The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Before the Celebration

It was high summer, and there was a festive atmosphere in the capital. Visitors from foreign parts meant money flowed freely. Events and happenings would naturally build until there was a spontaneous, unofficial party in swing.

Celebrations were not inherently bad. They made everyone lively and happy, in the court as much as beyond it. And how did that liveliness manifest itself within the palace walls?

“Overwork.” Such was the one-word verdict the physician rendered on the pale-faced bureaucrat. The man had bags under his eyes and a thousand-yard stare. “Be sure you get some sleep. You’ll work yourself to death, literally.”

Sleep was so important. People thought they could go without it for a day or two, but it would catch up with them—come back to haunt them—as they got older. At one point, Jinshi had been getting dangerously little sleep himself. Every time he came to the pleasure quarter, Maomao had made him take a nap.

Setting up shop in the capital meant getting the bureaucracy’s permission. Street stalls might appear on a whim, but a proper storefront demanded permits, for tax purposes if nothing else. If you were caught evading the necessary red tape, the best you could hope for was a heavy fine—you might even be thrown in prison.

Festivals always attracted crowds. Foreigners were coming, which meant trade goods would be more readily available, and plenty of people had come to the capital hoping to get their hands on some. All of which meant the civil officials were doing paperwork morning, noon, and night.

The soldiers had been busy as well. The frequency of the freak strategist’s visits declined, for which Maomao was grateful. Then again, it might have been more accurate to say that after the food-poisoning incident, his subordinates had set up something of a dragnet for him.

More people meant more potential for crime, and it was the soldiers’ job to shore up public safety. Between the fact that they could simply allocate training time to work instead and the fact that they were generally muscle-brains, there was much less collapsing among the soldiers than among the unfortunate bureaucrats. There were, however, more injuries.

“Hfff! Can’t you be a little more careful?!” demanded a soldier as Yao daubed some medicine on a cut a good three sun long.

It’s just a flesh wound, Maomao thought. The soldier had sustained it, he said, when he’d confronted a man who’d opened a stall without a permit and was selling dodgy medicines. When they’d tried to shut down his shop, he’d pulled a knife on them.

“I’m sorry,” Yao said steadily, although Maomao could see her lips purse. She didn’t look angry so much as like she was holding back tears.

En’en discreetly went to help out. She offered the soldier a cup. “This should numb the pain,” she said, although Maomao was fairly confident she’d simply picked up a cup of cold barley tea.

The physicians still only rarely let the young women handle patients, but they thought quite highly of En’en’s small, thoughtful touches like that. Complaints about the medical office had allegedly diminished.

And what was Maomao doing? She was busily making medicines. The doctors had felt that she could at least be entrusted with preparing simple balms, and if she suppressed her desire to work on more exotic concoctions, it wasn’t so bad. It was the right place for her: she had neither the attitude nor, compared to the other two, the looks to be dealing with patients.

“Maomao, balm?” Since the incident with the cookies, En’en had taken to speaking to Maomao in a distinctly more informal tone. Her change in attitude had prompted Yao to start talking to Maomao a little more herself, so maybe En’en had done it in order to change her mistress’s childish behavior. Maybe.

“Balm, here you go,” Maomao said. As she was about to hand the stuff over, she glanced at the patient. It was the whiny soldier. An awful lot of noise he made for a pretty minor injury. Without a word, Maomao grabbed some balm she had in the folds of her robes, swapping it for the medicine she’d been about to give to En’en.

The perfect chance. Such an animated patient would be the perfect opportunity to test out her new salve.

Maomao was startled by a voice from behind her: “What do you think you’re doing?” She looked back to find an elderly physician glowering at her. “You just swapped those medicines, didn’t you?”

“Why, whatever do you mean, sir?” she asked. She was trying to sound as innocent as she could, but the physician grabbed her experimental medicine. Still glaring at her, he swiped a finger through it.

“This has something in it. Something unusual mixed in.”

“I reiterate, sir, whatever do you mean?”

This time Maomao’s attempt at deflection only earned her a knuckle to the head.

“For your information, Luomen asked us to be especially strict with you.” It would be hard for her to wriggle out of this with someone who knew her father. This doctor was the strictest in the medical office, and he already suspected her of having gotten her position because of her family connections. “What did you put in this?”

After a moment Maomao responded, “A little bit of frog.” She’d heard frog oil was supposed to be good and wanted to try it, but it had proven hard to get oil from frogs, and in the end she’d only been able to make what the doctor was currently holding in his hand. “I’ve heard they use frog oil as a medicine in foreign countries.”

“Have you, now? I certainly haven’t.”

In fact, neither had Maomao. She’d simply thought it might be possible it would have some sort of effect. She’d been careful to choose a nontoxic frog, and had confirmed there were no obvious ill effects by testing it on herself. She wasn’t savage enough to subject someone else to a concoction she hadn’t even checked for toxicity.

“In any case, I’m confiscating this.”

“What? No!”

Thus she found her medicine taken away. And after she’d spent her day off scrounging around in the rice paddies!

“Did you say...frog?” Yao asked, her face pale. It looked like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You would put frogs in medicine? There must be something wrong with you!”

Maomao dug in one ear with her finger and ignored her. She must have been over the line, for En’en nudged her with her elbow. So she said, “I can understand you might not be acquainted with such things, but they’re quite a typical meal among the common people.”

Yao looked even more disbelieving than before. She turned to En’en as if to ask whether that could possibly be true.

“She’s right, milady. Frogs are frequently eaten. You might also be interested to know that sometimes people try to pass off sliced snake meat as fish.”

Whatever color was left in Yao’s face drained away at the mention of snakes.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure no snakes end up on your table,” En’en assured her.

“I would be perfectly happy to see them on my table,” Maomao offered. The profusion of tiny bones could make them some work to eat, but all you had to do was fry them up and it was fine. If the smell bothered you, some fragrant or medicinal herbs could take care of it. In fact, Maomao had a few skewers of dried snake meat with her as a nice little snack in case she started to get peckish. She took one from her bag and held it out to Yao in silent invitation, but Yao only shook her head and turned limply to the wall. Maomao shrugged and put the skewer back.

“No slacking, ladies!” snapped the doctor, and the three women abandoned their chat and got back to work.

Maomao and the others had lunch at a nearby dining hall. The food was free and you could even get seconds, but if you didn’t want what they were serving, you had to bring your own meal or snack.

The court ladies ate separately from the men. Usually, Yao acted all but indifferent toward Maomao, but at meal times she edged a little closer on account of the atmosphere in the dining area.

Whether it be the rear palace or the pleasure quarter, there was a side of women that only came out with other women. When the ladies were off in their own corner of the dining hall, where the men wouldn’t see or hear them, that was when the talk really started.

“I give up. I just can’t abide soldiers. He gets paid well, but he’s so busy, and so much of his money goes to all the food he needs. He doesn’t even treat me to a decent meal!”

“Ugh, that’s awful. But civil officials aren’t so great either. That one who chatted me up the other day? Remember him? Well, it was nice of him to ask, but—ugh. I just don’t think I have anything to talk about with a man who’s made his way in life by organizing shelf after shelf of moldy books! I can’t even accept his hair stick. It’s so old-fashioned, I wouldn’t be caught dead with it!”

“Oh, take it. I know you—you’re just going to pawn it anyway.”

Many of the court ladies came from high-ranking families, but their personalities weren’t always as good as their upbringings. It was something of a difficult reality for a genuinely prim and proper young lady.

Maomao usually chose a seat in a corner of the dining area, and wherever she went, Yao would dart after her. She knew that if Maomao was there, the crueler ladies, especially those who were hostile to the newly minted medical assistants, would keep their distance.

I just tried to give them fair warning, Maomao thought, but now they wouldn’t get anywhere near her. It was like the Crystal Pavilion all over again.

So what had happened? There had been a court lady who’d decided to launch a preemptive strike against what she took to be the naive young medical assistants. She’d approached them with a train of hangers-on, in fact looking much like Yao had at the beginning. But where Yao had obviously been passionate about her work, this woman gave the impression that she was mostly at the palace in hopes of landing a mate. The way she seemed to have a different male dining companion at every meal, it was almost as if she took pride in being a woman of easy virtue.

Maomao couldn’t help but notice a rash around the woman’s mouth. “It seems you have a substantial number of partners,” she’d said. “Are you aware of the risks of illness?” She was just making sure.

“I wouldn’t be with a man who was sick!” the woman had said, whereupon Maomao had told her about how sexually transmitted diseases could be present but dormant, and how even if her partner wasn’t sick, one of his other partners might be, and the illness could still be passed to her. She wasn’t the only one who could sleep around, after all. Finally, Maomao had explained that several sexually transmitted diseases could be communicated at once.

“Have you been feeling tired?” she’d asked. “Any swelling or soreness in your private areas? Or bleeding, for that matter?”

As Maomao had proceeded with her questioning, the woman had grown paler and paler and finally vacated the scene. Maybe, Maomao reflected, it had been a misjudgment to handle her the same way as she did the courtesans at the Verdigris House. But if the woman wasn’t treated promptly, her nose might rot and fall off.

Maomao had been talking to the woman very much in earnest, but meanwhile Yao’s face had been bright red. En’en must not have known much about sexually transmitted diseases, for she had been taking copious notes.

Now, to return to the present moment. Today’s meal was congee, soup, and one of several side dishes. Choice of sides was free, but show up too late and they might be out of your favorite. We mentioned the small quantities of food, but that was because in general, full meals were served only in the morning and evening. The afternoon service was essentially a large snack.

For her side dish, Maomao took steamed chicken with cold vegetables. Meat dishes were popular and always went to the early birds. The other two women took the same thing.

“Just so you know, I’m not copying you,” Yao said.

I didn’t say you were, Maomao thought. In its own way, her behavior was sort of charming, and ever since she’d had that realization, Maomao had started to develop an affection for the other court lady. She was an awful lot easier to deal with than a sycophant who kept her true intentions hidden.

The other side dishes included fish and something vinegared. The fish did look a bit like snake meat, if you squinted; maybe that was why Yao hadn’t wanted it. Call her twisted, but the realization made Maomao want to tweak the young woman just a bit. They set up camp in their usual corner, but whereas Maomao normally ate in silence, today she said, “They say some sort of foreign dignitary is coming, right?” It had been all the talk recently. “Did you know that in the desert, snakes and lizards are considered important sources of nutrients? They eat them all the time there.”

Food culture differs from place to place, as one would discover quickly by going west—and indeed as Maomao had learned firsthand on her trip to the western capital. She hadn’t gotten to do any sightseeing as such, but there had been a lot of strange offerings at the street-side food stalls. Suirei, with her aversion to snakes and insects, had been at her wits’ end, Maomao recalled with a warm glow.

“Maomao,” En’en said, giving her a discouraging look.

Yao’s spoon was frozen in midair. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she said, putting the spoon down. It looked like Maomao had gone a bit too far.

“Lady Yao, you need your food,” En’en said.

“I might have some appetite for a snack,” Yao replied, still looking a little miffed. En’en thought about it for a second, then produced a cloth packet she unwrapped to reveal a bamboo cylinder—a canteen. The cafeteria servings were never enough for Yao’s voracious appetite, and En’en was always prepared with a supplement.

“You can have this after you finish your meal,” she said, glancing Yao’s way. Yao grumbled but started in on her congee again.

She knows how to handle her, Maomao thought. As for what was in the canteen, En’en got a bowl and emptied the contents into it, revealing something sweet-smelling, translucent, and moist.

“That’s your snack?” Maomao said. Yao really was rich—this was a luxurious treat. The perfect summer dessert. It even showed up in Empress Gyokuyou’s evening meals every once in a while.

“It’s Lady Yao’s favorite,” En’en said. She accompanied the remark with a finger to her lips, correctly guessing that Maomao knew what the dessert was.

Here I thought she was looking out for Yao! It was cruel, what she was doing. Was this, too, in the interest of helping Yao grow?

“Mmm! It’s a little warm, but it’s still good,” said Yao, digging into her jiggling snack with gusto.

The name of the dish? Hasma. The nature of the ingredients? Frogs’ reproductive organs. For Yao’s sake, Maomao decided not to say anything.