the bowl again and pointed to the rim. “I suspect these are the fingerprints of whoever put the poison in here. Perhaps they pinched the rim of the bowl while they did so.”

One must never touch the rim of a food vessel—something else Hongniang had taught them. One’s fingers must not dirty anything that might be touched by the lips of some noble person.

“That’s my view of what happened,” Maomao said.

Gaoshun rubbed his chin and gazed at the bowl. “May I ask you one thing?”

“Yes, sir?” Maomao passed the vessel, still cradled in its cloth, back to Gaoshun.

“Why did you attempt to cover for that woman?” In contrast to Maomao’s strained expression, Gaoshun appeared downright curious.

“Compared to a consort,” Maomao said, “the life of a lady-in-waiting is all too cheap.” Particularly that of a food taster.

Gaoshun nodded easily as if he understood what she was saying. “I’ll make sure Master Jinshi understands the situation.”

“My thanks.” Maomao politely watched Gaoshun leave—and then she slumped into a chair. “Right. Right. I’ll have to thank her.”

Since she was kind enough to change them, after all.

Maomao really ought to have drunk it, she thought.

⭘⬤⭘

“...Such is how matters stand, sir,” Gaoshun said, concluding his report on what he had learned at the Jade Pavilion. Jinshi, who had been too busy to go himself, ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully. Papers were piled on his desk, and his chop was in his hand. In the whole administrative office, large but barren, only he and Gaoshun were present.

“I never cease to be impressed by what a fine talker you are,” Jinshi said.

“If you say so, sir,” his ever-intense aide said curtly.

“Whatever the case, it was clearly an inside job.”

“The circumstances would seem to suggest so,” Gaoshun said, furrowing his eyebrows. He always got right to the point.

Jinshi’s head hurt. He wanted to stop thinking. Among other aggravations, he’d had no time to sleep since the day before, nor even to change his clothes. It was enough to make him want to throw a temper tantrum.

“Your, ahem, poker face is slipping, sir.”

Jinshi’s usual sweet smile was gone. He wore a sullen look that honestly looked more appropriate for a man of his youth. And Gaoshun seemed to read him like a book.

“No one else is here. Does it really matter?” His minder was always so strict.

“I am here.”

“You don’t count.”

“Yes, I do.”

Jinshi had hoped the joke would get him out of this, but Gaoshun, serious and diligent, never did have a sense of humor at the right times. What a burden it was to have someone minding your every move from the day you were born.

“You’re still wearing your hair stick,” Gaoshun said, pointing to his head.

“Oh. Crap.” Jinshi didn’t usually talk that way. “It was fairly well hidden. I doubt anyone noticed.” Jinshi pulled out the stick to reveal an accessory of considerable craftsmanship. It was carved in the shape of the mythical qilin, a sort of cross between a deer and a horse. It was said to be the chief of the sacred beasts, and the right to wear its likeness was conferred only upon those of considerable rank.

“Here. Keep it somewhere safe.” Jinshi tossed the stick nonchalantly at Gaoshun.

“Be careful with that. It’s immensely important.”

“I understand.”

“You certainly don’t.”

And then, having gotten in the last word, the man who had been responsible for Jinshi for well nigh sixteen years left the office. Jinshi, still comporting himself like a child, laid down across the desk. He still had so much work to do. He needed to hurry up and make some free time for himself.

“All right, let’s get to it.” He gave a great stretch and picked up his brush. In order to have too much time on his hands, first he had to finish his work.