by Natsu Hyuuga
When they got home, Maomao settled in a creaking chair and kicked out her legs. She never had gotten that hot water. She was lucky it wasn’t the sweating season, but thanks to all that rushing around she was perspiring anyway, and it felt icky.
Almost as uncomfortable was this business about the double suicide. Something about it nagged at her. The man in question had been such a lowlife that even the apprentice girl hated him, and from what the others had said it sounded like the person he most looked out for was himself. Would a man like that get sucked into some overheated display of love like a double suicide?
Did the courtesan poison him, then?
Maybe he hadn’t chosen to commit suicide. But Maomao quickly gave up the idea. There’d already been at least one attempt to poison the man; he wouldn’t be too quick to eat anything a courtesan offered him. Maomao crossed her arms and grunted to herself. Her father watched her as he crushed some herbs in a mortar. After a beat he said, “Don’t say anything based on an assumption.”
For him to say that suggested he already had an inkling as to the truth of the incident. Maomao looked at him ruefully, then slumped against the table. She tried to bring to mind everything that had been at the scene of the incident. Had she missed something?
There was a man and woman, collapsed. The scattered tobacco leaves, the glass vessel with its...
Now Maomao registered that unless she was remembering wrongly, there had been only one glass vessel at the scene. And the wheat stalks. Two different colors of alcohol.
Without a word, Maomao got up and stood in front of the water jug. She ladled up some of the contents, then put them back. Her father watched her do this several times, before he sighed and put the powdered ingredients into a container. Then he rose and shuffled over to stand in front of her. “It’s over now,” he said. “It’s done.” He mussed her hair fondly.
“I’m aware of that,” Maomao said, putting the ladle back in the jug one more time and then leaving the house.
Not suicide. Murder, Maomao thought. And it was the courtesan, she believed, who had tried to kill the man. The playboy son, the smooth talker, the lover-and-leaver of so many women. The very courtesan whom the man had been courting, the most recent subject of his amorous advances, might be the one who had attempted to kill him.
Maomao felt she could safely suppose that the philanderer had, as usual, plied this woman with promises to buy her out of her contract. Unlike Maomao, many people seemed to believe that love could change a person. And when enough people repeated an idea enough times, somewhere along the line it became the truth.
Very well. How, then, had the courtesan managed to poison the vigilant man? It was simple: just show him that there was no poison present. The courtesan would have taken a drink of the wine first, just the sort of thing Maomao did in her job. When the man saw that the woman was perfectly fine, he would drink the same stuff. That was why there had been only one container.
That, however, raised the possibility that the woman would succumb to the poison first, and the man wouldn’t drink the tainted wine. Some poisons, like the one Maomao had discovered at the banquet, were slow-acting, and there was probably one of those present, too: in this case the agent was most likely the tobacco. It had a stimulant effect when chewed, and was spat out quickly.
If the courtesan was a talented actress and could consume the poison without being discovered, well and good, but Maomao suspected she’d had help. She’d drunk the wine through a straw made from a wheat stalk. It was a perfectly normal thing to do, and wouldn’t have aroused the man’s suspicion.
How had this enabled her to avoid the poison? Maomao thought it had something to do with the wine. There had been two different types. Two colors of wine in a single, transparent glass vessel. Though they might not be as immiscible as oil and water, two types of wine would have slightly different densities. If you poured a lighter wine on top of a heavier one carefully enough, two layers would form. And how pretty that would be, a dual-colored wine in a glass container. A lovely little trick to delight a favored guest. And meanwhile, the courtesan would use her straw to drink only from the lower layer, while the man, without a straw, drank from the top.
Once the woman was sure the man had collapsed, she would drink a bit of the poisoned wine herself. Not enough to die, just enough to present a convincing illusion. The tobacco leaves scattered around would help hide the smell, and make people think that was what they had used to do the deed. If the courtesan died herself, it would all have been for naught. She had worked very hard to make sure the man succumbed and she survived. Which presumably also explained why she had chosen to do this first thing in the morning.
There was even someone to conveniently discover the situation for her.
Maomao arrived at the brothel from that morning. She went around back, to the room where the poisoned courtesan had been put to get some rest. She found the exhausted-looking woman leaning against a railing and gazing up at the sky. Apparently she was up and about. She was humming a children’s song, and an ephemeral smile floated across her face. Ephemeral and yet, Maomao thought, somehow dauntless.
“Sis, what are you doing?” a servant girl—not the child from that morning—called when she saw the courtesan leaning on the railing. She dragged the woman back into her room and closed the window.
The behavior of the first servant girl, the one who had tried to stab the man, struck Maomao as odd for someone whose beloved “sister” was at risk of dying of poison. She’d deliberately gone to the apothecary and not the doctor, in hopes of being too late to save the man. And she’d taken her time summoning Maomao’s father, too. Wasn’t she worried about the courtesan at all? Or did she not believe a second person so close to her could die as well? Was Maomao overthinking things—or did it almost seem the girl had known all along that the courtesan would make it through?
Then there was the other courtesan, who had so emotionally described the woman’s plight to Maomao. And the uncommonly generous madam. The more she thought about it, the stranger everything seemed.
No assumptions, huh?
Maomao looked slowly from the newly closed window up to the sky. She was finally back in the red-light district for which she had pined all those months in the rear palace, but deep down they were the same place. Both were gardens, and cages. Everyone in them was trapped, being poisoned by the atmosphere. The courtesans absorbed the toxins around them, until they became a sweet poison themselves. With the playboy son alive, it was hard to say what would happen to his would-be killer. He might suspect an attempted poisoning. But then again, it might go the other way around: the brothel might accuse him of having ruined an important product of theirs, and squeeze something out of him that way.
I guess it doesn’t matter which, Maomao thought. It had nothing to do with her. If you felt personally involved in everything that happened in this place, you would never survive.
Maomao gave the back of her head a tired scratch and decided to go over to the Verdigris House. She was going to get that hot water. She set off at a slow trot.
Chapter 24: A Misunderstanding
Maomao’s three days at home went by in a flash. It hurt to have to leave after becoming reacquainted with so many familiar faces, but she couldn’t just abandon her work at the rear palace. Not least because of the trouble it would cause for Lihaku, who had vouched for her. The final push came from the madam of the Verdigris House, who was even now trying to pick the perfect sadist to make Maomao’s first customer.
I’ll just pretend I had a very pleasant dream. When she saw the slick Pairin and Lihaku, who resembled a pile of melting honey, Maomao reflected that maybe she had paid too rich a reward. The next place Lihaku would visit for pleasure was set in stone. Having tasted the nectar of heaven, he could never again be satisfied with the tepid offerings of earth. Maomao felt a little bit bad for him. She was sure the madam would take him for all he was worth.
But that wasn’t Maomao’s problem.
And so she returned to the Jade Pavilion, bearing gifts, only to discover a nymph-like young man who seemed quite on edge. She could detect something toxic just the far side of his delicate smile. Why did he seem to be glaring at her?
His personality aside, he certainly was beautiful. The glare he fixed on her was a little intimidating. Maomao ducked her head, hoping to avoid the trouble of dealing with him, and tried to make a beeline for her room, but he got a solid grip on her shoulder. She felt his nails dig into her flesh.
“I’ll be waiting in the sitting area,” he said, his voice like honey in her ear. Wolfsbane honey, that was. Poisonous. Behind him, Gaoshun was urging Maomao with his eyes not to fight it. She saw Gyokuyou, too, whose eyes were sparkling even though she seemed a bit troubled. Finally, there was Hongniang, looking at Maomao with what she took to be reproach, and the other three ladies-in-waiting, looking on more with curiosity than concern. She expected to be well and truly interrogated after this was over.
Whatever this is.
Maomao set down her baggage, changed into her uniform, and went to the sitting area.
“You asked for me, sir?”
Jinshi was alone in the room. He was dressed in a simple official’s uniform, but he wore it well. He was seated in a chair with his legs crossed, resting his elbows on the table in front of him. And to Maomao’s eyes, he appeared to be in a worse mood than usual. Maybe it was just her imagination. She hoped it was just her imagination. Yes, that’s what she would go with: it was her imagination.
Jinshi’s customary sedative, Gaoshun, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Consort Gyokuyou.
And that made the situation unbearable for Maomao.
“I see you had a little visit home,” Jinshi began.
“Yes, sir.”
“And how was it?”
“Everyone seemed in good health and good spirits. That’s what matters.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jinshi said nothing further, so neither did Maomao. It was clear they weren’t going to have much of a conversation at this rate.
Finally Jinshi prodded, “This Lihaku. What kind of a man is he?”
“Sir. He vouched for me to leave the palace.”
How does Jinshi know his name? Maomao wondered.
Lihaku would yet become a regular customer. A major source of revenue. A very important person indeed.
“Do you know what it means? Do you understand?” Jinshi said, the irritation plain in his voice. There was none of his usual sweetness.
“Of course. One must be a high official of impeccable background in order to vouch for another.”
Jinshi looked absolutely taxed by this response, as if enervated by the statement of the obvious.
“Did he give you a hair stick?”
“Me and quite a few others. He was passing them out to every girl in sight—apparently he felt obliged to do so.” For all his intimidating look, Lihaku could actually be quite generous. The design of his accessory was clean and simple, but the workmanship was solid, and it was overall a quite lovely piece. If Maomao ever lacked money, she could probably sell it for a decent price.
“You’re telling me I lost out to that? That I was bested by a bauble some hack felt obliged to give you?”
Wow, I’ve never heard him talk like that, Maomao thought, puzzled by Jinshi’s unfamiliar tone. Clearly, something was wrong.
“I gave you a hair stick, too, as I recall,” Jinshi went on, “but I didn’t see hide or damned hair of you when you needed someone to vouch for you!” He looked positively sullen. His alluring smile had been replaced by the pout of a petulant boy, and suddenly he looked hardly older than Maomao. Perhaps younger, even. Maomao marveled that a single change of facial expression could alter how a person looked so drastically.
This much she understood: Jinshi was displeased that she had leaned on Lihaku for help rather than coming to him. Maomao couldn’t say it made sense to her. Why should he want one more thing on his to-do list? Wouldn’t his life be easier without? Or was it precisely having so much time on his hands that made Jinshi so eager to get involved even in things that might mean inconvenience for him?
“My sincere apologies,” Maomao said. “I couldn’t think of compensation that would be worthy of you, Master Jinshi.”
Would’ve been rude to give a eunuch an invitation to a brothel, right?
Maybe if it had been one of those innocuous places where the ladies only served tea and played music for the entertainment of the guests. But Maomao knew full well that wasn’t all that happened at the Verdigris House. She balked at the idea of inviting a man who was no longer a man to come there.
What was more, she had to consider who Jinshi was. Maomao could all too easily imagine the average courtesan falling completely under his spell. She was sure she would have caught hell from the madam for introducing him to her ladies.
“Compensation? What’s that supposed to mean? Did you pay this Lihaku?” He looked deeply disturbed; a touch of insecurity was now added to his overall ill humor.
“Yes. I offered him the pleasure of a night’s dream.”
And I don’t think he’ll be back to reality for a while, she added privately. A man like Lihaku might be a lion with his troops, but he was probably a kitten in the hands of Pairin. And folk belief held that a cat well cared for might bring its master luck... or money.
Maomao looked at Jinshi and realized the blood had drained from his face. His hand, clutching a teacup, was shaking.
Maybe he’s feeling cold. Maomao turned to heap a few more pieces of charcoal on the brazier and fanned the flames gently. “He seemed entirely pleased,” she reported. “It makes me feel all the hard work I did for him was worth it.”
And now I’ll have to work hard to find more new customers. Maomao clenched her fist to demonstrate her private determination. From behind her, she heard the sound of a teacup shattering.
“Whatever are you doing?” she asked. Bits of ceramic were scattered on the floor. Jinshi was standing there, his face absolutely pale. Tea stained his neat uniform. “Oh, I’ll grab something to wipe up with,” Maomao said, but when she opened the door, she discovered Consort Gyokuyou, clutching her stomach with laughter. Gaoshun was there, too, seeming exhausted. Finally there was Hongniang, who looked at Maomao with an expression of pure exasperation: she didn’t need to say anything more. Maomao looked at them, baffled. Without a word, Hongniang walked over to her and smacked her on the back of the head. The chief lady-in-waiting was quick on the draw. Maomao rubbed her head, still not understanding quite what was going on, but she headed for the kitchen to get a rag just the same.
⭘⬤⭘
“And how long can we expect you to sulk?” Gaoshun asked, thinking what a great deal of trouble this was going to be. Even after they got back to his office, Jinshi refused to do anything but lie slumped across his desk. Gaoshun heaved a sigh. “Must I remind you that you are supposed to be at work?” The desk, so recently and with such effort cleared off, was already piled with new papers to attend to.
“I know that.”
I hate work. This person, Jinshi, would never have actually given voice to such a childish response. He wouldn’t become too attached to his toys.
After Jinshi’s conversation with Maomao, Gaoshun had painstakingly extracted a clarification from Consort Gyokuyou. The “payment” for Maomao’s guarantor had consisted of a meeting with a “star” courtesan, she said. It had never occurred to Gaoshun that a girl like Maomao might have such connections.
So what, exactly, had his master been imagining? Ah, the terrors of youth, the withered thirty-something mused.
Jinshi had calmed down considerably since then, but his bad mood remained. He had powered through his work and rushed off to find Maomao, only to discover she’d gone back to her home with a man he didn’t know. It must have hit him like a bolt from the blue.
That was too bad, Gaoshun thought, but he couldn’t spend
all his time soothing the tantrums of an overgrown child.
At length, Jinshi started putting his chop to the accumulated papers. If, at a glance, he judged a paper was one he couldn’t approve, he set it to one side on his desk. No sooner had he gone through the pile than an under-official arrived with a new armload.
Jinshi could stand to ponder some of the papers just a little longer, Gaoshun thought, watching his master work. Many of them were proposals from officials whose ideas would benefit no one but themselves. Gaoshun lamented that the young master’s workload should increase for such a sordid reason.
Before he knew it, the sun was going down, and Gaoshun lit the lamp.
“Pardon me, sirs.”
Gaoshun saw a subordinate coming and moved to intercept him. “We’re done working for the day,” he said. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to come by tomorrow.”
“Oh, it’s not a business matter, sir,” the man said with a hurried wave of his hand. “In fact...”
And then, furrowing his brow, the messenger related a most urgent situation.
Chapter 25: Wine
“What terrible news,” Consort Gyokuyou said, her face darkening. Standing before her, Jinshi’s heavenly countenance was likewise troubled.
I guess some bigwig is dead. Maomao was there, too, but she was simply present, feeling none of the emotion of the moment. It might have seemed cold, but she wasn’t sentimental enough to muster any sympathy for someone whose name she had never heard and whose face she had never seen. The deceased had been more than fifty years of age, anyway, and the cause of death was drinking too much. You reap what you sow; that was all there was to it.
Or it should have been.
Even after completing her food tasting duties, Maomao couldn’t leave the room. Jinshi had apparently sent Hongniang on some kind of errand, and as a consequence Maomao had to stay instead. Even a eunuch couldn’t be alone with a royal consort; a lady-in-waiting had to be present. The salient point was that Jinshi had charged Hongniang, and not her minion Maomao, with the task.
