Imperial Woman (12 page)

Above her the Emperor waited and now he began to speak. “I do this day decree that the mother of the Imperial Heir, here kneeling, is to be raised to rank of Consort, equal in all ways to the present Consort. That there be no confusion, the present Consort shall be known as Tzu An, the Empress of the Eastern Palace, and the Fortunate Mother shall be known as Tzu Hsi, the Empress of the Western Palace. This is my will. It shall be declared across the realm, that it may be known to all people.”

These words Yehonala heard and her blood ran strong and joyful to her heart. Who could harm her now? She had been lifted up and by the Emperor’s hand. Three times and three times and yet three times more she touched her forehead to her hands. Then, rising to her feet, she stood until the Chief Eunuch put out his right arm and, leaning on it, she returned again to her place behind the Dragon Screen. But when she was seated, she did not turn her head to look at Sakota, nor did Sakota speak.

While Yehonala had stood before the Dragon Throne the vast multitude in the Banquet Hall was silent. Not one voice spoke except the Emperor’s and not one hand stirred. And from that day she was no longer called Yehonala. Tzu Hsi, the Sacred Mother, was her imperial name.

That same night Tzu Hsi was summoned to the Emperor. For three months she had received no summons, the two months before her son’s birth and the one month since. But now the time was come. She welcomed the call, for it was proof that the imperial favor still was hers, not only for her son’s sake but for her own. Well enough she knew that in these months the Emperor had made use of one concubine and another, and each had hoped that she could displace her who was most favored. Tonight would tell her whether any had succeeded, and eagerly she made herself ready to follow the Chief Eunuch who waited in the entrance of her palace.

Ah, but now how hard it was to leave! The child’s bed stood by her bed. His own rooms had been prepared for him before his birth, but she had not let him go from her, even for a night, nor yet tonight. Ready and robed in soft pink satin, jeweled and perfumed, she could not force herself away from the boy who slept, replete with human milk, upon the silken mattress. Two women sat beside him, one the wetnurse, and the other her own woman.

“You are not to leave him for one breath of time,” she warned them. “If when I return, though it be at dawn, mind you, if he is hurt or weeping or if a spot of red is anywhere upon his flesh, I will have you both beaten and if he is harmed at all, your heads will be the price.”

Both women stared to see her look so fiercely at them, the wetnurse awed, and the woman amazed at the courteous mistress she thought she knew.

“Since the Empress of the Western Palace has borne the child,” she said in a mild voice, “she has become a tigress. Be sure, Venerable, that we will guard him better even than you tell us how to do.”

But Tzu Hsi had more commands. “And Li Lien-ying must sit outside, and my ladies must not sleep soundly.”

“It shall all be so,” the woman promised.

Still Tzu Hsi could not go away. She leaned above her sleeping child and saw his rosy face, the pouting lips soft and red, the eyes full and large, the ears close to the head and set low, the lobes long, and these were all signs of high intelligence. Whence did her child receive his beauty? Hers alone, surely, was not enough for this perfection. His father—

She broke off thinking and reached for his hand, first his right hand and then his left, and gently pressing open the curling fingers she smelled the soft baby palms, as mothers do. Oh, what a treasure now was hers!

“Venerable!”

She heard An Teh-hai’s voice bumbling from the outer room. The Chief Eunuch grew impatient, not for his own sake, but for her own. She knew by now that he was her ally in the secret palace war, and she must heed him well. She stayed then only to perform one more task. From her dressing table she chose two gifts, a ring of gold and a thin bracelet set with seed pearls. These gifts she gave the two women, the ring to her own woman and the bracelet to the wetnurse, and thus she bribed them to their duty. Then she hastened out and there was Li Lien-ying, her eunuch, waiting with An Teh-hai. To her eunuch she gave a piece of gold without a word; he knew what it meant, and while she went with An Teh-hai, he stayed behind to guard her son.

Inside the bosom of her robe she held gold in a packet for the Chief Eunuch, too, but she would not give it to him until she saw how the Emperor received her. Did the night go well, then he would have his prize. And the Chief Eunuch understood this, and he led her by the well known narrow ways to the imperial center of the Forbidden City.

“Come here to me,” the Emperor said.

She stood at the threshold of his vast chamber, that he might see her in all her strong beauty. Upon his command she walked slowly toward him, swaying as she went with that grace she knew so well how to use. She was not humble but she feigned shyness and assumed a sweet coyness which was half real and half pretended. For it was this woman’s power that she could be almost what she feigned and planned to be, and so she became nearly what she would be, at any moment and in any place. She was not deceiving, for she deceived herself as much as the person before whom she appeared.

Thus now when she approached the imperial bed, as wide and long as a room inside the yellow curtains and the net of gold, she felt sudden pity. The man who waited for her here was surely doomed for death. Young as he was, he had spent his force too soon.

She hastened the last few steps to him. “Ah,” she cried, “you are ill and no one told me, my Lord of Heaven!”

Indeed by the light of the great candles in their golden stand he looked so wan, his yellow skin stretched tightly across the fine small bones of his face and frame, that he seemed a living skeleton propped there against the yellow satin pillows. His two hands, palms upward, lay lifeless on the quilts. She sat down on the bed and put out her warm strong hands and felt his dry and cold.

“Have you pain?” she asked anxiously.

“No pain,” he said. “A weakness—”

“But this hand,” she insisted. She took up his left hand. “It feels different from the other—colder, more stiff.”

“I cannot use it as once I did,” he said unwillingly.

She put back his sleeve and saw his bare arm, thin and yellow as old ivory beneath the satin robes.

“Ah,” she moaned, “ah, why was I not told?”

“What is there to tell?” he said. “Except I have a slow creeping coldness on this side.”

He pulled his hand away. “Come,” he said, “come into my bed. None of them has been enough. Only you—only you—”

She saw the old hot light come creeping back into his sunken eyes, and she made ready to obey. And yet as the dark hours passed to midnight and then beyond, she felt a sadness she had never known before. Deep, deep was the woe in this poor man who was the Emperor of a mighty realm. The chill of death had struck his inward life and he was man no more. As helpless as any eunuch, he strove to do his part and could not.

“Help me,” he besought her again and yet again. “Help me—help me, lest I die of this dreadful heat unslaked.”

But she could not help him. When she saw that even she was helpless she rose from the bed and sat by his pillow and took him in her arms as though he were a child and like a child he sobbed upon her breast, knowing that what had been his chief joy could never be again. Though he was young in years, indeed his third decade not yet come, he was an old man in body, weakened by his own lusts. Too early had he yielded to his desires, too often had the eunuchs fed them, too humbly had the Court physicians whipped his blood alive again with herbs and medicines. He was exhausted and only death remained.

This certainty overwhelmed the woman as she held the man to her breast. She soothed him with pleasant words, she seemed so calm, so strong, that he was at last persuaded.

“You are weary,” she said, “you are beset by worries. I know our many foes, and how the Western men with all their ships and armies do threaten us. While I have been living my woman’s life, such troubles hide inside your mind and sap your strength. While I have borne my son, you have bent beneath the burdens of the state. Let me help you, my lord. Throw half your burden upon me. Let me always sit behind the screen in the Throne Hall at dawn and listen to your ministers. I can hear the inner meaning of their plaints and when they are gone I will tell you what I think but leaving all decision to my lord, as is my duty.”

From unsatisfied desire, she wooed him thus away from love and to the affairs of the nation, the threats of enemies, and the strengthening of the Throne itself, now that he had his Heir. And she saw how weary was this man with all his burdens, for he gave great sighs and then he lifted himself from her bosom and leaned against the pillows again, and holding her hand with his own hand, he tried to tell her his perplexities.

“There is no end to my troubles,” he complained. “In the days of my forefathers the enemy came always from the north and the Great Wall stopped them, men and horses. But now the wall is useless to us. These white men swarm up from the seas—Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutch and Germans and Belgians. I tell you, I do not know how many nations there are beyond the border mountains of K’un Lun! They make war with us to sell their opium and they are never satisfied. Now the Americans are here, too. Where did they come from? Where is America? I hear its people are somewhat better than the others, yet when I yield to those others, the Americans demand the same benefits. This is the year when they wish to renew their treaty with us. But I do not wish to renew any treaty with white men.”

“Then do not renew it,” Tzu Hsi said impetuously. “Why should you do that which you would not? Bid your ministers refuse.”

“The white men’s weapons are very fearful,” he moaned.

“Delay—delay,” she said. “Do not answer their pleadings, ignore their messages, refuse to receive their envoys. This gives us time. They will not attack us so long as there is hope that we will renew the treaty. Therefore do not say yes or no.”

The Emperor was struck with such wisdom. “You are worth more to me than any man,” he declared, “even than my brother. It is he who plagues me to receive the white men and make new treaties with them. He tries to frighten me by telling me about their big ships and the long cannon. Negotiate, he says—”

Tzu Hsi laughed. “Do not allow yourself to be frightened, my lord, even by Prince Kung. The sea is very far from here, and can there be a cannon long enough to reach as high as our city walls?”

She believed what she said, and he wished to believe what she said, and his heart clung to her more than ever. He fell asleep at last upon his pillows and she sat beside him until dawn. At that hour the Chief Eunuch came to waken the Emperor because his ministers waited for the usual early audience. When he came in, Tzu Hsi rose to command him while the Emperor still slept.

“From this day on,” she said, “I am to sit behind the Dragon Screen in the Throne Hall. The Son of Heaven has commanded it.”

An Teh-hai bowed down to the floor before her and knocked his head on the tiles. “Venerable,” he exclaimed. “Now I am happy.”

From that day on Tzu Hsi rose in the darkness of the small hours before day. In the candlelight her women bathed her and put on her robes of state and she entered her curtained sedan and Li Lien-ying went before her with a lantern in his hand to the Throne Hall and she sat behind the great carved screen before which was the Dragon Throne and Li Lien-ying was her guard. He stood near her always, a dagger ready in his hand.

From this day, too, the Heir slept no more in his mother’s bedchamber. He was moved into his own palace and the Chief Eunuch was made his servant, and Prince Kung, the brother of the Emperor, was appointed his guardian.

The cold came soon that year. No rain had fallen in many weeks and already by midautumn the dry and bitter winds blew from the northwest, scattering their burden of pale sand from the distant desert. The city was clothed in the faint gold of the sand and the sun glittered upon the roofs of the houses where the sand drifted into the crevices of the eaves. Only the porcelain tiles of the roofs of the Forbidden City, royal blue and imperial yellow, shed the sand and shone clear in the white glare from the sky.

At noon while the sun still gave forth a mild heat, old people, wrapped in padded garments, stirred out of their houses and sat in sheltered corners between walls, and children ran into the streets and played until the sweat streamed down their brown cheeks. Yet when the sun went away again at nightfall the dry cold congealed the blood of young and old alike. Throughout the night the cold deepened until in the hours after midnight and before dawn it reached its depths. Those beggars in the streets who had no shelter ran hither and thither to keep alive until the sun came up again, and even wild dogs could not sleep.

In such a cold and silent hour and upon a day set by the Board of Imperial Astronomers, Tzu Hsi rose one day to take her usual place in the Throne Hall. Her faithful woman slept near her. When the watchman’s brass gong sounded three times three through the streets, the woman got up from her pallet bed and laid fresh charcoal on the brazier and she set on the coals a kettle of water. When it boiled she made tea in a silver and earthen pot, and approaching the vast bed where Tzu Hsi slept she put aside the curtains and touched her shoulder. It needed but a touch, for though Tzu Hsi slept well, she slept always lightly. Now her great eyes opened wide and aware, and she sat up in bed.

“I am wakened,” she said.

The woman poured the infused tea into a bowl and presented it with both hands and Tzu Hsi drank it slowly, but not too slowly, gauging exactly the measure of the passing time. When she had drunk the bowl empty the woman took it again. In the bathing room the water was already poured steaming hot into the porcelain tub. Tzu Hsi rose, her every movement graceful and precise, for grace and precision were her habit, and in a few minutes she was in her bath. Her woman washed her gently and then dried her and put on her garments for the imperial audience. Her undergarments were of perfumed silk and over these was a long robe of rose-red satin lined with northern sable and buttoned at the throat and over this again a robe of pale-yellow gauze embroidered in small blue medallions in phoenix design. Upon her feet Tzu Hsi wore lined stockings of soft white silk and over them her Manchu shoes set on high double heels in the middle of the soles. Upon her head, when her hair was dressed, the woman set a headdress made of figures and flowers of satin and gems and veiled with beads of fine small pearls.