Imperial Woman (22 page)

In this quiet place, where an hour ago Tzu Hsi had painted peach blossoms, the dreadful news now fell upon her. She heard it and said not one word. She sat musing, and Prince Kung, looking sidewise at her, pitied the beautiful and lonely woman and waited for her to speak.

“We cannot receive these hateful strangers at our court,” she said at last. “And still I do believe they use Victoria’s name without her knowledge. Yet I cannot reach her distant throne, nor reveal to our people the mortal illness of the Emperor. The Heir is still too young, the succession is not clear. We must deny the foreigners entrance. At any cost, we must still delay and promise and delay again, making winter our excuse.”

He was greatly sorry for her in the midst of his own deep alarm and he spoke gently.

“Empress, I say what I have already said. You do not understand the nature of these men. It is too late. Their patience is at an end.”

“Let us see,” she said, and that was all she would say. To his pleadings and to his advice she shook her head, her face pale, and the black shadows creeping beneath her tragic eyes. “Let us see,” she said, “let us see.”

Heaven helps me, Tzu Hsi told herself, and indeed that winter was cold beyond any that man had known. Day after day when she rose and looked from her window the snow lay deeper than the day before. Imperial couriers to the south took three times as long as usual to reach the capital and it was months before her reply could reach Canton again. The aged Viceroy Yeh was now wasting away in a prison in Calcutta, whither the English had transported him, but her heart was hard against him. He had failed the Throne and no excuse was strong enough to forgive him such defeat. Let him die! Pity and mercy she would keep for those who could serve her.

Winter crept slowly by and spring came again, a bitter and uneasy spring. She longed for the first leaves to bud on the date trees and for the bamboo sprouts to crack the earth. Inside the palaces the sacred lilies bloomed, warmed by the burning charcoal smothered in ashes in which their bowls were placed. Dwarf plum trees, coaxed by hot stoves, stood blossoming in porcelain jars. She made a mock spring from such flowers in her halls and in the branches of the potted trees she commanded birds in cages to be hung so that she could hear their songs. When she thought of the peril in which the nation stood it comforted her to open the cages and let the birds fly out and settle on her shoulders and her hands and take food from her lips, and she played tenderly with her dogs. To such creatures her love flowed out because they were so innocent.

Innocent, too, was her little son, and she knew, and this was her deepest joy, that he loved her and her alone, as yet. When she came into the room where he was, though he had not seen her for a day or two if she were busy, he forgot all others and ran into her arms. She could be cruel, and anyone who crossed her will felt instantly her relentless cruelty; and yet this tenderness flowed from her toward all weak and innocent creatures and certainly toward others who loved her. Thus she bore with the evil of the eunuch, Li Lien-ying, because he worshipped her. She winked at his thieving and his mischief and his demand for bribes from those who sought her for the Emperor’s favor. In the same mood, she forgave the Emperor his helplessness and decadence and his folly with women. For he would have women with him nightly because with her he was impotent, but not always with little young women. Yet her he loved and those he did not. She could forgive him because she did not love him, and she was tender to him because he loved her.

All this Prince Kung knew, and she knew that he knew, and that never would he put his knowledge into words, for she saw understanding in his eyes and she heard it in the gentleness of his voice. But she was lonely as only the high can be lonely, and since she could never speak her loneliness, he was the more steadfast in his loyalty, not as a man, for he had his own beautiful and beloved wife, a quiet woman, sweet of heart, who fulfilled his every need. She was the daughter of an old and honorable mandarin, Kwei Liang by name, a man of good common sense who was at all times faithful to the Throne and who gave wise counsel always to the Emperor Hsien Feng, now ruling, as he had also to T’ao Kuang, the Emperor’s father, now dead.

The spring crept slowly on. It deepened into summer and still Tzu Hsi could not decide if it were safe to go to the Summer Palace. She longed for its peace. All winter she had not looked beyond the walls of the Forbidden City and she was sick for the sight of the lakes and mountains of Yüan Ming Yüan. Never had she longed for beauty as she did now, when all was uncertainty about her, and she yearned for the natural beauty of sky and water and earth. When she slept at night she did not dream of lovers but of gardens not enclosed and of the peacefulness of moonlight on the bare and distant hills. She spent hours poring over landscape scrolls and painted scenes, imagining she walked beside rivers or the sea and that at night she slept in pine forests or in a temple hidden in a bamboo grove. When she woke she wept, for these dreams were as real as memories, clear and never to be forgotten, but which she could never see.

But one day, suddenly as a storm comes down, the rumors of the evil for which she felt herself always waiting came rushing northward and instantly she put aside all hope of Yüan Ming Yüan. The Western men were moving up the coast in ships of war. Imperial couriers in relay ran day and night to tell the news before the ships could reach the Taku forts at Tientsin, which city was a scant eighty miles from the capital itself. Now consternation fell on everyone, on commoners as well as on courtiers. The Emperor bestirred himself and he commanded his Grand Councilors and ministers and princes to gather in the Audience Hall and he sent a summons to the two Consorts to seat themselves behind the Dragon Screen. There Tzu Hsi went, leaning on her eunuch’s arm, and she sat herself upon the higher of the two small thrones there. In a while Tzu An, the Empress of the Eastern Palace, came, too, and Tzu Hsi, always courteous, rose and waited while she sat on the other throne. That Empress was aging beyond her years, for she was not yet thirty-two. Her face had grown long and thin and melancholy, and she made a faint sad smile when Tzu Hsi pressed her hand.

Yet who could think of one when all were threatened? In silence the noble assembly listened to Prince Kung as he stood to announce the evil news. The Emperor, in his golden robes and seated on the Dragon Throne, bowed his head low, his face half hidden by a silken fan he held in his right hand.

When proper greetings had been made Prince Kung proceeded to the hard truth he must tell. “In spite of all the Throne has done to prevent them, the aliens have not remained in the south. They are even now on their way up our coast, their ships armed and carrying warriors. We must hope they will halt at the forts of Taku, and not enter into the city proper at Tientsin, from whence it would be but a short march to this sacred place.”

A groan burst from the kneeling assembly and they bowed their heads to the floor.

Prince Kung faltered and went on. “It is too soon for me to speak. Yet I fear, I fear, that these barbarians will obey neither our laws nor our etiquette! The least delay, and they will come even to the gates of the imperial palaces, unless they are bribed and persuaded to return south again. Let us face the worst, let us cease dreaming. The last hour is come. Ahead is only sorrow.”

When the full text of the memorial which Prince Kung had written was read and presented, the Emperor ended the audience, commanding the assembly to withdraw and consider its judgment and advice. So saying he rose, and supported by two princes, his brothers, he was about to come down from the Throne when suddenly Tzu Hsi’s clear voice rose from behind the Dragon Screen.

“I who should not speak must nevertheless break my proper silence!”

The Emperor stood uncertain, turning his head left and right. Before him the assembly knelt with heads bowed to the floor and they remained motionless. None spoke.

In the silence Tzu Hsi’s voice rose again. “It is I who have counseled patience with these Western barbarians. It is I who have cried delay and wait, and now it is I who say I have been wrong. I change, I declare against patience and waiting and delay. I cry war against the Western enemy—war and death to them all, men, women and children!”

Had her voice been that of a man, they would have shouted yea or nay. But it was the voice of a woman, though she was an empress. None spoke, none moved. The Emperor waited, his head drooping, and then, still supported by his brothers, he came down from the Throne, while all heads were bowed to the floor, and he entered his yellow palanquin and, surrounded by Bannermen and guards, he returned to his palace.

After him in proper time the two Consorts also withdrew, saying not a word to each other, except what was necessary for courtesy, but Tzu Hsi could see that Tzu An shunned her and looked away. And Tzu Hsi returned to her own apartments while the day passed to wait for the imperial summons, but none came. In silence she pored over her books, her mind distracted. When evening came near and she was not called, she inquired of Li Lien-ying, her eunuch, and he told her that the Emperor had dallied all day with one and another of his lesser concubines and had not mentioned her name. This he had heard from the Chief Eunuch, who had been compelled to stay by his master’s side, and bear with his whims.

“Venerable,” Li Lien-ying said, “be sure the Son of Heaven has not forgotten you, but he is afraid now of what may happen. He waits for the judgment of his ministers.”

“Then I am defeated!” Tzu Hsi exclaimed.

This was speech too plain against the Emperor and Li Lien-ying pretended he had not heard. He felt the teapot and muttered that it was cold and he bustled away with the pot in his hands, his ugly face blank and unsmiling.

The next day Tzu Hsi heard the news she had foreseen. There was to be no resistance, even now, against the invaders from the West. Instead, by advice of his councilors and ministers, the Emperor appointed three honorable men to go to Tientsin to negotiate with the Englishman, Lord Elgin. Among these three the chief was Kwei Liang, the father of Prince Kung’s wife, a man known for his good sense and his caution.

“Aie, alas!” Tzu Hsi cried when she heard his name. “This excellent man will never oppose the enemy. He is too old, too careful and too yielding.”

She was right indeed. On the fourth day of that seventh month, Kwei Liang signed a treaty with the Western warriors, which was to be sealed in a year from that day by the Emperor himself. The three noblemen then returned with their treaty. At point of sword, the Englishmen and the Frenchmen, supported by their friends, the Americans and the Russians, had gained their demands. Their governments were to be allowed ministers resident in Peking, their priests and traders could travel throughout the realm without submitting to its laws, opium was to be called the stuff of legal trade, and the great river port of Hankow in the heart of the Empire, a thousand miles from the sea, was named a treaty port where white men could live and bring their families.

When Tzu Hsi heard such terms she retired to her bedchamber, and for three days she did not wash herself nor take off her garments nor eat food. Nor would she admit any of her ladies. Her woman grew frightened and her eunuch went to Prince Kung secretly to report that the Empress of the Western Palace lay on her bed like one dead, exhausted with weeping and weariness.

Prince Kung received the report in his own palace outside the Forbidden City and he begged audience with her. Tzu Hsi roused herself then and was bathed and dressed and she drank a broth that her woman brought to her, and leaning on her eunuch’s arm she received the Prince in the Imperial Library. There, sitting upon her throne, she listened to his reasonable words.

“Empress, do you think that so honorable a man as my father-in-law would have yielded to the enemy if he could have resisted? No choice was given us. Had we opposed their demands they would have marched forthwith upon this imperial city.”

Tzu Hsi thrust out her red underlip. “A threat!”

“No threat,” Prince Kung repeated firmly. “One thing I have learned about the Englishmen. What they say, they do.”

Whether this good Prince were right or wrong, Tzu Hsi knew him loyal and true and wise beyond his years and she could not argue, now that the treaty was made. Indeed, she was too sad. Were her hopes already lost because her son was too young to fight for himself? She made a gesture of impatient dismissal and when the Prince was gone she returned to her own chamber. There alone in days and nights to come, she planned her secret ways. She would conceal her heart and her mind, she would make friends of all, she would subdue herself wholly to the Emperor, sparing him the smallest reproach, and she would wait. And with this she made her will as hard as iron, as cold as stone.

Meanwhile, content with their victorious treaty, the Western men did not move northward. The year passed as other years had passed, and the new summer of the next year brought the day for the treaty to be sealed. Now Tzu Hsi had determined to win her way against the sealing, and she won, not by talk and threat, but by seduction of that weak man, the Emperor. When he found during this year that she was always gentle, always willing, he became her captive again, his mind with his body. Upon her advice, which she made subtle nowadays, he sent ministers to the white men ruling the city of Canton through the Chinese governors they had appointed, and these ministers were to coax and bribe the white men not to come north again because the treaty was not sealed.

“Let them be content with their southern trade,” the Emperor commanded. “Tell them we are friendly if they remain where they are. Did they not come here for trade?”

“What if they refuse?” Prince Kung asked.

Remembering what Tzu Hsi had said in the long night when they were alone together, the Emperor replied, “Tell them, if you must, that we will meet them later at Shanghai to seal the treaty. This is to go halfway toward them. Can they complain that we are not generous?”

For Tzu Hsi had said, feigning indifference to matters of state, “Why sign the treaty? Let them hope, and if they are impatient, say it will be signed at Shanghai, halfway up the coast. If they come there, then it will be time to decide what to do.”