Empress (34 page)

On that morning, I wore over my white tunic the indigo-colored imperial cloak embroidered with twelve rows of sacred drawings and painted with dragons riding astride clouds. With the crown of twenty-four tiers of jade pearls on my head and the emerald scepter in my hand, I climbed the steps to the Gate of Celestial Law amid the ringing of bronze bells and the chiming of sounding stones. I was preceded by a cortege of servants from the Inner Court and followed by princes and Great Ministers. I announced to the world the beginning of my dynasty, the Zhou dynasty. Its peace and prosperity would be inaugurated by the Era of the Celestial Mandate. Cheers from officials and shouts of joy from the people rang out. Heaven descended and wrapped me in its crystalline blue. All the power of the House of Tang was expiring, and a woman who had become Emperor was founding her own dynasty without scorching Chinese soil with war. This marvel confirmed once more that I truly was the envoy of the gods.

The whole world knew that my terrestrial legitimacy could be traced right back to the ancient Zhou dynasty whose kings were my ancestors. I took every opportunity to proclaim that I was descended from them by using their crimson banners-the color of fire, the element they venerated. The Sacred Hearth of the Empire was transferred from Long Peace to Luoyang, which was promoted to Imperial Capital. I went back through the family tree, and seven generations of ancestors were given the posthumous title of emperor. Seven temples were built to the east of the Forbidden City, and here their spirits could receive offerings and adorations. My son Miracle became the Imperial Descendent and enjoyed the privileges accorded to the Supreme Son. Piety, Spirit, and Tranquility, the eldest three of my nephews, became kings, and their cousins were raised to the rank of county kings. Having been a wood merchant, a fighting warrior, and then a dignitary kept far from the Court, Father could rise up at last, thanks to his daughter’s accession. In her lifetime, Mother would have been terrified to have given birth to an emperor, a god. As it was, they were both silenced by their pride.

They were exhumed and reburied with the posthumous titles of Emperor and Empress of Pious Clarity.

I stopped asking myself: Who am I? And where do I come from?

The Court had just offered me the title of August Sovereign Divinity. I was the Beginning, the Source of Sources. I was the identity, the root that would become a tree in the centuries to come.

The world forgot Confucius’s maxim: “It is as scandalous for a woman to meddle with politics as for a hen to crow like a cockerel.” Men forgot their indignation at seeing a widow emerge from the gynaeceum and command an empire, and all the rumors about my sexual exploits faded. The cheers of the people still reverberated through the Forbidden City; it was these heartfelt cries of a humble people- rather than any crown or imperial cloak-which restored the confidence of a sovereign dented by betrayal and revolts among her officials. I had become an inescapable truth, and now, as I sat on my throne facing my ministers and generals, I no longer saw them all as potential traitors.

I no longer needed the blood-thirsty judges-who I myself had appointed after Xu Jing Yei’s uprising three years earlier-to quash further conspiracies. I began to understand that some of them had earned promotion by exposing imaginary plots. It was time to reestablish justice in the special judgment court I had built within the Forbidden City, behind the Gate of Magnificent Landscape. I decided to eliminate those prosecutors and magistrates who were acting on their own initiative like the princes of independent kingdoms. A secret investigation revealed that they brought charges with no more proof than a simple denunciation; and, from the moment of their arrest, all of the accused were subjected to torture during interrogations. The tortures were given names such as “the phoenix spreading its wings,” “the braced donkey,” “the immortal offering divine fruit” and “the Daughter of Jade climbing the ladder.” To ensure that no culprit was spared, these trials condemned innocent men. On the pretext of quashing rebellions, the judges had created a parallel power that was beyond my control.

Their spies were proliferating throughout the Empire, even within the walls of my palace. To strike quickly and efficiently, I chose one judge who was familiar with the network’s every secret, strength, and weakness. Lai Jun Chen, famed for his cruelty, was the Lodge of Purification’s prosecutor. A former criminal, he had been sentenced to death by beheading. When I had opened my court four years before and given audience to humble commoners, he had obliged his jailor to accompany him to the capital, where he had dared to plead his innocence before me. I had pardoned his crimes and appointed him as prosecutor to hunt down his fellow creatures. The man who owed me his life received his orders without comment. One by one, he exterminated his colleagues, patiently and methodically. I learned that, to obtain a confession from Zhou Xing-a judge reputed to be a sinister torturer-Lai Jun Chen invited him to dine with him, and during the course of the meal, he asked his advice on how to interrogate especially resistant conspirators. Zhou Xing replied, “Put them in an earthenware jar over a pile of logs, set light to it, and let them cook dry. Even the dumb speak then.” It was then that the prosecutor drew the arrest warrant from his sleeve and announced, “At the entrance to this room, there is an earthenware jar set up on a blazing fire. Her Majesty suspects you of stirring up a plot against her. I beg permission to interrogate you on this matter.”

Lai Jun Chen triumphed over his own kind.

Decapitated: Qiu Shen Ji, Great General of the Golden Scepter of the Left, who crushed rebellious armies in their blood.

Decapitated: Magistrate Suo Yuan Li, a Turk scholar with the eyes of a lynx, an eagle nose, and a Barbarian heart.

Exiled: Zhou Xing, the ill jurist who drew his strength from his fevered interrogations. He was eventually assassinated.

Decapitated: Fu Yu Yi, the councilor for the chancellery who instigated the people’s petition calling for my enthronement.

Decapitated: Justice of the Peace Wang Hong Yi.

Decapitated: Judge Ho Si Zhi, the illiterate peasant who thrived on his intuitions and his ferocious cruelty and who despised wealth and pleasure. I shall never forget our brief exchange when I smiled and asked him, “You cannot read. How can you conduct investigations?”

Quite unperturbed, he replied, “Legend confers on the sacred griffon the ability to distinguish between good and evil. It can neither read nor write, and yet it recognizes the truth.”

Decapitated: Those three years of merciless repression. Bloodshed wiped away bloodshed; crime assassinated crime.

I summoned the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen to a private audience. He prostrated himself before me and then stood a few paces from me, upright and motionless. His face was magnificently chiseled; he would have been a beautiful man if there had been a hint of color in his ashen cheeks, if his face had been animated, and if his eyes had looked on this life with any warmth.

I showed him scrolls of denunciations.

“Zhou Xing, Suo Yuan Li, Fu Yu Yi, and Wang Hong Yi are dead; you alone are alive. There are just as many accusations leveled at you: corruption, buying favors, attempts to seize power-how dare you disobey the law?”

His face remained marble-like and his voice devoid of emotion as he replied, “Zhou Xing and Suo Yuan Li were anonymous scholars. When Your Majesty discovered their talents, they were able to make careers for themselves as magistrates, and this position meant they could take their revenge on the rich and the powerful. As for Fu Yu Yi and Wang Hong Yi, they both came from the lower depths of the Empire. They used flattery and intrigue to achieve their ends. Your Majesty likes unusual talents, their pride at the recognition you granted them outweighed their gratitude: They exploited their independence to build a separate network of power, and that is how they came to nurture the evil ambition of challenging Your Majesty’s strength. I was condemned to death and kept in a dungeon when Your Majesty heard my cry and gave me the opportunity to live and serve her. Ever since that day, I have sworn myself to my sovereign, body and soul. The real Lai Jun Chen was already dead. The one who prostrates himself at Your Majesty’s feet is another man, a creature who lives only to follow her orders and only by her will. The day that he ceases to be of use to her will be the day he returns to the shades. The officials understand the powerful ties I have to the sovereign; they are afraid of my intransigent devotion. That is why I have frequently been attacked by their paid assassins, and when their attempts at murder fail, they slander me. They want to be rid of me by whatever means they can, to weaken Your Majesty.”

I looked Lai Jun Chen in the eye for a long time. Other judges harbored anger, hatred, and perversion, but this prosecutor fascinated me with his coldness and his calm. The judges’ ferocity had served their own longings for power, and that was why I had them killed once they had served my ends. But Lai Jun Chen’s ferocity knew no vanity; this man who was once condemned to death was probably the greatest torturer of all time. He carried the Abyss within him, the Eternal Fire, Hell itself. He wanted neither to conquer nor to subdue. He was a destructive force-both chilling and blazing-offered to me by the gods.

I threw the denunciations into a brazier.

“I shall give you your life once again. You are now master of the Court at the Gate of Magnificent Landscape. I want no more persecutions and torture. Men apply hatred in response to hatred; my dynasty shall apply compassion.”

I was careful not to admit that this magnanimity was calculated. By leaving the most feared and loathed magistrate in his position, I was implying to officials that I had ceased to fight, but was by no means disarmed.

Lai Jun Chen prostrated himself before me. His voice was still echoing around the room as he backed out: “May my sullied existence allow Your Majesty to remain immaculate.”

MY DAY BEGAN at three in the morning, summer and winter. Every other day I received the Salutation of my officials at daybreak. After the prostrations and the ceremonial wish for ten thousand years of my reign, some presented reports, and others received my instructions. At the end of the audience, the officials went to their respective ministries, and I moved to my private room to read political files and discuss them with Great Ministers.

On the intervening days, I remained in my bed chamber until dawn when I received the prostrations of the overseeing eunuchs and the lady governesses who presented me with accounts, bills, plans for forthcoming banquets, lists of birthday gifts, embroidery designs for official costumes, and requests for promotions and punishments. As Emperor of China, I was also my own empress.

In the afternoons, after a brief siesta, I would be taken by litter to the Pavilion of Treaties and Interviews. I would sit behind a curtain of purple gauze, although I might remove this for those I knew well. Poets and calligraphers, Taoists and monks, merchants and peasants prostrated themselves at my feet: Each of them came to me with a complaint, a piece of advice, or some new knowledge. Thanks to the things they told me, I traveled to distant towns, witnessed foreign customs, learned of alliances and rivalries between neighboring kingdoms, and ensured my armies remained loyal even in the furthest limits of the desert. With poets I talked of rhymes and language; monks interpreted the sutras they brought back from India after braving a thousand dangers; geographers suggested building new roads and canals; astrologers spoke to me of the stars.

On some days at the end of the afternoon, I would go for a long ride through the Imperial Park on one of my horses. The thought of this period of escape brightened my mood from the moment I awoke. The vermilion glow of the setting sun tinted the tops of the trees and turned the River Luo into a ribbon embroidered with golden waves. A retinue of animals followed me: dogs, leopards, giraffes, and elephants. There were many men to dispute the honor of leading my steed by the bridle: my nephews the kings; Lai Jun Chen, the magistrate; and the Great Ministers. It was when I was inspired by the melancholy calm of these rides that I improvised my most beautiful poems.

Deep in the forest, eunuchs would free thousands of birds: blackbirds, orioles, skylarks, and thrushes launching themselves into the skies. Their song, an exuberant hymn to life full of virtuoso trills, moved me to tears. The more I was surrounded, the more I was alone. Dusk was falling. It would soon be everlasting night.

ONE MOMENT OF bliss followed another, and time wrapped itself around me like an endless thread tightening its stranglehold. From the depths of my opaque cocoon, I was expecting a miracle: never to grow old.

My lovemaking with Scribe of Loyalty was losing its intensity. At first his vigorous body and well-defined muscles had been like an unfulfilled fantasy, then a vague dream. As the years went by, his virile youth became disturbing.

My lover was thirty, and I sixty-nine. Like other wealthy debauched monks, he had bought houses for his mistresses in the commoners’ town outside the Forbidden City. His many wives dripped with jewels and lived off my generosity through him. The one he liked best was a young girl of sixteen bought for a jug of pearls in a brothel. She could make love to him for hours on end without tiring. Their cries of ecstasy had even carried to the depths of my gynaeceum where I struggled with my jealousy and despair.

Scribe of Loyalty came to the Palace less and less. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, he would caress me and spill his seed on me as a peasant sows his field. His every move was precise and attentive; he performed his duties as a favorite like an official carrying out a laborious task. In the darkness I could still read his pity, his resignation, and his indifference. Scribe of Loyalty no longer loved me. I no longer afforded him any pleasure.