As we move south, the days get warmer. We’re coming to the close of the fifth lunar month, and each hour brings increased heat and humidity. To find relief, our little party sits outside under a canopy and watches clouds scud across the sky. The slightly cooler air—and the changes in the landscape—are healing for my friend, though she still struggles with fatigue and listlessness. Often, after dinner, we return to the deck, where the boatmen silently pole or row us through the water. But on some nights, after my traveling companions fall asleep, I employ the tiller woman to help me go through my imperial gifts. I reallocate many of the items—textiles, home furnishings, and basic foodstuffs—into several large trunks and arrange with the tiller woman to have them sent to Meiling’s home upon our arrival. I’m not sure how my friend will feel about this, but I hope these things will serve as tangible—and very visible—proof to her neighbors and would-be patients of the success she achieved in the capital. No one needs to know the truth of what happened, and, fortunately, they’ll have no way to find out. Nor will they understand that the gifts she received are paltry compared to what, in my opinion, was due her for delivering the next emperor.
We know we’ve entered our province when we begin to spot orchards of oranges, pomelos, longans, and lychees. Other riches reveal themselves: ducks, geese, and pigs; stands of pines and bamboo; fields of rice, rapeseed, and other crops; mulberry leaves being plucked to feed silkworms; the smells of fish being dried in the open air and pots of rice steaming. When we’re two days from Wuxi, our boat stops so a messenger can run ahead to let our families know we’ll reach home shortly.
On the morning of our arrival, I rise early and step outside. The heavens appear as a low, glowing blanket of humidity. The hours ahead will be hot and miserable. I feed my son, eat a simple breakfast, bathe, and dress for my husband, not knowing if he’ll be in residence in the Garden of Fragrant Delights, in Nanjing, or traveling. From one of the trunks filled with my gifts of gratitude, I put on a rose-pink dress over a pleated white skirt that does much to hide that I recently had a baby. Over this, I wear a black satin sleeveless jacket. My ensemble may not send the message of longing for the bedchamber, but it will tell my husband and his family I was successful in their ambitions for connections and rewards.
Men tie the boat to Wuxi’s main dock. I had hoped to see my husband waiting for me. That he is not here to greet me and meet our son is a disappointment. Beside me, Meiling stretches her neck like a roosting goose looking for her gander. Not finding her husband, she appears hurt and confused. Three palanquins and several wagons, however, have been sent for our transportation. While the mood on the dock is more subdued and the activity far from being as bustling as I remember, plenty of men hop on and off the boat, yelling orders, hefting trunks. All of this makes our farewells feel hurried. Miss Zhao gets into her palanquin, the bearers hoist it, and in seconds she’s on her way to my grandparents’ home. I hold Meiling close.
“You’re so lovely that you shame the flowers,” I say. I mean it. Somehow the hardships she’s endured have left her as beautiful and ethereal as a fairy in a dream. “Your husband will be happy to see you. Do you think your house is finished?”
“I’ll go wherever the bearers take me. Whether it is to the tea shop or to our new home remains a surprise.” She sounds wistful and uncertain when she asks, “Will you come see me?”
“As soon as I can. I promise.”
Then she too is gone. All the sorrows of the world arise from parting, whether in life or by death.
I stay on the dock until the last of the cargo is unloaded and put on the wagons to be taken to their respective destinations. “When you reach the Garden of Fragrant Delights, take the trunks with my wardrobe and medicines to my bedchamber,” I instruct the men as sweat trickles down the backs of my legs. “The rest is to be overseen by Lady Kuo.”
I say thank you and goodbye to the tiller woman and then get into the palanquin with my baby. Poppy runs alongside us, as usual. I’m anxious to introduce Lian to my husband, and I’m ready for whatever form my confrontation with Doctor Wong will take, but another part of me senses something is wrong. I hear no merchants boasting about the attributes of their wares, no men shouting at each other to get out of the way, and no women calling above the street noises for their children to come home. Only the soft padding of the bearers’ footfalls comes to me through the palanquin’s walls. Indeed, arriving at the Garden of Fragrant Delights is not at all what I expect.
A Sapling in a Typhoon
No guards stand at the gate to greet me. I carry my son over the threshold and into eerie quiet. Not even the sounds of the women who sing at their looms reach us. I swiftly glide from the first to the second courtyard and keep moving. In the Courtyard of Whispering Willows, I find two men at the entrance to the garden for which the house is named. They draw back as I approach.
“Come no closer,” one of them says.
“Her face is clear,” the other man observes. Then to me, he orders, “Show us your arms.”
With those words, my heart sinks. “Is it heavenly flowers disease?” I ask.
Silence gives me the answer. Ailan… My baby… Neither has been visited by the smallpox-planting master.
“Are the ill in the garden?” I ask.
“They’ve been put in the Hermitage,” the first man answers. “We’re here to keep anyone from leaving the garden.”
“How many are inside?” I ask, gesturing with my head to the barred gate behind them. My breath is so ragged that each word comes out frayed and uneven. “Are there children? Any girls?”
The two men exchange glances. I’m not sure what this means. Maybe no one’s been counting… Maybe there are too many to count…
My next question is the most important because the answer will tell me what has already happened and what is still to come. “How long has the pestilence been in residence?”
“The first cases appeared two weeks ago,” one of the men answers, which means the worst effects of the disease have arrived.
I try to slow my racing heart. “Is my husband here?”
“Young Master Yang is in Nanjing.”
Relief. He’s safe, but then I’m drawn back into the frightening reality. I’m not brave enough… I’m not knowledgeable enough… I put three fingers over my lips. Tap, tap, tap. The motion is calming, while at the same time the pattern echoes the calculations I’m making—like moving the pieces on an abacus to arrive at a solution. I must protect my son… I must find my daughters… Tap, tap, tap.
I turn to Poppy. She is white with fear. I try to reassure her. “You have nothing to worry about. You already survived smallpox, as did I.” She slowly nods, but I’m not sure she believes me. “Follow me.”
I hurry to my chambers. Once inside, I give the baby to Poppy, who mutely stares at me.
“Keep him here,” I tell her. “Do not leave for any reason, and do not let anyone in.”
I exit the room, pull the door closed, and wait until I hear Poppy clamp the lock into place. I stay alert, placing each foot carefully in front of the last, not wanting to fall in my haste. When I reach my daughters’ room, I try the handle. The door is locked, which I take to be a good sign. I knock and call to my eldest daughter in a low voice, “Yuelan.”
I hear movement inside. Then close, so close, just on the other side of the door, Yuelan says, “Mama.”
“Are you well?”
“Chunlan and I are fine, but Ailan…” Yuelan starts to cry. “We put her outside when the fever came. Someone took her to the garden.”
With that, as filled with doubts as I am, I know what I must do. First, though, I try to bolster my daughters’ spirits for whatever might come next.
“You did everything correctly,” I say. “I’m proud to have you as my children. Don’t ever forget that.”
The wrenching sounds of my two oldest girls weeping follows me down the corridor back to my bedchamber. Poppy unbolts the door and lets me in. I hurriedly scan my shelves, putting whatever herbs I think will be useful into satchels. When I tell her what I’m going to do, she starts to cry big, gulping sobs. I’m working hard to tamp down my own fear and have neither the time nor the will to comfort her. Poppy puts my satchels in the corridor, I take Lian in my arms, and together we go to my mother-in-law’s room. I’m afraid that if I slow for even one second my insecurities will put up a blockade across which I won’t be able to pass.
My mother-in-law’s door is locked, but I hear her familiar keeck, keeck. She’s alive.
“Lady Kuo,” I call. “Lady Kuo.”
Just as it was with my daughters, I hear movement inside.
“Yunxian?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
She doesn’t open the door.
“Many are sick.” The way these three words roll from Lady Kuo’s mouth tells me she’s been drinking. “At first, we thought the children were simply suffering from childhood Fright.”
This is a common mistake in the diagnosis of smallpox. The symptoms of Fright can range from fretfulness to crying, from refusing to nurse to turning away from or not keeping down food, from fever to convulsions, all of which can make their presence known long before the heavenly flowers pustules of smallpox erupt.
“Is Doctor Wong in the garden?” I ask.
For the first time, my mother-in-law says something critical of him. “He showed himself to be too much of a coward to enter.” Then, “Yunxian, can you help?”
No cure exists for smallpox—either people live or they don’t—but I promise to do what I can. I ask a few more questions, while trying not to reveal my trepidation. I have some requests, the first of which is that Lady Kuo must find a wet nurse who either received variolation as a child or survived smallpox to feed my son.