Empress (12 page)

I could see him in the mirror, still trying to catch my eye. I stood up, put on my coat, and made for the door. He caught the hem of my tunic.

“We are alone. My people are watching the door. No one knows I am here. Listen to me first, then I shall leave.”

“Well then, please, may your Highness move further away from me and sit down.”

Little Phoenix went and sat obediently in a corner. I sat facing him at the far side of the room. He looked at his hands on his knees and said nothing. I watched a candle spilling its tears, and I too was silent. Suddenly he looked up.

“Heavenlight, I am to have a second child.”

I was about to congratulate him when he said: “Those women don’t count. There is only one person who fills my days and nights,” he said, and then lowered his voice before adding, “she is not like all the women at Court: the bland, formal, calculating women. She is spontaneous as a horse, pure as a river, free as the air. I venerate her, and I fear her. I suffer when I think I cannot be one with her.”

He broke off. His eyes were like two dancing flames in the half darkness. Outside the North Wind blew, and one of the watchmen struck the gong. It was late. Then he suddenly started stammering: “I want to teach you what true pleasure is. I know that you would like the abandon, the excesses. I’ll be gentle with you, you’ll see. And you would slowly become a woman. You would be the most beautiful woman in the Empire!”

Tears came to my eyes, but my voice was hard: “Go, Highness. What your Highness is doing is improper.”

He stared at me for a moment, then stood up and slipped away.

LUOYANG, THE EASTERN capital. Along the avenues icicles hung from every roof, and the trees were covered with buds of frost. The River Luo was frozen, a long, winding sigh reaching up to the weary sky. In the Forbidden City, only the winter plum trees braved the cold with their subtle fragrance. I stayed in the pavilions with my hands inside my sleeves and my feet up against bronze heaters, and I learned news of the outside world from the eunuchs. It seemed that regiments had come from the four corners of the Empire and had set up camp beside the town. Their garrisons had turned the countryside into an ocean of banners and horses. Accompanied by the heir, the Emperor would climb to the highest point of the Southern Gate and take command of the soldiers’ training sessions.

At the beginning of January, the peripatetic monk Xuan Zang returned, and this delayed our armies’ departure. After covering tens of thousands of lis and living for seventeen years traveling the western kingdoms, he came back to the eastern capital laden with sacred manuscripts gathered in the land of Buddha. The Emperor received him during his audience, covered him with gifts, and appointed him master monk at the Temple of Immense Felicity. The Precious Wife invited Xuan Zang to the Inner Court, and he stepped up onto a stage of lotus flowers where he gave a speech about the Buddha of the Future, Maitreya, who had promised to be reincarnated on Earth to guide millions of believers toward eternal peace.

But the Emperor and his generals were more interested in the victories of this world. The sovereign was already armed with his golden breastplate threaded with red laces and was leaving Luoyang by the Southern Gate. Three thousand musicians played the tune of the
Glorious Departure.
Lances, axes, and tridents gleamed; horses and carts whipped up dust that swirled for days without settling.

In the sovereign’s absence, the heir took over regency from his Eastern Palace, and entry to our gynaeceum was forbidden to men. News of the war reached us through screens and partitions. Our squadrons had wound their way up the coast and reached Korea. The city of Peisha fell, and eight thousand Koreans were taken prisoner. The troops of my benefactor, Great General Li Ji, crossed the River Liao and laid siege to a port. The army commanded by the sovereign had met with more grim resistance. The Koreans were brutal warriors and adept archers, and they defended their territories with all the energy of despair.

Neither the war cries nor the smell of blood breached the high walls of the Forbidden City. Spring came back to Luoyang. Court ladies set out in little groups to enjoy picnics by the banks of the river. Peach trees scattered their petals, and carefree peonies rustled in the wind. In the master’s absence, the jealousies and intrigues had stopped, but the favorites began to tire of this peaceful, untroubled existence. I missed Little Phoenix. This separation meant he was with me with every breath I took. Women no longer satisfied my soul’s desire, and their constant, insistent attentions only made me more obsessed with my absent brother.

In the ninth moon, the chrysanthemums in the Palace of Luoyang vied with one another in beauty and insolence. In the north of the Empire, a precocious winter had already set in. Snow fell thick and deep. The cold wore down our soldiers who were still in summer dress; the Emperor was forced to lift the siege, and the army retreated toward the central lands. The arduous crossing through swamplands exhausted the men and their horses. Accompanied by a light cavalry, the heir rode out to meet the sovereign, only to find an ailing man and a defeated conqueror.

The Court returned to Long Peace in the third moon of the following year. Spring had returned, but the Emperor was still bedridden. Every two days, the heir received the morning salutation in his Eastern Palace. The rest of the time he fulfilled his filial duties by his father’s bedside. In the Palace of Precious Dew, we were almost never apart. Being together again was not as joyful as I had imagined. When I was far from him, I hugged the image of him to me. When he was close, I despaired that I would never cross the invisible barrier that separated an heir from a Talented One. I struggled with a thousand contradictory feelings and preferred to say nothing and suffer in silence.

One night the wind changed for the worst, and the sovereign became paralyzed down one side of his body. He grew even more irritable and suspicious. From where he lay in the depths of his palace, he imagined plots brewing in the Outer Court where, he claimed, his prolonged absence was kindling usurpers’ ambitions. He asked Wu Ji to conduct investigations, and the persecutions began again. Soon, a great many imperial officers and state officials were condemned to be beheaded.

Fearing that the Supreme Son might be intriguing against him in his Eastern Palace, the Emperor ordered Little Phoenix to move to the Palace of Precious Dew and to sleep close to his own bedroom. To give some comfort to the prince who was now far from his own concubines, he sent him the most beautiful virgins from his gynaeceum every night. In the evening, before the doors were closed, I watched in despair as these women were conducted into Little Phoenix’s pavilion surrounded by lanterns and torches. I would go back to the Side Court along dark pathways. The trees rustled and tears rolled down my cheeks for no reason.

ONE AFTERNOON, WHEN I was waiting in the sovereign’s bed chamber for him to wake, Little Phoenix appeared and dragged me forcibly behind a screen. He put his arms around me. Unlike women’s arms that were supple and soft, his were strong and muscled. He held me against his chest, a hard flat surface like carved stone, so that I could hear the rapid beating of his heart. He lay his head on my shoulder and his cheek against mine. His tender young beard tickled my skin, and I heard him whisper: “It’s you that I want. It’s you I make love to every evening.”

Little Phoenix deflowered me during the course of a journey to a summer palace. Despite our precautions, our liaison could not escape the watchful eyes of those who spied behind curtains, nor the ears that lingered behind doors. But the Emperor now never left his bed, and the heir regent was all-powerful. Instead of denouncing me, the eunuchs and servant women flattered me as a way of pleasing the future sovereign. I never knew whether the Emperor got wind of the rumors. It seems likely that this lady’s man, who had once taken wives from his own father and brothers, was quite indifferent to an attachment between a son of his and an anonymous Talented One. The imperial Court was a world of constraints and contradictions: It was easy to die for a mistake, and it was easy to break a taboo.

While the Emperor still had plans to invade Korea, his life was slipping away. His belly swelled up like a mountain and made him howl in pain. But this intrepid warrior defied his suffering and dictated an entire book,
The Art of Being Sovereign,
to his heir. As I stood beside the door awaiting orders, I could hear his dark, determined voice reverberating. Memories of war and political tactics were intertwined with moral and philosophical reflections. The sentences punctuated by groans of pain; the heroic silences and the eerie sighs made me falter with admiration and sorrow.

In the Side Court, people whispered secretly that the astrologers had foreseen a change of reign in this twenty-third year of Pure Contemplation. The favorites removed their jewelry and ripped the pearls from their tunics. They gave their treasure to eunuchs who were financing services in the four corners of the Empire to pray for a miraculous recovery.

There was much talk of the future. But was there any future for the concubines of a dead sovereign? The mothers of kings may have been able to join their children posted in the province-kingdoms, but ordinary women had to choose between living in the funerary palace of the August Deceased, becoming nuns in monasteries, or dying alone in the Side Court.

The heir swore that he would offer me another life. He talked to me of a sumptuous palace and an elevated rank. I did not believe his naive promises. When the sovereign finally floundered along the river of this life, his treasures, clothes, horses, and the laughter of his women, all these beauties, would have to sink with him into the shades and into oblivion. Would Little Phoenix have the strength to save me while a whole world drowned?

Not believing his end was near, the Emperor continued to travel. He escaped the heat of summer in the mountains of Zhong Nan and the frosts of winter beside hot springs. The imperial caravans swayed, lulling weary bodies and awakening the senses. At night, the heir would disguise himself as a eunuch and slip into my tent. He caressed me softly and sweetly. But only very rarely did I let myself succumb to pleasure. Terrified by a fear I could not name, I wept in silence and feigned happiness. After he left, I would lie awake for hours with my eyes wide open. I denounced myself for feeling something. I was afraid of conceiving a child. I was horrified by the thought that I secretly longed for the sovereign’s death. I dreamed of that deliverance even though I knew I would always be a slave to the Forbidden City. I hated myself for using my body as a bargaining tool: I was copulating with the heir to ensure my own future. But could I have any legitimacy in that future thanks to an act of incest? When Little Phoenix held me tightly in his arms, I resented his selfish desire that made him deaf to my distress. As soon as he was far from me, I forgave him for being my downfall and loved him with all my strength. He was my only hope.

The news spread through all of China: The Emperor was in his final agonies. The people were terrified, and inflation began spiraling because of ill-considered buying and because merchants started stockpiling cereals, salt, and bolts of brocade. Our spies in the west and the north spotted movements of the Tatar cavalry regiments. The Empire was waiting for a seismic event, our enemies their hour of victory. Amid all this agitation, I watched my own metamorphosis with displeasure. My breasts were growing, my cheeks had become chubbier, my mouth fuller. My body was ignoring my own unhappiness: I had become beautiful just when beauty would no longer be of any use.

On the twenty-sixth day of the fifth moon in the twenty-third year of Pure Contemplation, in his summer Palace in the Zhong Nan Mountains, the Emperor of the Yellow People with Black Hair completed his earthly mandate and rose up to the heavens to sit amongst the powerful gods. The sun hid behind the clouds; Earth was plunged into darkness. For twenty-seven days, the Imperial City groaned with tears and prayers, and the various ceremonies-calling the Emperor’s soul, bathing him, the clothing ceremonies, laying him in his coffin, and the official closing of the coffin-were carried out with unprecedented pomp and splendor.

On the first day of the sixth moon, in his Eastern Palace, the twenty-two-year-old heir succeeded the late Emperor by putting on the imperial tunic painted with the twelve sacred symbols and by wearing the crown with twenty-four tiers of jade pearls. The music for the celebrations sailed over the red walls and hovered along the deserted galleries of the Inner Court. Bronze bells and sounding stones intoned the knell of his wives and concubines. Stifled tears and pious prayers escaped from every gloomy little room where the scarlet wall hangings had been covered over with white fabric.

I stayed at the bedside of the Delicate Concubine Xu, trying to persuade her not to let herself die. Beneath her linen sheet, she weighed little more than a feather. She spat blood and was wracked by violent coughing. She reached out for me with her frozen, bony hand. We talked endlessly about our first few years in the Side Court, the Institute of Letters, and the late sovereign. I begged her to receive a doctor. She smiled and gave me no reply. I could see in her eyes her determination to follow the master into the next world.

She died a few days later, and her death buried once and for all the intrigues between the Precious Wife, the Gracious Wife, and all the imperial favorites. Rivalries and alliances, loathing and attraction had been dissolved. Their existence had been a pointless tragedy, just as the talent of one prodigious poetess had been.

Every woman in the Forbidden City -beautiful or ugly, intelligent or foolish, refined or vulgar-was fragrant dust. The whirlwind of history would carry them away, making no distinctions.

THE SOVEREIGN HEIR gave the late sovereign the posthumous title of Emperor Eternal Ancestor. The man who had ruled the vastest empire under the skies had lost his final battle. Heroes are damned. No mortal conquers Death.