The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 8 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Bad Cooking

A few meager snowflakes drifted from a leaden sky.

“I thought it was getting colder. Look—it’s snowing,” said Yao, breathing on fingers red from doing the laundry. If En’en had seen her hands in that state, she would have been ready with the bandages in no time flat.

“And to think, it was clear last night,” Maomao said. She thought back to how lovely the stars had looked in the sky. In winter, chill and clarity were intertwined. Her old man had told her it was because without any clouds in the sky, the heat the air accumulated during the day quickly escaped. “The garden party’s going to be rough going if it doesn’t warm up a little.”

“Yeah.” They both acted like it didn’t concern them. They picked up the bucket of washing and headed back to the medical office. Today was, in fact, the very day of the garden party—and sadly, it indeed didn’t involve Maomao this year. Several of the physicians had been assigned to attend at the banquet, but that was all.

“Hey, do you see that? Looks like quite a crowd,” Yao said. They could see a stream of people, soldiers and bureaucrats alike—many more bureaucrats than one ordinarily saw in this part of the palace.

Maomao clapped her hands when she realized they all appeared to be heading for the toilets. “They must be attending the garden party. They’re all taking advantage of one last chance to do their business before the banquet starts. You can’t leave during the meal.”

“Don’t you think we’re a little far from the party, though?”

“Only the bigwigs get to use the closest place.” Maomao knew because she’d experienced it herself a couple of years earlier. Not having a readily accessible toilet had been a real trial.

“Including His Majesty?”

“I’m pretty sure they build a new one specifically for His Majesty’s use.” You couldn’t have the Emperor doing his business in any old restroom where who knew who had done who knew what. That was both the privilege and the curse of standing at the top of the nation’s hierarchy.

Yao abruptly halted.

“Something wrong?” Maomao asked.

“Maomao... Let’s not go this way,” Yao said, grabbing Maomao’s hand.

“It’s the fastest route, though.”

“There’s someone I don’t want to see over there.”

She sent off in a new direction, away from the milling officials. So there was someone among the soldiers and secretaries trooping to the toilets that she wanted to avoid. Maomao certainly sympathized with the desire not to run into a particular person.

I wonder who it could be, though. Who might Yao know among the officialdom? Her uncle—her current guardian—perhaps. Or maybe it was one of the potential prospects her uncle had tried to set her up with. Knowing the answer wouldn’t have done Maomao any specific good, so she obediently followed Yao away.

No sooner had they gotten back to the medical office than En’en homed in on Yao. “Young mistress!”

“En’en,” Yao said slowly, “I’m a little cold.” Her cheeks and ears were indeed red, and En’en was quick to bring a blanket and some hot ginger tea. She allowed Maomao to have what was left of the tea, but she wasn’t as generous with the honey as she had been with Yao. Maomao breathed on her cup, then took a sip, feeling the warmth spread through her. The drink had a lovely aroma; En’en must have grated tangerine zest into it.

The medical office was kept warm for any injured or sick people who arrived, but that had the unfortunate side effect of making the occupants somewhat drowsy. More than once, Maomao had seen soldiers who’d ducked into the medical office to escape training on cold winter days dragged back out by their commanding officers.

The highest-ranking physicians were out today on account of the garden party, leaving only a younger doctor, who was comparatively easy on Maomao and the others. Everyone felt that with the cats away, the mice should take a little time to play.

“Ahh, that warmed me up. Let’s get back to work, then,” Yao said.

En’en replied, “Young mistress, you should stay here today. Let me and Maomao handle the outdoor work.”

Hey, I want to be inside too, Maomao thought.

“I couldn’t do that,” Yao said. Then she studied En’en for a second. “I know that look. My uncle’s been here, hasn’t he?” So Maomao had guessed right.

“Young mistress...”

“How was it? He didn’t cause too much trouble, did he?”

“N-No, mistress. He looked like he was ready to wait for you, though...”

En’en glanced back at the young doctor sitting at the desk. He stood and came over to them with a stern look. “I made sure to explain to him that this is a place for the sick and the injured, not just a waiting area. And I pointed out that if he stuck around, he would never make it to the garden party in time—that got him out of here.”

“I see. Thank you very much,” Yao said with a grateful dip of her head. En’en gritted her teeth and gave the doctor a jealous look.

She doesn’t have to worry. He wasn’t trying to impress Yao—he was hoping to get to her. Nonetheless, En’en, who lived her life for her “young mistress,” seemed intent on treating every man around the young lady as if he were a caterpillar.

Maomao transferred the laundered bandages to a stewpot and got ready to boil them. She would have liked to just hang around a little while longer, but finishing the task at hand came first.

“Maomao,” En’en said, and Maomao looked over at her. “I found you some kindling.”

She passed Maomao a hinged board with cloth stretched over it. When opened, it revealed a man’s portrait.

“He never gives up, does he?” Yao groaned, even as she went to the brazier to get a coal to start the oven. It was clear now why Yao’s uncle had stopped by. The portrait was obviously of a potential suitor, but it was impossible to tell how much it had been dressed up. The guy looked like he could have been an actor.

The young doctor kept shooting looks at Maomao and Yao as if begging them to hurry up and leave. He seemed to think being alone with En’en might give him a chance to get to know her better, but Maomao highly doubted it. The other young doctors had already given up on her—and of course on Yao, whom she watched like a hawk—long ago. This guy was too thick to get it. (One might add that Maomao seemed not to have been a part of their calculations from the first.)

I wonder if he was actually able to talk to her at all when it was just the two of them, Maomao thought. It was a simple question—but this doctor proved resolute. Even as she and Yao were leaving the office, Maomao could hear him saying, “Shall we continue our conversation, En’en? Maybe you could bring it up with Yao later too.”

There was no response, but if the guy could get Yao involved somehow, En’en would put up with at least a little of his chitchat.

I’m sure she doesn’t see him as anything but a conversation generator at best, though. As she headed for the oven outside, Maomao reflected anew on how formidable En’en could be.

By afternoon the bandages had been boiled and dried. Maomao walked along, rubbing her hands together, looking forward to some lunch when she got back to the medical office. The garden party must have been on recess, because she could see a crowd gathering at the toilets again.

“You don’t need to use the bathroom, Yao?” she asked.

“N-No, I’m fine. What about you, Maomao?”

“I went a little while ago.”

Yao looked betrayed. Maomao, seeing that the toilets looked likely to get busy, had prudently relieved herself while Yao was doing the drying. “Sure you don’t want to go, Yao?” she asked again.

“Yes, I’m sure!”

The bathrooms were of course separated into men’s and women’s facilities, but with so many members of the opposite sex around, using them probably still required some courage. One could even see a few guys who just couldn’t hold it any longer ducking into the ladies’ restroom. The court ladies who were trying to use it looked positively disturbed.

“You’ve been to one of the garden parties, haven’t you, Maomao?”

“Did En’en tell you that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Maomao reflected afresh on En’en’s prowess at learning things.

“What’s it like?” Yao asked.

“Cold. It’s not the stuff dreams are made of, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The party had looked pleasant enough, but for Maomao, who had been there purely as a serving woman, it had been a battle with the cold. Especially with Princess Lingli there—she’d still been an infant at the time and couldn’t be allowed to catch a chill. Maybe receiving a hair stick was sort of dreamy stuff, but Maomao was sure En’en must be keeping a close watch on them from somewhere unseen. And then there was the food. The need to check it for poison left everyone there ignorant of what the meal was really supposed to taste like. They sat sipping soup that had long since gone cold.

There’s hardly even any chance to put poison in anything, Maomao thought. Poisoning food was, in fact, a risky business. If you were going to do it, you had better be ready for the consequences. Some people, though, were willing to pay the price—which was why Maomao herself had once tasted tainted soup.

Argh! I wish I could have some more of that...

“Maomao, is that, uh...a smile?” Yao asked, studying her closely.

“Oh! Pardon me.” She’d found herself lost in the memory of that soup. You might assume a poison would be bitter or nauseating, but in fact many perfectly palatable things were poisonous. Like blowfish, or certain mushrooms.

As they passed the toilets, they heard a distinct “Hrgh!” of someone vomiting. They looked over and saw some men gathered around a well, rinsing their mouths out with water. Their physiques implied that they were soldiers, although they were wearing slightly nicer uniforms than usual: even the military men got dressed up for a garden party. As it happened, Maomao thought she recognized one of them.

“Do you think something’s the matter?” Yao said.

“If you’re curious, we could ask them.”

“Huh? No, I—” Yao said, but Maomao was already heading for the well. Specifically, she was approaching one of the beefy men who looked like a big dog.

“Haven’t seen you for a while, sir,” she said.

“Oh! Hullo, miss,” said Lihaku, looking perfectly friendly. He’d been at the garden party two years before as well; it wasn’t such a surprise to see him here now.

“Is something wrong? I thought I heard vomiting.”

“Ahh. Thanks for asking. It’s no big deal. The food was just, uh, not quite good. Huh, guys?” Lihaku said, turning to his companions.

“Not quite good? That stuff was awful,” one of them said. “And they serve that in the palace? The old bastard at the mess hall cooks better!”

“That soup! I knew it would be cold, but this was something else. There was too much of something in there, whatever it was. You think His Majesty’s was as bad as ours?”

“Naw. He got something different. No way the Emperor would eat the same stuff as us.”

“Yeah, I guess not!” The soldiers started laughing.

“The food was bad?” Maomao said. She knew the kinds of things they served at these parties. It might end up cold, but the food itself should have been top quality. Unless they really did serve something so different to the officialdom. “May I ask what was served? You said this was the soup?”

If the chef served a dubious meal to the Emperor or the high officials, he might soon lose his job, or even his head. But if the foul flavor was due to something that got in without his knowing it, that would be another kind of problem.

“It was just so salty,” Lihaku said. “Maybe they were going for southern-style cuisine, you know, something different. They served these patterned eggs. It sure looked good.” Upon taking a bite, though, the men had discovered the eggs were desperately salty, and the soup almost nauseatingly so.

“You said the eggs were ‘patterned’?” Maomao asked. Like tea eggs? Making a tea egg involved cracking the shell of a boiled egg and steeping it in tea, resulting in a spiderweb pattern on the surface. After that, you could simply eat it. Maybe they’d been served at the garden party because they looked sort of fancy.

“We managed to force them down, but we were worried the rest of the meal would taste terrible too.”

“Yeah! But nobody else seemed bothered. Our commander was even smacking his lips, all ‘My, that was good!’ Maybe his tongue stopped working.”

The soldiers had continued eating, afraid that maybe they were the ones whose sense of taste had gone haywire. When they each got here and discovered there were other people who’d thought the meal tasted funny, they realized maybe something really was wrong.

“How long has it been since you all ate the soup?” Maomao asked.

“Hmm. Maybe an hour?” Lihaku said. “I had to fight the urge to throw up the whole time. I rushed here as soon as the recess was announced.” He and everyone else there had obviously been sweating.

“An hour? Hmm. You look like you’re in decent health.”

“What’s that mean? You’re not seriously thinking it might have been poisoned, are you? Hey, look at us. We’re fit as fiddles!”

“It depends on the poison. Certain kinds take longer to start working than others,” Yao interjected. There was a touch of real emotion in her voice, the sound of someone who knew what she was talking about from firsthand experience.

“G-Geez, don’t say that. You’re awfully frightening for such a pretty lady, you know that?” Lihaku said, frowning.

“If you have any further symptoms, come to the medical office,” Maomao said. “I’ll give you some medicine that will make you vomit your insides out.”

“But I need my insides to stay inside me!”

Maomao and Yao headed back to the office, leaving the pale-faced Lihaku behind them.

“What do you think’s going on, Maomao?” Yao asked.

“My first thought would be that the salt clumped together. Normally it dissolves in soup, but it looks like maybe those men back there got a bit too much in their bowls.” Perhaps the chef had used particularly large chunks of salt, or maybe some had been added late in the cooking process. Whatever the case, she would simply have to wait and see if they showed up at the medical office feeling worse.

“I see...” Yao didn’t look completely convinced, but for the moment she decided to go with Maomao’s hypothesis.

Everyone else was busy with the garden party, but for Maomao and Yao, this was a chance to go home early, and they were going to enjoy it. Today, they just had to clean up the medical office and then they were done for the day.

“Ahh, this was a nice, easy day. I only hope tomorrow will be so relaxed,” the young doctor was saying to En’en. “If you’ve got some time after this, perhaps we might go to dinner, or—”

“You haven’t written up the daily report,” she replied, placing some paper firmly in front of the doctor. “Dr. Liu will be back any minute, so you’d better get writing.” Then she took out an overgarment and put it on Yao. “It’s cold out, young mistress. You must make sure you stay warm.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Yao, who also had a scarf piled around her neck.

Maomao pulled on a cotton jacket and planted herself in front of the young doctor. His name, incidentally, was Li, but as there were two other Li’s in the office, calling him that wasn’t very efficient. His personal name was Tianyu, not that Maomao or her companions had ever used it. “Please feel free to call me Tianyu. Don’t be shy,” he’d said at their first meeting—which was precisely why none of the young ladies ever had. Maomao, Yao, and En’en might each have had their own motivations for this obstinacy, but the end result was the same.

“See you tomorrow,” Maomao said to Tianyu.

“See you tomorrow,” Yao echoed.

“What would you like for dinner, young mistress?” said En’en.

Completely ignoring him. He must have talked her ear off today. Tianyu was waving to them as they left, but En’en didn’t so much as glance at him. Meanwhile, Maomao was thinking at Yao: Say pork! Pork, pork, pork! A good, fatty food would be perfect on a cold day like this. As soon as they left the office, a cold wind began to nip at their ears.

“Let’s see... I think chicken sounds nice. Something crunchy on the outside!” Yao said. Maomao’s telepathy had failed to reach her. But chicken was a good consolation prize.

“All right. Then we’ll need something clean and sharp to go with it,” Maomao said, inserting herself into the conversation.

“Good point. I wouldn’t mind some raw fish and vegetables,” Yao said.

En’en looked at Maomao. With her lips she said, “Okay, then, Maomao. We don’t have enough vegetables—do you think you could buy some?” But her eyes communicated: Those who don’t work, don’t eat.

That was that, then. Maomao shrugged and nodded, but inside, she was trembling with fear.