Imperial Woman

by Pearl S. Buck

  “What—my kinsman?” she exclaimed. “I would as soon say that I myself could play the fool!”

  “Venerable,” Li Lien-ying muttered, grinning hideously, “I swear that it is true. The Imperial Concubine makes eyes at him when the Court meets. Do not forget that she is fair enough and still young, indeed, young enough to be his daughter, and he is at the age when a man likes his women as young as his own daughters. Remember, too, that he never did love the lady whom you gave to him, Majesty. No, three and three are still six and five and five are always ten.”

  But the Empress only kept on laughing and shaking her head, while she chose a sweetmeat from the porcelain tray upon the table at her elbow. Yet when the eunuch brought her proof a few moons later, she could not laugh. His own serving eunuch, Li Lien-ying now told her, had waylaid a woman servant as she took a folded paper to a certain altar in the inner room of the imperial Buddhist temple. There a priest received it and for pay he thrust it into an incense urn, where a little eunuch found it and again for pay took it to the gate where Jung Lu’s manservant received it, all bribed by the concubine who thus made herself a fool for love.

  “Majesty, pray read for yourself,” the eunuch begged.

  The Empress took the perfumed sheet. It was indeed a note letter of assignation.

  “Come to me at one hour after midnight. The watchman is bribed and he will open the third moon gate. There my woman will hide behind the cassia tree and she will lead you to me. I am a flower awaiting rain.”

  The Empress read and folded the letter again and put it in her sleeve, and Li Lien-ying waited on his knees before her while she mused. And why delay, she asked herself, when proof was in her hands? She was so close in heart and flesh to the man Jung Lu that a word that either spoke went straight to the other as arrow sent from bow. Whatever intervened of time or circumstance had always crumbled when her heart spoke to his. She could not forgive him now.

  “Bring me here the Grand Councilor,” she commanded the waiting eunuch. “And when he comes then close the doors and draw the curtains and forbid entrance to everyone until you hear me strike this bronze drum.”

  He rose, and always ready to make mischief, he went in such haste that his robes flew behind him like wings. In less time than she needed to subdue her rage Jung Lu came in, wearing his long robes of blue, upon his breast a square of golden embroidery, upon his head a high cap of the same gold and in his hands a length of carved jade which he held before his face as he approached the Empress. But she would not see his splendid beauty. She sat upon her private throne in her great library, her robes of crimson satin sewn with gilt dragons falling to her feet and her headdress set with fresh white jasmine flowers so that about her clung their matchless scent, and saw him as an enemy. Even he!

  Jung Lu prepared to kneel as her courtier but the Empress forbade it.

  “Sit down, Prince,” she said in her most silvery voice, “and pray put down the jade. This is no formal summons. I speak to you in private to inquire of this letter placed in my hand an hour ago by my palace spies, who, you know, are everywhere.”

  He would not sit, not even at her command, but he did not kneel. He stood before her and when she plucked from her sleeve the perfumed letter he did not put out his hand to take it.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  “I see what it is,” he said, and his face did not change.

  “You feel no shame?” she asked.

  “None,” he said.

  She let the letter flutter to the floor and folded her two hands together upon her satin lap. “You feel no disloyalty to me?” she asked.

  “No, for I am not disloyal,” he replied. And then he said, “What you ask of me, I give. What you do not ask or need remains my own.”

  These words so confounded the Empress that she could not answer. In silence Jung Lu waited and then he bowed and went away, not asking for her permission, nor did she call out his name to stay him. Thus left alone, she sat immobile as any image, while she pondered what he had said. So used was she to doing justly that even now her mind weighed his words against her heart. Had he not spoken truly? She should not have listened so quickly to a eunuch. There was not a woman in the realm whose heart did not answer to Jung Lu’s name. Was this his fault? No, surely he was above the petty loves and hates of lesser persons in the palaces. Then she had done him much injustice when she could believe him easily disloyal to her, his sovereign. And should she in justice blame him for being a man? And she sat thinking how she would reward him with some new honor and oblige him to be faithful.

  For a day or so, nevertheless, she was unkind to Li Lien-ying and short in what she said to him, and he was prudent and withdrew and planned another way to gain her ear. Thus some weeks later, one day after the Empress had given her usual audience to her princes and her ministers, a eunuch, not Li Lien-ying, brought to her a private memorial from the Emperor’s tutor, Weng T’ung-ho, who said therein that he had a duty to report to her a secret matter. Immediately she suspected that again it had to do with the young concubine, for this tutor hated Jung Lu, who had once been scornful of him in an archery tournament when the tutor had pretended prowess and had failed miserably, for he was a scholar and had a scholar’s reedy frame and was no archer.

  Nevertheless, the Empress received the memorial which the tutor had sent her thus secretly. It said simply that if she would go at a certain hour to the private chamber of a certain concubine, she would see a sight to surprise her eyes. He, Weng T’ung-ho, would not risk his head to reveal a secret, except that he did so from duty, since if scandal went unnoticed in the imperial palaces, what then would take place in the nation and among the people, to whom the Empress was a goddess?

  When the Empress had read this memorial she dismissed the petty eunuch by her lifted hand, and with her serving women she went swiftly to the Palace of Forgotten Concubines, and to the room where the lady lived, a concubine whom she had once chosen for her own son and whom he had never summoned.

  Softly she opened the door with her own hands, while around her servants and eunuchs, stricken by her unexpected presence, could only fall upon their knees and hide their faces in their sleeves. She flung the door wide and suddenly and saw the horrid sight she feared. Jung Lu was there, seated in a great chair beside a table upon which were set trays of sweetmeats and a jug of steaming wine. At his side knelt the concubine, her hands folded on his knees, while he gazed smiling down into her loving face.

  This was the sight the Empress saw. She felt within her breast such pain and heat of outraged blood that she put her hands against her heart to save it. And Jung Lu looked up and saw her. He sat an instant gazing at her and then he put the girl’s hands from his knees and rose and waited, his arms folded on his breast, for the imperial wrath to fall upon him.

  The Empress could not speak. She stood there and they gazed at each other, man and woman, and in that moment knew that each loved the other with a love so hopeless, so eternal and so strong that nothing could destroy what was between them. She saw his proud spirit unchanged, his love still immaculate, and what he did here in this room was meaningless between them. She closed the door as softly as she had opened it and returned to her own palace.

  “Leave me alone awhile,” she bade the eunuchs and the serving women, and alone she mused upon the scene she has discovered. No, she did not doubt his love or loyalty, but here was the wound—he was in some measure a common man, flesh as well as spirit. Flesh made its demands even upon him, and he had yielded. Even he, she murmured, even he is not great enough for such loneliness as I must bear.

  Her temples ached. She felt her headdress heavy on her head and she lifted it from her and set it upon the table and smoothed her forehead with her hands.

  Sweet it might have been to know that for her sake he could and did deny the common flesh of common man! So might her own loneliness be lightened to know that though he stood below her he was equal to her greatness.

  Here her thou
ghts ran around the world to find Victoria, the English Queen, whom never having seen she thought of as her sister ruler, and she addressed her thus in secret communication. Even as widow, Sister Empress, you are more lucky than I have been. Death took your love away unsullied. You were not cheated for a silly woman.

  Yet Victoria could not hear. The Empress sighed, tears rolled down her cheeks and fell like jewels on her bosom, and love ebbed from her heart.

  I thought I was alone before, she told herself most somberly. But now I do accept the full depth of loneliness.

  Time passed while she sat musing and with each moment the dark knowledge of her utter loneliness steeped through her soul until she was drenched with bitterness fulfilled. She sighed again and wiped away her tears, and as though she came out from a trance she rose from her throne and walked here and there about the great stately hall. She could now think of her duty and the punishment which Jung Lu must accept, if she were just. And just she was and always would be, and to all alike.

  The next day, at the hour of early audience, before sunrise, she announced, and by imperial edict, that the Grand Councilor, Jung Lu, was from this moment relieved of all his posts and hereby she declared his full retirement from the Imperial Court. No charge was made against him, nor needed to be made, for already rumor had carried the news of her discovery far beyond the palaces.

  At dawn she sat upon the Dragon Throne, which she had taken for her own when her son died, and her ministers and princes stood before her, each in his place, and they heard their fellow thus condemned and none spoke a word. Their looks were grave, for if one so high as Jung Lu could fall so low, then none was safe.

  And the Empress saw their looks and made no sign. If love were not her guard, then fear must be her weapon. In loneliness she reigned and no one was near her and all were afraid.

  Yet fear was still not enough. In the second moon of the next year Prince Kung took upon himself a task which was hateful, but to which he said he was compelled. One cool spring day, after audience, Prince Kung petitioned to be heard privately, a favor which for long he had not asked. Now the Empress was eager to leave the Audience Hall and return to her own palaces, for she had planned to spend the day in her gardens, where the plum blossoms were beginning to swell with spring warmth. Nevertheless, she was constrained to yield to this Prince, for he was her chief advisor and her intermediary with the ever more demanding white men. These foreigners liked Prince Kung and trusted him, and in commonsense the Empress took advantage of their trust in her Prince. Therefore she stayed, and when the other princes and ministers were gone, Prince Kung came forward and making his usual brief obeisance he presented himself thus:

  “Majesty, I am not come to you on my own behalf, for I am rewarded enough by your past generosity. It is your greatness now that I invoke and on behalf of the Empress Dowager and your co-Regent.”

  “Is she ill?” the Empress asked with mild interest.

  “Indeed, Majesty, it may be said that she is ill from much distress of mind,” Prince Kung replied.

  “And what distress has she?” the Empress, still distant.

  “Majesty, I do not know whether it has come to your ears that the eunuch Li Lien-ying has grown arrogant beyond all bearing. He even calls himself Lord of Nine Thousand Years, a title which was first given to that most evil eunuch of the Emperor Chu Yu-chiao, in the Ming Dynasty. Majesty, you know that such a title means the eunuch Li Lien-ying holds himself second only to the Emperor, who alone is Lord of Ten Thousand Years.”

  The Empress smiled her cool smile. “Am I to be blamed for what the lesser folk of the palaces call one who is their master? This eunuch rules them for me. It is his duty, for how can I busy myself with the small affairs of my royal household when I bear the burdens of my nation and my people? Who rules well is always hated.”

  Prince Kung folded his arms and kept his eyes no higher than the imperial footstool but his mouth was grim. “Majesty,” he said, “if it were the lesser folk who rebel, I would not stand here before the Dragon Throne. But the one with whom this eunuch is most rude, most cruel, and indeed most arrogant is the co-Regent herself, the Empress Dowager.”

  “Indeed,” the Empress observed. “And why does not my sister-Regent herself complain to me? Am I not generous to her in all ways, have I ever failed in duty to her? I think not! If she cannot perform the ceremonies and the rites it is because her health is frail, her body weak, her mind depressed. It has been necessary for me to do what she could not. If she complains, let it be to me.”

  Upon this she dismissed the prince with her right hand uplifted, and he could only go, aware of her displeasure.

  For the Empress, nevertheless, the day was spoiled. She had no heart to walk about the gardens, though the air was freshened by the recent dust storms, and the sun shone down without a cloud between heaven and earth. No, she went into a distant palace and there she secluded herself, wrapped about with the cloak of her great loneliness. Of love she dreamed no more, and she had only fear. Yet fear must be absolute or it too was not enough. No one must dare to complain of her or of those who served her. She would silence every tongue that did not praise her. Yet still she preferred mercy, if mercy were enough.

  Upon this, she went with her ladies to the Buddhist temple within the palace walls and she burned incense before her favorite Kuan Yin. There in the silence of her own heart, she prayed the goddess to enlighten her and teach her mercy, and she prayed that Sakota might awaken to the grace of mercy shown her so that life could be saved.

  Strengthened by her prayers, the Empress then sent messengers to the Eastern Palace and announced her coming. There she went in the twilight of the day and she found Sakota lying in her bed beneath a quilt of amber satin.

  “I would rise, Sister,” Sakota said in her high complaining voice, “except that today my legs gave way beneath me. I have such pains in my joints that I dare not move.”

  The Empress sat down in a great chair that had been placed for her, and she sent away her ladies so that she could be alone with this weak woman. When they were alone she spoke bluntly, as she had used to do when they were children under the same roof.

  “Sakota,” she said, “I will not accept complaints made to others. If you are not pleased, then tell me yourself what you would have. I will yield you what I can, but you are not to destroy my palace from within.”

  Now whether Prince Kung had fed some sort of alien strength into this foolish lady or whether she was goaded by her own despair, who can tell? For when she heard these words she raised herself on her elbow and she looked at the Empress with sullen eyes and she said:

  “You forget that I am above you, Orchid, and by every right and law. You are the usurper and there are those who tell me so. I have my friends and followers, though you think I have not!”

  Had a kitten sprung into a tigress, the Empress could not have been more surprised than she was now. She rose up from her chair and ran at Sakota and seized her by the ears and shook her.

  “Why, you—you weak worm!” she cried between her grinding teeth. “You ungrateful worthless fool, to whom I am too kind—”

  But Sakota, thus goaded, reached out her neck and bit the Empress on the fleshy part of her lower thumb and her teeth clung there until the Empress was compelled to loose her jaws by force while the blood streamed down her wrist and dripped upon her imperial-yellow robe.

  “I am not sorry,” Sakota babbled. “I am only glad. Now you know I am not helpless.”

  The Empress answered not a word. She drew her silk kerchief from its jade button at her shoulder and she wrapped it about her wounded hand. Then still without a word she turned and walked in her most stately fashion from the room. Outside, the eunuchs and the serving women were clustered, their ears pressed against the doors. Now all fell back, and her ladies, standing near, their faces grave, their eyes startled, could only bow in silence as she passed and then fall in behind her, for who dares irreverence when a royal tigress goes to battle? />
  As for the Empress, she returned to her own palace. In the dead of that night, after long and lonely thought, her aching hand against her bosom, she struck the silver gong that summoned Li Lien-ying. He came in alone and stood before her. So close these two were that he was always somewhere near her, and he knew through listening ears what had befallen.

  “Majesty, your hand pains you,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “That female’s teeth hold the poison of a viper.”

  “Let me dress the wound for you,” he said. “I have a skill from an old uncle, now dead, who was a physician.”

  She let him take the silk handkerchief away, and he did it tenderly, pouring hot water from the kettle on her brazier into a basin and adding cold enough to make the water no more than flesh warm. Then while the water soaked the hardened blood away he washed her hand clean and dried it on a towel.

  “Can you bear more pain, Majesty?” he asked.

  “Have you need to ask?” she answered.

  “No,” he said. And with that he took a coal from the brazier between his thick thumb and finger and he pressed it into her wound to cleanse it. She did not shrink and made no moan. Then he threw down the coal, and he opened a box to which she pointed and chose from it a clean white silk kerchief and he bound her hand again.

  “A little opium tonight, Majesty,” he said, “and by tomorrow the pain will be gone.”

  “Yes,” she said carelessly.

  He stood waiting then, while she seemed to muse as though she had forgot her burning hand. At last she spoke.

  “When there is a noxious weed within a garden, what is there to do but pluck it out and by the root?”

  “Indeed, what else ?” he agreed.

  “Alas,” she said, “I can but depend on one who is most loyal.”

  “That am I, your servant,” he said.

  They exchanged one look, a long look, and he bowed and went away.

  She called her serving woman then, who made ready an opium pipe and helped her to bed, and sucking in the sweetish smoke, the Empress gave herself to dreamless sleep.