The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Blue Roses

The cold was gradually loosening its grip on the world, and the first hints of spring were in the air. As Maomao stood out drying some bedding, she felt like she might succumb to the temptation of the warm, pleasant sun, but she shook her head (Mustn’t sleep on the job!) and forced herself to focus on her work.

Time did pass quickly when one’s days were full and satisfying. Even though somehow, the two months she had spent in Jinshi’s employ had felt interminably long.

She still longed sometimes for the larded shelves of medicines in the outer-palace physician’s office, but she could rectify that issue here; she could work through the quack doctor to get the rear palace medical office up to speed. Meanwhile, she could lean on Gaoshun to get her anything she needed from the archives. It would have been even better if she could have left the rear palace at will, but, well, one couldn’t have everything. So long as she was serving there, she couldn’t expect to come and go as she pleased.

Consort Gyokuyou’s pregnancy was becoming more and more certain. Her menses still hadn’t resumed, and now she was experiencing fatigue as well. Her temperature was slightly elevated, and it seemed she was evacuating more often than usual. Princess Lingli would occasionally put her cheek to Gyokuyou’s belly and grin, as if to intimate that she knew there was something in there.

Can babies tell? Maomao wondered. Lingli was waving bye-bye to Gyokuyou’s belly as Hongniang took her away for her afternoon nap.

Children were most mysterious creatures.

The princess had begun to toddle around on her own; the Emperor gave Lingli a pair of little red shoes, while she in turn gave the ladies-in-waiting their share of headaches. She had become more expressive as well; if you gave her a nice, soft bun, she would smile broadly in return. The ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion had no children of their own but apparently did have the maternal instinct, for they doted endlessly on the little princess.

Hongniang became given to saying “Perhaps I’ll have one of my own sooner or later,” but the other women, including Maomao, weren’t sure how to respond. Hongniang looked concerned when she said this, yet no one expected the devoted head lady-in-waiting to retire from her post. Even had a suitable offer come along, the other women would most likely have done anything to stop Hongniang from leaving. It was she who allowed the Jade Pavilion to function with such a small staff.

Ah, being too talented could have challenges of its own.

Maomao took to entertaining Princess Lingli when she had no other work to do. The injury to her leg was another factor. Rather than having the busy and able-bodied other ladies-in-waiting watch the princess on top of all their other duties, wasn’t it more efficient to have the woman with nothing to do but taste food look after her?

Thus, on this day, Maomao found herself once more playing with Princess Lingli, who was making piles of wooden blocks (purposely constructed with light materials) and then knocking them down. She also showed some interest in illustrated books, so Maomao would copy the pictures out of books she got Gaoshun to borrow for her, writing the words below each one. Lingli was still just two years old, but Maomao had heard it was never too early to get them started. Sadly, Hongniang put a premature end to her educational efforts when she confiscated the pictures.

“Draw flowers like a normal person,” she instructed, pointing to the flowers in the courtyard. Apparently, no matter how excellent the renderings might have been, pictures of poisonous mushrooms were off-limits.

That was how Maomao passed the time until, one day, a gorgeous eunuch appeared for the first time in quite a while, bringing trouble with him.

“Blue roses, sir?” Maomao asked, looking at the eunuch with some fatigue.

“Oh, yes. Everyone’s quite interested, you see.”

Jinshi looked like he was in something of a bind. To the palace women, he looked beautiful even in his distress, and at this moment, three pairs of eyes were watching through the crack in the door. Maomao chose to ignore them. Shortly thereafter, Hongniang, looking rather exasperated herself, grabbed the owners of the eyes—quite nimbly, we might add; two with her right hand, one with her left—by the ears and dragged them away. Maomao chose to ignore that too.

“Such capable handling,” Gaoshun commented, a remark Maomao would keep to herself.

Back to the subject at hand.

“Everyone would like to admire some of these flowers,” Jinshi said. And for some reason, he was the one who was supposed to come up with them.

I knew this was going to be trouble, Maomao thought.

“You want me to find some?” she asked.

“I thought you might know something about them.”

“I’m an apothecary, not a botanist.”

“It just seemed like something that might be in your wheelhouse...” Jinshi offered weakly.

“Oh, very convincing, sir,” Consort Gyokuyou said gaily from where she was lounging on a couch. The princess was beside her, sipping on some juice.

Someone somewhere (Jinshi professed not to know who) had suggested that one of Gyokuyou’s ladies might know something about the subject. That at least explained why he was here.

Was it the quack? Maomao wondered. It wasn’t impossible. The good-natured old fart had a bad habit of overestimating the abilities of others. It was profoundly frustrating.

Maomao wasn’t entirely bereft of knowledge about roses. She knew the petals yielded an oil that served as a skin beautifier—the courtesans had used it periodically. She had earned herself some pocket change by steaming the petals of wild roses, with their powerful aroma, to make the stuff.

“I’m given to understand such flowers once bloomed on the palace grounds,” Jinshi said, folding his arms. Hongniang, evidently done disciplining the three eavesdroppers, entered with fresh tea.

“Someone was seeing things, surely.” Arrgh, my calf itches, Maomao thought. Her wound was driving her crazy as it healed. Small blessings: her feet were hidden under the table, so she could scratch it with the toes of her other foot. But somehow, that seemed to inspire itches elsewhere.

“I only heard one person say it, but upon investigation I discovered a number of people who testified to it.” Jinshi’s expression was hard to read.

“Was opium ever widely used here?”

“It would be the end of the damn country if the likes of opium got around!”

Consort Gyokuyou and Hongniang looked at Jinshi, wide-eyed at the sudden change of tone. Gaoshun furrowed his brow and coughed politely. The anger lingered on Jinshi’s face for another beat, but the next second, the celestial smile had returned. Maomao looked at him almost pleadingly. She just didn’t deal well with that smile. Gyokuyou was watching them with considerable amusement, though Maomao herself wasn’t amused in the least.

“Can’t you possibly?” Jinshi said.

Yeesh! Personal space! Maomao thought. He kept leaning in, but she didn’t want him any closer than he already was. Finally, she heaved a sigh. “What is it you want me to do, sir?”

“I’d like them to be ready by the garden party next month.”

It was time for the spring party. Had it really been that long since the last one? Maomao’s emotions were just threatening to get the better of her when she had a thought. Huh? Next month?

“Master Jinshi, were you aware?”

“Of what?” He looked at her, curious.

He didn’t understand. Of course not. There wouldn’t be blue roses, and couldn’t be blue roses, and it wasn’t a problem of color.

“It’s going to be at least two more months before any roses come into bloom.”

His silence was her proof: he’d had no idea. Of course. She was starting to get one of her bad feelings. He was going to press the matter, and she wasn’t going to like it.

“I’ll turn them down...somehow.” Jinshi’s shoulders slumped.

“May I ask you one thing, sir?” Maomao said. Jinshi looked at her hopefully. “Would this request happen to have come from a certain military commander?” It was the only thing she could think of, considering the circumstances. That would explain the itching, she thought. She’d had her suspicions; and her body had reacted in a show of absolute denial of this name she didn’t wish to hear.

“Indeed. Laka—”

Jinshi slapped his hands over his mouth before he could get the name out. Gyokuyou and Hongniang looked at him, mystified.

He was speaking, of course, about him.

No way around it, then, Maomao thought. If he was involved, then she bore a certain responsibility.

“I don’t know if I can help you,” she said, “but I’ll try.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. But there are a few things—and a place—that I’ll need.”

It would have been too infuriating simply to run away from the challenge. She would have liked nothing better than to snatch the monocle off that leering face and smash it.

○●○

The spring garden party would take place among the peonies. It would ordinarily have been held a little earlier, but people kept complaining about the cold, so it had been moved back. Maybe they should have done that sooner, but precedent was a hard thing to change.

A red carpet had been laid out and long tables surrounded by chairs set up in the garden. The musical performers restlessly tuned their instruments, ready to start anytime they were needed. Women rushed back and forth making sure everything was in order, while young military men stroked their as-yet underdeveloped beards and enjoyed the sight.

A curtain had been set up behind them all as a blind, and someone behind it was making a fuss. A slim girl—practically emaciated, in fact—was holding a giant vase of flowers. Cradled in it were colorful roses—even though it was still too early in the year for them.

“You really did it,” Jinshi said, gazing at the roses, whose buds had not yet opened. The flowers were red and yellow, and white, and pink, and yes, blue—as well as black, purple, and even green. When Maomao had promised to try to create blue roses, no one had imagined this panoply of colors. Jinshi was set back on his heels, wondering how she had done it.

“I can tell you, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t even get them to bloom,” Maomao said with genuine regret. She wasn’t sorry to have come up short for Jinshi so much as she was disappointed not to have been able to make things go exactly as she had envisioned them. Jinshi already knew she was like that—but it still irked him.

It irked him so much.

“No, this will be just fine.” He picked up a rose, water dribbling from its stem. “Hm?” Something seemed off. For the moment, though, he didn’t care; he put the rose back in the vase.

He remained surprised that, though she had only agreed to blue roses, Maomao had produced a veritable rainbow. However she had done it, she looked like she might collapse from sheer fatigue. He entrusted her to the care of the ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion, while he took the vase and set it by the seat of honor. Even as buds, not blossoms, the roses were more than enough to steal the peonies’ thunder; everyone seemed to notice them, and everyone was amazed.

Murmurs spread among the gathered officials, along with some derisive snorts: this wasn’t possible.

Jinshi was a eunuch in His Majesty’s good graces. What was more, though he understood that it sounded like hubris to say it, he knew that his looks were enough to take most anyone’s breath away. But for all that, he still had his enemies. One would have to be all but bereft of ambition to enjoy the prospect of a young eunuch throwing his weight around with the Emperor—and most officials were anything but. Jinshi never let his nymph-like smile slide, making sure his posture was perfectly straight as he approached the dais. The Emperor with his prodigious beard sat there, surrounded by beautiful women.

The gazes that focused on Jinshi concealed many different thoughts and feelings. Lust was fine by him—there were endless ways to use it. Jealousy likewise. Very simple to exploit. Whatever someone might be feeling, so long as you knew what it was, there were ways to handle it.

Far more problematic when a person was hard to read. Jinshi looked at the official who sat to the Emperor’s left. Full cheeks—and eyes that never gave away what he was thinking. If Jinshi was a little uncomfortable around him, who could blame him?

As far as this man was concerned, Jinshi was just a young upstart, and a eunuch at that. At one moment, he could seem to be studying Jinshi intently; the next, it was as if he were looking at empty air. The man’s smile was ambiguous, defying exact interpretation.

He was Shishou, the father of one of the consorts currently at the rear palace—Loulan. He’d had the Imperial affection during the previous reign—not of the emperor, but of his mother, the empress dowager—and he continued to lord it over the current ruler.

It was not a good thing.

Even so, Jinshi never let his smile slip...

At least, not intentionally.

Then his gaze went from Shishou on the Emperor’s left to the man sitting to the Emperor’s right, and their eyes met. This man wore a monocle in one of his fox-like eyes, and he was eating a chicken wing with no concern for decorum. He seemed to think he was being subtle about it, but he would take a bite, stash the food in his sleeve, then take another little bite before concealing it again.

At the moment, this was the man Jinshi considered most dangerous—Lakan. He appeared to be studying the head of the high official standing beside him. Then, as if the chicken wing wasn’t bad enough, he reached over and plucked away the official’s cap. What could he be thinking?

For some reason, a wad of black fluff was attached to the cap’s underside. Lakan feigned a look of astonishment. When they realized they could see the man’s bare head, three officials across from him fell silent.

It was a cruel prank, exposing the man’s (admittedly well-made) wig. A few people chuckled at the childish mischief, some were openly exasperated, and a few had their hands full trying to control a rush of anger. Jinshi wasn’t the only one who couldn’t maintain an impassive expression.

It wouldn’t do for him to burst into laughter, however, so he somehow mastered his face and instead knelt on the carpet. He offered the vase of roses to the Emperor, who stroked his beard and nodded with undisguised pleasure. Jinshi prevented himself from sighing as he respectfully withdrew.

Lakan inspected the roses theatrically, this time with a dried grape in his fingers. Jinshi couldn’t help wondering why nothing ever came of his failures of civility.

○●○

“You mustn’t go to the Crystal Pavilion anymore.”

Maomao’s head rested on Yinghua’s knees. They were in an open-air pavilion some distance from the banquet. Yinghua had been quite worried about Maomao, and was keeping a close eye on her.

With her pregnancy beginning to show, Consort Gyokuyou had excused herself from this event on the pretext that she was giving her place to Loulan, the new Pure Consort for whom this was in effect a public debut.

Why had Maomao grown so gaunt as to alarm Yinghua? It seemed every time she went to the Crystal Pavilion, she ended up ravaged by fatigue.

That was where she had been for the past month or so; she’d had Jinshi make the arrangements. The ladies-in-waiting of the Crystal Pavilion continued to look at her as if they thought she was some sort of evil spirit, but she paid them no mind. There was something she needed there in order to make her blue roses.

The “place” she had requested of Jinshi was the Crystal Pavilion’s sauna, which she’d asked to have built when Consort Lihua had been convalescing. Maomao knew that despite the consort’s high status, Lihua could be a very generous person, so she’d figured it couldn’t hurt to ask if she might borrow the bath. And indeed, Lihua had agreed without hesitation.

Maomao still felt bad using the place for free, though, so she’d brought along a book she’d recently obtained from the Verdigris House. “This is His Majesty’s favorite reading material,” she said as she gave it to Lihua. The Emperor had requested new and different “texts,” so one of them might as well come from Lihua.

When the consort realized what kind of book it was, she calmly put it away in her private chambers, maintaining her elegant demeanor the entire time. Her ladies-in-waiting whispered among themselves as they watched their lady go to her room. Maomao regarded them with a detached gaze; no one would ever imagine that such an aristocratic woman would have a book like that tucked in her sleeve.

Having thus earned the goodwill of the mistress of the house, Maomao received permission to construct a small shed in the courtyard, into which the steam from the sauna would flow. The building looked rather strange: it had large windows, including one right on the roof. Like the sauna itself, it was expensive—well, expensive for Jinshi, who paid for it out of his own purse. No skin off Maomao’s nose. Still, she couldn’t help wondering just how much of a salary he must draw to afford things like this.

Into the building she brought roses. Not just one, or a few, but dozens, hundreds. She cultivated them amidst the warmth from the steam, making sure they got plenty of light and taking them outside when the weather was good. On any evening cold enough to threaten frost, she would stay up with the flowers all night, pouring water over hot stones to keep them warm.

More than once, all the to-ing and fro-ing caused the wound on her leg to open. When Gaoshun discovered this, he insisted on assigning another maid to be Maomao’s minder. Xiaolan, of all people, was the one who arrived. (How had Gaoshun known about her?) It had proven simple enough to motivate Xiaolan: when she found out that not only would she get to skip her chores but be given snacks, too, she was thrilled to do it. She was probably the one thing that kept Maomao from collapsing from overwork.

Maomao’s goal in all this elaborate maneuvering was to confuse the roses. Flowers bloom according to their season, but once in a while, for whatever reason, they can be seen to bloom at a different time of year. That was what Maomao was hoping for: to trick the roses into thinking it was time to bloom.

She’d brought in the massive number of plants on the understanding that not every one would put out buds. She’d picked a species that bloomed on the early side, and not every rose in her collection was of the same variety. With just a month to work, she couldn’t guarantee success—so she was overjoyed when she saw the first buds. She’d known that would be the real challenge, far more difficult than achieving the right color. She’d gotten several eunuch helpers from Jinshi, but the subtleties of maintaining the correct temperature were something she alone could oversee. If there was the slightest mistake and the roses died, it would all be for naught.

From time to time, the women of the Crystal Pavilion would hover around, either out of open curiosity, or a desire to test their nerve against the sheer fright of seeing Maomao. They began to get on her nerves, so Maomao decided to arrange for something else to hold their attention. But what? The idea came to her when she was staring at her fingers, considering what to do.

She took some rouge and painted it on her fingernails, then buffed it carefully with a cloth. It was a simple manicure, the sort of thing they did all the time in the pleasure district, but it was uncommon in the rear palace. Such decoration would get in the way of work—but it immediately drew the interest of the ladies of the Crystal Pavilion, who didn’t do much work to begin with. Maomao made sure the other women “happened” to catch sight of her nails, sending them scrambling to their own rooms to dig out their rouge.

That worked out very nicely, Maomao thought, and then she had a very slightly naughty idea. She decided to suggest a manicure to Consort Lihua as well.

The rear palace had its own trends, and the trendsetters were frequently the ladies who had the eye of the Emperor. And since even a maid, if she became His Majesty’s bedmate, could be elevated to the status of consort, it was only natural that the women of the rear palace should all want to imitate anything that might please the Emperor.

At the moment, it was unquestionably Loulan who was at the cutting edge of fashion in the rear palace, but she changed her clothes so often that none of her looks could take hold as a genuine trend. When Maomao went back to the Jade Pavilion to do Gyokuyou’s food tasting, she showed her manicure to the Precious Consort and the other ladies-in-waiting. Hongniang was vociferous about the inefficiency of it, but the others were all very impressed.

Wish I had some balsam plants or woodsorrel. Balsam, which was sometimes simply referred to as “nail reddener,” could be ground up together with woodsorrel (sometimes called “cat’s paw” in Maomao’s language) and applied to the fingernails. The woodsorrel helped bring out the red color of the balsam.

About the same time a craze for manicures began to take hold in the rear palace, the buds of the roses started to swell and then put forth blossoms, a profusion of white petals. All the roses Maomao had chosen were white.

“What in the world did you do?” Jinshi asked as he came back after presenting the flowers. There was a deep furrow in his brow and Gaoshun, behind him, looked equally intrigued. Yinghua had gone, dismissed by Jinshi. Although Maomao was publicly Consort Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting, Jinshi was still technically her direct employer.

“I dyed them.”

“Dyed them? But there’s nothing on them,” Jinshi said, plucking at a petal.

“Not on the outside,” Maomao said. “I dyed them from the inside.” She picked up one of the blue roses and pointed to where the stem was cut. Droplets of blue liquid clung to it.

She had put the white roses in colored water. It was as simple as that. The flowers absorbed the water, color and all, through their stems, dying the petals a whole rainbow of hues. However, when they were arranged in a vase together, all the flowers except the white ones had to be specially treated, lest the colors mingle together and turn the blossoms an unpleasant black.

Thus, although the roses appeared to be arranged all in a single vase, the base of each stem had been padded with a bit of cotton impregnated with color and secured with oil paper. Maomao had left the paper there until the moment the flowers were to be presented.

That really was all there was to it.

The gimmick being so simple, it was conceivable that somebody might figure it out and say something, but Maomao had a way of dealing with that too. The night before the banquet, when His Majesty visited the Jade Pavilion, she had told him exactly what she had done. Everyone likes to be the first to learn a secret, and with the pleasure of having been let in on the game, His Majesty seemed apt to remain in good spirits no matter what anyone said to him.

Jinshi, it seemed, had withdrawn before the Emperor had a chance to tell him the story.

“In other words, the last time there were blue roses around here, it was because someone or other had enough time to kill that they could spend every day infusing the roses with blue water,” Maomao said, looking toward the garden of roses.

“But why on earth would someone go to all that trouble?”

“Who knows? Wanted to impress a woman, maybe,” Maomao said flatly. Then she produced a narrow, oblong, paulownia-wood box from the folds of her robe. It looked like the box in which she kept her caterpillar fungus, but it was something she’d had sent along when she requested the “special” books.

“Now, that’s unusual,” Jinshi said, peering at the box. “Do you color your nails?”

“I do, though I can’t say it suits me.” Being exposed to so many drugs and poisons and doing so much scrubbing and washing had left her hands in a sorry state. The pinky finger on her left hand was slightly deformed. Painting it red wouldn’t change the unnatural shape, but it helped.

Jinshi was looking a little too interested, so she regarded him the way she so often did: like he was a fish gawping at the surface of the water.

Oops, can’t be doing that, she reminded herself, shaking her head. If a little peek was enough to set her off, she’d never last with him. Anyway, she still had work to do.

“Master Gaoshun. Do you have what I asked for?”

“Yes. Exactly as you requested.”

“Thank you very much.”

The stage was set. She was going to give that bastard the scare of his life.