Imperial Woman (16 page)

When this knowledge settled into her being, her gaiety was gone. With firm steps she walked across the room and entered again into her sedan chair, and the Chief Eunuch himself let down the curtains.

So Tzu Hsi returned again to the Forbidden City, and when she approached the great gate of the Meridian, the Imperial Guard announced the end of the day. The drummer stood behind his great drum, beating upon it a rhythm so swift that the sticks fell with heavy blows as steady, one upon another, as the beat of some mighty heart. In the twilight the trumpeters stood in their robes, and each held to his lips a long brass trumpet. These trumpets they raised in unison, then lowered to the same level, and at this moment they blew a long quivering blast of music, beginning in softness and rising to strength, and always following the beating of the mighty drums until, falling away again, the trumpet voices died. Again and again this music was repeated until the last time when the trumpeters allowed the sounds to die so slowly that they were lost in distance. So, too, did the drummer soften the beat of the drum until he made it end by three slow measured beats. A pause of silence followed, and then a bronze bell was struck three times and by Jung Lu.

And the night fell as always it did fall. The watchmen marched to their task, and Tzu Hsi in her sedan entered the vast gates and heard them close behind her.

Winter ended late, and the halting spring was delayed still further by the evil winds that blew down from the north. Sandstorms tortured the city and though the people closed their doors and sealed their windows, yet the wind drove the fine pale sand through every crack and corner. Nor was the news good from the south. The Viceroy Yeh had obeyed the commands from the Dragon Throne. He had dallied and delayed, he had not replied to the many messages from the Englishman Sir John Bowring, and when it was reported to him that a French priest had been killed somewhere, he made no reply to this announcement, either, nor to the demand of the French minister for retribution. Yet, the Viceroy now reported to the Dragon Throne, instead of being subdued by such neglect the white men were more restless than before, and he, the Viceroy, sought further direction from the Son of Heaven. What if war broke out again? And meanwhile there was the small trouble of the families of the beheaded men, who had been the ship’s crew of
The Arrow.
They were angry and their sons and nephews had joined the Chinese rebels for revenge against the Viceroy, who stood for the distant Emperor. And worst of all, it was rumored that the Englishman Elgin, a noble lord, very powerful, was threatening to sail English ships northward along the seacoast and enter the harbor at Tientsin in order to attack the Taku forts, which protected the capital itself.

When the Emperor read this memorial he fell ill and took to his bed and would not eat. In silence he handed the document to his brother Prince Kung, whom he summoned, and he commanded that Tzu Hsi read it also and that they two present their advice. Now for the first time Tzu Hsi fell into open disagreement with Prince Kung. They argued in the Imperial Library, their usual meeting place, and in the presence of the Chief Eunuch and Li Lien-ying, who stood as attendants and heard all that was said.

“Venerable,” Prince Kung said reasonably, “again I tell you that it is not wise to annoy these white men to the point of anger. They have guns and warships, and they are barbarian at heart.”

“Let them return to their own lands. We have tried patience and now patience fails,” Tzu Hsi exclaimed. She was very beautiful when she was haughty, and Prince Kung sighed to see such beauty and such pride. Yet he admitted in his secret heart that this woman had an energy which even he had not and surely that his elder brother had not, and indeed the times needed strength.

“We have not the means to force their return,” he reminded her.

“We have the means if we have the will,” she retorted. “We can kill them every one while they are still few and throw their bodies into the sea. Do dead men return?”

He exclaimed at such recklessness. “Will death put an end to them? When their peoples hear of it, they will send a thousand white men for each one that dies, and they will come with their many ships of war, bearing their magic weapons against us.”

“I do not fear them,” Tzu Hsi declared.

“Then I do,” Prince Kung assured her. “I fear them greatly. It is not only their weapons I fear—it is the white men themselves. When they are attacked they return ten blows for one. No, no, Venerable—mediation is the safe way, and bargaining and delays, as you wisely did advise before. These must still be our weapons. We must still confound them with delays and promises unfulfilled, and we must still put off the evil day of their attack. We must weary them and discourage them, always courteous when we speak, seeming to yield and never yielding. This is our steadfast wisdom.”

So in the end it was decided, and that Tzu Hsi might be diverted, for she continued rebellious, Prince Kung advised his elder brother, the Emperor, that she be permitted to spend the hot season at the Summer Palace outside the city of Peking. There among the lakes and gardens she could disport herself with the Heir and her ladies and forget the troubles of the nation.

“The Empress of the Western Palace loves plays and theatricals,” he suggested. “Let a stage be built at the Summer Palace and actors be hired to amuse her. Meanwhile, I will consider with the councilors what reply shall be sent south. And it is to be remembered that when the green spring comes again we must celebrate the first birthday of the Heir, and we should announce the occasion soon, that the people may prepare their gifts. Thus all will be diverted while we ponder the dangers ahead.”

In this way Prince Kung hoped to allay Tzu Hsi’s anger and turn her thoughts to pleasure and away from proud revenge upon the white men. In his secret heart he was very fearful, and he wished to take counsel with the princes and the ministers and any whose wisdom he could trust. For he saw in the future, and not too far, the increasing threat of the men from the West. They had discovered the treasures of ancient Asia, and being men of nations young and poor, could they be asked to leave what they had found? They must be placated, but how he did not know, until defense could be planned. Troubled indeed he was, sleepless at night and never hungry for food any more, for what he pondered was deeper than he could fathom. The old civilized ways of peace and wisdom were menaced by a new brute force. Which would prevail and where lay the final strength, in violence or in peace ?

So grave were these times that the Emperor in the fifth month renewed an ancient rite which his ancestors had seldom observed after the end of the preceding dynasty of Ming. At the Spring Feast of the Dead, in this moon year, the Emperor, sorely troubled and afraid, announced that he would worship at the Supreme Temple of Imperial Ancestors. Now this was a very ancient temple and it stood in a vast park where great pines shielded its roofs from the sun. These pines, being older than the memory of man, were gnarled and twisted by the wind and the sand, and beneath them the moss was deeper than piled velvet. Inside the Temple were the sacred shrines of dead emperors, their names carved upon tablets of precious wood and each tablet resting upon a cushion of yellow satin. Only priests in yellow robes wandered about the park and cared for the Temple, and silence hung everywhere as heavy as the centuries that had passed. No birds sang in this still place, but white cranes came in the spring and made their nests in the crooked pines and reared their young and in the autumn flew away again.

To this place then, at the Feast of the Dead, the Emperor came with his princes and dukes, his councilors and high ministers. It was the hour before dawn and mists, unusual in this dry northern climate, rose from earth to sky, so that brother looking at brother could not recognize his face. Two days before the feast day the ancestral tablets of the dead Manchu rulers had been brought from their own private hall near the Imperial Library, and by the light of horn lanterns, so dark were the shadows under the pines, the Chief Eunuch and his eunuchs had arranged them upon the eleven shrines inside the temple.

All was now in readiness for the arrival of the Son of Heaven. He had spent the night in the Hall of Abstinence, neither eating nor drinking nor sleeping. For three days, too, the people of the whole nation had eaten no meat, they had not tasted garlic or oils nor drunk wine nor heard music nor looked at plays, nor invited guests. Law courts were closed for these three days and there was no litigation made by anyone.

At this gray hour before dawn the Court Butcher made his report that he had slaughtered the beasts for the sacrifice, and had poured their fresh blood into bowls, and had buried their bones and fur. The princes and the dukes reported that the sacred prayer was written, which the Son of Heaven was to pray before the guardian Ancestors, whose tablets stood upright and ready upon the imperial-yellow cushions upon the altars.

The Emperor received these reports and he rose to allow the Chief Eunuch to put on him the solemn robes of sacrifice, dark purple trimmed in plain gold and leaning upon two near kinsmen, his first cousins, he entered the Supreme Temple. There his younger brother, Prince Kung, waited to receive him. No strangers were near. Even the eunuchs from the Temple withdrew before the Son of Heaven entered and his kinsmen alone stood at the door. Now the imperial princes came forward to meet the Emperor and after obeisances they led him from one to another of the eleven sacred altars. At each one he made nine obeisances and he offered bowls of food and wine, and before each altar he made the same prayer. The prayer was for peace and for safety against the new enemies that had come from the West. It was a long prayer, and the Emperor read it eleven times, slowly and in as loud a voice as he could muster.

To the Spirits of the Great Dead he reported what the Western men had done, how they had made war and how they had seized territories and how they came as barbarian tribesmen, in ships that spat out fire to frighten the people, and he reported how these men insisted upon unwanted trade.

“We have our own goods, O Venerable Ancestors,” the Emperor declared in his prayer. “We have no need of Western toys. What do we lack under the protection of Heaven and Our Guardian Ancestors? We beseech Our Ancestors to protect us now. Let the strangers be driven into the sea! Provide pestilences to destroy them! Send down poisonous insects to sting them and vipers to strike them dead! O Guardians of our people, restore to us our land and give us peace.”

When the prayer was ended the hour was already near sunrise and in the dawning light flocks of white pigeons, sleeping under the broad eaves of the Temple, awoke and spread their wings and circled above the ancient pines. The candles faded in the lanterns, and dust motes danced in the pale sunbeams stealing through the wide gates of the Temple. The sacrifice was ended and the Emperor let himself be led away again and entering into his imperial palanquin he returned to his own palaces. Then everywhere over the nation the people took up their accustomed life, comforted and encouraged because the Son of Heaven himself had bowed before the Guardian Ancestors, had made his report and sent up his prayer on their behalf.

These rites at the Spring Feast of the Dead so heartened the Emperor that when the sixth month of the moon year drew near and the heat of summer increased, he himself decided to go to the Summer Palace with his two Consorts, and with him to take the Heir and the Court. Until now, although he had longed to go, the disturbances in the nation had made him uneasy. What if the Chinese rebels were to rise while he was away from the capital, or what if the Western men were suddenly to become incensed and sail their ships northward up the coasts as they had long threatened to do? Yet neither of these ill events had come about and, although the Viceroy Yeh was still gloomy, the delays and the evasions which he made held back both rebels and Western men.

And Tzu Hsi herself coaxed the Emperor upon a certain night when the summer moon was full and her smile enchanting.

“My lord,” she said, “come with me to the Summer Palace. The coolness of the hills will restore you to health.”

The Emperor was sorely in need of such restoration. The slow paralysis which had weakened him in the last five years lay heavy upon his limbs. Upon some days he could not walk and must lean upon two eunuchs for crutches, and upon other days he could not raise his hands to his head. His dead left side was his constant affliction, and he felt his whole body pervaded with its heaviness. He yielded therefore to this beautiful woman who enlivened him and strengthened him as no other living creature was able to do, and he decided upon a day, then a month hence, for the journey to the Summer Palace, some nine miles outside the city walls.

Now Tzu Hsi, though she could look the Empress and in full majesty, was still so young a creature that the thought of a holiday permeated her heart like warm wine. She did not yet love the severe and noble palaces in which she was doomed to live, although among them she had made small separate places for herself, secret gardens in old forgotten courtyards and terraces where no one walked, and where sometimes she might escape the burdens of state which she must carry. In her own palace she had her pets, a little dog, a female, who bred pups to amuse her, and she kept crickets in cages and birds of many colors. The pets she loved best were not these, however, but the wild creatures who settled sometimes in the trees and upon the pools. She could so imitate the sharp whisper of a cricket that she coaxed the insect to sit upon her forefinger while she stroked its papery wings. With much patience she learned the call of a nightingale at twilight so that the dim brown creature fluttered intoxicated about her head. When this happened she felt a childlike happiness that she was loved for herself alone and not for any favor that she could bestow. Sometimes, when she sat with her son upon her knees, she forgot that he was the Heir and together they watched a flock of ducklings newly hatched or the pups pulling and mauling in play, and then she laughed so loudly that her ladies marveled and smiled behind their fans. But Tzu Hsi had no fear of smiles or reproaches. She was herself and as she was, so she continued to be, a creature as free as those she played with. Yet, though four square miles lay within the Forbidden City, its walls confined her and she longed to be outside all walls and in that place of which she had often heard but where never yet had she gone to live or even to visit.