“It must be the incense sticks,” I said hastily, trying to get some distance between me and the arguably large and aggressively gnarling dog, “I… I used a new kind of incense stick today. It must be irritating his smell.”

The young maid looked back and forth between me and the dog, but didn’t argue. Instead she reached into her pocket to take out a treat, that she waved in front of the beast’s face to distract it from me.

“I’ll put him to bed then, milady,” said the maid and I nodded vehemently.

To my relief the maid easily led the dog away from me and over to a large satin cushion. Meanwhile I had the chance to get familiar with what I assumed had to be Chu Hua’s private quarters: The main room was fairly large, but small compared to the humongous halls that we had passed through earlier. The floor and the walls were made of smooth dark-red wood and both were largely covered in luxurious patterned carpets and curtains. Besides the dog’s sleeping cushion, there were several drawers, low tables and numerous human-sized seat cushions spread out through the room. At the end of the room – opposite to the entrance door – was a half-open sliding door, behind which I could spy the grassy beginnings of another garden. To one side of my room were two additional sliding doors – both of which stood open – so I could identify a bath and a bedroom.

While I had been wandering slowly around the room, making sure I didn’t look at things with too curious an expression, my maid had calmed down the dog, which was now chewing away on a large treat it had received. Although he was no longer growling, the dog’s large brown eyes were still focused right on me.

He knew exactly that I wasn’t his owner.

He knew exactly that I didn’t belong here.

“I don’t want to be here either,” I thought, staring right back into the dog’s wary eyes. “In the morning you’ll be rid of me – I promise!”

The maid again looked from me to the dog and back. When she realized I had noticed her short stare, she looked back at some spot on the floor and said:

“Is milady hungry or does milady wish to retire to bed for the night?”

Now that someone was directly asking me I did feel hungry – the day had been very exhausting for me and I hadn’t eaten anything in a while. On the other hand I desperately wanted to go to sleep to momentarily forget about the trouble I was in and to wake up soon and get back to the temple.

“I’d like to retire to bed,” I said, faking a yawn.

The maid nodded, got up and went ahead of me into the adjacent bedroom. I followed her inside and she closed the door. We looked at each other for a couple of seconds – both expecting the other to take action – until the maid – again looking at the floor instead of my face – timidly told me to spread out my arms, so she could help me change into my nightgown. I did as she had said – almost apologizing out loud, but then quickly reminding myself that so far I had irritated every single person I had apologized to.

While my maid undressed me I came to realize what a complex gown I really was wearing and what energy and skill it must have cost Chu Hua to get me dressed while I was knocked out. It took the maid several minutes to get me out of the sash and the three-layered shirt-jackets and long skirts. To my relief I got to keep the very last underdress and did not have to strip entirely , before the maid helped me put on a soft long bright-blue jacket. Finally she made me sit down in front of a large mirror in the corner of the bedroom, while she removed the numerous hairpins and opened the bun, to let my hair fall onto my shoulders. I thought she might notice that my hair was shorter than Chu Hua’s, but she kept her eyes lowered through the whole process and did not comment.

Finally she pushed aside the numerous layers of blankets that neatly covered the bed, let me climb into it and arranged them nicely and evenly above my body once I had laid down. Then she blew out the two lamps that had been burning, quietly tiptoed outside of the room and closed the bedroom sliding door with a few gentle pulls – leaving me alone in the darkness.

I wanted to go to sleep right away, but there were several burning questions in my head that kept creeping up on me, each time I thought sleep had finally come close. I lay awake in my bed staring at the dark ceiling for so long, that my eyes got used to the darkness and with the little bit of moonlight that was shining through small gaps in the wall facing the garden I could make out the ceiling, which was apparently painted. When my tired eyes made out eerie painted faces staring back at me from the ceiling, that looked alive with movement in the semi-darkness, fear came over me and I quickly threw the many blankets over my head. Like a little kid, scared of the darkness and half-suffocated by the heavy blankets, I laid in the bed until sleep finally – mercifully – came over me.

When I awoke I immediately knew where I was. I knew I wasn’t back in the Park residence, but still in the royal court of Cathay. I could feel and smell the strange place. And hear it. Opening my eyes, slowly pushing the blankets off my head and blinking at my room – which was still dark, although through small gaps in the wall I could see bits of daylight streaming in – I could hear numerous footsteps through the wall to my left, in which direction the main halls and corridors lay. Some footsteps were fast, some slow and although not entirely silent, they were all skillfully quiet, so that I wouldn’t have heard them, hadn’t I been listening closely.

I had no idea what time it was, but taken from the fact that a lot of people were already awake it had to be morning if not noon already. I pushed the blankets a little further from me, but remained sitting on the bed, because I wanted to plan ahead carefully what I would say to the maid. Meanwhile I took another timid look at the painted ceiling above my head, only to find that the faces of the figures I had thought so frightening last night, looked friendly and harmless during the day. When I felt I had found the right words that sounded authoritative enough, I got up, walked over to the sliding door and opened it.

The main room of Chu Hua’s quarters was empty however – except for the dog – whose name I had already forgotten – who had decided to spread out over several seat cushions instead of his own sleeping cushions, but was luckily asleep and quietly snoring. Still I made sure not to wake him when I went inspecting whether the maid was anywhere to be found inside the quarters. At the end of my search I turned up empty. Quite possibly she hadn’t been Chu Hua’s personal maid or simply slept elsewhere. Or maybe it was just too early in the morning for a servant to be in a lady’s private quarters. I thus headed for the sliding door leading to the garden and opened it to check the weather.

Bright white light met my eyes, when I had pushed open the door and stepped out onto the small roofed porch outside. Once my eyes had gotten used to the light, I got a good look of the beautiful garden that lay right next to my quarters under the open sky – although fully surrounded by small porches and other doors that I assumed led to rooms like Chu Hua’s.

It was already quite warm outside, although not as hot as it had been yesterday afternoon. From this and the position of the sun I estimated that it still had to be early morning. No earlier than six and no later than eight. I could see that all other doors leading to the porches were closed, so I assumed that the inhabitants of the adjacent quarters were still asleep.

I turned around and closed the sliding door again. I wasn’t sure whether now was an appropriate time for a court lady to be up and going about fulfilling her spiritual needs or not. I also wasn’t sure whether Chu Hua was of high enough status to demand an early-morning journey to the Temple or not. Either way I had to give it a try.

After an unpleasant trip to the bathroom in which I discovered that the Cathay stage of development when it came to toilets was nothing more than a hole in the wooden floor, I went into the bedroom and pulled open the drawers that I had seen the maid put my clothes into the night before. The drawer was full of various pieces of clothing in all imaginable colors – with the exception of yellow as I curiously noticed. I rummaged through the clothes until I had found a skirt, a sash and a shirt-jacket that I vaguely felt matched each other. I put on the skirt and shirt-jacket and then spend quite a while in front of the corner mirror trying to tie the sash in a way that looked at least remotely as elegant as my dress from the day before. Every time I had tied the sash satisfactorily tight, there were several nasty crinkles in either the skirt or the jacket and I had to redo the whole thing. After about ten tries I gave up trying to make it look nice.

“Screw it,” I thought and got out another shirt-jacket to cover up the mess I had made of my first layer of clothing.

I didn’t bother adding further layers though as hunger was making me impatient. Instead I quickly rummaged through the contents of the drawers by the mirror and did a fast and inelegant imitation of the bun I had worn the day before. I gave the numerous hair-pins a quick look, but was sure that I would mess up, so I preferred to simply leave them be and headed for the main sliding door of Chu Hua’s quarters without further serious thoughts concerning my attire. I was determined to find a servant – any servant I could demand something of – and make them take me to the Temple. If I found anyone with a social standing to myself like the maid from yesterday, then – this much I had learned already – they would neither be in a position to comment on my clothing nor refuse to take me to where I wanted to go.

Hunger and impatience pressing down on me I pushed open the sliding-doors leading out into the hall only to find it empty. I looked up and down the hall to see whether there was anyone up or down the corridor to either side, but I couldn’t see a single person. When I suddenly heard gnarling behind me I quickly turned around and found the beast of a dog awake and slowly coming towards me. In a reflex of fear and flight I took a quick step outside Chu Hua’s quarters and pushed the sliding door shut as quickly as I could.

“Great!” I thought, “Now I can’t go back in there alone!”

I had successfully locked myself out of my only place of quiet retreat in this part of the palace and no choice but to try and find some servant to help me out.

I decided to walk in the direction that I and the maid had come from the day earlier, although I knew that I could never find my way back to where the palanquin had dropped us off. Just getting closer to the temple by a few steps I could feel some relief, so I kept walking until I had reached the end of the hall. There I pulled open the door, which to my surprise was quite heavy. Struggling a little with the sheer weight of the door, I understood why it had been the work of the maid to open the doors, since it was quite the manual labor to open so many doors after each other.

Stepping through the first big door I found myself in a smaller hall, which had several adjacent doors, but was just as empty as the first. Before I could reach the door that we had come through the night before however, another door opened and two male servants – deep in conversation – came marching in.

I immediately became extremely self-conscious of my poorly put on dress and to my own shock noticed the fact that I had forgotten about shoes altogether. Luckily the long pink skirt I was wearing covered my feet – nevertheless my shoelessness made me feel oddly vulnerable. My stomach dropped when the two servants stopped in mid-conversation as soon as they spotted me. They gave me very short bewildered looks, but then – like I had seen many times before by now – turned their eyes to the floor and continued walking.

Once they had exited the hall I went ahead to pull open the next heavy door and hurried through it, only to have the same thing happen to me in the next hall – this time with a group of three maids. After they had left I no longer knew which door I had to take and I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to get anywhere without the assistance of a servant. If I could only find one wandering about by him or herself, then it would be easier to approach them with the request of taking me to the Temple.

I walked in circles inside the large wooden hall trying to choose a door, when another door opened and a tall male servant – all by himself – entered. With some impatience I approached him, as he was closing the door and with the most demanding voice I could muster, I requested to be brought to the Temple. At my words he spun around and to my surprise looked me right in the face.

“The temple is open now, isn’t it?” I said with some impatience.

To my frustration the servant didn’t answer. Instead he just mustered me – and not just my face, but my whole attire, from my floor-long skirt all the way up to my messy hair-bun.

“Where’s your petal mark?” he said.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but now I noticed that although the servant was wearing muted greens and blues like all the servants, he had several silver embroideries on his clothes, including a large embroided bird on the front of his shirt-jacket. He was slightly older than most servants that I had encountered – in his mid-thirties maybe – and had a whole different aura of confidence and authority.

The man, whose social status I could not identify, took a step towards me and pointed his finger at me, repeating what he had said before:

“Where is your petal mark?”

Although I understood his words I did not know what he was talking about, although I felt that as Chu Hua I very much should have. Assuming from his behavior that I somehow ranked beneath him, I put on an apologetic smile and bowed slightly, saying:

“I apologize for forgetting about my petal mark. I have pressing spiritual matters to attend to at the Temple and would kindly ask for your guidance, Sir.”

The man glared at me and then – gritting his teeth – said:

“I thought we already went through this, Lady Rong. You can move about the palace within the Baolin and Cairen quarters all you want and go to the temples for your spiritual needs, but only when accompanied by your maid. And dressed properly!”

He gave me another disproving look, while I did my best trying to hide that I only understood half of what he was saying. Baolin? Cairen? I knew these words… but I could attach nothing to them. How inconvenient…

“Hey, you!” shouted the head servant in front of me. I winced, because I thought he was scolding me, but looking up he had turned his tall head towards another male servant who had just entered the hall. The young man hurried towards us at an impressive speed, which further showed me that the man in front of me was someone to be respected and obeyed – even by a court lady like Chu Hua apparently.

The young servant who had been called over arrived next to us and keeping his eyes on the ground he simply said:

“Sir!”

“Servant Jin, take this confused lady back to her quarters in the Baolin wing and then go wake her maid,” commanded the head servant.

The young man nodded and the head servant ce more towards me.

“Don’t go walking about without a petal mark again. They’ll think you’re a commoner impersonating a court lady and that will get you a date with the gallows faster than you can say the royal families’ name.”

I gulped. I had passed as Chu Hua – who apparently had had some trouble before with this particular head servant – for now, but should it be revealed that I was only an impersonator after all… I could find myself arrested or worse… executed.

“Any other trouble you got for me?” asked the head servant, who was losing his patience with me.

“No, Sir. No!” I said and then started walking back towards the door I had come through before – the young servant quickly scampering past me to open the door for me.

As I passed through the door I threw one last look at the head servant, who was still standing in the center of the hall giving me a half-angry, half-amused stare.

My emotions were such a mess of fear, shame and confusion, that I actually thanked the young servant out loud when he opened the next door for me. This caused the young man to look up at me in surprise and I noticed that he had a handsome and friendly face.

“You’re welcome,” he said and actually smiled at me.

It was the first genuine smile anyone had given me in a long time – certainly the first time anyone had looked me into the eyes without a hint of fear, suspicion or anger since I had entered the strange land of Cathay.

Internally I was still in turmoil over my failed little escape, but nevertheless the young man’s smile was so addictive, I had to smile right back at him.

Suddenly I was curious – what had the head servant called him? Jin? Was that his first or his last name? Probably his last…

But then the young man averted his gaze again and hurried past me to be the first one to reach the door I had to pass through. With this I quickly returned to reality and scolded myself for getting distracted in the first place, when all I had to do now was to be a quiet and arrogant version of Chu Hua for a little longer until I had been properly dressed and was allowed to travel to the Temple.