Chapter 4: The Prince's Audience

At noon the next day Prince Xiao Zhengyi came to see for himself whether the Empress Dowager was mad.

He wore dark purple with a jade belt, and he smiled at everyone.

He was a broad man with a round face and a thin moustache.

He bowed to the Dowager exactly as deeply as the law required and not a hair lower.

"Sister-in-law," he said. "You look well."

"I am well," said Murong Yue.

She sat behind a long black table in the small audience room, in scarlet and gold.

Her hair was pinned high and her face was painted white and red.

Nothing about her looked like a woman who had cried out a physician's name on a lacquered couch eight hours earlier.

Qinglan knelt at her left hand on a cushion with a brush and a sheet of paper.

She tried very hard to think the same about herself.

Her knees were sore.

Her thighs were sore from the floor of the Physicians' Office.

A mark the shape of a mouth sat low on her ribs under her robe.

"And this is the new physician," the Prince said.

"Shen Qinglan," said the Dowager.

"A woman."

"A woman can feel a pulse as well as a man."

"Of course." The Prince's smile did not move.

"I only wonder at the choice."

"The last three were men of reputation, and where are they now?"

"In the ground."

"In the ground." He sighed. "Though I'm told no grave has a stone. Strange."

Qinglan's brush stopped.

The Dowager's voice was perfectly flat.

"Do you question how I bury my servants, Zhengyi?"

"I question how many are buried, Sister-in-law."

"Three physicians in one season."

"People talk."

"They say the palace is cursed."

"They say the Dowager's grief has made her" and he lifted a plump hand and tapped his temple, gently, "unwell."

"Physician," said the Dowager.

Qinglan put down her brush.

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