“Fire and the sword!” Gordon declared lugubriously. “Fire and the sword! The vengeance of the Lord! We’ve destroyed all, like new Vandals. The damage must come to twenty million pounds. It can never be replaced.”
October 24, 1860
PEKING: THE FORBIDDEN CITY
Negotiations naturally proceeded smoothly thereafter, though it took a few days to settle the details. On October 24, 1860, the Eighth Earl of Elgin was carried through the streets of Peking in a vermilion sedan chair on the shoulders of twelve sturdy bearers. Four companies of infantry marched in his triumphal procession while a hundred cavalry horses pranced in the shadow of the great Merdian Gate of the Forbidden City.
Prince Kung, his youthful vigor depleted by the humiliation, appeared wizened when he rose to receive the Scottish nobleman in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. His eyes were sunken in his square face, and the wen on his cheek appeared enormous against his pallid gray skin.
Their business was soon done. The treaty signed in Tientsin in 1858 was ratified in the Hsien Feng Emperor’s paramount Hall of Audience in 1860. The additional Convention of Peking provided, among other conditions, that a first installment of three hundred thousand taels was to be paid immediately against a total indemnity of eight million. When the silver was duly delivered, Lord Elgin withdrew without rancor from the citadel of the barbaric power whose cruelty had required severe chastisement.
Having already forgiven his enemies with Christian charity, the Earl felt profound satisfaction at having achieved so much at so little cost. He had redeemed the Bruces’ reputation for quiet competence—and diplomatic and commercial relations with the Chinese Empire now rested on a solid foundation. Peking was spared, as he had promised. Allied casualties were negligible and Chinese casualties only a few thousand, though an accurate count was impossible. The common people, he had been assured by his Sinologues, bore the British no rancor whatsoever. They understood that their oppressive rulers had to be taught a firm lesson.
Lord Elgin was also gratified by the prudent measures he had taken to inform the Chinese populace of the facts of the matter. Placards bearing great black ideograms written by the Expeditionary Force’s linguists were posted throughout Peking to prevent the Manchus from retailing a fallacious version of the destruction of the Summer Palaces.
Colonel Wolseley, who had a gift for words, wrote in his journal: “Lord Elgin’s knowledge of human nature, and of Chinese dispositions in particular, pointed out the only substantial method then within his power of taking vengeance for the crime [of killing prisoners of war].… The destruction of [the Emperor’s] favorite residence was the strongest proof of our superior strength; it served to undeceive all Chinamen in their absurd conviction of their monarch’s universal sovereignty.… [The posters] prevented the authorities from giving a false coloring to our actions, as they would no doubt have otherwise endeavored to spread abroad the impression of our having destroyed that place simply for the sake of plunder.”
Lionel Henriques’s knowledge of human nature was enlarged by the experience, as was his comprehension of the peculiar character of the Chinese. Though he would always afterward maintain that a bold stroke of vengeance and intimidation had been necessary, he could never condone the atrocity that destroyed the Summer Palaces.
“The Chinese can understand everything.” He could almost hear the comment his wife might make if she were watching Lord Elgin’s sedan chair leave the Imperial City through the Gate of Heavenly Peace. “But they would understand it far better—and be far more ready to forgive—if they thought we had done it simply for plunder.”
CHAPTER 38
March 30, 1861
Jehol in Manchuria
THE IMPERIAL HUNTING PARK
A mood of utter desolation in a desolate place! The sinuous grass writing flowed down the mulberry paper. Cold amid the hot springs, my heart, too, is ice!
Yehenala signed the couplet with bold strokes and laid her writing brush down on the malachite inkstone. The image poignantly conveyed the despondency that oppressed not only herself but the entire Court in exile in the disused Imperial Hunting Park at Jehol, the Place of the Hot Streams, a hundred and fifty miles northeast of Peking, at the end of March, 1861.
The Lord of Ten Thousand Years had for months ignored Prince Kung’s pleas that he return to the Northern Capital, despite his half-brother’s warnings that prolonging his absence could imperil the Dragon Throne. He was, the Emperor said, too ill to travel, and his constant debauchery would soon make that pretext a reality.
The Emperor sulked in rustic seclusion because he could not face the humiliation that awaited him in Peking. It would pain him to face the ministers who had counseled against his precipitate flight, and it would distress him to see the scorched ruins of the Summer Palaces. Above all, he dreaded receiving the European ambassadors in audience—as he must if he returned. Having won at gunpoint the right to reside in the Northern Capital in violation of Sacred Dynastic Law, the foreigners now insisted upon presenting their letters of accreditation to the Emperor himself. But they refused to perform the kowtow, the prostration required of all men granted the honor of looking upon the face of the Son of Heaven. They would gladly kneel, the barbarians said, as they knelt to their own kings, but they would not touch their foreheads to the ground. Not nine times as prescribed, not even once. The Hsien Feng Emperor of the Great Pure Dynasty could not allow the barbarian envoys to thus assert their savage monarchs’ equality with the Supreme Ruler of All Under Heaven. At that ultimate affront, Heaven would tremble, the earth would crack, and the Dragon Throne would collapse.
Actually, Yehenala believed, the feeble spirit of the Lord of Ten Thousand Years had finally broken. The rash flight against which she had so vehemently advised had been his last decisive act. The Emperor had thereafter lapsed into apathy. He would not fight the barbarians, and he would not make his personal peace with them; he would not exercise his Imperial powers with vigor, and he would not delegate his authority to enable others to act. He did not wish to live, but he lacked the courage to die.
Instead, the man whom she had so faithfully served with her body and her mind for a decade sought oblivion in the winepot, the opium pipe, and the arms of Chinese harlots. He recoiled from his sanctified wives as if, having tacitly abdicated his Imperial power over the state, he had also resigned his rights to the Imperial Seraglio. Besides, those lawful mates were all Manchus, and their devotion was a mute reproach to his cowardice. Of course, her own reproaches had not often been mute.
The Emperor turned from dissipation only to participate in the diabolistic observances of the lama temples that clung to the crags overlooking the valley of the hot springs. Like his nomadic ancestors, he disdained the refined practices of Chinese Buddhism to embrace the savage Tibetan-Mongolian rites—with their manifold reincarnations, their black sorcerers, their trance dances, and their bestial pornography, which presumably tempered the celibate monks through temptation. The lamas and nuns, she had heard, actually celebrated some holy days with orgies, ritually enacting the most revolting perversions under the sway of hallucinatory drugs.
Yehenala’s scroll painting signed with her doleful couplet was dominated by those somber monasteries. Beneath their fortified towers she had drawn the palaces of the Imperial Hunting Park built by the great Kang Hsi and Chien Lung Emperors as manly alternatives to the soft pleasures of the Summer Palaces near Peking. Like most ladies, she preferred to sketch birds and flowers, but the raw Manchurian landscape dominated her spirit as the eldritch monasteries dominated the Hunting Park.
Yehenala shivered and pulled a sable-lined cloak around her shoulders. Untenanted for four decades, the palaces of Chien Lung were no longer bucolically magnificent, but dilapidated piles. No rugs covered the cold stone floors, and the wind off the steppes whined through fissures in the walls. Broad strips of paint were peeling from the gilt-and-carmine beams, and the murals depicting ceremonial hunts were splitting beneath their grime. Coars
e weeds and evergreen seedlings had rent the broad terraces, and the storms of forty winters had stained their shining marble.
The Hsien Feng Emperor had chosen to immure himself in this bleak valley to escape the challenges of the civilization bounded by the Great Wall. Deliberately or not, he had also chosen to imperil her future and to blight the prospects of her son, the Heir Presumptive. The Emperor was apparently prepared to die amid that decrepit splendor rather than face the terrors with which his febrile imagination populated Peking. He had not only abdicated the responsibility that was as much the legacy of his forefathers as his wealth and power. He had also turned away from the men and women who still sustained his Imperial state. In his passion for extinction, he had turned away from Yehenala herself.
The silver writing brush slipped easily into the carved cinnabar holder among heavily tufted brushes for broad strokes and others of a single mink hair for cobweb lines. Yehenala’s stiletto fingernails crackled as she stroked her glossy sable ceremonial winter crown, which mutely recalled the glory that had slipped away from her during the past half-year.
The Emperor had turned his face from her after she vehemently opposed his decision to flee and abandon the Northern Capital to the barbarians. Her blunt counsel he might have forgiven. He could not forgive her deriding the pretexts he invented to deceive the people—and himself: the sham of “taking the field to command the troops in person”; the pretense that he was merely going hunting; and the ridiculous contention that the barbarians would respect his duty to mount a “sacred hunt.” Any excuse except the truth: terror-stricken, he was running away like a yamen clerk caught in petty theft. He might even have forgiven her if she had not, when they finally reached Jehol on the day the Yüan Ming Yüan burned, persistently urged him to return to Peking. Finally, he had banished her from his presence.
Ostracised within a Court in exile, she was shunned by the man she still loved despite his pusillanimity. Having vanquished hundreds of rivals to win his love, she had triumphantly sealed that love with the most splendid gift any man, even the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, could receive. She had given the man a son, and the Emperor an heir. Yet his spite now deprived her of his affection and destroyed her pride.
Shortly after they came to Jehol he had also deprived her of the five-year-old Prince Tsai Chün, her son and the guarantee of her future. Declaring Yehenala “unsuitable to rear the Heir Presumptive,” he had given the child into the care of the wife of an Imperial Prince of the collateral line. The Virtuous Concubine was permitted to glimpse her son only during Court ceremonies. Her enemies had told the Emperor that she flirted with the officers of the Imperial Guard. As soon as the lax atmosphere in Jehol gave her the opportunity, the conspirators whispered, she had shown her true nature, which was salacious. The Emperor had believed their lies.
She almost wished she had intrigued with officers of the guard. But she had—like a fool and unlike others she could name—been chaste in every action and thought. She had occasionally smiled to thank a subaltern for some service, but she had only smiled—and never twice at the same man. Exalted above all other women by bearing the Heir Presumptive, she had never dreamed of allowing a commoner to defile the sacred vessel that was her body.
Hooves clattered in the forecourt, and soldiers’ voices shouted greetings. The Mother of the Heir should have been secluded from the rough soldiers, but she had been relegated to a tumbledown villa near the chief gate of the wall surrounding the Imperial Hunting Park. She was far removed from the Palace of Serenity, where the Emperor lived, and the adjoining Hall of Perfect Satisfaction, where he gave audiences. His cowardice had exiled the Imperial Court, and his spite had exiled her from that Court.
Despite the interminable journey of the unwieldy Imperial cavalcade, Jehol was no great distance from Peking for robust cavalrymen. The tumult in the forecourt signaled the arrival of a detachment from the capital after a ride of no more than four days. The officers would be demanding news after reading with awe the black plaque hanging over the gate.
The square ideograms written by the great Kang Hsi Emperor read: Pi-shu Shan-chuang—the Hill Manor Shunning Heat. The simple name propitiated Heaven and the jealous gods by avoiding vainglorious boasting. The Imperial Hunting Park, Yehenala mused bitterly, should now be called Pi-huo Shan-chu—the Mountain Hermitage Shunning Life. The fearless Kang Hsi and Chien Lung Emperors had been succeeded by an Emperor who was almost as afraid of living as he was of dying.
Fingernails grated on the splintered door, and the serving maid seated in the corner of the cavernous room rose to open it. When Yehenala saw the slender figure in the green eunuch’s robe standing on the veranda, she flicked her fingers to dismiss the maid. The eunuch drew the door shut before bowing and speaking softly.
“Of course, Little An,” Yehenala said delightedly. “Of course, if he’s not afraid of being contaminated. Naturally, you’ll remain. And bring the wretched maid back. Two witnesses are better than one.”
Her favorite eunuch, An Hai-teh, slipped out the door. Not yet twenty years old, he was small and neat, self-effacing and attentive. He was also rapacious—in short, the perfect servant. Though she believed he returned her affection, his greed guaranteed his loyalty. If she prospered, he must prosper, too. Nor could he desert her, since he was indelibly tainted by his service to the woman the Emperor’s spite had made a leper. He had already laid up much wealth in her service, and he constantly reassured her that their twin stars would soon rise again.
The door creaked open, and the Baronet Jung Lu entered on thick-soled riding boots, his black helmet under his arm. His forehead was curiously striated. The grimy band left by his helmet’s rim demarcated the pale expanse above from the sunburned skin below. His blue tunic was travel stained, the bear of a lieutenant colonel obscured by ochre dust. But his large eyes were eager, and he moved easily despite his burden of fatigue.
“Jung Lu, welcome!” Yehenala spoke first. “It is kind of you to call on a neglected lady.”
“Highness!” He bowed extravagantly low. “I cannot believe that you’re neglected. You will never be neglected as long as I live.”
“I’m delighted to hear that.” She wondered if he knew that she was in disgrace. “But you’re always gallant. To how many ladies have you sworn eternal devotion?”
“I’m never gallant, Highness.” A smile tempered his arrogance. “Only truthful. You know I’ve sworn devotion to no other lady in this world … none!”
She half-believed him. The twenty-four-year-old Baronet, her cavalier since their childhood together, was bound to her even more strongly by affection than by the profitable transactions they had so long conducted together.
Her efforts, of course, had been well rewarded, and Jung Lu too had profited greatly. They would both face decapitation if suspicion regarding their relationship arose. But her conscience was clear, for they had done nothing remotely improper since she entered the Forbidden City. She had never thereafter allowed herself to feel more than sisterly fondness for the young Baronet, and she would certainly not change now.
“You almost convince me.” Yehenala laughed. “But was it a hard ride?”
“I wouldn’t want to do it every day. But I would to see you.”
“Enough gallantry for one day.” Lowering her voice, she glanced at the eunuch and the serving maid sitting just out of earshot. “What news of the capital?”
“The forsythia are budding beneath the city walls—and wild flowers are springing up in the ashes of the Summer Palaces.”
“That bad?”
“Bad enough. Prices are sky-high, and the people grumble because their rice is shipped north to feed the idle Court in Jehol.”
“Let them eat wheat. Most never tasted rice till we Manchus brought prosperity. What brings you to this sad valley?”
“I must report to His Majesty.”
“Report what? New disasters?”
“Nothing unexpected, Highness. Just that the foreign envoys arr
ived in state five days ago.”
“The barbarians in Peking? Disgusting!”
“I am also charged to plead with the Lord of Ten Thousand Years to return,” he continued. “Prince Kung has entrusted me with a confidential message. The Emperor must return, he says.”
“What good will that do?”
“My pleas or the Emperor’s return?”
“Jung Lu, he will not return. And, if he did, he’d do little good.”
“Nonetheless, Prince Kung entreats you to use all your power of persuasion with the Emperor. If he does not return, the reactionary faction will run wild, and we’re not strong enough to fight the barbarians again so soon. Or the appeasers could come out on top, the fools who see no need to build up our armies. The Emperor must return to placate the common people and restore stability. It is imperative, Prince Kung says, that you use all your influence.”
“I have no influence, Jung Lu. I’ve been cast aside. The Emperor would listen to the scruffiest serving maid before me.”
“So bad, Nala? I heard rumors but couldn’t believe them.”
Jung Lu impulsively grasped her arm. She allowed herself that comfort for a moment before patting his hand and gently placing it on the marble table-top.
“I’m no use to Prince Kung or to you—no use even to myself. I’ve ceased to exist.”
“No use to me? Nala, you’ll always be greater than any empress to me—and far more beautiful.”
She smiled at his devotion, which had warmed her all her life; it was perhaps the only disinterested affection she had ever known. Though the Emperor spurned her, she was still beautiful in Jung Lu’s eyes. Her self-confidence revived minutely, and her eyes lingered fondly on his lean features. Her smile vanished after a few seconds, and her oval face set severely.
Mandarin Page 37