My Last Empress (19 page)

Balefully I eyed the document official’s house. What bountiful reward for employment that paid an annual wage of three hundred tael of silver, which, while a substantial amount, would barely put the roof on this estate. The wall was made of green stone from far mountains, and the arch gate featured two prominent columns, formerly the trunks of some ancient redwoods, flanked by two sedate stone lions carved with the most exquisite craftsmanship and liveliness. The green wall of secrecy allowed one to see a glimpse of some garden peonies in bloom and a partial view of a pond floating with lotus flowers. A knock on the door begot no reply.

The rickshaw was stepped on as a ladder and the wall climbed. A tree connived nearby, and with a nimble lunge and hop I was on the ground, noiseless as a neighbor’s cat. Rare was the sight of a mansion without a fashionable Indian servant, turbaned and stiff; even rarer was the silence of the manse, no servants charging forward or barking dogs afoot.

The door to the main hall was ajar, the fragrance of incense seeping through. A soft nudge later I was in. Greeting me was a dead man hanging from an ornate roof beam, rope taut and slender. His tongue had slipped out and the rope had cut beneath his jowl. His blood was still fresh, dripping down his broken neck and white-shirted chest, but life had departed: there was serenity to death gained only
through finality. Beneath his feet was a toppled chair and a ring of incense burning, ashes aground.

It seemed like the parting rite of a man in despair: the circle of incense representing the cycle of lives, leaving one to reenter another in endless ripples and rings enlarging one’s soul. But such a rite would entail much forethought and surely requisite fasting, for one never was to enter passage to the beyond while intentionally carrying what was disdained and to be forsaken in one’s intestines and bowels. Our documents man seemed to have consumed a bellyful of meat for lunch or breakfast; some had upchucked onto his shirt, evidencing the residue of lamb sausage dotted with red pepper among the splashes of his own blood. The blood under his fingernails bore the signs of struggle, and that wincing door ajar confirmed my claim. No genuine suicide would be conducted with an unlatched door, giving way to a possible middeath foil. I would know: I had tried a handful of times.

I had intended to shield my child away from the gore, but Q slipped by me. “He’s dead. Finally!” she said, circling the corpse.

“Why ‘finally’?”

She picked up the fallen chair, and stepping on it, leaned forward to examine the dead man’s eyes, squinting her own. “He was good at deducting my monthly stipend, stealing a tenth of my share. I had to threaten him with bodily harm to get my share back.”

“What are you looking for?”

“They say a dead man’s eyes capture the image of the last person he sees.”

“See anything?”

She frowned, sticking out the tip of her tongue. “No, nothing.”

“Who would want him killed?”

“Many.” She spat on the ground. “This rope was never far from his neck.” Q spun him around like a slab of slaughterhouse meat and hopped off the chair. “He simply knew too much.”

Being a eunuch was a lifelong devotion entailing one to serve his master until his last breath. Many did indeed accumulate much wealth and even mightier power, but rarely did they win the privilege to use it. They were the sacrificial lambs, chosen by their clan, and taken in upon the recommendation of a palace eunuch related by blood.

I had once glimpsed a page from In-In’s diary tucked under his pillow in his absence to tend to an ailing servant, a distant uncle from his village. Therein he had jotted a line that illuminated it all:
“One pearl, a hundred acres of rich land; two pearls, an eternal glory to all but I.”

Pearls, in this reference, pertained not to jewels but the treasures of men. In-In had, in rare revelation of a true self, boasted of having an uncle, his father’s youngish brother from the third wife of his octogenarian grandpapa, who had attained the rank of eighth grade officialdom in the basaltic country of his origin because of In-In’s Court service. Such, though, was to be dwarfed by the august post held by the cousin of the chief eunuch as an inspector general of salt trade within his province, salt being white gold from the endless sea that would reward the cousin with a staggering monthly income of ten thousand silver tael, of which three quarters entered his uncle’s pockets.

A quick search around the dead man’s echoing chambers yielded the only piece of evidence that at first had eluded my eyes.

“What fragrant theft this is!” Q asked, pointing at a silk scroll hanging on his bedroom wall, consigned not to the lowly official but to Yong-Le, the beloved early emperor of the Ming Dynasty, by four famous calligraphers.

“They are still the only four styles to be imitated and copied by the most adamant of learners hundreds of years after their originators’ passing.” Jumping off the stool, Q carefully took the scroll down from a rusty nail. “It was dedicated to Emperor Yong-Le on the fourth anniversary of his ascendance, a fete much lorded in the annals of Court celebrations, shaming all that came afterward. Even Grandpa still mentions it as the yardstick to adhere to.
‘The fourth had this and had that,’
she would say, alluding to this event. Thousands of guests were invited, among whom were generals and officials, but more important, painters and calligraphers, poets, and even some poetesses. It was a fine autumnal day. Long stretches of desks were laid out on vast courtyards, and thousands were urged to wet their brushes and spread their rice paper putting their poetry to the scrolls. This scroll of four seasons, with each artist’s brushing in the characters of such, was the brightest gem from that day, and here it is in the soiled hands of a thief.”

“With this we’ll singe the entire rotten Neiwufu,” I declared. “Let’s return to the palace so we can seal and search the Treasure Chamber immediately.”

“Why the hurry?”

“Once the word is out, they will try to cover their traces.”

Q produced an expedient dagger and cut the hanging rope, letting the dead man fall. “Never leave a hanged man hanging. His ghost will haunt us all.”

The sun was setting, and the city of Peking was all gray shadows, urging onward the throng of people heading south before the city gate closed. The punctuality of the gate closure was notorious. Those locked within would be torturously inspected and put away in the night jail as thieves or rioters. Such stringency made no exception for Court workers or royal affiliates. Even the dean of the potent Neiwufu was not exempt, riding his sedan bent on the path home. It was under the Valor Gate that we detected his sedan and intercepted him. The scholarly dean was not the least stirred by the death of his inferior. All he cared for was beating the closing gong: the first strike was for warning, the second strike announced the gate’s closing, and the third and last strike marked its locking; then night ensued with the city sequestered.

Unwittingly I ordered him to return to the palace to hunt for the killer.

“Killer?” He learned toward me, frowning. “What killer?”

“The man who ordered him hanged.”

His anger was sudden and surprising. “How dare you utter this ugly inflammatory word in my face? Here is the key to the Documents Chamber, a thing that I have always kept close to my chest: something you should be careful not to misuse. You have one night and one night only to clear this matter or indict the dead man; then all ugly and unsubstantiated talk of murder shall cease when I return in the morning.”

Onward the harried man vanished, dusk in his wake.

It surprised me not at all that word of the death had outrun our feet. By the time we reached the Neiwufu’s outer gate, a pair of Court marshals were waiting for us, their hands clutching an order from Grandpa herself demanding our presence in her chamber immediately.

Grandpa was bent over her writing desk, brush-painting calligraphy onto a rolling scroll, accompanied by her ink man, Li Liang, the chief eunuch. Having risen from the modest rank of palace woman—over five hundred of them—she was uncharacteristically known to have mastered the high art of ink and brush, having a special penchant for painting such characters as
longevity
and
harmony
, gifts that she doled out generously to admirers and visitors alike. The brush painting was, to her and others, a mental tai chi one does for relaxing tense nerves and sore bones, akin to a warm cup of rice wine or a doleful puff of opium.

Without stopping the brushing at hand, she said in her thin-throated piercing voice, “I heard of that official’s hanging. You need not burden me with the details. It’s unfortunate he has done himself in. I heard that you have been poking around the Neiwufu’s offices and chambers and that was the cause that drove the man to his unfortunate death. Do you know what you are doing?”

When Q asked to be allowed to reply, she was duly hushed by Grandpa, who cast her slanting gaze at me and continued, “Tell me, what are you trying to do? To disturb the nests of all the birds here?”

“We are merely acting on our great ruler’s direction,” said Q rather timidly.

“I heard of that too. You know his words are not to be relied on. He has his good days and bad—you should know better. When I first met you, you were far wiser, taking my advice to aid him, acting as a bridge between me and his Court. That’s why I made you an empress, hoping you would give me a roomful of heirs. But no, you changed your colors like a chameleon, leaning on your own whims that at first seemed rather charming to all. Then you began to mislead him, knowing him to be gullible and foolish. Did I blame you? No, I let you do what you two wished. I can only watch and hope, praying to my ancestors for wisdom and enlightenment.” She dipped her brush in the inkwell, then returned back to the scroll, crafting a perfect dot to end the stanza of Tang Dynasty poetry she was copying.

“But that man did not kill himself,” Q persisted.

“See?” Grandpa uttered with annoyance. “There you go again with your foreign tongue when I’m not done talking. Didn’t your adoptive father teach you anything at all in those barbaric ocean lands?”

“Yes, Grandpa, he did.”

“I would not say so. Now tell me, why would anyone want to kill that cursed man? And why would you try and blame someone else when no ground was found for your assertion?”

“He left no note about killing himself, and the door of
his house was left ajar. There was also blood under his nails though no scratches were found on his person, hinting at a struggle with those who concocted to have him killed.”

“Nonsense, you fool!” Grandpa set her brush down and pounded the desk with her fragile fist, making the inkwell and rice paper leap. “How did you come up with such absurdity? First, you accuse the entire Neiwufu of stealing. Now you call them murderers? No one is a killer here except you two. Your inquiry pushed him to his death. You two are the murderers! A man can endure only so much. You gave him no way out.”

“We only asked to see the files and ledgers.”

“Files and ledgers? Don’t you know those files and ledgers contain essential palace secrets? How can we let this mere ocean man see such contents of confidence? The world would soon know.” Grandpa cast a cold glare in my direction.

She did not mince words, that old witch!

“He is acting only upon our ruler’s order, checking on the Neiwufu to sort out the reason for this great deficit. This palace is running on empty, far outspending its intake. I was schooled in Austria in the science of mathematics and was involved in the bookkeeping at my father’s embassy. I want to help our emperor account for things that may or may not be the fault of anyone so that this palace might have a healthier fiscal well-being.”

“Gibberish! Your foreign schooling may have been good, but you have put it to the wrong use. Our young emperor is not better off because of your education. I would say he is worse off because of your wild influence. As for the deficit within this Court, much of it has to do with your free
spending:
your
horses and foreign motor bikes. The blame should start from the very top. You should put a stop on your expenditure. You used to give me gifts of things you fancy. Now you don’t even think of this old lady who championed for your admission into the palace.”

“It was your sour words of criticism that have driven me away.”

“Sour words are only words that are true. They are sour and biting because I speak wisdom that glided by your eardrums unheeded, which failure for certain would have you endure the bitterness of my wrath. Don’t you know the emperor is, after all, my son? That soft-hearted deviant of mine wasn’t even weaned off my breasts of wisdom yet, and there you came along taking him away from me while I had wished to bring him closer to me.”

“I shall do my best to right the wrong,” Q said, stricken.

“So you have said many a time. You break all pledges easily, shaming yourself again and again. I have my eyes and ears—your trip to the Union Hospital and other things. I am watching you two; you had better be careful.”