by Natsu Hyuuga
“I don’t know whether it was suicide,” Maomao said. “I do know that she didn’t do it alone.”
“And how is that?” Jinshi asked, looking regal as he sat in his chair. He was like a different person from the childish youth he sometimes showed her.
“Because there was no ladder by the wall.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Do you think it would be possible to scale that wall with a grappling hook?”
“I very much doubt it. No?” he asked probingly. It was truly frustrating, dealing with him. She wanted to tell him off for asking questions he already knew the answers to, but Gaoshun was watching, so she refrained.
“There is a way to reach the top without any tools, but I don’t believe that woman could have managed it.”
“Is there? What way would that be?”
After the commotion surrounding the “ghost” of Princess Fuyou, Maomao had wracked her brains trying to understand how the woman had gotten up on the outer wall. It wasn’t a place one simply clambered up to.
When Maomao got a question into her head, she gnawed at it until she had the answer, so she had spent a great deal of time contemplating the walls. What she had discovered was a series of projections at one corner where the walls met. A brick jutting out slightly here and there. They could conceivably serve as footholds—if one were, say, a talented dancer like Princess Fuyou. Maomao speculated that the protruding bricks had been used by the builders when they were constructing the wall.
“It would be difficult for most women. Especially one who’d had her feet bound.”
Sometimes a girl’s feet were wrapped in bandages and shoved into tiny wooden shoes. The bones were crushed, her feet then bound with strips of cloth and constrained in wooden clogs. All this was done on account of a standard by which the smaller a foot was, the more beautiful. Not every woman was subject to the practice, but one sometimes saw it in the rear palace.
“You’re suggesting it was homicide?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. But I do believe she was alive when she fell into the moat.” The red fingertips implied the woman had scratched desperately at the walls around the moat. Down there in the cold water. Maomao didn’t want to think about it.
“Couldn’t you have a closer look?” There was the honeyed smile, impossible to refuse. Yet, unfortunately, refuse she must: she couldn’t do what she couldn’t do.
“A master apothecary instructed me never to touch a dead body.”
“For what reason? Some simple-minded fear of impurity?” Jinshi seemed to be implying that apothecaries interacted with the sick and injured all the time, and contact with corpses could hardly be unusual for them.
Maomao’s riposte was to state the reason plainly: “Because human beings can likewise become medicinal ingredients.”
No telling how far your curiosity goes, her father had said. If you must do it, well... leave it till last. He’d claimed that if she ever handled a dead body, she might well turn into a grave robber. It wasn’t the nicest thing he’d ever said. Maomao privately felt that she had more sense than that, but she had nonetheless somehow managed to respect his stricture thus far.
Jinshi and Gaoshun, jaws slightly agape, looked at each other and nodded in understanding. Gaoshun turned a pitying gaze on Maomao. She thought that was terribly rude, but forced her fist not to tremble.
In any event.
Did she kill herself, or did someone else do it? Maomao had never once thought of ending her own life, and she had no interest in being murdered, either. If she were to die, it would mean she could no longer test medicines or experiment with poisons. So if she had to go, she wanted it to be while she was trying out some heretofore unexplored toxin.
I wonder which one would be best...
Jinshi was looking at her. “What are you thinking?”
“Sir. I was meditating on which poison would be best to die by.”
She was just being honest, but Jinshi frowned. “Are you of a mind to die?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Jinshi shook his head as if to say she wasn’t making any sense. Well, she didn’t have to make sense to him. “No one knows the day or the hour of their death,” she said.
“True enough.” A hint of sorrow passed over Jinshi’s face. Perhaps he was thinking of Kounen.
“Master Jinshi.”
“Yes, what?” He looked at her skeptically.
“If, perchance, I must be put to death someday, may I humbly request that it be done by poison?”
Jinshi put his hand to his forehead and sighed. “And why would you ask me that?”
“If I should ever commit an offense that warrants such punishment, it would be you who handed down judgment, would it not?”
Jinshi studied her for a moment. He seemed in an ill temper, though she wasn’t sure why. Indeed, he almost seemed to be glaring at her. Gaoshun was looking increasingly anxious behind him.
Hmm, perhaps I just committed the offense.
“Pardon me, sir, I’ve overstepped myself. Strangulation or beheading would be equally acceptable.”
“I don’t follow,” Jinshi said, visibly passing from anger to exasperation.
“Because I’m a commoner, sir,” Maomao said. Commoners couldn’t contradict nobles. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong; that was simply how the world worked. True, the way the world worked was sometimes turned on its head, but she didn’t think there would be many who would be pleased with a revolution at this particular moment. The rulership in this day and age simply wasn’t that bad. “My head might be chopped off for the slightest mistake.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Jinshi watched her, unsettled.
Maomao shook her head. “It’s not a question of whether you would. But whether you could.” Jinshi had the right and authority to dispose of Maomao’s life, but Maomao didn’t have the same right. That was all there was to it.
Jinshi’s face was impassive. Was he upset? It was hard to tell. He might have been mulling something over. Maomao had no special need to know. It simply looked to her as if many different thoughts were running through his head.
I guess what I said bothered him.
Neither Jinshi nor Gaoshun said anything further, and Maomao, with nothing more to do, bowed and left.
A rumor reached her sometime later that the dead woman had been present at the scene of the attempted poisoning not long before. She said as much in a note that had been discovered. The case was closed, ruled a suicide.
Chapter 27: Honey (Part One)
Holding tea parties was legitimate business for the consorts. Gyokuyou had them seemingly every day. Some were held at the Jade Pavilion, while other times she was called to the residence of another consort.
Excellent chance to sound each other out and play politics, Maomao thought. She wasn’t a big fan of the tea parties herself. The subjects of conversation were mostly limited to makeup and trends in fashion. Boring talk interspersed with probing questions: a veritable microcosm of the rear palace. They look pretty comfortable with all of it... Guess that’s what makes them consorts.
Gyokuyou was talking to a middle-ranked consort who also came from the west. Their shared homeland seemed to be spurring real conversation between them. Maomao didn’t know the details, but it seemed the main subject had to do with future relations with Gyokuyou’s family.
Gyokuyou was a cheerful and engaging talker, and many consorts would tell her little secrets before they knew what they were doing. One of Gyokuyou’s jobs was to write these things down. Consort Gyokuyou’s home was a parched land—but it also sat at a nexus of trade, and the ability to read both people and the shifting of the times was paramount. In addition to what she earned as a consort, she helped her family by communicating tidbits of information to them.
She was up awful late last night, but she doesn’t look tired at all. The Emperor was visiting his beloved Gyokuyou once every three days, or even more often. Ostensibly, it was to se
e his daughter, who was starting to grab onto things and pull herself up to standing, but needless to say, admiring the princess was not the only thing he did on his visits. Maomao was aware that the Emperor no more neglected his daily than his nightly business, suggesting a man of tremendous energies. From the perspective of helping the country to prosper, it was a praiseworthy thing.
At the conclusion of the tea party, Maomao received a bevy of tea candies from Yinghua. She was willing to eat some of them, but it was really too much for her to handle alone, so she made her customary visit to Xiaolan. Xiaolan’s stories weren’t always articulate, or even completely coherent, but she obligingly shared her latest crop of rumors with Maomao. Today she had talk about the serving woman who had killed herself, the attempted poisoning, and for some reason, something about the Pure Consort.
“They can talk about the Emperor’s ‘four favored ladies’ all they want, but there’s no getting around the fact that she’s getting older.”
Consort Gyokuyou was nineteen, Lihua was twenty-three, and Lishu just fourteen. But the Pure Consort Ah-Duo was fully thirty-five, a year older than His Majesty. It might still be possible for her to bear a child, but under the system operating in the rear palace, she could soon expect to be moved aside in a process they sometimes called “being slid from one pillow to another.” In other words, Ah-Duo could not hope to become a mother of the nation.
Talk was already going around about her possible demotion and who might be elevated to the rank of high consort in her place. Such chatter was nothing new, but because Ah-Duo had been the Emperor’s consort since before his accession, and because she had in fact borne him a son at one time, the talk had rarely gained much traction.
Mother of a dead little prince, Maomao thought. It was the same fate Lihua had to look forward to if she didn’t become pregnant with another child for His Majesty. And she wasn’t really alone: Consort Gyokuyou couldn’t assume she would hold pride of place in the Imperial affections forever.
For every beautiful blossom faded in time. The blossoms of the rear palace had to bear fruit, or they were worthless. As familiar as this logic was to Maomao by now, it never ceased to remind her that the palace was also a prison.
She brushed a few stray crumbs of mooncake from her skirt and looked up at the overcast sky.
Gyokuyou’s partner for today’s tea party was somewhat unusual. It was Consort Lishu, another of the four favored ladies. It was uncommon for consorts of the same rank to hold parties for each other; still more so when it came to the highest-ranked women.
The nervousness was clear on Lishu’s childlike face. She was attended by four ladies-in-waiting, including the notorious food taster. Apparently the woman hadn’t been punished as severely as Maomao had feared she might be.
It was cold out, so the tea party was being held indoors. Some eunuchs were put to work setting up chaises longues for the ladies-in-waiting in the sitting room. The table had a mother-of-pearl inlay, and the curtain was changed for a new one with elaborate embroidery. To be perfectly blunt, they hardly put this much care into receiving the Emperor himself—but it was the way of women to want to put their best foot forward for their peers.
Makeup was likewise applied with gusto, and Maomao was summarily deprived of her freckles. The girls accented the corners of their eyes with red lines. It was a level of makeup men might have considered ostentatious, but that didn’t matter; here, the more gaudy of the two parties would be the victor.
In their conversation, Consort Gyokuyou seemed to do all the talking, while Lishu nodded along meekly. Perhaps that was just what came of the difference in their ages. Behind Lishu, her attendants seemed less interested in their lady than in the accoutrements of the Jade Pavilion, glancing this way and that at the ornaments and furnishings. Only the food taster stood dutifully behind Consort Lishu, across from Maomao, eyeing her erstwhile tormentor watchfully.
What’s the story, here? First the women from the Crystal Pavilion, now this girl. Maomao wished people would stop treating her like some sort of monster. She wasn’t a stray dog, and she wouldn’t bite.
Offhand, they look like perfectly ordinary ladies-in-waiting, Maomao thought. She’d once told Gaoshun that they bullied their consort. It might be a little awkward if the allegation turned out not to be true, but she would have been just as glad to be wrong.
Compared with the few, the proud ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion, Lishu’s women seemed a bit slow to act, but they did their jobs. At least, such as they were: since Gyokuyou was the hostess of today’s tea party, they didn’t have that much to do.
Ailan appeared with a ceramic jar and hot water.
“Are you partial to sweet things? It’s so cold today, I thought this might be comforting,” Gyokuyou said.
“I like sweets,” Lishu answered. It seemed to make her feel a little more at ease.
Inside the jar was citrus rind that had been boiled in honey. It would warm the body and soothe the throat, and could even help prevent colds. Maomao had made it herself. Gyokuyou seemed to like it, and had frequently served it at her tea parties lately.
Hmm? Despite her pronouncement that she liked sweets, Consort Lishu suddenly looked distinctly uncomfortable. The food taster likewise seemed as if she wanted to object to what was being poured into her lady’s drinking cup. Can’t take honey, either? Maomao thought.
None of the other ladies-in-waiting lolling about seemed prepared to say anything. They just looked at Lishu in annoyance. Get over it, they seemed to be saying. They still thought it was just childish pickiness.
Maomao gave a little sigh and whispered in Consort Gyokuyou’s ear. Her eyes widened slightly, and she called Ailan over. “I’m terribly sorry, but it seems this needs to steep a little longer. I’ll serve something else. Do you take ginger tea?”
“Yes. Thank you, ma’am,” Lishu said, sounding a little more upbeat. Changing teas had evidently been the right move.
As Maomao glanced up, she saw Lishu’s ladies-in-waiting. She almost thought they looked disappointed. The impression only lasted for a second, and then it was gone.
Come evening, that loveliest of eunuchs appeared, as ever. Nymph-like smile in front, Gaoshun behind. Maomao had the feeling lately that there were more furrows in Gaoshun’s brow than before. Perhaps he had new troubles to contend with.
“I hear you had a tea party with Consort Lishu,” Jinshi said.
“Yes, and it was lovely.”
Jinshi made regular rounds of the Emperor’s most prominent consorts, almost as if it was his business to keep things together in the rear palace. He seemed to sense something unusual in the day’s get-together, and so felt compelled to involve himself. Maomao tried to make her exit before she got sucked into anything, but naturally, he stopped her.
“Would you be so kind as to let go of me?”
“I wasn’t done talking.” When the sublime young man turned his gaze on her, Maomao could only drop her own eyes to the ground. She was sure she was looking at him as if he were a dead fish. Not a pretty fish, either. Probably one of those bottom-feeding ones.
“Ah, such friends you are,” Gyokuyou said, laughing merrily. A little too merrily; and Maomao found herself replying, “Lady Gyokuyou, a bit of acupressure around the eyes may help prevent wrinkles.”
Oops. Can’t be talking like that. She had to be careful not to be rude to anyone but Jinshi. Er... Guess that’s not such a great idea, either. She’d already upset him just the other day. Too many little missteps like that, and she might find herself out of the eunuch’s good graces, and perhaps meeting a prompt end by strangulation directly after that.
“Have you heard that the serving woman who killed herself is allegedly the perpetrator of the poisoning the other day?”
Maomao nodded—for it seemed by Jinshi’s tone that he was asking her and not Gyokuyou. As for the consort, she seemed to sense that this conversation would best be held in private, and left the room. Maomao, Jinshi, and Gaoshun were
left alone.
“Do you really believe the culprit committed suicide?”
“That’s not mine to determine.” To turn a lie into fact was the prerogative of the powerful. She didn’t know who had made the determination, but she suspected Jinshi was connected somehow.
“Would a mere serving woman have reason to poison the food of the Virtuous Consort?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”
Jinshi smiled, a seductive look he could use expertly to manipulate people. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t work on Maomao. She was sure he knew he didn’t have to leer at her to get what he wanted; he simply needed to give her an order. She wouldn’t refuse.
“Perhaps I could dispatch you to help in the Garnet Pavilion, starting tomorrow?”
What purpose did the question mark serve? Maomao gave the only possible answer: “As you wish.”
A house, they say, comes to reflect its master. Just so, Consort Gyokuyou’s Jade Pavilion was homey, while Lihua’s Crystal Pavilion was elegant and refined. And the Garnet Pavilion, where Ah-Duo lived, was eminently practical. Nowhere in the decor was there anything unnecessary; there was a conspicuous lack of interest in extraneous ornamentation, which itself achieved a kind of sublime refinement.
It spoke directly to who the mistress of the house was. Every bit of waste had been stripped away from her body, which boasted neither flowery excess nor ample abundance nor charming loveliness. What was left, though, was a stark, neutral beauty.
Is she really thirty-five? If Ah-Duo had put on an official uniform, one could have mistaken her for some up-and-coming civil servant. Here in the rear palace, where there were nothing but women and eunuchs, she must have been the apple of many an eye. She was attractive in a way that was very similar to Jinshi—and then again, different. Maomao hadn’t seen exactly what Ah-Duo had been wearing at the banquet, but now she had shed any skirt or wide sleeves in favor of what looked almost like riding clothes.