by Natsu Hyuuga
Still, did he really have to ask me right in front of his other consort?
She almost marveled at a man who could make a request like that of her, then eat a luxurious meal and be intimate with Consort Gyokuyou immediately afterwards. Maybe that was just an emperor for you.
When Maomao began to “look after” Consort Lihua, the first thing she turned her eye to was improving the woman’s diet. The poisonous face powder had been banished from use in the rear palace on Jinshi’s command, and thorough punishment appointed for the merchants who had brought it in in the first place. It would not be possible to get more of the stuff from here on out.
In which case, the priority had to be expunging the remaining toxins from Lihua’s body. Her current meals were based on bland congee, but it was frequently topped with things like deep-fried fish, broiled pork, red-and-white bean buns, and other rich foods like shark fin or crab. Nutritious, true enough, but too heavy for the stomach of a convalescent.
Forcing herself not to salivate, Maomao told the cook to change the menu. The weight of an Imperial assignment gave even an unimportant lady-in-waiting like Maomao a certain amount of authority, and Lihua’s meals were made to consist of porridge (rich in fiber), tea (an excellent diuretic), and fruit (easily digested).
Unfortunately, all of these were now scattered on the ground. Maomao, raised in the red-light district as she was, was appalled by the waste of food.
The women of the Crystal Pavilion were less impressed by whatever Imperial commission Maomao might have had than they were displeased by the fact that she served their rival, Consort Gyokuyou. Maomao would have gladly given them all a piece of her mind, but instead she bit her tongue and cleaned up the mess.
Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting brought the consort sumptuous meals, but over time they came back more and more untouched. Presumably, the ladies got to enjoy the leftovers.
Maomao would have liked to perform a proper physical examination of the patient, but Lihua’s canopied bed was surrounded by a phalanx of ladies-in-waiting, collectively performing a rather ungracious and ineffective nursing duty. When they provoked a cough by slapping whitening powder on Lihua’s face while she was asleep, they would exclaim, “The air is bad in here. It’s this noxious worm!” and chase Maomao out of the room. She couldn’t get at Lihua to do an exam.
No question in my mind. At this rate, she’ll keep wasting away until she dies.
Maybe she had taken in too much of the poison and it was too late to get it out of her system. Or perhaps she simply wasn’t strong enough. If a person didn’t eat, they would die. Lihua appeared to be losing the will to live.
Maomao was leaning against a wall, counting the number of days her head was likely to remain attached to her body, when she heard a shrill of coquettish voices.
She had a very bad feeling about this. She raised her head very slowly and found herself confronted with a gorgeous face, smiling like the sun. It was the beautiful eunuch.
“You look troubled,” he said.
“Do I?” Maomao replied tonelessly, her eyes half-closed.
“I wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t.” He stared straight at her, so she tried looking away instead. He leaned in, his eyelashes noticeably long, to counter her, and when their eyes met again, Maomao very much broke her promise to Gaoshun by adopting the expression of someone looking at a piece of garbage.
“What is with that girl?” The words were soft but venomous. Maomao was referring to the woman who had spilled the food. She was insufferable, and she veritably exuded menace.
A woman’s wrath was a terrible thing, but Jinshi nonetheless said softly into her ear with his honeyed voice, “Shall we go inside?” Maomao found herself pushed into the room before she could object.
The chamber’s self-appointed guardians looked even more dangerous than before. But when they saw the nymph beside Maomao, they immediately put on nonchalant smiles, even though they were all obviously forced. Truly, women could be terrifying creatures.
“Surely you agree it’s unbecoming for lovely, talented young ladies to make a hash of the Emperor’s good offices.”
The women paused, they bit their lips, and then one by one they backed away from the bed.
“There now, go,” Jinshi said, giving Maomao a little shove on the back that almost toppled her over. She bowed and approached the bed, then took Lihua’s hand. It was pale; the veins stood out prominently.
Maomao had some experience of medicine—the practice of healing—if not as much as she had of medicine—the concoctions that did the healing. Lihua’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t fight Maomao. It was hard to tell if she was even awake or asleep. She already seemed to have one foot in the grave.
Maomao placed a finger on Lihua’s face, hoping to get a better look at her eye. She was greeted by a slick, slippery texture. Lihua’s skin was as pale as it had ever been.
It hasn’t changed? Maomao frowned, then went over to the ladies-in-waiting. She stood in front of one of them, the one who had been making the consort up earlier. In a deliberately soft, restrained voice, Maomao asked, “You. Are you the one who does the lady’s makeup?”
“I certainly am. It’s a lady-in-waiting’s duty, you know.” The woman seemed mildly intimidated by Maomao’s searing look. It obviously took everything she had to remain defiant. “We want Consort Lihua to be as beautiful as she can, always.” The girl sniffed; she sounded so sure of herself.
“Is that right?”
A crack echoed through the room. The girl stumbled aside, in the direction of the force, hardly knowing what had happened. She felt an unfamiliar heat in her cheek and ear. Maomao’s right hand smarted; it burned almost as much as the girl’s left cheek. Maomao had smacked her about as hard as she was able.
“What’s wrong with you?!” one of the other ladies-in-waiting demanded. Several of them were openly astounded.
“Me? I’m just giving an idiot her due.” Maomao grabbed the girl by the hair, pulling her to her feet.
“Ow! That hurts, stop!” the lady-in-waiting wailed, but Maomao paid her no heed. She dragged the girl over to the makeup stand and picked up a carved jar with her free hand. She opened the lid and smeared the contents on the face of the lady-in-waiting. White powder went everywhere, causing coughing fits. Tears brimmed in the young woman’s eyes.
“There! Now you can be as beautiful as your lady. Lucky you!” Maomao gave a tug of the girl’s hair, forcing her to meet her eyes, and leered like a beast with its prey in its claws. “You can have poison in your pores, in your mouth, in your nose, in every part of your body. You can wither away just like your beloved Lady Lihua, until your eyes are sunken and your skin is bloodless.”
“No... I don’t believe you...” the newly powdered lady-in-waiting simpered.
“You don’t understand why this stuff was forbidden, do you?! It’s poison!” Maomao was well and truly angry now. Not because of the sneers and glares, not because of the spilled porridge, but because of this fool of a lady-in-waiting who thought of nothing, but simply assumed she was right about everything.
“But it’s the prettiest! The most beautiful... I thought Lady Lihua would be happy...”
Maomao dipped her hand in the powder scattered on the floor, then grabbed the girl’s cheek, pulling, distorting her lips. “Who would be happy to be continually covered in poison that sucks their life away?” It was like listening to a child trying to explain why they’d done something wrong. Maomao gave a click of her tongue and let the woman go. A few long strands of dark hair remained wrapped around her fingers. “All right, go rinse your mouth out. And wash your face.”
She watched the girl all but flee the room, weeping, and then she turned to the other ladies-in-waiting, who were now thoroughly frightened. “Go on. You want that stuff to get on the patient? Clean it up!” She pointed to the powdery floor, deciding to ignore the fact that she was the one who had spilled it. The other ladies-in-waiting winced, but then went to get the cleaning
supplies. Maomao crossed her arms and snorted. Some of the powder was on her clothes, but she didn’t care.
One person had remained calm and collected throughout all this. “Women are indeed terrifying,” Jinshi said now, tucking his hands into his wide sleeves.
Maomao had completely forgotten he was there. “Argh!” she said as the rush of blood to her head subsided. She squatted down right where she was.
Now she’d done it.
Chapter 13: Nursing
Consort Lihua’s condition was worse than Maomao had thought. She changed the millet porridge for thin gruel, but Lihua could hardly sip it from the spoon. Maomao had to work Lihua’s mouth open, pour the gruel in, and gently help her to swallow. Not the most decorous routine, but then, this wasn’t the moment to be worrying about decorum.
This was the biggest problem: Lihua wasn’t eating. An old proverb held that a healthy diet was as restorative as good medicine, and Maomao knew her patient wouldn’t get better if she didn’t have some food. And so she persisted obstinately in trying to feed Lihua.
She had the air in the room changed, and the cloying scent of incense lessened, replaced by that characteristic odor of a sick person. They must have been burning the incense in hopes of covering the smell of Lihua’s body. How long had it been since she’d had a bath? Maomao felt ever more enraged at the witless ladies-in-waiting.
At least the young woman Maomao had upbraided seemed to have learned something from it. The whitening powder she’d been using on Lihua had been from her own secret stash. Sad to say, the eunuch who had failed to find and confiscate the powder was condemned to be beaten. Birth could affect even the punishments one received.
Maomao derided the eunuch in charge of all this as a worthless idiot to his face, but it didn’t seem to mean much. He turned out to be one of those high-born people with “special” proclivities.
Maomao had a cloth and a bucket of hot water prepared, then summoned the other ladies-in-waiting to help her wash Consort Lihua. The ladies looked uncomfortable, but at a glare from Maomao they meekly went along.
Lihua’s skin was so dry the water hardly beaded on it, and her lips were painfully cracked. They applied honey rather than red makeup to her lips, and her hair was tied back in a simple knot. Now they just had to get her to take some tea whenever they could. Once in a while, she was given watered-down soup instead. It would help her get some salt. This would cause her to use the toilet more, expelling the toxins from her body.
Maomao had thought the consort might reject this unusual new caretaker, even think of her as an enemy, but Lihua was as pliant as a doll. Looking at her vacant eyes made one doubt whether she even knew one person from another. But then they were able to increase her portion of gruel from half a bowl to an entire bowl, and then to add some rice and grains. When Lihua was able to chew and swallow without help, meat stock was added, making a savory soup, along with mashed fruits.
One day when she had managed to use the toilet on her own, Lihua suddenly spoke: “Why... ...ie?”
Maomao stood closer to catch the whispered words.
“Why didn’t you just let me die?” The voice was vanishingly small.
Maomao frowned. “If that’s what you want, then just stop eating. The fact that you keep taking your gruel tells me you don’t want to die.” And then she offered Lihua some warm tea.
The woman gave a gentle cough. “I see...” She smiled, however faintly.
Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting tended to have one of two reactions to Maomao: either they were terrified of her, or they were terrified of her but still fought back.
Guess I went a little too far.
Once Maomao’s emotions hit a boiling point, she was wont to boil over herself. She knew it was a bad habit. She’d even abandoned the delicate language of the court for more uncouth expressions. Maomao might not show much emotion, but she had a warm heart, and it honestly hurt her to see people regard her from afar as if looking at a devil or a monster. She rationalized this latest outburst: it had been in the service of taking care of Lady Lihua. It had been necessary.
Jinshi himself put in frequent appearances. Whether on the orders of the Emperor or at the behest of Consort Gyokuyou, Maomao didn’t know. Bent on making use of anything that was provided to her, though, she asked him to have a bath added to the Crystal Pavilion. The extant bathing facilities were expanded to include a steam bath.
Maomao tried, indirectly of course, to communicate to Jinshi that he could not help and was not wanted here, but he still stopped by to smile at her at every opportunity with the tenacity of a ghost that was haunting her. He clearly, Maomao concluded, was a eunuch with far too much time on his hands. She wished he would take a cue from Gaoshun, who at least had the decency to bring treats whenever he showed up. A person as thoughtful as that might make someone a good husband—even if he was a eunuch.
Lihua, meanwhile, was encouraged to consume fiber, drink water, and to sweat—anything that would help move the poison out of her system. Two months passed focused on this and only this, and finally Consort Lihua was even able to walk on her own.
She had already been in a severe condition on account of her emotional malaise. Maomao judged that as long as she didn’t take in any more of the toxins, she would be all right. It would take some time yet for her to regain her healthy figure and the flush in her cheeks, but she no longer seemed to be standing on the banks of the river that divided this world from the next.
The night before Maomao was to return to the Jade Pavilion, she went to pay her formal respects to Consort Lihua. She half expected to be dismissed as someone too lowly to merit the consort’s notice, but this was not the case. Lihua, she learned, had her pride, but she wasn’t prideful. With all that had happened surrounding the prince, Maomao had come to think of Lihua as quite a disagreeable woman, but in fact she had the comportment and personality of a true Imperial consort.
“I’ll take my leave tomorrow morning, milady,” Maomao told her. She added some instructions regarding what the lady was to eat, and a few other cautionary pieces of advice, and then went to leave the room.
But Lihua said from behind her: “Young lady, do you suppose I will ever be able to bear another child?” Her voice was flat and affectless.
“I don’t know. The only way to find out is to try.”
“But how, when His Majesty no longer has any interest in me?”
Her meaning was clear enough. She had only conceived the prince because the Emperor happened to visit her after his time with his favorite, Consort Gyokuyou. The fact that there was three months’ difference in age between the little princess and the little prince revealed the truth of the matter.
“It was His Majesty who ordered me to come here in the first place. Now that I’m leaving, I must think you will see him again.” It wasn’t a political or emotional problem. The issue was the same for both of them. The rear palace being what it was, love and romance had no place here.
“Do you think I can yet win out over Consort Gyokuyou? I, who ignored her advice and killed my own child doing so?”
“I don’t think it’s a question of winning. And as for our mistakes, we can learn from them.” Maomao took down a vase that was decorating the wall, a slim thing designed to hold a single flower. At the moment, it was occupied by a star-shaped bellflower. “There are hundreds, even thousands of kinds of flowers in the world, but who would dare say whether the peony or the iris is the more beautiful?”
“I don’t have her emerald eyes or fiery hair.”
“If you have something else instead, then there is no problem.” Maomao’s gaze traveled down from Consort Lihua’s face. They always said those were the first things to go when you lost weight, but Lihua still had her ample endowment. “I think size like that is quite a treasure.”
Maomao had seen a great deal in the brothels, so she should know. She would keep to herself the fact that she’d been struck by a certain amount of amazement every time they bathed the cons
ort.
Given that Lihua was the rival of her own mistress, Maomao couldn’t help her out too much, but she decided to give the woman a last gift before she left. “May I whisper in milady’s ear?” And then, quietly so that no one else would hear her, she gave Consort Lihua some advice. A secret technique one of the older ladies of the night had told her it “couldn’t hurt to know.” Sadly, Maomao lacked equipment of the necessary size. But this particular technique seemed the perfect thing for Consort Lihua.
Lihua’s face went as red as an apple when she heard it. What Maomao might have told her was a subject of lively debate among Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting for some time afterward, but it was all the same to Maomao.
There was a period after this when His Majesty’s visits to the Jade Pavilion became noticeably less frequent. With a mixture of irony and real relief, Consort Gyokuyou only said: “Phew! Finally, I can get a little sleep!”
Maomao gawked in surprise. But that’s a story for another time.
Chapter 14: The Fire
There. I knew it. Balancing a laundry basket in one arm, Maomao smiled. Those were red pines growing in a grove near the eastern gate.
The gardens of the rear palace were deftly manicured. Once each year the dead leaves and withered branches were cleared out of the pine forest, as well. And Maomao knew that a well-tended pine forest encouraged a certain kind of mushroom to grow.
Right now, she held a small-capped matsutake mushroom in her hand. Some people didn’t like the way they smelled, but Maomao loved them. Quartered matsutake mushrooms, grilled on a grate with a dash of salt and a squeeze of citrus over them, was her idea of heaven.
It was a modest copse, but as she’d found a convenient cluster of the mushrooms, she put five of them in her basket.
Should I eat them at the old fogey’s place, or in the kitchen?
She couldn’t do it at the Jade Pavilion; there would be too many questions about where she’d gotten the ingredients. They might not smile upon a serving woman admitting she had gathered the mushrooms herself from the grove. So Maomao went instead to see the doctor, the man who was so good with people and so bad at his job. If he liked matsutake mushrooms, too, then all was well; and if not, she figured he would still be kind enough to look the other way. Maomao had by now completely ingratiated herself with the loach-mustached man.