Empress Page 9

  I congratulated him, and he replied with a melancholy smile.

  “I wanted neither the child nor the title. Both events caught me unawares. When I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I cannot understand why I already have descendants. In Court, after the audience, dignitaries, and minister gather around me, some ask for my opinion; others give me their advice. Before, great ministers could walk past me as if I were transparent. Now they give me deep bows and invite me to their banquets. Even Sovereign Father has changed. Only yesterday he was distant and treated me like a little boy. Now he showers me with his warmth and attention, as he did with the King of Wei before his downfall. Heavenlight, I don’t recognize myself. I feel I have slipped into a stranger’s body.”

  “Little Phoenix, the world has not changed. You have grown up. You are no longer a child lost in dreams. You have become a man, a man of destiny! The sovereign has offered you the seal of the future. With your hands and your thoughts, you will rule the world—you will change it. You will be able to wipe away the lies, to right the wrongs, and spread goodness and compassion!”

  “Heavenlight, your words are reassuring and encouraging. But when I am far from you, I lose my confidence again. All this responsibility is beyond me. I am not educated enough; I know nothing about politics. The fact that there are three councils, six ministries, and twenty-four departments gives me a migraine. Amongst all the uncles and brothers and the aunts and sisters who are rushing to offer their loyalty, I cannot tell who is a friend and who is an enemy. I don’t think I am intelligent enough to recognize the traitors and liars who are twice, three times, even four times my age. I’m frightened of people. I will never be ready to reign.”

  “Confidence has a long apprenticeship,” I consoled him. “Like physical strength, it is accrued with experience and exercise. You have modesty and lucidity, two qualities that are essential to becoming a good sovereign. Fear nothing, Highness; the Emperor is keeping watch over your education. The Great General Li Ji is your tutor; he is an honest and devoted warrior. You shall be a great sovereign if you do not retreat in the face of difficulty.”

  “All this means little to me. I would be the happiest of men if I could have you by my side,” he said, looking deep into my eyes.

  “Highness,” I replied in amazement, “I am already by your side!”

  “Heavenlight, are you so very blind?” he asked and ran away.

  I was filled with a sweet sadness mingled with anger. I remembered the first time we had met: The boy had been smaller than me. Now he was taller than me and wore the beginnings of a mustache. Was I so very blind? Little Phoenix had become a man. He was no longer a little boy seeking the wisdom and consolation of a sister; the feelings he now nurtured for me were a man’s. He saw me as a woman!

  The heir found a thousand excuses to visit the Palace of Precious Dew. He tried to catch my eye, but I avoided him and lowered my eyes. As a Talented One of the fifth rank, my body and soul belonged to the sovereign even though he had never honored me. Little Phoenix was expecting an incestuous affection from me that I could not grant him. How had he dared confuse me with those poor women he had seduced and promptly abandoned? How could he allow himself to consider me as an object of amusement and distraction? I wanted us to be connected by an undying friendship, and he was offering me a transient love that would fade with time.

  He managed to follow me to the private washroom. He stood blocking the doorway and spoke: “Why are you hiding yourself? Why don’t you want to speak to me? If I have behaved tactlessly, please forgive me!”

  I avoided his eyes and said: “Before, your Highness was a child, now he has become and man and is heir to the Empire. The Ancients say that a man and a woman should keep a respectful distance. I no longer wish to speak freely with your Highness. Let me go.”

  “Talented One, you are so formal with me now! Why are you so cold and unkind? And I think of you every day. Here, look, I’ve been to the market to buy the quince jelly you like so much. Don’t you know that since Little Bull’s death you are the person dearest to me? Heavenlight, be kind, give me a smile. Tell me you’re not angry.”

  Hearing him speaking like that, I thought I might have misinterpreted his intentions. I regretted being susceptible and ate the delicacy he had put in my hand.

  Nothing would ever be the same again.

  My conversations with Little Phoenix had lost all their spontaneity. Now that he was Supreme Son, he was careful about his clothes and makeup. His tunics were sumptuous garments gleaming with pearls and precious stones. His face, with its light dusting of powder, looked even more pure and delicate. The perfume he wore made my heart beat faster, and I often forgot what I wanted to say to him. Somewhere deep inside I felt a new kind of happiness. For the first time in that Forbidden City, someone was showing an interest in my life and my death. Little Phoenix said that, without me, he would never overcome his fears and his weakness; he did not know that, without him, I would be just one more unhappy soul among the ten thousand women growing a little older every day in the Inner Palace.

  In the Eighteenth year of Pure Contemplation, the kingdom of Korea invaded the kingdom of Sinra on the peninsular.13 When the King of Sinra called for his help, the Emperor decided to set off on a campaign against our hereditary enemies, the Koreans. On the fourteenth day of the tenth moon, the ceremonial regiments, the imperial guards, the government, and the gynaeceum escorted the sovereign to the eastern capital, Luoyang, where an army of one hundred thousand warriors was to gather.

  As the horses galloped on, I looked through the curtains of my carriage and could see troops maneuvering in a cloud of dust on the horizon. That night, the imperial bivouacs stretched out over the entire plain that was turned into an ocean of light by the countless camp fires.

  One night, when I was taking out my topknot before the mirror, someone raised the curtain to my tent without asking to be announced. I recognized the heir, wrapped in a thick fur coat. Seeing him, Ruby and Emerald prostrated themselves and withdrew. I understood too late that they were accomplices to this reckless act. The heir was already sprawling on a cushion behind me. He was agitated and told me how he had stepped over drunken servants and slipped through the guards.

  I begged him to leave. But he protested: “As I’ve been unable to flee my retinue during the daytime since we left the Capital, it is now half a moon since we have seen each other. Tonight, I decided to take a risk because I have come to tell you something important.”

  I could see him in the mirror, still trying to catch my eye. I stood up, put on my coat, and made for the door. He caught the hem of my tunic.

  “We are alone. My people are watching the door. No one knows I am here. Listen to me first, then I shall leave.”

  “Well then, please, may your Highness move further away from me and sit down.”

  Little Phoenix went and sat obediently in a corner. I sat facing him at the far side of the room. He looked at his hands on his knees and said nothing. I watched a candle spilling its tears, and I too was silent. Suddenly he looked up.

  “Heavenlight, I am to have a second child.”

  I was about to congratulate him when he said: “Those women don’t count. There is only one person who fills my days and nights,” he said, and then lowered his voice before adding, “she is not like all the women at Court: the bland, formal, calculating women. She is spontaneous as a horse, pure as a river, free as the air. I venerate her, and I fear her. I suffer when I think I cannot be one with her.”

  He broke off. His eyes were like two dancing flames in the half darkness. Outside the North Wind blew, and one of the watchmen struck the gong. It was late. Then he suddenly started stammering: “I want to teach you what true pleasure is. I know that you would like the abandon, the excesses. I’ll be gentle with you, you’ll see. And you would slowly become a woman. You would be the most beautiful woman in the Empire!”

  Tears came to my eyes, but my voice was hard: “Go, Highness. What y
our Highness is doing is improper.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then stood up and slipped away.

  LUOYANG, THE EASTERN capital. Along the avenues icicles hung from every roof, and the trees were covered with buds of frost. The River Luo was frozen, a long, winding sigh reaching up to the weary sky. In the Forbidden City, only the winter plum trees braved the cold with their subtle fragrance. I stayed in the pavilions with my hands inside my sleeves and my feet up against bronze heaters, and I learned news of the outside world from the eunuchs. It seemed that regiments had come from the four corners of the Empire and had set up camp beside the town. Their garrisons had turned the countryside into an ocean of banners and horses. Accompanied by the heir, the Emperor would climb to the highest point of the Southern Gate and take command of the soldiers’ training sessions.

  At the beginning of January, the peripatetic monk Xuan Zang returned, and this delayed our armies’ departure. After covering tens of thousands of lis14 and living for seventeen years traveling the western kingdoms, he came back to the eastern capital laden with sacred manuscripts gathered in the land of Buddha. The Emperor received him during his audience, covered him with gifts, and appointed him master monk at the Temple of Immense Felicity. The Precious Wife invited Xuan Zang to the Inner Court, and he stepped up onto a stage of lotus flowers where he gave a speech about the Buddha of the Future, Maitreya, who had promised to be reincarnated on Earth to guide millions of believers toward eternal peace.

  But the Emperor and his generals were more interested in the victories of this world. The sovereign was already armed with his golden breastplate threaded with red laces and was leaving Luoyang by the Southern Gate. Three thousand musicians played the tune of the Glorious Departure. Lances, axes, and tridents gleamed; horses and carts whipped up dust that swirled for days without settling.

  In the sovereign’s absence, the heir took over regency from his Eastern Palace, and entry to our gynaeceum was forbidden to men. News of the war reached us through screens and partitions. Our squadrons had wound their way up the coast and reached Korea. The city of Peisha fell, and eight thousand Koreans were taken prisoner. The troops of my benefactor, Great General Li Ji, crossed the River Liao and laid siege to a port. The army commanded by the sovereign had met with more grim resistance. The Koreans were brutal warriors and adept archers, and they defended their territories with all the energy of despair.

  Neither the war cries nor the smell of blood breached the high walls of the Forbidden City. Spring came back to Luoyang. Court ladies set out in little groups to enjoy picnics by the banks of the river. Peach trees scattered their petals, and carefree peonies rustled in the wind. In the master’s absence, the jealousies and intrigues had stopped, but the favorites began to tire of this peaceful, untroubled existence. I missed Little Phoenix. This separation meant he was with me with every breath I took. Women no longer satisfied my soul’s desire, and their constant, insistent attentions only made me more obsessed with my absent brother.

  In the ninth moon, the chrysanthemums in the Palace of Luoyang vied with one another in beauty and insolence. In the north of the Empire, a precocious winter had already set in. Snow fell thick and deep. The cold wore down our soldiers who were still in summer dress; the Emperor was forced to lift the siege, and the army retreated toward the central lands. The arduous crossing through swamplands exhausted the men and their horses. Accompanied by a light cavalry, the heir rode out to meet the sovereign, only to find an ailing man and a defeated conqueror.

  The Court returned to Long Peace in the third moon of the following year. Spring had returned, but the Emperor was still bedridden. Every two days, the heir received the morning salutation in his Eastern Palace. The rest of the time he fulfilled his filial duties by his father’s bedside. In the Palace of Precious Dew, we were almost never apart. Being together again was not as joyful as I had imagined. When I was far from him, I hugged the image of him to me. When he was close, I despaired that I would never cross the invisible barrier that separated an heir from a Talented One. I struggled with a thousand contradictory feelings and preferred to say nothing and suffer in silence.

  One night the wind changed for the worst, and the sovereign became paralyzed down one side of his body. He grew even more irritable and suspicious. From where he lay in the depths of his palace, he imagined plots brewing in the Outer Court where, he claimed, his prolonged absence was kindling usurpers’ ambitions. He asked Wu Ji to conduct investigations, and the persecutions began again. Soon, a great many imperial officers and state officials were condemned to be beheaded.

  Fearing that the Supreme Son might be intriguing against him in his Eastern Palace, the Emperor ordered Little Phoenix to move to the Palace of Precious Dew and to sleep close to his own bedroom. To give some comfort to the prince who was now far from his own concubines, he sent him the most beautiful virgins from his gynaeceum every night. In the evening, before the doors were closed, I watched in despair as these women were conducted into Little Phoenix’s pavilion surrounded by lanterns and torches. I would go back to the Side Court along dark pathways. The trees rustled and tears rolled down my cheeks for no reason.

  ONE AFTERNOON, WHEN I was waiting in the sovereign’s bed chamber for him to wake, Little Phoenix appeared and dragged me forcibly behind a screen. He put his arms around me. Unlike women’s arms that were supple and soft, his were strong and muscled. He held me against his chest, a hard flat surface like carved stone, so that I could hear the rapid beating of his heart. He lay his head on my shoulder and his cheek against mine. His tender young beard tickled my skin, and I heard him whisper: “It’s you that I want. It’s you I make love to every evening.”

  Little Phoenix deflowered me during the course of a journey to a summer palace. Despite our precautions, our liaison could not escape the watchful eyes of those who spied behind curtains, nor the ears that lingered behind doors. But the Emperor now never left his bed, and the heir regent was all-powerful. Instead of denouncing me, the eunuchs and servant women flattered me as a way of pleasing the future sovereign. I never knew whether the Emperor got wind of the rumors. It seems likely that this lady’s man, who had once taken wives from his own father and brothers, was quite indifferent to an attachment between a son of his and an anonymous Talented One. The imperial Court was a world of constraints and contradictions: It was easy to die for a mistake, and it was easy to break a taboo.

  While the Emperor still had plans to invade Korea, his life was slipping away. His belly swelled up like a mountain and made him howl in pain. But this intrepid warrior defied his suffering and dictated an entire book, The Art of Being Sovereign, to his heir. As I stood beside the door awaiting orders, I could hear his dark, determined voice reverberating. Memories of war and political tactics were intertwined with moral and philosophical reflections. The sentences punctuated by groans of pain; the heroic silences and the eerie sighs made me falter with admiration and sorrow.

  In the Side Court, people whispered secretly that the astrologers had foreseen a change of reign in this twenty-third year of Pure Contemplation. The favorites removed their jewelry and ripped the pearls from their tunics. They gave their treasure to eunuchs who were financing services in the four corners of the Empire to pray for a miraculous recovery.

  There was much talk of the future. But was there any future for the concubines of a dead sovereign? The mothers of kings may have been able to join their children posted in the province-kingdoms, but ordinary women had to choose between living in the funerary palace of the August Deceased, becoming nuns in monasteries, or dying alone in the Side Court.

  The heir swore that he would offer me another life. He talked to me of a sumptuous palace and an elevated rank. I did not believe his naïve promises. When the sovereign finally floundered along the river of this life, his treasures, clothes, horses, and the laughter of his women, all these beauties, would have to sink with him into the shades and into oblivion. Would Little Phoenix have the strength to
save me while a whole world drowned?

  Not believing his end was near, the Emperor continued to travel. He escaped the heat of summer in the mountains of Zhong Nan and the frosts of winter beside hot springs. The imperial caravans swayed, lulling weary bodies and awakening the senses. At night, the heir would disguise himself as a eunuch and slip into my tent. He caressed me softly and sweetly. But only very rarely did I let myself succumb to pleasure. Terrified by a fear I could not name, I wept in silence and feigned happiness. After he left, I would lie awake for hours with my eyes wide open. I denounced myself for feeling something. I was afraid of conceiving a child. I was horrified by the thought that I secretly longed for the sovereign’s death. I dreamed of that deliverance even though I knew I would always be a slave to the Forbidden City. I hated myself for using my body as a bargaining tool: I was copulating with the heir to ensure my own future. But could I have any legitimacy in that future thanks to an act of incest? When Little Phoenix held me tightly in his arms, I resented his selfish desire that made him deaf to my distress. As soon as he was far from me, I forgave him for being my downfall and loved him with all my strength. He was my only hope.

  The news spread through all of China: The Emperor was in his final agonies. The people were terrified, and inflation began spiraling because of ill-considered buying and because merchants started stockpiling cereals, salt, and bolts of brocade. Our spies in the west and the north spotted movements of the Tatar cavalry regiments. The Empire was waiting for a seismic event, our enemies their hour of victory. Amid all this agitation, I watched my own metamorphosis with displeasure. My breasts were growing, my cheeks had become chubbier, my mouth fuller. My body was ignoring my own unhappiness: I had become beautiful just when beauty would no longer be of any use.

  On the twenty-sixth day of the fifth moon in the twenty-third year of Pure Contemplation, in his summer Palace in the Zhong Nan Mountains, the Emperor of the Yellow People with Black Hair completed his earthly mandate and rose up to the heavens to sit amongst the powerful gods. The sun hid behind the clouds; Earth was plunged into darkness. For twenty-seven days, the Imperial City groaned with tears and prayers, and the various ceremonies—calling the Emperor’s soul, bathing him, the clothing ceremonies, laying him in his coffin, and the official closing of the coffin—were carried out with unprecedented pomp and splendor.