Chapter 5
Before dawn the next morning, Eunuch Qi came to turn me out.
“Lady Miao, His Majesty has ordered your immediate expulsion from the palace. Not a moment’s delay is permitted.”
I carried only a small bundle.
Over five years, Xiao Heng’s gifts of gold, silver, and jewels had filled three storerooms.
I took none of them.
I had come empty-handed. I ought not to leave with his things.
Eunuch Qi followed me all the way, repeatedly looking as though he wished to say something.
“You’re just leaving like this? Haven’t you forgotten something?”
After his repeated reminders, I suddenly remembered that I had indeed forgotten one thing.
I turned and ran back.
Straight to the Imperial Medical Bureau.
A pity.
Physician Li wasn’t on duty today.
I went to his usual seat and respectfully kowtowed three times.
Over these five years, he had taught me to read pulses, prepare pills, and study unique medical texts unavailable outside the palace.
He had been something of a teacher to me.
Eunuch Qi caught up, wearing an odd expression.
“You came back just to kowtow to Physician Li?”
I rose, brushed the dust from my knees, and smiled at him.
“You know he saved my life. If it’s convenient, please look out for him in future. All right. We can go now.”
At the palace gates, the guards were inspecting my bundle.
Hoofbeats suddenly sounded behind me.
Xiao Heng was taking Consort Chen to see the newly opened peach blossoms outside the city.
I knelt, my posture deferential.
The prized “blood-sweating” horse stopped before me.
Seated in Xiao Heng’s arms, Consort Chen asked, “Aren’t you one of His Majesty’s attendants? Where are you going?”
I lowered my eyes and answered with perfect propriety. “Your Highness, this servant is going home.”
Consort Chen gave a soft “Oh!”
She turned to Xiao Heng reproachfully.
“Your Majesty is so stingy. After all those years of service, surely her trouble deserves some reward, even if she has no great achievements. Why not give her more spending money? Look at her clothes—the fabric is four or five years out of fashion.”
Xiao Heng’s hand paused on the reins.
Then he looked down at me, no warmth at all in his eyes.
“Those are all she deserves.”
I nodded without arguing.
A cold laugh sounded above my head, its meaning unclear.
The hoofbeats soon disappeared at the far end of the street.
I stood among the crowd, looking at a capital I had not seen in five years.
The restaurant had a new sign, and there was a stall selling flatbreads on the corner.
Even the air was free.
Eunuch Qi saw me aboard a passenger boat. He had worn a cold expression all the way, but at last he couldn’t keep silent.
“You’re a fool, too. If you’d been willing to give His Majesty a child, you could have been a consort. What would have been so wrong with that?”
I smiled. “Perhaps it would have been wonderful. But I don’t want it.”
After more than a month on the boat, the air gradually grew damper.
I was a little seasick.
Whenever the boat rocked, my stomach churned.
Seeing my poor color, a boatman specially brewed something for the sickness and brought it to me. He had added a few extra slices of ginger, saying the river wind was cold and it would warm me.
His wife noticed that I kept supporting my lower back and found me a thick cushion.
“So young, and already in poor health. Why haven’t you seen a physician?”
Leaning beside the window, I thanked her softly.
Ever since the miscarriage, I had suffered from back pain. If I sat too long, it felt as though fine needles were being driven, little by little, into the spaces between my bones.
She sighed quietly and lowered the cabin curtain to keep out the river wind.
When we stopped at a wharf along the way, the boat owner went ashore for rice and supplies.
He returned holding a jar of wine, beaming, his steps lighter than usual.
“Have you heard? The emperor has proclaimed a general amnesty and remitted a year’s labor service and taxes!”
The medical book in my hands went still for a moment.
He did not notice and continued happily:
“They say Consort Chen is with child. His Majesty is overjoyed and has extended his benevolence to the whole realm.”
“What wonderful news! Everyone says he adores her, and it’s true. She’s barely entered the palace, and already there’s an imperial heir. She’ll have blessings enough for a lifetime.”
He chattered about the emperor and his consort’s devotion, and how the people on the wharf had cheered and given thanks.
I listened quietly, my fingertips brushing the page.
Xiao Heng was finally going to have a child.
That night, I dreamed of something long ago.
I, too, had once carried a child.
In my fifth month at the palace, there was one evening when he did not dine with me.
I ate a bowl of lotus-seed soup alone. By midnight, agonizing cramps twisted my belly.
Only when blood soaked the bedding did Xiao Heng learn that I was pregnant.
And in that same moment, he learned the child was gone.
He went mad.
He interrogated everyone who attended him, swearing to find whoever had drugged me.
The next day, he bathed several times and steeped himself in the scent of ambergris, but still could not cover the heavy reek of blood.
He held me and said again and again:
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll have another child.”
No. There would never be another.
In my dream, thick black fog smothered me.
…Threaded with a faint, elusive trace of ambergris.
Through the confusion, I seemed to feel a warm palm stroking my forehead.
I instinctively curled into a ball.
“Please, let me go…”
He told me not to be afraid.
But how could I not be?
Overnight, all the servants in Weiyang Palace had been replaced.
Maids who had spoken with me disappeared one after another.
They washed the blood from the long flight of steps for three days, but the cracks between the bricks were still red.
I raised my hand and found my palm coated with sticky scarlet.
A small child’s voice wept, calling, “Mother, save me!”
…
I woke screaming.
Only a gentle river breeze drifted past.
Then, at last, I remembered that I had already left the capital far behind.