Imperial Woman (53 page)

He rose and dusted off his knees and walked backward from her presence, bowing as he went, and on his full square face she saw a look of patience which somehow struck her to the heart. For this man had saved her more than once and he had been obedient to her command, and she knew that he was still loyal. Some day she would be lenient toward him again but not today. She would not let her heart soften to anyone and her greatest wrath was yet to fall. For next she summoned the Emperor by her own handwriting and to her name she set the imperial seal.

But on that day when she had dispatched the command, a strange mad turmoil upset the whole Summer Palace. Near evening, when the Empress rested in the Pavilion of Orchids, one of her ladies came running through the round marble gate, her robes flying and her hair disordered. The serving woman, who knelt beside the Empress to fan the small insects away, put up her hand for silence, for the Empress slept. But the lady was too frightened to heed and she cried out in a shrill high voice,

“Majesty, Majesty—I saw—I saw—”

The Empress woke at once and fully, as she always did. She sat up on her couch and looked at the lady with a piercing stare.

“Saw what?” she asked.

“A man shaved like a priest,” the lady gasped. She clutched her bosom and began to weep with fright.

“Well, well,” the Empress rejoined, “a priest, I suppose—”

“No priest, Majesty,” the lady insisted, “but only bald like a priest. Perhaps he was a Thibetan monk—ah, but he wore no yellow robes! No, he was black from neck to feet and taller than any man I ever saw, and he had such great hands! Yet, Majesty, the gates are locked, and none save eunuchs are here inside the walls!”

The Empress turned her eyes toward the sky. The sun had set, and the soft red light of afterglow poured into the courtyard of the pavilion. Indeed, no man should be here now.

“You are dreaming,” she said to the foolish lady. “The eunuchs are on guard. No man can enter.”

“I saw him, Majesty, I saw him,” the lady insisted.

“Then I myself will find him,” the Empress declared firmly. So saying she sent the serving woman to bring the Chief Eunuch to her, and when he heard the tale he called twenty lesser eunuchs and they lit lanterns and held swords, and encircling the intrepid Empress, they searched long and found no one.

“We are fools,” the Empress cried at last. “That lady had a nightmare or she was drunk. So you, Li Lien-ying, bid the eunuchs carry on the search while you hold the lantern for me.”

So they two walked back, he ahead to light the way, until she returned to her library room. She had but crossed the threshold when lifting her head she saw upon the writing table a long sheet of red paper whereon were brushed in huge bold strokes these words, “I hold your life inside the hollow of my hand.”

She seized the paper and read it twice and threw it at the waiting eunuch.

“See this!” she shouted. “He hides here—an assassin! Get back to the search.”

By now her ladies flocked about her, and while Li Lien-ying made haste away, they consoled the Empress with many words and sighs.

“Be sure, Majesty, the eunuchs will find him,” they said, and they declared that now since all knew the hairless man was real and not a dream, he could be quickly found.

They lit candles, a score or so, and led the Empress to her sleeping chambers, saying that she must not fall ill with weariness, and they would stay with her all night. But as they entered into the chamber they saw a sheet of red paper pinned on her yellow satin pillow and upon it with the same bold strokes were brushed these words:

“When the hour comes, I bring my sword. Asleep or waking, you must die.”

The ladies shrieked but the Empress was only angry. Then suddenly she seized the red paper and crumpled it into a ball and threw it across the floor. She laughed, her black eyes aglitter. “Now come,” she commanded, “be silent, my children. The fellow is some clown who loves to tease. Go to bed and sleep and so will I.”

They made a chorus against her. “No, Majesty, no—no, Majesty, we will not leave you.”

Still smiling, she yielded, and with her usual grace she let them undress her and put her to bed. And six ladies lay on mattresses the serving women brought and put upon the floor, while others went to their rooms to sleep until midnight and then another six would take their place until dawn. Meanwhile Li Lien-ying had summoned the eunuchs and they surrounded the sleeping chamber, standing with their swords drawn, until the night was spent.

At dawn the Empress woke, she yawned pleasantly behind her outspread hand. She smiled and said she felt the better for the commotion of the hairless man. “I am lively,” she declared. “We have been too indolent in all this beauty of our palace.”

She went out from her chamber that morning, bathed and dressed, her hair set with fresh flowers, to eat her early meal, her eyes looking everywhere to see that all was in usual order. Suddenly she saw, laid upon the dishes, the red sheet of paper, and the same strong strokes of black.

“While you slept, I waited,” the black words declared.

The ladies screamed again, some wept aloud, and the serving women ran in and struck their cheeks with their palms. “But we put out the dishes only now and we saw no man come in!”

“He will be found,” the Empress said lightly, and again she crumpled the paper and threw it to the floor. Nor would she allow the dishes to be removed, although the ladies shuddered and implored, saying that the meats might be poisoned. No, she ate as usual and felt no pains, and during that whole day the search went on. None saw the man, but four more red sheets of threats were found here and there.

So went this search for two full months, by day and night, a zealous search, for now and again a lady or a eunuch saw a glimpse of the hairless man, in black from neck to feet, and his pale face and head all of a color. One lady indeed fell into sickness and her mind went weak because she said when she had opened her eyes one morning from her sleep she saw the man’s face staring at her, but upside down as though he hung from the roof, and when she screamed the head went upwards.

Nevertheless the Empress would not be afraid, although day and night the eunuchs stood on guard. No one outside the walls knew the story, for the Empress had forbidden one word to be told lest the city be disturbed and rascals come out from among them to seize the chance of some confusion.

One night, while the Empress lay sleeping in her chamber, the wakeful eunuchs stood on guard as usual in the halls outside and in the courtyards about. In the still hours between midnight and the dawn they heard a door creak open slowly and against the faint moonlight a black foot appeared, a leg, a thigh thrust in the narrow space. The eunuchs sprang together to lay hold upon that secret being. He fled, but eunuchs everywhere were waiting, and in a garden behind a great rock the Empress had ordered from a distant province they caught the hairless man between their hands.

The Empress was awakened by the eunuchs’ shouts and cries. She rose swiftly from her bed, for she had commanded that whatever hour the man was caught, he must be brought before her. Her women wrapped her in her robes and set her headdress on her head, and in a moment she sat upon her throne in her Audience Hall. Here the eunuchs brought the man with ropes wound about his body.

He stood before the Empress and he would not bow, though eunuchs seized him by the neck to force him down.

“Let him stand,” the Empress said, and her voice was mild and cool.

She stared down upon the tall bold figure, a young man, his head shaven, and she saw his strange tiger face, the sloping forehead, the tight-drawn mouth, the slanting eyes. A black garment, cut to his shape, fitted his thin body like a skin.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I am no one,” the man said, “nameless, of no significance.”

“Who sent you here?” she asked.

“Kill me,” the man said carelessly, “for I will tell you nothing.”

At such impudence the eunuchs shouted and would have fallen on him with their swords but the Empress put up her hand.

“See what he has on his person,” she commanded.

They searched the man while he stood carelessly at ease, indifferent to them, and they found nothing.

“Majesty,” Li Lien-ying now said, “I pray you give this fellow to me. Under torture he will speak. And I will see that he is beaten slowly with bamboos split thin and sharp. He shall not move, for he shall be laid upon the ground, his arms and legs outspread and fastened down with wire tied to stakes. Leave him to me, Majesty.”

All knew how Li Lien-ying dealt torture, and all approved with groans and cries.

“Take him and do what you will,” the Empress said. As she spoke she met the man’s eyes full, and she saw that they were not black like other human eyes but yellow, and as impudent as are the eyes of wild beasts which fear no human. She could not turn her own gaze away, so loathsome and yet strangely beautiful were those yellow eyes.

“Do your work well,” she bade the eunuchs.

Two days later Li Lien-ying returned to make report.

“What names did he speak?” the Empress asked.

“None, Majesty,” he said.

“Then continue torture but make it twice as slow.”

This was her command but Li Lien-ying shook his head.

“Majesty,” he said, “it is too late. He died as though he willed it, and he did not speak.”

For the first time in her life the Empress felt afraid. The strange yellow eyes seemed still to watch her. Yet when had she allowed herself to fear? She put out her right hand and plucked a jasmine flower from a blooming tree set in a porcelain pot nearby, and held the fragrance to her nostrils and breathed it in for comfort.

“Now let him be forgot,” she said.

Yet she it was who could not forget the hairless man. He left behind him the shadow of darkness and suspicious doubt. The beauty of her palace was dimmed, and though she walked in her gardens every day and showed her old zeal for each flower and fruit in season, and though daily she commanded the Court actors to present some merry play, her easy joy was gone. She had no fear of death, but what she felt was a heavy sadness, since somewhere there were those who wished her dead. Could she have found those enemies, she would have killed them, but where were they to be found? None knew and all were troubled.

One day in late afternoon she sat among her ladies on the great marble boat and she saw Li Lien-ying come near. She had played gambling games all day and still she played, her tea bowl in one hand while with the other she moved her pieces here and there to win the game.

“Majesty, your tea is cold,” the eunuch said. He took her bowl and let a serving eunuch fill it. When he put it down upon the table near her he whispered that he had news.

She seemed not to hear, she played her game out and then she rose, and with a look she summoned him to follow her.

When they were alone in her own palace, her ladies standing at a distance since they knew the eunuch had some business to report, she waved her fan to signify he should not kneel and nodded to him to begin what he had to say.

“Majesty,” he said, his hissing whisper near her ear.

She struck him slowly with her fan. “Stand back,” she cried imperiously. “Your breath is foul as rotting carrion.”

He put up his hand then to hold back his breath and began his tale.

“Majesty, there is a plot.”

She turned her face away and held her fan before her nose. Oh, cursed delicacy, she thought, that made her smell twice as keenly as another might all stinks and odors! Did not this eunuch serve her with his whole heart, she would not keep him near her.

“Majesty,” he began again, and thus he unrolled the plot. The young Emperor now listened to his tutor Weng Tung-ho, who urged him that the nation must be made strong, or it would surely fall at last into the hands of waiting enemies, their jaws open and their saliva dripping, to eat up the Chinese people. The Emperor, Li Lien-ying went on, had asked what should be done, to which the tutor had replied that the great scholar, whose name was K’ang Yu-wei, must give advice, for this scholar was wise not only in history but in the new Western ways. He alone could advise how to build the ships and railroads and the schools for young men who could renew the nation. The Emperor had then sent for K’ang Yu-wei.

The Empress turned her head somewhat, her fan still between her and the eunuch. “And is this K’ang already in the Forbidden City?” she inquired.

“Majesty,” the eunuch said, “he is daily with the Emperor. They spend hours together and I hear that he declares the Chinese men must cut their queues off as the first reform.”

At this the Empress dropped her fan. “But their queues are the sign of subjection these two hundred years to our Manchu dynasty!”

Li Lien-ying nodded his heavy head up and down three times. “Majesty, K’ang Yu-wei is a Chinese revolutionist, a Cantonese. He plots against Your Majesty! Yet I have worse to tell. He bade our Emperor send for Yuan Shih-k’ai, the general who commands our armies under Li Hung-chang, as you know, Majesty. This Yuan has imperial orders now to seize you by force, Majesty, and keep you imprisoned.”

The eunuch gave a mighty sigh, so foul a blast that the Empress put up her fan again in haste to shield herself. “Doubtless my nephew plots to have me killed,” she said too mildly.

“No, no,” the eunuch said. “Our Emperor is not so evil. It may be that K’ang Yu-wei has so advised, but my spies tell me that the Emperor has forbidden harm to your sacred person, Majesty. No, he says you shall only be imprisoned here in your Summer Palace. You are allowed your pleasures but all your power shall be stripped away.”

“Indeed,” she said. She felt a strange sweet strength invade her blood. To do battle was still delight and she would have the victory yet again.

“Well, well,” she said, and laughed. Then Li Lien-ying, at first astonished at her high humor, laughed with her silently, his ugly face made more hideous by his mirth.

“There is none like you under Heaven,” he said tenderly. “You are not male or female, Majesty, but more than either, greater than both.”