The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Rear Palace

Be they a palace woman or a eunuch, all those entering the rear palace were subject to a physical inspection. Maomao and her old man were used to it, but Yao and En’en seemed to find it pretty embarrassing. They recoiled at the idea of being touched by a eunuch; the looks on their faces all but screamed Don’t touch us! Luomen finally gave up and summoned one of the rear palace women.

“This is the only time,” he advised them.

“Yes, sir,” they said. At least it looked like they weren’t going to argue with him. Still, Maomao couldn’t shake the sense that their attitudes toward him had taken a turn for the worse since they’d found out that he was a eunuch. That’s hardly unusual. Eunuchs were widely dismissed and looked down on. Luomen himself was all too used to this, and it seemed to roll off his back, but it still made Maomao angry.

It felt so familiar to be back in the rear palace. In this garden of women, the only men around were eunuchs. It was a strange situation—and yet here, it was also perfectly ordinary. The combination created some real characters.

People kept sneaking glances at Maomao and the others; when you couldn’t come or go freely, you developed a sensitivity to anyone from the outside world. Eyes shone as they fixed on the newcomers, wondering if they might have any interesting gossip to share. Maomao even recognized a few of the faces they saw. It was no one she was especially close to, just maids who had been around sometimes when everyone was chatting at the laundry area. They were openly perplexed by the way that every time Maomao got out of the rear palace, she seemed to wind up coming back.

To begin with, Luomen headed straight for the medical office. The two other court ladies looked around in fascination as they went, but Maomao and her old man betrayed no special interest in the place as they walked along. That must have bothered Yao, because for once, she spoke to Maomao.

“Why do you look so used to this?” she asked.

“Because I worked here for two years.” Not quite consecutively, but she’d been there until the past autumn. “That’s the term of service for ladies in the rear palace.”

Telling the whole tale would have been a pain, so she left it at that and hoped Yao would too. That put an end to the conversation, and they were silent until they arrived at the medical office, where they found a familiar loach-mustached man fast asleep.

“Hello?” Luomen said apologetically, catching the man right in the middle of a snore, which turned into a snuffle, then a grunt, and then the quack doctor sat bolt upright.

“Oh! Oh, Luomen, it’s you,” he said. “And the young lady! It’s been quite a while.” He walked over to them, his hands clasped around his large belly. It had been several months since Maomao had accompanied him to his home village.

Speaking of nepotism, she thought, remembering what the medical officer over by the military camp had said.

“And who are your friends there?” the quack asked, looking at Yao and En’en. The two of them seemed a bit conflicted. This man was a eunuch, but he was also a medical officer, and while that was easy enough to grasp intellectually, they seemed to be struggling to decide exactly how to behave toward him.

Either unable or unwilling to read the look on their faces, the quack said, “Who wants some tea and snacks?” He started rifling through the medicine cabinet. In one sense, his ignorance was indeed his bliss.

“These three are court ladies who are going to be helping in the palace medical offices in the future,” Luomen explained. “I’ve brought them with me today as an experiment. You and I alone can’t handle the entire rear palace forever. Didn’t you get my message?”

At that, the quack glanced guiltily at his desk, where there was an unopened letter. But let’s spare him any further embarrassment on the subject.

“Ahh, yes, of course,” he said, as if, in fact, he had been entirely aware that they would be coming. “And what do you plan to have them do?”

Maomao knew this was pretty standard for the quack, and her old man was giving him a wry smile; meanwhile, Yao and En’en had already started to sense that there was something wrong here and were looking at the quack suspiciously. Maomao guessed that it wouldn’t be long before they figured out what a quack he was.

“We’re going to visit Consort Lihua’s pavilion today, and then the middle consorts.”

Among the high consorts, Loulan had disappeared after the Shi rebellion, Gyokuyou had become Empress and left the rear palace, and Lishu was effectively stuck in her nunnery. Lihua was the only one remaining in the rear palace.

I heard she gave birth to a boy. I wonder how he’s doing, Maomao thought. It had been a long, long time since she’d last seen Consort Lihua. She had a certain attachment to the consort, whom she’d personally attended for a long stretch while nursing her back from an illness. It could be said that Lihua had had her share of misfortune, if perhaps not quite as much as Lishu. She’d gotten rid of her most problematic ladies-in-waiting, and Maomao wondered how things were going for her.

She was also curious about the real reason they were there—Aylin, the new woman from Shaoh. She was the entire reason Maomao had become a court lady in the first place.

“In any case, how about we start by heading to the Crystal Pavilion?” Luomen said, and then they were off.

Since they were visiting a high consort, they were accompanied not just by the doctor, but by other eunuchs who acted as bodyguards. Partly they were there for the safety of the medical officer, but they would also keep a close eye that no harm was done to the consort. Turnover wasn’t that high among the eunuchs, so Maomao recognized their guards.

Ever faithful to their duty, the men only spoke to Maomao and the others when absolutely necessary, so she didn’t even know their names. That didn’t bother her, though. She figured that as long as she didn’t cause trouble for them, they were happy too. She was perfectly content with these sorts of well-defined relationships.

Lihua, also known as the Wise Consort, had always kept a lovely house, and her pavilion was as stunning as ever. Now there were roses everywhere, a legacy of the time Maomao had borrowed a building on the grounds of the Crystal Pavilion to grow some; she’d given the consort all the flowers she hadn’t used, and they had been planted all over. Maomao had grown only white roses, but the groundskeeper must have considered the colorless flowers a bit sad, for now there were red and yellow roses, and even a vibrant green variant. They could have renamed the place the Rose Pavilion. Maomao was only sorry they’d come near the end of the flowers’ season.

The lady-in-waiting who had come to greet them saw Maomao standing in the Pavilion’s entryway and let out an “Eep!” Apparently not all of the old ladies-in-waiting had left, for several of them wore undisguised looks of distress when they saw Maomao. They never did cease to treat her like some kind of monster, and Maomao got the feeling that it was earning her renewed suspicion from Yao and En’en. For that matter, even her old man was looking at her, his anxious eyes asking: Did you cause some kind of trouble even here?

They were shown into the inner chamber, not the bedroom but the reception room. A few minutes later, there was a rustle of cloth, and a consort who looked like a gigantic rose herself appeared. She carried a plump young baby in her arms, its mouth working open and closed gently. There was a faint aroma of milk in the air, suggesting she had been feeding the child until a moment before.

Consort Lihua wore only a touch of rouge on her lips and no whitening powder on her face; she had such lovely skin that she hardly needed it to make her look more pale.

Maomao and the others followed the example of Luomen and the quack in how to greet the consort. Maomao was pleased to find her looking so healthy. The child in her arms had a fine pallor as well, and was now well past the age at which the former crown prince had died. Remembering that there really should have been another rambunctious young boy running around brought a pang of sorrow to the heart.

Empress Gyokuyou’s son was now the presumed heir apparent, but the little boy in Consort Lihua’s arms would be the next in line.

Unless they’re still treating Jinshi as the heir apparent? The thought of the succession disputes that could arise gave Maomao pause, but at the moment she was just happy that the child seemed to be doing well.

“There’s no need to spend too long on greetings. Could we go straight to my checkup?” Lihua said, passing the baby gently to Maomao. She was a little taken aback to suddenly find an infant in her arms, but the boy, unbothered to be held by a stranger, stuck his thumb in his mouth and smiled.

Babysitting isn’t really one of my talents...

Maybe Lihua wanted Maomao to see the child. To know that the consort, who had been like an empty shell after the death of her first son, had given birth to this beautiful, healthy boy. Knowing that, who could fail to cherish him?

The new ladies-in-waiting who’d been brought into the Crystal Pavilion proved quite good at their jobs: a chair was brought so that Maomao could hold the child securely, and a cup with a piece of absorbent cotton in it was prepared. If the child wanted some water, Maomao could put it to his mouth.

Meanwhile, Luomen began Consort Lihua’s exam, taking her pulse. The quack stood by smiling, not doing anything in particular. In his place, En’en passed Luomen any tools he needed.

Maomao took a good look at the child. There was a bit of sweat around his neck, maybe because it had gotten rather warm. Other than that, she saw nothing out of the ordinary; he was the picture of health. She whispered as much to the grinning quack, who passed the message on to her father. Luomen seemed not the least bit surprised; he told the quack to get some medicine for sweat out of the medicine cabinet.

The most important thing was that the child was growing up healthy—but Maomao couldn’t shake the sense that Yao was glaring at her the entire time she held the baby.

After Consort Lihua, they went to see the new middle consort from Shaoh. There were three spare high-consort pavilions available, but Aylin didn’t live in any of them. Like the other middle consorts, she’d been given a more modest building to herself. So she wasn’t getting any special treatment. It was located slightly east of the center of the rear palace, and looked like it hadn’t been used for a while; the scenery around it was a bit desolate.

The ladies-in-waiting who came out to greet them smiled broadly at Maomao and the others and showed them inside. There were five of them, a pretty average number for a middle consort.

“Hello.” They were greeted by the new consort, a woman with golden hair, wearing a wide-sleeved robe, probably an unfamiliar outfit for her. She was voluptuous and tall, her skin so pale it seemed almost translucent and her eyes the color of the sky. Certainly an appearance that made her stand out from the crowd.

You can understand why they thought they would make it in here on their looks alone, Maomao thought. Even if Jinshi had shown them up when he put on women’s clothing. Anyway, it hardly mattered. Aylin had finally achieved what had then been her objective: to enter the rear palace. When she had arrived, she had not spoken well of the other former emissary, Ayla—had they had a falling-out sometime during the last year? They certainly looked like they got along well enough. Maomao knew that women’s friendships could be fragile and easily broken, but she couldn’t help wondering what had shattered this one. She knew better than to ask, of course.

Aylin reclined on a couch, watching one of her ladies prepare tea.

She certainly checks all His Majesty’s boxes. Notably, the curves. Foreign women tended to look older than they were, and Maomao had heard Aylin was only in her late twenties. The Emperor could certainly be energetic after dark, but Maomao also knew he was a sharp thinker. He had two perfectly healthy sons already; he didn’t need to be in a rush to add a third. For that matter, if he had a child with a woman who had come seeking political asylum, it could be a source of much diplomatic strife later.

And there’s enough sources of that already.

Maomao looked at the woman with whom Lahan had been so pleased to chat out west. At the moment, she sat demurely sipping her tea, but it was impossible to say what thoughts she harbored in her inmost heart.

The lady-in-waiting beside Aylin tasted the tea for poison and then poured it for the visitors. Luomen sounded unhurried as he began the conversation. “Have you gotten used to life in the rear palace?” Aylin spoke the local language fluently, but slowing down a little bit could only make it easier for her to understand.

“Yes, thanks to the kindness with which everyone has treated me.” Her long fingers wrapped around her cup, a foreign-style mug with a handle. Her fingernails were conscientiously painted red. From the faint sweet aroma of the tea, Maomao guessed it was the fermented stuff they served in the west. She was eager to try a sip, but only her father and the quack had been given cups. They included us at the Crystal Pavilion, she thought. A bit of politeness on Consort Lihua’s part, perhaps. Normally, it seemed, there was to be no tea for assistants.

Luomen started his examination by taking the consort’s pulse. One thing that set him apart from the other doctors was that he wrote down numbers as he did his exams. He wasn’t as mad about them as Lahan was, but he valued numbers greatly as concrete guides to a person’s health. Now he placed a portable writing set on the table and began scribbling down figures.

Maomao noticed that his writing wasn’t the ordinary kind. Western characters? she wondered. At a glance they appeared twisty, like earthworms. Long ago, her old man had recorded his medical knowledge in characters like this, but Maomao had worked furiously to decode them, and he had ended up switching to another mode of writing.

Even as Maomao wondered why her father had decided to use those letters, she noticed several people stealing peeks at him and his writing. The quack clearly didn’t have the slightest idea what any of it said and simply handed Luomen his tools as he asked for them. One of the ladies-in-waiting was brewing some more tea, but also sneaking little glances at the physician’s notes. And there was someone else, too: En’en was taking it in with a subdued expression.

The notes didn’t say anything particularly interesting. Even Maomao could read them. Pulse normal, health good—short, simple words like that.

“I don’t see anything unusual,” Luomen said at length.

“In-deed, sir?” Aylin’s otherwise fluent speech still had an occasional lilt. Maybe it had something to do with the pronunciation of her native language. She kept taking little looks at Maomao—did she remember her?

With nothing out of the ordinary to report and their job completed, they were just about to leave when Aylin stopped them. “Since you’ve come all this way, perhaps you’d take some treats with you,” she said.

She held out bundles of baked goods wrapped in lovely cloth. They seemed to be cookies in an unusual shape; the aroma of butter rolled off them. Only the court ladies were given snacks; the quack doctor was left to gaze enviously at the unique treats. Maomao would have to share a bit of her bounty with him when they got back to the medical office.

En’en’s cloth, and hers alone, boasted a pattern rather than a solid color. Maybe Aylin hadn’t been able to find three pieces of the same color cloth.

So no tea, but we get snacks? It seemed strange, but they couldn’t refuse a gift. Maomao tucked the cookies in the folds of her robe and then her father led them off to the next consort.

The sky was turning red by the time they had visited the remaining middle consorts and headed back toward the medical office. It was about the time of day when Maomao, who always ate modestly, started feeling peckish. She wondered if she could entice the quack to serve up a little tea in the office.

“That takes care of the middle consorts, but we’ll have to go around to the lower consorts, and eventually see the ladies-in-waiting too,” Luomen said genially. Maomao seemed to remember he only used to visit down to the middle consorts. It seemed he’d gotten busy lately. The quack was looking at him admiringly.

Luomen was back as a medical officer, and there were court ladies to help too. He was getting on in years and wouldn’t be able to do these examinations forever; he probably intended to turn the work over to the court ladies eventually. Chances were he was also taking into account the fact that the population of the rear palace would be shrinking, which would make things easier in the long run.

Luomen didn’t lead them to the medical office, but made for the gate they’d come in by. “I think we’d best be on our way home,” he said.

“Surely you could stay a little longer?” the quack said.

Yeah! We’ve got snacks! Maomao added silently, but her father shook his head.

“I’m afraid we can’t. There’s more work yet to do.”

The quack looked positively crestfallen. He didn’t have many friends to share tea and a bite with, just the eunuchs who came by occasionally. Even Maomao’s friend Xiaolan was gone, since her term of service had ended the year before. I wonder how she’s doing, anyway, Maomao thought. Xiaolan was a sweet girl and had found herself work in a good part of town. Maomao thought maybe she should send her a letter soon.

The quack doctor was still looking sadly at their treats, so Maomao took hers out, intending to share some. She stopped when she noticed something odd: the cookies were essentially cylindrical in shape, and there seemed to be something inside them. She grabbed at one, managing to extract a small piece of paper. There was one in each of the cookies.

What’s this?

She slipped the snack back into her robe and left the rear palace. As for the distinctly disappointed doctor, she decided to pretend she hadn’t seen him.