"They're at it again," Jinshi muttered glumly to himself. It was unseemly, the way the blossoms of the palace carried on sometimes. It fell to Jinshi-one among his many responsibilities-to quiet things down.
As he waded into the crowd, Jinshi saw one person walking along as if the uproar didn't concern her. She was a petite girl with freckles peppering her nose and cheeks. There was nothing else distinctive about her, except that she paid no heed at all to Jinshi as she walked along muttering to herself.
And that could well have been the end of it.
It was not quite a month later that word spread the young prince had died. Consort Lihua was consumed with weeping, and was thinner now than ever; she no longer looked anything like the woman who had once been considered the blooming rose of the court. Perhaps she suffered from the same illness as her son, or perhaps it was an affliction of the spirit that blighted her. Regardless, she could hardly hope for another child in such condition.
Princess Lingli, the half sister of the deceased prince, soon recovered from her indisposition, and she and her mother became a great comfort to the bereaved emperor. Indeed, it seemed likely Consort Gyokuyou might soon bear another child, given how often His Majesty visited.
The prince and princess had both suffered from the same mysterious illness, yet one had recovered while the other had succumbed. Could it be the age gap between them? It had been just three months, but such a span could make a significant difference in an infant's resilience. And what of Lihua? If the princess had made a recovery, then there was every reason the consort should be able to as well. Unless she was suffering chiefly from the psychological shock of losing her son.
Jinshi turned these thoughts over in his head as he reviewed some paperwork and pressed his chop to it. If there was any difference between the two children, perhaps it lay with Consort Gyokuyou.
"I'm going out for a while," Jinshi said as he stamped the final page with his chop, and promptly left the room.
The princess, cheeks as full and rosy as steamed buns, smiled at him with all the innocence a child could muster. Her tiny hand clasped into a fi around Jinshi's finger.
"No, child, let him go," her mother, a red-haired beauty, scolded gently She wrapped the infant in swaddling clothes and put her down to sleep in her crib. The princess, apparently too warm, kicked the coverings off and lay watching the visitor, gurgling happily.
"I presume you wish to ask me something," said the consort, always a perceptive woman.
Jinshi got right to the point. "Why did the princess recover her health?" Consort Gyokuyou allowed herself the smallest of smiles before pulling a piece of cloth from a pouch. The cloth had been torn off of something an was adorned with ungainly characters. Not only was the handwriting uneven, but the message appeared to have been written using grass stains, so in places it was faded and difficult to read.
(Your face powder is poison. Don't let it touch the baby.)
Perhaps the faltering quality of the handwriting was deliberate. Jinshi cocked his head. "Your face powder?"
"Yes," Gyokuyou said, entrusting the child in the crib to a wet nurse and opening a drawer. She took out something wrapped in cloth: a ceramic vessel. She opened the lid to a puff of white powder.
"This?"
"The very same."
Perhaps, Jinshi conjectured, there was something in the powder. He remembered that Gyokuyou, already possessing the pale skin that was so prized at court, didn't need to use the powder to try to make herself more beautiful. Consort Lihua, in contrast, looked so sallow that she used more of it every day to conceal her condition.
"My little princess is quite a hungry girl," Gyokuyou said. "I don't make enough milk for her, so I hired a nurse to help." Sometimes mothers whose children had died shortly after birth found work as wet nurses. "This face powder belonged to that woman. She favored it because she felt it was whiter than other powders."
"And where is this nurse now?"
"She took ill, so I dismissed her. With ample funds for her livelihood, of course." Spoken like a woman who was both intellectual and perhaps too kind for her own good.
So say there was some kind of poison in the face powder. If the mother were to use it, it would impact the child; if whatever was in the powder got into the mother's milk, it might even end up in the child's body. Neither Jinshi nor Gyokuyou knew what such a poison might be. But if the mysterious message was to be believed, it was how the young prince had met his end. By simple face powder, makeup used by any number of people in the rear palace.
"Ignorance is a sin," Gyokuyou said. "I should have taken more care with what was going into my child's mouth."
"I'm guilty of the same crime," Jinshi said. It was ultimately he who had allowed the Emperor's son to be lost. And there may have been others who had died in the womb.
"I told Consort Lihua about the face powder, but anything I say only makes her dig in her heels," said Gyokuyou. Lihua had dark bags under her eyes even now, and used ample helpings of the white makeup to conceal the poor color of her face, never believing it was poisonous.
Jinshi gazed at the simple cotton cloth. He thought it looked strangely familiar. The hesitant quality of the characters appeared to be a ruse, but the hand had an unmistakably feminine quality. "Who gave this to you, and when?"
"It came the day I demanded the doctor examine my daughter. I'm afraid I only succeeded in causing you trouble, but this was by the window afterward. It was tied to a rhododendron branch."
Jinshi remembered the commotion that day. Had someone in the crowd noticed something, realized something, left a word of warning? But who? "No doctor in the palace would resort to such circuitous methods," he said.
"I agree. And ours never did seem to know how to treat the prince." All that commotion. On reflection, Jinshi did remember a serving girl who had seemed distanced from the other rubbernecks. She had been talking to herself. What was it she had been saying?
"I need something to write on." Jinshi felt the pieces fall into place. He started to chuckle. "Consort Gyokayou, if I were to find the author of this message, what would you do with her?"
"I would thank her profusely. I owe her my daughter's life," the consort said, her eyes sparkling. Ah, so she was keen to discover her benefactor. "Very well. Perhaps you would allow me to keep these for a short while."
"I eagerly await whatever you may discover." Gyokuyou looked happily at Jinshi. He returned her smile, then collected the jar of face powder and the cloth with the message on it. He searched his memory for any cloth that felt quite like this.
"Far be it from me to disappoint His Majesty's favorite lady." Jinshi's smile had all the innocence of a child on a treasure hunt.