Imperial Woman (39 page)

He was startled and turned his face all naked to her eyes, and she saw such wild pain there that she threw her arms about his neck.

“Oh, love,” she cried, “what’s wrong?”

He stiffened and in the next instant loosed her arms. “Old troubles,” he muttered, “old problems, never to be solved! I am a fool to think upon them. Come, let’s sleep.”

And side by side they walked down the corridors to their rooms, where at the door to her bedroom he took his leave, saying as though it had only come to his mind, “And are you better with this child within you than you were with the first?” For she was big with child a second time.

“I thank you, I am well,” she said.

To which he smiled and said, “Then we will have a daughter, if I remember old wives’ tales I heard in childhood. It is the sons who struggle against the womb.”

“And shall you mind if I give you a daughter?” she asked.

“Not if she looks like you,” he said most courteously, and bowed to her and left her there.

Next day when the water clock had marked the third hour after noon, the eunuch Li Lien-ying, overzealous today to please his royal mistress, announced that the Grand Councilor Jung Lu sought audience with her when it was her convenience.

To which she said at once, “When is it not convenient for me to welcome my kinsman? Bid him come now.”

So in a brief time Jung Lu was in her private audience hall, where she sat on her throne to receive him, and when she had motioned to the eunuch to stand at a distance, she bade Jung Lu rise from his knees and seat himself below her throne.

“Now pray you,” she said, “let us be easy together. Put courtesy aside and say what is in your mind for once. You know that underneath the Empress there is always I, the one you knew as child and maiden.”

She spoke freely and he was the more easily alarmed because of the Chief Eunuch’s thrust. He turned his head this way and that to see if a curtain moved, or if Li Lien-ying held his ears alert. But no, that eunuch read some book or other, and the curtain did not sway. So vast was the hall that unless one stood near the throne, he could not hear what his beloved said, for she had made her voice small and sweet. Yet he would not yield beyond a long look that passed between them, he with his right hand covering that strong mouth of his.

“Take your hand from your mouth,” she said.

His hand dropped and she saw him bite his lower lip.

“Those teeth of yours,” she said, “are white and strong as any tiger’s teeth. Spare yourself, I pray you—do not bite your lip so cruelly.”

He forced his eyes away from hers. “I came to speak about the Emperor.”

He used his own guile, knowing that only her son could divert those dark eyes from his face.

“What of him?” she cried. “Is something wrong?”

He was free again, the bond was loosened between them, that bond which never broke.

“I am not pleased,” he said. “These eunuchs with their pandering hands pervert a young lad by their own perversion. You know what I mean, Majesty. You saw their evil wreak its doom upon the late Emperor, a foul corruption. Your son must be saved before it is too late.”

She flushed and did not answer for an instant. Then she said calmly, “I am glad you speak as a father to my fatherless son. I, too, am much concerned, but being only woman, what can I do? Can I foul my tongue to speak of deeds I should not so much as know about? These are men’s affairs.”

“So I am here,” he said, “and I do advise you that you betroth your son early. Let him choose the one he likes, with your consent, and though he is too young to wed for two years more, for he should not wed before he is sixteen, I daresay, yet the image of her whom he has chosen will keep him clean.”

“How can you know that?” she inquired.

“I know it,” he said bluntly, and would say no more, and when she sought to get his eyes again to hers, he turned his head away.

She sighed at last, yielding to his stubborn goodness. “Well, I will do as you bid me. Let the maidens be called together soon, to be prepared—as I was. Oh, Heaven, how the years have passed so that it is I who sit, as the Dowager Mother once did sit beside the Emperor, to mark his choice! Do you remember she did not like me?”

“You won her afterwards as you do win all,” he muttered, and still did not turn his head toward her.

She laughed softly, her red mouth trembling as though to speak some mischief, but she withheld it and rose, again the Empress.

“Well, let it be so, kinsman! And I thank you for advice.”

She spoke so clearly that Li Lien-ying, still distant, heard and thrust the book into his bosom, and came to escort the Grand Councilor from the hall. Jung Lu bowed low to the floor, the Empress Mother inclined her head and so they parted yet again.

Meanwhile the Chief Eunuch was uneasy. He had thought his place as secure as the Throne itself. Emperors came and went, but eunuchs remained, and above all eunuchs was the Chief Eunuch. Yet the Empress Mother could be angered even with him! He was shaken, he felt uncertain, and he longed to escape for a while from the walls of the Forbidden City, where he had spent his life.

“Here I have lived,” he muttered in himself, “and I have never seen what is beyond.” And he drew out of his memory an old dream he had forgotten and with it he went to the Empress Mother.

“Majesty,” he said, “I know that it is against the law of the Court for a eunuch to leave the capital. Yet it has been my secret longing all these years to sail on the Grand Canal southward and view the wonders of our land. I pray you let me go for such a pleasure, and I will surely return.”

When the Empress Mother heard this request, she was silent for a time. She knew that she was often blamed privately by princes and ministers and Court ladies, because she gave heed and honor to eunuchs. Only once in the dynasty had such heed and honor been given to eunuchs. It was two hundred and fifty years earlier when the Emperor Fu Lin, then ruling, had let eunuchs control the affairs of the palaces. This Emperor, being prone to books and meditation and desiring much to become a monk, was deceived by those greedy and powerful eunuchs, who became the lords of the palace, corrupting all they touched. One day, Prince Kung, saying nothing, had put before the Empress Mother a book telling the history of the reign of the eunuchs of the Empress Fu Lien, which was called the period of Shun Chih, and she read it, her face flushing with anger as she read. When she had finished she closed the book and returned it in silence to Prince Kung, and though she gazed severely at him, he did not lift his head to meet her eyes.

Nevertheless she had pondered on the present power of eunuchs. She used them as spies everywhere, rewarding them richly when they brought her rumors and gossip. Above all, she had honored An Teh-hai, the Chief Eunuch, for not only was he loyal, but he was also handsome and gifted as an actor in the Imperial Theater and as a musician he knew how to coax sadness from her spirits. So reflecting, she had excused herself for her dependence upon eunuchs, saying to herself that she was, alas, a woman, and when a woman rules there is none she can trust, for though a man who sits upon a throne has his enemies, he has also those loyal to him for their own sakes, but a woman knows no such loyalty. Spies are her necessity, that she may learn enough to act before the enemy suspects her knowledge.

“What a trouble you make for me,” she now exclaimed to An Teh-hai. “If I let you go, then all will put blame on me for breaking the law and the tradition.”

He sighed sadly. “It is sacrifice indeed that I have made, to give up manhood and wife and children, and beyond that it seems I must be content with the walls of one city as long as I live.”

He was a creature still young enough to claim good looks, his height noble and his face brave and proud. Corruption, indeed, had done its work in the sensual lines of his square mouth and in the blurred planes of cheek and brow, and he had grown too fat. But he had a melodious voice, not small as the voices of eunuchs are, and he spoke with classical perfection, carving each word with proper tone and emphasis so that all he said was music. To these graces he added surpassing grace when he moved, even in the gestures of his large and beautiful hands.

The Empress Mother did not deny that his beauty pled his case, and remembering now his constant loyalty to her, not only in obedience but in amusing and comforting her, she yielded. “I might,” she said thoughtfully, examining the gold nail shield of the little finger on her left hand, “I might send you to the southern city of Nanking to inspect the imperial tapestries being woven there. I have commanded special fabrics for my son, the Emperor, against the day of his marriage and accession, for such stuffs need time to weave. And though I sent exact instructions, yet I know how easily mistakes are made. I remember in the time of our Ancestors the Nanking weavers sent bolts of satin of a yellow too pale to be imperial. Yes, go there and make sure that the yellow at least is a true gold, and that the blue is not faint, for you know that clear blue is my favorite color.”

When she had thus decided, the Empress Mother as usual allowed no sign of possible mistake to escape her, and she held her head high above any who cried against what she did. In a very few days the Chief Eunuch set sail for Nanking, his entourage on six great barges, each flying imperial banners, and upon the barge where he lived he commanded to be raised the Dragon insignia itself. When the barges passed through any town and city upon the Grand Canal the magistrates saw banners and insignia and they hastened to bring gifts to An Teh-hai and to bow before him as though he were the Emperor. Thus encouraged, the proud eunuch demanded bribes not only of money but of lovely maidens, for though he was eunuch, yet he used them in his own hateful ways. Thus the barges became abodes of evil, those eunuchs who were with him taking heart for license from their chief’s example.

The stink of this reached northward to the ears of Prince Kung, for magistrates sent secret memorials to him, knowing now the Empress Mother favored eunuchs, and at the same time eunuchs who hated An Teh-hai for some past cruelty and secret injustice carried tales of what he now did to Sakota, the Empress Dowager of the Eastern Palace, so that she sent privately for Prince Kung, and when he had come to her palace she said, sighing:

“I do not often oppose what my sister does. She is a strong and brilliant sun and I am a pale moon beside her. Yet I have always wished she did not favor the eunuchs as she does, and especially that An Teh-hai.”

By this Prince Kung knew that she had heard the rumors concerning the Chief Eunuch and so he said boldly:

“Now is the time, Majesty, when the Empress Mother must learn the lesson you have tried to teach her. With your permission I will arrest this infamous An Teh-hai and have him beheaded. There is nothing more to be said when his head rolls in the dust.”

The Empress Dowager made a small scream and put her clenched hands to her mouth. “I do not like to see anyone killed,” she faltered.

“It is the only way to rid the Court of a favorite and so it has always been in history,” Prince Kung replied. His demeanor was calm, his voice was steady. “Moreover,” he went on, “this An Teh-hai has corrupted two generations of our emperors. Our late Emperor was debauched while he was yet a child by this same eunuch. And now I hear—nay, I have seen with my own eyes—that our young Emperor is led in the same evil ways. In foolish disguise he is even taken into the streets at night, to brothels and to lewd theaters.”

The Empress Dowager sighed and murmured that she did not know what to do. Whereupon Prince Kung put forth a bold question. “If I prepare a decree, Majesty, will you sign it with your own imperial seal?”

She shuddered, her delicate frame aquiver. “What—and brave the Other One?” she whimpered.

“What can she do to you, Majesty?” Prince Kung urged. “The whole Court, even the nation, would condemn her if she even touched you with intent to harm you.”

Thus persuaded, she did sign the decree when the Prince had prepared it, and in swift secret he dispatched it by courier.

By now An Teh-hai had gone beyond Nanking and had reached the heavenly city of Hangchow. There he had seized the great house of a wealthy merchant and he began to exact tribute from the populace, demanding gifts of money and treasure and beautiful maidens. All citizens were soon in a mood of fury and revenge and yet none dared to refuse him, for he had his eunuchs and his bodyguard of six hundred armed men. Only the magistrate of that city was bold enough to complain and he, too, sent secret memorials to Prince Kung, describing the orgies and the evils of the arrogant handsome eunuch. To this magistrate, therefore, Prince Kung sent the secret decree of death. Immediately the magistrate invited An Teh-hai to a vast banquet, where, he said, the most beautiful virgins of the city could be seen, and in much joy An Teh-hai prepared for the feast. But when he entered the guest hall of the magistrate’s palace he was seized and forced to his knees, while his eunuchs and guards were held in the outer court. There the magistrate showed him the decree declaring that he would obey it at this very instant. An Teh-hai screamed that the seal was only the seal of the Empress Dowager and not of the Empress Mother, who was the real ruler and his patron. But the magistrate replied:

“By law the two are one and I do not recognize one above the other.”

With this he lifted his hand and thrust down his thumb from his clenched fist and at the sign his headsman stepped forward and cut off An Teh-hai’s head with one blow of his broadsword, and the head fell upon the tile floor so heavily that the skull cracked and the brains spilled out.

When the Empress Mother heard that her favorite and her loyal servant was dead, she fell into such wrath that she was ill for four days. She would not eat or sleep, her rage burning hot against her sister-Regent but hottest against Prince Kung.

“He alone could have made a lioness of that mouse!” she cried, and she would have ordered Prince Kung himself beheaded, except that Li Lien-ying, in terror at such madness, went secretly to Jung Lu.

Again Jung Lu came to the palace and without delay or ceremony he stood in the doorway of the bedchamber where the Empress Mother lay restless upon her bed, and the curtain hanging between them, he said, his voice cold and quiet with sad patience: