The party took place at a banquet area set up in the central gardens. Red carpets were rolled out through large open-air pavilions, and two long tables were placed end to end with the seats of honor at either end. The Emperor himself occupied the
central seat of honor, with the Empress Dowager and the Imperial younger brother seated to either side of him. On the east side of the table were seated the Precious Consort and the Virtuous
Consort, while on the west side were the Wise Consort and the Pure Consort. To Maomao, the seating arrangement looked
deliberately designed to provoke dispute. It could only possibly fan the flames of hostility among His Majesty’s “four ladies.”
With the young prince deceased, the Emperor’s younger brother was now first in line for the succession. Although the Imperial younger brother was, like the ruler himself, the son of
the Empress Dowager, it seemed he rarely saw the light of day. A seat of honor had been provided for the prince, but in fact it was empty. He was frequently ill, rarely leaving his room and
performing no official duties.
Everyone had a different explanation for this: that the Emperor was quite fond of his substantially younger sibling and wanted to keep him calm for the sake of his health; that he wanted to keep the prince isolated and out of sight; or that the Empress Mother was overprotective and refused to allow the young man outside.
At any rate, none of it had anything to do with Maomao.
The food wouldn’t be served until after noon; at the moment, the guests were enjoying musical performances and dances.
Consort Gyokuyou was attended only by Hongniang; unless they had some particular business, her other ladies held station behind a curtain and awaited any instructions.
The Empress Dowager was currently rocking the princess in her arms. The woman exuded a class and unfading beauty that
could not be ignored even with the four esteemed consorts around her. She appeared so young that, seated beside the Emperor, she could easily have been taken for His Majesty’s queen.
And the Empress Dowager was, in fact, relatively young. When Yinghua had told Maomao exactly how young—and when Maomao had done a little figuring from the current Emperor’s age to
determine how old his mother must have been when she bore
him—it was enough to make her profoundly suspicious toward the previous sovereign. There were those possessed of a special
deviancy by which they favored very young girls—but how should one react when one’s own ruler had possessed such a proclivity? In any event, the Empress Mother had held strong and given birth to the child, and for that at least, Maomao respected her.
As Maomao was having these thoughts, a gust of wind sprang up. She felt herself shiver. They couldn’t even bother to set up a tent for us? she thought. The curtain she stood behind was only just enough to keep the attendants out of sight; it did little to
block the wind. And if Maomao and the other ladies-in-waiting
with their warm stones were feeling cold, how much worse must it be for the ladies of the other consorts? She could see them
shivering furiously, and a few were turning pigeon-toed. She didn’t think there would be any particular problem with going to use the toilet at that moment, but maybe there were certain pretenses that just had to be kept up with the other ladies
watching.
It was a problem, the way these ladies-in-waiting felt
compelled to play out proxy battles on behalf of their mistresses. And the head ladies-in-waiting, who might have been able to whip them into line, were busy attending the consorts. There was no
one to stop the subordinate women.
At the moment, they were almost like two paintings, one of which could be entitled Consort Gyokuyou’s Forces Confront
Those of Consort Lihua, and the other of which could be called
The Forces of the Pure Consort Confront Those of the Virtuous
Consort. And let it be noted that “Gyokuyou’s forces” consisted of just four women, less than half of those they were ranged
against. The numbers were against them, but Yinghua was
striving to make up the difference.
“What’s that? Plain? What are you, dumb? Ladies-in-waiting
exist for one reason—to serve their mistress. What good would it do them, preening and posturing?”
Apparently there was an argument over their outfits. The ladies across from Maomao and Yinghua served Consort Lihua, and as
such their ensembles were based on the color blue. The outfits were frilly and heavily accessorized, making them rather more conspicuous than Gyokuyou’s retinue.
“You’re the one who’s dumb. If a lady doesn’t look good, it reflects badly on her mistress. But what else would you expect from someone who’d hire such a clumsy oaf?” The girls from the Crystal Pavilion all set up a giggle.
Oop, I think I’m being made fun of. Maomao had the thought almost as if it were about someone else. No doubt she was the oaf in question. She was just as aware as anyone that she was hardly above average in any way by the standards of the rear
palace.
The proud lady making these pronouncements was one of those who had defied Maomao before. She had force of
personality, but without anything to ground her; she was
constantly saying, “I’m going to tell my father!” To shut her up, Maomao had found her when she was alone once and pinned her against a wall, sliding a knee between the girl’s thighs and tickling the nape of her neck with one finger. “Fine,” she had said. “Let’s
just leave you too embarrassed to tell him anything.” After that, the girl had kept her distance.
Guess the red-light district gave me a unique sense of humor.
At least one that didn’t work with sheltered children of the nobility. Now the young woman always kept Maomao at arm’s length, flinching away as if afraid of what might happen to her
next. Too inexperienced with the ways of the world to take a joke for what it was.
“I can see she’s not here. I guess you left her behind. Good choice. It would be humiliating for the consort to have such a
hideous creature around. I’m sure she wouldn’t even get a single decorative hair stick.”
The serving woman had evidently completely missed Maomao.
That’s not very nice. After we worked together for two months, too.
It was taking the best efforts of two other women to keep Yinghua from tackling the nasty attendant, and Maomao thought maybe it was time to put this little argument to rest. She went around behind Yinghua, holding up her hand to hide her nose,
and looked at the young women in blue. One of them glanced at her suspiciously, realized who she was looking at, went pale, and started whispering to the other woman. With her hand in front of her nose, they realized it was Maomao even without her freckles.
Word worked its way along the chain of serving women like a whisper game until it reached the haughty lady at the front. The finger she had been pointing imperiously started to shake, and her mouth hung open. Her eyes met Maomao’s.
Finally noticed me, huh? Maomao smiled her biggest smile,
looking to Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting like a wolf who had cornered her prey.
“Ah—Ah, ahh, ahem!” Apparently the woman was so flabbergasted she could hardly think of anything to say.
“Yes? What?” Yinghua said, not knowing Maomao was standing behind her grinning. The suddenly meek-looking lady-in-waiting
puzzled her.
“I-I—I think you’ve had enough for today. J-Just be glad I’m letting you off.” With that barely coherent parting shot, the lady
bolted for the far end of the curtained area. There were plenty of open spaces, but she pointedly chose the one farthest away from Maomao and Gyokuyou’s other women. Maomao looked at Yinghua and the others, who were staring open-mouthed. Funny. It still hurts.
Yinghua composed herself and then saw Maomao. “Bah, I always knew she was a witch. I’m sorry you had to hear that.
What a thing to say about someone so sweet.” Yinghua sounded downright apologetic.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Maomao said. “Anyway, don’t you want to change your hand warmers?”
It really didn’t bother Maomao, so it was no problem. But Yinghua wouldn’t stop frowning and offering her looks of
sympathy.
“No, it’s all right. They’re still warm. Still, I can’t help
wondering why that girl broke out shivering so suddenly.” The other two ladies-in-waiting seemed to be asking the same
question. The three of them from the Jade Pavilion were all devoted workers, but they shared a certain tendency to
daydream, and it left them oblivious to some things. But Maomao somehow liked that about them, even if it could make them a
little tricky to work with.
“Who knows? Maybe she had to go pick some flowers, if you know what I mean,” Maomao said rather brazenly.
For those keeping track, Maomao’s legend was growing: she was now a girl who had been abused by her father, then sold into the rear palace, made food taster like a disposable pawn, and after all that, she’d been compelled to spend two months
enduring the slings and arrows of the residents of the Crystal Pavilion. She was, so it was held, so deeply mistrustful of men that she even felt the need to blemish her own face.
Inconveniently for Maomao, in other words, Yinghua and the others were just as imaginative as any girls their age. Even Jinshi’s endless smiles were turned, in their minds, into looks of
pity for the poor young thing. Maomao couldn’t understand where they were getting that idea.
But as it would have been a great deal of trouble to try to set them straight, she let the story stand.
Meanwhile, another proxy battle was still going on. Seven on seven. One group of ladies-in-waiting in white, and the other in black. The first group were the women of Lishu, the Virtuous
Consort, and the second served Ah-Duo, the Pure Consort.
“They don’t exactly get along, either,” Yinghua said. She was warming her hands over the brazier. She was also quietly roasting and eating some chestnuts Maomao had snuck in, but the women of the Crystal Pavilion were keeping their distance, and there was no one with enough of the moral high ground to chastise the two of them for it. “Lady Lishu is fourteen years old, and Lady Ah-Duo is thirty-five. Both consorts, but far enough apart in age to be mother and daughter. No wonder they don’t see eye to eye.”
“Yes, no wonder,” said a reserved lady-in-waiting, Guiyuan.
“With the Virtuous Consort so young and the Pure Consort so old, it must be a rather tricky relationship to navigate.”
“And the Virtuous Consort is pretty much the mother-in-law of the Pure Consort,” added the lanky lady-in-waiting Ailan with a
nod. Both she and Guiyuan seemed less excitable than Yinghua, but all three of them were perfectly happy to gossip, as girls their age will.
“Mother-in-law?” Maomao asked, surprised. It didn’t seem like an expression that was heard much around the rear palace.
“Oh, yes. The situation is a bit complicated…”
Lishu and Ah-Duo, Maomao was informed, had been the consorts of the former Emperor and the young prince,
respectively. When the former Emperor had passed away, the Virtuous Consort had left the palace for the period of mourning. This was chiefly for show, however, and by abandoning the world
—that is, becoming a nun—for a brief time, it was considered to be as if she had never served the previous Emperor, and she then married the late ruler’s son. It wasn’t precisely aboveboard, but it was the sort of thing the powerful could get away with.
The last Emperor died five years ago, Maomao reflected. At
that time, the Virtuous Consort would have been nine years old.
Even if the marriage was purely political, it was an unsettling
thought. When she thought about how the Empress Dowager had entered the rear palace even younger, it was beyond unsettling;
she felt the bile rise in her throat. It made the current Emperor seem downright benign. All right, so he had a weakness for
especially plump fruit, but he didn’t share his father’s deviancies.
He may be insatiable, but at least he doesn’t go for… that. She pictured the thoroughly-bearded ruler. One heard the most
shocking things in passing conversation.
“That can’t be true, can it? A bride at nine?” Ailan said disbelievingly. Thank goodness.
