The Apothecary Diaries

Two Consorts

"Huh! So it's true?"

"It is! She said she saw the doctor go into their rooms with her own eyes!"

Maomao sipped her soup and listened. Hundreds of serving girls were having their breakfast in the vast dining room. The meal consisted of soup and a porridge of mixed grains. She was listening to two women diagonally across from her as they traded gossip. The women took pains to look chagrined about the story, but it was an unseemly curiosity that lit their eyes.

"He visited both Lady Gyokuyou and Lady Lihua."

"Gracious, both of them? But they're only six months and three months, aren't they?"

"That's right! Maybe it really is a curse."

The names were those of the Emperor's two favorite consorts. Six months and three months were the ages of the ladies' children.

Rumors were rife in the palace. Some of them sprang from contempt for His Majesty's companions and the heirs they bore him, but others had more the savor of simple ghost stories, the sorts of tales told during the summer doldrums to beat the heat by chilling the blood.

"It must be. Otherwise, why would three separate children have died?"

All of the offspring in question had been born to consorts; that is to say, they could in principle have been heirs to the throne. One of the poor victims had been born to His Majesty before his accession, while he still lived in the Eastern Palace, and two more since he had assumed the throne, but all three had passed away in infancy. Mortality was common among infants, of course, but that three of the Emperor's own progeny should die so young was strange. Only two children, those of the consorts Gyokuyou and Lihua, still survived.

Poisonings, perhaps? Maomao mused, sipping her porridge, but she concluded it couldn't be. After all, two of the three dead children had been girls. And in a land where only men could inherit the throne, what reason was there to murder princesses?

The women across from Maomao were so busy talking about curses and hexes that they had stopped eating entirely. But there's no such thing as curses! Maomao thought. It was stupid, that was the only word for it. How could you destroy an entire clan with one curse? Such questions bordered on the heretical, but Maomao's expertise, she felt, constituted proof of this pronouncement.

Could it have been some kind of sickness? Something blood-borne, maybe? How exactly did they die?

And that was when the detached, quiet maid began talking to her chatty dining companions. It would not be long before Maomao regretted succumbing to her curiosity.

"I don't know the whole story, but I heard they all wasted away!" Apparently inspired by Maomao's show of interest, Xiaolan, the talkative maid, thereafter regularly brought her the latest rumors. "The doctor's been to see Lady Lihua more often than Lady Gyokuyou, so I guess Lady Lihua must be worse." She wiped at a window frame with a rag as she spoke.

"Lady Lihua herself?"

"Yes, it's mother and child both."

Maomao supposed the doctor paid closer attention to Lady Lihua not necessarily because she was more sick, but because her child was a little prince. Consort Gyokuyou had borne a princess. The Imperial affection fell more upon Gyokuyou, but when one child was a boy and the other a girl, which one should receive preferential treatment was clear.

"Like I said, I don't know everything, but I've heard she has headaches and stomachaches, and even some nausea." Satisfied that she had divulged all her newest gleanings, Xiaolan busied herself with another task. By way of thanks, Maomao gave her some tea flavored with licorice. She'd made it with some herbs that grew in a corner of the central garden. It smelled strongly medicinal, but was in fact quite sweet. Xiaolan was thrilled—serving girls had all too few opportunities to enjoy sweet things.