The Secrets of Jin-Shei

‘I made it strong,’ Yuet said. ‘If you are in enough pain to retire to bed in the middle of the day, you may as well try and sleep through the worst of it. As you say – I will handle anything that comes up.’

‘One of these days,’ Szewan said, taking a delicate sip of the sleeping draught, ‘I will have to draw up the papers properly, and make you a partner. You are no longer an apprentice, Yuet-mai.’

Yuet blushed. ‘I’ll never know all you know,’ she said.

‘You already know more than you think you know,’ said Szewan shrewdly, ‘and, I think, more than I think you know. Sometimes I believe you keep secret notes on everything I say and don’t say. When I am gone and you go through my papers, there is little that you will learn that you have not already found out.’

‘I listen, Szewan-lama.’

‘I know,’ said Szewan. ‘Sometimes you hear far too much.’ She yawned, showing a mouth with many teeth either missing or yellow with age and decay, and handed the cup back to Yuet. ‘I will sleep now. Leave me.’

Yuet bowed her head in acknowledgement and withdrew as Szewan closed her eyes and pillowed her withered cheek on her arm.

‘I will sleep now,’ she murmured again, as Yuet closed the door gently behind her.

There were no further emergencies that morning, and only one house-call she had to make on an ailing patient too ill to come to her, so Yuet spent the morning in her stillroom, making up the supplies of the herbal remedies she used to ease the more common aches and pains of Linh-an and checking up on the stocks of the more rare medicines whose existence was written down in secret books and only in jin-ashu script where a woman might read of them. She looked in on Szewan just before she left to see her patient, but the old healer still slept peacefully, snoring gently through her parted lips. Yuet’s patient appeared to be on the mend – still weak but definitely improving, sitting up and taking solid food for the first time in many days – and Yuet returned home feeling pleased with herself.

She was met by first disaster, and then potentially deepening catastrophe.

The first person she saw as she stepped into the entrance hallway of the chambers she shared with Szewan was the woman who served the healer’s household as cook and maid-of-all-work. She stood in the hall, wringing her hands, her expression equal parts panic, fear and grief. Yuet’s heart stopped for a moment. She instinctively knew what must have happened – but stood frozen, her hand still on the door handle, staring at the servant in silence.

There was a dose of guilt in the servant’s demeanour, too.

‘I heard her breathing funny, mistress – I swear I didn’t know what to do, and you weren’t here, and I went in and I saw – she was breathing funny, mistress, and she was lying on her side with her face into the pillow so I came in to look and I just tried to turn her head, just a little, so that she could get air, and she just …; she just …;’

‘Oh, dear Gods,’ Yuet whispered.

‘I’m sorry, mistress, I didn’t know – I shouldn’t have touched her – I should have waited – I should have sent for you – I should have …;’

‘Is she …; is Szewan dead?’

The servant burst into tears. ‘Yes, mistress, she is dead. I turned her head, just a little, so that she could breathe and she, she, she choked and started coughing and then choked again and it was as if she couldn’t get enough air, and then …;’

‘Enough,’ said Yuet, her eyes full of tears. ‘It is not your doing.’ She hunted for an activity, something to give the servant to do, something familiar to calm her nerves and soothe her panicked guilt. ‘Go …; go make some green tea. Bring it to the sitting room.’

The servant sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Yes, mistress.’

Yuet closed the door behind her, very slowly, kicked off the sandals she had worn to go outside and set down the leather bag she had carried to her patient’s house. She made her way into Szewan’s sleeping quarters, walking softly on the balls of her bare feet, as though a sharp noise could wake her mistress.

I gave her a strong poppy draught. What if it was this …; ? Should I have made it weaker? Oh, dear Gods.

Szewan was lying half on her side, half on her back – the ministrations of the servant, no doubt. Yuet checked, but it had not been any physical obstruction that had blocked Szewan’s airways – she had not choked on her tongue or anything like that, an event that Yuet had seen occur and had prevented more than once with patients who suffered from fits or seizures. On that, at least, she could reassure the poor cook, who probably thought that her very touch had made the old healer drop dead in her bed.

Perhaps it was just age.

Yuet arranged Szewan’s body in a seemly manner on her bed, laying her on her back and crossing her arms on her thin ribcage. As though there had not been enough death in Linh-an in the month just past. There would be things to arrange with the Temple – there was no immediate family and it would be up to Yuet, the apprentice and the closest thing to a relative old Szewan had in this world, to perform the funerary rites required. But already she was thinking ahead. She said I was no longer an apprentice, Yuet thought to herself as she fussed with the bedclothes. But the papers hadn’t been drawn up yet. What if …; ? What happens now?

There was a tap on the door.

‘Tea, mistress.’

Yuet crossed to the door. ‘I am coming.’

The servant was still wringing her hands. ‘It’s so sudden, mistress, I never meant …; I didn’t mean to …;’

‘You have done nothing wrong. I have looked at her and there are no signs of anything but that you tried to help,’ Yuet said again, soothingly, calming the woman down. ‘There will still be work for you here.’

That was part of the servant’s panic, the fear that she would be dismissed now that the household had changed. She seemed to relax a little at this reassurance, but Yuet found herself wondering if she was in fact in a position to give it. She stepped into the sitting room to pick up the bowl of steaming green tea which the cook had brought in on a lacquered tray, and then went into the tiny alcove that had served Szewan as an office, piled high with scrolls and papers and bound books of recipes for medicines, patient records, agreements, licences and other legal documentation. Somehow Szewan had never quite planned for dying. Yuet knew she would need to go through all this anyway, it was all her responsibility now, at least until she found out otherwise – but she was looking for practical things, for things relating to what would happen to the healer’s practice now that she was gone, whether a journeyman like herself, who had not yet been quite promoted to full mastery, could take over now or if she would need to go looking for some other Linh-an healer with his or her master’s papers and hand over all of Szewan’s accumulated treasury of information to this …; this usurper.

I should have the papers drawn up, Szewan had said. Barely a few hours ago. If only there had been a witness to that – to the utterance which to all intents and purposes graduated Yuet from journeyman to full-fledged healer.

There was. There might have been.

If the cook was led to believe that her having heard that, that her willingness to swear that she had heard that, may have a direct bearing on her livelihood in this household, then maybe a notary could be found …;

Yuet set the bowl of tea aside, and it grew cold, forgotten, as she immersed herself in Szewan’s papers. In rebuilding a future which, through sins of omission, looked as though it might disintegrate around her.

She owed it to Szewan, safeguarding her secrets. She owed it to Szewan’s high-born patients, details of whose illnesses ought not to become bargaining chips for healers who had not earned the trust or the confidence of those patients.

She owed it to Tai, to her jin-shei-bao, to whom she had made a promise – which she might never be able to keep if she was dispossessed of her status and her position. She owed it to the dead of the Summer Palace earthquake, some of whom had passed in their caskets beneath her window that very morning.

She owed it to Liudan, the survivor.

She owed it to herself.

Seven

Yuet spent a sleepless night amongst Szewan’s chaotic records, trying to make sense of the world she had inherited. She had finally retired to her room in the last dark hours before dawn and fell into a fitful doze; she was not at her best when she was shaken awake only a few hours later by the servant.

‘Mistress? I’m sorry, mistress, I would not disturb you, but there is a message from the Court, for Mistress Szewan. The man says he must have an answer.’

‘Did you say anything to him about Szewan?’ said Yuet, sitting up, shocked awake.

‘No, Mistress Yuet. I said I would come and wake you.’

‘Thank you. Please tell him I will be there at once.’

It was light outside, full day. Yuet drew on her outer robe in feverish haste, rebraided her tousled hair into a semblance of tidiness with swift, practised fingers, and paused to splash a handful of cold water onto her face, dabbing it dry with one of Szewan’s fine linen towels. It would have to do. It was just a messenger, after all.

The man who had come with the message waited in the hallway, having refused the servant’s invitation into the sitting room.

Yuet greeted him with a bow, and he returned it politely.

‘How may I help you?’ she asked.

‘The healer Szewan is required at the Palace, immediately.’

‘She is …; unavailable,’ said Yuet carefully. She most emphatically did not want the news of Szewan’s death prematurely escaping from this house. She needed time, time to set up her world, her life. Time to organize her future. ‘I am Yuet, her apprentice …; her partner. Is someone ill? May I be of assistance?’

‘If it please you, Mistress Yuet, I come from the Chancellor. Sei Zibo requests the presence of healer Szewan at a meeting of the Imperial Council this morning.’

Yuet’s mind raced. Imperial Council? This had to do with the regency. Why did they want Szewan?

The answer was obvious. Liudan.

‘When is Szewan’s presence required?’ Yuet asked.

‘The meeting is in an hour’s time, Mistress Yuet. I was sent to escort the healer to the Palace immediately.’

‘If you will wait here,’ Yuet instructed, ‘I will need a few moments to make a few arrangements and then I will accompany you myself.’

‘But it is the healer Szewan who …;’

‘She is, as I say, unavailable at this moment,’ Yuet said with a veneer of serenity which hid a wildly beating heart. She was going to gamble on something here; it was a good thing that this was a simple messenger, not a Guard with specific orders, not someone who would think things through and demand explanations. This man was of a lower tier, someone used to taking commands from somebody who knew how to give them, who would follow the last firm command that he was given. All she needed to do was remain firm. ‘Wait here. I will be out as soon as I am ready.’

He was looking a little unhappy, but he bowed his acquiescence and took up a waiting stance at the door. Yuet went back to her room and summoned the servant, who came in so quickly that Yuet was sure she must have been lurking just outside the door, listening.

‘Help me,’ she said. ‘I need assistance with dressing my hair. I will go to the Palace in Mistress Szewan’s name. It is a good thing. At least I will be able to pass on the news without sending wild rumours out. The messenger is waiting to escort me there, we need to be quick.’

The servant nodded, taking up a comb even as Yuet unbraided her hair and shook the rippling dark mass of it out. It spilled, straight and thick and long, almost down to her knees. ‘As simple as formality will allow,’ she instructed, hunting for ornaments on the table in front of her, reaching for the white ribbons of mourning that had to be woven into her hair, sorting out silver clasps to hold the rest of it up. ‘In the meantime,’ she said, while the servant’s deft fingers plaited and coiled, ‘allow no one into the house until I return, and say that Szewan and I are both unavailable at the moment. Take down details of anyone who needs urgent help, and I will deal with that when I get back. But nobody waits here, and nobody gets past you into the house. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Mistress Yuet,’ the servant said, her eyes wide.

‘And when I return I will need to talk to you,’ Yuet said, ‘about Mistress Szewan.’

‘Yes, mistress,’ the woman said, her voice faltering a little.

Yuet left her with that small seed of disquiet. It would do her good to worry on it for a while.

She donned a fresh shift, laced an inner robe of pale silk at her throat, shrugged into a heavy brocade outer robe suitable for a Court appearance, ran a final check over her hair and her make-up, made sure she was wearing the white ribbon of mourning around her sleeve, and swept out of her chambers with a final warning to the servant to lock up after her and not allow anyone into the house.

The escort had a hired sedan cart waiting, obviously in deference to Szewan’s age and infirmities, and since there had been no countermand issued he simply helped Yuet into it and gave the signal for the driver to depart. The streets were empty of people, still wrapped in mourning for the dead Emperor, normal commerce still operating in fits and starts; from within the chair Yuet could hear the intermittent calls of street vendors but the cart was given free passage, not jostled by other conveyances or forced to wait while one of higher rank swept by, and they were quickly at the gates of the Palace where they were admitted, after a brief hesitation, by one of a pair of Imperial Guards on duty. The chair was trotted into an inner courtyard; Yuet’s escort handed her down from it courteously, she thanked him, and he left her with a bow.

Alone before the entrance to the Imperial Palace, Yuet drew a deep breath, aware that her hands were shaking. Szewan had meant to do this, she was sure – had meant to promote Yuet into a full partner, with every right to be here in her place – but she had not done it yet, she had not done it yet

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