Yin Cheng once again pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her, barely a moment out of his sight and she’d already turned her own face into a mess, forgetting the mealtime entirely.
“How many more do you have? Aren’t you hungry?” He glanced at the small pile of uncut potatoes and patted his own stomach.
“Oh, time to eat?” Zhao Xiaojin gave her face a rough wipe and handed the handkerchief back. “Almost done.” Another ten minutes or so and she’d be finished.
Well, since he was already here, delaying the meal a little while longer wasn’t a big deal.
Yin Cheng took the used handkerchief and found a clean corner of it. “Don’t move, you missed a spot.” She had no idea just how long and ugly that black smudge was.
Zhao Xiaojin froze for a moment, not because of what the little monk had said, but because he’d tilted his head up and was wiping her face with the handkerchief himself.
It was strange, really. Aside from when she was very small, ever since she’d started washing her own face, not even her mother had bothered to wipe it for her with this much patience. Even though he was shorter than her, the way he tilted his head up looked so earnest and focused.
“Done?” Not clean yet?
Zhao Xiaojin felt rather embarrassed, with so many people watching. There was Wang Xiaohai standing behind the little monk too, his eyes practically bulging out of his head, all from glaring at her.
She hadn’t wanted this either, but wasn’t it a bit too late to refuse now?
“All right.” It was Yin Cheng who finally put the handkerchief away, tossing it back to Wang Xiaohai. “How about it, want me to help?” He pointed at himself.
Once again, Zhao Xiaojin couldn’t find a reason to say no.
Yin Cheng ended up cutting the rest of the potatoes, with Zhao Xiaojin directing from the side. Although Wang Xiaohai tried several times to stop his young master from picking up the knife, the words stayed stuck on the tip of his tongue, never actually said aloud.
Ever since this secondary consort had arrived at the pox-avoidance quarters, the young master seemed to have come fully back to life, laughing more, talking more. Not like before, when he’d only ever lie there quietly. To put it disrespectfully, he’d been no different from some dying old man, simply waiting for the end.
Pah, pah, pah, he deserved a slap on his own mouth for even thinking such a thing!
The young master was doing well now, and if he could just grow a little taller, put on a bit more flesh, that would be even better. Looking at the two of them standing together, the young master was still half a head shorter than his secondary consort.
Yin Cheng, absorbed entirely in cutting potatoes, had no attention to spare for whatever was going through Wang Xiaohai’s mind.
He carefully brought the knife down, cutting one open. Surprisingly enough, though the thing looked quite ugly on the outside, the inside was perfectly clean once cut open. Much like the pears he ate, except for the yellowish tint, it looked just as fresh and moist.
He made as if to take a bite, to taste it.
“Smack!” The hand holding half the potato was slapped hard.
“Not, allowed, to eat.” His secondary consort rarely wore such a stern expression, and pronounced each word with deliberate precision.
Yin Cheng rubbed his thoroughly innocent hand, waiting for an explanation.
He already knew some people had eaten it and ended up bedridden, why would he actually put it in his mouth for real? This thing was of unknown origin, and though his secondary consort’s little display hadn’t been much, anyone paying close attention who asked around would surely grow suspicious.
Better to make things clear now, while the courtyard was full of people. That way, no greedy soul would go eat it and end up pinning the blame on the secondary consort instead. According to what Wang Xiaohai had told him, every last one of the leftover potatoes at the pox-avoidance quarters was already here.
Yin Cheng was, in truth, taking something of a gamble. Since his secondary consort was clearly so familiar with this thing, she must have seen it before, back in the south. She’d asked for baskets, asked for soil, and now had it cut into pieces and set out to dry, by the looks of it, she meant to plant it.
If it could be planted, it surely had some use. Plenty of medicines were inherently poisonous, and yet, used properly, became life-saving remedies. This thing might well be the same.
It all came down to how it was used.
Zhao Xiaojin couldn’t quite manage the word “poison,” so she simply picked up an uncut potato and nearly poked it right in front of the little monk’s face. She pointed at the sprouts growing on it, made sure the little monk had gotten a good look, then waved her hands vigorously and tilted her head, sticking her tongue out in an exaggerated grimace.
Ahem. Seeing his secondary consort make such a face, though it wasn’t the most elegant gesture, Yin Cheng found the meaning fairly clear.
He pointed a finger at the sprouts as well, so that was where the problem lay.
“This part, not, edible.” Thinking she hadn’t made herself clear, Zhao Xiaojin emphasized it once more. Then she quickly pulled the potato back, out of the little monk’s line of sight.
“Plant, then edible.” Potatoes that had already sprouted contained toxins and were bad for people to eat.
If this planting attempt succeeded, only the harvested potatoes would then be edible. Most of what was in this basket had already discolored and sprouted.
“Understood, won’t eat it.” Yin Cheng took her word for it, then turned to Wang Xiaohai. “Wang Xiaohai, the secondary consort says this thing can’t be eaten.”
“Yes, Young Master, heard loud and clear.” Although he had no idea why it couldn’t be eaten, those servants lying bedridden were fresh enough proof. Wang Xiaohai raised his voice, making sure everyone in the courtyard could hear.
Just as the young master had worried, the pox-avoidance quarters were a place where word leaked out in every direction, one always had to think a step ahead here. Since his secondary consort recognized this thing and clearly knew the reason it wasn’t edible, but her speech still wasn’t quite fluent, there was a real risk that someone with ill intentions might exploit that.
Once the remaining potatoes were all cut into pieces, Yin Cheng and Zhao Xiaojin went off to eat. Wang Xiaohai stayed behind a little longer, making sure every piece was coated in ash and set out in a shady spot.
While waiting for the baskets and soil she’d requested to arrive, Zhao Xiaojin kept mulling over what data she needed to record. She’d already worked out the general categories in her head, but she’d never actually learned to write with a brush, and her earlier attempts at tracing the traditional characters in the Thousand Character Classic had turned out an absolute mess.
So, she decided to ask the little monk for help.
After the meal, Yin Cheng stood by the writing desk, waiting to watch his secondary consort practice her tracing. Instead, the moment she sat down, she stood right back up again, gesturing for him to take the seat.
What was this about? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already seen her clumsy handwriting plenty of times, why give up the seat now?
It really was odd, though, she clearly could read characters, but couldn’t write them.
Zhao Xiaojin had already picked up the Thousand Character Classic with practiced ease, flipping through to find the characters she needed.
Yin Cheng sat down at the desk and waited.
Ah, there, “upright in form, correct in manner.”
Zhao Xiaojin pointed out the character “form” to the little monk, then handed over the brush.
For once, Yin Cheng genuinely didn’t understand what she meant.
“Write this character, ‘form’?” He moved the brush but didn’t dip it in ink, surely there was more to it than that.
Sure enough, Zhao Xiaojin shook her head.
She simply dipped her finger in some water and drew a large square box on the desk in front of her. Then, several horizontal lines, several vertical lines. Finally, at the very top of the box, she wrote out six characters: “Potato Planting Record.”
Yin Cheng looked at it, so she could write after all. Her handwriting was even fairly neat and squared off, except among the six characters, three looked familiar at first glance but turned out, on closer inspection, to be characters he’d never actually seen before.
Potato, something, plant, something, something.
As a prince, even one who’d been sickly since childhood, Yin Cheng had still had proper tutors. Although he’d never amount to much in martial arts, and couldn’t match several of his older brothers in scholarship either, he at least knew his basic Chinese characters well enough.
What his secondary consort had written felt somehow, vaguely familiar.
Going by the literal meaning of the characters, it looked like it referred to planting and record-keeping. If that was right, this style of writing was actually rather convenient, it was just that, at first glance, some of the characters looked unfamiliar.
Zhao Xiaojin dipped her finger in water again and wrote “Basket One,” “Basket Two,” “Basket Three…” down the small box on the left. Once she finished that column, she went back to the small box at the top and started writing “Day One,” “Day Two,” “Day Three…”
Before she could go any further, the earliest boxes she’d drawn had already started to dry up.
“All right, all right, I think I get the gist of it.” Writing this much all at once, didn’t her finger hurt?
Yin Cheng, seizing the moment before the water on her fingertip ran out completely, stopped her from writing any more.
“Once the supplies you need arrive, I’ll help you write it all out properly by basket.” By then, between guessing and piecing things together, he could surely work it out.
Yin Cheng sketched a rough box in the air, gesturing to convey his meaning.
Zhao Xiaojin thought about it, that made sense. Once the supplies arrived, matching them against a proper record would keep things accurate. She didn’t push the matter further, and let herself be steered back to character-tracing practice instead.
Holding the brush, comparing it to the smooth strokes she’d managed with water a moment ago, while it wasn’t quite night and day, the difference was still noticeable.
Two days later, everything she’d requested had arrived, filling the courtyard in a chaotic jumble, with quite a few people standing around as well. Soon enough, after reporting where the soil had come from, those people were sent away.
Zhao Xiaojin took a red brush and wrote an unfamiliar character, really just a number, on the outside of each basket. Yin Cheng, holding a blank notebook, recorded the soil type corresponding to each basket, following what his secondary consort had written.
Wang Xiaohai followed behind, placing the sorted, ash-coated potato pieces one by one into the baskets as Zhao Xiaojin instructed, then covering them with soil.
About an hour later, Zhao Xiaojin looked at the neat rows of baskets and finally felt she’d made a good start. Without a proper stretch of land to plant in, container planting, using baskets in place of pots, would have to do, it wasn’t so different after all.
Based on her records from school, new sprouts should appear in the baskets after about twenty days.
With twenty-six baskets suddenly filling the courtyard, people coming and going couldn’t help but have their attention drawn to them. At first, it was just baskets of dirt, nothing much to look at. But slowly, green shoots began appearing.
The first person to spot them was an entirely ordinary errand maid, whose shout brought everyone in the courtyard running out to see.
The Eleventh Prince’s smallpox inoculation had succeeded, and he’d been recuperating for some days now. The physicians here had submitted their medical reports to the emperor, and word came back that he should return to the palace on the Autumnal Equinox this month.
The Autumnal Equinox, the xīnchǒu day of the eighth month in the thirty-fifth year, fell the very next day.
By custom, since the emperor, the empress dowager, and all the palace’s masters were staying at Changchun Garden, the Eleventh Prince, now recovered, ought to go pay his respects as a junior member of the family. But everyone who knew the situation well knew perfectly well that the Eleventh Prince had always been sickly. Even “recovered” simply meant he could manage a few steps without gasping for breath.
If something went wrong along the way while traveling, whose fault would that be?
Even the emperor had waived the requirement for the Eleventh Prince to pay his respects, so naturally no one else would insist on it either, risking his displeasure. His own birth mother, Consort Yi, had also said to just have him return to the palace directly, leaving nothing more for anyone else to say.
In fact, everyone was rather curious about this secondary consort of the Eleventh Prince. After all, news traveled fast in the palace, and no one had ever actually seen a little bride brought in to counter bad luck before. There’d be plenty of time ahead, if they missed seeing her this time, surely there’d be another chance.
When Yin Cheng had first arrived at the pox-avoidance quarters, it had been one carriage for people, one carriage for belongings, a rather bare, quiet little procession. Now, returning to the palace, the carriage for people, with the addition of one secondary consort, was more than adequate.
As for belongings, though, there was no way all twenty-six baskets could be brought into the palace. At the palace gate, even with the Eleventh Prince himself stepping in, these things would surely be turned back.
Zhao Xiaojin felt a bit gloomy about it, but there was nothing to be done. She could only bring the two baskets with the healthiest-looking sprouts into the palace, leaving the rest in the care of the pox-avoidance quarters, with word to be sent in the moment there was any news.
On the way back, the carriage went straight around the moat toward the Gate of Divine Might, since the Eastern Five Houses lay just east of that gate, going around from outside was more convenient than entering through the West Prosperity Gate and passing through gate after gate inside.
After leaving the pox-avoidance quarters, Zhao Xiaojin fell rather quiet. Leaving the potato baskets behind was one thing, but more than that, watching the passersby and buildings sweep past outside, she couldn’t find a single trace of familiarity in any of it.
The most familiar thing was the Forbidden City glimpsed across the moat. She’d always wanted to visit before, but her mom and dad never had the time.
Now she was about to walk right inside it, and yet she found herself afraid that the Forbidden City she knew might not be the same place at all.
“Don’t be afraid, I’ll always look out for you.” Seeing the unconscious flicker of timidity cross his secondary consort’s face, Yin Cheng couldn’t help but speak up.
She’d only just grown used to the pox-avoidance quarters, and now had to change places again, it was only natural she’d feel afraid.
“Mm.” For now, Zhao Xiaojin could only put her trust in the little monk.