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“It had been a very fulfilling day for Maomao. She’d gathered an entire basket full of mushrooms, including quite a few medicinal ones. She’d told the quack they were poisonous; she figured that would keep even him from eating them. Granted, he’d hardly looked able to restrain himself even so—but she would just have to trust him.”
“Gaoshun grimaced again. The creases in his brow were practically valleys. Somehow, she felt like he was glaring at her. “May I ask one more thing?” he said, in a way that gave her a bad feeling. “What do you plan to do with all the mushrooms you picked recently?”” -LN Vol 3.
~o~O~O~o~
Gaoshun is not a fun guy. His wife, Taomei, never used to tire of telling him this. He was too stolid, too responsible, too wedded to duty. Not communicative enough for the woman who wants pillow talk, dirty talk, lively conversation. He is a quiet man, with little love for words. His love language is gifts. Practical things. Particularly food. He does have a connoisseur’s palate, which makes the times he must provide food tasting services for the Emperor much more enjoyable. Taomei eats for fuel, not pleasure. She has no interest in gifts, particularly practical ones.
Gaoshun loves his wife, but loving her can be a little lonely at times. A lot lonely, if he’s honest, ever since Yoh decided Gaoshun’s formidable administrative and security talents were somehow better put to use managing his little brother. Sure, the lad did grow into an able, if overly micromanaging, civil servant under his tutelage, and he is a perfectly fine swordsman (not as good as Gaoshun of course – his skills with a blade may be the one thing Taomei truly appreciates him for). But the point was, the past six some odd years taking this awful drug daily to suppress his yang? So they could oversee the Rear Palace? After Yoh had specifically told Zui he could pluck any of the mid-or-lower ranking concubines or palace women he desired? Yes, it has been a lot lonely since Taomei wants little to do with him if he can’t even get it up for her.
And now this. Another death in the Rear Palace. Truly, women are such vicious creatures.
They have set their little pawn to collecting mushrooms, and rumor has it she has found a treasure trove of such throughout the rear palace. But it is not until a shocking event at a funeral that she realizes what Gaoshun and Jinshi are really looking for.
In the aftermath of the corpse hunt, Gaoshun stares down the wayward woman-child. “What, may I ask, do you intend to do with all the mushrooms you picked recently?”
She is not at all cowed as she glares back at him, defiant. He supposes he should not be surprised. She showed no sign of dismay when she revealed the hideous welt on her wrist from the toxic red fungus. She showed no signs of dismay when standing in the forest, directing him to dig up a half-rotted corpse – the reek of which still clung to their clothes, even now. She rarely shows her dismay at the situations life has thrown at her, accepting everything with an equanimity that rivals his own.
“Master Gaoshun.” Maomao stalls while she thinks a moment, almost grins as she remembers the first of her trump cards. “Do you remember the matsutakes last year?”
He does indeed remember, to his present chagrin, the matsutakes. Jinshi had scented the delicious aroma from Maomao and Guen’s illicit grill. Had demanded a share for himself, teapot steamed, if Gaoshun remembered correctly. Maomao had, however informed him the next day that she had been unable to find any more. Jinshi had been peeved, but what could he do? Five days after that, Maomao had come up to Gaoshun while he was rounding in the Rear Palace without Jinshi, brought him over to a certain pine grove, and handed him a basket with six freshly harvested mushrooms.
“They take several days to grow back after a harvest.” She’d flashed one of her rare grins then, as if she’d just been waiting for a day without Jinshi to deliver them specifically to Gaoshun (she had). Gaoshun had had a moment’s weakness. Just a moment. Maybe several hours worth of weakness. He’d brought the bounty back to Suiren, and the two of them had eaten them all. Teapot steamed was indeed delicious. That delicate broth, the sweet aroma. Heaven. Fresh matsutakes got a little something extra from the kick of pulling one over on their spoiled master.
“Do you want me to tell Master Jinshi that you didn’t share with him either?”
Gaoshun makes sure to hide his inner wince; wielding that thousand yard stare like a shield. This was what he deserved for being weak and craving those delicious mushrooms. Still, would it be more trouble to have a sulky prince to look after or an apothecary (poison fiend) with a basket of potentially toxic mushrooms. The furrow between his brow deepens as he ponders.
Maomao sees he is weakening, loads her second arrow of the battle. “You remember what I said then about the harvest?”
And Gaoshun remembers, not just what she said, but an old memory. One he’d rather not recall. He was what, 13? Ah Duo 12? Yoh 11. They were up in the mountains at the hunting lodge. The three of them had run wild in the forests in between lessons with the royal tutors. On that day, Yoh had been pent up somewhere with the Empress Dowager, and Gaoshun and Ah Duo had gone into the forest exploring. Both the forest and each other, as children are wont to do. They’d climbed trees and waded streams, only to collapse in a shady oak grove carpeted in soft moss. Impishly, Ah Duo had reached over, put her hands on him, pulled him out of his pants. Had queried how it was that this appendage (which she’d then compared unfavorably to some mushrooms growing in a hollow between some roots) could possibly qualify someone to become a soldier, a minister, a ruler, when one such as her was condemned to a life of stifling dresses and confinement in some future husband’s estate because of what she lacked. She’d accompanied her rant with some increasingly knowledgeable hand motions (practicing, she’d said with an unladylike snort, for that mythical future husband). Then, referring again to that cluster of mushrooms, at least if you cut those off, they would regrow from their underground body. What was the use of a man if he couldn’t even regrow one small appendage? Gaoshun remembers that he had helplessly spent himself in her hand, even as she laughed at him. No, it was not a fond memory. It was then that he recognized within himself, the shame of a man who enjoyed being pushed around by strong women. Ah Duo, Taomei, Gyokuyou and her ridiculous demands (weed my garden, indeed), Surien, perhaps even Maomao.
Regardless, Ah Duo’s lesson now resonated with a man just pretending to be a eunuch. Mushrooms regrow. You have not killed the organism by removing its sexual organ.
Here in the present, in the confines of the medical office, alone but for a strange woman-child with hard, bitter eyes, and a fluttering quack of a doctor, Gaoshun closes his eyes and nods grimly. He sees Maomao’s point. He can take this basket from her. Can destroy all the fruits of her labor. But she will just go back in a week and find more, and this time he will not know.
“Or,” Maomao concludes, “You can help me sort through these, and I will mark on a map where the poisonous ones came. We will then return and scorch the earth. I’ll throw out all that are poisonous, process and donate the medicinal mushrooms to the quack here, and we can share the edible ones?” Her big dark eyes seem to stare into his epicurean soul.
Gaoshun’s resolve is weakening, his glare, conversely, intensifying. The tension in his forehead makes his head hurt quite badly. He swears he can still scent corpse rot in the air. “And how do you propose to identify the medicinal and edible mushrooms? Do you know them all that well?”
“There is a book.” Still Maomao refuses to back down. She thinks she may be winning, even. “I saw it in the printer’s shop last time I was home. It’s from the west, but I can read enough to get by. I can pay for it.” She adds the last quickly, not wanting Gaoshun to think she’s mooching off of him, Though, she totally would, were he to offer to pay.
Gaoshun regards Maomao (the girl), regards the basket of mushrooms, regards Maomao (the cat). Thinks how much he just wants a good soak right now, followed by dinner alone, with a good book. Does not want to fill Jinshi in on the dead body. Does not want to write the investigatory report. Does not want to deal with his wayward prince and his pouting over paperwork, angsting over the apothecary. Does not want to deal with the neglected papers piling up on his own desk. Thinks how much more pleasant it would be to spend an afternoon sitting here, petting the cat, drinking tea, eating the delightful snacks that Doctor Guen always has on hand for visitors, watching the clever apothecary work. Surely, he can claim that it too is part of his duty. His responsibility to see the mushrooms are well and truly cleared from the Rear Palace. If he never again sees one of those obscene red monstrosities it will be too soon.
Gaoshun looks down at the young women, coming barely up to his shoulder, schools his face to mildness, “I will return tomorrow. What are the details of this book you require?” What can be the harm in this?
~o~o~o~
Gaoshun returns the next day, with the book. He has purchased it with discretionary funds for the Rear Palace. Almost, he used Jinshi’s personal purse. The book would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the ridiculous medicines the foolish prince has been buying up in anticipation of gifts for his apothecary future consort.
Doctor Guen is already bustling around preparing tea. Maomao is sitting up on the kang, her fungal bounty spread out before her on a clean cloth, sleeves tied back. Glove on one hand, brush in the other. She is humming, a soft half-smile on her face as she sorts the mushrooms into distinct piles and takes copious notes on the attributes of each. Color, smell, shape, how they bruise, what the spores look like. It is far more appealing than the terrifying grin the apothecary sometimes sports in the heat of the moment. Gaoshun knows he should not consider anything this servant girl does as being appealing or not. He belongs to Taomei, she to the Moon Prince. He sits on the other side of the kang, across the table from Maomao, and begins to work on his report. It is strangely peaceful here. Listening to the doctor and the apothecary banter, petting the cat. Time passes rather quickly, and by the time his report is written, he looks up to see that Maomao is looking at him expectantly.
“Master Gaoshun?”
“Yes, Xiaomao?”
“Do you read the western tongue? I understood most of these descriptions. But I’m not quite sure about a couple.” Learning haphazardly from eavesdropping on clients at the Verdigris House and by stealing her dad’s books has left certain gaps in her vocabulary.
“Yes. Can you show me?” Maomao doesn’t stop to wonder why a eunuch in the rear palace, even one as highly placed as he, might be conversant with foreign languages, just scoots over, presses close to his side, as unselfconscious as the cat rubbing up against his ankles, and starts flipping pages. Gaoshun realizes she has memorized which pages the difficult passages are on, as she flips unhesitatingly through, making notes here and there on how his reading and hers differed. The work is done quickly, and, task done, the apothecary gets up to return to her piles of mushrooms.
He misses immediately the warmth of her presence. But she returns quickly, holding something in her hand.
“Master Gaoshun, would you like to try one? This mushroom is edible, described as a rare delicacy, is said to have a salutary effect on stress, and also acts to improve circulation. I’d like your opinion on the best way to cook it?”
Maomao is determined to once more make him complicit in her illicit harvesting activities. It’s not hurting anyone, and food should never go to waste, is her philosophy. And it really is a tasty fungus. She holds out a small piece of a delicate mushroom cap, allows Gaoshun to take it, smell its savory aroma, chew slowly and thoughtfully the fine, toothsome flesh.
“Coated in potato starch, sauteed, with a sake glaze.” He says at after a few moments thought.
“I thought perhaps steamed, with just a hint of citrus and salt, but your way does sound better. Maybe after we’re done here, we could borrow the kitchen of the Jade Pavillion for a taste test?” Maomao’s voice is hopeful, eager, almost as if this is a new medicine not a food they are discussing.
“Hnn.” Gaoshun is noncommittal. He does not feel he should approve of this request. Delicious though it may be.
Maomao remains at his side, drawing notations onto a map of the rear palace. Finally, she passes him the map, leaning in to show him where the poisonous mushrooms grow.
She is unusually close. Almost under his arm. The heat of her side pressed up against him is pleasant. Gaoshun chooses not to remark up on it, not to react. The details she has put into the instructions for purging the poisonous growths from the rear palace are impressive and meticulous, just the way he likes. He focuses on her cramped, inelegant brush strokes – here the ground must be raked and burnt, there, the dead trees culled, there, drainage must be improved and the orchard pruned to reduce shade. He hadn’t realized how much work would be involved in managing what she has discovered.
Gaoshun feels his headache starting to grow, a sinking feeling in his stomach, imagining the weeks to come, the cost, the reallocation of labor.
She is staring at him, intently. It is discomfiting. “Master Gaoshun. I would like to try some acupressure. That much tension across your forehead cannot be healthy.”
Gaoshun is afraid of getting wrinkles. He does not like to admit how old he feels some days, spending all his time in a garden of young, attractive women. Maomao is speaking to his secret fears. He nods his permission. No one is here to witness this small impropriety but the Master Physician Guen, and he is occupied on the far side of the office, dusting the shelves and humming a little tune.
The small woman kneels in front of him, reaches her lean hands up to touch his face, stroke his forehead, center themselves; surprisingly strong thumbs push in firmly. Gaosun breathes in against the intensifying pain, breathes out slowly, feels the pressure gently, slowly release, fingers sweeping out across his eyebrows. The pain is nearly gone. She repeats her actions again. He closes his eyes, unable to look at the utter focus in her face. Gaoshun has not been touched in so very long.
He bows his head to allow her to reach around to the base of his skull, her hands settling gently on his neck, then pressing firmly into his stiff muscles, and holding there. A gradual release, a return of the pressure, his soreness losing the battle to the skill in her hands. It feels like a gift. It feels like tenderness, not mere professionalism, when her hands sweep forward to briefly stroke the planes of his face before retreating, leaving him bereft of touch once more.
“There, how does that feel?” again the apothecary’s intense gaze catches him in its web. Gaoshun cannot look away. Words are struggling to form. The pain, that constant tension across his forehead is much improved, but now he has another problem. It has been so, so long since he touched another person in a way that was not to restrain, to guard, to punish.
Gaoshun does not feel in control of his body. His brows threaten to snap back to their usual beetled state. He sees himself reach out, capture Xiaomao’s jaw in one hand, and run his thumb gently across her cheek. He thinks he hears a muttered, “don’t smudge my freckles,” but she doesn’t look away. Her expression is quizzical. He can only imagine what his normal frown has become.
“Xiaomao.”
“Master Gaoshun, wha. . .?” Maomao’s question is abruptly cut off. Gaoshun has tilted her chin up, tilted his down, slanted his lips firmly across hers. His kiss is deliberate, paced, intent; it demands a response from her, receives one. It is a slow, languorous dance of lips and tongues, until Gaoshun thinks he may drown in the sensation. It has been so long since. . . since anything. When he releases her at last, he sighs a long exhalation as if for this one moment all the tension has left his body.
It returns immediately, and with a vengeance, as he realizes what he has done. He knows his expression must be thunderous as Maomao scrambles backwards, her eyes wide, pupils still blown dark by what has just occurred.
“Back room. Now!” He snaps, barely keeping his volume controlled so that the somehow oblivious eunuch who is dusting shelves with his back to them cannot hear the commotion.
Maomao bolts and he follows at an only slightly more sedate pace, closes the door behind him, and locks it. (Why does the door to the medicine storage area have an inside lock anyway? He cannot help wondering, convenient as it now is.) Gaoshun stands to his full, rather intimidating height, back straight, shoulders back. Hands tucked neatly in his sleeves. Maomao has retreated the farthest corner of the room, kneels on the floor, assumes a posture of profound apology, even though it is he who has overstepped.
Silence reigns as Gaoshun strives to regain his equilibrium. Maomao dares not speak. Gaoshun has never in his life, not once, lost control like that. There can be only one explanation.
“What, exactly did you say the effects of that mushroom were supposed to be?”
“Mental relaxation, improved circulation.” Maomao is certain that’s what the translation came to.
“Not an aphrodisiac?”
“No! That is one word I know for sure.” Maomao says the foreign word. “It was not mentioned at all. Besides, last night the quack ate a piece three times as big as the one I gave you. And I had a whole one this morning.”
Gaoshun shakes his head. What?
Rather desperately now, “I told him all the fungi were poisonous so he wouldn’t touch them, but he couldn’t resist. He ate part of one after I left last night. Only told me this morning. He was lucky he did pick one of the edible ones. He was fine, so I had one. I just thought you might like the taste!”
Gaoshun breathes deep, in and out, slowly, reaching for calm, trying not to think of how soft the girl’s lips were, the taste of her tongue. How it has been years since he had a woman. How it has been years since he could. “And you didn’t notice anything at all odd with Master Physician Guen’s behavior? Or your own?”
“Well,” Maomao’s voice is as apologetic as it ever gets. “He seemed even perkier than usual, a nice healthy flush in his cheeks. And he was happily cleaning (for once). I figured it was a good thing. At worst, I thought it might help with your headaches.”
She has not noticed that she, who never reaches for another human, has sought contact with him. Small gestures, the utmost she can marshal.
Gaoshun makes a decision. He is so tired of this life. He wants a woman like a man in the desert craves water. He tells himself he craves Taomei. Tries to picture her face, her body. Her voice.
“Master Physician Guen is a eunuch. Perhaps the medicine affects him differently.”
He sees Maomao mouth the words. Sees the moment she realizes just what he is(n’t) saying. Her eyes dart from his face, down, below his waist. There is nothing to see. Even if the robes weren’t in the way, Gaoshun has regained his self control. Improved circulation be damned. Maomao’s expression is one of barely suppressed panic. Gaoshun realizes she may be laboring under some misapprehension.
“Xiaomao, I’m not going to touch you.”
She shakes her head. That’s not what she is afraid of. Not at all. “. . . not allowed. I don’t want you to be killed.”
Ah, a different misapprehension, then. “Xiaomao, I work in the Rear Palace on the Emperor’s orders. There is nothing to fear.”
The flash of surprise turns into calculation. Gaoshun is pleased that he has learned to read the apothecary so well.
“Then. . . Master Jinshi?”
“Is also not a eunuch.” Gaoshun continues slowly, deliberately, “The Emperor would hardly order his younger brother, the crown prince, castrated would he?”
And. . . the supressed panic is back. Gaoshun does not know how to soothe a panicked woman. Taomei has never been panicked in her life. He still does not understand what possessed him to kiss the apothecary. Zuigetsu’s woman. Whether or not she understands that she is his is an entirely different matter.
“Master Jinshi is. . . “
“The Moon Prince, yes.”
She does not ask why the farce. He sees her thinking it through.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“A precaution to think before you act. Had you fed that mushroom to the Prince instead of me, it would have been more than a kiss you’d be subject to.” Maomao gets his gist immediately.
“He actually wants to? I thought it was just. . . harassment Why would one so highly ranked? . . Strange proclivities.” The muttering reveals her inner monologue as she considers his words. She does not seem like a woman under the influence of an aphrodisiac mushroom. Oddly, other than that urge he’d had to kiss her after the acupressure and the resultant arousal, neither does he feel particularly stimulated.
“Xiaomao,” Gaoshun is not sure how much he should say, but having got this far, “You do understand, don’t you, that he would woo you, as a man does a woman?”
She shakes her head vehemently.
“He would not let the Grand Commandant buy off your contract, despite the risk of making an enemy of him. As a daughter of the La, he could make you his consort, a wife even.”
“Impossible.” Maomao shakes her head bitterly. “A man like that and a chicken bone of a woman like me, no manners, no looks, no money? Only fools believe in a dream like that.”
Gaoshun feels strangely sad, “And yet, you may belong to no other.” He wants this to be very clear, “The sooner you accept his suit, the sooner he will cease this farce. The sooner I can go home to my wife.”
“If that is true,” which she clearly does not believe, “Why doesn’t he just command me to do as he wishes. Why all this? I thought I was just a useful pawn. I know where I stand as a pawn. Use me as a pawn.”
“I did tell him to use you. As a man uses a woman” Gaoshun clarifies, “I told him you would not protest overmuch. You know your place, don’t you Xiaomao?”
Bitterly she nods. “I accepted your kiss, did I not? You too outrank me, Master Gaoshun.” Her tone is acid, and yet, somehow at the same time, wistful “You too, could command me.”
He shakes his head, sadly. Not if he wants to live. The temptation is great. He reminds himself that Taomei is waiting for the day he is allowed to go home. He hopes.
“Xiaomao, I am sorry. I did not mean. . .”
“You meant it, Master Gaoshun.” Maomao will brook no argument on this. She is very bad at understanding other people’s feelings, but she is sure of this. She remembers very well the taste of him, the strength of his sure grip on her cheek, the soft swipe of his thumb through her freckles. She would not hesitate to kiss him again, were he to command her.
“I enjoyed being kissed by you.” Maomao speaks as though she is talking of the weather. “I have never expected to have any choice as to with whom, or when my first kiss with a man would be. If I had to have no choices, I am yet glad it was you. I have often thought you would make someone a good husband. Your wife is very lucky.”
Gaoshun sags, rubs his head with his hand, Taomei certainly does not think she is lucky. He does not know how to deal with this situation. Perhaps, avoidance.
“Xiaomao, can you go fetch the book? I wish to read the text for myself.”
She slips past him like a shadow, thin and insubstantial, returns with the tome. Opens to the page in question. Hands it to him. Gaoshun reads, sounds the words in his head, thinks of phrases that don’t translate well across the two cultures. Mental relaxation was Maomao’s translation.
“Lowered inhibitions.” He sighs out loud, “that’s the correct translation.” So close, and yet so far.
Not an aphrodisiac then. It did not create something that wasn’t there. Didn’t amplify lust. Simply made it easier to act on something that was already there.
Something that was already there.
The two people, young woman with ancient eyes, old soldier too much a slave to duty, stare at each other. Caught in a trap of their own devising.
“You were right the other day. Please destroy everything.” Maomao is the first to speak.
“Yes, of course. I’ll arrange the groundskeepers to handle the remaining decontamination.”
A quick bow, and Maomao flees, leaving Gaoshun alone with his thoughts.
He looks at the book in his hands, the illustration of the mushroom. Rubs his furrowed brow. Decides to keep some of the dangerous fungi. Just in case.
In the main room, the pile of inhibition-lowering fungus is clearly tagged. The others swept back into the basket for disposal.
Half of the pile is missing.
There is a note.
“Tossed in starch, sauteed, with a sake glaze. Tonight. 9pm. Jade palace kitchen. Bring an appetite.”
Fin