Raven of the Inner Palace Vol. 1, page 3
The two court ladies turned around, surprised.
“Who on earth are you?” the girl in the blue ruqun asked in a tizzy.
“I’m a simple court lady, as you can see by my dress,” Jusetsu replied, puffing her chest out with pride. “That girl does not want to help you. Are you incapable of doing your own chores?”
The girl in blue looked Jusetsu up and down suspiciously.
“Why would I do something that I could get someone else to do for me? I don’t need you to order me around,” said the girl, before unexpectedly backing down with the curt comment, “Never mind. I’ll let this one go.”
Jusetsu was disappointed with how the conflict fizzled out, but the girl in blue simply ignored the girl in light yellow and walked away, seeming to have already lost interest.
The girl in light yellow let out a sigh of relief.
“Umm… Thank you,” she said to Jusetsu. Her voice was as quiet as a little bird.
She had quite a pretty face. Daughters of high-ranking officials and girls from respected families were often selected to become concubines and court ladies, but others were chosen for their appearance. This girl likely fell into the latter category.
“She’s always giving me unreasonable requests like that, so I was in quite a pickle… But my family runs a rice cake shop and her father is an assistant in the trade committee, so I couldn’t afford to refuse.”
The trade committee was the authority in charge of the market, but it seemed wholly unlikely that one of their assistants would be able to destroy a rice cake shop just by picking faults with it.
“She was one of the palace catalogers, was she not? Does she normally come all this way to request these unceremonious tasks of you?”
Court ladies that worked as kitchen staff and cleaners worked everywhere, with a number of them assigned to each palace. However, the palace catalogers worked at the archives in the inner palace, which was some distance from the Hien Palace.
“It’s not me she comes here for. I think there’s a eunuch here that she exchanges letters with.”
“Oh…”
It wasn’t unheard of for court ladies to be on intimate terms with eunuchs, but Jusetsu couldn’t understand why she couldn’t have stuck to giving him the letter and left the poor girl alone. Perhaps she just couldn’t resist bullying her while she was in the vicinity.
The girl in the light yellow ruqun took another close look at Jusetsu’s face.
“So, which palace do you work for? We haven’t met, have we? You look like you work in the kitchens, but I don’t think I recognize you.”
There was an enormous number of court ladies around, so it wasn’t unusual to come across an unfamiliar face. Jusetsu thought about giving the name of a random palace, but if the girl had friends there, she’d be in trouble. With this being the case, she simply replied, “The Yamei Palace.”
“What? Are you the Raven Consort?! I’ve heard that there aren’t any court ladies there.”
“Why wouldn’t there be?” said Jusetsu.
The girl was right—there weren’t—but a palace without any was almost unheard of, so she took Jusetsu’s word for it.
“What’s the Raven Consort like, though? Is it true that she’s just a young girl?”
“She is sixteen years of age.”
“Really? That’s so young!” commented the girl, seeming surprised. “Is it true that she has mystical powers? Can she predict the weather? And can she really predict who’s going to die?”
Jusetsu expected her to be a quiet girl, but she was surprisingly talkative. She reminded her of a skylark, chirping at the top of its lungs. Jusetsu kept quiet, and before long, the girl suddenly clasped her hands against her mouth.
“Don’t tell me…that you’re not allowed to talk about her?” she asked nervously.
It’d be a nuisance to explain otherwise, so Jusetsu simply nodded.
The girl nodded back at her repeatedly, then changed the subject.
“Still, you’re too pretty to be a court lady. You’re beautiful! What’s your name? I’m Jiujiu.” That was a common name out in the city.
“I am known by the name Jusetsu,” the Raven Consort said.
“You have a funny way of talking, Jusetsu. Not even the concubines talk in that stuffy, old-fashioned way these days.”
“…Don’t they?”
All this time, Jusetsu had been convinced that all upper-class people spoke like that. Having had a rough city upbringing, the previous Raven Consort had been the one to teach her this way of speaking. Her mentor had come from a distinguished family, but Jusetsu didn’t realize that her speech would be so old-fashioned due to her advanced age.
Then, perhaps out of concern for Jusetsu—who was looking shocked—Jiujiu hastily cleared things up.
“But I think it suits you! Yeah. I mean, you’ve got that ethereal beauty thing going on. And you must have had a good upbringing, right?”
Jusetsu silently shook her head.
“Really? Well, you must have been chosen for your looks, then. I’m sure you’re the prettiest of all the court ladies. It’s a real waste,” said Jiujiu. “There are even some concubines who’ve never been called on, so there’s no way a court lady could become a royal mistress.”
Jiujiu let out a resigned laugh. Now that she’d come to the imperial estate, she would have to stay here for the rest of her life. Things might have been okay if she had the emperor’s favor, but that was just a pipe dream for a court lady.
“I wouldn’t want the emperor to summon me, anyway.”
Jusetsu frowned as she remembered his sly, emotionless expression. Jiujiu blinked at her in surprise.
“You’re an unusual one, Jusetsu,” she replied, but the moment she finished speaking, a voice came from the back entrance to the palace.
“Jiujiu! Are you there? What are you slacking off for?”
“Coming!” Jiujiu responded, flustered. She then turned to Jusetsu and added, “See you later, then. And thanks for earlier.”
However, when Jiujiu set off toward the door, Jusetsu started following behind her.
“Huh? What’s up?” Jiujiu asked.
“I am going to help you with your work.”
“What? Don’t you have your own jobs to do?”
“I’m unoccupied for the moment,” Jusetsu said.
Jusetsu hadn’t made this suggestion out of kindness, though—she just thought she might be able to gather some information while she was helping out.
Jiujiu seemed skeptical, but she brushed it off by reminding herself that the Yamei Palace was no ordinary palace.
They stepped inside the spacious kitchen. Several large stoves were positioned along the wall. A number of servant girls were in front of them, lighting them up. Lucky charms dedicated to the god of ovens were stuck to the wall behind the stoves alongside hanging scrolls featuring couplets designed to ward off bad luck. The same was true for the Yamei Palace, but the customs in the concubines’ kitchen didn’t seem much different from those in the city.
Large jars stood lined up in a row along the opposite wall. At the long desk in the center, the kitchen ladies were mashing sesame seeds with wooden pestles and sifting the loose seed dust with a colander.
“Has breakfast not been served yet?” Jusetsu asked.
“Of course it has. We’re preparing dinner,” Jiujiu replied.
This came as a surprise to Jusetsu. This early in the morning? she thought. That would have been unthinkable in the Yamei Palace, where it was just Jusetsu and her maidservant.
“Hey, you can’t go bringing a court lady from another palace here!”
As critical as the other court ladies were, Jiujiu stuck up for herself. “But she’s my friend. And she wanted to help us.” She took Jusetsu by the hand and led her into the corner to a rice mortar containing some roots that had been tossed inside.
“Why don’t you do some hulling for us?” Jiujiu suggested, passing Jusetsu the pestle.
“How do you do that?”
“You soak them in water once they’ve been ground up, let them dry, and then turn them into grains. Bracken grains.”
I see, Jusetsu thought to herself as she began striking at the bracken roots. There was another mortar beside her, so Jiujiu went over to it and began moving her pestle in the same way. The satisfying sound of their pestles crashing against the hard surfaces echoed monotonously around the room.
“Did you come to the palace after the current emperor came to power?” Jusetsu asked.
“Yeah. I’ve been here for a year.”
“In that case, I doubt you know anything about the previous emperor and the one before that, do you?”
“I haven’t had any direct experience with them, but I’ve heard plenty of stories from court ladies who’ve been here for years. They’re all about the previous emperor, though—anything beyond that is ancient history.”
Jusetsu almost stopped moving the pestle, disrupting the sound it was making. “What do you mean by plenty of stories?”
“Well, this is the inner palace we’re talking about, so as you’d expect, things happen. Stuff was particularly crazy when the previous emperor was around—with the empress and everything…” Jiujiu took a quick look around, then lowered her voice.
“The empress?”
“The current empress dowager. She’s in confinement now.”
“Confinement?!”
“Shh!” hushed Jiujiu, chiding Jusetsu for speaking so loudly. “We’ll get punished if we talk about it in the open. Don’t you know what happened to her, Jusetsu? The empress dowager.”
“I don’t,” Jusetsu replied, but she could tell by Jiujiu’s face that she didn’t believe her.
“But you must have heard that the current emperor once had his position as heir taken away from him, right?”
Jusetsu shook her head, and Jiujiu’s eyes grew even wider. Her expression reminded Jusetsu of the skylark that would perch on the window grate back at her palace. This girl really did resemble a bird.
“Our emperor has had a really hard time of things. This is just a rumor, but they say the empress dowager murdered the emperor’s real mother. That’s why the emperor lost his position as heir, even though he was a crown prince.”
Apparently, Koshun had been forced into a corner of the inner court, almost as if he were imprisoned himself.
“But the emperor didn’t give up—he gathered his strength and roused himself to action. He got the northern imperial defense army on his side since it’s their job to protect the emperor and his family, and they defeated the officials and eunuchs who had been pandering to the empress dowager…”
Jiujiu told the story as if she saw it unfold with her own eyes. According to Jiujiu, this was the talk of the town. Jusetsu had no idea. She had heard that there was some dispute over who would be the emperor’s successor, but nothing past that. The previous Raven Consort never went into any more detail about it either.
“The emperor’s real mother was called Sha, and she was a really beautiful woman. I hear that the emperor inherited her good genes, but I wouldn’t know—I’ve never seen him with my own eyes.”
Jiujiu blushed as her imagination went wild. Jusetsu wanted to tell her what an insipid young man the emperor was, but she held her tongue.
“She lived in the Hakkaku Palace. Being the fourth consort, she ranked pretty low among her peers, you see.”
There were differences in rank even among the emperor’s consorts. The Hakkaku Palace wasn’t a particularly big one either. The consort who was assigned to that palace was known as the Crane Consort—taken from the palace’s name as it was written using the character for “crane”—but she was also only the fourth most important consort overall. She may have been the crown prince’s biological mother, but her rank meant she was either low in status or lacked backing from anyone important.
“You said many things happened in the inner palace during the previous emperor’s reign. What did you mean by that?” Jusetsu asked, going back to the topic at hand.
“So like, you know, the empress dowager murdered his birth mother, made the consort who was carrying the emperor’s child have a miscarriage, cut off the tongues of the court ladies she didn’t like, and so on and so forth… One consort got executed for having an illicit affair, another was poisoned by a fellow consort… The consort who administered the poison ended up hanging herself, and…”
“Wait,” ordered Jusetsu, interrupting Jiujiu’s flow.
Jiujiu gave her a blank look. “What is it?”
“Did you say there was a consort who hung herself?”
“That’s what I heard. She was found hanging from a beam in her room with a silk shawl around her neck…” Jiujiu’s cute face scrunched up as she said that.
“What was her name? That consort. What was she called?”
“Huh? Hmm… I don’t remember.”
“Would the court lady who told you that story know?”
“Yeah, I guess so… Hey, wait!”
Jusetsu cast away her pestle, grabbed Jiujiu by the hand, and headed toward the door.
“Take me to her.”
“But what about work?!” Jiujiu protested.
“That can wait.”
Jusetsu bolted out of the kitchen with Jiujiu in tow, who followed in apparent resignation. Apparently, that court lady was one of the palace textile dyers, so she’d probably be in the washing area. Jusetsu just needed Jiujiu to take her there.
They went around to the back of the building where the court ladies lived and reached an area where a variety of fabrics were hanging up to dry. They could also see some court ladies standing next to a well, washing textiles in washbowls.
Jiujiu called out to one of them. “Gugu!”
That was a respectful way of addressing an older court lady. A woman in her forties turned around. Her wrinkles stood out on her sunburned skin, but she still had a beautiful face. It was no wonder that she’d been chosen as a court lady.
“Did you need something?”
“This girl wants to ask you something—about the consort who hung herself.”
The woman gave Jiujiu a skeptical look. “Now? I don’t mind, but I am busy, so you’ll have to lend me a hand while we talk.”
She instructed Jusetsu to wash the wet clothes, and the Raven Consort followed along obediently. The older woman got Jiujiu embroiled in helping out too.
“What’s your name? Jusetsu? Hmm. Well, I’m Ashu,” she explained as she carried on with her duties, “All the new court ladies want to hear about things like this. They just can’t get enough of my spooky stories or juicy romantic gossip.”
She had looked unfriendly—or even a little angry—but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“After all, there’s not much else in the way of entertainment around here. Anyway, that woman who died by hanging was named Han. She was one of the warbler ladies. I’ve forgotten what her position was now, though.”
The warbler ladies were lower-ranking concubines, referred to with “Ojo” as their title. How many of them could there be?
“Han Ojo was a slightly fragile-looking beauty. She wasn’t the type that stood out. She used to live in the third consort’s palace.”
Only the highest-ranking concubines were given their own palaces. Lower-ranking ones just had a room in one of the palace buildings. The third consort was gifted the Jakuso Palace and was bestowed with the title of Magpie Consort. This appellation too included the same character for magpie that was present in the palace’s name. The title of empress, incidentally, was the highest rank of them all.
“I wonder what that consort’s name was… The Magpie Consort was young and beautiful, and to top it off, she was the daughter of the emperor’s chief vassal. Being so young, she was ignorant of how the world worked. People said that made her a very arrogant and impudent girl. However, one day, she was given some poisoned broth and passed away. She was pregnant at the time, so the palace investigators did some serious research into what went on. As it turned out, Han, the warbler lady, had some wolf’s bane in her bedroom cupboard.”
Wolf’s bane was a poisonous plant that contained a deadly poison in its roots.
“The day they found it, Han Ojo hung herself. She was found in her room, dangling from a beam by her own silk shawl.”
Then Ashu lowered her voice.
“Not long after, rumors started circulating that she’d come back as a ghost. You could apparently hear her weeping as she walked, trailing her skirt behind her with her long hair down.”
Jiujiu let out a fearful squeal. “Not this again, Gugu! You’re just trying to scare her now. Plus, I bet you made that last bit up.”
“You’d be surprised, Jiujiu. Some of us have seen her with our own eyes!”
“That warbler lady, Han… Did she wear earrings?” Jusetsu interrupted.
“Earrings?”
“Jade earrings, specifically.”
Ashu tilted her head to one side. “I don’t know about that. I only saw her once or twice myself. I never spoke to her directly.”
“…Should you really be making up rumors about someone you’ve never even spoken to, just for the fun of it?”
“Excuse me?”
I suppose death is just another form of entertainment in the inner palace, Jusetsu thought, shaking her head. “Never mind. What happened to Han’s lady-in-waiting? How about her maid? Are they still in the inner palace?”
Ashu seemed a little taken aback by Jusetsu’s barrage of questions but responded anyway. “Probably…but I have no idea where they work. This is a huge place, you know.”
Jusetsu felt disheartened. She was certain that Han’s lady-in-waiting or her maid would know whether she wore jade earrings, but for now, she had no conclusive evidence that the ghost was really Han Ojo.
“Do you know if there has been anyone else who hung themselves or was strangled to death?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I have a feeling that there was. You know the emperor’s biological mother, Consort Sha, was poisoned as well, don’t you? There was a consort who was beheaded in prison too. Poisoning is the most common, though. There are food testers, but things still slip through the cracks.”
