The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Corpse Fungus (Part Two)

The next day, Maomao learned that the instigator of the trouble at the funeral had been one of the low-ranking consorts. She was the daughter of a prosperous merchant house and was of a pleasant disposition; supposedly the Emperor had even been to visit her on several occasions. But about this time the year before last, she’d been beset by a mysterious illness that caused her face to swell and redden and her hair to fall out. There had been talk of dismissing her, but she would never be able to find a husband if she went back home looking like she did. Instead she remained a lower consort, drawing her salary, in what had to be considered a show of the Emperor’s goodwill.

The real question was, what had driven this consort to show up spitting and cursing at the dead woman’s funeral? The simple answer would seem to be that the deceased middle consort had caused the mysterious illness.

The lower consort had fallen ill about this time two years ago, and it was in the same season this year that the middle consort had died. The symptoms of the disease rang a bell for Maomao. On a hunch, she went to one particular place, and when she found exactly what she had expected, her suspicion turned to certainty.

She had come looking for a specific species of thoroughly poisonous red mushroom. She collected a sample, wrapping it carefully in several layers of cloth.

She was almost sure this was the kind of mushroom Jinshi had been looking for.

Maomao asked a eunuch to send a letter to Gaoshun, and the next day, he and Jinshi arrived. Considering the specimen they were dealing with, the medical office seemed like the place for today’s discussion. The quack doctor fussed around making tea. Maomao the cat groomed herself before curling up to sleep.

The quack might not be any good at mixing up medicines, but he made a mean cup of tea. It didn’t seem like the best idea to have someone smiling and setting out snacks while you were handling a poisonous mushroom, though, so Maomao politely turned down his hospitality. He shuffled away, his mustache drooping. She felt bad, but what else was she supposed to do? She noticed him sneaking little peeks at them—he looked sort of lonely—so she made sure to close the door tight. As she did so, the doctor’s look turned to one of genuine sadness, but she paid him no mind.

“Wrap this around your hands, Master Jinshi. And this is for your mouth.” Maomao handed him and Gaoshun some squares of cloth. Then she took her own advice and covered her mouth and hands. She really would have liked to have proper gloves available, but she hadn’t been able to find anything thick enough on short notice. Jinshi and Gaoshun looked a bit doubtful, but they covered themselves up just like Maomao. She produced a wooden box.

“Is that it?” Jinshi asked, his voice muffled by the cloth.

“Yes, sir. A very poisonous mushroom.” Maomao opened the lid and pulled back several layers of cloth to reveal a mushroom that did indeed look very dangerous. It looked like a red, swollen finger; it could hardly have been clearer that this was not something you were supposed to put in your mouth.

This mushroom grew near withered broadleaf trees, and even a single bite of it could be lethal. In fact, to make it even more dangerous, simply touching it could be enough to poison a person.

“I found it in a grove in the northern quarter.”

Unlike the southern part of the rear palace, the Emperor rarely visited the northern area. As such, evocative and beautiful vistas were less important, and parts of the land were allowed to go to waste while buildings stood empty. Even this grove, which had once been a distinguished piece of landscaping, had been neglected until now it was in a terrible state. Apparently, though, it was a state these mushrooms preferred, for they had begun to appear there.

It could only be called bad luck: Maomao had searched over much of the rear palace, but she was only one woman and could hardly canvass the entire place. If she’d noticed these mushrooms, she certainly would have at least alerted Jinshi. They were just that dangerous.

They were also relatively rare, which was why it hadn’t occurred to her that they might be growing here until the recent incident. If missing them had been bad luck, the fact that she had found them now was good luck.

“These mushrooms can cause your hand to swell just by touching them,” she said. “And don’t get them anywhere near your face. Otherwise you’ll end up like this,” she added, rolling her sleeve back from her left arm. She undid the wrappings slightly, revealing her wrist. It was swollen an angry red and bore a welt that would probably never disappear. Indeed, it looked very much like the lower consort’s face...and like the scar on the arm of the lady-in-waiting who had given Maomao her flower.

“I only brushed against one gently out of personal interest, and this is what happened,” Maomao said.

She’d simply been testing it, as she did so many poisons she encountered. Several times each year she and her old man would go into the mountains to collect medicinal herbs, and it was on one such occasion that she had found one of these mushrooms.

Touching it had turned out to be a poor choice. Even her slight brush had caused her skin to swell up and turn an angry red color. When her old man had seen it, he’d immediately doused her wrist under running water, but the swelling wouldn’t go away.

“I noticed you always kept that arm bandaged... It was because there are scars under there?” Jinshi was looking at Maomao closely, his face somewhat stiff. Come to think of it, she’d never shown the eunuch her scars before.

“Not to worry, sir. I give myself these scars in the ordinary course of my experiments.” She rewrapped the bandage and tucked the cockscomb-like mushroom back in its box. She would have to dispose of it properly later.

“What experiments?”

“Just things of personal interest.”

“Interests? What interests?” The blood had drained from Jinshi’s face, but as for Maomao, she wanted to hurry up and finish this conversation.

Pretending she hadn’t heard him, she said, “The body in the coffin had a swollen face, and her hair had fallen out. I suspect she was suffering from the effects of this mushroom. Wasn’t that what you wanted to know about, Master Jinshi?”

“Perceptive, as ever.” It was not Jinshi but Gaoshun who spoke, a strained smile on his face. Maybe they hadn’t wanted anyone else to know that the middle consort’s cause of death had been a poisonous mushroom. That, however, struck Maomao as most unnatural.

“Could you explain the situation to me in more detail?” she asked. Maybe it would be better for her not to know, but not knowing would be even worse.

Jinshi’s shapely eyebrows creased and he stole a glance at Gaoshun. Gaoshun’s face, though, remained impassive, and finally Jinshi sighed deeply. “Consort Jin had been ill for nearly a year before her death. Her face and head were so badly swollen she could barely talk.”

Jinshi visited the middle consorts about once a month, including the sick woman, Jin. Whenever he went to see her, he said, he’d found her lying in her sleeping chamber, looking agonized.

There was a lower consort with similar symptoms, and, just like her, by His Majesty’s good offices, Jin was to be allowed to remain in the rear palace. A variety of rumors circulated about Jin, but she was the daughter of a high official, and there was no telling what might happen if she came back to him looking like she did.

Consort Jin had previously been known for her haughty personality, more than ready to flaunt her father’s authority any time it suited her, but her illness seemed to subdue her, and she had become very withdrawn.

Hmm, Maomao thought. Jinshi, she realized, must be a very diligent person; from Consort Gyokuyou to the lower consort at the funeral, he had to pay the utmost attention to these women.

Consort Jin, it seemed, had used the poisonous mushroom against the lower consort, and had then attempted to use it on someone else—but had mistakenly touched it herself, ultimately leaving her disfigured and with no hope of attention from the Emperor. She was handled in the simplest feasible way: she would be allowed to stay in the rear palace so long as she caused no further trouble. It sounded cruel, but sometimes that was the sort of solution one had to adopt in politics.

However, Jin had been a proud woman. “Unable to bear the state she was in, she finally poisoned herself and committed suicide,” Jinshi said. “At least, that was the testimony of her ladies-in-waiting.” Jin had had five ladies, and all of them had given the same story. Everything appeared to match up. It was Jinshi’s responsibility, though, to think of things from a variety of angles. That was part of the reason he hadn’t spoken to Consort Gyokuyou about this.

“So you wanted to know where she got the poison,” Maomao said, and Jinshi nodded. There was no telling how Jin’s father would react to the news of his daughter’s death, but if there had been underhanded dealings involved, then he would hardly have any choice but to make minimal fuss.

Maomao hmmed again and, taking the handkerchief away from her mouth, stroked her chin. “A question, sir. That would imply that she ate the poisonous mushroom in order to kill herself, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

But that only made things stranger. Jin’s face had been red and swollen. It would have made sense had it been that way for some time, but some of the swelling was clearly fresh.

“It’s true that this mushroom causes swelling upon physical contact,” Maomao said. “But I would expect eating it to produce swelling of the tongue and inside of the mouth—I didn’t know it could cause inflammation of the face as well.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. This mushroom causes stomach pain and vomiting and can even induce paralysis. However, considering the extent of the deceased woman’s swelling, the only conclusion I can reach is that the mushroom was rubbed directly on her face.”

That was when something else occurred to Maomao: the hand of the dead woman as she lay there in the coffin wasn’t swollen at all. If she’d been so desperate to die that she had rubbed the mushroom all over her own face, she surely wouldn’t have taken the trouble, as Maomao had done here, to protect her hands.

Maomao stroked her chin again, grunting to herself. The answer was starting to seem clear, but she had no real proof. And without that, she was unwilling to say much more to Jinshi.

“You sound like you’re beating around the bush,” Jinshi said. He was staring at her as she thought. His face was very close to hers; there was hardly an inch between their foreheads. “If you have something in mind, then just say it.”

Maomao didn’t find it that easy to simply spit out what she was thinking, though. Instead she looked at the ground and said, “Do you have time a few days from now? Also, if possible, I’d like to borrow a few strong eunuchs. Men with sturdy stomachs—and tight lips.”

Jinshi looked perplexed by this request, but nonetheless said, “Very well. If that’s what it takes to get to the bottom of this, they’re yours.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“It doesn’t matter. Do it.” The command in his voice was unmistakable.

Good, it’s better that way. Maomao was just a minor palace woman. Things were so much easier when he treated her as such. “Understood, sir,” she said with a bow of her head.

Maomao spent the next three days searching, based on her study of the plan of the rear palace. Starting from the area around Consort Jin’s residence, she searched high and low for one particular thing. The quest left her muddy and gross, so that she provoked a chorus of screams from the other ladies-in-waiting each time she came back to the Jade Pavilion. Finally she took to keeping a change of clothes at the medical office.

And then, a story made its way to her from the quack and from the gossipy girls at the laundry area. Something related to a rumor that had gone around some days before. Even with this new information in mind, Maomao couldn’t be sure. But it made far more sense to her than the testimony of Consort Jin’s women did.

The day after she’d finished her preparations, three eunuchs came to meet Maomao, Gaoshun among them. She’d asked for strong men, and she had to admit, he fit the bill. Jinshi had other business to attend to and hadn’t come. Maomao knew that as lackadaisical as he looked, he actually kept quite busy. She sometimes reflected that being too good at looking carefree could have its own drawbacks.

“Thank you all for coming.” Maomao bowed her head, then handed a shovel to each of the men. Two of them looked at her in mild confusion, but as Gaoshun didn’t say anything, they refrained from asking questions. Maomao was impressed. Someone had found men who knew how to play along.

With that, she started for the grove in the northern quarter. Not the one in which she’d found the notorious poisonous mushroom, but another neglected corner piled with fallen leaves. The breeze carried an odor that made her nose prickle.

Maomao pointed to one particular place in the grove, where mushrooms could be seen dotting the ground among the leaves. “Would you be so kind as to dig here?” She’d circled three places on the map of the rear palace. She’d come here first because she thought it had the highest chance of containing what she was looking for.

The eunuchs cleared away the fallen leaves with their shovels, then began digging into the earth. The soil was moist and soft and gave way easily. Maomao felt like she ought to help, but Gaoshun had declined her offer in light of the injury to her leg, and she had decided to let him win that argument. Incidentally, this time the leg was finally healing properly.

Abruptly, one of the eunuchs grimaced and covered his nose. Everyone else promptly followed suit. The upturned earth gave off an offensive, ripe smell that assaulted their nostrils; it was far stronger than the whiff they’d caught on the breeze earlier. Gaoshun’s eyes started to water. He could see some kind of cloth in the hole.

“So this is why you asked for men with strong stomachs...” He stuck his shovel in the ground, his brow more furrowed than usual. He gave the soil a good kick, turning it over with his shoe.

It is, and I see he made good choices, Maomao thought. One of the eunuchs was expressionless, the other smiling grimly as they regarded what emerged from the ground. Maomao was glad there was no one else present. Otherwise there would have been a great deal of screaming or fainting, either of which would have made this substantially harder than it had to be.

And what had emerged from the ground? The bones of a human hand and arm. Bits of flesh still clung to it, but it had clearly been buried for quite some time. They had found a corpse.

“Is this the proof you were looking for?” Gaoshun asked.

Maomao looked down. “I have to admit, I didn’t think I would find it on the first try.” Hence why she’d marked two other possible spots.

Feeling strangely queasy, Maomao watched the men exhume the body.

Maomao didn’t have to explain who the corpse was. It was still wearing several lovely accessories, each of which carried the crest of one consort in particular: Consort Jin.

She had already been dead a year ago.

Gaoshun placed the body in a wooden box that would serve as a coffin, then turned to Maomao with a tired look. The other two eunuchs had been dismissed; their part in this was over. No doubt they would be eager for a bath. Gaoshun assured her they wouldn’t say anything, and she trusted him.

“Consort Jin died a year ago,” Maomao said. “We can’t know whether it was murder or an accident, but we can be confident her ladies-in-waiting knew of her demise.”

They were in the medical office, which they had borrowed for their discussion. Gaoshun held a teacup but didn’t drink from it. Instead he looked Maomao in the eye and said, “Then who did we hold that funeral for?”

“There would have been someone else who knew about the consort’s death, someone besides the ladies-in-waiting.” Maomao took a piece of paper from the folds of her robe. It was a drawing of a young woman, a sketch Maomao had produced after picking the brains of the women at the laundry area about the palace woman who had mysteriously vanished. Gaoshun studied it for a moment, then shook his head.

“You’ve heard there was a palace woman who went missing?” Maomao said.

“Yes...”

Such vanished women frequently turned up dead by their own hands within a few days. It was impossible to escape this flower garden with its deep moat and high walls, and trying to do so meant death anyway.

“Say a consort’s face were to be disfigured so badly that only her ladies-in-waiting would be likely to know who she was.” And suppose her head was then wrapped in bandages, and she could hardly talk—it would be easy enough for her to deceive someone who only saw her once a month. Even better for her if that person was neither able nor expected to stay in a consort’s chambers very long.

“You’re suggesting the missing woman was actually a coconspirator?”

“I couldn’t offer any specifics. It simply seems like a reasonable deduction.” Maomao could think of a few reasons why the women might do such a thing—but these deductions were just slightly less reasonable, and she decided to keep them to herself.

Suppose the jealous Consort Jin had despised the fact that a woman who looked so much like her had earned the affections of an official, while she herself languished without so much as a single visit from the Emperor. She found every opportunity to needle the woman, provocation finally turned to quarrel, and by design or by accident, Jin died.

The ladies-in-waiting, never too enamored of their mistress, decided to lie and say that the consort had fallen ill, both out of self-preservation and sympathy for the other lady. The culprit’s sense of guilt left her with no choice but to join them in their story.

The woman’s impending marriage, though, threatened to unravel the deception. When her term of service ended, there would be no one for Jinshi to see when he arrived the next month. Panicked, the ladies-in-waiting had—

Better stop there, Maomao thought. Let the bigwigs pick whatever motive they thought was fitting.

Maomao took a sip of tea as the thoughts flitted through her head. Gaoshun seemed to understand that she didn’t want to speculate aloud, because he didn’t press her further. He did, however, ask one question.

“How did you know she was buried there of all places?”

There had been no traces of burial in the patch of earth Maomao had chosen. A suspicious soul might have wondered if Maomao herself were the culprit.

“Disturbed earth isn’t the only kind of evidence.” A profusion of mushrooms had popped up over the body—and different kinds of mushrooms grow in different places. “My adoptive father taught me that that particular kind of mushroom favors manure—or dead animals.” Otherwise, you didn’t see it much. That was why Maomao had been so excited when she spotted the mushrooms. She’d assumed they were growing in overflowing waste from the sewers. Not that that wouldn’t have been bad enough, but now she knew she’d been enjoying a little mushroom hunt right over a human corpse.

“I figured that accounted for the smell. I apologize—I couldn’t be sure, as I’m not supposed to touch dead bodies.”

The sewer hadn’t been backed up after all; it had been the smell of rot seeping out of the earth as the weather got warmer. No wonder Yinghua had found the odor so unpleasant.

Gaoshun grimaced again. The creases in his brow were practically valleys. Somehow, she felt like he was glaring at her. “May I ask one more thing?” he said, in a way that gave her a bad feeling. “What do you plan to do with all the mushrooms you picked recently?”

This time it was Maomao’s turn to fall silent. She shot a glance at her basket, bulging with mushrooms she’d intended to sort through later. “You must understand, sir, there are a great many interesting specimens in there.”

“Specimens of mushrooms that grow from corpses?”

“No, I found nothing so caterpillar-fungus-like as that.”

She wondered if there even was such a thing; if so, she’d certainly like to see it once in her life. She wondered what effects it might possibly have.

Maomao’s motivation was innocent curiosity, but so few people understood that. So few people, including the dedicated, fastidious Gaoshun.

He had every last mushroom disposed of. The heartless monster.