Empress (42 page)

Filled with extraordinary energy, I rose to my feet. The Sacred Emperor who held the Celestial Mandate and the Golden Wheel would open every closed door. She would find her lovers’ bodies and bury them with her own hands.

As I stepped out of my palace, the North Wind pierced right through me. I who had outwitted every plot, how had I not foreseen this one? Had I been reduced to this? I felt overwhelmingly faint and coughed until I spat blood. The soldiers’ gleaming lances became stars scattered across the night sky.

Ministers slash the still-twitching bodies. Soldiers throw the corpses onto a carriage and abandon them by a river. Snow falls, clouds of furious butterflies. Snow brushes over the black peonies of gaping wounds. Snow melts into open eyes, empty holes drinking in the sky. Crows spread their wings and hop down from the trees, cawing. Lean wolves and jackals come out of the woods, bellies brushing through the powdery snow. Pointed beaks lacerate those purple faces, and bloodied jaws delve through the exposed entrails. A starving fox circles round the carcasses then lunges, snatching Prosperity’s sexual organ before fleeing across the plain.

I was woken by the sound of my soul screaming.

In that overheated room with its glowing braziers, the feeble crying of my serving women was punctuated only by my own rasping breath. A fever burned in my chest but my limbs were icy cold. The pain spreading through my body only aggravated my unbearable suffering. With the shutters closed and curtains lowered, I did not know whether it was day or night. The flames projected shadows on the walls, and I thought I could see Prosperity’s silhouette among them. It was all a nightmare! The Zhang brothers would wake me from this anguished sleep, slipping under the covers with me. With their cool skin against mine, we would wait and see dawn break: The windows would open and the light would wash away the painful memories.

A man started speaking. Startled, I turned toward him and recognized Great Chancellor Zhang Jian Zhi kneeling beside my bed. His words dug deep into my ears. His very presence reminded me there had been a massacre. It was all over: Simplicity and Prosperity were dead!

The wicked traitor tried in vain to justify his actions and to persuade me to sign a decree of abdication. His droning monologue was maddening; I did not even know how long he had been there, worrying at me. Seeing that I remained silent and unmoved, he withdrew, and my nephew Spirit took over trying to make me understand how serious the situation was. Even he had betrayed me!

Eventually my daughter Moon appeared. She talked about my health and how I needed to rest. She said that an empire could not survive without a master, and that the time had come to hand over the reins of power. Her words made perfect sense; they reminded me of Mother: Just like her, my daughter had never understood me.

I interrupted her explanations: I would sign my abdication if she gave the Zhang brothers a decent burial in a monastery on Mount Mang.

“I have carried this crown to save the Palace from discord and to delay the fall of the world. Ambitious men have urged your brother on, and he is now claiming it as his. I shall give it to him!”

Moon left with the document on which I had put my seal and my thumbprint. The silence rekindled my pain. I closed my eyes and could picture a troop of soldiers marching; I could hear the clatter of their weapons, their officers shouting, their feet stamping. Simplicity and Prosperity are running away through the snow. Simplicity’s face is suddenly twisted, his eyes roll back; he totters and falls. Prosperity carries on running toward my pavilion. He has lost his shoes, he trips over the bodies of serving women, crying “Majesty, help me!” An arrow carves through the air and strikes him in the middle of his forehead. His body freezes, his pupils dilate. He opens his mouth to give a silent wail and falls to his knees. A bright, frothy trickle of blood runs down between his eyes and over his nose. His face becomes so transparent that I read his last interrupted thought, his shattered poetry and evaporating breath.

Simplicity and Prosperity were dead. The last music in my life had fallen silent. What did anything else matter to me?

FUTURE ASCENDED TO the throne and gave me the title of August Emperor of Celestial Law. To distance me from my followers, the Court ousted me from the Forbidden City and set me up in a summer palace on the southern bank of the River Luo, to the west of the city. Every five days, the New Empress and Princess Moon would come to my door for news of my health, accompanied by Gentleness who now worked for my son and had been raised to the rank of Delicate Concubine. Every ten days, Future and his high dignitaries would raise an imperial cortege, and he would come to offer me his respectful salutation. The Court longed for me to die. All this artificial commotion was just play acting, to fool the people and the history books.

Despite the orders sent out to cut me off from the world, information filtered through those high, well-guarded walls. The Zhang brothers’ clan had been decimated. Officials and artists known to be their friends had been beheaded. There were countless heads displayed outside the Southern Gate of the Forbidden City, exposed to the abuse of passersby. The Empress, who wanted to start everything afresh, had driven out three thousand palace servants and Court ladies.

The activities of the Forbidden City no longer affected me. The anguish of my grief had stripped me of my vanity as if casting off unnecessary garbs. I was reduced to skin and bone, but I would not succumb. My will to triumph had come back with new vigor. As I lay on my bed, drawing each painful breath through my mouth, I decided to stop shedding tears over my fate and to accept the will of Heaven with my eyes open.

Future brought an end to the Zhou Dynasty I had inaugurated, closed the Sacred Temple of Ten Thousand Elements and expelled my ancestors from the Eternal Temple. The Empire bore the name Tang once more. The ministries went back to their former names, and banners and official tunics returned to the colors of old. The Court abolished the writing I had invented, and Luoyang was demoted, conceding its precedence as Capital to Long Peace. The world I had built was annihilated and I barely suffered from this appalling waste. The children I brought into the world, the ministers I trained and Gentleness who I set free had all betrayed me. But I was not haunted by the agonies of betrayal. I had not followed prosecutor Lai Jun Chen’s advice and had not exterminated my two families. I had not had Gentleness killed when told of her secret liaison with the woman who had become Empress. My indulgence was not a mistake, it was a renouncement. Just as beauty begins to fade the moment it blossoms, so I had already accepted that my Zhou Dynasty was the briefest episode in the great dream of History.

Yesterday Master of the World, today a humiliated prisoner, captive in my own paralyzed body, confronting the final trial of my existence. I did not loathe Zhang Jian Zhi and his followers who had snatched power from a sovereign weakened by old age. I forgave the heir his cowardice, taking the crown from his dying mother. I understood the choices my nephews had made as they struggled to stay on top of the churning waves. All those people had to carry on with their fears and efforts, and I no longer needed a mirror or a seal. I had freed myself from all that posturing; I was relieved of my burden.

Spring came once more. Prosperity and Simplicity would not see the peonies flower and the swallows return. My heart was at peace. The Court hoped that I would die but I was breathing. Defying illness, opening my eyes, throwing myself into life every morning were my duties. I had to finish writing in my mind the book of my life.

The frustration of an heir who had waited too long turned into the dissipation of an emperor too eager to enjoy his power. Future was permanently drunk, reeling from one party to another. Zhang Jian Zhi and Spirit vied for power in the Outer Court, and in the Inner Court the Empress Wei found a formidable rival in Moon, appointed by her brother as the Great Imperial Protector. Both women interfered with political decisions and fought to influence the weak sovereign.

Officials were already secretly regretting the end of my reign. Messages from them reached me, stitched into belts worn by my eunuchs. Too late! My body was still in this world, but my spirit had already left. One night, Spirit was let into my bedchamber. He threw himself at the foot of my bed and shed copious tears. This wily nephew had changed his tune: He promised to free me and to avenge Simplicity’s and Prosperity’s deaths. He tried in vain to obtain my signature authorizing him to overthrow Future. I watched him pityingly: I refused to give my dying name to another massacre. My lovers’ assassination would not be avenged; the Zhou dynasty would die with me. No more blood would flow in my lifetime. The Empire would not descend into chaos.

The news and messages dried up: My faithful eunuchs had in turn been driven out of the Palace, and I was now watched over by cold, aloof women. I was seen by a succession of imperial doctors. They too were new faces and, instead of curing me, their prescriptions weakened me.

From then on I refused every remedy, and the Court had to accept that their revelries must wait a little longer: So long as I was alive, I acted as a stern conscience, a pitiless mirror for them. My serving women no longer helped me change position; they had probably been given orders to let my flesh rot. Suppurating wounds gnawed at me day and night. My hair and nails kept on growing. The women filled my room with budding flowers and baskets of fruit to smother the fetid smell of their crime. The Emperor and his Court had stopped their salutations; Moon and Gentleness no longer came to see me. They wanted to kill me by forgetting me.

A rainstorm battered the peach blossom, and summer was upon us. A mysterious vitality within me still refused to capitulate. My pavilion was full of life: Simplicity and Prosperity, dressed in white lilac tunics and gazing at me dreamily, filled the air with their exquisite perfume; Mother leaned on her cane and described the marvels of the Pure World of Buddha; Little Phoenix rushed in and out, my celestial husband was always eager to set off on some journey. Ships with their sails ballooning in the wind navigated across my face and sailed off onto the ocean.

Then hundreds, thousands of horses made the floorboards thrum, galloping across my room with their hectic manes flying.

My ecstatic smile converted the women watching over me. They saw a golden light radiating from my body, and they prostrated themselves at my feet, venerating me feverishly. When they had washed me, fed me, and arranged my hair, I had my bed moved over to a window. Robins, magpies, crested parrots, and peacocks pecked at the garden where the irises had wilted and the orchids were shyly opening their buds. A wide path snaked through thickets of bamboo, its paving stones untouched by visitors’ feet for many months and covered in damp moss. I watched the lotus flowers blooming in the middle of a pond, aware I was seeing them flower for the last time.

I bid good-bye to the autumn as it left forever, then winter held me in its grip. Snow fell from the sky. I remembered the same time the previous year, watching Simplicity and Prosperity throwing snowballs at my court ladies. Their laughter and shouts still echoed but their silhouettes had already blended into the withered trees. Simplicity and Prosperity were gone. I did not know what had happened to my women. The silent falling of those white flowers had strung a net between the earth and the sky, where the living frolicked and played.

In the first year of the Era of the Divine Dragon, on the night of the twenty-fifth day of the eleventh moon, the snow stopped. Prosperity appeared beside my bed. He prostrated himself and then played his bamboo flute. Pearls of crystal streamed around me. The moon turned into a silvery river carrying me off in its glittering currents. I saw jade palaces in the skies, misty plains, and fields of light!

The following morning I asked for my topknot and makeup to be done as soon as the sun was up. Wearing my most beautiful jewels and dressed in a flame-colored tunic over a dazzling white gown, I dictated the epitaph that should be engraved on my funeral stela to be erected beside my husband’s.

I would reveal the beauty of the Zhou dynasty to any man who stopped before my tomb. He would learn of its prosperous towns, swift horses, deep forests, and magical rivers. He would admire the way the arts flourished and would praise the glory of its poetry. I described my pride in adoring the gods, venerating the ancestors, subduing men’s struggles, sanctifying Heaven, and reigning in the Temple of Clarity. I drew a portrait of myself as a humble sovereign, bowing to the will of one true God, the source of all divinities. The end would be the beginning; the ephemeral would become the infinite. My trials over, I would return to the skies.

At dawn the next day, the silence in my bedchamber was broken by the sound of horns and drums. Other sounds-horses whinnying and men shouting-were carried to me on the wind: Future and his Court were beating through the imperial forest.

Banners cracked in the wind. Leopards and hunting dogs ran ahead of the horses as stags fled through the undergrowth. Branches drew closer, whipping the intruders’ faces, then parted. Snow heaped on the tops of trees collapsed and fell in a fine powder. Breathing more labored. Heart beating, fit to burst. Suddenly, there was a lake, a block of ice, a mirror on eternity.

In a single leap, my soul broke away from my body and launched itself into the sky.

THE SERVING WOMEN beat their breasts and wept, and a posse of soldiers galloped off to inform the sovereign. Bronze bells were sounded, and prayers went up from every monastery. Stunned and saddened, weaving women abandoned their looms, merchants their ledgers, and peasants their toils. The people tore their clothes, untied their topknots, and wailed lamentations. Music, laughter, and bright colors vanished from Chinese soil overnight. Horses were stripped of their ornate saddles; men wrapped themselves in hemp tunics held with belts of woven straw. Galley warships raised white sails, and mourning flags flew over every rampart.