Chapter 2
After the affair of the jade pendant, the food in the Cold Court improved for three days.
On the fourth, we were back to greens.
I was just preparing to accept my fate when someone arrived from Lady Zhaoyi’s palace.
Her surname was Han. After three years in the palace, she was finally pregnant.
Something had gone wrong with her meals.
It wasn’t poison. Someone was using the way she ate as a weapon.
The goat’s-milk custard with red dates, candied hawthorn, and deer-tendon soup were all fine foods on their own. Together, however, they could promote bleeding.
Lady Han dared not make a fuss, afraid that people would learn her pregnancy was unstable. She sent her personal maid to consult me in secret.
My head ached as soon as I heard.
“Get an imperial physician.”
The maid was close to tears. “The physicians only say Her Ladyship has a weak constitution. But after she ate that custard yesterday, her stomach hurt for half the night.”
I sighed.
Women in the harem had a hard life.
Carrying a child was like balancing a bowl of water on a knife’s edge. Cry out in pain and someone might exploit it; keep quiet and something might truly go wrong.
I put on an old cloak and followed her to Lady Han’s palace.
Lady Han lay on a couch, her face white as paper.
The first thing she said when she saw me was, “If you can save this child, I’ll protect you from now on.”
I badly wanted to say there was no need.
All that protecting one another meant work.
But her eyes were full of a desperate will to survive.
I could only sit down, examine the menu, and smell the food box.
“Who sent the candied hawthorn?”
Lady Han hesitated. “Consort Xian.”
“And the deer-tendon soup?”
“The Imperial Household Department added it to my allowance.”
“The goat’s-milk custard?”
“My own kitchen.”
I explained, “Taken separately, none of them would be enough to make anyone responsible. But your pregnancy is already unstable. If you begin every day on an empty stomach with something sweet and rich, follow it with something sour that stimulates the blood, then finish with a heating tonic—
“Put all three together, and it’s enough to cause abdominal pain and spotting. Like three people pushing the same door. Each barely uses any strength, but the door still falls.”
Lady Han grew paler.
I told her to stop eating those things and had her kitchen switch to plain porridge, steamed eggs, and warm water. A sample of everything she consumed was to be kept.
Three days later, the pain stopped.
On the seventh day, they uncovered a maid who tended the fire in the little kitchen.
After examining everything again, even the imperial physicians agreed: this wasn’t poison. Someone had turned her frailty against her.
The maid never added poison. She merely changed the order of the meals so that Lady Han had the goat’s-milk custard first, then the candied hawthorn, and finally the deer-tendon soup.
Anyone investigating would find not a single poisonous ingredient.
But the child would be lost.
Lady Han held her stomach and cried for a long time.
I sat beside her eating the osmanthus cakes she had given me, silent for a long time too.
Some blades in the harem drew no blood.
They came disguised as rules, menus, and smiling faces.
The empress’s insomnia began after winter set in.
Three groups came from Fengyi Palace.
The first brought gold bracelets. I refused them on account of my cold.
The second brought silks. I refused them on account of a headache.
The third was Matron Cui, the empress’s attendant.
She brought nothing. She simply said, “Her Majesty hasn’t slept properly in seven days.”
I climbed out of my rocking chair.
For one reason alone.
The empress was the center around which the harem turned. If she couldn’t sleep, the whole harem would go mad with her.
Fengyi Palace was warm.
Unnaturally warm.
Aloeswood incense burned within the bed curtains. A string of calming beads lay beside the pillow, and an old sachet from the empress dowager hung above the bed.
The empress reclined against a bolster, dark shadows beneath her eyes. She put on no airs when I arrived.
“Selected Lady Wen, do you see anything amiss here?”
I walked around the bed and pointed at the top of the curtains. “Take down the old sachet.”
Matron Cui frowned. “That was a gift from the empress dowager.”
“She meant it as a kindness. She didn’t mean for you to smother someone until they grew mold.”
The attendants took it down and opened it. Sure enough, the benzoin inside had gone damp. Mingled with the aloeswood in the curtains and the medicinal smell of the beads, it could cause palpitations and irritability after prolonged exposure, rather than calm the nerves.
The empress gave me a look.
“Open the windows for a quarter of an hour every day,” I added. “Move the charcoal braziers farther away. It isn’t that Her Majesty can’t sleep. She can barely breathe in here.”
Matron Cui looked embarrassed.
Afraid the empress would catch cold, they had sealed Fengyi Palace up like a steamer.
No wonder she couldn’t sleep.
The next day, the empress slept for six hours.
On the third, Fengyi Palace sent me a new reclining chair.
Red sandalwood, with soft cushions.
The moment I lay down, I nearly wept with gratitude.
Now this was living.
Xiaoman stood beside me, looking deeply worried. “My lady, the empress, Consort Xian, and Lady Han all owe you favors now. Are you about to become someone important?”
I kept my eyes shut. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Important people have to get up early to pay their respects.”
I rolled over.
“Early mornings are incompatible with my destiny.”