“A grandson!” she exclaims. The door opens. Even in these most calamitous of circumstances, she can rejoice at the good news. She’s somewhat unsteady, but not so much that I can’t leave my son with her. I have to trust she’ll do everything possible to keep him fed, safe, and well.
“It is my husband’s right to name our son,” I say, “but please let Maoren know I call the baby Lian.”
I put my lips to his forehead. If I see him before this scourge is over, then I’ll probably lose him forever. Fetal poison is still fresh in him, making him too young to survive should the malevolent miasma of the disease reach him.
Lady Kuo carefully takes Lian from my arms. Here at last is the grandson she’s been waiting for. She puts a hand on my sleeve and says, “Manzi is in the garden. Please save him.”
I understand she loves Manzi as her second son. She’s doted on him his entire life and has without doubt spent more time with him these past fourteen years than with her own birth son, my husband. Her affection for the boy has been reflected in the bride-price gifts that have been sent to the salt merchant’s family for their daughter and in the plans that are already under way for a marriage celebration two years from now that will rival my own.
“I’ll do all I can,” I promise her.
Could there be anything harder in the cosmos than turning my back on my mother-in-law, son, and servant? My heart pounds in my chest and my breasts ache, but I retrace my steps, pick up the satchels, and go to the entrance to the Garden of Fragrant Delights. The two guards let me pass, and in moments I’m surrounded by the beauty and tranquility of plants and rockeries. I make my way along the pebble paths to the Hermitage, where I see bundles on the terrace. Only as I cross the zigzag bridge do I realize these lumps are people, which means that the interior of the Hermitage must already be full.
Stepping onto the terrace, I get my first glimpse of the scourge. In my mind I thought it might look like any other rash—in patches, red, maybe flaking or oozing—but I was wrong. We call smallpox tian hua—heavenly flowers—but it’s also considered a dou—bean—rash, because the eruptions look and feel like hard beans under the surface of the skin. Very hard beans.
I must find my daughter.
As I walk past each person, I let my eyes travel over exposed skin. Some of the ill have only a few beans, but others have beans on beans, covering every inch of flesh. I cross the threshold into the Hermitage. My hand covers my mouth and nose. The stench is dreadful. Like anything in nature, the bean must grow, sprout, and open, only instead of blossoming into a flower or producing ripe fruit, this bean ultimately bursts to release the poison inside. Those before me have entered this stage of the disease. Now they will either die like my brothers did or survive as I did. If they survive, some will be scarred beyond recognition. They might have marriage contracts canceled. If they are servants, they might be dismissed. The lucky will end up like me, with only a few pockmarks to show the world of their inner fortitude.
“Mama.”
I spin in a circle, looking for the source of the voice. In a corner, two women sit with their backs against the wall. One of them lifts a hand and motions to me. I step over people lying on mats haphazardly spread across the floor. Nearing the two women, I see that one holds a baby. Her face is so covered with beans that I don’t recognize her. Her clothes are decorative and lovely enough that I conclude she must be a concubine. The other woman is similarly dressed. She sits with what appear to be bundled children on either side of her.
As I approach, the second woman says, “It is I, Miss Chen.” I’m startled by how much weight she’s lost since I last saw her. It’s as if her body has been transported back in time to when she first attracted Master Yang’s eye, which only emphasizes the few beans that dot her face. Miss Chen places her hands on the mounds nestled against her. “My son, Manzi, and his first sister.” It’s been years since the boy left the inner chambers and I’ve seen him up close, yet I’m struck by how little he looks like his father or his half brother. His cheeks are angular, while their faces are as exquisitely round as the full moon. Even under the coverlet, I can see the broadness in Manzi’s shoulders, while my father-in-law and husband both have the carriage and build of men whose work is more of the mind than of the body.
Miss Chen clears her throat to get my attention. She tips her head in the direction of the other woman. “Snowpink and her son.”
So my husband now has two sons. I can’t help but wonder which one is the older and what fights over the order of succession lie ahead of us. I dismiss this from my mind, for it can’t matter right now.
“My daughter? Have you seen her?”
Miss Chen reaches over the child on her left to touch the next mound. “Ailan is here with me.”
I step around and over more of the sick until I reach Miss Chen’s side and the mound she’s pointed out. Two eyes peer up at me.
“Mama…”
I drop to my knees, lift strands of hair from Ailan’s face with a fingertip, and tuck them behind her ear. The beans on her face are too many to count. Later I’ll examine her body, but for now, I say, “Don’t be afraid. I am here, and I will take care of you.”
The smallest of smiles lifts the corners of Ailan’s lips, while voices plead from every direction in response to my words.
* * *
Snowpink’s son—only ten days old—returns to nothingness on my first night in the Hermitage. My husband’s concubine dies three days later. During that same period, four children, whose mothers didn’t invite the smallpox-planting master to do variolation or for whom the process didn’t give them enough protection, lapse into delirium and drift away in the night. One is a girl; three are boys. Of the boys, two had already left their mothers’ sides in the inner chambers and were studying with tutors in the family school. I learn from Miss Chen of others who died before I came home, including her two youngest daughters, one of whom was seven and the other who had recently turned four and was getting ready to have her feet bound. Her second daughter has yet to be touched by the disease.
Miss Chen keeps her body as still as a statue and her voice even when she tells me all this. “There will be time to mourn those I lost,” she says. “But now I must do everything possible to save Manzi and Fourth Daughter.”
Her son, Manzi, I know. But Fourth Daughter? I raise my eyebrows in question.
“Lady Kuo has three daughters with Master Yang,” Miss Chen explains. “I have four daughters with him. This one is my first, making her Master Yang’s fourth daughter.” The clouds in her eyes tell me she’s used this tactic to help secure her daughters’ positions. She turns away, embarrassed perhaps.
There are so many children, each one in a different stage of the disease. Initial fever and vomiting. Sores in the mouth and nose. When those pustules break, the disease flowers down the neck and arms and onto the torso. A few children have reached the point of scabbing, but they’ll remain infectious until scars form. In some cases, I do not have the time or a chance to learn a child’s name. Late at night, after I’ve made a round of the Hermitage to visit each patient, I stretch out a mat on the terrace and try to lose myself in the stars. Sometimes the keening and wailing of brokenhearted mothers reaches over the wall of the garden to overwhelm us all with added misery and dread. In these moments, I wish I could hold my son.
I fight my feelings of powerlessness by staying busy. I prepare Live Pulse Infusion. The ingredients boost the qi, especially in those who have lost vitality through fever sweats. I create ointments and salves using soap bean, one of the fifty most important ingredients in Chinese medicine, which I remember Grandmother using to treat carbuncles and other skin problems. I attend to ruptured and suppurating pustules as I might try to heal scrofula nodes or tumors hardened by cancer by burning mugwort cones on the skin. I recall the case of a woman with a fiery rash that I wrote about in my notebook. I treated her—successfully—with Decoction of Four Ingredients and Decoction of Two Aged Ingredients. I try it on a few patients, and it seems to slow the eruption of new pustules and reduce suffering. But everywhere I look I see Fright in children’s eyes and hear it in the whimpering calls to their mothers. The light of life quickly dims in adults, who, petrified and panicked, often give up too quickly. The babies, of course, don’t understand what’s happening to them, which is a mercy. With each passing hour and day—and with every dead body that must be shrouded in cloth and moved to the back gate—I have to accept that, ultimately, I’m failing. Still, I try.