The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Rumored Eunuchs

In the medical office, Maomao the kitten was wrapped around the quack doctor’s leg, pleading for a fish. As usual, the office was open but singularly lacking in patients. Maomao (not the kitten) was there researching herbs that might serve as anesthetics.

The moment she’d returned to the rear palace, she’d asked the doctor about the procedure for making eunuchs. She’d learned a bit from her old man, but not enough. She’d hoped to learn more from the quack doctor, but true to form, he wasn’t able to tell her anything her father hadn’t.

“At it again, young lady?” he asked. His lips were pursed and he wore a dejected look.

Maomao (the kitten) was easily able to bat the fish out of his hand and steal it away. Perhaps thanks to her improved diet, her fur had grown lustrous; it really would make a wonderful brush, but thus far Gaoshun and the doctor had prevented Maomao from plucking any of the kitten’s hair.

“They don’t make eunuchs anymore. No need to learn how to do it.” His expression turned distant. It must have been terribly painful.

Maomao had a thought. “How do the eunuchs get into the rear palace?” she asked.

The doctor dangled a stalk of foxtail for the kitten to swipe at as he replied, “How? Well, they undergo the surgery to become eunuchs.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” She wanted to know how they were determined to be eunuchs.

“Time was, they’d let you in if you had written proof that you’d undergone the surgery. But now...” The quack flushed and ducked his head, a bit embarrassed. He acted almost as unworldly as Lishu. “These days they, uh, feel them. To see if anything’s there or not.”

“Do they grab at it?”

“What a question, miss,” the doctor said, exasperated. Such inspections hadn’t been the practice in days past, but there had been too many cases of people attempting to pass themselves off as eunuchs, and so the checks had been implemented. “People forged the documents, or got proxy papers. Some people will do anything for a few coins.”

The inspections were conducted by three officials, each representing a different department of the government. Before, the doctor told her, they’d conducted visual inspections of the would-be rear-palace entrants, but some of the officials found themselves rather discomfited by the process and so it was done away with.

Huh? Maomao cocked her head in curiosity. “They only conduct this inspection the first time a eunuch enters the rear palace?”

“No, each time you arrive, in principle. Though once they come to recognize you, they usually let you right through.”

Maomao didn’t say anything immediately, but continued to lean her head to one side as she gazed at the anesthetic herbs. Maybe... But she shook her head: no. The doctor, meanwhile, turned from the kitten and changed the subject. Sort of. “Speaking of eunuchs, did you know some new ones have joined us?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“Yes, younger men for the first time in quite a while. I think they’re proving quite a distraction!” He touched his loach-like mustache and sighed. Usually, becoming a eunuch cost a man any specific signs of masculinity, but in some cases, like the quack’s, a mustache or the like might remain. It was perhaps the doctor’s one source of pride.

Young women, particularly the more innocent among them, were often fastidious about cleanliness. They preferred eunuchs, with their almost gender-neutral appearance, to men with too much body hair or intimidating demeanors.

“The fuss is extra big this time because there’s a lot of pretty ones,” the doctor went on. “Right now they’re still behind the scenes, so it’s all well and good, but if one of them proved capable enough to be elevated to a higher position, it could be a real problem. I hope things calm down before then.”

Funny how the quack sounded like none of this concerned him, when he was the one on tenterhooks every time Jinshi was around. Then, too, if he could already comment on the eunuchs’ appearance, he must have gotten a look at them right after they were checked.

“I heard there was quite a scene when one of the lower consorts got too interested in one of the new eunuchs as he was heating the baths.”

“Hmm. I suppose such behavior can’t be ignored,” Maomao said. The lower consorts rarely had any hope of attracting the Emperor’s attention. The occasional unsatisfied woman wasn’t a rarity in the rear palace. No doubt there were a few palace ladies who had taken eunuch lovers.

Tough life, Maomao thought as she began to clean up the herbs.

○●○

“When are you going to tell her?”

It was the umpteenth time he had asked. Jinshi glared across at his attendant. “In good time.”

“Oh, yes! ‘In good time.’ Of course.” Gaoshun was standing beside the desk in Jinshi’s office, acting studiously unmoved. Well, his brow was furrowed, but that was typical for him. “I understand how nervous you are, but you’re acting a bit too overt about it, and it’s making things worse.”

“...With any other palace woman, that would be enough.”

“Xiaomao appeared as if she were looking at a snail that had lost its shell!”

In other words, a slug?

“Pipe down already,” Jinshi grumbled. He looked at the papers, separated them into the feasible and the infeasible, and began applying his chop.

There was no one else in the office. The soldier standing guard outside was probably yawning to himself. The place was set up so that they would know the moment anyone approached. It was only under such circumstances that Gaoshun would speak to him of a matter like this.

“I know.” Jinshi slammed his chop down, then passed the bundle of papers to Gaoshun. The other man accepted them without a word, straightened them, and placed them in a basket that an underling would take away.

“You have to make your decision soon, or it will come back to haunt you,” Gaoshun said.

“Are you sure it’s not better this way?”

Jinshi knew perfectly well what Gaoshun was thinking. He was suggesting Jinshi should bring the apothecary girl, Maomao, completely into his fold. Meaning...

“It would bring the strategist out of the woodwork, I can tell you that,” Jinshi added. He could see it now: the monocled man sticking his nose in. He was crazy about his little girl. And he was an unknown quantity, someone even the Emperor had to keep one eye on.

“Then fight poison with poison, as it were,” Gaoshun said calmly.

Lakan, “the strategist,” occupied a unique position within the palace. Though he officially held the title of Grand Commandant, he belonged to no particular faction, had formed no new faction himself, and drifted here, there, and wherever he pleased. He was the nail that stuck up, and ordinarily he would long ago have been pounded down—but he hadn’t been.

The man who had wrested back his inheritance from his blood father and half-brother something more than ten years before to now lead the La clan was a warrior fully worthy of the name. His astonishing genius had powered a meteoric rise through the ranks. Many had no doubt regarded him as an eyesore, and more than a few—so one heard—had tried to knock him off his perch. But it was Lakan who had survived. He did more than burn those who had tried to stop him; one man had even found his entire family scattered to the winds. The frightening thing was that neither rank nor blood intimidated Lakan.

There was no telling what was going on in that man’s head. But he could see things that others couldn’t, and use them to write a script that dragged his opponents down to the utmost depths.

There was, therefore, a tacit understanding among the inhabitants of the palace that one did not have anything to do with Lakan unless it was strictly necessary. If you didn’t hurt him, he wouldn’t hurt you. But having nothing to do with him also meant not making him your ally.

“All my papers would get covered in grease,” Jinshi said, remembering how Lakan hadn’t hesitated to eat oily snacks in his office.

“We would just have to live with it,” Gaoshun said, adding another crease to his brow. Truth be told, he wasn’t thrilled about the method, but it remained that he wanted to tell Maomao the truth. Ignore lineage and let her know what was really going on. Why she and they were in the position they were in, and why they’d had to hide it. Yes, he wanted her to know the truth. But at the same time, he was mildly terrified of how she might react.

Jinshi let out a long sigh and decided to get started on his next job. This was rear palace work, written requests submitted by the consorts to the master of the place.

“Seems to be quite a few of them today.”

“Yes,” said Gaoshun. “The usual matter, I presume. Perhaps along with items related to events the other day.”

The seals were already broken. He, or perhaps another official, must have checked them over once already.

Jinshi opened the first missive and gave it a quick look, then picked up the second. As he looked at a third, and then a fourth, he gradually settled into his chair, until he found himself gazing up at the ceiling, pressing the spot just under his eyes.

A good half of the material concerned just one of the four ladies, Loulan. The grievances were various: She had too many ladies-in-waiting compared to the other palace women. Her outfits were too gaudy and sullied the palace’s scenery. These were familiar complaints, motivated in large part by jealousy. Nothing new.

Aside from that, there was a report that some of the palace ladies were looking at the new eunuchs with romance aforethought.

“I could have seen that coming,” Jinshi muttered.

“Yes, sir.”

The newly arrived eunuchs had all been assigned to behind-the-scenes work: heating the bathwater, cleaning the laundry, and other jobs that mostly involved simple strength. The number of eunuchs had gone down in proportion to the number of palace women, so physical labor was considered a priority in the eunuchs’ tasks. If any of them showed any special aptitudes, they might later be transferred to some department that could use their skills, but these people had once been slaves of the barbarian tribes; due care was necessary. As for the women, their ardor would cool in time, but for form’s sake, he would have to keep an eye on things for now.

“What a headache.”

“Life goes on, sir.”

It was with many an exchange like this that Jinshi finished his paperwork.

Thus it was that Jinshi arrived at the rear palace the next day to observe the new eunuchs.

He asked the person who oversaw daily tasks in the rear palace about how the new arrivals were doing—heating the bathwater and doing the laundry both required well water, after all. As they spoke, Jinshi looked around.

He saw five people he took to be the newcomers; as they hadn’t yet been assigned to a specific department, they all wore white sashes. They were younger than the other eunuchs, but their faces were drawn, perhaps bespeaking their time in slavery. They seemed withdrawn, maybe likewise a legacy of their stay with the tribes. The way they scuttled fearfully about suggested they’d been under the barbarians’ thumb a long time.

Jinshi and the current Emperor concurred in their desire to reduce the staff of the rear palace, but this was another aspect of that issue. These people, having been castrated and enslaved, would take some time to adjust to having their freedom again. In a way, having them serve at the rear palace was the best way to help them adjust.

As he watched them, Jinshi understood the root of the issue. One of the newcomers had a positively lovely face. It looked gender-neutral, as eunuch faces tended to, but hollow cheeks gave it a gallant touch. However, the eunuch seemed to avoid using his left hand in his work.

“What’s the matter with him?” Jinshi asked.

“It seems he was beaten severely, badly enough to cause some paralysis on the left side of his body.” He was also horribly scarred, they were told, so he tried to show a minimum of skin.

“I see...” Getting water from the bath wouldn’t be the best job for him, then. He was weaker than the other eunuchs, and thus slower at his work. Meanwhile, the tendency of his face to attract admirers made him unsuited to assignment in the populous southern quarter. “Quite popular, though, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s very intelligent, and most considerate toward the ladies.”

At a distance, they could see some palace women talking. Gaoshun looked hard at Jinshi.

“What?”

“Look who’s talking,” he said with some annoyance.

Indeed, Jinshi had attracted his usual gallery. They turned their loveliest gazes upon him; he smiled back at them but walked over to the eunuch in the most I’m-here-on-business-like manner he could muster.

As he approached the newcomers, the more experienced eunuchs nudged them gently and they took the hint and bowed their heads. Their arms where they protruded from their sleeves looked abused. Jinshi saw welts that he took to be the results of whipping. He could well understand why they might wish to cover themselves.

Even as he took note of all this, Jinshi knew he could betray no obvious reaction. He simply gave the new eunuchs a brief exhortation to work hard and assurances that if they did so, they might rise in the world. He was about to leave when there was a crash.

He turned toward the sound, wondering what it could be. A palace woman was standing there, pale-faced, with a stunned expression. An apoplectic eunuch was shouting at her. Beside them was an overturned cart, its contents—precious ice, cushioned in reeds and cloth—spilled across the ground.

The ice had presumably been intended for one of the consorts. The stores in the ice chambers were getting low by this time, making an already rare resource all the more valuable.

Jinshi thought he recognized the terrified young lady. While he was still trying to figure out where he’d seen her, another woman rushed up. Another familiar lady, petite and distant.

Ah, so the young woman was a friend of Maomao’s. That must have been why she looked familiar. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he decided to start by seeing how things developed.