Imperial Woman (19 page)

“But Venerable—”

Tzu Hsi raised her hand. “No doubts, child! He will do what I say.”

“No doubts, Venerable, but—”

Tzu Hsi examined the pretty face, still pink. “You think it is too long to wait so many months?”

The lady hid her face behind her sleeve.

Tzu Hsi laughed. “Before one journeys to a new place the road must be built!”

She pinched the lady’s cheeks and made them still more red and then dismissed her.

“For two hundred years,” Prince Kung said, “the trade of these foreign merchants was confined to that one southern city of Canton. Moreover, such trade could only be through the licensed Chinese merchants.”

Summer was ended, the autumn half gone, and Tzu Hsi, listening to her lesson, gazed pensively beyond the wide doors open to the sun of midafternoon. Porcelain pots of late chrysanthemums bloomed in red and gold and bronze. She heard and did not hear, the words falling on her ears and floating on her mind like fallen leaves upon the surface of a pool.

Prince Kung spoke sharply to recall her from her dreaming.

“Do you hear, Empress?”

“I hear,” she said.

He looked doubtful, and went on. “Recall then, Empress, that the end of the two Opium Wars left our nation defeated. This defeat taught us one bitter lesson—that we could not consider the Western nations as tributaries. Their greedy, ruthless men, though never our equals, can become our masters through the brute force of the evil engines of war they have invented.”

These words, spoken in his powerful deep voice startled her, and she woke from her dreaming memories of summer now gone. How hateful was it to return again to these high walls and locked gates!

“Our masters?” she repeated.

“Our masters, unless we keep our wits awake,” the Prince said firmly. “We have yielded, alas, to every demand—the vast indemnities, the many new ports opened by force to this hateful foreign trade. And what one foreign nation gains, the others all gain, too. Force—force is their talisman.”

His handsome face was stern, his tall figure wrapped in gray satin robes drooped in the carved chair below the phoenix throne which Tzu Hsi made her favorite seat here in the Imperial Library. Near her Li Lien-ying leaned against a massive wooden pillar, enameled red as all the pillars were.

“What is our weakness?” Tzu Hsi demanded. Her indignation roused her. She sat upright, hands gripping the sides of her throne. Jung Lu’s face, so clear to her mind a moment before, faded into dimness.

Prince Kung looked sidewise at her, his melancholy eyes seeing as always her powerful beauty informed by the strength of her lively mind. How could he shape her so that these could save the dynasty? She was still too young, and, alas, forever only a woman. Yet she had no equal.

“The Chinese were too civilized for our times,” he said. “Their sages taught that force is evil, the soldier to be despised because he destroys. But these sages lived in ancient times, they knew nothing of the rise of these new wild tribes in the West. Our subjects have lived without knowing what other peoples are. They have lived as though this were the only nation on the earth. Even now, when they rebel against the Manchu dynasty, they do not see that it is not we who are their enemies, but the men out of the West.”

Tzu Hsi heard these fearful words and instantly her mind caught their meaning.

“Has the Viceroy Yeh let these white men enter the very city of Canton?”

“Not yet, Empress, and we must prevent it. You will remember that I told you how, nine years ago, they fired their cannons at our forts at the mouth of the Pearl River, upon whose banks the city stands, and by this force compelled us to grant them a great tract of land on the south bank for their warehouses and their homes. At that time they demanded also that in two years the gates of Canton were to be opened to them, but when the time came the Viceroy denied the agreement, and the British did not press. Yet this is not peace. If these foreigners seem to yield, be sure it is only while they plan some larger victory.”

“We must put them off,” Tzu Hsi insisted. “We must ignore them until we are strong.”

“You speak too simply, Empress,” Prince Kung replied and again sighed the heavy sigh that had become his habit. “It is not a matter of white men alone. The knowledge of foreign weapons, the sight of cruel force instead of skillful reason, is changing even the Chinese people in subtle ways. Force, they say now, is stronger than reason. We have been wrong, the Chinese say, for only weapons can make us free. This, Empress of the Western Palace, this is what we must understand in all depth and distance, for I do assure you that in this one concept hides a change so mighty in our nation that unless we can change with it, we who rule, Manchu and ourselves not Chinese, our dynasty will end before the Heir can sit upon the Dragon Throne.”

“Give them weapons, then,” Tzu Hsi said.

“Alas,” Prince Kung sighed, “if we give the Chinese weapons wherewith to repel the enemy from the West, they will turn first on us, whom they still call foreign although our ancestors came down from the north two hundred years ago. Empress, the throne is trembling on its foundations.”

Could she comprehend the peril of the times? His eyes rested most anxiously upon the beautiful woman’s face. He could not read the answer that he sought, for he knew that woman’s mind is not an instrument apart from her other being. She does not separate herself as man does, now flesh, now mind, now heart. She is three in one, a trinity complete and unified. Thus while Prince Kung could only guess how Tzu Hsi’s mind received what he taught, in fact her mind was working through her every sense. It was not the dynasty alone the white men threatened, it was her and hers, the son, the Imperial Heir, imperial not only because he was the next to sit upon the Dragon Throne, but imperial because she had made him, her energy conceived him and created him, and now her instinct rose to save him.

That day, when Prince Kung left her and she had returned to her own palace, she sent for the child. While she played with him, holding him in her arms, laughing with him, singing to him the songs that she had heard her mother sing, counting his small toes and fingers, coaxing him to stand and catching him when he fell, as all mothers do, her mind was busy planning how she could destroy his enemies. The nation—yes, but first her son! And when the play was over she gave him to his nurse again and from that hour she applied herself with fresh will to read the memorials presented to the Throne from each province but especially from that place where the white men quarreled to gain entrance for their trade, the southern city of Canton. There, although both Chinese and white merchants grew rich on trade, neither could be satisfied. She wished she dared to risk a war, but it was too soon. The turmoil of foreign war heaped upon Chinese rebellion might indeed destroy the Dragon Throne and force the Emperor to abdicate before a people’s wrath. No, she must play for time until her son was grown and then he in his manhood could lead the war. Year by year—

But when the first snow fell upon the palaces news came by courier from the Viceroy of the Kwang provinces that new ships of war had anchored in the harbor near Canton, and these ships brought not only weapons of greater strength than before, but also envoys of high rank from England. In fright and fury the Viceroy thus memorialized the Throne. He did not dare, he said, to leave his city, else would he come himself before the Son of Heaven and cry his shame that he had not been able to prevent these enemies from crossing the black seas. What therefore were the commands of the Most High? Let them be sent by special courier and he would obey.

The Emperor, distracted, could only call his government to consultation. Day after day at bitter dawn they met in the Audience Hall, the Grand Secretariat, whose four First Chancellors, two Manchu and two Chinese, two assistant chancellors, one Manchu and one Chinese, and four sub-chancellors, two Manchu and two Chinese, met with the Council of State, who were the princes of the blood, and the grand secretaries, presidents and vice-presidents of the six Boards, the Board of Revenue, the Board of Civil Office, the Board of Rites, the Board of War, the Board of Punishments and the Board of Works. These chief ruling bodies heard Prince Kung read the memorial before the Dragon Throne. After much discussion each body separated to decide apart what advice to give to the Son of Heaven and their advice was written down and presented to him, and he received it, the next day to return it with his own comment, written with the imperial-vermilion brush.

Now all knew that it was not the Emperor who used the vermilion brush but the Empress of the Western Palace. All knew, for Li Lien-ying boasted everywhere that each night Tzu Hsi was summoned to the royal bedchamber, and not for love. No, while the Emperor lay in his bed, half sleeping in an opium dream, she pondered long and alone upon the written pages, studying every word and weighing every meaning. And when she had decided what her will was, she lifted the vermilion brush and crossed out the words of those who advised action or war or retaliation against the intruders. “Delay,” she still commanded. “Do not yield, but do not resist—not yet. Promise, and break the promises. Is not our land vast and mighty? Shall we destroy the body because a mosquito stings a toe?”

None dared to disobey, for to her handwriting she set the imperial seal, and she alone, except the Emperor, could lift it from its coffer in the imperial bedchamber. All that she commanded was printed in the Court Gazette, as imperial decrees, essays and memorials had been printed daily for eight hundred years. This gazette was sent by messenger to every province and its viceroy, to every city and its magistrate, so that everywhere the people could know the royal will. And this will now was the will of one woman, young and beautiful, who sat alone within the royal chamber while the Son of Heaven slept.

Prince Kung, reading the vermilion words, was sick with fear.

“Empress,” he said when next they met in the wintry shadows of the Imperial Library, “I must warn you again and yet again that the temper of these white men is short and savage. They have not lived the centuries that our people have. They are children. When they see what they want they put out their hands to snatch it. Delays and promises not kept will only anger them. We must bargain with them, persuade them, even bribe them, to leave our shores.”

Tzu Hsi flashed her splendid eyes at him. “Pray, what can they do? Can their ships sail a thousand miles up our long coast? Let them harass a southern city. Does this mean that they can threaten the Son of Heaven himself?”

“I think it possible,” he said gravely.

“Let time tell,” she retorted.

“I hope it will not be too late,” he sighed.

She pitied his careworn looks, too grave for a man still young and handsome, and she coaxed him with pleasant words. “You make your own load heavy. You revel in your melancholy. You should take pleasure as other men do. I never see you at the theater.”

To this Prince Kung made no reply except to take his leave. Ever since her return from the Summer Palace Tzu Hsi had kept the Court actors near her, and supported by the imperial funds, they enjoyed good food and a pavilion of their own to live in outside the walls of the Forbidden City and another for their theater inside the walls. On every feast day Tzu Hsi commanded that they give a play, and to it came the Court, sometimes the Emperor, but certainly the ladies and the royal concubines, the eunuchs, and the lesser princes and their families. By sunset all must be gone, men and their families, but the play lasted two hours or three of every day and in such diversions winter passed to spring, and peace held.

With the first flowering of the tree peonies the Court prepared to enjoy the birthday feast of the Heir. The spring was favorable. The rains fell early and dispelled the dust, the air was mild and so warm that already mirages hung over the landscape like painted scenes from some distant country. The nation, informed by the gazettes, welcomed opportunity for feasting, and the people prepared gifts. A slumberous peace pervaded every province and Prince Kung wondered if the Empress of the Western Palace had a private wisdom of her own. The ships of the white men delayed at the port near Canton, and daily quarreling went on, but no worse than it had been. The Viceroy still ruled the city, nor did he yet receive the envoy from England, Elgin, a lord of high rank. For this lord still would not bow himself to the floor, in acknowledgment of his inferiority, and the Viceroy Yeh, proud and mindful of his place, would not receive an emissary not willing to bow before him, who stood for the Emperor. Neither yielded and each maintained his place for the sake of each his ruler.

In this vague and shallow peace the people seized upon the chance to make a feast and have some pleasure, while the Court made ready for the birthday of the Heir. Everywhere men looked at neighbors and agreed that they would not think beyond the day and therefore let the future wait upon the feasting. For Tzu Hsi this birthday gala had another meaning, too. All through the winter and its troubles she had been patient with time and stern with her own heart. Yet while she had resolutely studied and read her books, she had remembered Jung Lu and her purpose to advance his rank. One day before the birthday, she chanced in passing, or it seemed chance, to see that Lady Mei looked pensive. She put up her hand and stroked the lady’s smooth cheek.

“Do not think I have forgotten, child!”

She gazed into the pretty eyes that looked up at her startled and knew that this woman whom she called “child” understood her meaning. It was Tzu Hsi’s secret strength that while she put her mind to the large matters of state, pondering long into the night and far beyond what Prince Kung thought she did, yet she could at the same time remember her own hidden wishes. Thus a few nights before the birthday, as she lay in the Emperor’s arms, seeming half asleep, she murmured words.

“Almost I forgot—”

“Forgot what, my heart and liver?” he inquired. He was in good humor because this night he had found satisfaction, enough to make him feel himself still a man.