Imperial Woman (2 page)

“Keep yourself apart,” her mother had said yesterday. “Among the virgins you are only one. Sakota is small and delicate in beauty and since she is the younger sister of the dead Consort certainly she must be favored above you. Whatever place is given you, it is possible for you to rise beyond it.”

Instead of farewell her mother, always stern, gave her these plain words and they were alive in her mind. She had not wept when in the night she heard others weeping, fearful lest they be chosen on this day of the Emperor’s choosing. For if she were chosen, and this her mother told her plainly, then might she never see again her home and her family. Nor could she so much as visit her home until she was twenty-one years old. Between seventeen and twenty-one there stretched four lonely years. Yet must they be lonely? When she thought of Jung Lu they were lonely. But she thought also of the Emperor.

That last night at home she had been sleepless with excitement. Sakota, too, was wakeful. Somewhere in the silent hours she had heard footsteps and recognized them.

“Sakota!” she had cried.

In the darkness her cousin’s soft hand felt her face.

“Orchid, I am frightened! Let me come into your bed.”

She pushed aside her younger sister, lumpish in sleep, and made room for her cousin. Sakota crept in. Her hands and feet were cold and she was trembling.

“Are you not afraid?” she whispered, cowering under the quilts against her cousin’s warm body.

“No,” Orchid said. “What can harm me? And why should you be afraid when your own elder sister was the Emperor’s chosen one?”

“She died in the palace,” Sakota whispered. “She was unhappy there—she was sick for home. I, too, may die.”

“I shall be there with you,” Orchid said. She wrapped her strong arms about the slender body. Sakota was always too thin, too soft, never hungry, never strong.

“What if we are not chosen into the same class?” Sakota asked.

So it had happened. They were separated. Yesterday when the virgins appeared first before the Dowager Mother of the Son of Heaven, she chose twenty-eight from the sixty. Sakota, because she was the sister of the dead princess was placed in F’ei, the first class, and Orchid in Kuei Jen, the third.

“She has a temper,” the shrewd old Dowager said, staring at Orchid. “Otherwise I would put her in the second class of P’in, for it is not fitting to put her with the first class with her cousin and the sister of my daughter-in-law, who has passed to the Yellow Springs. Let her be in the third class, for it is better if my son, the Emperor, does not notice her.”

Orchid had listened in seeming modesty and obedience. Now, a virgin only of the third class, she remembered her mother’s parting words. Her mother was a strong woman.

A voice called through the sleeping hall, the voice of the chief tiring woman, whose task it was to prepare the virgins.

“Young ladies, it is time to rise! It is time to make yourselves beautiful! This is your day of good fortune.”

The others rose at once upon this summons, but Orchid did not. Whatever the others did she would not do. She would be separate, she would be alone. She lay motionless, all but concealed beneath the silken quilt, and watched the young girls shivering under the hands of the women servants who came to attend them. The early air was cool, the northern summer was still new, and from the shallow wooden tubs of hot water the steam rose in a mist.

“All must bathe,” the chief tiring woman commanded. She sat in a wide bamboo chair, fat and severe, accustomed to obedience.

The young girls, now naked, stepped into the tubs and serving women rubbed their bodies with perfumed soap and washed them with soft cloths while the chief tiring woman stared at each in turn. Suddenly she spoke.

“Twenty-eight were chosen from the sixty. I count only twenty-seven.” She examined the paper in her hand and called the names of the virgins. Each virgin answered from where she stood. But the last one did not answer.

“Yehonala!” the old woman called again.

It was Orchid’s clan name. Yesterday, before she left his house, Muyanga, her uncle-guardian, had summoned her into his library to give her a father’s counsel.

She had stood before him, and he, not rising, his large body clad in sky-blue satin and overflowing the seat of his easy chair, gave his advice. She felt an easy humor toward him, for he was negligently kind, but she did not love him, for he loved no one, being too lazy for love or hate.

“Now that you are about to enter into the City of the Emperor,” he said in his oily voice, “you must leave behind your little name, Orchid. From this day you will be called Yehonala.”

“Yehonala!” Again the chief tiring woman shouted and still she did not answer. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“Has Yehonala escaped?” the old woman called.

A serving woman answered. “Mistress, she lies in bed.”

The chief tiring woman was shocked. “Still abed? And can she sleep?”

The servant went to the bed and looked. “She is sleeping.”

“What hard heart is this?” the old woman cried. “Waken her! Pull away the quilts, pinch her arms!”

The servant obeyed, and Yehonala, feigning to wake, opened her eyes. “What is it?” she asked drowsily. She sat up, her hands flying to her cheeks. “Oh—oh—” she stammered, her voice as soft as that of a mourning dove. “How could I forget?”

“How indeed!” the chief tiring woman said, indignant. “Do you not know the Emperor’s command? In two hours from now you must all be ready in the Audience Hall, every virgin at her best—two hours, I tell you, in which you must be bathed and perfumed and robed, your hair coiled, your breakfast eaten.”

Yehonala yawned behind her hand. “How I slept! The mattress is much softer here than on my bed at home.”

The old woman snorted. “It can scarcely be imagined that a mattress in the palace of the Son of Heaven would be as hard as your bed.”

“So much softer than I imagined,” Yehonala said.

She stepped upon the tiled floor, her feet bare and strong. The virgins were all Manchu and not Chinese, and their feet were unbound and free.

“Come, come,” the chief tiring woman said. “Hasten yourself, Yehonala! The others are nearly dressed.”

“Yes, Venerable,” she said.

But she did not hurry herself. She allowed a woman to undress her, putting forth no effort to help her, and when she was naked she stepped into the shallow tub of hot water and would not lift her hand to wash her own body.

“You!” the woman said under her breath. “Will you not help me to get you ready?”

Yehonala opened her large eyes, black and brilliant. “What shall I do?” she asked helplessly.

No one should guess that in her home there was no servant except Lu Ma in the kitchen. She had always bathed not only herself but her younger sister and brothers. She had washed their clothes with her own and she had carried them as babies on her back, strapped there with broad bands of cloth, while she went hither and thither helping her mother about the house and running often to the oil shop and the vegetable market. Her only pleasure was to stop on the streets and watch a troupe of wandering Chinese actors. Yet her uncle Muyanga, always kind, allowed her to be taught with his own children by the family tutor, although the sum of money he gave her mother went for food and clothing and provided little luxury.

Here all was luxury. She glanced about the vast room. The early sunlight was creeping over the walls and brightened the opaque shell-latticed windows. The blue and the red of the painted beams overhead sprang into life, and the reds and greens of the long Manchu robes of the virgins responded. Scarlet satin curtains hung in the doorways and the cushions of the carved wooden chairs were covered with scarlet wool. Upon the walls the picture scrolls showed landscapes or wise sayings brushed in black ink upon white silk. The air was sweet with perfume of soaps and oils. She discovered of a sudden that she loved luxury.

The serving woman had not answered Yehonala’s question. There was no time. The chief tiring woman was pressing them to hurry.

“They had better eat first,” she was saying. “Then what time is left can be spent on their hair. A full hour is needed for their hair.”

Food was brought in by kitchen maids but the virgins could not eat. Their hearts were beating too fast in their bosoms, and some were weeping again.

The chief tiring woman grew angry. Her fat face swelled. “How dare you weep?” she bellowed. “Can there be a better fortune than to be chosen by the Son of Heaven?”

But the weeping virgins wept on. “I had rather live in my home,” one sobbed. “I do not wish to be chosen,” another sighed.

“Shame, shame,” the old woman cried, gnashing her teeth at the craven girls.

Seeing such distress, Yehonala was the more calm. She moved with accurate grace from one step to another and when food was brought in she sat down at a table and ate heartily and with pleasure. Even the chief tiring woman was surprised, not knowing whether to be shocked or pleased.

“I swear I have not seen so hard a heart,” she said in a loud voice.

Yehonala smiled, her chopsticks in her right hand. “I like this good food,” she said as sweetly as a child. “It is better than any I have eaten at home.”

The chief tiring woman decided to be pleased. “You are a sensible female creature,” she announced. Nevertheless after a moment she turned her head to whisper to one of the serving women. “Look at her great eyes! She has a fierce heart, this one—”

The woman grimaced. “A tiger heart,” she agreed. “Truly a tiger heart—”

At noon the eunuchs came for them, led by the Chief Eunuch, An Teh-hai. He was a handsome, still youthful figure, wrapped in a long pale-blue satin robe, girdled at the waist with a length of red silk. His face was smooth, the features large, the nose curved downward, the eyes black and proud.

He gave orders half carelessly for the virgins to pass before him and like a petty emperor he sat in a great carved chair of blackwood and stared at each one as she passed, seeming at the same time to be only contemptuous. Beside him was a blackwood table upon which were placed his tally book, his ink brush and box.

From under her long eyelids Yehonala watched him. She stood apart from the other virgins, half hiding herself behind a curtain of scarlet satin hung in a door way. The Chief Eunuch marked with a brush and ink the name of each virgin as she passed.

“There is one not here,” he announced.

“Here am I,” Yehonala said. She moved forward shyly, her head bent, her face turned away, her voice so soft it could scarcely be heard.

“That one has been late all day,” the chief tiring woman said in her loud voice. “She slept when the others rose. She would not wash or dress herself and she has eaten enough food for a peasant woman—three bowls of millet she swallowed down! Now she stands there stupid. I do not know whether she is a fool.”

“Yehonala,” the Chief Eunuch read in a high harsh voice, “eldest daughter of the dead Bannerman Chao. Guardian, the Bannerman Muyanga. She was registered at the Northern Palace two years ago, aged fifteen. She is now seventeen.”

He lifted his head and stared at Yehonala standing before him, her head drooping modestly, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Are you this very one?” he inquired.

“I am she,” Yehonala said.

“Pass on,” the Chief Eunuch commanded. But his eyes followed her. Then he rose and commanded the lower eunuchs. “Let the virgins be led into the Hall of Waiting. When the Son of Heaven is ready to receive them, I will announce them myself, one by one, before the Dragon Throne.”

Four hours the virgins waited. The serving women sat with them, scolding if a satin coat were wrinkled, or if a lock of hair were loosened. Now and again a woman touched a virgin’s face with powder, or painted her lips again. Twice the virgins were allowed to drink tea.

At noon a stir in distant courtyards roused them. Horns sounded, drums beat and a gong was struck to the rhythm of footsteps coming nearer. An Teh-hai, the Chief Eunuch, came again into the Hall of Waiting and with him were the lesser eunuchs, among whom was one young and tall and lean, and though his face was ugly, it was so dark and so like an eagle’s in its look that Yehonala’s eyes were fixed upon him involuntarily. In the same instant this eunuch caught her look and returned it with insolence. She turned her head away.

But the Chief Eunuch had seen. “Li Lien-ying,” he cried sharply, “why are you here? I bade you wait with the virgins of the fourth class, the Ch’ang Ts’ai!”

Without a word the tall young eunuch left the hall.

The Chief Eunuch then said, “Young ladies, you will wait here until your class is called. First the F’ei must be presented to the Emperor by the Dowager Mother, then the P’in. Only when these are reviewed and the Emperor’s choice is made may you of the third class, who are only Kuei Jen, approach the Throne. You are not to look upon the imperial face. It is he who looks at you.”

None answered. The virgins stood silent, their heads drooping while he spoke. Yehonala had placed herself last, as though she were the most modest of them all, but her heart beat against her breast. Within the next few hours, within an hour or less, depending on the Emperor’s mood, she might reach the supreme moment of her life. He would look at her, appraise her, weigh her shape and color, and in that little moment she must make him feel her powerful charm.

She thought of her cousin Sakota, even now passing before the Emperor’s eyes. Sakota was sweetly simple, gentle and childlike. Because she was the sister of the dead princess, whom the Emperor had loved when he was prince, it was all but sure that she would be among the chosen. That was good. She and Sakota had lived together since she was three years old, when, her father dead, her mother had returned to the ancestral home, and Sakota had always yielded to her and leaned upon her and trusted her. Sakota might even say to the Emperor, “My cousin Yehonala is beautiful and clever.” It had been upon her tongue, that last night they slept together, to say to her, “Speak for me—” and then she had been too proud. Sakota, though gentle and childish, had a child’s pure dignity, which forbade advance.