Imperial Woman (58 page)

Nevertheless, in a few days she sent for Jung Lu, ready to reprove him for what her spies said he had done.

“How now?” she asked when he appeared before her. The hour was late and she had not let him take his evening meal. No, she said, he could eat later.

“What have I done, Majesty?” he inquired.

For the first time she thought he looked old and tired. “I hear you have allowed the foreign ministers to augment their guard.”

“I was compelled,” he said. “It seems that they also have their spies who brought them word somehow that you, Majesty, have listened to Kang Yi, and do intend to approve the bands of secret Chinese rebels whose purpose, as all know, is to destroy the foreigners among us down to the last child. Majesty, I said I would not believe that you could approve such folly. Indeed, do you think that even you can fight against the whole world? We must negotiate, propitiate, until we make our forces strong enough for victory.”

“I hear the people muttered curses when the foreign troops came in,” she said. “And Kang Yi has been to Chu-chou and he says the province now is organized to fight the enemy. He says that at Chu-chou he found the magistrate had arrested some of the secret rebels, who belong to the order of the Boxers, but he, Kang Yi, commanded them to be released and brought before me to show their powers. He says that they have magic which prevents their death. Even when guns are fired against their bodies they are not wounded.”

Jung Lu cried out in anguish. “Oh, Majesty, can you believe such nonsense?”

“It is you who are foolish,” she retorted. “Do you forget that at the end of the Han dynasty, more than a thousand years ago, Chang Chou led the Yellow Turban Rebels against the Throne and took many cities, though he had less than half a million men? They, too, knew magic against wound and death. And Kang Yi says that he has friends who many years ago saw this same magic in Shensi province. I tell you, there are spirits who aid the righteous.”

Jung Lu was beside himself by now. He wrenched his hat from his head and threw it on the floor before her and he seized his hair in both hands and tore out two handfuls.

“I will not forget your place,” he said between set teeth. “But still you are my kinswoman, that one to whom I long ago gave up my life. Surely, I deserve the right to say you are a fool. For all your beauty and your power, you, even you, can be a fool. I warn you, if you listen to that stone-head, Kang Yi, who has no knowledge of the present but lives in centuries now dead, and if you listen to your Chief Eunuch and his kind or even to Prince Tuan, who dreams of folly, too, then I say you do destroy yourself and with you the whole dynasty. Oh hear me—hear me—

He put his hands together to beseech her and gazed into the face he still adored. Their eyes met and clung, he saw her will waver and dared not speak lest he undo what he had done.

She spoke in a small voice. “I asked Prince Ch’ing what he thought and he said doubtless the Boxer bands might be useful.”

“It is only I who dare to speak the truth to you,” he said. He took one step forward and thrust his hands into his girdle lest he put them out toward her. “In your presence Prince Ch’ing dares not say what he says to me in private—that these Boxers are imposters and pretenders, ignorant robbers who seek to rise to power through your approval. But what man worships you as I do?” His voice sank and his words came out a dry reluctant whisper.

She dropped her head. The old power still held. All through their lives his love had stayed her.

“Promise me at least that you will do nothing without telling me,” he said. “It is a small promise.” He urged her when still she did not speak. “A reward—the only one I ask.”

He waited for a time and all the while he waited he kept his eyes fixed upon her drooping head. And she kept her head down, and saw his two feet planted on the floor before her, strong feet in velvet boots half hidden by his long blue satin robe. Faithful in her service, those two feet—stubborn, brave and strong.

She lifted up her head. “I promise.”

“Majesty,” Kang Yi said, “you do wrong. Your heart grows soft with age. You do not allow even foreigners to be done away with. Yet one word from you and they would be gone, even to their dogs and fowls, and of their dwellings not one brick would be left to stand upon another.”

His spies had told him how Jung Lu was his enemy and he had made haste to audience.

She turned away her head. “I am weary of you all,” she said.

“But, Majesty,” he urged, “now is not the time for weariness. It is the hour of victory. And need you lift a hand? No, only speak, and others do your work. My son attended Chi Shou-cheng’s theatricals yesterday and he said everyone was talking of Jung Lu’s folly in allowing the foreign troops to enter the city. And Chi’s father-in-law, Yu Hsien, wrote last month from Shansi saying that while there are not many Boxers in his provinces he is encouraging men to join them, so that his province may unite with all the others when the time comes to strike the blow against the Western enemy. We wait your word—only your word, Majesty.”

She shook her head. “I cannot speak it,” she said.

“Majesty,” Tung Fu-hsiang said, “give me your leave and I will demolish the foreign buildings in our city in five days.”

The Empress sat at audience in the Winter Palace. She had returned to the Forbidden City the day before, leaving the autumn beauty of the Summer Palace behind her. The Boxers, without permission, had burned the railway to Tientsin.

Alas, were they invulnerable? Who could know? In the heat of midsummer she had sent for her bearers to bring her here, fanning herself all the way.

“Majesty,” Kang Yi said, “I beg that you will excuse Tung. He has the coarse ways of a soldier, but he is on our side, though he is Chinese.”

“This right arm,” Tung boasted, and held out his thick right arm.

The Empress turned away her head. She glanced toward the assembled council. Jung Lu was not there. He had asked for leave two days ago but she had not replied. Nevertheless he was gone.

“Majesty,” the Grand Councilor Ch’i Hsiu said, “let me prepare a decree for your signature. At least let us break off relations with these foreigners. This will frighten them, if no more.”

“You may prepare it,” the Empress said, “but I will make no promise to sign it.”

“Majesty,” Kang Yi said again, “yesterday I went to the birthday celebration of the first lady in the household of Duke Lan. More than a hundred Boxers live in his outer courtyard, under their own commander. They have the gift of calling upon magic spirits to enter their bodies. I saw youths no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, who went into trances and spoke strange languages. Duke Lan says that when the time comes these spirits will lead the Boxers to the houses of Christians to destroy them.”

“I have not seen it with my own eyes,” the Empress declared. She raised her hand to end the audience.

“Majesty,” Li Lien-ying said in the twilight, “many citizens are sheltering the Boxers.” He hesitated and then whispered, “If you will not be angry, Majesty—your own adopted daughter, the Princess Imperial, is paying for two hundred and fifty Boxers to be quartered outside the back gate of the city, and her brother, Prince Ts’ai Ying, is learning their magic. The Boxers from Kansu are preparing to enter the city. Many people are leaving, fearing a war. All await your word, Majesty.”

“I cannot give it,” the Empress said.

On the sixteenth day of that fifth moon she sent Li Lien-ying to find Jung Lu and bring him to her. She must take back her promise. This morning her spies had brought her news that still more foreign soldiers were marching overland from the coast. This was to avenge the death of yet another foreigner, killed by angry Chinese in the province of Kansu.

It was noon before Jung Lu came, dressed in his outdoor garments as though he came from garden or hillside. But she paid no heed to his looks.

“Am I still to be silent while the city fills with foreign soldiers?” she demanded. “The people will rise against the throne and the dynasty be lost.”

“Majesty, I agree that we must not allow more foreign soldiers to enter the city,” Jung Lu replied. “Nevertheless I say that it will disgrace us if we attack the envoys of foreign nations. They will think us savage and ignorant of the laws of hospitality. One does not poison the guest inside the house.”

“What would you have me do?” she inquired with bitter looks.

“Invite the foreign ministers to leave the city, with their families and their friends,” Jung Lu said. “When they are gone their troops will go with them.”

“And if they will not go?”

“Perhaps they will go,” he said calmly. “If they do not, then you cannot be blamed.”

“Do you release me from my promise?” she demanded.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “tomorrow—tomorrow.”

In the night, in the deepest darkness, she was suddenly awakened by bright light. As always she slept with her bed curtains drawn back and now the light shone through the windows. It fell not from a lantern or the moon but from the sky itself, crimson and on fire. She sat up and called to her women who slept on pallets on the floor about her bed. They woke, one and then the other three, and they ran to the window.

“Aie,” they cried, “aie-aie-aie—”

The door burst open and from behind it, his face carefully turned away, Li Lien-ying shouted that a foreign temple was in flames, the fire lit by unknown hands.

The Empress rose from her bed and cried out that she must be dressed at once. Quickly the women put on her robes and then with her eunuchs she went outside into her most distant courtyard and there climbed her peony mountain, from whence she could look over the walls and down into the city. Smoke mingled with flames hid the scene but soon a fearful stench of roasting flesh spread into the air. Behind her handkerchief the Empress inquired what this stench was and Li Lien-ying told her. The Boxers were burning the French church near by, and inside were hundreds of Christian Chinese, men, women and children.

“What horror,” the Empress moaned. “Oh, that I had forbidden the foreigners from the very beginning! Years ago I should have forbidden them, and the people could not have strayed to foreign gods!”

“Majesty,” Li Lien-ying said, “be comforted. It was the foreigners who fired first upon a crowd at the gate of the church and brave Boxers took revenge.”

“Alas,” she mourned, “the Canon of History tells us that when fires rage in the imperial city common pebbles and precious jade alike are consumed.”

She turned away and refused to look any more and brooding that whole day upon what she had seen, while the air reeked with the scent of death, she commanded the eunuch to move her goods and her books to the Palace of Peaceful Longevity, where she could not see or hear what went on in the city and where the air was purified by distance.

“Majesty,” they urged, “unless you would see all lost, you must use the magic of Boxers. The foreign soldiers are filling the streets like flood waters flowing through the city gates.”

“Now, now, Majesty, without delay—”

“Majesty, Majesty—”

They clamored before her. She gazed at one face and another in the small throne room, Kang Yi, Prince Tuan, Yuan Shih-k’ai, and her highest princes and ministers. They had come in haste at her summons for meeting before audience, and they stood in disarray. This was no time for obeisance or ceremony.

At her right the Emperor sat upon a low carved chair, his head bowed, his face pale, his long thin hands folded in listlessness upon his knees.

“Son of Heaven,” she said to him, “shall we use the Boxer horde against our enemies?”

If he said yes, was not his the blame?

“Whatever you will, Holy Mother,” he said and did not lift his head.

She looked at Jung Lu. He stood apart, his head bowed, his arms folded.

“Majesty, Majesty!” the voices cried about her, the voices of men, roaring and echoing into the high painted beams of the lofty roof.

She rose to her feet and raised her arms for silence in the twilight of this early morning hour. She had eaten nothing and she had not slept while the fires burned on and foreign soldiers marched through the gate—nay, not one gate but through four, converging from the four corners of the earth upon this, her city. What remained except war?

“The hour has come,” she cried. “We must destroy the foreigners in their legations!” she cried aloud in the sudden silence. “One brick must not be left upon another nor one human being allowed to live!”

Silence followed again. She had broken her promise to Jung Lu. He strode forward and fell before her in obeisance.

“Majesty,” he cried, and the tears ran down his cheeks, “Majesty, though these foreigners are indeed our enemies, though they have only themselves to blame for their own destruction, yet I beseech you to consider what you do. If we destroy these few buildings, this handful of foreigners, their governments will denounce us in wrath, their armies, their navies, will fly across land and sea to attack us. Our ancestral shrines will be crushed into dust, even the tutelary gods and the people’s altars will be razed to the ground!”

In her bosom her heart trembled and the blood turned cold in her veins. Yet she hid her terror. She had never shown herself afraid and the old strong habit held, though her fear was monstrous and near despair. Her beautiful face did not change nor her eyelids quiver.

“I cannot restrain the people,” she declared. “They are mad with vengeance. If they do not rend our enemies, they will rend even me. I have no choice. As for you, Grand Councilor, if you have no better advice than this to bestow upon the Throne, then leave us. You are excused from further attendance.”

Immediately Jung Lu rose up, his tears dried on his cheeks, and without word or gesture, he left her presence.

When he was gone the Councilor Ch’i Hsiu drew from his high velvet boot a folded paper. This he opened slowly and with great dignity he approached the throne and in obeisance he presented the folded paper. “Majesty,” he said, “I have presumed to suggest a decree. If I am permitted, I will read it aloud.”

“Do so,” the Empress commanded. Her lips were stiff and cold, but she sat motionless and in state.