The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Third Time’s the Charm (Part Two)

There was a general hubbub. People rushed to see what was going on. The elegant entrance hall was already packed with palace women, up to and including maids standing dumbstruck with dustcloths in their hands, completely forgetting that they had been wiping railings and window frames.

“And what, may I ask, brings you here now?” asked a lady with her eyebrows drawn together. She was looking directly at the one and only medical officer in the rear palace.

This was most unusual. The doctor hardly ever left the medical office; it had been nearly a year since he had last been seen in the Crystal Pavilion. How could he show his face around here after the death of the young prince? He was notorious now for being a doctor in name only, otherwise incompetent. He had remained in this garden of women, unpunished, chiefly because there would have been no one to replace him.

And now here he was. What could he possibly want?

The doctor carried an outsize bundle and a palace woman followed behind him. The woman was slim, nearly emaciated; her movements were efficient and precise. On her mouth (which she kept closed) was a touch of bright-red lip color, and there was a dusting of pink on her cheeks.

Had there been such a woman in the rear palace? they asked themselves. And wouldn’t it be more typical for the eunuch doctor to be assisted by another eunuch? Maybe they were wrong about that. And anyway, there were two thousand palace women here. It wasn’t that surprising if there were one or two they didn’t recognize.

Since everyone else was busy whispering, she had taken it upon herself to step forward. “Can we help you?” When they heard her speak, the other ladies immediately stopped chatting. The maids promptly returned to their tasks, although their dallying didn’t go unnoticed. She might not know every face in the rear palace, but she certainly knew every face here at the Crystal Pavilion. Her name was Shin, and that was her job.

She had come with Lihua when she had been chosen as consort, and had worked ever since to gain the Emperor’s affections.

“We’d like to see the Wise Consort, if we might,” the doctor said. Shin narrowed her eyes. “Wise Consort” was not an expression she wanted to hear from this man.

“My apologies, sir,” she said. “I don’t believe Lady Lihua wishes to see you.”

The doctor’s face with its sad excuse for a mustache drooped at the polite but unambiguous refusal. His facial hair was truly pathetic; as a eunuch, he was no longer able to grow a mustache worthy of a man. He was as far from the Emperor, with his glorious beard, as the clouds were from the dirt.

The eunuch looked back with an expression of distress. The palace woman behind him, with an eminent air of competence, whispered in his ear. The eunuch hesitantly reached into the folds of his robe and produced a piece of parchment paper. “We’ve got a letter, you see.” The parchment was covered in flowing script and bore instructions that the doctor was to be allowed into the residence. The name at the end read: Jinshi.

Jinshi, the first person anyone in the rear palace would think of if you said the words “gorgeous eunuch.” He was so lovely that, had he been a woman, he could have brought the country to its knees—but he was not a woman. Nor was he a man.

He was beautiful enough to make even Shin sigh in spite of herself, but, unlike the other palace women, he evoked no more feelings than that for her. When she thought of why she had come to the rear palace, she knew she had no time to be distracted by eunuchs. It was vital that she gain the Emperor’s affections, not just for herself, but for the sake of her clan. That thought had been drilled into both her and Lihua since they were girls.

Shin’s mother was the older sister of Lihua’s father. Shin and Lihua were the same age; thus they had entered the rear palace together, and thus Shin oversaw the Crystal Pavilion, where they now lived. All the ladies-in-waiting of the Crystal Pavilion were the daughters of prominent families, of blood suitable to serve His Majesty.

“Very well, then.” Shin didn’t like it, but she knew when she was beaten. She resolved to show the visitors inside. She could have left the task to one of the other women, but if the doctor was here on the orders of the eunuch who oversaw the entire rear palace, that changed things. It made her wonder what he was after. The doctor usually only showed up at a consort’s residence when she was feeling unwell, but Lihua had shown no sign of ill-health. Shin was at her side constantly; she would have known if Lihua were sick. But today, like every day, the consort had eaten breakfast with gusto; she was feeling fine.

As Shin was puzzling over the meaning of this visit, she realized she no longer heard footsteps behind her. She glanced back to see that the doctor and his attendant had stopped. They were looking at a small building, something of a hut or shed, standing near the garden. Lihua’s room was still far away, the innermost chamber on the uppermost floor of the pavilion. This was just one of the small outbuildings on the way there.

“Is something the matter?” Shin inquired.

“Oh, no, I was simply wondering what that little building was.”

“It’s just a storage shed.” Shin was impatient to show them to the consort; why were they wasting time asking about random buildings?

The Crystal Pavilion had been built out when it had appeared that it would be the home of the heir apparent. Was it so strange that there would be freestanding baths or storage buildings? Then there was the weird freckled girl who’d come last year and had some bizarre thing built next to the bath. A sauna, she’d called it, but Shin didn’t like it much, although Lihua used it from time to time.

Despite Shin having told them that the shed was for ordinary storage, the palace woman the doctor had brought with him wouldn’t stop staring at it. What did she find so interesting about it? A shrub that bore yellow flowers grew near its window, but that was the one distinguishing thing about the place.

It was just a storage building. They needed to keep moving.

The palace woman tugged on the eunuch’s sleeve, whispering in his ear again. The eunuch frowned, then said to Shin, “Have you done anything different with this garden lately?”

“No,” Shin replied. “We leave it to the groundskeeper.”

“I see, I see.”

Then a wave of doubt caught Shin. Had those plants always been there? When had the gardener done that?

The eunuch fell silent, but the palace woman nudged him again. He puffed out his cheeks—he was easy to read, but the palace woman’s expression never shifted as she turned to Shin. Her dark eyes bored into the chief lady-in-waiting, who said nothing, but tried to avert her gaze.

“You’re wearing perfume today, aren’t you?” the palace woman asked. Her voice sounded...familiar, somehow. Then that graceful mouth began to twist—she was smiling, but not in a nice way. There was a savagery to the expression, like a wild beast eyeing its prey.

Shin was struck speechless.

“It’s been a while, Lady Shin. I must apologize for my rudeness the last time I was here.” Her face, with its copious whitening powder, carefully accented eyes, and long eyebrows, came closer. The ostentatious accessories she wore distracted from the shape of her face, but it was round, young.

And the way she stared—Shin remembered that look. She felt ice run through her veins. She knew from experience that this woman usually meant trouble. She’d come to the Crystal Pavilion for the first time the year before. She’d nursed Lihua assiduously, but during that time she’d also done a number of outrageous things that had left half the ladies here without the ability to defy her.

Shin was not one of them, but then, the woman had appeared again only recently and all but torn Shin’s clothes off. She was not, suffice it to say, someone with whom Shin wished to have much to do.

The woman continued to stare at her; Shin found herself involuntarily backing up.

It was at that moment that the doctor suddenly raced for the garden. The plump little man appeared to be trying to reach the storage shed. Shin tried to go after him, but found her path blocked by the unpleasant woman. Shin shoved past her and tried to pursue the eunuch, but she was too late.

He was holding the bar of the door in his hand and standing there in mute amazement. A distinctive odor drifted from the entrance. It was the same way Lihua had once smelled: the reek of a sick person on her way to the next life.

The other palace woman was rubbing her behind—maybe she’d fallen on it when Shin had shoved her—but she didn’t look particularly concerned. There was just a slight furrow in her brow. She grabbed the bundle the eunuch was holding.

No longer bothering to whisper, she shouted, “Hot water! Boil some water right away, please!” Then she rushed into the shed.

The patient was resting on a crude bed, just some woven mats piled on top of each other. She was one of the laundry maids.

“Yes, of course, miss,” the eunuch said, pelting off again so fast his chin jiggled.

The palace woman gave the maid what looked to be water, then turned to Shin. “Why is she in here?”

“Do you have to ask? We’re isolating her so no one else gets sick. It’s only common sense.”

The lady obviously wanted to shoot something back, but she restrained herself. Instead she said, “Indeed it is. However...”

The maid was coughing, but it didn’t sound normal. The visitor pressed a handkerchief to the maid’s mouth as she coughed, and when she took it away, it was speckled with red.

“True, this is an infectious disease. Not highly communicable, but one thing is certain: if you continue to treat her like this, she will die. But what’s one dead maid, eh?” She moved away from the sick woman, about to go farther into the shed. Before she knew what she was doing, Shin tried to grab her by the shoulder, tried to stop her, but the intruder slipped easily out of her grasp.

No! That’s—

Shin tripped on a wicker box as she made another attempt to stop the woman, but now she was too late. The woman was picking something up—a small box.

“When I entered this room, it brought back memories,” she said. “Memories of when Consort Lihua was ill.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“You were burning incense to try to disguise the odor.”

Yes—but so what? Shin reached out to snatch the box back.

“I noticed something similar when I came in here. But the other way around this time.” The woman opened the box to reveal a collection of small, colorful bottles. “You seem to be using this sick woman to disguise the aroma of these perfumes.” She popped open one of the bottles and took an experimental sniff. “The ladies of the Crystal Pavilion do like their secrets. And letting innocent eunuchs take the blame.”

The woman had opened a bottle of perfume oil, something that had come from the caravan the other day. Most of them had been confiscated by the eunuchs.

“Each individually is only minimally toxic, but if you combine them, who knows?” the woman said melodically, her eyes narrowing as she smiled. Then the woman, Maomao, asked Shin a question: “What exactly are you doing trying to make a drug to induce a miscarriage?”

○●○

Now, what to do, Maomao wondered as she wiped her face with a handkerchief. She hated the feeling of the whitening powder, and the rouge just wouldn’t come off. She’d have to give her hair, which she’d styled with perfume oil, a good, thorough wash later. To disguise her relatively expressionless eyes, she’d cut the ends of her hair short and then glued it near her eyes. She wore a longer skirt than usual, hiding high shoes that made her look taller than she was, but maybe that hadn’t been necessary.

After all, the ladies of the Crystal Pavilion had hardly even noticed her.

Feeling a bit sullen, Maomao took off her elevated shoes. She also changed into a different outfit, because the sick woman had coughed some phlegm onto her when Maomao had been examining her. The disease was only mildly infectious, true, but she wasn’t about to go walking around in those clothes, and had asked for a new outfit for safety’s sake. They’d had to settle for a lady-in-waiting’s outfit from the Crystal Pavilion, though, so it lacked something in practicality. More than anything, Maomao wanted a bath, but there was no chance of that, so she gave up the idea.

Finally looking a little neater, she went into the room where everyone was waiting.

The people gathered in the reception room all wore brooding looks. They were dressed in every kind of finery, and when Maomao came in having removed her makeup, she found herself feeling distinctly out of place.

Consort Lihua was there, as were Jinshi and Gaoshun, and a slim woman with a classically beautiful face. At a word from Lihua, the rest of the ladies-in-waiting withdrew. The quack doctor looked like he would have liked nothing more than to be part of the assembly, but he had other work to do and decided to give it precedence. Quite frankly, having him there would have been no particular help.

The beautiful woman was Shin, Consort Lihua’s chief lady-in-waiting. They were cousins, and as a woman of distinguished blood herself, Shin had a proud streak; she was, to be fair, lovely enough to attract attention even here in the rear palace. Her face even somewhat resembled that of Lihua, perhaps another sign of the familial connection. She was only a chief lady-in-waiting, but her social status could have qualified her for a position as high as middle consort herself.

So, is that why she was made chief lady-in-waiting?

The consorts weren’t the only ones who might gain the Emperor’s affections. Cases in which even lowly maids had fallen under the Imperial gaze and become mothers of the country were not entirely absent from the annals. So why have just one beautiful flower in one spot when you could have, as it were, a bouquet?

If a lady-in-waiting became the Emperor’s bedmate, and that lady had a social background distinguished enough to warrant being a consort herself, the rank would almost certainly be given to her immediately.

So what does that mean for them? Maomao wondered. She didn’t know anything about Lihua’s family background, but she could guess that feelings between her and Shin must be complex. It would make one feel secure indeed to forge a bond of trust that would transcend such conflicts.

How lucky Consort Gyokuyou is. Her chief lady-in-waiting, Hongniang, hadn’t been put here to serve some special purpose, but seemed to exist purely to oversee Gyokuyou’s women. In the service of this cause, she’d even missed the usual window for getting married, so hopefully Gyokuyou would be able to arrange a good match for her someday. The consort’s other ladies-in-waiting likewise were all sweet and attractive, but none of them harbored ambitions of drawing the Emperor’s interest.

But as for Consort Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting...

“What is the meaning of this?” Jinshi demanded, pounding the table with his fist. On the table was a collection of perfume oils and spices—the ones that had been found in the sick woman’s chamber. No one of them alone was particularly conspicuous, but together they produced a noticeable aroma.

An aroma that clung to the chief lady-in-waiting, Shin. Even though the last time Maomao had been here, she’d worn no perfume at all. Did that mean her purchases hadn’t been confiscated? Or had she simply managed to hide them?

Shin stood silently with her eyes closed.

Not talking, huh?

Her crime was twofold: not just possessing the forbidden substances, but attempting to use them to make some kind of concoction. Her isolating of a maid in a storage shed probably wouldn’t be considered an offense. Getting the sick woman out of the main residence to avoid spreading her disease had been an appropriate response. With only one medical officer for the entire rear palace, maids often weren’t seen immediately.

And yet he’s got so much time on his hands that the medical office is practically becoming a café for the eunuchs.

A mere serving woman might not even be able to entrust herself to the clinic. Not everyone liked to see women take charge of medical care. If someone died because of that attitude, it was a nuisance, but little more. Maids were just that expendable.

Jinshi would use the evidence in front of him to prove what wrongdoing he could, but Shin stood looking as if she knew nothing about any of this. Besides, her family was important enough that she might be able to object to his investigation no matter what he said.

Most inscrutable of all in the room was Consort Lihua, who simply looked at her chief lady-in-waiting, her eyebrows creased. The expression was one of...sadness.

Shin refused to look at the ground, but met the eunuch’s eyes.

Huh. The woman’s got spirit. Most palace women would have wilted under interrogation by Jinshi, but it looked like his almost supernatural powers weren’t going to work on this opponent.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” Shin said. “It’s true, I was the one who instructed that serving girl be moved to that building. But I think there’s a much more obvious problem here: visitors who show up out of the blue demanding to see Lady Lihua and then barging into our storage buildings. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Her tone was clipped, confident. It was true; there was no way of proving that the items found in the storehouse belonged to her. As the building housed a sick person, nobody was likely to have much more contact with her than to bring her meals, but by the same token, almost anyone might have gone in there.

“Then we need simply ask the maid herself.”

“If you believe you can trust the word of a woman who’s been addled with fever.”

“So you’re aware she was highly feverish,” Maomao interjected. Shin’s expression shifted; she seemed to resent the intrusion. “How kind of you,” Maomao went on. “Taking the trouble to see how a mere serving girl was feeling. I suppose that would explain, then, how the smell of this perfume got on you.” Her tone was brazen as she picked up one of the little bottles on the table.

All right, time to dial it back, Maomao thought, but her body wouldn’t listen to her; it kept moving. She didn’t like it one bit, but there were things that made her so angry that concerns about her social standing faded away.

“This is what you smell like. This perfume oil. Even though it was tucked neatly inside a wicker trunk. I wonder if the smell is really so powerful that it would seep out like that. Perhaps I might be allowed to check?”

Maomao grabbed for Shin’s sleeve, but the lady-in-waiting was too fast. She pulled away, at the same time raking Maomao’s cheek with her long fingernails.

The room started buzzing. Maomao ran her thumb along the cuts. They’d pierced the skin, but they weren’t really bleeding. “My apologies,” she said. “It’s not for someone of my lowly stature to touch one of your station. We should have someone else, someone more appropriate, perform the investigation.”

She spoke nonchalantly as every gaze in the room settled on Shin. The other woman was barely restraining a scowl, and her eyes were bloodshot. An unpleasant smell of sweat wafted from her. Her pupils were dilated.

People sweat when they get nervous, but it’s glistening stuff that’s distinct from that induced by exercise. The pungent odor can bother even the person producing it. The eyes likewise change when a person is anxious. Although not as obvious as a cat’s, human pupils do change size. This was more noticeable in Consort Gyokuyou, who had lighter irises, than it was in many people, so during tea parties with other consorts she could often be seen to squint slightly as she laughed.

One more push... Maomao had just taken a step forward when someone said:

“Perhaps I might be more suited to handle the matter, then.”

The voice was proud, but not haughty. It belonged to Consort Lihua, who stood up from her couch, her long skirt rustling as she walked toward Maomao—no, toward Shin, who stood just across from Maomao.

Hmm? Lihua’s clothing was quite similar in style to what Gyokuyou had been wearing recently. It would make sense enough, if she’d also bought clothes from the caravan.

“What crime would she be charged with?”

“Lady Lihua...” Shin said. There were a great many conflicting emotions in her eyes, but desperation was not one of them. She refused to beg.

“If she’s found to have even attempted to create a drug that would induce a miscarriage, it would be considered the same as if she had murdered the Emperor’s child.” Jinshi closed his eyes, knowing this was all he had to say.

“I see,” Lihua said softly. “And that would be true regardless of which consort was her target?”

“Upper, middle, and lower consorts are all alike in this regard.”

Lihua cast her eyes to the ground, then looked at Shin.

A thought flitted through Maomao’s mind: the names Lihua and Shin were something of a pair, meaning “pear blossom” and “apricot,” respectively. This woman, Shin, certainly didn’t seem unintelligent to Maomao. And yet, the world was full of perfectly smart people who did stupid things, often when they had let their emotions get the better of them and lead them into a mistake. Shin, thought Maomao, might be one of them.

Then Lihua delivered the coup de grâce: “Even if her only intended victim was me myself?”

“Consort!” Jinshi exclaimed, leaning forward. “Do you mean that?” Gaoshun was likewise wide-eyed.

For Maomao, however, Lihua’s question made everything fall into place. She’d always thought it was strange that a woman as capable as Lihua should be so unable to find decent ladies-in-waiting. Surely she should have attracted better servants.

It hadn’t been her fault. The one who had formed the group of ladies-in-waiting at the Crystal Pavilion was none other than Shin.

After the incident with the toxic face powder, a single lady-in-waiting had been forced to leave, but those above her head had continued their work uninterrupted. And now, Lihua confronted her chief lady-in-waiting...

“Shin. You’ve never once treated me as befits a true consort. I suppose you never thought I deserved to be a mother of the nation.”

That, too, rang true to Maomao. She’d noticed that Shin had never once referred to Lihua as “Consort.”

“You and I... Until the very last moment, we didn’t know which of us would be the consort, did we?” Lihua’s voice was sad. She had real sympathy for Shin. But did Shin feel the same way? She bit her lip and looked at Lihua, her eyes blazing with resentment.

“How dare you talk down to me,” the chief lady-in-waiting sneered. “I’ve always hated that about you. I was a better student than you. I was better at almost everything than you. So why did everyone fawn over you?”

Bust size, Maomao observed privately, but she had the decency to feel bad about the thought as soon as she had it. After all, Shin wasn’t exactly small herself. No, wait, that wasn’t the point.

It wasn’t about having a bigger bust, but being a bigger person.

“Is it because you were the daughter of the head of our family? Did you think that made you better than me? Don’t make me laugh. I was raised my entire life to become a mother to this nation.” Shin looked like a wolf baring its fangs. Thinking the chief lady-in-waiting might leap at the consort at any moment, Maomao moved to put herself between the two women, but Gaoshun and Jinshi were already there.

“May I understand you to be admitting to the accusations?” Jinshi said.

In response, Shin grabbed the bottle of perfume oil off the table and flung it at Lihua. Gaoshun slapped it away and the bottle smashed against the floor.

“May you wither in this garden a barren woman!” Shin spat as if pronouncing a curse, as Gaoshun grabbed her hands and restrained her. “How dare a eunuch touch me!” she cried. “Unclean, filthy thing!” She struggled, but she couldn’t hope to free herself—even if he was a eunuch, Gaoshun was still a man. Her noble lips continued to produce a stream of foul invective.

You do run into her kind sometimes, Maomao thought. When Shin finally had to pause for a breath before she could resume her tirade, Maomao stepped in front of her and smirked.

“What?” Shin demanded.

“Oh, nothing. I was simply thinking, you must truly revere His Majesty, Lady Shin.”

“Of course I do! What are you blathering about?”

“It simply looked to me as if it was the status of mother of the nation that you truly loved. Unlike Consort Lihua.” Maomao gave another wide smile. Shin’s mouth hung open.

It was all too clear now what Lihua had that Shin did not.

“Shin... So that’s how you felt.” Though she looked as if she was fighting back tears, Consort Lihua’s voice was clear and firm. Then she stood in front of Shin, raised her hand high—and slapped her across the cheek.

I guess that’s the least she should expect, Maomao thought.

Then, however, Consort Lihua said something that even Maomao hadn’t expected.

“Sir Jinshi, I release this chief lady-in-waiting from my service, on the grounds of using abusive speech toward her mistress. So much so that I had to raise my own hand against her.”

This time it was Jinshi’s turn to go slack-jawed. “Consort...”

“I see an open hand was not emphatic enough.” Even as Shin stood looking dazed by the slap, Lihua grabbed her by the collar and made a fist. Jinshi and Gaoshun rushed to stop her. Only Maomao found herself downright impressed. The lady knows how to handle herself! Lihua was no longer the consort she had been, waiting vacantly for the thread of her life to be cut.

“I release this woman from my service. And I formally request that she never be allowed in the rear palace again under any circumstances,” Lihua said, clearly and confidently.

Even if Shin were to become a mother to the nation, she would live her life not for the country’s people, but for her own position. She sought only power; she had no interest in fulfilling the duties and responsibilities that would come along with it. The nation had no need for such a queen.

Shin still hadn’t recovered from the slap. Did she understand what mercy she was being shown? Or would she think Lihua had wronged her, and resent her all the more?

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

No matter how noble the blood, a woman who left the rear palace under scandalous circumstances would be unable to retaliate against a consort. Personally, Maomao thought Lihua was being a bit soft, but let us consider what humiliation this treatment must have brought to such a proud woman.

“Can I ask you something?” Jinshi said as they walked through the halls of the Crystal Pavilion. He was looking at the building where the sick maid had lain in bed.

“Yes, sir?”

“I know you were aware that the sick woman was here at the Crystal Pavilion, but you didn’t know exactly where she was, did you? I mean, you even went to the trouble of putting on a disguise, presumably so no one would be suspicious if you visited repeatedly.”

He was right: Maomao had worn that outfit because she herself was by now most unwelcome here. She’d realized she might not figure out where the sick woman was in a single visit, so she’d taken care to keep people from knowing who she was. Yes, a palace woman accompanying the doctor attracted a certain amount of attention, but certainly less than Maomao would have received without a disguise.

The serving women of the Crystal Pavilion knew how to keep their mouths shut. Or perhaps they had been taught how—through harsh discipline from the ladies-in-waiting above them, somewhere Consort Lihua wouldn’t have seen.

“Ah, but I did know where she was,” Maomao said. She’d already had a sense of where a sick person would be staying: somewhere moderately isolated from the sleeping quarters of the other maids, or anywhere else inconspicuous. When she’d been here full-time, maids who weren’t feeling well were given new sleeping quarters to ensure that whatever they were sick with didn’t spread. There was even a dedicated sick area within the pavilion.

But a storage shed, yeesh.

The odor wafting from Shin had given her a strange feeling, but she’d never imagined things had gone that far. It was sheer luck that she’d noticed the place.

“That was my clue,” she said, pointing to some white flowers. The bush must have been planted recently, because the earth below it was a different color from the rest of the garden. It was awfully poor placement to be the work of a gardener. Right beside a storage shed. The bush bore black fruit full of the white dust that would become face-whitening powder.

“How so?”

“In feng shui, green-colored things are considered good for the health. Supposedly, it’s ideal to combine them with white.”

White—like all the flowers on the bush. Though the plant was known as whiteblossom, or sometimes the four-o’clock flower, red was a more typical color for it. Maomao had realized that someone must have specifically chosen stock that would bloom white.

She didn’t remember the bush being there at the Crystal Pavilion. Someone had planted it—she didn’t know who, but it must have been someone who felt for the sick woman. Maomao found a wave of relief rolling through her to know there was at least one person there who did.

Whiteblossom, though... Maomao contemplated the irony of what she had found in the flower’s presence along with the sick woman. She let out a long sigh, then realized someone was staring at her. She glanced back to see them half-hidden by a pillar.

“What’s the matter?” Jinshi stopped and looked at her. The person watching Maomao looked stricken.

“You go on ahead, Master Jinshi.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re in the way.”

Her blunt response seemed to annoy Jinshi, but Gaoshun talked him down the way one might a frustrated ox—giving Maomao a fresh opportunity to appreciate just how good it was to have someone around who could actually intuit what was happening.

Maomao looked toward the woman hiding behind the pillar. “What is it?” she asked. The other woman looked perhaps a little bit older than Maomao, but she also appeared distinctly intimidated. By Maomao, or by her companions? It was hard to say.

“Uh, um... A-About the woman in that building...”

There was a fresh, white flower in the young woman’s hand. Green and white: the colors were unmistakable. The woman carried herself well, although she spoke hesitantly.

“She’s no longer there. It was decided that she would leave the rear palace, but they’re sending her somewhere it will be easier for her to get better.”

Consort Lihua, feeling that responsibility rested with her, had volunteered to pay the woman’s medical costs and give her a stipend to live on.

“Oh. So she left...” The maid looked at the ground, but at the same time, appeared relieved. She let her hands brush her cheeks in an attempt to hide the tears that were spilling down them, then bowed to Maomao and went back to her work.

Behind her there were only small, white petals on the ground.