Imperial Woman (37 page)

The Empress Mother read this document a few days later as she sat in the winter garden of the Middle Sea Palace. She read it twice. Then most thoughtfully she considered what man this Gordon was, who could for so high a reason refuse vast treasure and great honor. For the first time it came into her mind that even among the Western barbarians there were men not savage, not cruel, not venal. There in the quiet garden, this thought shook her to the soul. If it were true that there could be good men among the enemy, then indeed she must still be afraid. If righteous, the white men were stronger than she reckoned, and she kept this fear hidden in her so long as she lived thereafter.

The Empress Mother held Tseng Kuo-fan in the city for many days while she pondered what reward he should have for his bravery and successes, for by now this imperious woman asked no advice of prince or minister, and at last she commanded that he be made Viceroy of the great northern province of Chihli, and that he live thereafter in the city of Tientsin. On the sixteenth day of the first moon of the new year, she presided at a Court banquet whose dishes were beyond reckoning, and while all feasted, Tseng Kuo-fan sat in the highest seat of honor and the court actors presented six famous plays. Only after all this merrymaking did the Empress Mother bid Tseng Kuo-fan to depart for Tientsin and there find peace.

Yet he had no peace, for sudden rioting burst out in that city against some French nuns. These nuns, who kept an orphanage, offered a reward of money to any who would bring them a child, and trouble then followed, for evildoers began to kidnap children to sell them to the nuns who received them without asking to whom they belonged, and would not give them up again when their parents came to claim them, since they were paid for.

The Empress Mother sent for Tseng Kuo-fan again.

“And why,” she inquired of him, “do these foreigners want Chinese children?”

“Majesty,” the learned man replied, “I believe, for myself, that they wish to make converts to their religion, but alas, the ignorant people of the streets are full of superstitions and they declare that the magic medicines of the foreigners are made from the eyes and hearts and livers of human beings, and it is for this that the nuns want the children.”

She had cried out in horror. “Can it be so!”

But he assured her, “I think it is not so. The nuns do often take the children of beggars already half dead on the streets, or they search for the newborn female infants of the very poor, whose parents expose them on the roadsides to die, and it is sure that most of such children cannot be saved, and yet the nuns take them and baptize them and count them as converts. Then such as die are buried in their Christian graveyards and it is considered to the merit of the nuns to baptize so many.”

Whether Tseng Kuo-fan was right or wrong, she did not know, for he was a man of tolerance, believing no ill even of his enemy. Nevertheless, in the fifth month of that same year, a curse of the gods had fallen upon the nuns in the city of Tientsin, so that many children in the French orphanage had died and a horde of rabble-rousers and ne’er-do-wells, who called themselves the Turgid Stars, went everywhere saying that the foreign nuns were killing the children left in their care. The people were angered, and the nuns, in fear, agreed that certain chosen men should be allowed to come in and see for themselves that the orphanage was a place of mercy and not of death. Alas, the French Consul was angered in his turn at such inspection and he came and drove out those chosen, and although Chung Hou, the Superintendent of Customs in Tientsin, warned him that this was dangerous indeed, yet that foreigner was too proud to deal with him and demanded that an officer of high rank be sent to the Consulate. Then, although the city magistrate did his best to placate his people, they continued in their rage, and they went to the church and the orphanage of the foreign nuns, threatening them with fire and weapons, whereupon that foolish French Consul ran into the street with his pistol in his hand to succor the nuns. But he was seized by the people and put to death in some unknown manner, for none ever saw him again.

Prince Kung then came to the aid of Tseng Kuo-fan and he negotiated with all his skill, and by luck and by chance at this moment France itself went to war with Prussia, and in such trouble was more willing to close the negotiation. Nevertheless, the Empress Mother had been compelled to agree to pay to France four thousand silver taels from the Imperial Treasury as the price for the dead Frenchman’s life and the fright caused the nuns, and Chung Hou, the Superintendent of Customs in Tientsin, was ordered to go to France in person to make apology for the Throne.

Before Tseng Kuo-fan could bring this trouble to an end, the Empress Mother sent for him again, for she had received a memorial from the south that brought grave news. Though the Heavenly King was dead, the city of Nanking and the four provinces were still not peaceful, the people so unruly and restless after the many years of rebellion that they had assassinated her Viceroy. For this reason she sent in haste for Tseng Kuo-fan and commanded him to take the dead man’s place in Nanking. The weary, aging general was compelled to leave his post and come to the capital and once more in the Imperial Audience Hall at dawn he knelt upon the cushion before the Throne, whereon sat the young Emperor. Behind the yellow silk curtain the two Empresses sat on their thrones, the Empress Mother to the right and her co-Regent to the left.

When the kneeling general heard the voice of the Empress Mother commanding him to return to the south and take up new duties in Nanking as Viceroy, he begged her patience while he told her that indeed he was not well, that his eyesight was failing, and therefore he prayed to be excused from such a task.

She interrupted him from behind the curtain. “Though your eyes fail you,” she declared, “yet you are able to supervise those under your command.” And she would not hear his plea.

He reminded her then that he had not yet settled the troubles in his present province of Chihli, where a French officer in Tientsin had been murdered by Chinese rowdies while he tried to protect the nuns who were his countrywomen.

“Have you not executed those miscreants?” she demanded.

“Majesty,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied, “the French Minister and his friend the Russian Minister insist upon sending deputies to watch the beheadings, and they have not yet arrived. I have left my supporting general, Li Hung-chang, to finish the task. The beheadings were to have taken place yesterday.”

“Oh, these foreign missionaries and priests!” the Empress Mother exclaimed. “I wish we could forbid them our realm! When you take up your duties in Nanking, you must maintain a large and disciplined army to control the people, who hate all foreigners.”

“Majesty, I purpose to build forts along the entire Yangtse River,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied.

“These treaties Prince Kung has made with the foreigners are too irksome,” the Empress Mother went on. “Especially irksome are the Christians, who come and go everywhere as though theirs were the country.”

“Majesty, it is true,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied. He was still on his knees, and since Court custom compelled him to kneel without his hat on his head, he felt the chill of the wintry dawn creeping into his bones. Nevertheless he continued with courtesy to agree with the Empress. “It is true,” he said, “that missionaries cause trouble everywhere. Their converts oppress those who do not wish to eat the foreign religion and the missionaries always protect the converts and the consuls protect the missionaries. Next year when the time comes to revise the treaty with France, we must reconsider carefully the whole matter of allowing religious propaganda to be spread among the people.”

The Empress Mother said with still more irritation, “I cannot understand why we must have a foreign religion here when we have three good religions of our own.”

“Nor I, Majesty,” the old general replied.

After silence the audience ended, and since this was the year of Tseng Kuo-fan’s sixtieth birthday, the Empress Mother again made a great feast for him and gave him many rich gifts. She composed a poem in her own vigorous handwriting in which she praised him for his age and accomplishments, and with it she sent a carved tablet upon which were the words “To One Who Is Our Lofty Pillar and Our Rock of Defense.” She sent also a gold image of Buddha, a scepter made of sandalwood inlaid with jade, a robe embroidered with gold dragons, ten rolls of imperial silk and ten other rolls of silk crêpe.

So powerful was the influence of Tseng Kuo-fan that the restlessness of the people subsided when he entered the Viceregal palace in Nanking. His first duty was to discover the assassin of the former Viceroy and condemn him to death by slicing. He made this death public, deeming it well that the people watch with their own eyes what befell such a criminal, and they watched in silence while the thin strong blade of the headsman’s knife cut the man’s living body into strips of meat and fragments of bone.

Thereafter the people returned to their daily work and to their usual amusements. Once more the flower boats plied their way upon Lotus Lake and lovely courtesans sang their songs, playing upon lutes while their clients listened and feasted. Tseng Kuo-fan was pleased to see the old peaceful life return, and he reported to the Throne that the south was now as it had been before the great T’ai P’ing Rebellion.

Yet in spite of his honors and his high place and his rectitude, Tseng Kuo-fan had not long to live. In early spring of the next year he was struck down by the gods while he sat in his sedan chair on the way to meet a minister whom the Empress Mother had sent with messages from Peking. As was his habit when alone, he was reciting to himself certain passages from the Confucian classics when suddenly he felt his tongue grow numb. He motioned to his attendants to take him back to the palace. He felt dazed and confused, spots floated before his eyes, and he lay silent upon his bed three days.

Twice again he was struck, and then he summoned his son to his side and with difficulty he gave him these commands:

“I am about to cross over to the Yellow Springs. Alas, I am useless, for I leave behind me many unfinished tasks and problems. I command you to recommend to the Empress Mother my colleague, Li Hung-chang. As for me, I am like the morning dew which passes swiftly away. When the end comes and I am encoffined, let my funeral services be performed with the old rites and Buddhist chants.”

“Father, do not speak of death,” his son exclaimed, and the tears overran his eyelids and rolled down his cheeks.

At this Tseng Kuo-fan seemed to rally, and he asked to be taken into the garden to see the blossoming plum trees. There he was stricken once more, but this time he would not be taken to his bed. Instead, he motioned that he was to be carried into the Viceregal Audience Hall, and they carried him in and put him upon the Viceroy’s throne, and there he sat as though he conducted an audience and so he died.

At the moment of his death a great cry went up from the city, for a shooting star fell from the sky and all saw it and feared catastrophe. When he heard that the Viceroy was dead, every man felt that he had lost a parent.

The Empress Mother, hearing the evil news two days later, bowed her head and wept for a time in silence. Then she said:

“Let there be no merrymaking, no feasting or plays, for three full days of mourning.”

And she sent out a decree over the whole nation ordering that a temple be built in every province to the honor of this great and good man, who had brought peace to the realm.

On the evening of the third day she sent for Jung Lu, who came to her private audience hall and knelt before her, and she put a question to him.

“What do you think of this Li Hung-chang whom Tseng Kuo-fan put before me in his place?”

“Majesty,” Jung Lu replied, “you may trust Li Hung-chang above all other Chinese. He is brave and enlightened, and the more you depend upon him, the more loyal he will be to the Throne. Nevertheless, reward him often and generously.”

She listened to these words, her great eyes wistfully upon his face, and she said:

“It is only you who seek no reward for all you do for me.”

When she saw that he would make no reply to this, but continued to kneel before her in silence, she touched his shoulder with her foiled fan and she said:

“I pray you guard your health well, kinsman. Next to you, I valued Tseng Kuo-fan, and since he is gone, I tremble lest the gods in some wrath that I do not understand are set upon snatching from me my every support and stay.”

“Majesty,” he said, “you are to me what you ever have been, since the days of our childhood together.”

“Stand,” she said. “Stand and let me see your face.”

He stood then, stalwart and strong, and for one instant their eyes met full.

In the autumn of the next year, the Board of Imperial Astrologers proclaimed the day for the burial of the late Emperor. During these several years between death and burial, his jeweled casket had rested in a temple in a distant part of the palace, but now most solemn preparations were made for the imperial funeral. The building of the new tomb had taken five years, and as a sign of her renewed confidence in Prince Kung, the Empress Mother, had commanded him to be responsible for the collection of the vast sums needed. Without complaint Prince Kung had performed this duty, though indeed the task was severe, for the southern provinces, the richest in the Empire, whence should have come most of the tribute monies, were too poor from wars and rebellions to give their share. Ten million silver taels he collected by force and persuasion, levying taxes on every province and guild, and from this sum he must allow commissions to officials high and low, from ministers and lesser princes and viceroys to eunuchs and tax gatherers. Each one must be paid for his effort and in the privacy of his own palace Prince Kung complained to his gentle wife, in whose presence alone he could speak his heart.

“Yet must I obey the She-dragon,” he sighed, “for if I offend her again she will destroy us all.”

“Alas,” his lady replied, “I wish, my lord, that we were poor folk so that we might be at peace.”