The Apothecary Diaries

Honey (Part Two)

"I grant Master Jinshi's joke went a little too far, but it really was just a bit of mischief. Perhaps you might find it in your heart to forgive him?" Gaoshun was showing Maomao to the Diamond Pavilion, where Consort Lishu lived. His master had already been roundly excoriated at the Jade Pavilion for the incident in question.

"Very well. If you'll lick it off in the future, Master Gaoshun, I don't foresee any problems."

"L-Lick it..." Gaoshun looked conflicted. His proclivities seemed to be, if you will, quite modest, and he had no inclination to lick anything off the hands of another man, not even Jinshi.

"If you take my point, then that's enough." Maomao, lips pursed, proceeded ahead at a brisk trot.

The man was an unrepentant pervert. Such a pretty face for such a repugnant personality. Maomao was sure he'd entrapped countless others with just the same trick. Shameless, that was the only word for it. If he hadn't been so damned important, she would have seriously considered kicking him between the legs. She was somewhat mollified by the thought that you couldn't kick what wasn't there.

At length they arrived at the Diamond Pavilion, a brand-new building planted with auspicious nantian bamboo.

Consort Lishu greeted them wearing a cherry-pink outfit, her hair held back by a hair stick decorated with flower ornaments. Maomao thought the girlish ensemble suited her better than the elaborate getup from the garden party.

Once Consort Gyokuyou had gotten involved, Maomao had requested an audience with Consort Lishu, in hopes of getting closure about something that had been nagging at her.

Lishu didn't bother to hide her disappointment when she saw Jinshi wasn't with them. It was somewhat hard to blame her—he at least had that pretty face, after all.

"May I inquire what it is you wished to ask of me?" Lishu reclined on a chaise longue, hiding her mouth behind a folding fan made of peafowl feathers. She lacked the authority and presence of the other consorts; in fact, she almost seemed nervous. She was still so young. Yes, she was beautiful—they didn't call her the "lovely princess" for nothing—but she had yet to come into her womanliness. Indeed, she was even flatter than Maomao, who was as scrawny as a chicken.

Two ladies-in-waiting stood apathetically behind the consort. Lishu at first regarded the unfamiliar freckled woman with annoyance, but then she looked closer and appeared to realize Maomao was one of the ladies-in-waiting who had been at the garden party. Her eyes widened and her disposition seemed to improve somewhat.

"Do you dislike honey, ma'am?" It would have been just as well for Maomao to start with some pleasantries or idle chatter, but it would have been tiresome, so she dispensed with them.

Lishu's eyes widened further. "How did you know?"

"It was clear on your face." Anyone with eyes could have seen it, Maomao thought. Consort Lishu appeared more and more amazed. Maomao had rarely met anyone so easy to read. She went on, "Have you ever been sick to your stomach on account of honey?" Consort Lishu appeared yet more astounded. Maomao took that as a yes. "It's not uncommon for a person who has experienced food poisoning to become averse to the food that did it to them."

This time, Lishu shook her head. "That's not it. I don't remember it. I was only a baby at the time." As an infant, Lishu had nearly died because of some honey. She found it hard to eat now because for her entire life, her nursemaids and ladies-in-waiting had told her to avoid it.

"Listen, you little tart," a woman said nastily. "How dare you march in here and start interrogating Lady Lishu?"

You're one to talk, Maomao thought. The woman had been at the tea party; she was one of those who hadn't made the slightest attempt to aid her honey-hating mistress. Don't act like you're her friend now.

The ladies-in-waiting seemed to have a simple con going: they treated visitors like villains, pretending to stand up for Consort Lishu. The guileless young woman came to believe there were enemies all around her. Her attendants assured her that they—and they alone—were her allies, and thus isolated her. Then the consort had no choice but to rely on her ladies. It was a vicious cycle. And so long as the consort didn't realize that it all came out of her ladies' malice, no one would ever figure it out. The women had simply made the mistake of getting overconfident at the garden party.

"I'm here on Master Jinshi's orders. If you have some kind of problem with me, I'd advise you to take it up with him personally." Maomao would borrow the menace of the tiger, so to speak, and give the women something to think about at the same time. Surely she could at least be allowed that.

The attendants' faces were burning, and Maomao was most amused to ponder what pretext they would use to get close to the perverted eunuch.

"One more thing," Maomao said, remaining carefully expressionless as she returned her gaze to Lishu. "Are you acquainted with the chief lady-in-waiting of the Garnet Pavilion?"

The consort's shocked look was all the answer she needed.

"There's something I'd like you to look for," Maomao had said to him, and that was what led to Gaoshun's presence in the court archives.

Maomao, a serving lady in the rear palace, was, in principle, not permitted to leave her place of service. But she seemed to have discovered something—what could it be? The depth of her thinking and her cool head didn't seem like those of a girl only seventeen years of age. One could even feel that such an ability to think rationally and solve problems was a shameful waste in a girl child. (Though some with certain proclivities might disagree.)

Such an easy pawn to use. If only he would simply do it. She would go along with it, though perhaps with a token objection or two.

Who was "he"? Who else? Gaoshun's master, who was not as mature as he first appeared.

"I've been remiss," Gaoshun mumbled. Perhaps he should have stopped his master before that joke went so far. But what would he have done? He would have stopped Jinshi, and then... what?

When he recalled Maomao's baleful look, he worried she might yet have something in store for him later. Gaoshun touched his hairline. He was just starting to fret about it.

Maomao sat on the bed in her room, flipping the pages of a book. The cramped space contained a brazier and a mortar and pestle for making medicine, while some dried herbs hung along the wall. Some of the tools she had wheedled from Gaoshun, others she had "borrowed" from the medical office.

"Sixteen years ago, huh..." About the same time the Emperor's younger brother was born.

Maomao was holding a stitched bound book, the volume Gaoshun had procured for her. It chronicled events in the rear palace.

The current emperor had produced a single child when he was still heir apparent. Its mother had been the then-prince's milk-sibling, the later Pure Consort. But the child had died before it was weaned, and the prince produced no further progeny until after his father had died and the Imperial harem had been reestablished.

He only had the one consort during his entire princedom. She found it strange. Knowing that horny old man, she would have expected him to take a whole crowd of concubines. She almost couldn't believe he had been faithful to one woman for more than ten years. It only went to show that you couldn't rely on rumors and hearsay. Best to check the records for yourself.

Sixteen years ago.

A child dead in infancy.

And...

"The court doctor, Luomen, banished." Maomao knew that name. The feeling that washed over her wasn't surprise so much as a sense that some pieces had fallen into place. On some level, she'd suspected something like this must be the case. Maomao made frequent use of the various herbs that grew around the rear palace. They weren't there naturally—someone, she always assumed, had planted them. She knew one person who cultivated a panoply of herbs around his house.

"I wonder what my old man is up to..." She thought of her father, who limped as he walked like an old woman. A practitioner as skilled and knowledgeable as he was wasted languishing in a pleasure district.

Indeed, Maomao's mentor in medicaments was a former palace eunuch, missing the bone in one of his knees.