The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: The Empress Dowager

Maomao was thrilled. Indeed, she could hardly have been happier. Behind her, Hongniang and Yinghua stood looking intimidating.

“Really? Right here?” Maomao asked, watching Hongniang carefully.

“Yes! Have a good, hard think about what you did,” the chief lady-in-waiting replied with a snort. Maomao’s eyes began to brim with tears, and she clasped Hongniang’s hand.

“Thank you so much!” she said, bowing deeply.

“Er—?”

“Wait... Maomao?! Ooh, this is the exact opposite of what we wanted!”

Maomao, paying no heed to Hongniang and Yinghua’s dismay, veritably flew into the storage shed. This was to be her room from today forth.

“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh, Yinghua?” Guiyuan asked as she poured some tea, which she offered along with a snack to Yinghua.

“I thought so too, but it’s her own fault,” Yinghua replied, managing to purse her lips and sip her tea at the same time. Today they were having a sweet-smelling fermented tea from the west. “We kept telling her to stop, but she wouldn’t! We know she was out collecting bugs again...” She glared at Maomao. Hongniang, it seemed, had thrown out all the fruits of Maomao’s efforts.

Maomao only cocked her head. She’d stopped trying to gather lizard tails, recognizing that work couldn’t get done around the Jade Pavilion if the ladies-in-waiting kept fainting. “What are you talking about?” she asked Yinghua, genuinely surprised. “I stopped after the thing with the lizard.”

“There’s talk! We heard a weird lady was going around the rear palace collecting bugs and laughing like a maniac.”

Maomao didn’t say anything, but Yinghua—and now Guiyuan too—both looked scandalized.

This was clearly some sort of misunderstanding.

“I don’t do that,” Maomao said earnestly. Yes, she’d collected moths one time recently, but that had been for work. She hadn’t gone after a single other bug since then. Or lizard. “And if I did do something like that, it wouldn’t be bugs I was after. It would be herbs.”

“But you admit you would be maniacal about it?”

Yinghua and Guiyuan looked thoroughly exasperated as they studied Maomao. Of late, they had finally started to grasp her true nature.

Grr. She knew that look. They didn’t believe her.

But it was true. Maomao had only been laughing because she’d found some medicinal herbs, not because of any bugs. She did have some measure of common sense. She understood perfectly well what would happen if she tried to cultivate insects in that cramped room. It was summer; it would be a catastrophe.

Maomao frowned and balled her hands into fists. This was a very grave situation. But she thought she knew who was really responsible.

“Huh? Hihui’s beeb booing whah?” Xiaolan asked, her mouth full of peach bun. Maomao offered her a bamboo cylinder full of sweet tea and nodded. They were chatting and snacking behind the laundry area, as usual. Maomao had made Xiaolan write a few characters in the dust to satisfy herself that the girl was paying attention in class. She certainly was.

“That Shisui... She’s the most mercurial creature,” Xiaolan said, drinking some tea. Maybe it was her recent academic bent that had introduced difficult words like that into her vocabulary. She hopped down off the barrel she’d been sitting on and trotted toward some palace women chatting near the well. “Hey, you don’t know where Shisui’s been lately, do you?”

Maomao went after her. The three palace women answered Xiaolan with a friendly greeting, although they stiffened a bit when Maomao approached. Their reaction wasn’t unusual; Xiaolan and Shisui were about the only women with tastes strange enough to enjoy talking to Maomao.

“She’s an odd one,” one of the ladies said. “Just when you think you’ve seen her, it’s like she’s gone again.”

“You know, I feel like she’s been around...”

“Yeah, me too.”

The one thing they seemed sure about was that they weren’t sure.

“Ooh, where, where? Tell me, pretty please!” Xiaolan, with no fear of anyone she might be talking to, began to pester them mercilessly. The three ladies looked at each other, obviously hesitant to say. They were probably feeling sensitive about having Maomao there. Her outfit wasn’t like theirs. It was still plain and easy to move in, sure, but it wasn’t one of the general uniforms the rear palace issued to its staff. No, she wore clothing given to her by her mistress, as befitted an attendant of one of the consorts.

Those outfits created an invisible but uncrossable barrier between those who attended the consorts and those who didn’t.

Shoot... Maomao realized she should have kept her distance. Some of the palace women could be hostile toward those who served the consorts, but many of them simply clammed up, afraid that sharing the wrong rumor might get them in trouble. Few people were as carefree as Xiaolan.

So, what to do now? She might have been able to lighten the mood with some snacks, but she’d given everything she had to Xiaolan already. Maomao felt in the folds of her robe, wondering if she might be carrying anything that could work as a bribe in lieu of food.

Ooh! she thought as she ran across one particular item.

“If any of you have any details, I might find my way to giving you this.”

It was a lovely piece of cloth, pleasant to the touch and faintly perfumed. It was technically a handkerchief, but it was of such fine material that, with some imagination, it could be practically anything. In point of fact, Jinshi had given it to Maomao when her cheek had been injured. She’d been thinking she might be able to sell it to the quack doctor at the medical office. She didn’t want to spend too long thinking about any interest in men he might have, but she might get a few coins out of him for something that had belonged to the gorgeous eunuch.

“Is that...”

“It looks like silk, doesn’t it? Most unsuitable material for a handkerchief, I daresay.”

One of the women took the cloth and brought it to her nose. Then her eyes went wide. “This smell... It can’t be! Can it?”

Maomao turned toward the woman with a slight smile on her lips, though she didn’t let it reach her eyes. “I’ll leave that to your imagination.” She feared that actually saying Jinshi’s name would be counterproductive. Let them get a whiff of the idea and fill in the rest themselves.

The woman with the sensitive nose was mumbling to herself: “Wait... But... Can it really...? Could it be his...?” Maomao couldn’t be sure who she was thinking of, but she saw she had a taker. When they saw the woman’s reaction, the other two ladies with her took turns sniffing the handkerchief.

Maomao folded the cloth up and said respectfully, “Perhaps I could prevail on you to share your insights first?”

The palace women told Maomao that they’d spotted Shisui among the unkempt groves in the northern quarter. It made sense; that was where Maomao had run into her before. It was apparently a favorite spot of hers. Maomao went there and sat down among the trees. It being summer, there were a lot of noisy insects. The cicadas crying all around she could forgive, but she crushed a few mosquitoes that buzzed irritatingly past her ear.

Should’ve brought a little burner to keep the mosquitoes away, she thought. They used mugwort and pine needles to produce a thick smoke that kept the bugs at bay. One was always burning at the Jade Pavilion because Princess Lingli was still so young.

The area around the woods wasn’t tended very carefully, and Maomao saw all kinds of things growing there: pampas grass, for example, and a bevy of red flowers. She leaned toward them. So this is where they grow. They were whiteblossom flowers. The trumpet-shaped blooms would start to open come evening.

Maomao picked one and crushed the petals, staining her fingers with a red juice. It was a little game she’d often played when she was young. Meanwhile, the courtesans had picked the flowers for their seeds, which contained a powder much like face-whitening powder. But that wasn’t how the courtesans used it.

A question still lingered in Maomao’s mind. It was about what had happened at the Crystal Pavilion a few days before, when Consorts Lihua’s chief lady-in-waiting, Shin, had been found to be attempting to make a drug to induce a miscarriage.

Shin had never used any perfume before. If the stuff contained ingredients that could be harmful to a pregnancy, and if she felt it was she who should be consort, it would explain why she wouldn’t want to wear it. She’d probably hoped to take Lihua’s place. She might have thought that if the current consort failed to produce an heir, her family would feel compelled to give His Majesty someone else instead. And yet, on this occasion, she’d been so desperate to produce the abortifacient that she’d even worn the dreaded perfume. Why?

Consort Lihua had been wearing looser clothing than usual. Outfits that didn’t cinch around the belly, just like Consort Gyokuyou. And was it Maomao’s imagination, or had she looked a little plumper than before?

Gyokuyou was hardly the only one who received the Emperor’s visits. There was one very distinct possibility, but Maomao didn’t dare say it. It wouldn’t matter if she did; she was in no position to help Consort Lihua.

Her nagging doubt was about the ingredients involved in whatever Shin had been making in that storage shed. Anyone could have bought the perfume oils and such from the caravan, provided they had enough money. That much was obvious. And yet, Maomao found herself perplexed.

The courtesans gathered the whiteblossom seeds not for cosmetic purposes—but to create a drug that would rid them of a child in their belly. It would be boiled with other ingredients, including lantern plant, tree peony, balsam, flowering peony, and quicksilver to achieve the desired effect.

Quicksilver, or mercury, aside, these plants were all things that could be had in the rear palace, but Shin’s brew hadn’t included any of them—even though it seemed like the easiest and cheapest way. That left Maomao with an unsettling thought: maybe someone had deliberately told Shin about the toxins. That person might still be here in the rear palace.

She’d tried to give Jinshi an inkling of what she was thinking with an oblique suggestion, and she knew him well enough to expect he would look into the matter. She was less sure whether the proud, stubborn chief lady-in-waiting would be easily induced to talk.

At that moment, the cacophony of cicadas suddenly subsided.

Triiiing.

She heard what sounded like a bell ring quietly, followed by a distinct rustling. She turned toward the sound to discover something large crawling through the pampas grass. It hopped along like a frog, then raised its hands and started laughing merrily.

“I’ve got you this time!” it shrieked. The voice had the same touch of innocence as Xiaolan’s, but was higher pitched. The owner of the voice had a grin on her face—a face that looked surprisingly young for how tall she was.

The woman, obviously pleased from the bottom of her heart, took the insect in her hands and put it in a bamboo insect cage.

I can’t believe it, Maomao thought, watching the girl cackle as she hopped around in the weeds grabbing at bugs. They mistook me for that? It was frustrating. She thought she was a little less deranged than that. Her curiosity satisfied, however, Maomao made to leave the area.

She didn’t get far.

She heard it again: triiiing, this time from right by her ear. Puzzled, she touched her head—to discover a bug sitting on it. This, it seemed, was the true source of the “bell” she’d been hearing. And that would have been fine, if it had been the end of the matter.

Instead, a figure came charging at Maomao, colliding with her. “My bug!” it cried. Then the figure looked at Maomao in surprise. Her face reminded Maomao of a squirrel somehow.

“If you could get off me, I’d appreciate it,” Maomao said, but the girl didn’t move a muscle. Her hand was on top of Maomao’s head, perfectly still. She looked a bit disturbed. Maomao quickly guessed what was going on. “Hurry up and take it away. I don’t want to lie here with a bug on my head.”

There had been a squelch when the girl had tackled her. Something had squished, and she knew what.

“I’m real sorry, Maomao,” Shisui said, but she was grinning as she finally stood up.

It felt wonderful to pour the cold well water over her head—but she couldn’t wash away the feeling of disgust.

The other girl handed the sopping Maomao a handkerchief. She took it gratefully and started mopping herself off. The insect cage hanging at the girl’s waist was occupied by several bugs that were a sort of scorched color; they shook their wings, making a sound like a ringing bell.

“So that’s what you were trying to catch?”

“Uh-huh.” Shisui still looked a bit embarrassed, but her eyes as she turned to Maomao were shining. Maomao had known she liked insects, but she hadn’t quite realized just how much.

While Maomao was still trying to decide what to do, she found the other girl pulling her around to the far side of the well. That side was shaded by the trees, and there was a wooden box, a perfect place to sit down. Shisui patted the box, directing her to sit.

Maomao was starting to get a very bad feeling about this. And her bad feelings were usually right.

“These bugs are native to the island country to the east, see? They make noise by vibrating their wings,” Shisui informed her, not looking up from the inhabitants of the cage. “I guess some of them must have hitched a ride with a trade mission and then gotten loose. I think this is the only place they live in our country, just like those moths.”

Maomao offered a half-hearted sound of interest.

“Their coloring makes them look like cockroaches, but they’re not, so don’t worry.”

Maomao could have lived without knowing that, she thought, once again rubbing her head vigorously with the handkerchief.

The girl with the poor choice of words delivered this meandering lecture on insects for a full thirty minutes. If this went on, the sun would be down before they were finished. Maomao kept trying to break her way out of the conversation and leave, but each time, she felt a tug on her sleeve and was drawn inexorably back into the lesson. She well understood wanting to talk about something you were interested in, but she wanted to alert Shisui to what a bore it was for her audience.

If only we were talking about drugs. Then I could survive this.

The uncomfortable stretch was soon abruptly interrupted by the clacking of a wooden clapper. Maomao looked around, trying to figure out where it had come from; she could see the other nearby palace women doing the same thing.

The source was soon revealed from the gate to the south. A figure appeared, flanked by a lady-in-waiting and a eunuch bodyguard to each side, with three more people trailing behind her, one of whom was sounding the clapper. The center of the parade was a woman dressed in colorful finery. Maomao thought she recognized her face, composed and gentle-looking.

I do believe that’s the Empress Dowager.

She’d only seen her once, at the garden party the year before, but there were only so many people who could progress through the rear palace with such an extensive entourage. Comparing the person in front of her to that hazy memory, she concluded it had to be the Empress Dowager. She looked altogether too young to be the mother of the current Emperor with his robust facial hair, but on she came, the clapper sounding all the while.

“Wonder where she’s going,” Shisui whispered. She was crouched in the shadows of a building.

“Why are you hiding?” Maomao asked.

“Well, aren’t you?”

Shisui had her there. In an almost conditioned reflex, Maomao had likewise crouched behind a pillar. All the other palace women around were bowing deeply. It had been drilled into everyone from the moment they arrived here that that was what one did when someone of higher status passed by. Strictly speaking, it was what Maomao should have done whenever Jinshi and his cohorts were present, but she’d gotten in the habit of forgetting lately.

That won’t do, she thought. She had to maintain proper boundaries. Shaking her head, she resolved to do better in the future.

“Is she going in the direction of the clinic?” Shisui mused, putting her chin in her hand and watching the Empress Dowager. It was certainly true that the clinic was in the direction the parade was going.

“The clinic, huh...” Maomao wondered what the Empress Dowager would be doing going to the rear palace’s unofficial medical office.

Quite unexpectedly, Shisui provided the answer. “I heard it was Her Ladyship who started it. That was back when the empress regnant was still at her most powerful, so she couldn’t do it publicly, and even now it’s still kept pretty quiet.”

That would certainly make sense. The Empress Dowager was reputed to be a kindhearted woman. It was said to be by her influence that both slavery and the making of eunuchs had been forbidden upon the accession of the current Emperor. Either of those changes alone would have been revolutionary in its own right. Many people felt they were good choices from the perspective of simple humanity, but there were problematic knock-on effects.

The slave trade, for example, had been a form of business, and pulling it out from under things had brought certain sectors to a halt. There was also the question of where to draw the line as to what constituted slavery. When people were herded and sold like animals, that was clear enough, but what about those who effectively made themselves collateral on a debt? Technically, they had entered into something like an employment contract, but this could also be considered slavery. Bring that into the equation, and even the courtesans—at the moment, perfectly legal—could conceivably be considered slaves. Maomao remembered seeing the old madam discussing the possibility, pale-faced.

In short, although outwardly there was no more slavery in the land, everyone was aware that in many ways the practice had simply changed its name and adapted to the new social standards. Maomao had no interest in finer details than that and didn’t know anything about them.

“I think I’d better be getting back,” Shisui said, grabbing her insect cage and standing up. “Better watch out, Maomao. You’ll get in trouble if you slack off here too long.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She wondered if the Empress Dowager’s walk in the direction of the clinic had something to do with the recent events at the Crystal Pavilion. If Her Ladyship was getting involved, there might soon be another revolution, this time in medical treatment at the rear palace. Maomao wished she could be a fly on that wall, but she was scared of what would happen if she was found eavesdropping, and anyway, Shisui was right—Maomao would really hear it from Hongniang if she was too late getting back.

Hmmm. She crossed her arms in thought. It seemed like the other ladies-in-waiting had been doing nothing but getting upset with her recently.

“I suppose I better get back,” she said, and reluctantly headed for the Jade Pavilion.

When Maomao returned she was, quite unusually, made to do some actual cleaning. She was told to dust the windowsills with more than the usual attention to detail, and her work only passed muster on the third try. That’s two failures. She was starting to wonder if Hongniang really was getting her back for her recent attitude, but when she saw that the other ladies-in-waiting each had to redo their work at least once, she figured it must be something else.

Someone must be coming, but who?

The only times they cleaned this carefully were when another consort was coming for a meal or a tea party. Such meetings had been suspended recently, and only consorts in whom they had the utmost confidence were received at the Jade Pavilion. Just as Maomao was wondering who might fit that description, the visitor arrived. It turned out to be the Empress Dowager herself.

“It’s been too long, Lady Anshi.” Consort Gyokuyou greeted her with a delicate smile and perfect posture. She was proving why she was the consort; with the exception of Hongniang, her ladies-in-waiting all but wilted in Her Ladyship’s presence.

The Empress Dowager’s gaze fell to Gyokuyou’s belly, but only for a second. Thus it was that Maomao learned Her Ladyship’s name, Anshi, but she knew it was a name she would almost certainly never speak.

So that’s what’s going on, Maomao thought. As what amounted to Gyokuyou’s mother-in-law, the Empress Dowager shared an implicit understanding with her. The fact that the deeply (and rightly) suspicious Gyokuyou would not only receive the Empress Dowager, but make her privy to the fact of her pregnancy, spoke to how deeply she trusted her. Or perhaps she was obliged to alert Her Ladyship. If one took the rumors about the Empress Dowager at face value, it seemed likely to be the former—but Maomao had no way of being sure.

As far as it went, she looked very good-tempered. Princess Lingli at first ignored her grandmother, but soon grew accustomed to the gentle Empress Dowager. Maomao tasted the food for poison, but, before she could leave, the Empress Dowager said, “You, dear—you’re the attendant Jinshi sent, aren’t you?”

How does she know that? Maomao wondered. And why was she condescending to speak to a mere food taster? Maomao wanted to ask but knew it might be rude, so she only said, “That’s correct, ma’am,” and bowed.

“Suiren told me. She said she’d finally found a girl worth the effort, but that she was going back to the rear palace.”

Suiren was Jinshi’s personal lady-in-waiting, a woman just entering old age. She’d never seemed like the affable type, but apparently she was old friends with the Empress Dowager.

“She was once my own lady-in-waiting, you know.”

That would explain it. It was common for the daughters of officials to serve as ladies-in-waiting or nursemaids.

Then Her Ladyship glanced at Gyokuyou. The perceptive consort appeared to take her meaning immediately. “I’m so very sorry, Lady Anshi, but might you excuse me for a moment to put the princess down for her nap?” she said.

Hongniang was holding Lingli, who looked tired from playing with her grandmother. She was largely weaned by now, but it would do well enough as an excuse for Gyokuyou to leave the room. Hongniang went with her mistress.

So it was that Maomao found herself in a room with the Empress Dowager.

“She does know how to take a hint, doesn’t she?” Her Ladyship said, sounding a touch amused. At that moment, she seemed less like Gyokuyou’s mother-in-law and more like her slightly older friend. Maomao wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing, so she stood politely and watched the Empress Dowager for any clues. Her Ladyship noticed and gestured to Maomao to sit in a chair.

“It seems you’ve helped resolve a great many problems for us,” she said. She clasped a glass full of ice to cool her palms. The ice was a gift she’d brought. Consort Gyokuyou couldn’t let her body get too cold, but she could put the ice in her mouth and enjoy it while it melted. The princess, meanwhile, had been devouring treats made of shaved ice with fruit juice on top.

Maomao replied, “I’ve only offered what knowledge I have that happened to fit the situation.” Maomao wasn’t spectacularly imaginative. It just so happened that the truth sometimes lurked among the things she knew, which were little more than a window into what her father had taught her. If they were to ask him directly, she believed he would have solved their problems in half the time it took her.

It would have been easy to take Maomao’s words as contrary, and indeed the lady-in-waiting standing beside the Empress Dowager—a woman of something past forty who exuded experience—was frowning. It was only the three of them here in this room.

Possible misunderstanding or no, however, Maomao wouldn’t be comfortable unless she prefaced the discussion with that disclaimer. She had no interest in overselling her own abilities, and she wanted the other woman to be clear about that. Some might say she was selling herself short, but this was one of Maomao’s tenets, and she would live by it.

“That’s enough for my purposes,” the Empress Dowager said. Her eyes went briefly to the ground, and it seemed to Maomao—she couldn’t be sure—that the kindness in them was replaced for an instant by something dull and vacant. “Whatever you’re able to do will be enough—but I want you to investigate something.”

The lady-in-waiting was watching the Empress Dowager, who slowly shook her head as she looked at Maomao. “Do you suppose I’ve been cursed by the former emperor?”

It was quite a question for the Empress Dowager to ask. Quite a question indeed.