Imperial Woman

by Pearl S. Buck

  Then she waited, learning meanwhile that the Emperor had summoned Yuan Shih-k’ai to be his general. She was in several minds when she heard this news. Should she wait still longer to seize back the throne or should she move at once? To wait was her decision, for she liked best to appear upon a scene like Buddha, and when all was manifest to bring down judgment. Meanwhile her spies told her that Yuan Shih-k’ai had left the city by a secret way and none knew his direction.

  I will wait, she thought. I have found my wisdom always in waiting. I know my own genius and my mind tells me that the hour is not yet here.

  And again she let the days slip past. The summer heat subdued itself to early autumn. Days were warm but nights were chill. The autumn flowers budded late, the last lotus lilies bloomed upon the lake, the birds lingered day by day before they flew southward, and autumn crickets piped their fragile music in the pines.

  On a certain day after Prince Kung had died and had been buried with due honor, the Empress sat in her library to compose a poem. The air was mild, and as she mixed her inks she chanced to look toward the sunlit court, and in the bright square of sunlight by the open doors she saw a blue dragonfly floating on the air, its wings outspread. How strange, she thought, for she had never seen a dragonfly so blue, nor seen one with its gossamer wings so still. It was an omen, surely, but of what? She wished the color were not blue, a royal blue, for this was the hue of death. She rose in haste and went toward the door to frighten off the creature. But it was not afraid. Evading her hands, it moved higher above her head. When her ladies, waiting in the far corners of her library, saw this they came forward and they too reached up their hands and waved their fans and cried out, but still the creature floated far above them. The Empress then bade them summon a eunuch who was to fetch a long bamboo, but before they could obey her, they heard commotion at the gate and suddenly the Chief Eunuch appeared, unbidden, to say that a messenger had come to announce the arrival of the Viceroy Jung Lu, from Tientsin.

  Not often in the years since the Empress had commanded Jung Lu to take Lady Mei to wife had he come near her throne of his free will. He waited to be summoned, and once she had reproached him for this. To which he had replied that she must know that he was always her loyal servant, and she had but to put her jade sign into a eunuch’s hand and send him forth and he, Jung Lu, would come, whatever the hour and wherever he was.

  The Empress bade the serving eunuchs to prepare for his coming, and she returned to her seat. But she could not finish the poem, for when she looked up to find the dragonfly, it was still gone. Its coming, then, was portent, an omen which she could not disclose even to the Court soothsayers, for Jung Lu would not come except for gravest cause, and she would not disturb the Court until she knew what the cause was. With fierce impatience covered by her calm bearing she put down her brushes and strolled out about her gardens until noon, and would not rest or touch food before she knew what Jung Lu came to tell her.

  Toward evening he came, and his palanquin was set down in the great outer courtyards and eunuchs carried the news. The Empress waited for him in her central courtyard, in these summer months a vast outdoor living space, for mattings, woven of sweet straw and the color of honey, were spread over bamboo framework to make roofs. In the soft cool shade tables were spread and chairs set out, and around the many verandas that walled the courtyards were pots of flowering trees. The Empress seated herself upon a carved chair set between her two favorite ancient cypress trees, which the imperial gardeners kept closely trimmed into the lean shapes of wise old men, and this because the Empress wished to be reminded always of the true ways of the ancestors, shaped to staid beauty and simple dignity.

  A summer warmth had returned that day and now a southern wind wafted the fragrance of the late lotus flowers from the lake where they closed slowly for the night. The scent pervaded the air and the Empress breathed it in and she felt the old sharp pain of contrast between the calm of everlasting beauty and the turmoil of human conflict. Ah, if Jung Lu had been coming to her now as her old and well-loved husband, and if she could but wait for him as his old and loving wife! They were young no more, their passion spent unused, but the memory of love remained eternal. Indeed, her mellowed heart was more tender now than ever toward him and there was nothing left that she could not forgive him.

  Through the dusk, lit by great flickering candles set in stands of bronze, she saw him coming. He walked alone and she sat motionless and watching. When he reached her he prepared to fall upon one knee but she put out her hand upon his forearm.

  “Here is your chair,” she said, and motioned with her other hand toward the empty chair at her left.

  He rose then and sat beside her in the sweet twilight, and through the gate they watched the torches flare upon the lake for the night’s illumination.

  “I wish,” he said at last, “that you could live your life here undisturbed. Your home is beauty and here you do belong. Yet I must tell you all the truth. The plot against you, Majesty, now nears its crisis.”

  He clenched his hands upon the knees of his gold-encrusted robe, and her eyes moved to those hands, large and strong. They were still the hands of a young man. Would he never be old?

  “Impossible to believe,” she murmured, “and yet I know I must believe, because you tell me.”

  He spoke on. “Yuan Shih-k’ai himself came to me four nights ago in secret, and I left my post in haste to tell you. The Emperor sent for him twelve days ago. At midnight in the small hall to the right of the Imperial Audience Hall they met.”

  “Who else was there?” she asked.

  “The imperial tutor, Weng T’ung-ho.”

  “Your enemy,” she murmured, “but why do you recall another woman to me now? I have forgot her.”

  “How well you love cruelty,” Jung Lu retorted. “I forgive him, Majesty, and you do not. The pale small love that sprang up in a woman’s lonely heart is nothing to me. I learned a lesson from it, nevertheless.”

  “And what lesson needed you to learn?” she asked.

  “That you and I stand somewhere far from other humans, and though we are lonely as two stars in Heaven we must bear our loneliness, for it cannot be assuaged. Sometimes I feel our very loneliness has kept us one.”

  She moved restlessly. “I wonder that you speak so when you came to tell me of a plot!”

  “I speak so because I take this moment to pledge myself again to you,” he said.

  She put her fan against her cheek, a screen between them.

  “And was no one else in the small hall?” she asked.

  “The Pearl Concubine, the Emperor’s Favorite. You know, for you know every wind of gossip, that the Emperor will not receive his Consort, whom you chose. She is still a virgin. Therefore all her heart has turned to hate. She is your ally.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “We must count every ally,” he went on, “for the Court is divided. Even the people on the streets know that it is so. One party is called Venerable Mother and the other is called Small Boy.”

  “Disgraceful,” she muttered. “We should keep our family secrets private.”

  “We cannot,” he replied. “The Chinese are like cats. They creep through every crevice in silence, smelling out their way. The country is in turmoil and Chinese rebels who are ever waiting to destroy our Manchu dynasty are again ready to seize power. You must come forth once more.”

  “I know my nephew is a fool,” she said sadly.

  “But those about him are not fools,” he said. “These edicts that he sends forth like pigeons every day, a hundred edicts in less than a hundred days—have you read them?”

  “I let him have his way,” she said.

  “When he comes here to call upon you each seven days or so, do you ask him nothing?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I have my spies.”

  “One reason that he hates you,” he said bluntly, “is that your eunuch keeps him waiting on his knees outside your doors. And did you bid the
Emperor kneel?”

  “He kneels,” she said indifferently. “It is his duty to his Elder.”

  But she knew that it was true that Li Lien-ying in his impudent self-confidence did keep the Emperor kneeling. And she was guilty, too, for she pretended that she did not know it. Her greatness was penetrated with such small mischiefs, and she knew her smallness as well as her greatness, and did not change herself, accepting what she was.

  Jung Lu spoke on. “I know, too, that your eunuchs have compelled the Son of Heaven to pay them bribes to bring him to you, as though he were but a palace official. This is not fitting and well you know it.”

  “I know it,” she said, half laughing, “but he is so meek, so frightened of me, that he tempts me to torture.”

  “Not so frightened as you think,” Jung Lu retorted. “The hundred edicts are not the work of a weak man. Remember that he is your nephew, his blood of the clan blood of Yehonala.”

  His grave eyes, his solemn voice, compelled her to her greater self. She turned her head away and would not look at him. This, this was the man she feared. Her heart trembled at the knowledge, and the strange impulse of lost youth rushed into her blood. Her mouth went dry, her eyelids burned. Had she missed life itself? And now she was too old, even for the memory of love. What she had lost was lost without recall.

  “The plot,” she murmured, “you said the plot—”

  “It is to surround this palace,” he said, “and force you to immolate yourself, promise never to decree again, promise to put away your spies, to yield the great imperial seal, and employ yourself henceforth with flowers, caged singing birds, your favorite dogs—”

  “But why?” she cried. Her fan dropped, her hands fell helpless on her knees.

  “You are the obstacle,” he told her. “But for you they could bring a new nation into being, a nation shaped and modeled on the West—”

  “Railroads, I suppose,” she cried, “guns, navies, wars, armies, attacks on other peoples, the seizure of lands and goods—” She leaped from her carved chair and flung up her hands and tore at her headdress. “No, no—I will not see our realm destroyed! It is the heritage of glory from our Ancestors. I love these people whom I rule. They are my subjects, and I am not foreign to them. Two hundred years the Dragon Throne was ours and now is mine. My nephew has betrayed me and in me all our ancestors.”

  Jung Lu rose beside her. “Command me, Majesty—”

  His words restored her. “Hear me, then. Summon to me at once my Grand Council. All must be secret. Let the leaders of our imperial clan come also. They will beseech me to depose my nephew, they will implore me to return to the Dragon Throne. They will say my nephew has betrayed the country to our enemies. This time I will hear them and make ready to do what they ask. Your own armies must replace the Imperial Guardsmen at the Forbidden Palace. When the Emperor enters Chung Ho Hall tomorrow at dawn for the autumnal sacrifices to our tutelary gods let him be seized and brought here and placed upon that small island in the middle of the lake, which is called Ocean Terrace. There let him wait, imprisoned, for my coming.”

  She was herself again, her vigorous mind at work, imagination seeing all the scenes ahead as though she planned a play. Jung Lu spoke behind his hand, his eyes glittering upon her.

  “You wonder,” he murmured, “you Empress of the Universe! What man’s mind can run like yours from yesterday beyond tomorrow? I need not ask a question. The plan is perfect.”

  They faced each other full, he stood a long moment and then he left her.

  In two hours the Grand Councilors arrived, their bearers running through the night to bring them to the Empress. She sat upon her throne robed in imperial garments, her phoenix-gilded satins, her jeweled headdress set as a crown upon her head. Two tall torches flamed beside her and blazed upon the gold threads of her robes, and glittered on her jewels and in her eyes. Each prince stood within the circle of his men and at a sign from the eunuchs all fell to their knees before her. She told them why she summoned them.

  “Great princes, kinsmen, ministers and councilors,” she said, “there is a plot against me in the imperial city. My nephew, whom I made Emperor, designs to put me into prison and kill me. When I am dead he plans to rout you all and set up new men who will obey his will. Our old ancient habits are to end, our wisdom flouted, our schools destroyed. New schools, new ways, new thoughts are now to be put in their place. Our enemies, the foreigners, are to be our guides. Is this not treason?”

  “Treason, treason!” they shouted one and all.

  She put out her hands with her old coaxing grace. “Rise, I pray you,” she said. “Sit down as though you were my brothers, and let us reason together how to foil this hideous plot. I do not fear my death but the death of our nation, the enslavement of our people. Who will protect them when I am gone?”

  At this Jung Lu stood up to speak. “Majesty,” he said, “your general, Yuan Shih-k’ai, is here. I thought it well to summon him and now I beg that he himself may tell the plot.”

  The Empress inclined her head to signify permission and Yuan Shih-k’ai came forward, wearing his warrior robes, his broad sword hanging from his girdle, and he made obeisance.

  “On the morning of the fifth day of this moon,” he said in a high level voice, “I was summoned for the last time before the Son of Heaven. I had been summoned thrice before to hear the plot, but this was the last audience until the deed was done. The hour was early. The Emperor sat upon the Dragon Throne in all but darkness, for the light of morning had not yet reached the Throne Hall. He beckoned me to come near and hear him whisper his commands and I did so. He bade me make all haste to Tientsin. There I was to put to death the Viceroy Jung Lu. When this was done I was to hasten homeward again to Peking and, bringing all my soldiers with me, I was to seize you, Majesty and Sacred Mother, and lock you in your palace. Then I was to find the imperial seal and myself take it to the Son of Heaven. The seal, he said, should have been his when he ascended to the Throne, and he could not forgive you, Majesty, he said, because you have kept it for yourself, compelling him, he said, to send his edicts forth signed only by his own private seal, and thereby proving to all the people that you did not trust him. For sign that his command was absolute he gave me a small gold arrow for my authority.”

  And Yuan Shih-k’ai drew from his girdle a gold arrow and held it up for all to see, and they groaned.

  “And what reward did he promise?” the Empress next inquired, her voice too mild, her eyes too bright.

  “I was to be the Viceroy of this province, Majesty,” Yuan replied.

  “A small reward for so much done,” she said. “Be sure that mine will be much greater.”

  While the General was speaking the Grand Councilors had listened, groaning to hear such perfidy. When he had finished they fell upon their knees and begged the Empress to take back the Dragon Throne and save the nation from the barbarians of the western seas.

  “I swear I will grant your request,” she said graciously.

  They rose again and took counsel and decided together under her royal approval that Jung Lu must return secretly to his post as soon as he had replaced the guards at the Forbidden City with his own men. When the Emperor came at dawn to receive the litany which the Board of Rites had prepared for the sacrifice to the tutelary deities, the guards and the eunuchs were to seize him and bring him to put him on the Ocean Terrace Island and there bid him wait his venerable mother’s arrival.

  The hour was midnight when all was approved. The Councilors returned to the city and Jung Lu without further farewell went to his post. The Empress then descended from the throne and, leaning on her eunuch’s arm, she went to her sleeping chamber, and there, as though it were any usual night, she let herself be bathed, perfumed, her hair brushed and braided, and in her scented silken night garments she went to her bed. The hour was dawn, the very hour the Emperor was to be seized, but she closed her eyes and slept most peacefully.

  She woke to silence in the palaces. The su
n was high, the air was sweet and chill. In spite of fears and cautions of the Court physicians who declared the winds of night were evil, the Empress always slept with windows open and not even her bed curtains drawn. Two ladies sat near to watch her and outside her door a score of eunuchs stood on guard, not more, nor fewer, than were usual. She woke, she rose as usual, and as usual let her woman make her toilet, lingering somewhat longer, perhaps, upon her choice of jewels and choosing amethysts at last, a dark and gloomy gem that she did not often wear. Her robes, too, were dark, a heavy gray brocaded satin, and when her women brought her orchids for her headdress she forbade their use, for on this day she would be stately.

  Yet she ate her usual hearty breakfast and she played with her small dogs and teased a bird by singing his own song until he sang himself half mad to drown her mocking music. Meanwhile Li Lien-ying waited in the outer hall until at last she summoned him.

  “Is all well?” she asked when he appeared.

  “Majesty, your command has been obeyed,” he said.

  “Is our guest on the Ocean Terrace Island?” she inquired. Her red lips quivered as though with secret laughter.

  “Majesty, two guests,” he said. “The Pearl Concubine ran after us and clung to her lord’s waist with both her arms and locked her hands so fast that we dared not delay to part them, nor could we take the liberty of killing her, without your order.”

  “Shame on you,” she said, “when did I ever order—ah, well, if he is there, she matters nothing. I go to face him with his treason. You will accompany me and only you. I need no guard—he’s helpless.”