Imperial Woman (7 page)

By night of the third day of the seven, An Teh-hai, too, was beside himself and he went to the Dowager Mother and told her what was going on, and how Yehonala, although she knew her power, would not obey the Emperor.

“I have never heard of such a woman in all our dynasty,” the Dowager Mother exclaimed with energy. “Let the eunuchs take her by force to my son!”

The Chief Eunuch hesitated. “Venerable,” he said, “I question this method. She must be won and persuaded, for I do assure you, Venerable, that she cannot be forced. She is so strong, being both taller and heavier than the Son of Heaven, though slender as a young willow tree, that she will not hesitate to bite him or scratch his face when they are alone.”

“What horror!” the Dowager Mother exclaimed. She was old and she had an illness of the liver and spent much of her time in bed, and was indeed now lying in the recesses of a bed so large that she seemed to be looking from a cave.

She pondered. “Is there no one inside the palace who can persuade her?” she inquired.

“Venerable, the Consort is her true cousin,” the Chief Eunuch suggested.

The Dowager Mother remonstrated. “It is not usual for the Consort to urge a concubine upon her own lord, the Emperor.”

“Neither usual nor proper, Venerable,” the Chief Eunuch agreed.

The old lady remained silent for so long that he thought she had fallen asleep. But she had not. She lifted her sunken eyelids after a time and she said, “Well, then, let this Yehonala go to the Consort’s palace.”

“And if she will not go, Venerable?” the Chief Eunuch inquired.

“How—if she not go?” the Dowager demanded.

“She has refused to go to the Son of Heaven himself,” An Teh-hai reminded her.

The Dowager Mother groaned. “I tell you, I have never seen so fierce a female! Well, then, the Consort is gentle. Suggest to her that Yehonala is ill and should be visited.”

“Yes, Venerable,” the Chief Eunuch said. These were the instructions he wanted and he rose to obey. “Sleep in peace, Venerable,” he said.

“Go away,” the Dowager Mother replied. “I am too old for the troubles of men and women.”

He went softly as she fell asleep, and he went at once to the palace of the Consort and there found Sakota embroidering tiger faces upon a pair of shoes for her child when it should be born.

When he had been announced and presented he exclaimed upon this work.

“Does the Imperial Consort not have many women to embroider for her?” he asked.

“I have,” Sakota replied. “But then I myself have nothing to do. I am not clever like my cousin Yehonala. I do not wish to study books or learn painting.”

“Ah,” he said, standing before her. With a gesture of her little hand she now bade him sit. Upon the middle finger of this hand was her thimble, a ring of gold at the second joint.

“It is about your cousin that I come before you, Lady,” he went on, still standing, “and at the command of the Dowager Mother.”

She lifted her pretty eyes. “Oh?”

The Chief Eunuch coughed. “Your cousin gives us much trouble.”

“Indeed?” Sakota said.

“She will not obey the imperial summons,” he went on.

Sakota’s little head drooped over her embroidery and she blushed as pink as a peach blossom. “Yet I heard—my women told me—”

“She has won the Emperor’s favor,” he agreed, “but she will not return to him.”

The peach-blossom pink deepened. “What has this to do with me?” Sakota asked.

“It is thought that she might listen to you, the Consort,” he suggested.

Sakota pondered this, embroidering slowly and with the utmost delicacy about the yellow eye of the tiny tiger on the shoe. “Is this a proper request to make of me?” she inquired at last.

The Chief Eunuch was blunt. “Indeed, it is not, Lady. Yet must all of us remember that the Son of Heaven is not a common man. He is not to be refused by anyone.”

“He likes her so much!” Sakota murmured.

“Can she be blamed?” he asked in reply.

The little creature sighed and folded her embroidery and put it on the inlaid table near her. Then she put her hands together. “We have always been sisters, she and I,” she said in her sweetly plaintive voice. “If she needs me I will go to her.”

“Thank you, Lady,” the Chief Eunuch said. “I will escort you there myself and wait for your return.”

So it happened that Yehonala, lying on her bed that same day, tearless and in despair, looked up and saw her cousin standing in the doorway. By now she felt she hated all her life and she was sorry that she had chosen greatness for she did not wish such greatness when she knew the price of it.

“Sakota!” she wailed and held out both her arms.

Sakota flew to her at once, melted by such a cry, and the two young women clasped each other and wept mutual tears. Neither dared to speak of what both remembered, and Sakota knew that the memory was as hateful to her as it was to Yehonala.

“Oh, poor Sister,” she wept. “Three nights! I had only one.”

“I will not return to him,” Yehonala whispered. She all but strangled her cousin, so tightly did she hold her by both arms around the neck and Sakota sank down into the bed.

“Oh Sister, but you must!” she cried. “Else what will they do to you, my dear? We are not our own now.”

Then Yehonala, always whispering because of the listening eunuchs, revealed her heart. “Sakota, it is worse for me than you. You love no man, do you? Alas, I know now that I do love. Here is the misery! If I did not love, I could be careless. What is a woman’s body? It is only a thing, to be kept or given away. There is no pride in it when one does not love. It is only priceless when one loves—and is loved again.”

She had no need to speak the name. Sakota knew it was Jung Lu.

“It is too late, Sister,” Sakota said. She stroked Yehonala’s smooth wet cheeks. “There is no escape now, Sister.”

Yehonala pushed her hands away. “Then I must die,” she said, her voice breaking, “for truly I will not live.” And she put her head down on her cousin’s shoulder again and wept.

Now this little Sakota had the soft heart of a woman in whom is only gentleness, and so while she soothed Yehonala with her hands, stroking her forehead and her cheeks, she plotted in her heart as to what she could do to help her. To leave the palace or even the Forbidden City was not possible. If a concubine escaped there was no place for her in the known world. If Yehonala returned to her uncle’s house, who was Sakota’s father, then the whole family might be killed for her sin. Yet where else can a runaway woman hide? If she mingles with strangers do they not all inquire to know who she is, for is it not told everywhere with noise and commotion if a concubine runs from the palaces of the Dragon Emperor? Whatever help, whatever comfort, must be found only within the walls themselves. Intrigue there was a plenty, and though no man could sleep within the walls of this city at night, save only the Son of Heaven, nevertheless women had their lovers by day.

Yet how could she, the Imperial Consort, stoop to bargain with eunuchs and so put herself in their power? She could not do this. Not only fear but delicacy, too, forbade.

“Dear Cousin,” she said, hiding her thoughts, “you must speak with Jung Lu. Ask him to tell my father that you cannot stay where you are. Perhaps my father can buy you free, or exchange you for some other one, or he can say you have gone mad. Not now, you understand, Cousin, for indeed I hear that our lord is much in love with you. But later, Cousin, when your turn is over, and another takes your place, perhaps it can be done.”

Sakota said this innocently, for she loved no man, and was not jealous, but Yehonala felt a prick of pride. What, was she to be displaced? If Sakota said this, then it must be that she had heard it already murmured among the women and the eunuchs. She sat up in bed and pushed her tumbled hair away from her face.

“I cannot ask my kinsman to come to me—you know that, Sakota! Gossip would flare from court to court. But you may send for him, Sakota. He is your kinsman, too. Send for him and tell him I will surely kill myself. Tell him that I care nothing for anyone, only to get myself free again. Here is a prison, Sakota—we are all in prison!”

“I am happy enough,” Sakota said, mildly. “It is pleasant here, I think!”

Yehonala turned her eyes sidewise on her cousin. “You are happy anywhere—so long as you can sit in peace and embroider bits of satin!”

Sakota’s eyelids fell and her small mouth curved down. “What else is there to do, Cousin?” she asked sadly.

Yehonala flung back her hair and caught it in one hand and twisted it into a great knot behind her head. “There—there—there—” she cried. “It is what I am saying! There is nothing to do—I cannot go on the street, I cannot so much as put my head outside the gate to see if there is a play at the corner, I have not seen one play since I came here and you know I have ever loved to see a play. My books, yes—my painting? Well, I paint. For whom? Myself! It is not enough—not yet! And at night—”

She shivered and drew up her legs and laid her proud head down upon her knees.

Sakota sat silent for a long moment. Then, knowing that she had no comfort for this young and stormy woman, whom indeed she could not understand, since not by storm can a woman change what she is born, she rose.

“Cousin, my dear,” she said, in her most coaxing voice, “I will go away now so that you can be bathed and dressed and then you must eat some food, something you like. And I will send for our kinsman and you must not refuse to see him if he comes, for it will be because I have so decided for your sake. And if there is gossip, then I will say that it is I who bade him come.”

She put her hand so lightly on Yehonala’s head, still bent on her knees, that it felt no heavier there than a leaf, and then she went away.

When she was gone Yehonala flung herself back upon her pillows and lay stone still, her eyes open and staring into the canopy above her. A fantasy wove itself in her mind, a dream, a plan, a plot, possible only if Sakota protected her, Sakota who was the Imperial Consort, whom no one could accuse.

When her serving woman peered in, afraid to speak or call, Yehonala turned her head.

“I will have my bath now,” she said. “And I will put on something new—say, my green robe, the apple green. And then I will eat.”

“Yes, yes, my queen, my pet,” the woman said, well pleased. She let the curtains fall and Yehonala heard her feet trotting down the corridors, hastening to obey.

Sometime in the afternoon of that day, two hours before the curfew fell when all men must leave the Emperor’s city, Yehonala heard the footstep for which she waited. She had spent the day alone in her own rooms after Sakota left her, forbidding the entrance of anyone. Only her serving woman sat outside the door. To her Yehonala said honestly:

“I am in sore trouble. My cousin, the Consort, knows my woe. She has commanded our kinsman to come to me, to hear me and to carry my trouble to my guardian uncle. While he is here, you are to stay by the door. You are not to enter, nor let anyone so much as peer into my court. You understand that it is by the Consort’s command that he comes.”

“Lady, I do understand,” the woman said.

Thus the hours had passed, she at the door and Yehonala inside the closed door behind the dropped curtain. She sat idle in body but her mind was exceedingly busy and her heart was in turmoil. Could she prevail upon Jung Lu to foresake his rectitude? It was her will so to prevail.

He came at last, two hours before the curfew. She heard his footsteps, the firm pace measured to his height. She heard his voice inquiring whether Yehonala slept and her woman’s reply that she waited for him.

She heard the door open and close, and she saw his hand, that large smooth hand she knew so well, lay hold upon the inner curtain and hesitate. She sat rigid in her chair of carved black wood, waiting and motionless. Then he put the curtain aside and stood there looking at her, and she looked at him. Her heart leaped in her breast, a thing alive and separate from her, and tears welled to her eyes and her mouth began to quiver.

Whatever she could do, this that she did shook all his will. He had seen her weep in pain and he had heard her sob with rage, but he had never seen her sit motionless and weep without a sound, helplessly, as though her very life were broken.

He gave a great groan and his arms went out to her and he strode across the floor. And she, seeing only those outstretched arms, rose blindly from her chair and ran to him and felt them enclose her fast. Thus locked together, in silence and in fearful ecstasy they stood, how long, neither knew. Cheek to cheek they stood, until their lips met by instinct. Then he tore his mouth away.

“You know you cannot leave this place,” he groaned. “You must find your freedom here within these walls, for there is no other freedom for you now.”

She listened, hearing his voice from afar, knowing only that within his arms she held him.

“The higher you rise,” he told her, “the greater will your freedom be. Rise high, my love—the power is yours. Only an Empress can command.”

“But will you love me?” she asked, her voice stifling in her throat.

“How can I not love you?” Thus he replied. “To love you is my only life. I draw my breath, my every breath, to love you.”

“Then—seal me your love!”

These were the bold words she spoke but in so soft a whisper that he might not have heard them, except she knew he did. She felt him motionless, then he made a sigh. She felt his shoulders shiver and his muscles loosen and his bones yield.

“If once I am made yours,” she said bravely, “even here I can live.”

No answer yet! He could not speak. His soul was still not yielded.

She lifted her head and looked into his face. “What does it matter where I live if I am yours? I know you speak the truth. There is no escape for me except by death. Well, I can choose death. It is easy in a palace—opium to swallow, my gold earrings, a little knife to open my veins—can I be watched day and night? I swear I will die unless you make me yours! If I am yours, I will do what you say—forever and my whole life long. I will be Empress.”

Her voice was magic, lovely with pleading, deep and soft and gentle, warm and sweet as honey in the summer sun. Was he not a man? He was young and fervent, still virgin because he had loved no one but her whom he now held within his arms. They were prisoners, trapped by old ways of life, jailed within the imperial palace. He was no more free than she was. Yet only she could do what she would. If she said she would be Empress, then none could hold her back. And if she chose death, then she would die. He knew her nature. And would he not devote his life to help her live? And had not Sakota herself imagined some such scene as this when she had bade him come here? At the last moment the Consort had laid her hand on his arm and she bade him do all he could—“whatever Yehonala asks”—those were Sakota’s very words.