Imperial Woman (62 page)

She received him in a small ancient hall. There she sat with folded hands upon a great carved chair of southern blackwood set on a low platform to resemble a throne. She allowed none to be near when she and Jung Lu met. Her ladies she dismissed, saying that they must go into the fresh air and the sunshine and Li Lien-ying she commanded to wait in the anteroom.

The door opened and Jung Lu came in, tall and gaunt from sorrow and fatigue, but always fastidious in her presence, he had used his hour to bathe and put on fresh robes. As usual he made a feint of obeisance and as usual she put out her right hand to prevent him. He stood before her and she rose, the platform lending her height, and they exchanged a long lingering look.

“I grieve that your wife has left you for the Yellow Springs,” she said in a low voice.

He acknowledged this by a slight bow. “Majesty, she was a good woman,” he said, “and she served me faithfully.”

They waited, one for the other, but what could be said between them now?

“I shall lift up another to her place,” the Empress said at last.

“As you will, Majesty,” he said.

“You are tired,” she observed. “Do not act with ceremony. Let us sit down together. I have need of your wisdom.” She descended from the platform and crossed the room with her old controlled grace, a slender figure regal and upright as she had ever been, and she sat down in one of two straight wooden chairs between which was a small two-tiered table. At her gesture he sat down in the other chair and waited for her to speak.

She waved a silk fan upon which once, in a moment of idleness, she had painted a landscape of this province. “Is all lost?” she asked at last, and looked sidewise at him from her long eyes.

“All is lost,” he said firmly. He sat with his large beautiful hands planted upon his satin-covered knees and upon these hands she now fixed her eyes. They were fleshless hands, but exceedingly strong, and well did she know their strength.

“What is your counsel?” she asked.

“Majesty,” he said, “there is only one course for you to follow. You must return to your capital and yield to the demands of the enemy and so again save the Throne. I have left Li Hung-chang behind to negotiate the peace. But before you return you must order Prince Tuan to be beheaded, as an earnest of your repentance.”

“Never!” she exclaimed and she folded her fan with a sharp crack of ivory sticks.

“Then you can never return,” he replied. “So great is the hatred of the foreigners against Prince Tuan, whom they consider the instigator of their persecution, that they will destroy the imperial city rather than let you come back to it.”

She felt the blood chill in her veins. The fan dropped from her hand. She thought of all her treasure hidden in that city, and more than such treasure the inheritance of the imperial ancestors, the glory and the power. Could these be lost and if they were, what was left?

“You are always too abrupt,” she observed. She pointed with her little finger to her fan and he stooped and picked it up and put it on the table, and she knew that he did not give it to her lest their hands touch.

“Majesty,” he said in his deep patient voice, “the foreigners will pursue you even here if you do not show submission.”

“I can move westward again,” she insisted, “and where I stay, there I declare my capital. Our Imperial Ancestors did so before me. I am but following their footsteps.”

“As your Majesty wills,” he said. “Yet you know, and I know, and, alas, the whole world will know, that unless and until you return to our ancient imperial city, you are in flight.”

But she would not yield, not instantly, even to him, and rising she bade him leave her and go to rest and she ordered special delicacies for him to eat, and so they parted. No, not instantly would she yield and therefore the next day she commanded the Court to be ready to move westward to the distant city of Sian in the province of Shensi, and there she said she would declare her capital, not, she maintained, in flight, but because there had been a recent famine in this province and the needs of the Court could not be met. Though the famine was past, yet all accepted her decree and as soon as a place was prepared for her, the Court set out for the west.

By her command Jung Lu rode beside her palanquin, and he said no more of her return to Peking and she asked no counsel. Instead, she spoke of the desert beauty of the landscape and she concerned herself with passing scenes and she quoted poetry and all this she did to cover her secret despair. For in the end she did not doubt that he was right. Somehow, some day, she must return to the imperial city at whatever cost. Yet she hid this inner certainty and she cheerfully and steadfastly continued westward, each day adding miles to the distance between herself and the Dragon Throne. When they came to the city of Sian, she took residence with the Court in the Viceroy’s palace which had been cleaned and furnished for her anew, the walls painted red, the outer courtyards surrounded by palisades, and in the main hall a throne had been built and cushioned with yellow silk. Her own chambers were behind the throne room and on the west side were rooms for the Emperor and his Consort and to the east was a room for Li Lien-ying, near his royal mistress and ready for her summons.

Here established, the Empress now insisted upon simple food to save expense. Though a hundred dishes of the finest dainties from the south were daily declared ready for preparation she chose only six for each meal. She commanded that only six cows be kept for the milk which she enjoyed drinking when she rose in the morning and at night before she slept. In spite of her long journey the Empress declared herself in good health, except for sleeplessness, and when she was restless at night, a eunuch, trained to the task, massaged her until she slept.

Now that she had settled in her exile capital, she again gave audience and daily couriers came from the distant imperial city bringing news. She bore all until they told her that the Summer Palace was desecrated once more. Soldiers of several Western nations had made merry in her sacred palaces, she heard. Her throne, she heard, they had carried to the lake and cast into the deepest waters, and they had stolen her personal robes and paintings and upon the walls of the halls and the chambers, even in her own bedchamber they had drawn lewd and ribald pictures and made coarse writings. When she heard this she fell ill with rage and vomited her food. In weakness during the next few days she knew that she must return to the capital, and that before she could return, she must yield to the demands of the enemy that all who had aided the Boxer band must die. This her General Li Hung-chang made clear to her in his daily memorials sent by courier. Yet how could she yield at such a price? And through all this Jung Lu was daily at her side, impassive, silent, pale, while he waited for the inevitable end.

Often she turned to him, her great eyes black in her pale and beautiful face and sometimes she spoke and sometimes was silent.

“Is there no other escape from my enemies except to yield?” she asked one day.

“Majesty, none,” he said.

She asked no more. Speechless, she lifted her eyes to his and he smiled sadly and made no answer. One night when she sat in her courtyard alone in the twilight, he stood before her unannounced and he said,

“I come as your kinsman. Why do you not yield to your destiny? Will you live your life here in eternal exile?”

She had upon her knees a small cinnamon dog, born in exile, and she played with its long ears while she spoke slowly and with long pauses.

“I am unwilling to kill those who have been loyal to me. Of the lesser ones I will not speak… But consider, I pray, how I can kill my good minister, Chao Shu-ch’iao? I do not think that he believed in the magic of the Boxers. His fault was in hoping for their strength at arms. Yet the foreigners insist that he is to be beheaded… And consider also that I am told to order the death of Prince Chia and how shall I mention the names of Ying Nien and Yu Hsien? There remains also Ch’i Hsiu. And I refuse to command execution for Prince Tuan… Eh, alas—I can speak no more names. All are loyal to me and many have followed me in exile. Am I now to turn on them and destroy them?”

Jung Lu was all tenderness and patience. His face, thin with withering age and sorrow, was gentle beyond the face of any man. “You know that you cannot be happy here,” he said.

“Long ago I cast my happiness away,” she said.

“Then think of your realm,” he argued with unending patience. “How can the realm be saved and the people united again if you remain in exile? The rebels will seize the city if the foreigners do not hold it. The country will be divided as thieves divide their booty. The people will live in terror and danger and they will curse you ten thousand times because for a few lives you were not willing to return to the Throne and gather together the broken threads of their life and weave them whole again.”

He spoke grave words and she could not but heed them. As ever, when she was reminded of greatness, she became great. While the little dog whined upon her knees to feel the touch of her hand, she meditated, stroking his tawny head and smoothing its ears. Then she put the small beast down and rose to meet Jung Lu’s waiting gaze.

“I have been thinking only of myself,” she said. “Now I will think only of my people. I return again to my Throne.”

On the twenty-fourth day of the eighth moon month, which is the tenth month of the sun year, the roads were dried after the summer rains, and the earth was firm. The Empress began the long journey home, and in imperial state. She would return, she said, not with humility but with oblivious pride. At the gate of the city where there was a temple she paused with her court to make sacrifice to the God of War. From there she commanded steady marching, at the pace of twenty-five miles a day, for she was ever merciful to the bearers of palanquins and sedans and to the mules and Mongol horses which carried the gifts and tributes she had received while in exile.

Day after day the fine weather of autumn held, and there was neither wind nor rain. One sadness marked the return and this was that she received before her departure the news of the death, in weakness of old age, of her faithful General Li Hung-chang. She had been sometimes displeased with this General, for he alone among all her generals had dared to speak the truth to her. While he was Viceroy in Chihli he had remained above corruption and he had built an army incorruptible. In his old age, against his own heart, she had sent him to the distant south to control the Cantonese rebels and thither he had gone, again to serve with patience and skill. When she summoned him northward once more he was already of great age, and he had delayed his coming until she was willing at last to renounce the Boxer horde. Then he had come to the imperial city and there, with Prince Ch’ing, he had made peace with the foreign enemies, a sad peace, but one which could save the country if she yielded. Now that he was dead the Empress Mother gave him his due, and she announced that she would cause a shrine to be built within the imperial city itself, beside other shrines already dedicated in the provinces where he had served her. Fickle she often was in her favor, and she had made willful excuses when she was displeased with Li Hung-chang, saying that she could not understand his dialect and that he did not speak a pure Chinese. But willfulness was cleansed at last from her whole being and she was chastened by terror and loss.

It was soon to be seen that Jung Lu was correct in his counsel. The return to the capital was a royal return. Everywhere the people welcomed the Empress with praises and with feasts, believing, now that the exile was over, their country was safe and all would be as it had been before. At K’ai-feng, the capital of the province of Honan, most splendid theatricals awaited her, and she commanded the Court to rest, so that she might enjoy her favorite pastime which she had denied herself while the country was at war. At this time she publicly, though gently, reproached the Viceroy because he had before advised her not to return to the capital, but to live in exile. When the Viceroy, Wen T’i by name, offered to swallow gold as expiation, she was merciful and refused his request and for this, too, the people praised her.

When she reached the Yellow River, again she paused. The autumn skies were violet blue, cloudless and clear, and the dry air was warm by day and cool by night.

“I shall offer sacrifices to the River God,” she declared, “and I shall make absolution and give thanks.”

This she did with much pomp and magnificence, and the brilliant noonday sun glittered on the splendid colors of her robe and upon those robes which the Court displayed. And while she worshipped, the Empress was pleased to see among the crowds that lined the river banks a few white-skinned persons, of what country she did not know, but now that she had decided to be merciful and courteous to her enemies she sent two eunuchs to take wine, dried fruits and watermelon as gifts to the white persons, and she commanded her ministers and princes that foreigners were to be allowed to watch her enter the capital city itself. After this, she stepped upon a great barge which the loyal magistrates had built for her and for her Court to cross the river, and this barge was made like a mighty dragon, its scales of gold, and its eyes rubies, burning red.

But proof of her resolution to be courteous now to those who had been her enemies was that at a certain place she came down from her palanquin and entered into a train of iron cars. This train ran on iron rails, and the railway was a toy of the Emperor’s, which she had always forbidden to be used. Now, however, she would use it to show the foreigners how changed she was, how made anew, how modern, how able to understand their ways. Nevertheless she would not, she declared, enter the sacred walls of the city in the bowels of this iron monster. In respect for the Imperial Ancestors, she commanded that the train stop outside the city that she might be carried through the imperial gate in her royal palanquin. A temporary station was therefore built outside the city and vast pavilions were built near this station for her use and as resting places for the Court. Here they were to be welcomed by officials and by foreigners, and these pavilions were furnished with fine carpets, with delicate porcelain vases, with potted trees and late blooming chrysanthemums and orchids. In the central pavilion thrones were set up, one for the Empress, made of gold lacquer, and a smaller one for the Emperor, made of hardwood painted red and gold.