It took me a while to realize what she meant: It must have been Mr. Liu who was in secret communication with Prince Gong from above the Great Wall, Mr. Liu who had warned him of the order on its way to execute the British hostages. And no doubt he’d been sending messages to Prince Gong in this last crisis. No wonder the princess was grateful to him. Of course, she wasn’t going to tell me all this.
To this day, I can’t be quite sure. But I do know one thing: Mr. Liu always seemed to come out on the winning side.
* * *
—
My greatest joy, however, was yet to come.
The new regime was quite ingenious. The boy emperor became the official ruler of China right away. The decrees all went out in his name, and he received the officials himself in person. Naturally the little fellow couldn’t yet know what to say, so the two dowager empresses remained in the room with him. But they sat behind the throne, hidden by a yellow curtain. A mandarin would deliver his report, and the empresses would whisper to the little boy what he should say—which usually meant that his mother would do the whispering, since the dear empress herself had hardly more idea what to say than the boy.
But everyone understood that this was a formality, so that was all right.
The real power lay with a small advisory council. There were no troublemakers, just long-standing, reliable men whom all the mandarins and officials knew and respected, and with Prince Gong as their head. The idea was to restore calm and follow precedent in the good old-fashioned way. But Prince Gong was also expected to add some judicious modernizing, just as he had when he formed the Beijing brigade.
And to emphasize the stability of the regime, the position of the two dowager empresses was ratified by granting them new honors and titles. The title given to the empress meant “Motherly and Restful”—which was a tactful way of putting it! As for my former mistress, her title was Cixi—which meant “Motherly and Auspicious.” And that’s how she was officially known for the rest of her life: Cixi.
But Prince Gong, in his wisdom, arranged one other kindness for the two women. It was clever also, I suspect, in that it prevented anyone claiming that he himself had profited from the destruction of the former regents. The entire vast fortune of the executed Prince Sushun was confiscated and given to the two dowager empresses, half each.
After all her tribulations, my former mistress was now suddenly one of the richest persons in the empire.
* * *
—
There had been a light dusting of snow over Beijing on the day I was told by Prince Gong that I was to report to the palace. The sky was a crystalline blue. The huge all-white expanse in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony shone so brightly in the sun that I had to blink. Its vast roof, however, since the snow was so thin, gleamed white in the furrows, with myriad ribs of gold where the yellow tiles showed through.
It was, I think, the most magical thing I ever saw.
I was shown into the presence of the Dowager Empress Cixi in a small throne room, where to my astonishment, she received me quite alone. She was dressed in white. But I smelled the familiar jasmine scent she had worn before.
“Well, Lacquer Nail,” she said after I had performed the kowtow, “look what has happened to us both. I have heard all about your adventures from Prince Gong. He and the princess speak very highly of you.”
“Your slave is honored,” I said.
“I was very sad when you deserted me before we went north of the Wall,” she said.
“Highness,” I cried in agony, “that was not of my doing…” But then I saw that she was laughing.
“Mr. Liu was very naughty,” she said.
It was more than that. He’d deliberately countermanded her orders by giving me the wrong instructions. He should have been demoted and punished, at least. But of course, with Mr. Liu, that was never going to happen.
“Yes, Highness,” I said.
“The problem is,” she went on, “that now I have no one I trust to look after my nails. Do you think you could do it?”
And she smiled at me.
“Oh yes, Highness,” I cried. And I performed the kowtow again, so close this time that I could almost have kissed her dainty feet.
1865
Would she ever see her husband again? Mei-Ling did not know. But she had an instinct—she could not say why—that he had gone forever. Perhaps it was just her fear.
They had spoken about America so many times down the years. As a possibility. No more than that. But when the handsome son of the big, bluff American who had come before—when the son came again and offered a generous payment in advance—how could they turn it down, things being as they were?
There’d been no good news in the hamlet for so long, or anywhere else. If the Taiping’s Heavenly Kingdom had ruined the great Yangtze valley for a decade, the barbarians’ destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing had humiliated the entire empire. Now the emperor who’d run away was dead, a child was upon the throne, and in essence the kingdom was being ruled by a pair of unschooled women.
Was this the whimpering end of an age? Was the Mandate of Heaven being withdrawn?
Along the coast, from Shanghai to Hong Kong, the barbarians had their ports, ruled like separate kingdoms under their own laws. Up in Manchuria, the Russians had taken a huge territory. As for the Taiping rebels and their Heavenly Kingdom, they’d been kicked out of Nanjing only a year ago, and not even by an imperial army, but by Chinese troops equipped and trained by Gordon and his British officers.
The message was clear enough: The barbarians had decided to keep the imperial court in power because Beijing would give them whatever they wanted. Everybody knew.
The empire was humiliated and its treasury exhausted.
Mei-Ling hadn’t any money, either. The last silver she’d held in her hands had come from Nio, when he’d been on his way to take Shanghai, and that had been spent long since.
What had become of Nio? She had never heard from him again. The Shanghai campaign had been a disaster. By the time that Nanjing had fallen, she feared he must be dead. But she couldn’t be certain. He’d turned up after huge absences before. Sometimes she’d be down at the pond, and if the breeze made a rustle in the trees by the path, she’d start and glance quickly towards the sound, half expecting that Nio would appear. But he never did. Time passed and her rational mind told her he must be dead and that she must accept it.
If only she knew for sure, she could weep and mourn him properly. But without that certainty, she felt she would be giving up on him, deserting him instead of keeping the flame of hope alive.
Her husband understood. At times he used to wish that someone would arrive with news of Nio’s death, if only to release Mei-Ling from the endless pain of not knowing.
Finally, as they were walking one morning, he suddenly said to her: “Nio’s dead. You must accept it.” And she nodded and said: “I know.” Then she clung to him and wept.
At least her family wasn’t starving. But that was almost all that could be said.
Elder Son of course was still nominally head of the family. But if he’d been weak before, he was little more than a walking shadow now. He seldom smoked opium, but only because he hadn’t the money to buy it. And alas, it hardly seemed to improve his health.
Three years ago, to everyone’s surprise, his skinny daughter had been found a husband, quite an old man from a neighboring village, who just wanted her as a housekeeper. But he was a husband. So she was gone. And perhaps Elder Son might have found strength to be a man for the sake of his one remaining child, poor Willow’s little boy. But three years ago, in one of those plagues that swept through the countryside every few years, the child had succumbed.
For Elder Son, that had been the end. From then on, he roused himself only enough to declare from time to time that he was the head of the family and must make the dec
isions, but never to do anything about it.
A sort of lethargy had descended upon the house. The bridge over the pond needed repairing. Second Son was ready to do the work, but his brother always insisted that he’d attend to it, although he never did. “It’s not worth quarreling about it,” Second Son told Mei-Ling, which was probably true. So nobody stepped onto the bridge anymore, because it wasn’t safe. When Mei-Ling went out to look at the full moon, she gazed at it from the bank.
Even Mother was affected. Instead of ruling the household and the kitchen nowadays, she let Mei-Ling make all the arrangements and sat in the courtyard. When Elder Son stopped collecting the rents, she did it herself, but with surprisingly little success. Sometimes she’d come back with nothing.
So effectively, Mei-Ling and Second Son kept the place going. He and their two grown boys worked the land. The family ate and was clothed. But they had little money to spare.
There was one ray of hope, though: one person who might be able to achieve the good life and, with a bit of luck, help them all. Her little girl: Bright Moon.
“She’ll be as beautiful as you,” Second Son often declared.
“She is more beautiful,” Mei-Ling would reply.
“Not possible,” he’d say, and perhaps he really thought so. But Mei-Ling knew better.
It was extraordinary how perfect the child was: Her skin was so pale, pure white, the hallmark of a Chinese beauty. And Bright Moon’s eyes were large, and her nose and eyebrows were straight, like those of a noble lady of the court from the days of the shining Ming.
Second Son doted on the little girl. As soon as he got home from work each evening, he’d sit and play with her.
Sometimes, if there was a wind, he and Bright Moon would go up to a place where they could watch the forest of tall bamboos swaying in the wind. The bamboo made beautiful clicking sounds as they knocked against one another, and if the wind was strong enough they sighed as well. “Their music is even more lovely than the erhu,” Second Son would happily declare. “And do you see along the forest fringe how their heads and shoulders droop so gracefully? Yet in a storm, even the tallest heads can touch the ground without the bamboo breaking.”
“Don’t they ever break?” the little girl once asked.
“If a bamboo is beside a wall, or even other bamboo canes that prevent it from bending the way it wants to,” he answered, “then sometimes it can snap.”
“Does it die?”
“No. The best thing is to cut it just above the ground, and by the next year another cane will grow up just as tall as the one before.”
“You love the bamboo, don’t you, Papa?” the little girl cried.
“Almost as much as I love your mother and you,” he answered, and the little girl knew that it was true.
* * *
—
Bright Moon was three years old when Second Son and Mother began to talk about her feet.
“She could become a rich man’s wife,” Mother said.
“And live the good life,” Second Son agreed.
“We need to bind her feet,” Mother said. “She can’t get a rich man otherwise.”
“I want her to have a good husband like I did,” said Mei-Ling. “And my feet weren’t bound.”
“She could do much better than me,” said Second Son. “I want her to have the best.”
“But would she be happy?” Mei-Ling asked.
“Why not?” her husband reasonably asked. “Being rich doesn’t make you unhappy. And it’s better than being poor, as we are now.” He gestured to the house and the broken bridge in the pond. “She’s been given so much beauty. We have to respect that, not waste it.”
“Perhaps she could marry a rich Hakka man,” Mei-Ling suggested. “Some Hakka are rich. And their women don’t bind their feet.”
“No Hakka,” said Mother.
“Or a Manchu, even. Their women don’t bind their feet, either.”
“The rich Manchu usually marry other Manchu. And their Han Chinese concubines all have bound feet,” said Mother. “You can be sure of that.”
“It’s painful,” Mei-Ling cried. “Everyone says it is.”
“It’s not so bad,” said Mother.
“Do you know how to do it?” asked Mei-Ling.
“There’s a woman in the town who has bound lots of girls’ feet. She’ll come and show us.”
Mei-Ling was still unhappy, though Second Son tried to comfort her.
“It’s all for the best. She’ll thank us one day,” he promised. “And being born with such beauty, she’d never forgive us if we didn’t give her the chance to make use of it.”
“I still can’t bear to think about it,” Mei-Ling confessed.
“Then don’t,” said Second Son. “She’s only three. We wouldn’t start until she’s six.”
So they didn’t talk about the foot-binding, not for the time being. And the only thing Bright Moon knew was that she had to carry a sunshade whenever the sky was blue.
* * *
—
The rumors from the coast began when Bright Moon was five years old. American merchants had been going around the towns and fishing villages again, offering good money to men who’d come out to California to build a railroad.
Of the three men who had gone to America from the hamlet when Read had come before, two had remained there, but one had returned. He’d come back with money.
And stories of the huge continent in the West: its temperate climate, beautiful bays, soaring mountains. And of course, the railroad: the endless iron tracks the barbarians were laying across the land, and the engine with the fiery furnace inside, belching steam and sparks, that raced along the tracks. Some people in the hamlet thought it was wonderful, though to Mei-Ling it sounded like a terrible and evil thing.
But the iron dragon on rails did not frighten her as much as the effect all this information had on her husband.
“I’ve heard they’re giving good money to people before they go. An advance payment. A lot more than I could ever earn around here.” He looked at her seriously. “You could use that money for the farm and for Bright Moon. And then, if I could come back with another pile of money…” He looked at her sadly. “I’d be away from you.”
“Please don’t go.”
He sighed. “I don’t know what to do. We have to think of the family.”
She thought of the run-down farm and the poor hamlet. It was hard for anyone in that area to make a living. If the Americans came offering well-paid work and cash down, they’d have no shortage of takers.
As for Second Son: She knew her beloved husband. If he decided a thing was right, nothing would stop him. He’d shown the same obstinacy when he’d insisted on marrying her. Wonderful then; terrible now.
“How long would you go for?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Two or three years, I suppose. I’d take our younger boy with me.”
“I’d be lonely,” she said simply.
“So would I. But if we need the money…”
“You’re not going down to the coast to look for the Americans, are you?”
“No,” he answered, “but if they came here…”
She understood. If they came all the way up here, that would be fate. That’s what he was telling her. If the Americans came, he’d go. She could only pray they wouldn’t. After all, if the money was so good, the Americans would find all the men they needed on the coast. And time had passed, and nobody came.
* * *
—
It was a sunny autumn day when the handsome young American appeared. He’d remembered the hamlet from the time he’d come with his father years before. He was offering a bag of silver in advance, so long as the men promised to stay three years.
But he remembered Second Son, too. And when her husband offered himself
and his son, the handsome young American shook his head. “You changed your mind last time, after only a day,” he told him.
“I won’t do it again,” Second Son said.
“Sorry. Can’t take the chance,” the American replied. “I need men who really want to go.”
Mei-Ling was standing beside her husband when the American said that, and she felt such a rush of joy and relief. They’d get by without the money, she told herself.
“I’ll promise four years instead of three,” said Second Son.
She stared at him in horror. What was he saying? The young American looked at him thoughtfully. “You swear?” he said.
“I promise,” said her husband. “For both of us.” He didn’t look at her.
Afterwards, she asked him, “Why did you say that?”
“Because he wasn’t going to take me otherwise,” he answered. “It was obvious.”
So the American gave her the bag of silver, and her husband and her younger son left straightaway. Second Son promised that the time would soon pass and tried to pretend that everything was all right. Her boy said he’d think of her every day, but he couldn’t help looking a little excited to be going on such an adventure.
That night there was a quarter-moon and a sprinkling of stars. And as she had when he left before, Mei-Ling sent messages of love after her husband. But this time clouds filled the sky, snuffed out the stars, and hid the moon; and she wasn’t sure that the messages reached her husband. She wasn’t even sure they left the valley where the hamlet was.
* * *
—
Bright Moon’s father had been away two years when they began to bind her feet.
The autumn season was the time to begin. Summer’s heat and humidity, which caused the feet to sweat and swell, was past. So the pain was less.
They told the little girl she should be grateful.
Even down here in the south, plenty of women in the towns had bound feet. But out in the countryside bound feet were not so common, and in their poor little hamlet Bright Moon was the first girl to be so lucky for years.
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