The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 6 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Conclusion of Lishu’s Journey

“It’s been a long trip, but it’s almost over,” Ah-Duo said as she stood on the deck of the ship and savored the breeze.

“Yes.” Consort Lishu had a firm grip on the railing. Her seasickness was much better now, but she was always afraid a sudden toss of the boat might throw her off her feet, so she didn’t let go. Ah-Duo smiled at her antics; Lishu responded with a pout, suddenly embarrassed.

With them on deck at the moment were a lady-in-waiting, the young woman Ah-Duo referred to as Rei, and two bodyguards.

Rei was dressed in masculine clothing, but seemed to be a woman. Lishu had been flustered around Rei at first, but after a while it occurred to her what was going on. Since Ah-Duo wore men’s clothing, too, the two of them made a lovely picture together. Both were tall and slim, simultaneously pretty and cool. Lishu could barely restrain a sigh when she looked at them—of admiration for one, and disappointment that she lacked the easy beauty of the other.

Lishu was sixteen, and she would have liked to say she was still growing, but she’d stopped getting taller last year, and her body seemed unlikely to grow any more womanly from here on out. She’d heard that cow’s milk could help with that, and for a while she’d tried to drink it, but it made her sick to her stomach every time, and she eventually gave it up.

To her chagrin, her ladies-in-waiting had discovered her making trips back and forth to the toilet. She knew they called her things like “the hopeless consort” and “trophy consort” behind her back. It made her upset and angry—of course it did—but what could she say? She knew it was true. At least she was aware of the nicknames now. Even that was better, far better, than having no idea what her women were saying, dancing around for them like a jester.

Lishu’s thoughts must have shown on her face, for Ah-Duo asked, “Will you be all right going back to the rear palace?”

Oops! the consort thought, and forced her lips to curve upward in a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

She had allies now, even if only a few. Along with her chief lady-in-waiting, several of Lishu’s other ladies had recently begun to be more considerate toward her. The maid who came to get the laundry occasionally spoke with her too. Lishu could just imagine what her former chief lady-in-waiting must have thought about her talking to someone of such low birth, but ever since the rebuke she’d received after trying to take Lishu’s mirror from her, the woman had been far more quiet.

The laundry maid had told Lishu that there was a book she loved but couldn’t read, so Lishu had been making a copy for her without telling the other ladies-in-waiting. It was a small secret, as secrets went, but with as little excitement as there was in the rear palace, it was enough to set the heart pounding.

Ah-Duo, meanwhile, looked at Lishu with concern. “And can you do your job?”

“I’ll...be fine,” Lishu said again.

Her job: in other words, her duty as a consort. Sometimes that meant officiating at ceremonies, but Lishu knew that wasn’t what Ah-Duo was referring to.

She was talking about the Emperor’s visits.

To this point, His Majesty had never ordered Lishu to be his bedfellow on account of her age. But she was sixteen now—no longer “too young.” When this journey was over, one of those visits would be waiting for her.

“You’re Sir Uryuu’s daughter. What happened on this trip need not affect you. I’m sure you can still talk to the Night Prince.”

The Night Prince—the man who had formerly used the identity of the eunuch Jinshi in the rear palace. It turned out that identity had been a cover; in reality, he was someone whose name could hardly be spoken. People referred to him as “the Emperor’s younger brother” or “the Night Prince” instead.

But as to that subject, Lishu could only shake her head. Yes, she’d been quite smitten with him when he’d been in the rear palace. A youth who looked like he had jumped out of a picture scroll, who always had a gracious smile even for her? She knew very well that it amounted to flattery, because she was an upper consort, but it still made her happy to have someone call her by her name and say kind things about her.

Before—long ago, when she was callow and ignorant—Lishu might have responded joyfully. The idea that someone so beautiful, someone she had been so taken with, could conceivably become her husband was like a dream.

But Lishu understood: the young man’s captivating smile was one he could and would show to anyone and everyone. She’d realized that almost a year ago now.

It was the moment when she’d seen the Imperial younger brother’s unguarded smile—not the one like a celestial nymph, but one belonging to an ordinary young man. Lishu had never seen it before, and it stabbed her with the realization that she was not special to him.

“I couldn’t. He would be wasted on me,” she said.

Ah-Duo grinned at that. “Ho ho. Happy being the Emperor’s upper consort, then?”

“Ack! That’s not what I—!” Lishu waved her hands as if she could push the idea away. She felt she wasn’t even fit to be His Majesty’s consort. Empress Gyokuyou and Consort Lihua both seemed to Lishu as if they lived above the clouds, so far removed from her that when she was seated next to them at banquets, she always found herself wondering if it was really acceptable for her to even be there. Sometimes she noticed herself being more high-handed than she needed to with her ladies-in-waiting in an attempt to shore up her own confidence. She burned with shame at the thought.

“No? Then what, if I may ask, did you mean?” Ah-Duo gave her a teasing smile.

Lishu puffed out her cheeks—but not too much. Strangely, she never really found it unpleasant when Ah-Duo teased her.

Lishu thought there was someone more suited to the Night Prince—as there was to the Emperor. She was quiet for a long moment.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Ah-Duo said, her eyes dancing, but Lishu continued to gaze silently at her. Ah-Duo looked like a handsome young man, but she was a woman. Once, she had even been His Majesty’s only consort.

Both Empress Gyokuyou, with the exotic allure of her red hair and green eyes, and Consort Lihua, who was like a blooming rose, and clever, too, were fit to be the centerpiece of His Majesty’s garden. But when Lishu asked herself who was most suited of all to stand alongside the Emperor, her mind went back to when His Majesty was still the heir apparent. How he would occasionally pop his head in to steal a snack when Ah-Duo and Lishu were taking tea together, and would bounce Lishu on his knee. She was an ignorant child, then, and called him Uncle Beardy. It would bring a wry smile to His Majesty’s face, while Ah-Duo held her sides laughing.

Now, it seemed unimaginable.

Lishu would munch on some sweet treat and watch them, thinking, So this is what a husband and wife look like. She thought they went together better than any couple in the world.

Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to accept this, even if she knew it was inevitable. Knew it had been inevitable from the moment she became a consort.

Lishu was, and would be, one more obstacle between Ah-Duo and the Emperor. She knew that love in real life was never as beautiful as it was in the picture scrolls, that this was what she had been born to. Yet she worried that Ah-Duo, whom she adored, would come to despise her because of this. She thought, in fact, that Ah-Duo might still be a consort if Lishu hadn’t come to the rear palace.

In her mind, though, neither did that mean she should become the Night Prince’s wife. Ultimately, she found herself simply swept along by life, not knowing what she really wanted. She knew love, or perhaps “love,” from her scrolls and novels—but she didn’t understand what it really was.

“You can just see the capital,” Ah-Duo said. Though still hazy in the distance, it was possible to make out the vast outer wall surrounding the palace. “I’ll head back to our quarters. I want to get my things in order.” Ah-Duo kept only a minimum of serving women; she largely looked after herself. It made her extremely impressive in Lishu’s eyes.

“Me too!” Lishu let go of the railing and made to follow Ah-Duo. “Ow!” she exclaimed.

The wood of the railing was somewhat rough, it seemed, for a splinter had pierced her palm. She tried to press her palm with her finger to draw it out, but all she succeeded in doing was making herself bleed. Frustrated by the shock of pain, she found another memory bubbling to mind.

A servant of the Night Prince had saved Lishu two separate times—the first from bandits, the second from a wild beast from a foreign land. On the first occasion, he had easily driven off the bandits, but Lishu, cowering behind, hadn’t been able to see his face. It was only when the lion had attacked that she’d seen him face-to-face for the first time. She’d imagined he would be older, but she realized they couldn’t have been more than five years apart. She heard later that he was a member of the Ma clan.

The young man had hurt his hand—was it because of the all-out swing he’d taken at the lion?—and was being tended to; Rei had tried to treat him, but the young man had declined her. The apothecary girl had noticed, however, and given him first aid over his objections. The apothecary was so aloof, and the young man, despite his griping, had allowed himself to be treated. Lishu saw that they must be good friends, and the thought made her sad.

More than once during their stay, she had fretted about whether she ought to thank him, but in the end she was so embarrassed that he’d seen her reduced to a sniffling wreck that she couldn’t work herself up to talk to him. The young man might be someone else’s servant, but he also came from a respectable house himself. Maybe he took Lishu for a little girl who didn’t know her manners. She wished she could at least send him a letter, but her position didn’t allow that either. Even if she could have sent one, though, she knew she never would have. She just didn’t have it in her.

Lishu felt a wave of depression. She returned to her cabin, gazing at the splinter in her hand.

“I guess this is goodbye for a little while, then,” Ah-Duo said lightly as she climbed into another carriage. Originally, they were supposed to part ways at the ship’s landing, but Lishu had begged, and convinced Ah-Duo to let her share a carriage back to the capital. Lishu really wished they could have been together all the way to the palace, but she gave up on that idea. Ah-Duo might have indulged her, but Lishu could see her own attendant growing ever more uncomfortable. She decided not to bother Ah-Duo any further.

Lishu watched Ah-Duo through the window of her carriage as it departed, and then her own transport started back to the rear palace. The six weeks of travel, to which she was unaccustomed, had been hard on her. She’d spent day after day in a carriage or on a ship, feeling her skin bake under the hot sun. There had been bugs, and to cap it all off, she’d been attacked first by bandits and then by a lion. Talk about kicking someone when she was down.

Yet the truth was, it had been fun. Life in the rear palace boasted every convenience, but it was boring. Lishu was glad to finally be seeing her ladies-in-waiting after so long, but she knew that included some who didn’t like her very much. Without them, though, Lishu would never have been able to maintain her dignity as a consort.

She looked at the lady-in-waiting beside her—ever since the lion attack, she’d served Lishu with a look of fear on her face. She’d been assigned to wait upon the consort by Lishu’s father, yet she had all but ignored Lishu—maybe she’d been told to do so by Lishu’s half-sister, or maybe she believed the rumors about the consort being an illegitimate child. Maybe both. Lishu was secretly relieved that the woman wouldn’t be coming back to the rear palace with her.

The carriage passed through the gate of the palace, the driver presenting a seal that served in lieu of written permission to enter.

Lishu had assumed they would proceed directly to the rear palace, so she was surprised when the carriage came to a halt with the rear palace gate still some ways off. “What’s going on?” she asked the lady-in-waiting with her.

Uneasily, the woman tried to get a peek at the driver, then she looked back at Lishu just as uncomfortably. “It appears they wish to speak with you, ma’am.”

At that moment, several middle-aged women boarded the carriage. Lishu hadn’t seen them in the rear palace—from their outfits, she assumed they were court ladies who served in the palace proper.

“Lady Lishu,” said the one in the center, kneeling before her. “Please accept our humblest apologies, but for the next month, you will be asked to live outside the rear palace.” She lifted her head and looked Lishu in the eye.