The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Clinic

There were always plenty of dark stories to go around in the world, Maomao thought as she sat on a wooden box behind the laundry area.

Xiaolan wasn’t coming today, and there wouldn’t have been much for Maomao to do if she’d gone back to the Jade Pavilion, so she was killing some time here. The “institute of practical studies” was beginning to get underway, and Xiaolan was among those who would go down in history as its first students.

Maomao considered going to the medical office to bum some snacks off the quack doctor, but thought better of it. He’d been busy ever since the recent commotion.

The commotion in question had to do with the matter of the perfume oil. The special envoys’ visit had all but driven it from her mind, but it hadn’t been entirely resolved yet. As part of the investigation, Jinshi had gone around to all the various consorts and discovered their ladies-in-waiting had all bought copious amounts of perfume.

It’s hard to blame them, Maomao thought. It was a trade good that had come from a far land across deserts, oceans, and mountains. Practically calculated to inflame the fascination of a bunch of young women who lived like birds in a cage. Maomao couldn’t pretend she was different: if she’d been confronted with a stall full of exotic medicines from the west, she would have borrowed money from the old madam herself to buy some.

Not all of the perfumes were dangerous, but they couldn’t leave the ones that were lying about, even in small amounts. So, although it felt like a waste, the perfume had been disposed of. There was too much of it available—true, no one bottle held very much, but put them all together and they could make quite a potent poison.

The question then became: who had brought it here?

I can’t vouch for the perfume and spices, but... She knew that the merchants had brought the upper consorts clothes suitable for a pregnant woman. It was possible that one of the envoys’ goals in coming here had been to worm their way into the consorts’ ranks. That seemed unlikely to be their nation’s primary objective, but the haughty envoy had certainly appeared to believe she was capable of it. Sadly for her, she’d been left with her pride in tatters; Maomao had heard that after the banquet, she even spoke less in meetings.

It was conceivable that the perfume was also their doing, but one mustn’t rush to conclusions. There were currently four upper consorts in the rear palace: Gyokuyou, Lihua, Lishu, and Loulan. Gyokuyou had the best part of the Emperor’s affections, followed perhaps by Lihua. It was said that several of the middle-ranking consorts had also been His Majesty’s bedmates. As for the lower consorts, rumor had it that His Majesty didn’t see much of them; until recently, they’d been kept in line by the jealousy of one of the other consorts.

Loulan seemed like the consort His Majesty would most have to pay attention to, though, given how powerful her father was.

Hmm... Maomao grabbed a stick and sketched an orchid—the lan of Loulan—in the dirt.

In terms of powerful parents, Lihua ranked next, though this was only because they were the Emperor’s maternal relatives; the family had never risen all that far in the world. Maomao followed the orchid with a fruit, for Lihua meant “pear blossom.”

In fact, it was Lishu’s family that had been on the rise over the past few generations, so ambitious that they had offered the previous emperor their young daughter for a wife. The shu of Lishu meant “tree,” so that’s what Maomao drew next in her row of symbols.

Gyokuyou’s family was based at a trade junction in the west. They appeared to make a good deal of money from commerce, but they were close to the border and in fact paid much of what they made in taxes to sustain the national defense. On top of that, the land wasn’t good for farming, so the place wasn’t particularly abundant.

The last picture Maomao drew was a leaf, for Gyokuyou, “the jewel leaf.”

There had been a poisoning attempt at one of the garden party banquets held the year before, caused by one of the ladies-in-waiting of the former consort Ah-Duo acting on her own initiative. The motive had had nothing to do with seizing power, but rather had been deeply human. Maomao understood that much—but it left her wondering who had been behind the earlier attempted poisoning of Consort Gyokuyou.

There was a good chance it had been the middle consort, the subject of the recent mushroom incident. Where had she learned about that poison, though? They used silver dishware, so it presumably wasn’t arsenic-based.

The result had been that Consort Gyokuyou reduced her staff of ladies-in-waiting by half; the woman who had been poisoned instead of the consort was still suffering the aftereffects.

It all made Maomao feel a little queasy. She recognized the sensation. It made her think of Suirei, a palace woman who’d had the wherewithal to fake her own death in order to escape. They still didn’t know where exactly she was or what had happened to her. Nor did they know what her objective had been. Why she had targeted Jinshi.

Maomao idly drew circles around her four sketches. Then she gave up thinking about it entirely. What good will it do me, anyway? She was just a lady-in-waiting. A food taster, a disposable pawn.

She decided she needed a change of scenery. There were plenty of gardens in the rear palace, set up to delight the Emperor. There were pine groves, bamboo forests, and fruit orchards.

I guess cherry season is just about over, she thought. Three months ago, she might have been able to score some bamboo shoots, but thanks to a certain monocled jerk, she’d spent that season tending roses in the Crystal Pavilion. It raised her hackles just thinking of him.

Gah, stop! Got to stop this. Her steps grew lighter just thinking about taking a little walk, but on her way to the cherry orchard she happened to meet the gaze of some women from the Crystal Pavilion. She recognized them, so she bowed slightly; they scrunched up their faces and ran away. One of them had tiny feet, suggesting they’d been bound, but she put on a remarkable turn of speed, leaving Maomao impressed in spite of herself.

Drama queens. All I did was tear off their clothes.

It happened all the time at the brothels: no sooner had a woman with a bit of life experience knocked on a door in the pleasure district than they were stripping her down and sizing her up. People always thought that younger women brought the highest prices, but the trend these days was for knowledge over youth. The wife of an official, fallen from grace, could bring a surprisingly hefty amount. The fact that she would already have had some education meant the initial investment would be low, and there were men out there who in fact liked a woman who had been someone’s wife—a distasteful preference.

It wasn’t as if Maomao had grabbed the ladies’ dresses out of sheer perversity. She’d just assumed all the ladies of the Crystal Pavilion, voracious consumers of fashion that they were, would have bought the perfume oil, and when she found out some of them hadn’t, she’d been so surprised that she felt compelled to make sure. But it had only earned her a scolding from a beautiful eunuch.

Eh, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them passed on the perfume. There were a lot of women at the Crystal Pavilion, including no fewer than ten ladies-in-waiting and no fewer than thirty maids dedicated to the building. Maomao didn’t give it any further thought, but continued on to go pick some cherries.

That evening, the ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion were having an early dinner.

“I’m feeling a little tired today,” Ailan said, half-slumped on the table. Maomao put a hand to her forehead to find that she was indeed a touch feverish.

“Don’t go getting a cold! What if Lady Gyokuyou catches it?” Yinghua asked as she took another cherry. She wondered where they had come from, but she happened to like cherries, so she decided not to investigate too closely. The cherries were, of course, a secret from Hongniang.

“I was being careful!” Ailan said, now looking annoyed as well as tired.

Maomao was just about to go to her room to mix up a cold remedy when Yinghua stopped her. “Sorry for the trouble, but if you’re going to make up some medicine, do you think you could take her to the clinic afterward?”

“The clinic?” Maomao asked, puzzled. Did she mean the medical office? Taking her there only seemed likely to tire her out more.

Yinghua must have guessed what Maomao was thinking, because she shook her head. “It’s not the medical office. It’s...hmm. There’s no doctor there, but there’s someone else to care for people. Anyway, Ailan knows where it is. Just go with her.”

Maomao nodded.

The clinic, whatever that meant, was located in the northern quarter of the rear palace. Behind some laundry facilities was a separate building populated by palace women in white outfits.

Oh yeah. I guess I was vaguely aware of this place.

Maomao had spent a fair amount of time tromping through the groves and copses of the northern quarter, but had rarely gone to any of its actual buildings. Ailan smiled at her, coughing as she said, “I’m sure they mentioned it when you first got here. You don’t remember?”

Unfortunately, Maomao had been dragged here against her will and hadn’t been paying all that much attention to what she was told. They’d given her some kind of lecture on the way over, but she was sure she must have been more interested in the mugwort growing by the side of the road or something. That was just the way she was.

The laundry area nearby was bustling with palace women doing washing. They seemed to be working with sheets of some kind.

Logical, Maomao thought. Easy access to a laundry area meant clothes and bedding could be washed quickly. A good location for a medical facility where cleanliness was paramount.

“Pardon me. I seem to have caught a cold,” Ailan said to one of the ladies. The woman, who looked busy, cast a quick, suspicious eye on her, but then set down her basket of laundry and placed her hand to Ailan’s forehead.

“Slight fever. Stick out your tongue.” The woman’s voice was full of age and experience, her cheeks deeply wrinkled. She was middle-aged, a rare thing in the rear palace. She squinted at Ailan’s tongue, then pulled down her lower eyelids. She looked far more practiced at it than the quack doctor.

“Hmm,” she said. “Doesn’t look too bad. Try not to overwork yourself for two or three days and you’ll be fine. How would you like to handle it?” The woman’s diagnosis was spot on.

“I have to avoid giving this to the consort. Would you let me stay here? Just to be safe.”

“Hmm,” the woman said again. Then she picked up her basket and strode into the clinic, where she set the basket down and motioned them over.

Inside, the clinic was stark and unadorned, but not in an elegant way. The pillars were undecorated, and the hallways boasted only wooden floors. The windows consisted of nothing more than square holes.

All this simplicity had an obvious advantage, though: the less elaborate the place was, the easier it would be to clean. The many windows let plenty of air in. It looked like it would be a very pleasant place to spend the upcoming season.

One thing Maomao didn’t notice in the clinic was the distinctive smell of medicine; instead, she got a good whiff of alcohol.

Ailan was frowning. Apparently, she didn’t like the smell, and that was why she hadn’t wanted to come here. Maomao, though, was impressed; to her, the odor said the place was kept thoroughly clean. A strong alcohol could eliminate toxins in and around wounds, and everyone knew that putting some in your mouth and spitting it out was one method of sterilization. Maomao had always wondered how the rear palace avoided outbreaks of disease with no one but that quack to care for it—this explained it.

“Okay, let everyone know I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ailan said.

“All right,” Maomao said.

The middle-aged woman gave Ailan a wooden tag with a number on it, and she headed to the room with that number. Maomao looked around the clinic with keen interest until she found herself grabbed by the scruff of the neck. It was the same way they grabbed the kitten in the medical office.

“Time for you to get back to work. Don’t think you can slack off just because you had to bring your friend here.”

Maomao didn’t respond.

“What’s that?” the middle-aged woman said, grinning. “You say you’ll stay and wash all the laundry here?”

Maomao shook her head vigorously. In the end, she was left with no choice but to go back to the Jade Pavilion. She couldn’t win with these older women. The madam had taught her that.

Maomao trotted back to the Jade Pavilion. She’d so wanted to see more of the clinic, but it obviously wasn’t going to happen. As she walked along, women with laundry baskets hurried past her. It rained off and on this time of year, so the ladies had their hands full doing all the washing they could whenever there was a break in the clouds. Come to think of it, Maomao realized, she would need to go get the laundry later too.

Still, I can’t help noticing...

The woman who’d kicked her out of the clinic wasn’t the only more mature lady there; all the women she saw were comparatively advanced in age. The rear palace being what it was, as they got older, women were virtually forced out and replaced. In general, you could expect to be shown the door before you were thirty years old; anyone who was still there after that must occupy a higher position, like the Matron of the Serving Women, or otherwise be a lady-in-waiting to one of the consorts. Hongniang, for example, ought to have found herself ejected from the palace long ago, although to say so out loud would be to invite a slap.

Judging by how practiced the ladies of the clinic seemed at their work, Maomao guessed they’d been allowed to remain because they served a vital function in the rear palace. She wondered, though, about the fact that the place hadn’t smelled of medicine at all. Had the smell of alcohol simply overpowered it? Or...

Maomao walked along, stroking her chin in thought, when she ran smack into something with a thump! She thought maybe she’d bumped into a pillar, until she realized a countenance like a heavenly nymph’s was shining above her like the sun.

“You shouldn’t walk along muttering to yourself. You’ll trip.”

“I was muttering?”

Jinshi heaved a sigh, spreading his hands and shaking his head. The clear show of exasperation rankled Maomao, and she was about to give him a look like he was an earthworm floating in a puddle when she saw Gaoshun, his face calm as a Bodhisattva’s. She managed to force her narrowed eyes open.

“Do you need anything, sir?” she asked.

“No, nothing. We just happened to run into each other and I talked to you. Was that wrong?” Jinshi looked a tad startled. Gaoshun appeared to be silently trying to tell her something, but she was very sorry to say she didn’t know what it was.

“Where were you coming from?” Jinshi asked, his shoulders slumped a bit.

“The clinic. So that’s where it was.”

“I told the palace women to show it to you when you got here. Surely they didn’t forget?”

“Certainly not.” Maomao, noticing the unusually serious expression on Jinshi’s face, wondered what she should do. The eunuch wasn’t having a crisis of confidence about his work, was he? He always seemed so sure of himself.

Jinshi guided them to a quiet side street. Considering how simply standing there, the gorgeous eunuch could draw enough of a crowd to get in the way of work, it was probably a wise choice.

“I was impressed with how well the place was run,” Maomao said. “Frankly, I think we could afford to make that the medical office.” Hrm, but then again, if they did that, the doctor would lose his head, and Maomao would lose a convenient place to slack off. She was about to correct herself when she realized Jinshi’s eyebrows were furrowed again.

“Make it the medical office? Yes, life would be much easier if we could do that.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Only men are allowed to be doctors as such,” Gaoshun explained. “And only doctors can prepare medicine, or administer care for anything more serious than a scrape.”

So that’s it, Maomao thought. She realized now why the clinic hadn’t smelled like medicine.

This implied one particular problem, though. “Where does that leave me?” she said. She made as much medicine as she liked. She couldn’t bring ingredients in from outside the rear palace, of course, but she was able to use the wide range of herbs growing on the palace grounds and the stuff available at the medical office.

“We’re looking the other way. There are a number of ladies-in-waiting with some knowledge of medicine, but in a place like that, drugs would be too obvious. We can’t keep them there.”

Jinshi’s tone implied that there was a complicated story here. Maybe it involved the niceties of various rules and regulations, like how the palace women’s salaries worked. Maomao didn’t know; it wasn’t something she had any interest in.

So medicine proper was denied to the clinic, but they managed to get away with using alcohol as a disinfectant. Simply having a clean, quiet place could be enough to help fight many illnesses. If a woman looked in particularly bad shape, it might also be possible to send her back home.

What a lot of trouble, Maomao thought. The only thing that would be harder still was replacing a system that was already established. Too many people out there were too interested in not rocking the boat.

“I wish there were other ways to fill out the medical staff. We may need them one day,” Jinshi said. He couldn’t castigate Maomao; he wasn’t one to talk. He sounded as if he was speaking to her, but he was essentially talking to himself. “We’ll need a way, when there are no more eunuchs.”

Eunuchs, huh...

The eunuchs made up almost a third of the population of the rear palace. They were much harder to replace than the ladies, so their average age was relatively old.

No young eunuchs, Maomao reflected. The surgery to turn a man into one had been outlawed some years before, after the current Emperor had ascended the throne. Maomao didn’t know when Jinshi had become a eunuch, but judging by his age, it must have been only just before the procedure had been outlawed.

Tough break. If only he could have waited a little longer.

Without really meaning to, she dropped her gaze, glancing between Jinshi’s legs, then brought her hands together gently. She looked up slowly—and found herself meeting Jinshi’s eyes. His face showed a range of conflicting emotions. He looked at Maomao, his mouth half-open.

Crap. I didn’t say that out loud, did I? Maomao put a hand to her mouth and looked away, and this time she found herself looking at Gaoshun. He continued to appear beatific, but she thought he was looking at Jinshi with the same pitying smile as hers.

Slowly, Gaoshun shook his head. “Master Jinshi, business calls,” he prodded.

“All right.” He looked at Maomao. “If you would, let them know I’ll be coming by the Jade Pavilion later.” Then he was walking away, looking as elegant as ever. Maomao finally took her hand away from her mouth.

I could probably make a nice take if I could come up with a medicine that would make it grow back.

It was, shall we say, a most improper thought. But if she could have managed it, she would have done a roaring business indeed.