The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 1

by Natsu Hyuuga

  It was still the hot season, and she suspected butter wouldn’t set well, so she decided to cover some fruit instead. A bit of ice would be perfect, but that was of course impossible and didn’t make the ingredients list. Instead she asked for a large, unglazed water jug to be prepared. It was filled half full with water. As the water evaporated, the inside of the jug would become cooler than the outside air, cool enough to help harden the fats.

  Maomao dipped a spoon into the mixture and tasted a bit of it. It was bitter and sweet at the same time, and her knowledgeable tongue likewise detected elements that would improve the mood. She was far more resistant to things like alcohol and toxins now than she had been when she’d had that first taste of chocolate, and it didn’t affect her nearly as much. But she could still tell it was powerful stuff.

  Maybe I should make the portions a bit smaller.

  She chopped the fruit in half with a simple cleaver, then dipped them in the brownish liquid. She put them on a plate, then placed them in the jug. She put a lid on the jug, then covered it with a straw mat to hide it. The only thing left was to wait for the chocolate to harden. Jinshi would come by to collect it that evening; that should be plenty of time.

  Guess I’ve got a little extra...

  She hadn’t used all of the brownish liquid. The ingredients were extremely expensive, and it was quite nutritious. Aphrodisiac or not, it had a minimal effect on Maomao, so she decided to eat it herself later. She chopped some bread into cubes and soaked them in the stuff; this way she wouldn’t have to worry about any cooling process, either.

  She put a lid on the jar of cacao liquid and set it on the shelf. The rest of the ingredients she put in her own room, then headed for the washing area to clean the utensils. She should have put the dipped bread in her room, too, but she was already thinking about other things. Maybe her taste-testing had left her a little inebriated.

  Well, it was too late now.

  It happened after that, while Maomao was out running errands for Hongniang, stopping off along the way to pick some medicinal herbs for herself. The bread, and the fact that it should have gone on the shelf, were chased clear out of Maomao’s mind. She returned with a laundry basket full of herbs, thoroughly pleased with herself, only to be greeted by Hongniang and Consort Gyokuyou, looking deathly pale and rather disturbed, respectively. Gaoshun was there too, which implied Jinshi was somewhere about.

  Hongniang could only put a hand to her forehead and point to the kitchen, so Maomao pressed her laundry basket into Gaoshun’s arms and headed over.

  She discovered Jinshi, looking annoyed. The delicate way to put it would be to say that a great medley of peach and light-red colors spread before her. Which is to say, more plainly, that three ladies-in-waiting were all leaning against each other, sound asleep. Their clothes were in disarray, their disheveled skirts revealing lascivious glimpses of thigh.

  “What happened here?” Hongniang demanded of Maomao.

  “I’m afraid I’m not best placed to answer that question,” she replied. She went over to the three young women and crouched down, flipping down their skirts and examining them. “It’s all right, this attempt failed to—”

  Hongniang, blushing furiously, smacked Maomao on the back of the head.

  Sitting on the table was the brown-colored bread. Three pieces were missing.

  The girls had mistaken it for an afternoon snack.

  The fatigue caught up with her after they had put each of the girls to bed in her own room. In the sitting room, Gyokuyou and Jinshi were looking at the chocolate bread with some wonder.

  “Is this your aphrodisiac?” Gyokuyou inquired.

  “No, ma’am, this is.” Maomao gave her the chocolate-covered fruit. Approximately thirty pieces, each the size of a thumbnail.

  “What is this, then?” Jinshi asked.

  “It was supposed to be my bedtime snack.” Everyone seemed to recoil a little at that. Had she said something wrong? Gaoshun and Hongniang both looked like they could hardly believe their eyes. “I’m very accustomed to spirits and stimulants, so I don’t feel them much.”

  Maomao had once, in the name of science, pickled a venomous snake in alcohol and drunk it, so she could safely be called an experienced drinker. She considered alcohol to be a kind of medicine. The more susceptible one was to new forms of stimulation, the better medicine worked on one. Take this bread, for instance: here in the Jade Pavilion, it passed for an aphrodisiac, but she had to think that in the land where the ingredients had come from, it would be substantially less effective.

  Jinshi picked up one of the pieces of bread and looked at it doubtfully. “I wonder if I might safely try a piece, then,” he said.

  “No, sir, don’t!” Hongniang and Gaoshun cried almost in unison. Maomao thought this was the first time she had heard Gaoshun speak.

  Jinshi put the bread back, remarking that he had only been joking. It would, of course, have been improper for him to consume a known aphrodisiac in the presence of the Emperor’s own favorite consort, but perhaps even more to the point, hardly anyone could have resisted him had he come to her with that nymph-like smile and a flush in his cheeks. His face, if nothing else, Maomao reflected, did him credit.

  “Perhaps I should have some made for His Majesty,” Gyokuyou said with amusement. “It might keep him from his usual ways.”

  “It would most likely work about three times better than a typical stamina medication,” Maomao informed her.

  At this, Gyokuyou’s face took on a cast that was hard to read. “Three times...” She mumbled something about whether she could endure so long, but those present affected not to have heard her. It seemed it wasn’t easy being a concubine.

  Maomao put the aphrodisiacs in a covered jar and handed it to Jinshi. “They’re quite potent, so I recommend taking just one at a time. Taking too many could overstimulate the blood flow and produce a nosebleed. Also, consumption should be limited to when the patient is alone with their partner.”

  With these instructions duly conveyed, Jinshi stood up. Gaoshun and Hongniang left the room to prepare for his departure. Consort Gyokuyou likewise nodded to him, then left with the sleeping princess in a carrier.

  As Maomao went to clean up the plate of bread, she smelled a sweet aroma from behind her.

  “Thank you. I put you to quite a bit of trouble.” The voice was sweet, too, like honey. Maomao felt her hair being lifted up, and something cold was pressed against her neck. She turned in time to see Jinshi waving at her as he left the room.

  “I get it.” When she looked at the plate, she discovered one of the pieces of bread was missing. She had an idea where it was. “I just hope no one gets hurt,” Maomao muttered, but she didn’t seem to think it had much to do with her.

  The night was still young.

  Chapter 10: The Unsettling Matter of the Spirit (Part One)

  Yinghua, lady-in-waiting to the Emperor’s favorite consort, Gyokuyou, was faithfully at her work, as she was every day. All right, so she had fallen asleep on the job the other day, but her gracious mistress had forborne to punish her. The only way to repay her, then, was to work herself to the bone. She would make sure she polished every windowsill, every railing, until it gleamed. This was not normally something a lady-in-waiting would be expected to do, but Yinghua was not above doing a serving girl’s work. Consort Gyokuyou had said how much she liked hard workers.

  Consort Gyokuyou and Yinghua both came from a town in the west. The climate there was dry, and the area had no special resources to speak of and was periodically subject to drought. Yinghua and the other ladies-in-waiting were all officials’ daughters, but she didn’t recall her life in her hometown as especially luxurious. It had been the sort of impoverished place where even a child of the bureaucracy had to work if she didn’t want to starve.

  And then Gyokuyou was taken into the palace, and the world began to take note of her home. When the consort received the special attentions of the Emperor, the central bureaucracy co
uld no longer hide where she had come from. But Gyokuyou was an intelligent woman. She wasn’t content simply to be a pampered ornament. And Yinghua was bent on following her lady wherever she might go, including into the rear palace. Not all of Gyokuyou’s ladies showed the same dedication, but those who remained simply resolved to work even harder to make up the difference.

  When Yinghua went into the kitchen to organize the utensils, she discovered the new girl there, making something. Maomao was her name, Yinghua recalled, but she had proven so taciturn that nobody was sure what kind of person she really was. Consort Gyokuyou was an uncommonly strong judge of character, however, so it was unlikely Maomao was a bad egg.

  Indeed, Yinghua felt sorry for her. The scars on her arm obviously bespoke a history of abuse, after which she had been sold into service, and now brought on to taste food for poison. It was enough to bring a tear to a lady-in-waiting’s eye. They kept increasing her portions at dinner, hoping to plumpen the spindly girl, and they refused to let her do the cleaning so that she wouldn’t have to reveal her injuries to the wider world. Yinghua and her two fellow ladies-in-waiting were of one mind in all this, and as a result Maomao frequently found herself with little to do.

  Yinghua was happy enough with that. She and the other girls were more than capable of handling the work by themselves. Hongniang, the chief lady-in-waiting, didn’t precisely agree, and at least gave Maomao the washing to take care of. It was just carrying the laundry around in a basket, so her scars wouldn’t be obvious. She also engaged Maomao for miscellaneous chores when necessary.

  Carting around laundry baskets also wasn’t the work of a lady-in-waiting, but was properly done by the serving girls from the large communal rooms. But ever since a poison needle had been discovered in Consort Gyokuyou’s clothing once, Yinghua and the others had taken to handling the wash themselves. It was incidents like this that inspired them to debase themselves as if they were simple serving women. Here in the rear palace, they were surrounded by enemies.

  “What are you making?”

  Maomao was boiling something that looked like grass in a stewpot. “It’s a cold remedy.” She always answered with the absolute minimum of words. It was understandable—poignant, in fact—to realize how hard she must find it to get close to people as a result of her abuse.

  Maomao was profoundly knowledgeable about medicine, and occasionally made some like this. She always cleaned up after herself neatly, and the anti-chapping ointment she’d given Yinghua recently was precious stuff, so Yinghua didn’t object. Sometimes Maomao even produced the concoctions at Hongniang’s request.

  Yinghua took down some silver dishes and began diligently polishing them with a dry cloth. Maomao rarely said much, but she knew how to be a polite listener in a conversation, so it never hurt to talk to her. And that’s what Yinghua did, telling her about some rumors she’d heard recently. Stories of a pale woman who danced through the air.

  ⭘⬤⭘

  Maomao headed for the medical office with her completed cold remedy and a basket of laundry. It was the doctor’s right to give his imprimatur to any medicine, even if it was only for form’s sake.

  Did this spirit suddenly pop up in the last month? Maomao shook her head at the garden-variety ghost story. She hadn’t heard anything of the sort prior to arriving at the Jade Pavilion, and because she trusted Xiaolan to tell her anything worth hearing, she had to think the rumor was a recent one.

  The rear palace was surrounded by what amounted to castle walls. The gates in each wall were the only ways in or out; a deep moat on the far side of the barrier prevented both intrusion and escape. Some said there were former concubines, would-be escapees from the rear palace, sunk at the bottom of that moat even now.

  So the ghost is supposed to show up near the gate, huh?

  There were no buildings in the immediate area, just a spreading pine forest.

  Started around the end of summer.

  It was the time for harvesting a certain something.

  No sooner had she had this naughty little thought than Maomao heard a voice, one she was not pleased by but which always seemed to be after her specifically.

  “Hard at work again, I see.”

  Maomao met the man’s smile, lovely as a peony blossom, with studious indifference. “Hardly working, sir, I assure you.”

  The medical office was beside the central gate to the south, near the headquarters of the three major offices that oversaw the running of the rear palace. Jinshi could be seen there often. As a eunuch, his proper place was in the Domestic Service Department, but this man seemed to have no specific place of employment; indeed, he almost seemed to oversee the entire palace.

  It’s almost like he’s over the head of the Matron of the Serving Women.

  It was always possible he was the current emperor’s guardian, but considering Jinshi looked to be about twenty years old, it was hard to imagine. Maybe he was the son of the Emperor or something, but then why become a eunuch? He seemed close with Consort Gyokuyou; maybe he was her guardian instead, or perhaps...

  The Emperor’s lover...?

  Relations between the Emperor and Gyokuyou always seemed perfectly normal when His Majesty came for his visits, but things weren’t always what they seemed. Maomao got tired of trying to play out the possibilities, though, and so settled on this last one. That was easiest.

  “Your face says you’re having the world’s most impertinent thought,” Jinshi said, squinting at her.

  “Are you sure you’re not imagining it?” She bowed to him and ducked into the medical office, where the loach-mustached quack of a doctor was industriously pulverizing something in a mortar. Maomao grasped that in his case, this wasn’t a step in making some medical concoction, but simply a way of passing the time. Otherwise, why would he need her to give him any medicine she made? The doctor didn’t seem to know but the most rudimentary medicinal recipes or techniques.

  The medical staff was perpetually shorthanded, as one might surmise of the rear palace. Women were not allowed to become doctors, and while many men might wish to be, few wished also to become eunuchs. The old quack here had at first treated Maomao like a distracting little girl, but his attitude softened when he saw the medicines she made. Now he would put out tea and snacks and gladly share with her any ingredients she needed, but while she was grateful for this, she did question what it said about him as a physician. Confidentiality seemed of little concern to him.

  I wonder if this is remotely all right. Maomao would entertain the thought, but she wouldn’t say anything. The current arrangement was far too convenient for her.

  “Would you be so kind as to check this medicine I’ve made?”

  “Ah, hullo, young lady. Of course, hold on just a moment.” He brought out snacks and some kind of tea. No more sweet buns; there were rice crackers today. That was fine by Maomao, who preferred a hotter flavor. It seemed the doctor had been so gracious as to remember her preferences. She’d had the continual feeling that he was trying to ingratiate himself with her, but it didn’t bother her. He might have been a quack, but he was a decent person.

  “Surely there’s enough for me, too?” a honeyed voice said from behind her. She didn’t have to turn around; she could practically feel his effulgence in the air. You must know by now who it was: Jinshi, in the flesh.

  The doctor, with a mixture of surprise and excitement, promptly changed the crackers and zacha—old tea with flavorings—for more-desirable white tea and mooncakes.

  My rice crackers...

  The beaming smile seated itself beside Maomao. By dint of social difference, they should never have found themselves sitting side-by-side, and yet here they were. It might have looked like a gesture of utmost magnanimity, but Maomao felt something very different in it, something pointed and forceful.

  “I’m sorry for the trouble, Doctor, but could you go in the back and fetch these for me?” Jinshi handed the quack a slip of paper. Even without getting a clear look at it, Maomao co
uld see an abundant list of medicines. It would keep the doctor occupied for a while. The quack squinted at the list, then retreated ruefully into the back room.

  So that was the plan all along.

  “What exactly do you want?” Maomao asked bluntly, sipping her tea.

  “Have you heard about the commotion concerning the ghost?”

  “No more than rumors.”

  “Then have you heard of somnambulism?”

  The sparkle that lit in Maomao’s eyes at that word wasn’t lost on Jinshi. A naughty bit of satisfaction entered his lovely smile. He brushed Maomao’s cheek with his broad palm. “And would you know how to cure it?” His voice was as sweet as a fruit liqueur.

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.” Maomao refused to be self-deprecating, but she didn’t want to overstate her abilities, either. She’d encountered virtually every kind of illness, though, and seen many of them in patients. Thus, she could say with confidence what she said next: “It can’t be helped with medicine.”

  It was a disease of the spirit. When a prostitute had been afflicted with this illness, Maomao’s father had done nothing to treat it, because there was no treatment to give.

  “But with something other than medicine...?” Jinshi wanted to know any potential cure at all.

  “My specialty is pharmaceuticals.” She thought that was about as emphatic as she could be, but then she realized she could still see the lovely face, now wreathed in distress, floating in her peripheral vision.

  Don’t look him in the eye...

  Maomao avoided his gaze, as if he were a wild animal. Or at least, she tried to, but it just wasn’t possible. He slid around so he was facing her. Talk about persistent. Talk about annoying. Maomao had no choice but to admit defeat.

  “Fine. I’ll help you,” she said, but she was careful to look very unhappy about it.

  Gaoshun arrived to fetch her around midnight. They were going out to witness the illness in question. Gaoshun’s taciturn nature and often expressionless face could have made him seem unapproachable, but Maomao actually rather liked it. Sweet treats went best with pickled foods. Gaoshun made the perfect complement to Jinshi’s saccharine attitude.