“I was under the distinct impression that I would be going back to the
rear palace.” Maomao found herself wearing an outfit made of cotton.
When she recalled the crude hemp dress she’d been allotted as a maid in the rear palace, it seemed awfully sumptuous.
“You were let go, I’m afraid. You can’t go traipsing right back. No, this is where you’ll be working from now on.” Showing her around the palace was Jinshi’s aide, Gaoshun, who was instructing her in the names of the various buildings and the offices that resided within them. Given the size of the palace proper, it was bound to be a dizzying tour.
The rear palace was part of the inner court, where the Imperial family resided. Her workplace now, though, was to be the outer court. In short, the same place as all the many functionaries who staffed all the many administrative organs.
“Over to the east from here you’ll find a great many soldiers and military types, so I would suggest steering clear.”
Maomao nodded even as she eyed the nearby plant life. I knew it. Lots more ingredients growing in the rear palace. She suspected it was her father, Luomen, who had planted the wide variety of useful herbs during his tenure there. It would explain the profusion of medicinal plants in an otherwise limited space.
As they walked along, Gaoshun explaining this, that, and the other thing, Maomao felt a peculiar prickling along her neck. She shot a glance behind her to discover some of the women who served in the outer court looking at her. Or more properly, glaring at her.
Just as there are things among men that only other men understand, there are certain things for which only women have a shared sense. Men have a tendency to resolve their differences physically, whereas women often
resort to emotional means. These women seemed to be taking stock of the newcomer.
Don’t like this one bit, Maomao thought. She stuck out her tongue at the
other women, then scuttled after Gaoshun toward the next building.
It turned out Maomao’s duties in the outer court would be much the same as those she had performed in the rear palace: clean the rooms she was told to clean and do odd jobs and little chores when and as she was instructed to do so. Jinshi, she gathered, had had bigger plans for her, but never got the chance to implement them: Maomao failed the test.
“How could you have failed?!”
Why should I have passed?
Jinshi and Gaoshun had both been stunned. Apparently they had simply assumed that Maomao would succeed. Being brought up in the red-light district, Maomao could read and write, and had received at least a baseline education in singing and playing the erhu. The test in question was not as difficult as the civil service examinations, so they seemed to have figured that with a little studying, she would pass easily.
Gee, excuse me for not living up to your expectations, Maomao thought as she wiped angrily at a window frame. She was in the hallway of Jinshi’s office. The architecture was plainer than that on display in the rear palace, though the building was perhaps a little taller. The vermillion-lacquered walls were a brilliant red, evidently refreshed each year.
The truth was, Maomao didn’t like studying, and was probably less adept than average at remembering things she wasn’t interested in. Drugs, herbs, and medicines were one thing, but why would anyone bother to learn history? What good would it do them? And as for the law, it changed constantly. What was the point of memorizing it? Maomao, sadly, was incapable of investing much effort in that direction. It was only natural she should fail the test.
She had, at least, opened the materials she’d been given to study with every intention of reading them through, but the next thing she knew it was morning. This happened several times in a row. So Maomao consoled
herself that the outcome had been inevitable. She nodded in agreement with her own conclusion.
Didn’t expect this place to be so dirty.
On the one hand, such a big space had many spots that were hard to reach and easy to miss—but on the other, Maomao didn’t not suspect that there might have been a little slacking involved. The women who served
here earned their place through the test, very much unlike the maids recruited, sold, or stolen to serve the rear palace. The women here had families and educations, and the pride to go with them. They probably saw maids’ work as beneath them. Even if they noticed some dust, it was unlikely they would lift a finger to do anything about it.
To be fair, it’s not their job, she thought. The ladies of the outer court were something like secretaries. Cleaning was certainly not part of their portfolio, and there was no need for them to do it. But that didn’t mean they shouldn’t. The government had ceased to own slaves during the time of the former Emperor, and bureaucrats began hiring menservants and maidservants to do odd chores instead.
Maomao was now such a maidservant, serving directly under Jinshi.
In Maomao’s experience, women who served in the rear palace were widely referred to as palace women, while those who worked in the outer court were frequently called court ladies. She might or might not have been exactly right about that, but it was a distinction Jinshi and others like him seemed to observe when they spoke.
All right, what’s next? She turned toward Jinshi’s office. The room was large but not luxurious; in fact, it was quite spare. Its chief occupant was a busy man; once he left his office, he rarely returned to it quickly. That made it easier for Maomao to do the cleaning, but there was one problem. “Excuse me, but what precisely do you think you’re doing?”
She registered that a number of unfamiliar ladies had surrounded her.
They were all bigger than Maomao; one among them stood a full head taller than her.
The better they eat, the bigger they get, Maomao thought, her glance unconsciously taking in both the girls’ height and their bustlines. The one who had spoken to her was noticeably tall, implying an excellent upbringing.
“Are you listening to me?” the woman demanded while Maomao entertained these somewhat untoward thoughts.
In a word, the ladies were upset that Maomao was serving Jinshi personally; they wanted to know why she should have received such a privilege. Unfortunately, she wasn’t privy to the inner workings of Jinshi’s mind; she only knew that he had hired her. If Maomao had been a well- connected foreign gentlewoman like Gyokuyou, or if she had been as
luscious as Lihua or as s*xy as Pairin, no one would have objected, nor would they have had grounds to. But Maomao looked like nothing more than a scrawny, befreckled chicken. The girls couldn’t stand it. It drove them mad to see Maomao by the side of the gorgeous eunuch; they would have given anything to trade places with her.
Hrm, Maomao thought, what to do now? She was hardly the world’s fastest talker; often, in fact, she would think hard but ultimately leave her mouth shut. But silence seemed likely to irritate these ladies as much as anything Maomao might actually say.
She decided to cut to the chase. “Do I understand correctly that what you’re saying is that you’re jealous of me?” It was more than enough to anger the ladies. It was only after she had been slapped across the cheek that Maomao started to reflect that maybe she’d chosen the wrong words.
There were five women around her, and Maomao hoped to avoid them killing her on the spot. But they herded her inexorably toward a dark corner of the hallway. She didn’t have much to lose at this point, so Maomao decided to see if she could talk her way out of this. “You can’t possibly think I’m getting special treatment somehow?”
The ladies’ faces distorted further. Maomao kept talking before she suffered another blow. “That’s absurd, and we all know it. What could a distasteful wench like myself have to do with one who could well be one of the heavenly nymphs incarnate?” She cast her eyes on the ground as she spoke, but the slight twitching of the ladies’ cheeks didn’t escape her notice. This might just work, she thought. “Is this noble man you so desire a person of such poor taste? When fine abalone and boar’s meat are laid before them, who would deliberately wish to gnaw on a discarded chicken bone instead? One would have to possess very specific proclivities.”
Those last words elicited another twitch from the women.
“I myself would not know, but do you believe that one of such beauty, with his ethereal smile, would possess such proclivities? I see, so his proclivities are—”
“N-Nothing of the sort! That’s ridiculous!” “Yes, ridiculous!”
A general hubbub ensued among the women. Maomao thought she’d escaped by the skin of her teeth, but one of the ladies was watching her skeptically. “Yet none of that changes the fact that you were hired, isn’t that
true?” the comparatively calm woman said. She was the tallest of them, her face cool and composed. Now that Maomao thought about it, she realized this woman had remained detached throughout the preceding argument.
Like the other women, she’d taken a half step back, but she continued to watch Maomao closely. She seemed like the type who might follow a mob just to see where it went, though not be a part of it herself.
Well, if that’s not enough to put them off… Maomao thought, and then she said: “This is the reason.” She held up her left arm and rolled down her
sleeve. Then she began to unwrap the bandage that ran from her wrist to her elbow.
“Eek!” one of the women cried, and they all looked at her, speechless.
Cruel scars covered Maomao’s skin.
Those experiments with burns I did recently left some good, nasty ones too, Maomao thought. The aristocratic young women must have been disgusted.
“The heart of that most beautiful object of your affections is as celestial and pure as his smile. I can attest to it, for he has given even one such as me food and board.” Maomao re-wrapped the bandage as she spoke. She was careful to accent her remarks with a demure glance at the ground and a gentle tremble of her body.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of the women said. Thoroughly relieved of any interest in Maomao, they promptly left. The tall one glanced back at her, but was soon gone as well.
There. Finally over, Maomao thought to herself. She cracked the joints
in her neck and picked up her dusting rag again. Just as she was about to go find the next place that needed dusting, she discovered a gorgeous eunuch standing with his head pressed against the wall.
“Might I inquire as to what you’re doing, Master Jinshi?”
“Nothing at all. And you, are they always after you? Those types? Say, were you holding up your left arm?”
“It’s fine. Frankly, they’re less trouble to deal with than the girls of the rear palace. Incidentally, if I may ask, why are you standing like that?”
Maomao ignored the question about her arm. It seemed Jinshi had been unable to see everything from his vantage point. The position he had adopted wasn’t particularly suited to nobility, Maomao thought. Judging by the way he was holding his head in his hands, Gaoshun, behind Jinshi,
seemed to agree.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll be about my cleaning, sir.” With Jinshi back again, it wouldn’t be possible to clean the office. She would have to find somewhere else that needed dusting. Maomao went off with her rag and a pail, but from behind her she heard Jinshi mutter: “Proclivities…”
I don’t think I said anything wrong, Maomao told herself. Even if Jinshi had witnessed the last moments of that confrontation, she saw no special reason for him to be upset. Instead, she focused on her cleaning.
Not much around here in winter, is there?
Sitting cross-legged in her room, Maomao folded her arms over her chest and grunted to herself. She’d stolen a moment here and there in between jobs during the afternoon to collect some herbs, but pickings were slim, and she still didn’t have nearly enough to properly work with. Left with scant choice, she simply cleaned them, patted away as much of the water as she could, and then hung them on the wall of her room to dry. She had been doing this ever since she came to the outer court, and Maomao’s room had turned into quite a sight to see. Drying herbs hung everywhere.
She had been assigned a relatively nice room for the quarters of a live-in maid, but there was no getting around the fact that it was still a little cramped. Really no bigger than her quarters in the rear palace. The difference was that at the Jade Pavilion she had been able to ask for permission to use the kitchen, and combined with the abundance of available resources, producing her concoctions had been a simple matter— all of which had taken the sting out of the size of her accommodations.
What to do, what to do? Maomao regarded the paulownia chest she’d placed carefully on top of her wicker trunk. Tucked inside the chest, which was sealed with a silk cord, was the herb that grew from an insect. It was called dong chong xia cao—winter worm, summer weed—otherwise sometimes known as caterpillar fungus, and Jinshi had brought it with him along with the money when he came to the pleasure district. The mere sight of it had induced Maomao to sign the contract without a moment’s further reflection, but now she wondered if she had let herself go too cheaply. She could never have overcome her desire for this uncanny herb, though.
She opened the lid and looked at the fungus within, and an unconscious smile spread over her face. It turned to a grin, and her cheeks veritably
started to twitch.
No, no, must stop. The day before, she’d let the twitch turn into such a great yawp that her neighbors two rooms over had come pounding on her door to object. Apparently you weren’t supposed to go shouting in the middle of the night. Allegedly, people were trying to sleep or something.
Maomao pressed her fingers into her cheeks to relax the smile, then lay down on her bed. A serving woman’s work started early, even before the cock crowed. The person she served might have been missing something very important, but he was still gorgeous and still of high station. One ought not to displease him.
Maomao pulled up her thin sheet along with several layers of outer clothing that doubled as bedding and closed her eyes.
“Is your current room not somewhat small?” the gorgeous eunuch inquired over breakfast.
Maomao blinked, then replied, “I dare say it’s more than generous for a serving girl like me.” Even she understood that she could hardly voice her true feelings. (“Yes, it damn well is small. If possible, I’d like to request a room with a generous fireplace, located next to a well.”)
“You mean it?”
This time she simply didn’t say anything.
The eunuch had just woken up and hadn’t entirely made himself up for the day yet as he enjoyed his breakfast. His otherwise tousled hair was held back with a simple tie. It was a bit problematic, how lurid it looked.
Gaoshun was in the room along with Maomao, as was a lady-in-waiting in the first flush of old age. They were the only ones allowed here, and Maomao could understand why. A woman might be driven mad with lust by what Maomao was currently seeing, and even a man might forget the boundaries of gender. This esteemed personage, she concluded, could be downright sinful.
He’s like a bug in heat. Some female insects produced exotic scents to attract mates. A single female could draw dozens or hundreds of males.
Maomao herself had been known to take advantage of this characteristic to collect insects she needed as ingredients.
From that perspective, Jinshi’s constitution might be considered extremely interesting. If I could capture that subtle aroma and turn it into
an incense, I bet it would sell. Such was the mindset with which Maomao regarded her potential love-potion ingredient—ahem, that is to say, Jinshi. It was an unfortunate fact that when Maomao was focused on a particular thought, something not having to do with the situation at hand, her attention tended to wander from the present moment. It frequently prevented her from following conversations going on around her, a tendency that was compounded by her habit of nodding along whether or not she was actually listening.
“If you wish, I shall have a new room prepared for you.”
Huh?
Jinshi, looking inordinately pleased with himself, was requesting more porridge from Suiren. She was one of just a few ladies-in-waiting ever to have served Jinshi. From her looks, Maomao guessed she was well past fifty. Suiren’s face remained impassive as she doled out a new bowl of porridge, topping it with black vinegar.
Maomao hadn’t exactly followed the conversation, but Jinshi seemed to be saying that he was willing to give her a nicer room; that much she understood. Then, though, her eyes met those of Gaoshun, who had his head in his hands again. Jinshi’s ever-weary aide seemed to want to communicate something to Maomao, but she only cocked an eyebrow in response.
If he wants to tell me something, he has to say it, she thought. I’m not a mind reader. She refrained from saying this out loud, though, because she knew that she herself frequently failed to be articulate enough.
“Perhaps a stable near a well, then,” she offered, and there it was: her true desire was out in the open.
“A stable,” Jinshi repeated. “Yes, sir. A stable.”
To her, this represented the place she was least likely to be intruded upon as she cooked up her concoctions, but she couldn’t help noticing that Gaoshun was shaking his head and forming an emphatic X with both hands. So the guy has a playful side, Maomao observed to herself.
“No stables,” Jinshi said flatly.
Yeah, uh, I guess that makes sense, Maomao thought, but she said only, “Of course, sir.”
After breakfast, Jinshi went out to work. He was frequently in his office
during the morning, and cleaning his private residence often fell to Maomao.
“I am so very glad you came, my dear. I start to feel my age when I have to clean this whole place by myself,” Suiren said, smiling openly. Before Maomao’s arrival, she’d been responsible for the entire large building, but at fifty, a person’s body started to get sore. “You’re not the first new girl we’ve had here, I might add. But, well, you know. Things happen, and none of them have ever stayed. I think you’re going to be fine on that point, Xiaomao.” The cheerful lady-in-waiting seemed to have picked up Gaoshun’s nickname for Maomao.
In addition to being quite a talker, Suiren’s wealth of experience had made her a quick worker as well, and her hands never seemed to stop moving. She polished some silver eating vessels quick as a flash. Cleaning the bedroom came next. Maomao went to stop her—this was all obviously maid’s work—but Suiren only said, “Well, but then we’d never have time for our afternoon tasks.”
There you had it. It seemed Suiren had held herself solely responsible for the cleaning of the rooms ever since some blunders with those earlier maids and ladies-in-waiting.
Incidents of theft, maybe? Maomao thought. And probably not just of money, she surmised—she could easily imagine other targets of such activity.
According to Suiren, things didn’t only disappear; sometimes she discovered they suddenly had more possessions than before. “Anyone would be upset to find underwear they didn’t recognize in the dresser,” she said. Made from human hair, at that! And with a name carefully embroidered on it. Maomao got goosebumps. This was not quite the explanation she had been expecting. “That must have been very difficult, ma’am.”
“I tell you, I was traumatized!”
As Maomao industriously polished another window frame, she reflected how life might be better if that eunuch were to wear a mask anytime he went out.
They finished cleaning Jinshi’s private quarters and took a late meal. Next would be his office. This was, in principle, easier than cleaning his
personal chambers because the room itself was less elaborate. But because they couldn’t be seen wiping and polishing by anyone too important, it required a degree of discretion.
What shall I do today? Maomao wondered. When Jinshi had visitors at
his office, Maomao had time to kill. At such moments, she often wandered the grounds of the outer court on the pretext of having some kind of business. I’ve covered the western side pretty thoroughly by now.
A map unfolded in Maomao’s mind. She would have loved to check out the eastern side, but something held her back. That was where the military was based. They might not smile upon a serving girl sniffing around in the bushes near their camp. She could all too readily be mistaken for a spy and arrested. And then there was the fact that Gaoshun had specifically recommended she avoid the place.
Besides, she thought, speaking of the military… Involuntarily, every muscle of her face tensed into a scowl. It was a measure of exactly how strong a reason she had to stay away from the place, but at the same time, an area unexplored was an area that might yet hide new herbs.
Maomao was standing with her arms crossed, deep in thought, when she felt something hit the back of her head.
The hell? She turned, rubbing the back of her head and glaring, to find a tall, refined lady of the outer court. I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere, Maomao thought, and then she remembered the woman from the crowd that had accosted her a few days before. She was wearing only the most
minimal makeup, but Maomao noticed that she had drawn on thick eyebrows. She had full, pouting lips, and yet she had only dabbed them with rouge. Her overall look was tidy, but oddly disappointing.
She could do so much better, Maomao thought. She had perfect bones and a beautiful face, but the makeup left her less remarkable than she was. If she would make the eyebrows thinner, use plenty of light rouge on her lips, and put up her hair in an ostentatious bun, then she could easily have been taken for one of the flowers of the rear palace. Then again, most people probably wouldn’t have noticed the potential for such beauty in this woman. Maomao, who had spent her life watching dirty street girls turn into captivating butterflies of the night, could see the possibilities.
“The likes of you aren’t supposed to go any farther,” the woman said, very blunt but sounding somehow tired. Maomao only wished she had
started by talking instead of hitting.
Then the woman walked past, as if to communicate that as a certified
lady of the outer court, she had nothing more to say to a maid like Maomao. In her hands she carried a small, cloth-wrapped package, clutching it protectively.
Huh? Maomao sniffed the air. There was the aroma of sandalwood, accompanied by a distinct bitter odor. She cocked her head curiously, looking in the direction the woman had gone.
Maybe she serves one of the soldiers? she wondered. The woman had come from the direction of the military camp. And indeed, if she was spending time there, then modest makeup might be the wise move. The camp might not be as dangerous as the back streets of the pleasure district, but there were plenty of young (and not-so-young) men with their blood up there, and an attractive young woman would do well to avoid them.
What Maomao was really contemplating, though, was what that smell
had been. Her reverie was broken by the ringing of a bell. Guess I’ll have to forget about it for today, she thought. She did an about-face and headed back toward Jinshi’s office, hoping the master of the place would be absent when she got there.
