The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: The Shrine Maiden’s Confession

Maomao took another spoonful before the shrine maiden’s attendant grabbed the congee away. “Wh-What do you think you are doing?!” she demanded.

“Simple. I’m tasting for poison,” Maomao replied, switching back to her own language. The attendant had done it first—clearly, Maomao’s Shaohnese wasn’t up to snuff. Frankly, she was glad to be conducting this conversation in her native tongue. “Give me that congee, please. I’m not done checking it. Or do you intend to let the honored shrine maiden eat the rest?”

The attendant stayed silent, which Maomao took as grounds to continue.

“I must say I’m impressed, even though I probably shouldn’t be. The way you got your hands on that poison without leaving a trace.”

“You have no proof!” The attendant scowled, but only for a second; she promptly regained her unflappable demeanor. Naturally—anyone who could be involved in such a far-reaching plot would have to be a good actor. The shrine maiden likewise appeared unfazed.

Makes sense, Maomao thought. She was never going to just conveniently burst out with a confession.

“If you’d be so kind as to wait a moment, then?” Maomao said. “If the congee was poisoned, I should start showing symptoms any moment now. Since I’m not sure how sudden or intense the poison’s effects might be, please let me have the rest.” She reached out, but the attendant made no move to give it to her. “There was only one piece of mushroom in the bite I had! That’s not nearly a fatal dose! Come on, give it!”

“You cannot be serious. If you think it’s poisoned, spit it out!”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Maomao said. She produced some notes from the folds of her robe.

“What is that?” the attendant asked.

“The notes kept by a court woman named Yao—the one who was tasting the honored shrine maiden’s food for poison. She’s a very diligent student, and one of the things I taught her was that if a food smelled funny, she shouldn’t eat it. If Consort Aylin had poisoned the food with her incense powder, Yao would have smelled it. She may not be very experienced, but she wouldn’t make such a fundamental mistake.”

The notes contained several days’ worth of detailed observations from before the dinner.

“She made a careful record of what the honored shrine maiden ate. For breakfast the day of the formal dinner, it seems she had a congee much like this one.”

The notes read: Morning. Congee w/ mushrooms.

“I’m sure you were well aware of the effects of the poison. That you timed it so they would appear immediately after the dinner. And might I venture that you were feeling a touch of guilt? You used just such an amount that with proper care, Yao could still be saved.”

Yao was in much better shape now. There was no telling if there might be lingering damage to her internal organs, but at least she was no longer in immediate danger of her life. En’en was feeling very reassured as well.

“I’m afraid you are not making any sense. The criminal has already confessed to the crime, has she not?”

“Yes, she confessed. May I assume that it was today that you received word that the culprit had been found and dealt with? That’s why Her Maidenship felt confident enough to go ahead and kill herself.”

Insofar as Aylin had to take the fall, the shrine maiden could only commit suicide after the consort’s guilt was assured. Maybe that was why she’d chosen a poison that could reappear in a second “wave.” Even better for her, if she were to die after Aylin had been confirmed as the criminal, her death would likely be covered up. Nobody wanted Li accidentally stumbling on the true culprit.

Maomao looked at the women. Calm, cold. I don’t think they’d try to shut me up here and now... Lahan was waiting at the shrine maiden’s villa. They’d sent a messenger for Maomao’s father, and she expected them soon. It wouldn’t be easy for them to shut my mouth...but having their plans undone at this stage can’t be a welcome prospect for them.

She understood. She knew that there was nothing for her to gain by doing this. The threatening tone she’d taken with them hadn’t actually been about revealing their plans, but was simply an opening gambit, a way to get them to listen to her.

“Honored shrine maiden. I believe you and Consort Aylin know each other well, do you not?” Maomao said.

“Yes,” replied the shrine maiden. “For once, long ago, she might have become my successor.” A look of sorrow passed over her face.

I thought so.

Aylin had been trying to protect the shrine maiden. Would she have done that if the shrine maiden had really been attempting to pin the whole thing on her? Knowing the relationship between them, it seemed possible that this had been their plan ever since Aylin had arrived at the rear palace.

“This will mean the gallows for her, you know,” Maomao said.

The shrine maiden flinched at that. Compared to her attendant, she left something to be desired as a performer. If Maomao was hoping to get one of them to crack, the shrine maiden seemed her best target.

“I don’t know how you do things in Shaoh, but in Li, murder—even attempted murder—is punishable by death. She dedicated her life to you. Are you simply going to let them kill her?”

Neither of the other women said anything.

“You are, then? Consort Aylin, the woman you educated so that she could have a future. Now you yourself are going to pluck that future away from her?”

Still Maomao got no reaction. No use. I figured. As she was trying to decide what to say next, however, the shrine maiden’s head drooped where she was sitting on the bed and she let out a sort of moan.

“H-Honored shrine maiden,” her attendant said.

“What was I supposed to do?” the shrine maiden said. The words carried none of the force of her office; they sounded pleading. Gossamer, as if the breeze might blow them away. When the shrine maiden began to speak again, it was in Shaohnese. Maomao struggled to keep up. <From the moment I was born, my life has been twisted, and all I could do was follow the path that had been laid out for me. I had nothing, nothing but being the shrine maiden. So I thought I could at least be the shrine maiden to the bitter end.>

“Honored shrine maiden!” the attendant said, shaking her, but she continued her confession in fluent Shaohnese peppered with the occasional word in the Li language. It was substantially as Maomao had guessed. The royal faction in Shaoh viewed the shrine maiden, by this time quite powerful, as an obstacle, and sought to dislodge her from her office. Perhaps she could have endured that, but they also intended to give her away in marriage once she was deposed. A touch of panic was understandable.

“I suppose that they wished to drag the shrine maiden back down to earth,” she said in the Li tongue, her accent thick. “That child did hate me so. Ayla...”

Ayla... Maomao thought.

The other emissary. So not everything Aylin said had been a fabrication. She’d skillfully woven in some facts as well. Perhaps Ayla’s jealousy of the shrine maiden’s position was what had fostered her resentment of albino people. It would explain why she had used the White Lady the way she had.

It wasn’t clear if the royal faction had some sense of who the shrine maiden truly was, or if they simply hoped to degrade the sacred woman by making her a common bride after removing her from office. Either way, simply instating a new shrine maiden would dramatically reduce the power of the office.

Maomao hadn’t specifically said that the shrine maiden was in fact a man, but from the context, they likely understood that she knew. Emotions were high, and perhaps it was a slip of the tongue, Maomao felt no inclination to draw attention to it.

“It was Aylin who first spoke to me of it,” the shrine maiden said. Aylin and Ayla were like sisters, and Aylin had revealed that she had discovered what the other woman was thinking. Her plan to use the White Lady.

“For to her, the shrine maiden was something special,” the attendant added. Aylin was well versed in Li’s ways. She knew, for example, that if the shrine maiden were to die outside Shaoh’s borders, her remains would be sent back to her homeland—and that burial was the custom in Li, with burning of bodies reserved for criminals. A simple cultural difference. In Shaoh, they believed that cremating the shrine maiden returned her to the sun, whence she had come.

And if all they want are some shards of bone, Aylin need only return some pieces that don’t reveal the shrine maiden’s gender. The shrine maiden’s death would leave Li with a debt to repay to Shaoh, even if the killer was another Shaohnese. Yet Shaoh, for its part, would be free of the troublesome shrine maiden. The king would be quite pleased with that.

“Wouldn’t it all be just the same, as long as you were gone?” Maomao asked the shrine maiden.

“No,” she replied. “I may go, but there will be another shrine maiden.”

So that’s it. Another young woman yet to reach menstruation would be found and set up as shrine maiden, and the attendant, who would return from Li, would be the power behind her.

“The next shrine maiden is far more capable than I. That is why I can surrender the office to her.”

Maomao wondered what made the current shrine maiden so sure that her successor was more suited than a person of more than forty years’ age and experience. She kept her doubts to herself.

“There will be no trouble without me.”

This time Maomao couldn’t restrain herself. “Are you really sure about that?” she asked. “That’s only if everything goes the way you predict. Have you considered what might happen if His Majesty learns of your plan and becomes angry?”

Everything the shrine maiden had spoken of so far benefited Shaoh and only Shaoh. Li, which would be left holding the bag, gained nothing. Not even with Aylin and the shrine maiden both sacrificing themselves. The shrine maiden was thinking of the good of her country—but she would achieve it at the expense of another.

“What did you intend to do if Yao died?” To that question, at least, Maomao wanted an answer. She smacked Yao’s notes. What had Yao done wrong? Could they tell her?

“W-Well... Well...”

Both other women clearly felt guilty. They had known they couldn’t use too weak a poison, or it might not work. In order to make the shrine maiden’s demise plausible, they had to demonstrate that there was a potent toxin involved. Yes, they had tried to attenuate it, but one wrong move could have resulted in Yao’s death.

“Was your plan for Shaoh to reap all the benefit, and Li to bear all the cost? If that’s the case, I will not stay silent about this,” Maomao said.

“Even if I die?” the shrine maiden asked at length.

“I hate when people think everything’s over just because they’re dead!” It was as good as refusing to face the consequences of whatever you had done. Maomao felt better having been able to say what she had most wanted to say.

Abruptly, she found herself thinking about a cheerful young woman who had loved insects. A young woman who had vanished into the snow and never been found. Maomao occasionally peeked into the shops, wondering if one day she might stumble upon the hair stick she’d given that girl.

“How can you be certain, honored shrine maiden, that Shaoh won’t begin making demands of Li after you’re gone?”

“I thought perhaps you might bend to a few of Shaoh’s wishes.”

“Like what? For food?”

“That would be one thing, yes. And I thought... Perhaps you might be induced to hand over the pale woman, the one I believe you’re holding in custody.”

“You mean...the White Lady?”

The White Lady couldn’t be the shrine maiden’s daughter. It wasn’t possible. Come to think of it, Aylin had hinted at the same thing right from the start. So what was the relationship between the two of them? At the very least, it seemed the White Lady was likely from Shaoh, given that Ayla had been using her.

“By all rights, that girl should have been brought up as the next shrine maiden,” the shrine maiden said. The White Lady had been born in the shrine maidens’ village; she and the present occupant of the office had a blood connection. Even granted that albino children seemed to be born more frequently than average in that line, still something distinguished her. “If I had simply vacated my office and given it over to her, none of this would have happened. But because I felt I had to cling to my place, I sent the pale infant back to her home.”

Somehow, it had led to the child traveling to another country and stirring up trouble, until she ended up treated like a common criminal.

“I was afraid that if it became known that there was another albino child to take up the shrine maiden’s mantle, there would only be more strife. So I asked for her to be raised in secret. But then...”

“Then she became a pawn in someone else’s game.”

“Yes. Used by Ayla, who wanted to destroy me. About five years ago, I heard that the girl had been taken away.” The shrine maiden gazed at the ground, deeply distraught. The child had been unable to become shrine maiden, and there had been nowhere else for her to go.

“Wow. You really caused our country nothing but trouble,” Maomao said.

“Watch your mouth!” the attendant said, her composure vanishing in an instant of fury. The shrine maiden, however, restrained her. They seemed to balance each other, one growing calmer the more emotional the other got. They acted like partners who had known and worked with each other for a very long time.

“I only tell you the truth,” the shrine maiden said.

“I know. But consider spending the rest of your life making amends for what you’ve done.” It was the only thing Maomao could say, the only suggestion that had occurred to her even after a great deal of thought. If this didn’t reach the shrine maiden, there would be nothing more she could do. She looked directly at the woman. “Die for me. For real this time.”