The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Rear Palace Redux

I used to think I didn’t like this place, but I guess I was wrong, Maomao thought with surprise. She was finding life in the rear palace, now that she was finally back, quite congenial. She’d grown up in another place full of women, so maybe the rear palace simply clicked with her.

Her days once again consisted of tasting food, mixing medicines, and taking little walks. Her leg still wasn’t healed, and she’d been given explicit instructions not to go out too much, but in her opinion she was fine so long as she avoided anything strenuous that might open the wound again. Frankly, her left arm proved she was nowhere near so delicate.

The question of Gyokuyou’s pregnancy still wasn’t definitively settled. When she had been pregnant with Princess Lingli, she hadn’t suffered from any severe morning sickness, and her food preferences had hardly changed. Other than the delay in her menstruation, there was no evidence one way or the other.

Nonetheless, a gag order was imposed on the Jade Pavilion, so as not to take any chances. If there were any who didn’t wish to see Consort Gyokuyou with child, they would certainly want to strike during the early stages, when the pregnancy would be most vulnerable. Poison was just one of many concerns.

For good measure, the sex-crazed old man (i.e., the Emperor) was discouraged from nocturnal activities at the Jade Pavilion for the time being. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but ever since Consort Gyokuyou had begun to put the things she learned at the consorts’ seminar into practice, “normal” no longer seemed to apply. There was no telling what might happen.

Maybe I should have taken it a little easier on the lessons, Maomao thought. But, no. Then Gyokuyou and even the Emperor would have wound up dissatisfied. Even if the end result of her approach had been to terrify Consort Lishu and cause Consort Lihua’s women to view Maomao as even more of a monster.

Maomao naturally hesitated to raise the subject with the Emperor herself—it was hardly something for a maid to bring up with His Majesty—so she communicated through Jinshi instead. Though she couldn’t quite make the suggestion explicitly, her hope was that the ruler would continue to visit Gyokuyou exactly as often as he had before, no more and no less. After all, while Gyokuyou wasn’t His Majesty’s only consort, if he were to suddenly visit her less often, some observant soul might sniff out the truth.

To her surprise, the Emperor continued to visit as faithfully as he ever had, playing with his adorable daughter and passing the time in idle conversation with Gyokuyou. Maomao was reminded, as she had been by Ah-Duo’s story, that perhaps she shouldn’t dismiss the Emperor as simply sex-crazed. Or again, perhaps His Majesty grasped the implications of his actions better than she gave him credit for. Some people regarded the current ruler as a sort of sage-king, and while some of this was because almost anyone would have looked competent after the buffoon that the previous emperor had been, Maomao did believe that the current ruler had his wits about him.

Not that it really matters to me, she thought. As long as he let life go on and didn’t exact outrageous taxes, she was happy. Some said the real difference between a foolish ruler and a brilliant one was that a foolish ruler thought the people were inexhaustible, while a brilliant one realized that they had their limits. If that was so, well, the present Emperor was certainly the latter. Still, she saw the lonesome faces he occasionally pulled, so she decided to pass along the rest of her teaching materials. They would help him pass the time, if nothing else. (It needn’t be said exactly what kind of teaching materials they were.) She’d made sure to have a number of different books on hand, just in case, but unfortunately none of the ladies-in-waiting had been interested in them.

He’ll just have to make do with two dimensions... Maomao placed the materials where they would be unobtrusive but noticeable, and luckily it seemed he spotted them.

When, a few days later, she was ordered to prepare more such “materials,” she decided that maybe “sex-crazed” was the right way to describe him after all.

There was a penchant for rumormongering in the rear palace, most likely attributable to the boredom generated by the endless routine and the perennial shortage of the opposite sex. Thus when the ladies-in-waiting didn’t have much to do, they found themselves chatting in the kitchen. For snacks they had the castoffs from the latest tea party—today it was longxutang, dragon’s beard candy, a treat made of delicate fibers that melted in the mouth. This one had tea leaves mixed in, giving it a faint aroma.

“I couldn’t believe that outfit, could you?” Yinghua, one of the Jade Pavilion’s ladies-in-waiting, said around a mouthful of candy. She was a self-possessed woman, more than willing to say what she thought.

“It’s true. But that thing she wore a little while ago, I thought that was nice. Western clothing is so cool, isn’t it?” said Guiyuan in a mild tone. She was smiling, happy just to be enjoying a sweet treat.

“Clothes like that choose their own wearers,” Ailan observed. “But hers have never looked bad on her.” The lanky lady-in-waiting wasn’t big on sweets and was simply sipping some tea at the moment.

Yinghua, looking wounded by her friends’ faithlessness, turned to her last refuge, Maomao. “Yeah, sure,” Maomao said, nodding and privately thinking how she hated to get dragged into these spats. That was as far as her engagement in the conversation went.

Yinghua, her hopes of reinforcement disappointed, puffed out her cheeks. “Well, I thought Consort Ah-Duo was much cooler.” She took an angry sip of tea without ever pulling her cheeks back in. Guiyuan and Ailan grinned at each other.

“Well! It turns out you were on Team Ah-Duo all this time, Yinghua!”

“I—I was not!” Yinghua exclaimed.

Ailan just smirked. “You don’t have to hide it. I know we serve Lady Gyokuyou, but no one would blame you for feeling the way you do.”

“I don’t feel that way!”

Maomao listened to the girls chatter as she drank the rest of her tea. She much preferred savory treats; the cottony candy was too sweet for her. She would have loved to have some salty rice crackers to refresh her palate.

As for who exactly Yinghua and the other girls were talking about, it was the newly arrived consort, Loulan. She had one unusual quality, which was more than enough to inspire conversation. Which quality? Her clothes. Virtually every time she appeared, she wore an outfit with a different personality. One day she might be in a western dress; the next, she would be outfitted like a rider from one of the tribes.

I wonder what the story is, Maomao thought. Maybe she just had too much money. If she kept changing outfits at that pace, pretty soon her pavilion would be crammed with clothing. The formerly austere Garnet Pavilion had already changed beyond recognition, as if the new resident were intent on banishing the spirit of Ah-Duo.

It was both the right and the wrong thing to do. On the one hand, the rear palace was a world in which one got ahead by standing out; but on the other, the nail that stuck up, as they said, would be pounded down. Loulan might have found herself to be such a nail under normal circumstances, but her father was an important advisor from the days of the former emperor, so there was, as it were, no hammer big enough for the job.

That explains a lot, Maomao thought. That would be more than enough reason to drive Ah-Duo out. Considering Loulan’s age, it might even have seemed a bit belated.

Then Maomao had a thought. Might it not have been more convenient in some ways for the Emperor had Ah-Duo remained in the rear palace? Because she could never be a mother of the country, her eyes were fixed straight ahead; she was so perceptive and intelligent one might wish she had been born a man. And now, at a stroke, the Emperor had lost an excellent advisor and gained a young woman who might influence not only the rear palace but the greater court itself. Perhaps it hadn’t seemed to him the most advantageous trade.

He couldn’t simply ignore her, but it wouldn’t necessarily be to his benefit to get too friendly with Loulan and have her conceive a child. A consort’s backer was really only powerful during a child’s minority. Once the boy became emperor—even had a child of his own—such a person could find himself altogether extraneous.

So what did that mean? Maomao entertained the possibilities as she helped herself to another cupful from the little teapot.