for a few minutes, only to have it snatched from her arms and put to death.
At first it had been a great relief not to see Ke Loo except for a few minutes each day, and she was certainly grateful that he had foregone his nightly assaults on her. She reveled in her privacy.
She soon decided, however, that privacy could be a curse as well as a blessing, for excepting the amah and the women servants who came in and out to care for her needs, and who only giggled and averted their eyes when she tried to make conversation with them, she saw no one. Chinese women, especially wives of noblemen, lived in a purdah as complete as that of a princess in a Turkish harem.
Summer became winter, with scarcely a day of autumn, or so it seemed to Lydia. The last caravans had made their noisy way through and a relative serenity settled upon the isolated city. The winds blowing from the desert swept across the garden, leaving a fine sifting of sand on everything. The trees were barren, the earth had turned brown, and the ornamental pools lay as still and black as sheets of polished marble.
She was lonely and bored. She closed her mind to memories of her parents, and the life she had once known. She would not dwell upon such things, nor upon the repugnance she felt for the man who was now her husband. That way lay madness and she could not undo what had been done. She had made up her mind, lying with Ke Loo in one of those inns, that her only hope to survive, and to retain her sanity, was to take each day as it came. The yesterdays were gone, and tomorrow too far away to do her any good.
Still, she longed for conversation in her own language with her own kind of people. She would happily have worked in the palace, but she quickly learned that this was unheard of for the wife of a Chinese prince. The long nails that she had observed on aristocratic Chinese women, often covered with elaborate nail guards, were a visible symbol of their wealth and leisure, for anyone could see at a glance that they did not have to lift a hand in any sort of labor. For her to be seen at household work would cause Ke Loo to lose face, and to a Chinese, losing face was the worst thing that could happen.
“But what do these women do with their time?” Lydia demanded of the amah.
“Time is a luxury,” the amah said.
“Well, I can’t just sit all day contemplating the mountains,” Lydia said, indicating the snow-capped range that could be seen from the garden.
The amah only smiled. She had concluded very quickly that the foreign woman was peculiar. They were, she had been told, a primitive people.
To fill her time, Lydia worked to improve her knowledge of the Chinese language, and even the amah was pleased at how quickly she learned.
Even this left her with time on her hands, however, and she often paced restlessly from one of the palace’s many gardens to the next. At the amah’s suggestion, she attempted to learn the intricate embroidery with which many of the women entertained themselves, but she soon found that she had no aptitude for such work, and she grew tired of constantly pricking her fingers.
It was while strolling through the gardens that Lydia one day came upon one of the servant women kneeling at a low table. She had spread before her an array of dishes and containers, and she was carefully measuring ingredients from one to another. She might have been preparing a recipe, except that she was far from the kitchen.
To Lydia’s further puzzlement, the servant shook one of the rose bushes close at hand, sending a shower of petals to the ground; she then collected the fallen petals putting them into one of the containers. When she saw Lydia, however, she paused in her efforts and made a low obeisance.
“What are you making?” Lydia asked.
Smiling shyly, the woman handed her a small vial. Thinking she was to taste its contents, Lydia raised it to her lips, which earned her a startled look and a giggle.
“No, no, this,” the woman said; taking the vial, she brought it to her nose and sniffed deeply, then handed it once again to Lydia.
It was perfume. Lydia was reminded at once of Peter MacNair and the cosmetics he had been collecting to take back to America with him. She knew that Chinese women used a great many such things; even the servant women here in the palace whitened their faces with powder. She had been curious, but this was the first time she had actually seen their manufacture.
She looked down at the table at which the woman was working and saw that various containers held a variety of such items. There was the white face powder, made, she had been told, from rice, and a satiny cream that smelled of almond blossoms, and yet another vial in which she could see flower petals floating.
“Will you teach me to make these?” she asked.
The servant giggled again, until she saw that the foreigner was indeed serious; properly chastened, she nodded in mute compliance.
* * * * * * *
Lydia was grateful at last to have a hobby to occupy her time, and one which would not cause Ke Loo to lose face, for the making of lotions and perfumes was one of the few pastimes practiced by women of the aristocratic class. It was an ancient art, and though there were certain basic procedures and ingredients, each woman had her own secret formulas, which were jealously guarded, and often handed down as treasures from mother to daughter. The royal perfume maker, she was told, was one of the most favored in the Empress’s retinue, but one hapless maid had been put to death for merely mentioning the name of one of the secret ingredients.
As her pregnancy advanced, Lydia found herself more and more absorbed in creating her own special scents and creams. The gardens of the palace were filled with myriad blossoms, each of which could be used for a scent, or blended with others in infinite variations.
Her hours were now filled with the scents of almond and myrrh, lemon and tangerine, patchouli and sandalwood. With the first tentative approach of spring came new blossoms and new variations.
And with spring, too, came her child. The warm fragrant breezes of April were wafting through her little house when she felt the first of the pains.
“Send to my husband to say that my time has come,” she directed the nurse, putting aside a perfume that she had been blending. “And then fetch the midwife.”
For a brief moment she allowed herself the luxury of wishing for her mother. How comforting it would be to have her here now, to hold her hand and listen to her reassuring voice. It was the first time she had thought of her parents in weeks.
“I mustn’t dwell on such things,” she thought, stubbornly thrusting the thought from her.
* * * * * * *
Her labor was prolonged and severe. It was as if her child well knew what difficult circumstances awaited, and resisted being thrust into so harsh a world.
It was done at last. Lydia lay in a semi-stupor induced by some drug the midwife had given her, and heard the first angry cries. She opened her eyes, willing away the effects of the drug.
“Bring him to me,” she said, struggling to lift her head from the pillow.
The midwife and the amah exchanged glances. Lydia’s heart skipped a beat.
“What is it?” she asked, fear making her voice shrill. “Is something wrong with him?”
The amah bent over the bed to wipe her brow with a wet cloth. “You must rest,” she said.
Lydia
