The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Truth Behind the Truth

For several days, there was no word from Jinshi. Maomao didn’t believe her speculations were beyond questioning, but neither did she think it had been a mistake to contradict her old man. The case of the attempted poisoning of the shrine maiden carried on, however, and Aylin remained the prime suspect.

When questioned, Aylin confessed. Her motive (she claimed) was that she hadn’t wanted to come to Li, but had been driven to it, and she bore a grudge against the shrine maiden, who was one of those responsible for her flight. After all, Aylin might have become shrine maiden herself—she had been raised for it—if the current occupant of the office hadn’t remained for so many years.

To confess openly to an antipathy toward not only the shrine maiden but Li itself, she must have been truly desperate. All she’d have to do is add the Emperor’s name to that list to make herself the most hated woman in Li. As it was, the story seemed to be that a shiftless foreigner had attacked the shrine maiden out of personal animus. That was simple enough. And convenient.

“Bullshit...” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Lahan was giving her the lowdown. This wasn’t something that could be handled by messenger, so he’d summoned her on the pretext that he needed some kind of medicine.

“You’re telling me,” he replied as he downed some stomach medication. Maomao was somewhat surprised to realize, belatedly, that even he could have an upset stomach sometimes. “I think this is as fishy as you do. The consort told me herself how much she respects the shrine maiden. And now she hates her enough to try to kill her?” He shook his head and sighed deeply. “Speaking of which, how’s that young woman? Yao or whatever it is?” As the one at least partly responsible for the entire affair, Lahan felt guilty about what had happened to her.

“She escaped with her life, but I think there may be aftereffects.”

Yao had gotten much better under Luomen and En’en’s ministrations. She wasn’t completely recovered, though, not to mention she was distraught to learn she had ingested poison without realizing it. Maomao didn’t blame her, as poisonous mushrooms could be surprisingly delicious, and she had been about to say so when her father had gently stopped her. He seemed to think it might not be as reassuring as she imagined.

Maomao visited the shrine maiden daily to see how she was doing, but to be quite blunt, she wasn’t sure whether the woman was acting or not. If she was only pretending to be ill, then there was no need for Maomao to pelt her with questions about her condition—indeed, doing so could make her an accomplice in the framing of Aylin. So she’d had ample opportunity to talk to the shrine maiden, but no right to ask the questions she really wanted to.

The biggest issue was that everything Maomao had said was ultimately speculation, with no specific evidence to back it up. If it was true that the shrine maiden had come all this way simply to make Aylin take a fall, then what was the weakness Aylin was so intent on leveraging? Wasn’t this entire endeavor too risky?

“I wonder what she has on the shrine maiden,” Maomao mused.

“I was so sure they were good friends. Notwithstanding the consort’s attempts to exploit that vulnerability. She never seemed like she had a grudge against the shrine maiden. She seemed to genuinely respect her.”

Lahan leaned his elbows on the table and took a drink of water. “You need to take it with food or it’ll upset your stomach,” Maomao said, remembering. With some annoyance, Lahan fetched a snack from the shelf. A bun filled with potato paste. When Maomao asked if they didn’t have any meat buns around, she was curtly informed that they did not. Boo.

“Anyway, if they were such good friends, I don’t think we would be in this situation right now,” Maomao said.

“I’m still convinced that Consort Aylin has deep respect for the shrine maiden. If the charges were spurious, why would she offer the testimony that she did?”

“True enough,” Maomao admitted.

“I’ve told her that if she has anything to say in her own defense, I’m more than open to hearing her out, but instead she goes and incriminates herself...” Was he really convinced by the charges against her? “She’s quite the actor.” She had spoken ill of the shrine maiden yet also confessed to the crime, essentially taking the guilt upon herself.

“Exactly how much did you hear about the relationship between Aylin and the shrine maiden?” Maomao asked.

“Just what I told you. Mistress Aylin was one of the potential future shrine maidens, and spent almost five years as an apprentice with the current one. Typically, apprentices live in the shrine maiden’s palace for their entire tenure, until their ‘monthly time’ is upon them and they lose the right to be shrine maiden. Usually, a marriage is found for them once they leave the maiden’s palace, but Consort Aylin was staunchly against that arrangement. Instead, she and her cousin sought sanctuary with their grandfather. He was a practical man, and saw how much use could be made of the education they’d received from the shrine maiden.”

That was how they had ended up as emissaries. Maomao had wondered how a couple of women had come to travel to a foreign country in such a capacity all by themselves, but it sounded like it hadn’t been an easy path. Yet if Aylin had learned of the shrine maiden’s baby, or at least guessed at its existence, during her time as an apprentice...

“Wouldn’t you normally expose what you knew sooner?” Maomao said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean about the infant. Her suspicion that the shrine maiden had borne a child.” What if she hadn’t been looking to find the shrine maiden’s weakness—but had merely been curious? “If she’s known about this child ever since she was an apprentice, why bring it to light now?”

“A fair point.” Maybe it was Lahan’s fondness for a pretty face that had created this blind spot for him. He straightened his glasses, then crossed his arms and closed his eyes. “How about this, then? What if investigating whether the shrine maiden had a child was only a pretext?”

“So you think so too?”

Lahan had some...less than ideal qualities, but he was intelligent. When he put his mind to something, he could be very quick to figure it out. “Suppose that was a bluff. A cover for something even bigger. Suppose this bigger thing is the reason we’re in this situation now.”

“I admit, it would connect a lot of dots.” The question then became what “something even bigger” was. Maomao and Lahan both made thoughtful noises. “If my old man were here...” Maomao began.

“I grant my honored uncle appears to know something. But there’s every chance he would refuse to tell us if he did.”

Luomen had looked all along like something about the situation bothered him. Had he come to some realization that still eluded Maomao? Maybe he had a guess—but as long as it remained a guess, he was unlikely to speak of it. Maomao felt herself getting angry again.

“If my honored uncle could only have examined the shrine maiden himself, we might have learned something...”

“Gee, sorry for being so inexperienced,” Maomao snapped. But she agreed something was strange. Surely it should be all right for a eunuch to touch the shrine maiden, even if he was, or had once been, a man. She was silent for a long moment.

“What’s the matter?” Lahan asked.

She only mumbled, “Eunuch...” She pressed her hand to her forehead. She felt like she had the scattered pieces of an answer. She tried to call to mind what she knew. She took out the notes from the folds of her robes. She’d recorded details of her exams of the shrine maiden. She’d tucked En’en’s letter in beside it as well.

“What’s that?” Lahan asked.

“A list of foods the shrine maiden eats frequently. They all treat women’s disorders—that is to say, they increase female qi. This is a list of their applications.”

The list included the ingredients the friendly medical official had said he’d been compelled to take on his visits to the rear palace. At first Maomao had thought he was so shaken by the memory because they tasted terrible, but when she saw the effects, she had to give a sympathetic smile.

“I think you could use some of this stuff, Maomao,” Lahan ribbed her as he looked down the list.

“Yeah, sure. Pop quiz: what are the characteristics of a eunuch?”

“You know, you could stand to be a little more respectful to your older brother. Bah, anyway. A eunuch’s male qi dwindles. His hair becomes thinner and his voice gets higher.”

“Yes, and he becomes more likely to put on weight as he gets older, at which point he can seem to age very rapidly. You can see it in my own father. But there’s another thing.” Lahan looked at her, most curious what it might be. “If a boy is castrated before his development into a man begins, his voice never changes, and his body hair never comes in. Because he lacks the male qi that motivates growth, his arms and legs can become disproportionately long.”

“I’ve never exactly taken a long, hard look at the shrine maiden. Are you implying...”

“She’s somewhat tall for a woman, and her limbs are rather long. She’s begun to acquire a bit of a paunch the last few years. And as it happens, there’s a sickness that affects eunuchs that causes symptoms quite similar to those of a woman whose qi is decreasing.”

The details all fit.

“Hold on. I know even you can tell the difference between a castrated man and an actual woman. You got a good look at her chest, at least! Wait...” Lahan had evidently remembered what was written on the list of medicines.

“Yes, and it was present and accounted for.” Maomao took out the notes again, feeling that same rush of anger. En’en’s letter enumerated the effects of various medicines—including hasma.

Hasma: Excellent for good skin and general beauty. Stamina booster; high in nutritional value. Overuse, however, can cause the chest to become enlarged.

This was one of the things En’en was feeding Yao. It would certainly explain the extent of her development—in fact, Maomao recalled En’en bragging about exactly that. Perhaps this was what had made the old physician smile with such pain. Too much of it could cause even a man to develop an ample chest, and that was no joke.

“The chest is obviously the first thing you look at when trying to distinguish between a man and a woman. The position of the bellybutton should have tipped me off.” The shrine maiden’s paunch had made it hard to judge, even if Maomao did wonder about it. If even Maomao, who was quite familiar with the naked bodies of both men and women, hadn’t connected the dots, how much harder would it be for Yao and En’en? The reason eunuchs weren’t allowed near the shrine maiden was because they were even more physically like “her” than the average woman. The secret might have gotten out.

This had been the plan all along.

“I want you to investigate whether the shrine maiden has borne a child.” At the moment of that request, Maomao hadn’t imagined the shrine maiden was a castrated man.

Shit! The wool had been pulled completely over her eyes. The strange look Maomao’s father had given her when she’d first reported the shrine maiden’s notable physical characteristics—maybe it was because the possibility had occurred to him even then. If he’d been able to look at the shrine maiden himself, he would almost certainly have discovered the truth.

“Is this the secret the shrine maiden’s been so desperate to hide?” Lahan said. It would certainly be the kind of vulnerability an opportunist could readily exploit. “But wait... If it is, why come all the way to another country to try to silence a woman who’s already become a consort at a foreign court? And why do it in such a convoluted way?”

The shrine maiden was not a woman: if that hypothesis was correct, what other apparent realities might it undermine? Was the “shrine maiden” trying to pin the affair on Aylin—or for that matter, was Aylin trying to take the blame on herself? If so, why? She gained nothing by it—but Li did.

“On that point,” Maomao said. “Consider what would happen if the shrine maiden’s killer had been one of our own people.”

“It would be a matter of national face,” said Lahan. “It could even mean war. Makes me pretty grateful that Mistress Aylin confessed to everything herself.”

“So it’s no problem for us if she’s the culprit?”

“I wouldn’t say no problem, but it’s unlikely to start an international conflict. It will unquestionably put us on the back foot with Shaoh, however.”

So Shaoh would find itself in an advantageous position vis-à-vis one of its biggest neighbors, and without a war. It made Maomao’s head spin, but she knew she had to stay calm and think things through. Start with the shrine maiden’s gender.

“What would happen if Shaoh found out their shrine maiden was a man?” she asked.

“What would happen if we found out our Emperor was a woman?” Lahan replied.

Maomao realized her question was ridiculous—it seemed like a contradiction in terms. Li had never in its history had an empress as sole ruler. Yes, the former emperor’s mother was sometimes referred to as the empress regnant, but that was something closer to a nickname, not a title proper. If she’d attempted to take the throne by pretending to be a man, not only would she have been punished, but trust in the government would have been deeply shaken.

“It’s said that the government of Shaoh has two pillars, the shrine maiden and the king,” said Lahan. “I’m sure there are those who would be happy to see that reduced to one pillar, but in any case, the authority of the next shrine maiden would be at rock bottom—if there even was a next shrine maiden. All the advances so diligently made during the era of the current shrine maiden would be undone.”

The current shrine maiden’s long tenure had allowed women to express their opinions more freely in Shaoh. If it was discovered that the “maiden” was a man, it would uproot all that had been achieved. What must Aylin feel about that? Aylin, who thanks to the education the shrine maiden gave her was able to avoid a marriage she didn’t want and even become an emissary despite being a woman?

“Whoever the shrine maiden’s enemies are, the king or his associates, they would have figured her out sooner or later. So instead she did something unprecedented—she took a trip,” Maomao said. She wasn’t sure, just trying the idea out. “The whole point of which was to prevent her enemies from discovering the truth, by—”

She stopped. The shrine maiden had gone somewhere she wouldn’t be discovered, somewhere they couldn’t reach her. So she would leave behind no evidence. No doubts. Maomao pressed a hand to her forehead. She gritted her teeth. This couldn’t mean what she thought it did—could it? Yet the dawning realization was the one that made the most sense in light of everything the shrine maiden had done.

Finally she gave voice to her awful suspicion.

“By committing suicide.”