"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 bloodborne, 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.
Headache, stomachache, and nausea. Maomao had some ideas
as to what illnesses these might portend, but she couldn't be
sure. And her father had never tired of admonishing her not to do
her thinking based on assumptions.
Maybe I'll just pay her a little visit.
Maomao was determined to finish her work as quickly as
possible. The rear palace was in fact a vast place, housing more
than two thousand women and five hundred eunuchs on the
premises. Lowly workers like Maomao slept ten to a room, but the
lower-ranked consorts had their own chambers, mid-ranking ones
had whole buildings to themselves, and the highest-ranking
consorts virtually had their own palaces, sprawling complexes
including dining halls and gardens, large enough to dwarf a small
town. Thus, Maomao rarely left the eastern quarter where she
lived; there was no need. She had neither the time nor the means
to leave unless she was sent on some errand.
Well, if I don't have an errand, I'll just have to make one.
Maomao spoke to a woman holding a basket. This basketcontained fine silk that would have to be washed over in the
laundry area in the western quarter. No one seemed to know
whether there was something diferent about the water there, or
perhaps about the people who did the washing, but apparently
the silk would soon be ruined if handled here in the eastern
quarter. Maomao understood that silk degraded more or less
depending on whether it was dried out in the sun or kept in the
shade, but she felt no particular need to tell anybody that.
"I'm just dying to get a look at that gorgeous eunuch they say
lives in the central area," Maomao said, invoking one of the other
rumors Xiaolan had mentioned in passing, and the woman gladly
gave her the basket. Chances for anything resembling romance
were few and far between in this place, so that even the eunuchs,
men who were not really men, soon became something to swoon
over. Stories were even told, from time to time, of women who
became the wives of eunuchs after they left palace service.
Presumably this was all healthier than the women lusting after
each other instead, but still it puzzled Maomao.
Wonder if I'll end up like everyone else one day, she thought
to herself. She crossed her arms and grunted. Romantic matters
held scant interest for her.
She delivered the basket of laundry as quickly as she could,
and then a red-lacquered building of the central area came into
view. Carvings were everywhere, every pillar like a work of art
unto itself. Each detail had been attended to, so that the whole
was far more refined than anything on the fringes of the eastern
quarter. At present, the largest quarters in the rear palace were
occupied by Consort Lihua, the mother of the prince. The Emperor
was without an Empress proper, which made Lihua, the only one
of his women with a son, the most powerful person here.
The scene Maomao discovered looked almost as if it could
have come from the city itself. One woman fulminated, one hung
her head in gloom, while others fussed and fretted, and a man
tried to make peace among them all.
It's hardly diferent from a brothel, Maomao thought, a cold
observation made possible by her status as a third party, if not a
gawker.
The upset woman was the most powerful person in the rearpalace, the one hanging her head the next most powerful, and
the fussy women were attendants. The man (no doubt a man no
longer at this point) interceding was the doctor. So much,
Maomao gathered from the whispering she heard and the general
state of things around her. That first woman would have to be
Consort Lihua, mother of the Imperial prince, and the second
woman would be Consort Gyokuyou, blessed—though not quite so
blessed as Lihua—with a daughter. As for the eunuch doctor,
Maomao knew nothing about him, but she had heard that in this
whole great palace there was only one person who could truly be
called a practitioner of medicine.
"This is your doing. Just because you had a girl, you got it into
your head to curse my prince to death!" A beautiful face distorted
by anger is a frightful thing. Eyes as furious as a demon's, set in a
face as pale as a ghost's, were turned upon the beautiful
Gyokuyou, who held a hand to her cheek. There was a red mark
under her fingers; she had, Maomao surmised, been slapped with
an open hand.
"That isn't true, and you know it. My Xiaoling is suffering just
as much as your son." The second woman had red hair and eyes
the color of emeralds, and she answered the charges calmly,
referring to the young Princess Lingli by an affectionate nickname.
Consort Gyokuyou's looks suggested no small amount of western
blood in her veins. Now she raised her head and glared at the
doctor. "And that is why I request that you not neglect to attend
to my daughter as well."
It seemed the doctor himself was the reason intercession had
been needed between the two women. He had been spending all
his time looking in here at the young prince, and Gyokuyou was
appealing in her daughter's behalf. One sympathized with her, but
this was the rear palace, and male children were more prized than
female ones. The doctor, for his part, looked caught between
trying to make an excuse, and total speechlessness.
What a knave, that sawbones, Maomao thought. To fail to
notice with the two consorts right in front of him. How could he
not have figured it out already, anyway? The dead infants, the
headaches, the stomach pains, the nausea. To say nothing of
Consort Lihua's ghostly pallor and frail appearance.Muttering to herself, Maomao put the raucous scene behind
her. I need something to write on, she thought. She was so busy
thinking it, in fact, that she didn't even notice the person passing
by.