Imperial Woman (9 page)

“Venerable, you told us—you told us indeed,” the serving women said, one after the other.

And Yehonala said, “I will obey you, Venerable, in all things.”

She made her obeisance and retired from the chamber. Outside the doors her own woman waited and Li Lien-ying also. The tall eunuch was rubbing his hands and grinning and cracking his finger joints.

“Let the Phoenix Empress command me,” he declared. “I wait for her commands.”

“Be quiet,” Yehonala said. “You speak too soon.”

“Have I not seen destiny over your head?” he cried. “I see it there now with my naked eyes. I say what I have always known.”

“Leave me,” Yehonala told him. She walked away with swift grace, her woman following. After a few steps she paused and she looked back at the eunuch. “One thing only you may do,” she said. “You may go to my kinsman and tell him what you have heard.”

The eunuch stretched out his neck, corded like a turtle’s neck. “Shall I bid him come to you?” he asked in a hissing whisper.

“No,” Yehonala replied in a clear voice for anyone to hear. “It is not fitting that I should speak now to any man, save to my imperial lord.”

And she went on her way, her hand resting on her woman’s shoulder.

In her own bedchamber she waited, expecting summons from the Emperor when he heard, and her woman bathed her and put fresh inner garments on her and brushed her hair in coils to fit under her jeweled headdress.

“What outer robes will you wear now, Venerable?” the woman inquired fondly.

“Bring me the pale-blue robe embroidered in pink plum blossoms, and the yellow embroidered in green bamboo,” Yehonala said.

The two robes were brought but before she could decide which one suited the color of her face today, there was a commotion in the outer courts. A sudden noise of wailing voices rose above the walls.

“What evil has befallen?” the serving woman cried.

She ran out, leaving her mistress with the robes spread out before her on the bed, and at the gate into the court she fell against the eunuch Li Lien-ying. He wore a face as green as a sour peach, and his coarse mouth hung ajar.

“The Dowager Mother is dead,” he gasped, and his voice came dry out of his throat.

“Dead!” the woman screamed. “But my mistress was with her two hours ago!”

“Dead,” Li Lien-ying repeated. “She came tottering to the Audience Hall supported by her ladies and when the Emperor hastened to her there, she opened her mouth to breathe as though her throat were cut. Then she cried out that he would have a son, and these were her last words, for she fell dead into her ladies’ arms. Her soul has gone to the eternal Yellow Springs.”

“Oh, Lord of Hell,” the woman wailed, “how can you bear such evil news?”

She ran back to her mistress, but Yehonala, hastening to the outer door, had already heard.

“I brought the Imperial Mother too much joy,” she said sadly.

“No, but joy came too quickly after sorrow, and her soul was divided,” the woman said.

Yehonala did not make reply. She went back to her bedroom and stood looking at the two robes spread out before her.

“Put them away,” she said at last. “I shall not be summoned now until the Emperor’s days of mourning are ended.”

And the old woman, sobbing and moaning at such ill fortune, folded the bright robes and put them away again in the red-lacquered chests from whence she had taken them.

The months slipped quietly into the Season of the First Cold. The Forbidden City was stilled in mourning for the Dowager Mother, and the Son of Heaven, wearing white robes of death, lived without women. Yehonala missed the fondness of the dead Dowager, yet she knew that she was not forgotten. She was free and by the Emperor’s command she was also guarded. Whatever she asked for she had, but she must obey the commands sent down to her. Thus she was encouraged to eat the most delicate and delicious foods, fish from the distant rivers, preserved in ice and snow, the yellow carp, the smooth-skinned eels. Fish she craved for every meal, and she drank the soup made from crushed fish bones. Beyond this she asked only to eat the coarse sweets of her childhood that she used to buy at the street vendor’s stall, red sugar cakes, sesame toffee, and rice-flour dumplings stuffed with sweetened bean paste, such as peasants eat. Fat pork and roasted mutton and browned duck and other palace meats she could not eat. And most difficult of all to swallow were the herbs and medicines which the royal physicians brewed daily for her to drink down, for they were continually frightened lest the child be born too soon or born deformed, for which evil they would be blamed, as they well knew.

Each morning after Yehonala was bathed and dressed and before she had. eaten, the physicians waited upon her in number, to feel her pulse and peer under her eyelids and examine her tongue and smell her breath. Then they conferred for two hours concerning her condition that day, and after they were agreed, they prescribed and themselves prepared what they had chosen. How vile were these bowls of green mixtures and black draughts! But Yehonala swallowed the liquors, for well she knew that what she carried in her was no ordinary child, but one who belonged to all the people as their ruler, and not once did she doubt that she carried a male child. She ate heartily and slept well and she kept down the medicines somehow, and her young body throve with health. Throughout the palaces a grateful joy pervaded like serene music, and this flowed out over the whole country. People said to one another that the times had turned, that evil was past and good was come again to the Empire.

Meanwhile Yehonala herself was changed. Until the day when she knew she had conceived, she had been a girl, willful and mischievous, changeable and impetuous in spite of her love of books and her ambition to learn. Now, while she continued to read the ancient books and to brush the ancient characters, whatever she learned she wove around herself and the child within her. Thus when she came upon the words of Lao Tzu, which are these, “Of all the dangers, the greatest is to think lightly of the foe,” she was struck by their present meaning. That wise man had lived how many hundreds of years before her and yet his words remained as fresh as though they were spoken to her this same day. The foe? The realm her son might one day rule was presently beset by foes. She had thought them no concern of hers, but now she knew they were the enemies of her son and so her own. She looked up from the page.

“Tell me,” she said to her tutor, “who are our present foes?”

The old eunuch shook his head, “Lady,” he replied, “I have no learning in affairs of state. I know only the ancient sages.”

Yehonala closed her book. “Send me one to teach me who are my present foes,” she said.

The aged eunuch was confounded but he knew better than to question her, and he reported her command to An Teh-hai, the Chief Eunuch, who went to Prince Kung, the sixth son of the last Emperor. His mother was a concubine, and he was therefore half-brother by blood to the present Emperor, Hsien Feng. The two half-brothers had grown up together, studying their books and learning swordsmanship under the same tutors. Prince Kung’s mind was good, his face manly and good to see. Indeed, his wisdom and intelligence were so high and calm that ministers, princes and eunuchs went to him secretly instead of to the Emperor, nor did he betray anyone and all trusted him. The Chief Eunuch, An Teh-hai, went therefore to the palace of this Prince, which was outside the Forbidden City, and he told him of Yehonala’s visit, and he begged Prince Kung himself to teach the young Favorite.

“For she is so strong,” he said, “so filled with health, her mind as clever as a man’s, that we do not doubt she will bear a son, who will be our next Emperor.”

Prince Kung pondered for a while. He was a young man, and it was not seemly for him to come near a concubine. Yet he was related to her now through his imperial brother and custom might be set aside. They were not Chinese, moreover, but Manchu, and Manchu ways were more free than Chinese ways. And he remembered how dire were these times. His elder brother, the Emperor, was dissolute and weak, the Court corrupt and idle, the ministers and princes lifeless, hopeless, powerless, it seemed, to stay the crumbling of the Empire. The treasury was empty, harvests failed and famines starved the people often. And in their angry hunger, the people made rebellion. Secret rebel bands were everywhere plotting against the Dragon Throne, the Chinese declaring that now was the time to drive out the Manchu emperors, who had ruled them for two hundred years. Drive out the Manchu! Restore the ancient Chinese dynasty of Ming! Already such rebels had gathered in a horde under the long-haired madman, Hung, who called himself a Chinese Christ, as if it were not enough that foreigners were Christians and in the name of that same Christ seduced the young in schools and churches to desert their family gods! What hope, then, except to hold hard the remnants of the Empire until an heir was born, strong son of strong mother?

“I will myself teach the Favorite,” he said, “but bid her aged tutor stay in her presence while I am there.”

The next day, then, when Yehonala went to her books as usual in the Imperial Library, she saw there a man, tall, young, and of powerful handsome looks, beside her tutor. With him was An Teh-hai, who presented Prince Kung, saying why he had come.

Yehonala drew her sleeve across her face and bowed, and Prince Kung stood sidewise, his head turned away.

“Be seated, Elder Brother,” Yehonala said in her pretty voice, and herself sat down in her usual chair, while the old tutor took his place at the end of the table. The Chief Eunuch stood behind the Prince, and her four ladies behind Yehonala.

In this fashion Prince Kung began to teach the Imperial Concubine. Without looking at her and his face turned away, he began the lessons which he continued, one day in seven, for many months. He told her the entire state of the nation, described how the weakness of the Throne invited rebellion of its subjects and invasion from enemies beyond the northern plains and eastern seas. He told her how these invaders, three hundred years before, were first men from Portugal, seeking trade in spices. By the riches of their lawless plunder they tempted other men of Europe to do as they had done, and Spanish conquerors came and Dutchmen in Dutch ships, and then the English, making war for their opium trade and after these the French, the Germans.

Yehonala’s eyes grew larger and more black. Her face was pale and red by turns and her hands clenched in fists upon her knees. “And we did nothing?” she cried out.

“What could we do?” Prince Kung retorted. “We are not sea-faring people as the English are. Their little lands lie circled by the sea, barren and scanty, and upon the sea they must forage or they starve.”

“Nevertheless, I do think—”

Thus Yehonala began but Prince Kung raised his hand.

“Wait—there is yet more.”

And he told how continuously the English had made their wars, each time victorious.

“Why?” she demanded.

“They spend their wealth on war weapons,” Prince Kung replied.

And he told her how still another enemy came down, this time from the north. “We have long known these Russians,” he told her. “Five hundred years ago, Most Favored, the great Kublai Khan, who ruled here, employed Russians to be his bodyguard and so did all the emperors of his dynasty. Two hundred years after him one Yermak, Russian and land pirate, a man of adventure and with a price upon his head, led his wild band across the Ural Mountains to seek furs for those who hired him. He fought the northern tribes who lived in the valley of the great river, Ob, and he took their royal city, called Siber, and he claimed it in the name of the ruler of Russia, who is the Tsar, and thereafter the whole region was called Siberia. And for this deed of conquest his sins were forgiven him and his people call him great even to this day.”

“I have heard enough,” she said abruptly.

“Yet not enough, Most Favored,” Prince Kung said courteously. “The English did not let us be. In the time of Chia-Ch’ing, the son of the mighty Ch’ien Lung, the British sent an envoy, Amherst by name. This man, when summoned to the Audience Hall at the usual hour of dawn, refused to come, saying that his garments of state had not arrived, and that he was ill. The Son of Heaven, then ruling, sent his own physicians to examine the foreigner, and they returned, saying that Amherst feigned illness. The Son of Heaven, then ruling, was angry and ordered the Englishman to go home. The white men are stubborn, Most Favored. They will not bend or kneel before our Sons of Heaven. They tell us that they kneel before none but gods—and women.”

“Women?” Yehonala repeated. She was diverted by this image of white men kneeling before women and she put up her hand to hide her laughter behind her sleeve. The sound of laughter escaped her nevertheless and Prince Kung turned his eyes sidewise and caught the mischief in her eyes and himself broke into soundless laughter. Thus encouraged the Chief Eunuch laughed and then the Court ladies laughed, holding up their silken sleeves, too, to hide their faces.

“Will white men still not kneel to the Son of Heaven?” Yehonala asked, when her laughter ended.

“They will not kneel,” Prince Kung replied.

Yehonala did not speak for a moment. But when my son rules, she was thinking, they will kneel to my son. If they will not kneel and bow their heads to the floor, then I will have them beheaded.

“What now?” she asked. “Are we still helpless?”

“We must resist,” Prince Kung said, “though not by arms or battles, for we have not such means. But we can resist by obstructions and delays. We must deny the foreigners their wishes. Now that these Americans, newcomers and followers of the English, insist, too, upon the benefits of the treaties we have been forced to make with other Western peoples, we have demanded that their government may not protect Americans who trade in opium and to this they have agreed.”

“What is the end?” Yehonala asked.

“Who knows?” Prince Kung replied. He sighed heavily and shadows fell across his face. It was a bitter face for all its handsome looks, a sad face, the lines deep about the thin mouth and between the black brows.