Chapter 7: The Second Physician

The Prince's physician arrived in a sedan chair carrying a black lacquer case and a covered cup.

He was an old man with a long grey beard.

He looked at women.

"I bring a tonic from His Highness," he said, setting the cup on the low table. "To calm Her Majesty's spirit."

Murong Yue sat on the lacquered couch in the audience room with her sleeve rolled to the elbow.

She looked at the cup.

Qinglan stood at her shoulder in her grey-green robe.

"Take her pulse," the Dowager said to the old man. "The Physician will observe."

He sat on the stool and laid his fingers on the white wrist.

He counted aloud, moving his lips.

Qinglan watched his face, not the wrist.

He was frowning.

"Fast," he said. "Very fast. A sign of an agitated heart, Your Majesty. Of a mind under strain."

"I walked here from the garden," said the Dowager.

"The garden is a hundred paces."

"It is a long hundred."

He gave a small, tight smile and wrote on a slip of paper.

Qinglan picked up the covered cup.

She lifted the lid and smelled it.

Under the sweet smell of honey there was something dry and green and bitter.

She knew it from the clinic.

"Ma huang," she said.

The old man's brush stopped.

"A little. Only a little, Physician. It clears the lungs."

"It also drives the heart." She set the cup down.

"Two sips would put a healthy woman at a hundred and twenty beats."

"I'd say the cup was meant to be drunk before the pulse was taken."

The room went still.

"You are young," said the old man. "You know little of the Prince's recipes."

"I know that a Prince doesn't send a tonic to a woman he thinks is sick unless he wants her sicker."

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