The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Meeting the Shrine Maiden

Close to Ah-Duo’s villa near the court was another, similar building whose main purpose was to house foreign visitors. At the moment, the shrine maiden from Shaoh and her entourage were staying there. That was where Maomao, Yao, Luomen, and several bodyguards went to perform her examination. Maomao recognized the guards—they were eunuchs she knew from the rear palace. With the shrine maiden present, the villa was on some level a place where men were not allowed, hence the emasculated escorts.

“What an odd place,” Yao commented. Although it was near the court, it was in the opposite direction from Yao and Maomao’s dormitory, so they’d never had a chance to take a good look at it. Maomao had glanced at it a few times when she was going to Ah-Duo’s villa, but only now did she see that Yao was right. It did seem strange.

Maybe the style could be characterized as foreign. The architecture didn’t seem Shaohnese so much as it seemed to come from somewhere farther west. Maomao had never seen such a building herself, but there had been pictures of one in a book she’d borrowed long ago. The construction used wood and occasionally brick, and the tops of the window frames were in the shape of crescent moons. The use of glass in a few places only emphasized the luxury of the place. The garden contained rose arches that must have been magnificent when the flowers bloomed.

The servants’ uniforms were equally striking, although the servants themselves all had dark eyes and hair that suggested they were people from Li. Guess you can’t hire foreigners to attend on a foreign dignitary. If one of them turned out to be a covert operative, it would be on your head. Maomao was sure that even the mud-covered middle-aged lady tending to the garden had been thoroughly vetted.

They entered the building and were met by a woman whose appearance screamed foreigner. She was tall, with light-brown hair, while her eyes were an olive color, straddling the line between light and yellowish green.

“We have been waiting for you,” she said with the unique Shaohnese lilt. “Please, come inside.”

She led them within, where they discovered that the interior of the building was much more elaborate than the exterior. There were flagstones beneath their feet, while many of the stone pillars around the building were decorated with carvings. A number of display pieces stood here and there. They looked imported; if a commoner were to knock one over, they could work their entire lives and never pay it back, Maomao suspected.

As they went deeper and deeper into the building, it got darker and darker. Curtains had been pulled over the windows, blocking the light from outside.

Right. She’s albino... That is to say, someone with white hair, pale skin, and red eyes. Some were said to have blue eyes, or a few streaks of gold in their hair, but all of them were sensitive to sunlight. Maomao’s old man had told her that albino people lacked the stuff that normally gave people their skin color, so the sun was harsher on them than on most people. To compensate for the blocked windows, there were candles placed along the ground at regular intervals, burning even here in the middle of the day.

“This way, please,” the woman said. “I sincerely apologize, but we must ask the men to wait here.”

“We understand, of course,” Luomen said, and he and the guards stopped at the entryway.

Maomao and Yao proceeded into the room. It was dim and full of the smell of incense. An orange light flickered, revealing a silhouette on a canopied bed.

“I’ve brought them, milady.”

A woman who appeared to be an attendant stood by the bed. She had dark skin and looked somehow familiar. Maomao was tilting her head, trying to figure out who it was, when Yao exclaimed, “Oh!”

Maomao gave her a nudge, but at the same moment, she realized why the woman looked so familiar. She was the one who’d been with the young girl, Jazgul, the other day. The embroidered cloth she’d given them as a thank-you had led Maomao to assume she was a rich woman—but she never would have guessed that she was the shrine maiden’s attendant.

So the shrine maiden eats frogs too, huh? She’d thought for sure that the shrine maiden avoided meat and fish on the basis that one wasn’t supposed to take a life. When she’d heard the woman was sick, Maomao had guessed it might be due to malnutrition from not eating meat, but she seemed to have been wrong about that.

The tanned woman appeared to remember them too, for she looked startled—but only for a moment. She soon collected herself, her face impassive once more. Maomao and Yao were here on business. None of them could take time for personal reminiscences while they were on official duty.

“If you would,” the attendant said, her accent thick. She pulled aside the curtain, revealing a beautiful woman who was indeed albino. She looked young for someone who was supposed to be in her forties. Maomao thought she seemed rather tall, though it was hard to tell while she was lying down. She also had a slight paunch, although her hands were long enough that she didn’t look overweight.

If she were a little younger and a little slimmer... Maomao thought. Well, then she would have looked exactly like the foreign woman the painter had spotted. And then there was... Yes, they do resemble each other.

Meaning the shrine maiden and the White Lady.

Maomao also had her secret mission, entrusted to her by Lahan. He wants to know if this “shrine maiden” really has the qualifications to be a shrine maiden, or if...

Or if her “qualifications” had gone long ago, when she had borne the White Lady.

I’ll have to see if there’s any sign she’s given birth. The quickest way would be to simply peek between her legs, but that was off the table. There was rude and there was rude. There’s another way, though. During pregnancy, the belly expanded rapidly over the course of nine months. It got so big it could almost burst, only to deflate as soon as the child was born. This resulted in stretch marks, which occurred because the skin couldn’t always grow fast enough to keep up with the rapid expansion of the belly during pregnancy, causing it to physically break.

Empress Gyokuyou and Consort Lihua both managed to avoid them, though...

Typically, birth resulted in stretch marks. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was one bit of evidence Maomao could use. I’m hoping she’ll at least let me look at her belly.

Maomao bowed and approached the bed. She and Yao had already discussed their respective responsibilities. Maomao would do the actual examination while Yao took notes. Yao had wanted to do the exam herself, but one of the physicians said that Maomao took more accurate pulses, and Yao had to acquiesce. Even if she hated knowing that she wasn’t doing as well as Maomao.

Maomao was starting to understand the many reasons En’en found Yao so adorable. She was almost unbearably earnest and open, and when someone disagreed with her she could be by turns obnoxious and inspiring. Just as she’d accepted Jinshi’s selection of En’en as one of his ladies-in-waiting, she was good enough to admit that Maomao outstripped her in medical abilities.

They’d already seen a written report detailing the nature of the shrine maiden’s complaint and what treatments had previously been tried. Maomao and her old man had discussed it together and come up with a number of possible diagnoses.

“I’d like to start by taking your pulse, milady, if I may?” Maomao said, speaking slowly and distinctly.

“Please do,” the shrine maiden said, holding out her hand. Maomao found it soft to the touch. The pale skin made it easy to see where the veins were. She placed three fingers against the maiden’s wrist. She could feel the woman’s heartbeat against her fingertips, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, and she measured how many beats there were in a set period of time. She gestured to Yao, using her fingers to communicate the number, which Yao recorded with a portable writing set.

“Are you feeling nervous? Your pulse is a bit fast,” Maomao said.

The question must have escaped the shrine maiden, for she gave Maomao a questioning look. The woman beside them said a few words in Shaohnese, whereupon the shrine maiden smiled and said, “Yes, a little.”

The number wasn’t abnormal, in any case, so Maomao saw no cause for alarm. She said, “May I touch your face, ma’am? I’d like to examine your eyes and tongue.”

“Please, go ahead.”

Maomao put her hands on the shrine maiden’s cheeks. She had laugh lines, but otherwise her skin was firm and beautiful. Maomao pulled down the skin under the woman’s eyes so that she could see the eyeball better. Then she had her open her mouth and stick out her tongue.

We were lucky, in a way, Maomao thought. She was thinking of their encounter with the girl Jazgul the other day. Pomegranates and hasma...

The items the attendant had bought that day were medicinal in nature. Yet the report they’d been given hadn’t said anything about that—implying the medicine was simply part of the shrine maiden’s regular diet. Maomao glanced at the woman standing beside the bed. All her surprise had vanished; now, she looked as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Maybe she wasn’t making medicine at all. Maybe it was a complete coincidence.

Taking too much medicine could have a deleterious effect on the body. “Pardon me, but could I trouble you to write down in detail the shrine maiden’s favorite foods?” Maomao said.

“Very well,” the attendant said. She made some quick notes, but unfortunately they were in Shaohnese. Maomao didn’t know all of the words. She would have to translate them later and then consider them. Anyway, it was her father who would give the final diagnosis; she hoped he might be able to read the list better than she could.

“Would you be so kind as to remove your overgarment?”

“Certainly,” the shrine maiden said and began to shrug off her clothing. Knowing the exam was coming, she’d gotten sleepwear that closed in the front. Maomao could now clearly see her breasts and belly button.

“May I conduct a physical examination?” Maomao asked.

“Go ahead.”

Maomao began to tap on the shrine maiden’s body, listening for subtle differences in the sound. Meanwhile, she looked at the woman’s belly. No stretch marks. The shrine maiden’s paunch would have made stretch marks less likely—but there was also the possibility that their entire hypothesis was wrong. That she had never borne a child at all. What would make Maomao think that? Her breasts are small for the amount of meat on her bones.

When menarche didn’t come, a person could wind up half yin and half yang, neither exactly a man nor exactly a woman. That might explain the size of her chest, but maybe her breasts had simply always been small. It was impossible to know for sure whether the shrine maiden had given birth or not. Whether she was ill and how likewise depended on whether her monthly visitor had ever even come.

Maomao’s eyebrow twitched as she conducted the exam; it was frustrating not to know exactly what she was working with. The examination was not making things clearer. And yet, she felt a creeping suspicion. I must be missing something. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t tell what—and she hadn’t figured it out by the time the examination was over.

I wish I could have inspected her bottom half, she thought, but she knew that was too much to ask. Just having gotten a look at the shrine maiden’s bare chest was an achievement for her very first exam. Even some of the consorts in the rear palace resisted the idea of strangers touching them.

“You can put your clothes back on,” Maomao said. She knew she was never going to figure it all out in one visit; the world simply didn’t work that way. Continuing to press wouldn’t get her anywhere. Better to go back and tell her father what she had learned. “I’m going to discuss things with the physician based on what I’ve seen and heard here,” she said.

“Understood,” the attendant said, helping the shrine maiden back into her overgarment. Maomao and Yao left the room.

Once they were safely in a carriage and headed home, Yao exclaimed, “G-Gosh, was I nervous!” She suddenly realized she’d spoken aloud and scrambled to look like she hadn’t said anything, but it was too late. If En’en had been there, she would have been making an isn’t my mistress cute when she blurts something out face. But she wasn’t there. Instead, Maomao studied Yao closely.

The results of the first examination, in Maomao’s mind, could only be called inconclusive. Especially when she couldn’t even consult with her father then and there, but had to wait until they left the villa.

There’s got to be a better way. The woman had come all the way from a foreign country, taking a whole sea voyage just to get treatment here, so Maomao assumed she believed the doctors in Li could help her. Yet now that she was here, a real doctor wasn’t even allowed to look at her.

“How’d it go?” her father asked, but Maomao had a sense that the gentle, pleasant, and endlessly affable man already knew the answer. Hence she dove right in.

“Do you believe the honored shrine maiden is really sick?” she asked.

“What do you mean? She came all the way from Shaoh, didn’t she?” Yao said.

“Yes, a long, difficult voyage. I suspect she is ill, but I have my doubts about whether it’s something she needed to come all the way to Li to cure,” Maomao said, careful to speak politely to her father when in Yao’s presence.

“And what do you think is the nature of her indisposition?” Luomen asked.

Maomao consulted Yao’s notes as she replied. “She reports fatigue and sleeplessness, lack of physical stamina, and weight gain. And one other thing that concerns me more than anything else.” The shrine maiden supposedly had a broken bone that refused to heal, the pinky finger of her left hand. It wasn’t a hindrance to her daily life, but it couldn’t make things any easier for her.

Maomao concluded: “I think her female qi is decreasing, leading to these problems. It’s not unusual as women grow older.” In fact, it was quite a common ailment when the monthly visitor stopped coming. With the drop in female qi, body and mind could both suffer. For one thing, the bones frequently grew fragile. Forty was somewhat young for the visitor to cease arriving, but hardly unheard of. If it had never come to begin with, it might make the shrine maiden that much more prone to such problems.

“I see, I see. All right, let’s assume you’re correct, Maomao. You know different countries have different ways of treating illnesses. Perhaps they really believed they couldn’t help the shrine maiden in Shaoh and sent her to Li instead. Do you have any evidence that it’s otherwise?”

“I do.” Maomao produced the sheet of paper detailing the shrine maiden’s diet. “She wasn’t given any medicine specifically for augmenting her female qi—but she wouldn’t have needed it. The food she’s been eating would have been more than enough to compensate.”

“You mean all that stuff the woman was buying at the shop?” Yao said, catching on. The attendant had made a substantial number of purchases, including many things that could treat women’s health concerns. The shrine maiden knew perfectly well how to treat her own condition, yet she had come all the way to Li. There had to be politics involved.

“May I take it the two of you are of one mind on this?” Luomen asked Yao.

“I don’t have as much medical knowledge as Maomao does, but I also saw the honored shrine maiden’s attendant buying a lot of medicine the other day, so I have no objections.” She looked somewhat pained at having to admit her own ignorance in medical matters. She was willing to be honest about it, though, which had a charm of its own. Maomao was virtually becoming a second En’en.

So she knows it was medicine. Did that mean she was also aware that her hasma snacks were medicinal? Maybe one day Maomao would ask.

Luomen, meanwhile, looked troubled. That was typical for him; at this moment, though, he looked somewhat more troubled than usual. “I would simply remind you of one thing.”

“Yes, sir?” Maomao and Yao each said.

“When we do our work, people’s lives hang in the balance.” Of course, they both knew that. “However we treat the shrine maiden, we must not risk life and limb doing so.”

“Yes, sir. I should have thought that was obvious...” Yao said, mystified.

“Under no circumstances are the shrine maiden or her people to hear what we just spoke of. We need only find and administer the appropriate treatment.”

Even if it happened to be what those people were already doing.

Yao doesn’t look happy about this. Understandably so. She had to be wondering why they would do the same thing the shrine maiden’s attendant was already doing. Wouldn’t that be tantamount to admitting they were incompetent? But knowing when to play the fool is an important skill too.

Her father had said they must not risk “life and limb,” but she suspected he wasn’t referring to the shrine maiden’s so much as their own. With the rank odor of politics floating around, inadvertently telling the truth could indeed put their lives in danger. Perhaps a difficult concept for a young lady still not disabused of her innocence about the world.

If En’en were here, I’m sure she could find a good way to communicate it to Yao... Unfortunately, En’en was away on assignment.

“Say, we’re almost there,” Maomao said to Yao in a bid to change the subject. Getting from the villa to the court took even longer than getting to the medical office once they’d arrived, so it could be a tiring trip. “Once we get to the office, how about we look for some medicine? Something you can only find in our country. If it helps even a little, that should do the trick.”

“Right... Sure,” Yao said. She was smart enough to know that making a fuss just then wouldn’t gain anything. To Maomao’s relief, she did the mature thing and stayed calm.

Once they got back to their office, Luomen immediately went to get the papers in order and make their report. With his permission, Maomao and Yao went to the room where the medicines were kept and started looking for something that might help. They decided to check everything, although they knew some medicines wouldn’t work on account of the shrine maiden’s constitution while others had already been tried.

They took out the medicines one by one, Maomao working from memory while Yao consulted a book. Although they had permission to be there, they had rather monopolized the medicine storage room. Eventually one of the doctors stuck his head in and snapped, “What’s going on in here? There’s medicine everywhere! What are you looking f—Yikes!”

It was Luomen’s old acquaintance, one of the doctors who had come to consult about the status of Consort Lishu’s virginity. He sometimes paid the medical office a friendly visit.

“Is something the matter? Do any of these combinations concern you?” Maomao asked, peering at him.

“Er, no, I just thought... For a second I was afraid...that they were sending me back there.”

“Where?”

“You know, there.” The man pointed to the northern quarter of the court. “The rear palace!”

“What would make you think that? I grant these are all treatments for women’s health concerns, but this has nothing to do with the rear palace.” Maomao let her eyes drift over the assembled medicines.

“Ah, women’s complaints... Yes, I see. It’s just that I mostly deal with men here at court. When I saw these particular ingredients laid out, I panicked a little.”

The man seemed to have some sort of traumatic memory of the rear palace. It reminded Maomao that in the past, doctors who weren’t eunuchs had been permitted to come and go there. “That’s right, you were a physician at the rear palace some time ago, weren’t you? I’ve heard,” Maomao said. “Did something happen there?”

“Nothing much. Just a bad memory. You take this, and this, and some of these...” He began plucking ingredients out of Maomao and Yao’s collection. “Mix them together, and they become a special fake-eunuch medicine.”

“Fake-eunuch medicine?” Maomao and Yao asked in unison.

“It’s a fairly straightforward matter. Sometimes a man who isn’t a eunuch needs to enter the rear palace, but that can lead to...problems. They didn’t force you to become a eunuch, but they made you take this medicine, which suppresses male functions.”

“Ahh.” Now Maomao understood. She’d always wondered how it was that Gaoshun had gone in and out of the rear palace with no problems. (Jinshi was another matter.) He’d probably been taking this medicine. “I admit, it looks like it would taste rather unpleasant.”

“The worst.” The doctor was clearly speaking from experience. “And it can start to have strange side effects as you become accustomed to it.”

“I knew it must have side effects!”

“Goodness, does it. Any medicine taken to excess can be harmful. That’s why I worried when I saw that stuff.”

It was clear enough why he had been so disturbed. Maomao wanted to ask him exactly what the side effects were, but the man showed himself out of the room before she could get the words out.

“I feel like En’en would know what to do in this situation,” Yao said.

“I agree. It is sort of her forte.”

“What with all this talk of side effects... Do you think we should write a letter to her and ask for her opinion?”

“I think that’s an excellent idea. And En’en would be happy to hear from you.” She was probably on the verge of going through withdrawal from young mistress deficiency. Her absence, though, had gotten Maomao and Yao to talk more, so that was some compensation.

Maomao’s thoughts wandered back to what combination of medicines they should use.