“Will we meet the Emperor today?” I asked a girl beside me, trying to start some small talk, but she was too busy to talk to me. With nothing else to do, I simply sat and watched them.
Someone shrieked, pointing at a pimple on her face. The others rushed to her, gasping and groaning as if a tumor had grown on her nose.
The sun rose and poured a pond of golden light through the chamber’s open doors. I was getting impatient waiting when an order told us to go to the courtyard, where a woman with hair shaped like a conch and a group of eunuchs stood. The woman would teach us the morning lesson of the Code of Courtly Conduct, she said.
“Conduct, courtesy, and compliance,” she said, the tip of the conch hair shaking precariously as she paced in front of us, “share similar sounds but bear one name, the name of virtue. Wear them like your finest gown, carry them like a gold ingot, paint them on your face in the brightest hue, because it is by your courtesy that your goodness is so judged, and, by your compliance, your honor is weighed. Now, repeat after me.”
I had never heard of the words before, but I followed her order and repeated them. Then the woman instructed us on the details of the daily court ritual, protocols, etiquette, and taboos. After she was finished, the head of the eunuchs, a man with a bald head, stepped up and said, “If you fail to obey the Code and disrupt the court’s peace, you will receive a reprimand, twenty lashes by thick rods, or worse—be sent to the Ice Palace for punishment.”
Father had told me about the Ice Palace. It was a euphemism for court prison, the last place a palace lady wanted to go, where the eunuchs stored rods and torture tools. It also, I remembered, had a chamber of reptiles that feasted on the most wicked sinners.
The sun was burning the top of my head by the time the head eunuch finished his speech, and another group of eunuchs came in with baskets that contained threads and needles and piles of handkerchiefs. They all needed to be embroidered in five days, the woman with conch hair said and dismissed us. No one mentioned a word about meeting the Emperor.
“This is it? We’ll embroider for five days?” I followed the girls as we returned to our bedchamber, our arms full of handkerchiefs.
For all I knew, embroidery was a craft where women could have an excuse to practice stabbing—not just the fabric, but people as well. I had heard of some embroidery techniques from Big Sister, but I was not interested in it, and Mother had not forced it upon me.
The Xu Girl, the girl with almond-shaped eyes, glanced at me. “Come, Selects, let’s take a look at the embroidery technique on the sample handkerchief. Here, I have the sample.” She gathered us around her, and I sat across from her in the outer circle. “We will start with the partridge. Let’s look at the satin stitches used in the feathers. Isn’t this fabulous?”
Nodding, the girls stroked the partridge’s tail.
“Look how even these stitches are.”
“And the threads are so shiny!”
“Well, we shall start embroidering,” the Xu Girl ordered and stuffed the piles of handkerchiefs into our hands.
I stared at the vague bird-shaped pattern on the cloth. In my right hand, I held a needle, but it felt like a slippery eel. Crouching carefully, I wrestled it between my thumb and forefinger, suspending my right arm in midair, and traced the edge of the vague pattern.
Soon my eyes were sore, my neck stiff, and my hands cramped, while my mind was knotted like a skein of yarn. When would I see the Emperor?
And I was hungry. I wanted my midday meal.
“So I heard this from the head eunuch when I arrived a few days ago. He said if you wish to see the Emperor, you need his summons,” the Xu Girl said.
I raised my head, surprised. I had assumed that since I was in the palace, I would see him immediately. Perhaps we would all gather in a courtyard, and he would pace before us and ask questions, similar to Father interviewing a group of scribes. But the Xu Girl could be right. The One Above All, the lord of the wind and the sand, the ruler of those flying and those walking, must elude others’ eyes.
“Whom will he summon first?” the girl with a pimple asked, glancing at all of us. “There are fifteen of us.”
“I suppose he will summon us in the order of age, pedigree, or the rank of our family,” the Xu Girl said.
A wave of voices exploded. “Then he would summon you first,” one said, pointing at the other.
“No, I think it’s you,” another added.
They sounded courteous, but a shade of uneasiness lurked in their eyes, telling me that they were not truly friends but rivals.
“If he summons us in the order of rank, shouldn’t he see the titled ladies first?” I said, fingering the needle between my thumb and forefinger. Everyone in the kingdom knew the Emperor had many titled ladies serve him.
“You mean the Four Ladies and the Ladies-in-Waiting?” The Xu Girl dismissed me with a wave. “Perhaps he will summon them first, and then he should see us.”
“But there are so many.” I could tell she disliked my interruption, but she did not seem to know how many titled ladies there were. “If you include all the ladies of nine degrees.”
She glanced at me and then looked down at the handkerchief in her hand. “Nine degrees?”
“Yes.”
The highest ranking of all titled ladies was the Empress, the chief wife, but she had died the previous year, so the Emperor had his consorts, the second-degree ladies, whom we called the Four Ladies; the third-degree ladies, known as the Ladies-in-Waiting; the fourth-degree ladies, the Beauties; the fifth-degree ladies, the Graces; the sixth-degree ladies, the Talents; the seventh-degree ladies, the Baolins; the eighth-degree ladies, the Yunus; and the ninth-degree ladies, the Cainus.
“Where did you learn that?” the Xu Girl asked me without lifting her head.
“From the Sui Book.”
“What book?”
I could tell the Xu Girl, like Big Sister, was not interested in reading, or perhaps she could not read at all. After all, reading was usually reserved for the noble boys. Many women, even the noble ones, did not have the privilege. But Father had given me all types of books: history books, Confucius’s Analects, poems and rhapsodies, and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I had enjoyed reading them. “The history book about the Sui Dynasty. It says the palace women were ranked in nine degrees, like the ministers in the Outer Palace. Emperor Gaozu adopted the same system when he founded his dynasty.”
She waved her hand, frowning. “Fine. Nine degrees of ladies. We know that now. Only a dozen women.”
“No, no. Not a dozen. Each rank consists of a different number of women. There are top-ranking ladies: the four Ladies, and six Ladies-in-Waiting. Then the middle-ranking, the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-degree ladies. Each of those ranks has nine women. And then there are lower-ranking, the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-degree ladies, and each of those has twenty-seven.”
The Selects stared at me, their mouths open in shock, and the Xu Girl pulled the thread abruptly, looking frustrated. “Twenty-seven lower-ranking women? What is the total of the titled ladies then?”
I added the numbers quickly. “One hundred and eighteen.”
She was quiet. Someone else dropped her needle.
“Are you sure?” the Xu Girl finally asked. “One hundred and eighteen titled women?”
“Yes,” I said. An army of the Emperor’s women. My stomach clenched as the true meaning of that number sank in.
If the Emperor shared one night with each titled woman, it would take him more than three months. About seven months if he ordered a second round, and if he was happy with his bedmates, it would probably take at least a year before he summoned one of us.
“Nobody told me that. You certainly know more than any of us,” the girl with a pimple said with a sigh.
“Well, I did not want to tell you this.” The Xu Girl flipped her handkerchief
over and touched the stitches. I could tell she was unhappy because I had gotten attention from the other Selects. “The head eunuch also told me that…” She gathered the others around her and whispered.
I could see the wall she built to isolate me. I frowned, pulling a thread through the fabric. I did not care if she liked me, but I desperately wanted to know what she was saying.
“Really? Three hundred women?” The girl with a pimple gasped.
“What three hundred women?” I asked. Then I understood. The Selects who had come before us.
“They have waited for years. Some have been here for ten years. But they have never received a summons.” The Xu Girl glanced at me. She looked triumphant that she had known that.
“They never met the Emperor?” someone asked.
“No, the head eunuch said that their hairs have grown white and their faces are wrinkled. They have never even glimpsed the Emperor’s face.”
That night, I lay on my pallet, eyes wide-open in the dark. Would I wait in the bedchamber until my hair grew white, like those old Selects? I would not accept that. I could not let my father’s wish turn into a dusty cobweb, and besides, I needed to get our house back and give Mother a comfortable life.
If the Emperor would not summon me, I would go find him myself.
I was already inside the palace. I needed only to walk around, locate the Emperor’s chamber, and introduce myself. No one could stop me.
I waited until the girls’ rhythmic breathing rose. Then I slipped off my pallet, unlatched the oak bar between the two brackets, and pulled. The door squeaked open. A cold draft rushed in, and my eyes watered. A girl shifted on her pallet, and I froze. When I was certain she was still sleeping, I slipped out the door, closed it, and stepped into the corridor.
Before me, the smooth ground of the courtyard, coated with a thin layer of frost, glimmered in the moonlight like a damask tapestry woven with silver threads. In front of the bedchamber, two pillars stood silently like watchful giants, while the tips of the flying eaves soared into a starless sky.
Footsteps paced outside the courtyard. The building was guarded, and it was impossible to escape.
AD 640
the Fourteenth Year of Emperor Taizong’s Reign of Peaceful Prospect
SPRING
4
Months passed. No summons came from the Emperor.
I learned I was living in the Yeting Court, which was located on the west side of the Inner Court. Heavily guarded by female guards twice my size, it was the home for old and new Selects, exiled ladies, slaves, and many unhappy women. At the northern end, when I walked far enough, I could see the towering trees from the Forbidden Park on the other side of the high wall. At the southern end of the court, near the hill, stood the Ice Palace and the gray brick buildings where the eunuchs lived. That area had no gardens or pavilions. It was often quiet, a place even birds seemed afraid to enter.
The titled ladies lived in a compound on the other side of the wall, the real Inner Court. The Emperor, of course, dwelled there with them. The walls were so high between us, even if I stood on tiptoe, even if I climbed the tree next to the wall, I could not see the face of the man who could change my family’s future.
I sank into the tedious routine of the court like a rock dropping in the river. I rose before dawn, ate my breakfast, and worked on my embroidery. There were endless pieces of fabric waiting for me: gowns, tunics, shawls, skirts, shoes, sleeves, padded jackets, and trousers. They were all for the titled ladies who lived in the Inner Court, I was told. When I finished one, another was pushed into my hands. Taking a break was not allowed, and if I slowed, I would hear harsh scolding from the eunuchs who supervised us. Over time, my embroidery skill improved greatly, and when the eunuchs compared my work with the other girls’, they could not tell the difference.
I seldom joined the girls’ conversations, which were mostly about facial creams or how to draw beauty marks, and the Xu Girl began to take an interest in my accent. When I commented on something, she would sniff and imitate me. The others tittered. Born in the capital, they spoke with a typical Chang’an accent, which was rigid and carried a light nasal sound, but I still spoke with a heavier nasal sound, the voice of Wenshui. I was determined to change. Whenever I had a chance, I silently practiced Mandarin. Soon I could speak as well as them, and they had to stop teasing me. But still when I sat in a corner, I felt like a stag among a herd of horses, where my own difference stuck out like antlers.
I missed my family. I worried about Mother every day. What if Qing refused to give her food? What if Qing beat her? Who would protect her? And Father. How tall the grass in front of his grave must have grown. Was he disappointed in me? When I thought of them, when I thought of how much Mother needed me, I could hardly sleep. I grew desperate.
I needed to get summoned.
• • •
One morning, I went to fetch water to wash my face. A woman in the pavilion called to me. “You’re new here.”
I had noticed her before. Like me, she was always alone, sitting at a low writing table in the pavilion. Although she did not look old, she had white hair that reached her waist. When she bent to the table, she looked as if she had been showered by snow.
“Do they give you any trouble?” She glanced at the Xu Girl, who passed by me with the other Selects.
“What makes you say that?” I walked to the pavilion. Perhaps the woman had noticed my unhappiness or heard the others make some comments about me.
She smiled, tucking a handkerchief in her pocket. “It would be hard to live here for anyone, especially if you have difficult chamber mates.”
I put my basin down and sat on the windowsill. “I agree.”
“You do know they dislike you because you are more intelligent than they are, don’t you?” She was drawing something on the table while a basket of fabric, unembroidered, lay near her feet.
I was rather flattered. “How did you know that?”
“It’s my secret. But I see you’re more beautiful than they say too.”
And she certainly knew the right things to say. “You’re very kind,” I said. When I was at home, I had not cared about my looks, but after spending all these months with the Selects, I understood a woman’s beauty was important. Still, it bored me to spend hours dabbing white cream on my face.
The woman herself was stunningly beautiful. She had willowy eyebrows and a small cherry-red mouth. Loops of white fringed her forehead, while two heaps of hair stood at both sides of her head like the pointy ears of a feline.
“How old are you? Fifteen?” She smoothed a scroll on the table and anchored the corners with the ink stone, ink sticks, and a calligraphy holder painted with white clouds and red peonies.
“Thirteen.” Most of the Selects were fourteen—another reason I did not fit in. I had bled for the first time the month before I came to the palace. My body was changing too, and my breasts were sore. But I still had the slender figure of a girl.
“So young,” she said. “They call me Jewel.”
“I’m Mei.”
“Of the Wu family.”
“You know my family?” I could not have been more proud.
“I heard the eunuchs talk about you when they were discussing the summons.”
“Summons? Have you met the Emperor?”
She shook her head, her gaze fixed on me. Her eyes were like a cat’s, inscrutable, observing me quietly but refusing to be observed. I wondered what she was thinking.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Long enough.” She picked up a calligraphy brush on the table.
“From what others have said, it sounds like we could be waiting forever. I do not like it, waiting here and wasting time.”
“There are some ways that can help you obtain the summons.”
“Really? What ways?”
“Ah, connections.” That was how the world functioned, of course. People with good connections received good opportunities; people with no connections received no opportunities. “What are the other ways?”
She glanced at me. “Bribe the eunuch who’s in charge of deciding the Emperor’s night companions. He’ll whisper in the Emperor’s ear about your beauty when he has a chance. When the Emperor gets curious, he’ll summon you.”
I wanted to groan. I did not possess anything valuable that could be used as a bribe, not a jade pendant or even a silver bangle.
“I did not mean to upset you, my friend.” She put down the brush. “Let me tell you something else. Every year on his birthday, the Emperor accepts gifts from his concubines, including us in the Yeting Court. If you give him an unforgettable gift, he may honor you by seeing you.”
“Oh, really?” I was excited. “What kind of gift?”
“Something unique.”
“It has to be, doesn’t it?” There must be thousands of gifts from all the ministers, titled ladies, and all the other ladies. How could one gift stand out and attract his eye? “What have the ladies given him in the past?”
“Gold or expensive toys, jewelry, silk robes, lapis lazuli even. I once offered him a horse.”
The Moon in the Palace (The Empress of Bright Moon Duology) Page 3