My Last Empress

by Da Chen

  Imminently guns were lowered on H’s camp; swords and daggers were sheathed on the other. In the golden wheat field the battle cries suddenly quieted into a silence of disbelief. When Miss A reached the vast middle ground field, the Christians, at least some of them, broke their line, dashing after her, guns in hand, aiming to recall her into their ranks. A handful of Wang’s camp also raced toward A, swords and spears in hands.

  A paused in her advance and stood still as she beckoned them with waving hands, inviting them to join her in singing hymns. Those who witnessed this recounted seeing her twirl, sway, and jump with her thin arms swinging, as if performing her favorite rice dance, a Manchurian ritualistic art to celebrate the seasonal bounties.

  As the combatants narrowed around her—men of thuggery righteous in their own minds, arms ready, eyeing each other with ancient hatred and disgust for one another—A threw herself suddenly prostrate on the ground, her hands clasping her precious Bible after casting away the basket of flowers, shouting or rather singing out her prayers to God.

  The soldiers of souls reached over, pulling on her four limbs, to clear the path of war. One eyewitness recounted that Miss A brandished her family Bible, a treasure given upon her birth that she placed by her pillow by night and carried in the silk jacket handmade by Mrs. H by day. The corner of God’s book caught on a corner of a soldier’s eye, causing him to let loose a scream of pain in that vital moment of vulnerability. In the next fleeting moment, Miss A snatched the handle of his sword out of his gripping hand. The sword in one hand, Bible in the other, posed no threat to anyone. They shouted her to depart this focus of contention. The walls of men came closer to one another. Among the encroaching men was Reverend H running among his followers with a bayoneted rifle. From the opposite end came Wang Dan astride a Gobi stallion, his right hand pointing a sword, in the other hand holding a red-jacketed holy scripture of his own invention, with thousands of his footmen guarding his flanks.

  The meeting of hostility was imminent. The sound of galloping hooves shook the ground and the fury of men raced the wind.

  Miss A appeared, holding her gleaming sword blade to her thin throat, shouting the words, “Leave this battleground now or I shall kill myself with this sword!”

  A Christian scout tried to approach her, which only caused her to throw her Bible in the air and slice it into pieces with her sword in warning. She ran barefoot down the line to separate the men ready to kill, from south to north. Then again she ran, widening that belt of peace until the soldiers were safely apart. A few stubborn Christians, our witnesses included, who were slow to retreat, nearly had their toes cut off by her sword.

  Now in view of thousands, she turned, sword still to her throat, and bowed to her father, then turned to face that stallion in the distance, rearing on its hind legs, and walked past Wang Dan’s parting men, looking to the one commanding them. She began to run, heading toward the archnemesis of her own father, of her own God.

  Mr. Wang climbed down to help her onto his saddle, holding her from behind. The horse galloped away, trailed by his men, leaving behind an empty field and an army of disheartened and much-puzzled Christians.

  At this conjuncture, Reverend H, instead of calling his army to arms, collapsed. Weak and delirious he begged to be taken back to his home. All his will and fortitude seemed thwarted, thus ending that day bloodless.

  The fate of our Joan of Arc, a true heroine, in the aftermath of her captivity, was kept unknown, except for rare glimpses by the paid spies who occupied the inner sanctum of Mr. Wang’s township. Such scouting was, at best, sketchy, speculative, and second- or third-handed, gleamed from the maids and manservants toiling within Mr. Wang’s ancestral estate.

  One account revealed the sight of red lanterns being hung on the very night of said failed battle, hinting at festivity of uncommon significance. Only weddings and Lunar New Year deserved this lengthy protocol. The rest of the year those silken-clothed, bamboo-ribbed symbols of liveliness and tools to drive away the presumed evils were carefully wrapped with long sheets of fabric and retired to storage until occasion would call on their use again.

  Could it be that Mr. Wang, who had been known far and near as a married man many times over, had taken another bride, this time of white skin, the daughter of his enemy?

  The other account, this one from a nephew of a butcher within the estate, claimed that ever since the Ocean Bride’s arrival, the lord’s meals had secretively taken on an aphrodisiac flavor prescribed by a famed doctor from the inner city of Peking to shore up his dwindled libido. Additional food items included daily supplies of oysters to be sucked raw with a dash of vinegar and soy sauce, four sets of mountain goat testicles simmered with ginseng roots, and blood-curd spilled from virgin pheasants weighing no more than nine lian (less than a pound).

  Another more serene and soothing account originated from Colonel Winthrop’s own cobbler, who had a widowed aunt serving as an amah, a tea lady, to Wang Dan’s third wife. Our amah, on several occasions, reported seeing the foot masseuse rubbing oil onto the Ocean Bride’s bare feet and thighs to warm her up for the coming night with Mr. Wang.

  The above observation suffices to negate the unfounded claim that Citizen A was the object of torture and that her abduction was impinged upon her rather than a volunteer act.

  All the above witness accounts unfortunately could aid us no further in our evidentiary exploration into the matter at heart.

  Buchanan’s memorandum ended abruptly. The entire legation was reluctant to engage me in this subject matter or tell me what had become of Buchanan. I shunned the ambassadorial staff who had long deemed me an insufferable creature lurching about their domain, overstaying my welcome, and instead I tried to befriend the kitchen staff. They were a sweaty bunch: a sous chef of Swiss descent, who after downing several shots of U.S. government issue whiskey, confessed in his Franco-English to having heard of Buchanan’s sudden discharge from legatine duty, and later his hush-hush tragic end aboard the Canton Express to Wu Hang, a central city of rebels and warlords, with assassins still at large and unpursued. I aimed to cajole the chef for further disclosure, but the single malt had kicked in and all he could do was cry and talk of his childhood spent in a Lausanne orphanage.

  The fate of my Annabelle eluded me at each step. But fate shall alter—it always does, mine and hers. Alive or ghostly, the myth and the mythology were to unveil themselves within that forbidden life awaiting me. All these entanglements are but precursors of what is to befall me.

  13

  That day of my entrance into the royal palace, I was met by the High Prince Yun, the birth father of the emperor, at the Gate of Valor. Prince Yun was a man of average height, with a pair of bushy, slanting eyebrows hanging over long slender eyes. After pleasantries were duly exchanged, Prince Yun read me a lengthy royal decree of things that were to come my way. Among the listings, I was to receive the fourth highest rank of officialdom among the Court personage, allowing me the privilege to ride on a four-manned sedan and be gifted with an apartment within the palace grounds. The offerings were long and tediously delivered, detailing such trivialities as the meals and petty household upkeep privileges.

  Though the outside world was only a wall away, the isolation seemed complete upon the closing of the tall iron door. A sense of suffocation and longing overwhelmed me. This must be what a convict would feel facing the mighty facade of his destiny.

  Eunuchs draped over my shoulders an embroidered silk robe in the color of blue, with elaborate piping and patterns of dragons and phoenixes, and they put upon my head a hat with a peacock-feather plume: symbols of my rank. Henceforth I ascended into a four-man sedan. The foursome members of the palace eunuch corps—maroon gowned, thinned-voiced men—carried me through the Gate of Valor, a northern back entry reserved for familial affairs, its casualness hinting at a heightened degree of privacy.

  We passed Mai Shan Mountain, a slanting manmade hill piled from the soil dug from nearby Bei Hai Pond back-endi
ng the palace outside its wall whereupon a Sinned Tree still stands, accused and convicted of providing a conniving branch, enabling another boy emperor, not this one, to hang himself in despair. The historian in me cherishes this nugget of factual reminiscence. A full Court trial was held to conduct a three-day proceeding wherein the tree was the defending culprit, with a charade of sobbing witnesses. The Court trial was necessitated by the need to find a killer because suicide would be impious to heavenly intent and purpose, making human and fallible what is loftily of gods and ages. The tree was uprooted to stand trial, possibly the first of its kind, only to be replanted back as irrefutable proof of a noxious growth, a sinner to be viewed by all and to suffer the insufferable, of having done in the one who could not be so undone. The tree, old it might be, blossoms annually with gusto, attesting not to its innocence but to a certain absurdity inherent in this monarchy or the next. Who, least this author, is equipped to critique an establishment that had outlasted many other empires?

  Where am I, in the procession of my entrance? Oh yes, we passed beyond a canopy of old pines, expectedly gnawed and knuckled, skirted ponds and lakes, turtles and goldfish. I was passing the back palace—you see the historian in me never quits working—the notorious dump for those of the hundreds of neglected palace women. All legal wives of the young emperor, they were chosen yearly, selected for their talent in needle, medicine, nursing, singing, dancing, or culinary skills: essential workers living at the Royal Court. A lucky one might one day catch the eye of the emperor and engage with him in a ritual known as de fu, getting lucky. That seed she carries and the child she bears, if she survives the envious saboteurs who hope for her death or disappearance, will bring fortune or misfortune.

  My apartment was a gift from the emperor himself, a two-storied elegance deftly called House of Deference and Tranquility, renamed and redecorated for my use, much to the protest of the old liners, whose paws would, as you will come to know, impinge upon every fabric and inch of this city within a city: the nation within an empire.

  A thin boy was kneeling at the apartment door awaiting my arrival in the dappled light of a noon sun, maroon gowned as all eunuchs were attired. All palace women naturally were to be watched over by the men in the house, the unique eunuch corps, thousands in number. Men they might be but manly they are not. This shy boy was my endowed vassal, an ink boy in name, though his chores varied. He was, foremost, to be my little lantern, shining the way in my initiation into the dead-end lanes of my palace existence. Without him I would go nowhere and accomplish less.

  “What’s your name?” I asked after the sedan carriers departed.

  The boy hesitated and said quietly, eyes downcast, “I was bestowed the palace name of In-In, though I was known since my birth as Cow Penis in my home village, a fortnight’s journey from here.”

  “Cow Penis?” I smiled at his endearing pronouncement, tinted vastly with a Shandong accent, one of many varieties made known to me thanks to my teacher, Dr. Jeffrey Archer.

  “Father saw our neighbor’s cow’s penis while it was taking its piss when Mother bore me in our pigsty, in the midst of her chore of feeding a litter of thirteen piglets.”

  “You could have been named Piglet then.”

  “But it was what Father saw that counted. So Cow Penis I was called till the day I yian ge—cut off my penis. Uncle Ting of Lung’s original clan would not wish to let anyone know of this name: it would render my service here improper and disrespect the Heavenly One.”

  “Why did you tell me then?”

  “You are to be my protector to whom I shall enslave myself. No secrets are to be hidden from you because a secret would be a genuine act of disrespect. Please tell no one of this secret, and many secrets I shall hide for you.”

  “Shall you?”

  “That is the only way one stays safe, out of misfortune …” He stole a glance at me, trailing off. “I have already overspoken, haven’t I? From now on, I shall be mute with what I say, deaf to what I hear, and blind to what I see. I am your wind and its shadow. I am here, but I am not here. I will carry out any chores you please. I will keep clean every inch of this apartment and replenish it with fresh goods acquisitioned and gifted to you from the Heavenly One. In the morn, I shall be up before you making the early tea and fetching breakfast for you. Lunch you shall have in your office together with other royal tutors, and supper is to be served from the servant’s kitchen with a special menu you shall select at daybreak so goods of your choosing can be secured and the bill be written for the Neiwufu’s review and approval.”

  “Their approval?”

  “It’s merely perfunctory. There will be no full board reviews, save for the seasonal one conducted by the Fu’s royal trustees and assignees. Have I spoken too much already, master?”

  “You have not. I have much to learn from you. Will you be my guide?”

  “I have many rules to adhere to, as stipulated by the chief eunuch. If my service to you fails in any manner, punishment awaits me.”

  “What rules do you speak of?”

  “Many that I have had to commit to my memory since the day of my arrival, speaking of which, I should not be having this conversation with you, as you are new, lofty, and …”

  “And what?”

  He stole another glance at me and whispered, “… alien and vastly strange and different from us.”

  The boy’s utter candor caught me off guard, contradicting the rumor of the perversion and corruption of the entire eunuch corps surrounding the titular emperor. I gifted him with a Dobereiner’s lamp, a lighter, so to speak, that I bought off a legation staff member. When flame ignited the contraption, In-In’s face lit up. He kneeled again and rose only after I had departed the hallway and entered the room I was to dwell in for the foreseeable duration, leaving the scant luggage I brought to be dealt with by my new boy servant. That night, after a meal of rice with four dishes and a soup were served to me—each officialdom is ranked by the count of dishes served per meal; four dishes with a soup put me, much to the anguish of Neiwufu personage, among the ranks of royal tutor—I retired for the first time to my sleeping chamber, the location of future sins and later shame.

  That night, I dreamed of her, my dear darling Annabelle; it was the longest duration we have been apart. She came in a blur of angst, not in any physical solidness. In the background, there were sounds of waves. Amidst the hushing whisper of the sea, I heard her say, “Find her,” and repeating such till both her presence and her voice were no more.

  14

  In the graying twilight, In-In led the way along the walled lanes, our footfalls echoing down the courtyards, a lantern dangling from his hand casting our diminished shadows against the walls. I had endured an unbearable audience with the Queen Mother, a painted and bejeweled dowager in her full glory, who had acquired her title by way of an infamous arm-twisting adoption, wrangling the emperor at the age of two from the bosom of his own mother. After a thorough inspection, she dismissed me curtly with a wave of her silky handkerchief. A fan would have been more fitting, but she was being fanned by two young maids, sweeping away the morning flies buzzing over her painted veil.

  I next met four fellow tutors, old scholars who, though toasting me with hot tea, greeted me coldly. Such guardedness was to be expected, adhering firstly to the belief that relations among educators are to be thin and pale like water; true affection would dent the thin walls of one’s intellectual sovereignty and demean the honor of a genuine scholar. A true intellectual should be scholarly about his own pursuit of knowledge, unbiased by his personal likes, thusly raising the bar of general scholarship. I also expected that the tutors would all bear a collective grudge against this slooped ocean man. They had all, without exception, ascended this far not by chance but by academic achievement, earning the highest marks in the civil service examinations held every six years, based on which the palace selected their officials. Such achievement was then assiduously followed by decades of devoted service. Only then co
uld one be considered for the lauded position of a royal tutor that would endow sumptuous estates and unparalleled prestige to be enjoyed by not just himself but all his offspring.

  I offered each three deep bows of respect, which they returned. In the gloom, the morning hours trotted on. All the other tutors came and went like shadows in a puppet show in muted sequences, their gowns swishing, hats lifted passing one another, and chairs squeaking. Then my turn came, with a eunuch leading me to the royal study quarters. It was deep in a mansion quieted by tall walls, eunuchs passing and going, feet light, hovering, busying themselves, birds perching on willows seen through fan-shaped wall windows, blades of grass secretly poking up in cracks and seams between bricks and smoothed stones.

  The emperor himself was on the porch, a fine-boned, thin-framed creature dressed in a white western suit and necktie, head tipped with a round-brimmed crown, and wearing a pair of black leather shoes.

  “I wear this in your honor,” the teenager proclaimed in hesitant English, reaching over his right hand, ready to shake mine, when I heard the servant order me to kneel. “Xia bai huang shang,” he said harshly. But the young emperor was quick, grabbing my hand with his, shaking it healthfully. I was ready to attempt a kowtow, as required, when he pulled me up.

  “Mian gui,” he said, granting me pardon. In the same instant, he ordered curtly for the eunuch to leave. “Qu le, qu le.”

  The eunuch bowed, not daring to look up at his master, though his reply was firm, claiming a higher order from the Queen Mother, whom he called Grandpa, to watch over the teaching ceremony.