The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Dancing Ghost

Seki-u had looked very upset indeed when she’d realized the retiring young lady was one of the upper consorts. But once Maomao had heard the story, it would have been impossible to keep her from involving herself in it.

And so it was that the next night Hongniang told Maomao, “Sir Jinshi is asking for you.” The food tasting was over; Maomao, who had been sipping her dinner of congee, quickly cleaned up her bowl. Seki-u, who had been eating with her, frowned, but didn’t go so far as to say anything.

At the baths the day before, Maomao had recommended that Consort Lishu consult with Jinshi about the ghost. Maomao couldn’t advise her on the matter directly, not least because the look on Seki-u’s face said she would never allow it. But Maomao knew that if Lishu asked Jinshi about it, there was as good a chance as any that the matter would be referred to her. And now it seemed she’d been right...

I didn’t think this all the way through.

Maomao felt a chill run through her as she was ushered into the sitting room. Gyokuyou was there along with Hongniang, as were Jinshi and Gaoshun. Jinshi wore his usual heavenly smile, but she thought she could see his mouth twitching. All she could think was, Crap.

On a hunting expedition with Jinshi not long before, Maomao had learned a terrible secret. Every man in the rear palace other than the Emperor was supposed to be a eunuch—but she’d discovered that one of them wasn’t. Namely, Jinshi himself. Let’s say simply that he possessed quite a fine specimen. Maomao wasn’t interested in remembering anything more than that.

Maomao had finally gotten her ox bezoars, and would have been happy to pretend nothing else at all had happened, but Jinshi seemed to have other ideas. This was the first time they had properly seen each other since the trip, and while his lips were smiling, his eyes were not.

“He he he. And what kind of request brings you here today?” Consort Gyokuyou asked, grinning. Her natural curiosity made her want to stick her nose into all the various matters Jinshi brought to Maomao. This particular case had to do with Consort Lishu, though. How would Jinshi broach the subject?

“It seems a ghost has appeared in the chambers of one of the other consorts.”

“My goodness,” exclaimed the red-haired lady, but her eyes were sparkling. Beside her, Hongniang was pressing a hand to her forehead as if to say Again?

Maomao couldn’t help noticing that Jinshi had come straight to the point. She appreciated that he didn’t beat around the bush, but Gyokuyou was sharp enough that she would almost certainly figure out whom he was referring to.

“How terrible. Which consort is it? I must pay her a visit to make sure she’s all right.”

“Lady Gyokuyou, you can’t go outside in your state.”

“Oh no? Then perhaps I can send someone on my behalf. You and Maomao could go together. Or if you’re busy, perhaps I could send Yinghua with her.”

“Making sure she was all right” was presumably the last thing on Gyokuyou’s mind; she just wanted the juicy details. There was no point hiding Lishu’s identity now; the truth would come out as soon as Seki-u opened her mouth. Jinshi had to know that, but perhaps out of some desire to get back at Gyokuyou, he replied, “Consort Gyokuyou, this is a matter of utmost secrecy, so I must ask you not to pay her a visit or send anyone. Such being the case, might you return her to me again?”

“I might be able to lend her to you.”

The object of all this returning and lending was, of course, Maomao. She, Gaoshun, and Hongniang all sighed at once: were they going to see a repeat of last time?

“No, I want you to return her to me—this girl right here! Maomao!” Jinshi stood in front of Maomao and pressed a finger down on her head. Then he let it slide down her hair. “And when she gets back, I believe you’ll find you get no information out of her.” His hand brushed her cheek, his pinky and ring fingers floating across her lips. “Because I’ve taken pains to keep her quiet.”

Then he left the room, walking with an impossibly elegant gait. Gaoshun, openly shocked, followed him. The other inhabitants of the room looked at Maomao with their mouths agape, but she wore much the same expression they did.

It was Gyokuyou who made the first move. “What happened between you two?” Her gaze, still shell-shocked, settled on Maomao, who found the look downright painful.

Gyokuyou proceeded to interrogate her for the next thirty minutes, but Maomao would say only: “It was the frog’s fault.” She was starting to think that a few ox bezoars had been too cheap a price for a secret she would have to carry to her grave.

Maomao wondered what kind of apparition this “ghost” was. Quite frankly, she didn’t believe in such things. There had been the incident at the scary-story gathering a while back, but Maomao had no idea if there had been anything supernatural about that. Yinghua, though, was convinced it had been a ghost, and Maomao didn’t argue.

Call them spirits or whatever; it didn’t matter. Maomao didn’t believe people could be killed by malign supernatural forces. When someone died, there was always a reason: poison, or injury, or sickness. To the extent that a “curse” or the like ever killed anyone, in Maomao’s mind, it was only because the person drove themselves to illness through their own belief that they were a victim of such forces.

In any event, Maomao found herself accompanying Jinshi to the Diamond Pavilion. Personally, she thought this wasn’t necessarily something that warranted his personal attention, that perhaps Gaoshun or the like could have handled it perfectly well, but maybe she was wrong about that.

When they arrived at the Diamond Pavilion in its bamboo grove, it was the chief lady-in-waiting alone who met them. When they realized Jinshi was present, however, the other ladies promptly brushed the dust off their clothes, ran their fingers through their hair, and stood in a line at the pavilion entrance.

Jinshi regarded them with a smile. Maomao could feel a nasty scowl coming on, but Gaoshun looked at her with the gaze of a bodhisattva. He was well aware that Jinshi hadn’t been quite himself since their return from the hunt. He’d pelted her with questions about it, but she wasn’t sure how much she should say and had given only ambiguous answers. Did Gaoshun know Jinshi wasn’t a eunuch? Could he himself be another exception to the rule?

Convinced that thinking about all that wouldn’t get her anywhere, Maomao simply followed them into the Diamond Pavilion.

Consort Lishu was entertainingly easy to read: her face was pale when they arrived, but when she saw Jinshi, she promptly flushed red; and then as they came to the matter at hand, the blood drained from her cheeks again. She might not be Maomao’s mistress, but it was still somewhat alarming to realize someone like her was one of the four most important consorts.

I suppose that could be one reason His Majesty hasn’t taken her for a bedmate, Maomao thought. She was seized by the image of the Emperor as a thoughtful and perceptive man—but then she concluded that it was probably mostly that the bust size involved failed to arouse his appetites. Lishu fell even farther short of His Majesty’s preferred ninety centimeters than Maomao did.

“This way, please.” The chief lady-in-waiting spoke on behalf of her pallid mistress. A veritable crowd of other ladies-in-waiting followed them around, but their main objective seemed to be Jinshi; to be blunt, they were in the way. To put it poetically, one might have said that it was like a beautiful flower surrounded by a crowd of butterflies. But the ladies-in-waiting were far noisier than butterflies, and the overall effect was more like a cloud of flies buzzing around a fish head.

If they knew he wasn’t a eunuch...

Ugh. Maomao didn’t even want to think about it.

As she was thinking he ought to just hurry up and chop it off (not a very ladylike idea, true), they arrived in the bathing area. Jinshi and the other eunuchs paused briefly, but it was always eunuchs who brought the hot water for the bath anyway, so surely there was no problem.

“Here.” The chief lady-in-waiting stopped before the changing room; Consort Lishu stood some distance away, afraid to get too close. “The consort says she was standing here when she witnessed a mysterious figure.” She gestured in the direction of the changing room window. There was nothing beyond, just a blank wall: a storage room could be seen beyond the window. Normally the window would have been covered with a bamboo screen, but it had happened to be open and the consort had happened to glance through it.

“Can you describe the figure to me?” Maomao looked at Lishu, who was clutching her skirt and looking at the ground. It made her seem so young. She lacked any of the authority one associated with a consort.

“Are you still talking about that?” one of the ladies-in-waiting, evidently inspired by her mistress’s cowering demeanor, asked in a nasal voice. “You’re just so desperate to get attention, Lady Lishu. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You must have been seeing things.”

The woman stepped forward importantly, adding a flirtatious glance at Jinshi for good measure. She was pretty—women of the rear palace were, almost by definition—but there was a dangerous glint in her eyes, one her use of eyeliner emphasized.

“I should think it the duty of a chief lady-in-waiting to admonish her mistress for such behavior,” the woman said, shaking her head and sighing. The other ladies-in-waiting clustered around her as if literally falling into line behind her. The chief lady-in-waiting seemed to shrink into herself.

Ah-ha, Maomao thought. The haughty woman must have been the former chief lady-in-waiting. It must have rankled her to be demoted in favor of the food taster. She probably needled her like this every day.

Jinshi, who could no doubt deduce that much just as well as Maomao, smiled and took a step toward the self-important lady. “You speak truly,” he said. “But my duty is to listen when a consort has something to say. I implore you not to take the chance to do that duty away from me.”

His voice was sweet as nectar, and the ladies-in-waiting could only nod in agreement with whatever he said. Most of the ladies of the rear palace were, let us say, inexperienced with men, making their reactions to them amusingly easy to read. Then Jinshi added softly that he wished to drink some tea—an effective strategy for clearing the room. The ladies-in-waiting all but stumbled over themselves to be the one to prepare his drink. Actually, another lady-in-waiting entirely had already prepared tea long before, but they didn’t know that. He really did know how to do his job.

“Now, milady, might you be so good as to tell me what’s on your mind?”

Thus mollified by Jinshi, Consort Lishu lay down on her couch and finally began to speak.

○●○

I went to take my bath just like normal. Personally, I prefer tepid water, but my ladies always make the water quite hot, so I bathe somewhat late, to give the water time to cool down.

I’ve begun to get the impression lately that my ladies-in-waiting are not especially fond of me. But at least they don’t complain about my bathing alone, which has been my practice ever since my time in the convent. The only time I’m accompanied is when changing my clothes, for which I have the help of Kanan—ahem, my chief lady-in-waiting.

It happened when I had finished my bath and had gone into the changing room. I felt a little overheated while I was drying myself off, so I raised the blind. The window was closed, so not much air came through. But then I saw a flicker. At first I thought it might be the curtain flapping in the breeze, but no. I’d closed the window before getting in the bath, and there shouldn’t have been any breeze. Yet it was flapping.

So I looked over, and then I saw it: a big, round face floating there, flickering and dancing, using the curtain like a robe.

The face was smiling. And the entire time, it looked straight at me.

○●○

The very memory was clearly fear-inducing, for Lishu hugged herself and trembled as she lay on the couch. Kanan rubbed her shoulders gently.

Wow, and she used to be so mean to her. So people really could change, Maomao reflected as she sipped her tea. The tea Jinshi requested earlier hadn’t yet arrived; there seemed to be an argument going on about who would have the privilege of bringing it to him.

There were almond cookies to go with the tea, a rather cosmopolitan snack. They were crispy and seemed like they would keep well, so Maomao kept glancing at Kanan, wondering if she might be able to wheedle a few out of her as a souvenir.

“You don’t think there could have been someone in the area?” Jinshi was asking. “Might you have seen a palace woman and mistaken her for a spirit?”

Lishu and Kanan both shook their heads. “Kanan was with me,” Lishu said. “She came running when she heard me shout. And she saw the ghost too.” Apparently, despite her fear, Kanan had approached the round-faced apparition in hopes of determining its true identity. “But then the ghost disappeared. There was no one around, of course, and the curtain was as still as if it had never moved. The window was shut too. That room doesn’t get much air through it.”

Maomao hmmed and put her hands together, looking at the location Lishu had described. The whole layout seemed off to her. Who would build a storeroom right next to a bath? At the Jade and Crystal pavilions, the bath was a separate structure, with an adjoining room where the consort could relax after her soak. The bath might not be separate in the Diamond Pavilion, but surely somewhere to relax would be a more appropriate thing to put beside it than a storage space.

She was about to steal a glance at Jinshi, but thought better of it and looked at Gaoshun instead. He was looking at Jinshi, an expression of concern on his face. Jinshi waved at them, and Maomao took it as permission to ask whatever was on her mind.

“Has this always been a storage room over here?” she said. She couldn’t shake the sense that there was probably a more pointed question to ask, but decided to start with the first thing that came into her head.

“No, it didn’t used to be,” Kanan said.

“Then why is it now?”

“Er, well...” Kanan stood, looking a little uncomfortable, and moved to the storage room across from the bath. She pointed inside, among the rows of shelves and piles of miscellaneous objects.

“Ah, I see,” said Maomao. She spotted black marks on the wall—mold, she discovered on closer inspection. Once it had taken root like this, it would require more than a little scrubbing to get rid of it. The proximity of the bath must have made humidity an issue here. And yet the Jade and Crystal pavilions didn’t have problems with mold. The ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion would probably have investigated to figure out where it was coming from so that they could take care of the problem at its source—but such dedication couldn’t be expected from the women of the Diamond Pavilion. In fact, the ladies of the Jade Pavilion, with their diligent cleaning, were somewhat exceptional. Here, they’d decided to sweep the problem under the rug, as it were, by simply turning the room into a storage area.

Still, the problem went beyond a little mold: in places, the wall was soft and springy to the touch. It might even be rotted clear down to the foundations.

“I wouldn’t have said this building was that old.”

“It’s not. It was built when Lady Lishu first entered the rear palace.”

Maomao frowned: could the structure have gotten so unstable in such a short time? Then, she noticed that there was a window directly next to the rotted part. This was the curtain Lishu had said was flapping.

Stroking her chin, Maomao went over to the bathing area; she went through the changing room and peered into the cyprus-wood bathtub.

“There it is.” The words had escaped her lips almost before she knew it. She’d found a small, round hole at the bottom of the tub. To the side of the tub sat a plug. The rear palace had been built over an old sewer system—one of its great conveniences—and the drain no doubt led to it.

In her mind’s eye, Maomao sketched the location of the bath vis-à-vis the storage room, then added in the flow of the sewers. Then she said, “Lady Lishu,” and looked at the consort. “On that day, did you, perchance, accidentally pull out the stopper in the tub?”

Lishu blinked. “How did you know?”

Now Maomao was sure. She walked briskly back over to the mold-infested wall, then tried to move a shelf so she could get a better look at the rotten floor. She wasn’t strong enough to do it alone, but the ever-perceptive Gaoshun quickly came over and helped.

Moving the shelf revealed a spot on the floor so soft that it looked like it might give way if she jumped on it. A crack had formed there between the floor and the wall.

“Would it be possible to check on a blueprint whether the sewer runs directly under this spot?” Maomao asked. It was, once again, Gaoshun who responded promptly to her request. He instructed another eunuch to bring a blueprint of the Diamond Pavilion.

Just as Maomao had suspected, the sewer system ran directly under the floor of the storage room. “With hot water passing just under the floor and steam coming up from it, it would naturally make this wall prone to rot,” she said. “And if some of the steam were to slip out of this crack, it could produce a breeze even with the window closed.”

That explained the flapping of the curtain.

Consort Lishu looked at Maomao open-mouthed, but then her eyes widened and she said, “B-But then, how do you explain that round face?”

Maomao hmmed thoughtfully and stroked her chin again. She looked at the location of the curtain, and the spot where she assumed Lishu had seen the face. Then she turned slowly around in that spot. With the wall at her back, she spotted a shelf at a diagonal from where she stood. It held something covered with a cloth. She approached and removed the covering to reveal a brass mirror. It looked awfully well polished for something left in a storage room; it still had some shine even now.

“That’s—”

“Yes, ma’am?”

Lishu looked at the ground. “That’s very important to me. Please be careful with it.”

Well, it wasn’t as if Maomao had intended to break it. However, she refrained from touching it, instead staring at the mirror’s surface. It was almost exactly the size of a human face. “How long has this been here?” she asked.

“Since the new mirror arrived with the special envoys. I used it all the time before that. It was put here when we got the new one.”

The envoys had brought the consorts full-length glass mirrors, meaning they showed much more than this brass plate, and far more clearly. There would be no comparison—and no reason not to put this one away in storage.

“And yet it appears to have been polished every day,” Maomao remarked. Brass clouded quickly. For the mirror to remain so reflective, it must have been cared for frequently.

Lishu regarded the mirror with a certain lonesomeness. She seemed far more attached to it than to the new gift.

“Since we have it out, take a look in it,” Maomao suggested. She took the mirror, careful to hold it with the cloth, and gave it to Lishu. “It will be easiest to see if you make sure there’s plenty of light.” So saying, Maomao opened the curtain, letting in the sun from outside. The highly polished mirror caught the light and reflected it. “It might be clearest if you hold it like this.” Maomao adjusted the position of the mirror in the consort’s hands. The light struck the brass surface, then reflected onto the white wall.

Everyone present reacted with astonishment: the light formed a perfect circle on the wall, in which floated the face of a smiling woman.

Jinshi was the first to speak: “What is this?” He stared fixedly at the wall as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Now I get it, Maomao thought. “I’d heard of so-called magic mirrors, but this is my first time seeing one,” she said. These were bronze mirrors that indeed seemed magical: when light struck them, they reflected an image or a message. They were sometimes also called “transparent mirrors” because of the way light seemed to make them see-through when it hit them. They had a long history, although very specialized techniques were required to make them.

Maomao’s adoptive father Luomen had a wide-ranging knowledge that extended well beyond drugs and medicine. Ever since she was small, he’d regaled Maomao with intriguing stories and surprising facts—and this had been one of them.

Presumably, the cloth had simply happened to come off the mirror that night. The polished surface of the mirror had caught the moonlight and projected its image on the wall. The result had been the floating face. A “ghost” created by sheer coincidence.

“This face...” Lishu sniffled, ignoring the tears that ran down her cheeks as she peered at the mirror. “It looks like my poor, deceased mother somehow.” She clutched the bronze plate tightly, her lips twisting with distress and snot pouring from her nose. Quite frankly, it robbed her of any semblance of the authority a consort should have, but it also looked very much characteristic of her. This girl was one of the Emperor’s “four ladies,” yet really, at her age, she should still have been growing up.

Now Maomao knew why she cherished that mirror so much. It was a reminder of her mother. Perhaps she’d hoped to make her daughter feel that even in the rear palace, far away, she was always at her side. Maomao herself didn’t really know what a mother was. But it was clearly something so important that it inspired deeply felt emotions in this consort.

Still indecorously dripping snot, Lishu clung to the mirror. The image on the wall had vanished, but no doubt she could still see that gentle smile in her mind’s eye.

“I wonder if Mother is angry that I changed mirrors. Maybe that’s why she appeared.”

“It was simply coincidence, milady,” Maomao said dispassionately.

“I’m told that she loved dancing. Giving birth to me shattered her body so she couldn’t dance anymore. She died never being able to do it again. I wonder if she came back as a ghost now to dance.”

“There is no such thing as ghosts.”

Lishu seemed not to hear Maomao’s cold pronouncement. Kanan took out a handkerchief and began wiping her mistress’s face.

The scene was robbed of its pathos when someone announced, “Your tea is ready, sir.”

It appeared to be the former chief lady-in-waiting who had won the struggle to deliver the drink. She’d arrived bearing fragrant tea along with snacks. She had an obsequious smile on her face for Jinshi’s benefit, but when she saw her sobbing, snotty mistress, her expression twisted into one of contempt. She quickly regained her smile, however, and slowly approached the consort.

“Lady Lishu, whatever are you crying for? You should be embarrassed, making such a display in front of these people.” She was the picture of a diligent servant remonstrating with her revered lady. But it was far too little, far too late to conceal her true attitude from Maomao. The way she put on her best airs for these important men, but promptly reverted to form outside their company, was no better than a third-rate courtesan. And like so many women of that kind, she knew a raw nerve when she saw one.

“Oh, my, do we still have this mirror?” the lady-in-waiting said, looking at the bronze plate. “And after those envoys were so kind as to give you such a lovely new one. Surely you don’t need this anymore. Why not bestow it on someone else?” She plucked the mirror out of Lishu’s slackened grip and smiled as she gave it an appraising look. No doubt she wanted it for herself.

“—back.”

The sound came from Consort Lishu, but she was curling into herself and her voice was as quiet as a fly, and the lady-in-waiting didn’t notice. She was too busy stuffing the mirror into the folds of her robe like a juicy piece of loot. She was just about to return to serving Jinshi his tea when Lishu reached out and caught her sleeve.

“Give it back.”

“What’s that, milady?”

“Give it back!” She tore at the woman’s collar, grabbing the mirror. The former chief lady-in-waiting was aghast, and Lishu’s other women, who had come bustling in belatedly, wore frowns of their own.

“What a way to behave—and in front of guests! You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The weeping, the grabbing: taken in isolation, they would seem to reflect poorly on Consort Lishu. It simply looked as if she had lost her temper. Whatever the other ladies-in-waiting may have thought having arrived late, however, Maomao, Jinshi, and the others knew that they were witnessing only the denouement of this struggle.

It was Jinshi who moved first. “It appears that mirror is a personal treasure of hers. I question whether it’s wise to take it from her without fully understanding what it is.” His tone was gentle and his words were delicately chosen, but it was unmistakably criticism. He stood before the lady-in-waiting, who was straightening her collar, and reached out one large hand. She blushed furiously, for it looked as if he was going to stroke her hair—but then instead he pulled out the hair stick she was wearing.

It was a beautiful piece, finely sculpted; Jinshi squinted at the crest it bore. “Was this also bestowed on you?” he asked. “Even if it was, I’m surprised you never learned that a mere lady-in-waiting who wears the crest of a high consort is reaching above her station.” Once again his tone was gentle, and his smile never slipped. But that made it all the more frightening.

Jinshi had to be well aware that Consort Lishu had been at the mercy of her ladies-in-waiting. He’d refrained from making the matter public because it would have been ruinous to Lishu’s reputation, as well as because, as a eunuch, it was simply not business in which he ought to be involved. With physical proof in his hands, however, he was now free to speak his mind. And he would drive the point home as hard as he could.

“In the future, I hope you’ll refrain from overstepping yourself,” he said. That unutterably lovely smile was on his face. The former chief lady-in-waiting simply crumpled to the floor; the other women, evidently remembering trespasses of their own, had all gone pale.

Wow, is he scary, Maomao thought: Jinshi was sipping his tea as if nothing had happened at all.