Imperial Woman (18 page)

Yet whatever she did for some twenty days, not only while she enjoyed outdoor feasts upon the imperial houseboats with the Court, not only while she walked among the flower gardens, or played with her imperial son, who throve in this pure air, not even when she was summoned to the Emperor’s bedchamber, she did not forget her wily wish to speak again with Jung Lu, her kinsman. It lay twisted in her brain, that enchanting plan, the germ within a seed, ready to come to life when she so chose.

One day, made reckless with much freedom and incessant pleasure, she did so choose, and suddenly deciding, she beckoned Li Lien-ying to her side, waving her jeweled fingers to him. He was always near and always watching and when he saw her raised hand, he came at once and knelt before her, his head low, to hear what she would command.

“I find my mind troubled,” she said in her clear imperious voice. “I cannot forget a promise I made to my birthmother concerning the marriage of my younger sister. Yet the months pass and I do nothing. Meanwhile at my childhood home they wait anxiously. Yet to whom can I turn for good advice? Yesterday I remembered that the Commander of the Imperial Guard is our kinsman. It is he alone who can help me in this maternal family matter. Summon him to come to me.”

She said this purposely before her ladies, for she who was so high could have no secrets. Let all know what she did. When she had spoken she sat calmly on her pretty throne, a seat delicately carved and inlaid with ivory from the tusks of elephants of Burma. Around her stood her ladies, and they heard and made no sign of any thought not innocent.

As for Li Lien-ying, he knew his sovereign well by now and when she spoke he obeyed at once, for nothing could rouse her temper higher than delay in what she wished. The thoughts in that dark heart of his none knew and none asked, but surely he remembered another day when he had obeyed such a command and had brought Jung Lu to Yehonala’s door. In the courtyard outside the closed door that day the long hours of afternoon had crept by, while he had let none enter. Only he and the serving woman had known that Jung Lu was there. At sunset when the tall guardsman had come out, his face proud and troubled, they had not spoken, nor had Jung Lu so much as looked at the eunuch. The next day Yehonala had obeyed the summons of the Emperor. In ten moon months the Heir was born. Who could say—who could say? He went grinning and cracking his knuckles to find the Commander of the Imperial Guard.

Where before she had received her kinsman in secret now Tzu Hsi received him openly and among her ladies. Seated on her throne in the great hall of her palace, she waited for Jung Lu. Magnificence became her, as always. The walls were hung with painted scrolls, behind the throne was an alabaster screen and porcelain pots of blooming trees stood to right and left. Her little dogs gamboled with four white kittens upon the floor, and here was the woman in the Empress. Tzu Hsi, in the midst of her splendor, laughed at her pets so much that at last she came down from her throne, possessed by mirth and playfulness. And while she went here and there she praised one lady for her fresh looks and another for her headdress and she trailed her silken kerchief to make the kittens follow her, and only when she heard the eunuch’s footsteps followed by a certain steadfast tread did she make haste to sit upon her throne again and fold her jeweled hands and look proud and grand, while her ladies smiled behind their fans.

Her face was grave, her lips demure, but her great eyes sparkled when Jung Lu stepped across the high threshold of the entrance, wearing his guardsman’s tunic of scarlet satin and black velvet trousers. He took nine steps forward and did not raise his face to hers until he knelt. Then before he bowed his head, he took one full look at her he loved.

“Welcome, cousin,” Tzu Hsi said in her pretty voice. “It has been a long time since we met.”

“A long time, Venerable,” he said and waited, kneeling.

She gazed down on him from her throne, the corners of her mouth deepening in a smile. “I have something to plead advice upon, and so I have summoned you.”

“Command me, Venerable,” he said.

“My younger sister is old enough to wed,” she went on. “Do you remember that child? A naughty wailing little thing, do you remember? Always clinging to me and wanting what I had?”

“Venerable, I forget nothing,” he said, his head still bowed.

Tzu Hsi received the secret meaning in these words and hid the treasure in her heart.

“Well, now my sister needs a husband,” she went on. “She has outgrown her naughty ways and is a woman, very nearly, a slender pretty thing—fine eyebrows she always had—like mine!”

Here she paused to lift her two forefingers and smooth her eyebrows, shaped like the leaves of a willow tree. “And I promised her a prince, but what prince, cousin? Name me the princes!”

“Venerable,” Jung Lu replied carefully, “how can I know princes as well as you do?”

“You do know them,” she insisted, “for you know everything. All is gossipped at the palace gates, I daresay.”

She paused for him to answer and hearing not a word she changed her mood upon the instant, and turned upon her ladies.

“Go—all of you,” she commanded. “You see my cousin will not speak before you! He knows that you will seize his words and scatter them as you go. Retire—retire, you listening ears—leave me with my cousin!”

They fluttered off like frightened butterflies, and when they were gone, she laughed and came down from her throne. He did not move and she stooped and touched his shoulder.

“Rise, cousin! There is no one near to see us, except my eunuch—and what is he? No more than a table or a chair!”

He rose unwillingly and kept his distance. “I fear any eunuch,” he muttered.

“Not mine,” she said heartlessly. “If he betrayed me by a word I’d pinch his head off as I would a fly’s.” She pinched her thumb and forefinger together as she spoke.

“Sit down yonder on that marble chair,” she commanded, “and I will sit here—the distance is enough, I think? You need not fear me, cousin. I remember that I must be good. Why not? I have what I want—my son, the Heir!”

“Be silent!” he cried in a low and angry voice.

She lifted her dark lashes at him, innocently.

“And what prince shall I choose for my sister?” she asked again.

Sitting stiffly upon the edge of the chair she had assigned, he considered this question of a prince.

“Of my lord’s seven brothers,” she mused, “to which one shall I give my little sister?”

“It is not fitting that she be a concubine,” Jung Lu said firmly.

She opened her eyes wide at him. “Why not, pray? Was I not a concubine until my son was born?”

“To the Emperor,” he reminded her, “and now you are the Empress. The sister of an empress cannot be a concubine even to a prince.”

“Then I must choose the Seventh Prince,” she said. “It is only he who has no wife. Alas, he is the least handsome of all princes—that heavy mouth drawn down, the eyes dull and small, a proud solemn face! I hope my sister does not love beauty in a face as well as do I!”

She looked sidewise at him from beneath her long straight lashes and he looked away.

“Prince Ch’un’s face is not evil,” he rejoined. “It is lucky if a prince be at least not evil.”

“Oh,” she said most mockingly. “You think that important? In a prince? Is it not enough that he be a prince?”

He ignored her mockery. “I think it not enough.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, kinsman, if Prince Ch’un be your advice, I’ll choose him, and send a letter to my mother.”

She was angry of a sudden at his hardness toward her and she rose to signify the audience was ended, then paused. “And you—” she said carelessly, “I suppose you’re wed by now?”

He had risen with her and he stood before her, tall and calm. “You know I am not wed.”

“Ah, but you must,” she insisted. A sudden happiness made her face soft and young, as he remembered it.

“I wish you would wed,” she said wistfully and locked her hands together.

“It is not possible.” He bowed and without farewell he left her presence and did not once look back.

She stood there alone, surprised at his being so swiftly gone and before she had dismissed him. Then her quick eyes caught the movement of a curtain in a doorway. A spy? She stepped forward and twitched the curtain and saw a shrinking figure. It was Lady Mei, her pretty favorite, the youngest daughter of Su Shun.

“You? Now why?” Thus Tzu Hsi demanded.

The lady hung her head and put her forefinger in her mouth.

“Come, come,” Tzu Hsi insisted. “Why do you spy on me?”

“Venerable, not on you.” This came forth in the smallest whisper.

“Then on whom?” Tzu Hsi demanded.

The lady would not speak.

“No answer?”

Tzu Hsi stared at the childish drooping figure and then without a further word she took the lady by her ears and shook her vehemently.

“On him, then!” she whispered fiercely. “Ah, he—you think him handsome? You love him, I daresay—”

Between her jeweled fists the small face looked helplessly at her. The lady could not speak.

Again Tzu Hsi shook with all her strength. “You dare to love him!”

The lady broke into loud sobs and Tzu Hsi loosed her ears. So harshly had she seized them that blood dripped where the earrings had cut into the flesh.

“Do you think he loves you?” Tzu Hsi asked scornfully.

“I know he does not, Venerable,” the lady sobbed. “He loves only you—we all know—only you—”

At this Tzu Hsi was in two minds what next to do. She ought to punish the lady for such a charge and yet she was so pleased to hear it said, that whether she must smile or slap the girl’s cheeks she did not know. She did both. She smiled and seeing the heads of her other ladies peeping here and there in doorways to know why there was such commotion, she slapped the girl’s cheeks with a sound but not with hurt.

“There—and there,” she said heartily. “Go from me before I kill you out of shame! Do not let me see you for seven full days.”

She turned and sauntering with exquisite grace she sat down on her throne again, half smiling, and listening she heard the patter of the lady’s little feet, running down the corridors.

From that day on the face and figure of Jung Lu were fixed anew in Tzu Hsi’s mind and memory. Though she could not summon him again, she planned and plotted how they could meet, not by contrivance and seldom but freely and often. He was present in her thoughts wherever she went in the day and when she woke in the night he was there. While she sat at a play he was the hero at whom she looked and if she listened to music, she heard his voice. As the summer days passed and she grew accustomed to her pleasure palace she indulged herself much in thoughts of love. Indeed, she was a woman compelled to love, and yet there was no man for her to love. Meanwhile the Emperor received the overflow of this need, and he thought himself beloved, but he was no more than the image upon which she hung her dreams.

Yet this woman was not one to be content with dreams. She longed for flesh and blood to match her own. Out of dreaming then she let herself proceed to purpose. She would raise Jung Lu high enough so that she could keep him near her, always maintaining their cousinship beyond doubt but using it for what she willed. How could she raise him without drawing all eyes toward her? Within the close walls of palaces scandals breed like foul fevers. And she recalled her enemies, Su Shun, the Grand Councilor, who hated her, because she was above him, and with him were still the Princes Cheng and Yi, for they were Su Shun’s friends. She had an ally in An Teh-hai, the Chief Eunuch, and him she must keep loyal. She frowned, remembering the gossip that he was no true eunuch and that he pursued the ladies of the court in secret.

This led her on to thinking of Lady Mei again, who, it could not be forgotten, was Su Shun’s child. Well, she must not let that lady hate her, too. No, no, she would keep the daughter her friend and within her power, so that the father could not use the daughter as a spy. Well, then, was it not useful to know that the lady loved Jung Lu? Why had she shown such jealous anger? She must undo what she had done. She would send for Lady Mei and bid her take heart, for she, the Empress of the Western Palace, would herself speak for her to the Commander of the Imperial Guard at some opportune time. Such a marriage would serve a double purpose, for it would give excuse to raise Jung Lu to high place. Yes, here, she saw all at once, was her means to raise up her beloved.

She paused, prudent after the instant of decision, and when the forbidden seven days had passed, she sent Li Lien-ying to find the Lady Mei and bring her here. Within an hour he brought his charge, who fell at once upon her knees before her sovereign. Tzu Hsi today was seated on her phoenix throne in the Pavilion of the Favorite, a small secondary palace she claimed also for her own.

When she had let the lady kneel awhile in silence, Tzu Hsi rose and came down from her throne and lifted her up.

“You have grown thin these seven days,” she said kindly.

“Venerable,” Lady Mei said, her eyes piteous, “when you are angry with me I cannot eat or sleep.”

“I am not angry now,” Tzu Hsi replied. “Sit down, poor child. Let me see how you are.”

She pointed to a chair, and herself sat down on another next it, and she took the lady’s soft narrow hand and smoothed it between her own and went on talking.

“Child, it is nothing to me whom you love. Why should you not wed the Commander of the Imperial Guard? A handsome man, and young—”

The lady could not believe what she heard. Her face flushed delicately, tears came to her dark eyes, and she clung to the kind hands.

“Venerable, I do adore you—”

“Hush—I am not a goddess—”

“Venerable,” the lady’s voice trembled, “to me you are the Goddess of Mercy herself—”

Tzu Hsi smiled serenely, and put down the little hand she held. “Now—now—no flattery, child! But I have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“We must have a plan, must we not?”

“Whatever you say, Venerable.”

“Well, then—” and here Tzu Hsi put forth her plan. “When the Heir completes his first full year since birth, you know that there is to be a great feast. At that time, child, I will myself invite my kinsman so that all may see my intent to raise him. When this is clear, then step can follow step, and who will dare to stop my kinsman? It is for your sake I raise him, so that his rank may equal your own.”