Empress (39 page)

A month later, for my entertainment and to ensure that he was no longer the only man in the gynaeceum attracting jealousy, Prosperity brought his elder brother Simplicity to my bed. The boy was eighteen. Their fresh faces, their soft skin, and their exquisite smell of crisp green leaves overwhelmed me. I had been neither a good mother nor a good lover. The Zhang brothers were my last chance to savor the joys of ordinary women. They were my last rays of sunlight before the ultimate sunset.

I gave them the most beautiful things in my possession. Sumptuous palaces had been raised for them close to the Forbidden City. Their stables were filled with the rarest chargers, gifts from kings in the west. Imperial peonies bloomed in their beautiful gardens where little boats glided over serpentine lakes, and cranes danced under canopies edged with gold bells. I gave noble titles to their mother and brothers, and all five boys from the family now had honorable positions. I indulged their faults in a way I never had my husband, and I was tender with them as I never had been with Scribe of Loyalty. I had stopped questioning my every move and forbidding myself pleasures. I had given up worrying about betrayal and usurpation. Simplicity and Prosperity’s delicate virility erased memories of the presumptuous phallus of man. I was no longer an assailed female, a conquered land. The love that I had always thought of as a theft was offered as a soothing balm.

Spring spread its fragrance. Swallows flew back to the eaves of the Palace. With the first mild breeze, the willows flowered. Soon their downy, silvered catkins were fluttering. The court ladies fixed colored kites to lengths of red string and made them dance in the sky. Waking became a delicious treat. The eunuchs congratulated me on my glowing good health so frequently that I felt young again. Where I had lost a tooth, a new one was growing: This miracle flooded me with childish joy. My frugal soul had been seduced by pomp and splendor. My thrifty mind stopped counting the cost. I gave sumptuous banquets and let the Zhang brothers organize extravagant shows with fireworks, animals, and acrobats from the western kingdoms.

Death was no longer an ice-cold bed, a fatal boredom. I wanted to leave this world in a whirlwind of celebrations. Politics were no longer a priority. Like a peasant who has worked hard all his life and resolves to enjoy his accumulated wealth, I decided to appoint an heir. I had to choose between my nephew and my son. The problems were still the same, but I felt less anxious when I confronted that tangle of hopes and frustrations. I was determined to be done with it. The ministers dared to give me frank advice, “Years ago the Emperor Eternal Ancestor braved the wind and the rain, and bared his life to the blade of the sword. He himself led his troops into battle to overcome disorder in this world. He founded the Tang Dynasty so that he could hand it on to his descendants. Before he died, the Emperor Lordly Ancestor entrusted his sons to you so that you might make great sovereigns of them. If Your Majesty now chooses to offer the throne to strangers, her actions would betray his wishes! Which is the more intimate connection, between a mother and her son or between a mother and her nephew? If Your Majesty appoints her son as successor, she shall still be receiving offerings in the Temple of Ancestors in ten thousand years’ time. If Your Majesty appoints her nephew… your servants have never heard of a nephew building a temple to honor his aunt!”

Lai Jun Chen was no longer there to pick out the dark plans for restoration beneath these words. Without his hissing comments, I myself was less susceptible to doubt. Granted, the imperial banners bore my colors, I had altered the calendar and the Empire venerated my ancestors as the founding sovereigns… but my husband’s Tang Dynasty lived on through his descendants and through me. Heaven’s wishes were more powerful than my own. I could not devour my own children so I decided my dynasty should not be the cause of radical revolution, no blood should flow. The forces of destiny had unarmed me for such was the destiny of the Empire. Piety the despot and Miracle the powerless emperor would see their claims brushed aside. I would call Future back from exile. This unworthy son had neglected his principle responsibility. His fourteen years banished from the Court might have put some polish on his flippancy. Now that his youth was buried in the wild mountains, he would come to me with no hint of arrogance.

AT THE BEGINNING of the first year in the era of the Divine Calendar my third son returned from the distant region in the south. At forty, the chubby, jovial prince had become a thin, stooped man with a graying beard. When he threw himself at my feet calling me “Mother” and “Majesty,” my eyes filled with tears. It was like hearing Splendor’s voice, and Wisdom’s, the echoes of their cries as tiny babies. I remembered the polo matches, the noisy celebrations with all four of my sons fighting for the golden goblet in my husband’s hand.

The past was a hurricane blasting through my dreams. How strange, how sad, to be receiving grandchildren-flesh of my flesh-who were strangers and already head and shoulders taller than me! Some had features vaguely like mine, others were like the Emperor Lordly Ancestor or their grandfather the Emperor Eternal Ancestor. Peaceful Joy, the daughter who was born on the road to exile, delivered into her father’s tunic, had grown into a princess whose beauty was mysterious and proud. Fourteen-the age at which I had come to the Imperial City for the first time. And this young girl who grew up in the wilds of the countryside like Heavenlight, was she too reeling and disorientated?

When he heard that his eldest brother had returned, Miracle was eager to offer him his title as Imperial Descendant. He made the request three times in writing. In the ninth month of that year I appointed Future as Supreme Son and his eldest son, Progress, as Supreme Grandson. At the same time I pronounced a Great Amnesty and gave banquets for the people. All the pomp of the celebrations was interrupted by Spirit weeping in grief: Piety had just died! He had been struck down as his father had been sixty years earlier.

General jubilation became imperial mourning. Laughter and congratulations turned to tears and lamentations. My nephew’s body went into the belly of Mount Mang. He would rest in an underground palace with funeral treasures fit for a powerful king who could so easily have been emperor. The entire Court and all of Luoyang was there to witness his journey toward Heaven. My nephew kings and my great nephew county princes wept, and their tears devastated me. I had just dashed their hopes for the future. The defeated were now open to reprisals from their victorious rivals.

I appointed Spirit as head of the Wu clan and first officiator in worshipping our ancestors, well aware that this subtle, learned man would succeed in endearing himself to the heir. To protect my clan from the possible revenge of the Tang princes, I arranged countless marriages between my granddaughters and great nephews, and ensured that my great nieces ruled in my grandsons’ households and gave them descendants. In order to calm the inevitable rivalry, I summoned Future, Miracle, Moon, Spirit, and all of their children to the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements. I stood facing the Altar of Heaven, the Altar of the Emperors of the Five Orientations, and the Altar of Ancestors. I asked my highest Court dignitaries to bear witness, and I ordered my descendants to swear on their lives to serve the dynasty together like the left arm and the right arm of one body. Their oath that they would never quarrel was inscribed on an iron blade and laid in the heart of the sanctuary.

HAVING EMERGED TRIUMPHANT from the succession crisis and free of the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen, the Court was ready to follow me to inaugurate a new era. On my way to Mount Song, I had discovered the River of Rocks, and beside it I commissioned the Palace of Solar Breath. The skilled workmen transformed the deep valley into an extraordinary garden of marvels. Pavilions with turquoise roofs blended into the luxuriant forests. Birds flew in and out of open windows and doors. Waterfalls cascaded inside pavilions built with the trunks of trees. Fish like long, translucent arrows swam beneath the crystalline floor. I kept beehives and herds of sheep. I liked watching Simplicity and Prosperity coming toward me through the huge magnolia woods, their tunics and wide sleeves flying in the wind as they brought me a chick, a fawn, or a butterfly. After two years of research, the bonze Hu Chao offered me the Immortal Remedy.

The pills he gave me warmed my entrails and made my body feel light. My hearing and eyesight improved. The world became limpid: Its waters began to whisper, bees no longer buzzed in silent abstract words. Soon I could even pick out the yawn of a leopard, the sighing of the trees, or even of the wind as it blew across the valley. Everyday I rediscovered forgotten sounds, and I listened delightedly to the creak of a shutter as it was lifted or the sneeze of a little eunuch who believed I was still deaf. To thank the gods and demonstrate my humility I renounced the title of Emperor who Holds the Mandate of Heaven and Turns the Golden Wheel. I entrusted the monk Hu Chao with a golden blade engraved with my prayer to all the gods in the universe. He toiled all the way to the summit of Mount Song and pushed it into a crack in the rock.

I set off with my lovers, sons, nephews, and ministers, on my boats decorated with dragons and phoenixes. We were an elegant gathering, all rustling silks and brocades, as we made our progress down the River of Rocks, passing cliffs where waterfalls languidly stroked the rusts and emeralds of lichens and mosses. The young princes plucked at musical instruments and the princesses danced, fan in hand. Great ministers served as cup bearers while I judged a poetry competition between my lovers, my nephews, and my sons.

The alchemy of Hu Chao’s pills gave me new energy: I undertook my last mission on this lowly earth-pacifying the murderous conflict between Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. My dynasty would recognize these three doctrines as three pillars of Chinese thought. Any quarrels or confrontations between their adherents would be punishable by death. Gods, immortals, Buddhas, spirits, Heaven and Earth would all be considered so many different manifestations of the one God, the source of multiple divinities. In my Imperial Park there were pavilions all along the River Luo, linked by brightly colored galleries. Geese, cranes, and storks flew through the soft red twilight along the reed-lined banks. That was where I set up the Academy of Sacred Cranes, where I asked Simplicity and Prosperity to compile the great encyclopedia
The Pearls of the Three Sects.
With the help of illustrious scholars, they produced 1,300 volumes in which they gathered every tract on Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. I succeeded in proving-from the way they used the same words to spread different convictions-that the three religions had the same veins through which the one and only source of Wonderment flowed.

IN THE FIRST year of the era of the Foot of Buddha, on the day we celebrated the Feast of the Moon, I hosted a banquet for 3,000 people in the Forbidden City. Lanterns and glasses full of wine floated along the city’s rivers. Lamps of jade and crystal sparkled in the trees. Acrobats vaulted through the starry sky leaving trails of pale flames behind them. Tatar dancing girls with masked faces and bare midriffs undulated between the river banks and the firework displays and snatched improvised poems from my guests’ hands. Sitting there watching those cheery, drunken faces, those dancing eyes, and smiling lips, and lulled by the hubbub of music, I succumbed to the sweetest sleep.

I was suddenly woken by a scuffle at a table in the distance. I sent my eunuchs off hastily for an explanation. My great nephew, the King of Wei, who was married to the Princess of Eternal Plenty, had just argued over a game with his cousin and brother-in-law, the Supreme Grandson. I called the two troublemakers over-one had a torn tunic, the other had blood trickling from his head. My last illusion was now shattered, and my anger soon found loose tongues willing to explain: The King of Wei, Piety’s eldest son, had accused his cousin’s family of assassinating his father. The Supreme Grandson had responded by saying that Piety had been an ungrateful intriguer. With alcohol fueling his hatred, my great nephew-who would have been the Supreme Grandson if his father had been appointed heir-vented his anger on the boy who had robbed him of his future. The two cousins who were brothers-in-law had insulted each other and come to blows. Their indignation unleashed ancient resentments. Great nephews and grandsons from both sides of my family had fought violently.

I trembled with shame and disappointment, but I did not want to spread any scandal. I silenced the servants, sent the two young princes back to their seats, and called for a deafening piece of music from the drums and mouth organs. I did not summon my two families to the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements until half a moon-phase later. I ordered the princes and princesses to kneel and asked for the iron blade, on which their oath of unity was carved, to be taken from his golden casket. There, before the Altar of Heaven, the Altar of the Emperors of the Five Orientations, and the Altar of Ancestors, I decreed that the law must be applied.

The King of Wei and the Supreme Grandson removed their brocade coats and their caps with jade pins. Wearing their simple white tunics and with their hair loose about their shoulders, they prostrated themselves at my feet, bowed to their parents, and went to hang themselves in a wing of the sanctuary. Silence reigned. I stared into space watching motes of dust dancing. Then I heard the sharp sound of two wooden stools being overturned. The first wife of my son and heir let out a gasp; she had just lost her only male child. Behind her, the Princess of Eternal Plenty-sister and wife to the dead men-passed out. Three days later Gentleness told me that this poor granddaughter had lost her child in the seventh month and had died bathed in blood. She was barely eighteen.

The Supreme Grandson and the King of Wei had both dreamed of bearing the crown one day. But the crown had struck them both down.