Your Majesty is Poisonous – Chapter 31
by Little PandaThe Empress Dowager is So Wicked
“Is Her Majesty the Empress Dowager trying to drive a guest away?” Longyi looked at the several chests being carried over by the staff of Ning’an Palace and smiled. “This palace hasn’t even said she’s returning to her fief1 yet!”
The senior maid leading the group of eunuchs smiled placatingly. “What is Your Highness saying? This palace is your home. How could you be considered a guest? Her Majesty the Empress Dowager simply didn’t know when Your Highness planned to depart and feared that sending things over in a rush when the day came would be an inconvenience. That is why she ordered us slaves to come today.”
Longyi had no intention of making things difficult for the people of Ning’an Palace, but she didn’t quite dare to accept gifts from Wan Bi.
As the saying goes, to be unusually attentive for no reason is to be either a villain or a thief.2 For Ning’an Palace to send over several chests of things out of the blue, there had to be a reason. But that woman Wan Bi’s mind was bizarre, impossible for anyone to fathom. And yet, she didn’t dare refuse the gifts.
“Just put them here,” Longyi said. It wouldn’t be proper to open the chests and inspect the contents in front of everyone, so she turned to the palace maid behind her. “Bring the reward silver. The people from Ning’an Palace have worked hard carrying such heavy things all this way.”
Yao Xi was small and stood at the back of the crowd; even on tiptoe, she couldn’t see Princess Longyi. She had fought for this delivery errand herself. The manager of the Miscellaneous Affairs Room, seeing her small frame and remembering Maiden Yuanqian’s instructions, hadn’t originally planned to assign Yao Xi such heavy labor.
Yao Xi had come to Princess Longyi’s residence to thank her for her kindness in pleading on her behalf that night in Ning’an Palace. If the princess hadn’t interceded, Her Majesty the Empress Dowager might not have spared her. Yao Xi had long wanted to send the princess a thank-you gift, but when she returned to the Bureau of Imperial Gardens that day, she found all her things had been stolen by Liao Bing. Later, with Zheng Dayun’s help, she had managed to recover a jade carving and a pair of gold paperweights.
She planned to give the jade carving to Princess Longyi.
It was the most valuable and presentable thing she owned, and jade was quite fragile, making it inconvenient to carry around. Besides, Meng Li’an had said the other two night-duty eunuchs in the side rooms were difficult to get along with, and Yao Xi was afraid her things would be coveted again.
Technically, the princess had saved her life, a debt she could never repay even if she gave away everything she owned. But Yao Xi couldn’t bear to part with it all. She kept the pair of gold paperweights in case of an emergency. She had fled the Bureau of Imperial Gardens in a hurry, bringing only the medicine gifted by the Empress Dowager and these two items. She wouldn’t receive her monthly silver from Ning’an Palace until next month.
Just as Yao Xi was worrying about money, Princess Longyi’s palace maid came over to distribute the reward silver. The senior maid received fifty taels, the managing eunuch twenty, and everyone else got ten taels each.
A Noble Lady’s annual salary in the palace was only two hundred taels!
A slave could work themselves to death for a year and not even earn ten taels!
Another big spender!3 Yao Xi thought, excitedly tucking the ten taels of reward silver into her robes. This trip was truly worth it.
Yao Xi guessed that besides being fabulously wealthy, Princess Longyi was so generous because they were from Ning’an Palace. She hadn’t expected the dividends from Ning’an Palace’s golden signboard to pay out so quickly. The thought that the Empress Dowager would be giving gifts to the masters of every palace for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival4 made Yao Xi happy. These were all opportunities to make money! At this rate, she could resign and leave the palace in less than half a year.
In the current dynasty, palace maids could leave the palace after the age of twenty-five, but eunuchs had to wait until they were forty to apply for departure. However, applications for early departure were generally approved. Most eunuchs stayed until they were fifty or sixty and had no choice but to leave. A slave leaving of their own accord was no great matter to their masters; the palace always needed fresh blood.
After receiving their rewards, the senior maid led the group in thanking the princess. Longyi noticed a small, rather familiar-looking eunuch in the crowd. Looking closer, she realized it was the same eunuch who had begged her for wine at Wangyue Pavilion.
He’s still alive? Longyi felt a wave of emotion. Her failure to plead for him in front of Wan Bi had left her feeling upset for some time, and she had remembered that the handsome eunuch’s name was Yao Xi. She had assumed he would die in Ning’an Palace that very night, but unexpectedly, he had survived.
When Yao Xi finished her thanks and looked up, she saw Princess Longyi looking at her. She quickly bowed. “This slave, Yao Xi, greets Your Highness the Princess.”
“The Empress Dowager kept you to serve in Ning’an Palace?” Longyi felt this eunuch must have some skill to have survived Wan Bi’s clutches.
“It is thanks to Your Highness’s immense fortune. Otherwise, this slave would not have the life to serve Her Majesty the Empress Dowager.” Yao Xi took the cloth-wrapped jade carving from her robes, walked forward, and presented it to Princess Longyi with both hands. “This is a small token of this slave’s gratitude. I hope Master will not disdain it.”
Longyi smiled and ordered her maid to accept it. She didn’t feel she deserved a reward for doing nothing, nor was she greedy for Yao Xi’s small gift, but she didn’t want to refuse him in public and cause him embarrassment. “Since you have given me a gift, this palace should reward you with something as well. You seemed to enjoy that wine last time. Why don’t you stay for a meal before you return?” Longyi said, then looked at the senior maid from Ning’an Palace. “Maiden, please inform Her Majesty the Empress Dowager that this palace will be borrowing Eunuch Yao for half a day.”
If she just wanted to give Yao Xi wine, she didn’t need to keep him for a meal; she could have just sent him back to Ning’an Palace with a jar. Longyi had other plans. She wanted to ask Yao Xi why Wan Bi had suddenly sent her gifts. Longyi had grown up in the palace and had seen too much scheming and plotting.5 She had always made it a policy to assume the worst of people.6 Especially someone like Wan Bi.
Wan Bi was black on the inside.7 That was how the Late Emperor had described her.
Her imperial brother, Emperor Ming Cheng, also often called Wan Bi a madwoman.
But while those two men said such things, what were their true attitudes toward Wan Bi? One doted on her so much he failed to preserve his integrity in old age,8 and the other indulged her without any bottom line. Two generations of Feng family sovereigns, both undone by Wan Bi’s hand. It was as if they’d seen a ghost.
Besides wanting to question Yao Xi, Longyi also genuinely found this eunuch quite interesting. It would be nice to have someone to drink and chat with. In a way, her situation in the palace was somewhat similar to Wan Bi’s—neither of them had a single friend. There weren’t many women in the palace with pure hearts. Noble Lady Lan counted as half of one, but unfortunately, she had been cast into the Cold Palace. It wasn’t that Noble Lady Lan was pure of heart, but rather that she was the type who saw things with perfect clarity.
The night she had met Yao Xi, the light had been dim. Now, looking closely in the sunlight, Longyi realized that Yao Xi bore a slight resemblance to Noble Lady Lan.
Longyi couldn’t help but smile bitterly. She wondered if the fondness she’d felt for this eunuch after drinking at Wangyue Pavilion that day was because she had subconsciously seen his resemblance to Noble Lady Lan. The two most important women in her life: her Mother Empress, who had died of grief after being hurt by her father the Emperor, and Noble Lady Lan, who was confined to the Cold Palace after being hurt by her imperial brother. She had been investigating the Yao family’s case for over a year but still hadn’t found any evidence to overturn the verdict. And to this day, she still didn’t know the reason why Noble Lady Lan had been sent to the Cold Palace.
She had gone to Jingling Palace to see Noble Lady Lan. Even in a place like the Cold Palace, the woman hadn’t changed at all, still as unhurried as ever. They had exchanged a few simple words at the entrance to Jingling Palace before Longyi was told she could not visit again. Worried that something might happen to Noble Lady Lan in the Cold Palace, Longyi had ordered someone to drill a two-finger-wide hole at the base of the wall. If Noble Lady Lan was in trouble, she could write a note and slip it through the hole. Longyi had arranged for someone to check the base of the wall every day. Even after she left for her fief, she had given instructions that if anything happened at Jingling Palace, they must send a fast horse to inform her.
She was afraid that one day, Noble Lady Lan would die in the Cold Palace and she would never even know.
Longyi pulled her thoughts back to the present and looked at Yao Xi. His features were truly exquisite, equally suitable for a man or a woman.
Today was Yao Xi’s first official day on duty at Ning’an Palace. She didn’t dare stay at Princess Longyi’s residence, afraid that delaying her work would anger the Empress Dowager. So she said tactfully, “This slave still has duties to attend to. Could Your Highness perhaps reward this slave with a pot of wine to take back and savor?”
“It’s not as if Ning’an Palace can’t function without you, Eunuch. Or is it that now that Eunuch Yao has entered Ning’an Palace, you look down on this palace’s wine?” Longyi said playfully, turning to walk into the hall. Yao Xi had no choice but to follow.
Ning’an Palace could indeed function without Yao Xi. Wan Bi, however, might not be able to.
As she strolled in the courtyard leaning on Yuanqian’s arm, her eyes kept unconsciously darting toward the gate.
“Boring.” Wan Bi casually plucked a leaf from a tree beside the stone path, looked up at the sky, and watched the clouds being blown toward the horizon by the wind. “It’s going to rain.”
“Yes,” Yuanqian assented at her side. “If Your Majesty is bored, shall this slave-girl play a few games of chess with you?”
Wan Bi gave Yuanqian a helpless look. “We’ve been playing for nearly ten years. Have you ever won against this bereaved one, even once?” A disquieting thought suddenly occurred to Wan Bi. “Maiden, you wouldn’t be intentionally letting this bereaved one win, would you?”
“Your Majesty thinks too highly of this slave-girl,” Maiden Yuanqian, who had been thoroughly trounced by her master on the chessboard for a full decade, said with a smile.
“Good.” Wan Bi hated being treated like a fool more than anything. “Maiden, you have been with this bereaved one for many years. You should know what this bereaved one despises most.”
Maiden Yuanqian curtsied slightly. “This slave-girl knows. Your Majesty most despises dishonest slaves.”
It took half a day for Zheng Dayun to be able to walk again after Yao Xi’s heartless kick. As soon as he could move, he went to the Bureau of Imperial Gardens. Not to get revenge on Yao Xi, but to apologize.
Yao Xi’s resistance hadn’t angered Zheng Dayun. He had thought it over and decided he had been too hasty. Although he had known Yao Xi for over a year, he had spent less than a month with him in the capital, having been sent to Zhejiang shortly after they met. Besides, Yao Xi’s resistance proved that the boy wasn’t easy. Zheng Dayun’s affection for Yao Xi, far from diminishing, had actually grown.
But when he got to the Bureau of Imperial Gardens, he didn’t find Yao Xi. He only found Liao Bing, who glared at him, seething with a rage he dared not voice.
Now Zheng Dayun was worried. If Yao Xi didn’t dare return to the Bureau of Imperial Gardens, where could he have gone after escaping from him? He wouldn’t do something foolish out of desperation, would he? He quickly sent people to make inquiries and only then learned that Yao Xi had managed to get into Ning’an Palace.
Ning’an Palace wasn’t like the Bureau of Imperial Gardens, a place he could visit whenever he pleased. He wanted to find Yao Xi to have a good talk, admit his mistake, and apologize. Since he couldn’t get into Ning’an Palace, his only option was to ask Yao Xi to come out.
Zheng Dayun wrote a long, heartfelt letter, carefully prepared many gifts, and ordered someone to deliver them to a eunuch at Ning’an Palace to pass on to Yao Xi.
“When Yao Xi returns, have him come see this bereaved one.” Wan Bi was tired from her walk, and seeing that the weather was turning, she decided to go back to her hall to lie down and read for a while, then nap when she grew tired. As she started up the steps to the main hall, she caught a glimpse of a figure at the palace gate. Thinking it was the slaves returning from their delivery to Longyi, she paused on the edge of the steps, her peripheral vision fixed on the gate.
But it wasn’t anyone from Ning’an Palace. A eunuch from some unknown bureau, holding a large pile of things, muttered something to the eunuch guarding the palace gate. The gate guard smiled and nodded repeatedly, then accepted the items.
“Go see what that’s about,” Wan Bi instructed a young palace maid behind her.
By the time the maid got there, the eunuch from outside had already left. After asking the gate guard what had happened, she returned to report to the Empress Dowager. “Your Majesty, it was a eunuch from the Directorate of Ceremonial, asking someone to bring some things for Eunuch Yao.”
“Bring the things here.” Wan Bi lifted her skirts and ascended the stone steps before the hall.
Footnotes
- A fief (fēngdì) was a territory granted by a monarch to a member of the nobility, who would then govern it and derive income from it.
- Original: wú shì xiàn yīnqín, fēi jiān jí dào. A well-known proverb suggesting that if someone is being unusually kind or helpful for no apparent reason, they must have ulterior motives.
- Original: yòu shì yīgè háo a! The character ‘壕’ (háo) is modern Chinese internet slang for a very wealthy person, a ‘tycoon’ or ‘whale’ in gaming terms.
- The Dragon Boat Festival (Duānwǔjié) is a traditional Chinese holiday celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It involves activities like dragon boat racing and eating zongzi (sticky rice dumplings).
- Original: gōuxīndòujiǎo, literally ‘hooking hearts and fighting with horns.’ An idiom describing intricate plotting and infighting.
- Original: bù dàn yǐ zuìdà de èyì lái chuǎicè rén. A famous quote from the early 20th-century writer Lu Xun. It has since become a common phrase to express deep cynicism about human nature.
- Original: qiē kāi shì hēi de, literally ‘black on the inside when cut open.’ A popular modern phrase, likely influenced by the Japanese term ‘haraguroi,’ which has the same meaning. It describes someone who appears harmless but is actually devious.
- Original: wǎnjié bù bǎo. An idiom for someone who ruins a lifetime of good reputation with a final misdeed.
0 Comments