by Zoey Gong
I have to do something. Have to stop him! I almost run to the front door. But if he hears me make a commotion, he could slip back out the window and into the dark night, escaping. Instead, I run to the window. Standing on my tiptoes, I look in. With horror, I see him standing over the empress, his hand raised as if to strike!
A scream rents the air, and it takes a moment for me to realize that I am the person screaming.
“Stop!” I yell. The man turns to run toward the window, as I thought he would, but he stops when he sees m.
“Help the empress!” I scream, and I finally hear the voices of her many servants as they are ripped from sleep. The man turns to run toward the door of the room, but the empress’s own eunuchs are already entering the bed-chamber. I finally feel that the empress is safe enough for me to call for the guards. I run back to the main walkway in front of the empress’s palace.
“Help! Guards! The empress!” In only a moment, over a dozen guards with lanterns and swords drawn are running toward me. I turn to lead them into the palace just as a maid throws the doors open.
“We caught him!” she says excitedly. “Please, hurry!” She is surprised as I rush into the palace, the guards right behind me, but she says nothing. I stop when I reach the bed chamber and see that several of the empress’s eunuchs have the man in black pinned to the ground beneath them. Someone has lit the lanterns of the empress’s room, and she is sitting up in bed, her face confused, her arms wrapped around one of her maids.
“The scissors!” someone says, and all the ladies scream. There on the floor, next to the skirmish, is a small pair of scissors. Not a pair large enough to cut hair, but one that might be in a lady’s sewing kit. Small, yes, but very sharp. One of the guards picks it up and waves it in the man’s face.
“What is this? Were you going to kill the empress?”
“No…no!” the man cries. It is then that I realize he is familiar, but I cannot place him.
“Peizhi!” a maid finally says. “He is one of Lady An’s eunuchs.” There is a round of gasps, including my own. She’s right. I have often seen him following behind Lady An with his head bowed, which is why I did not recognize him right away.
“The emperor approaches!” a eunuch announces, and all of us drop to our knees, even the eunuchs holding Peizhi.
“What is happening?” he yells.
“He tried to kill the empress!” someone explains.
“What?” the emperor roars, and for the first time, I see him truly angry. “Who?”
The eunuchs move aside, all of them pointing to Peizhi. “Him!”
The emperor storms forward, grabbing Peizhi by the collar, pulling him up and backhanding him across the face, his nose instantly spewing blood.
“Who are you? Why did you do this?”
Peizhi can form no coherent words, only sputters and cries. The emperor, disgusted, drops Peizhi to the ground.
“Arrest him,” the emperor orders. “Torture him. Find out exactly why he did this and who sent him.”
“Yes, your majesty!” the guards say as they get to their feet and go toward Peizhi. But before they can reach him, Peizhi lunges toward one of the empress’s eunuchs. He manages to grab the little scissors, and before anyone can stop him, he stabs himself in the neck, blood spurting into the faces of a nearby eunuch and a maid. This leads to another round of screaming, and even I feel sick.
The emperor grabs Peizhi, not caring about the blood getting on his hands or yellow robe. He grabs the assassin’s collar and slams him to the ground. “You bastard! Tell me who sent you!”
Peizhi’s mouth opens and closes, but only blood bubbles forth. I think it takes less than a minute for his body to stop moving. The emperor lets out a yell in his frustration and starts barking orders at the guards. He doesn’t see that the empress has gripped her maid in pains of her own.
I run across the room, trying to avoid looking at the dead body on the floor, and kneel by her side. “My lady!”
“It…hurts…” she says, clutching her stomach. It cannot yet be her time! That is at least three months away.
“Call the physician!” I yell. I fear she is losing the baby.
25
When I was seven years old, my mother had a miscarriage. I was so young at the time, I didn’t know what was happening at first. We lived a little better then, since the only children were myself and Mingming, who was only two years old. Mingming and I slept on one bed while Mama and Baba slept on another. A moaning sound woke me. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but then I heard Mama cry out in pain.
“Daiyu!” Baba yelled. “Light a lamp!”
It was the middle of the night, so it took a while for me to find the lantern and then light it in the dark. But when I did, I wished I hadn’t. There was so much blood. My hands shook and I could only stare at the nightmare before me. Mama looked at me, her eyes wide with terror.
“I’m losing the baby.”
Now, I had heard this phrase before. Every so often there would be a rumor that such-and-such had lost a baby. I thought it must be so terrible, to lay your baby down and not be able to find it again. I had supposed the babies were snatched away by some wicked person hoping to sell them. Or that the woman had simply put the baby somewhere, perhaps while she worked, and then forgot where she put it! That would never happen to me, I thought, believing my parents to be better than most.
As I stared at the blood and Mama’s words echoed in my ears, it was only then that I realized that it meant the baby was dying.
“What should I do?” I asked her.
“Fetch the midwife!” she cried through gritted teeth. I didn’t even put on my shoes as I fled out the door into the night. I ran down the hutong and around the corner to the home of the midwife. I banged on the door for what seemed like hours before someone finally answered. I don’t remember what I said. In my memory, even I don’t understand my words through my crying. But the midwife probably knew that there was only ever one reason why someone knocked frantically on her door in the middle of the night.
Back at the house, I felt completely helpless as I sat on the bed, holding Mingming, who wouldn’t stop crying. I watched as the midwife tended to Mama, massaging her belly, giving her bitter tea.
Mama lived, thanks to the skill of the midwife. We paid her what little money we could and she carried away the little bloody bundle that was supposed to have been a little brother or sister. But she warned Mama and Baba not to risk any more children, at least not for a while.
I was so terrified of Mama dying that anytime I woke in the night to hear her and Baba…umm… “doing what married people do,” as we were told when we were too little to understand, I would jump out of my own bed and into theirs between them. They didn’t scold me. I’m sure they knew it was for the best if Mama didn’t fall pregnant again. It was six years before Mama became pregnant with Junli. By that time, I was a little older and wiser and knew that miscarriages were actually rather common, and that most of the time the mother didn’t die. It was just a part of childbearing. Still, I laid awake every night, always the last to drift off to sleep, as I waited for the cries of pain that would tell me that she was losing the baby…
The empress did not lose her baby. While we waited for the physician, I held the empress’s hand, massaged her belly, and asked for bitter tea. I helped her breathe slowly and evenly. By the time the physician arrived, she had calmed considerably, and so had her pains. The doctor gave her more herbal remedies to calm both her and the baby and said it was simply the fear and shock of the night that caused her nerves to shake. If she remained calm and relaxed, she—and the baby—would recover.
Weeks later, I’m lying in the empress’s bed, between her and the wall, holding her hand in mine.
The dawn sun is just starting to peek through the windows, turning the room from black to gray. The birds tweet. I hear servants shuffling about outside, delivering food, laundry, fresh flowers, and other items to the various ladies’
palaces. You would think it was just any other day.
But it is not any other day.
Today is the day that Lady An has been ordered to kill herself. Even though the assassin never said it was Lady An who sent him, since he was her eunuch, that was the only conclusion. Lady An protested her innocence, of course. Said she loved the emperor and would never harm the empress or her son. But the emperor was so thunderously angry, he refused to believe her. She was banished to the Cold Palace—palace that is nothing more than a room with a single chair—and given a long white scarf. A consort of the emperor could never be executed like a common criminal, no matter how heinous her crime. Women such as Lady An, ladies of rank and dignity, are expected to do the honorable thing and take their own lives.
I swallow as I lean back against the headboard and peer over the empress to the spot on the floor where the eunuch died. The empress is too weak, too delicate, to be moved to another palace. Even though the rugs on the floor that had been stained red were thrown out and replaced with new ones, I think I can see a spot on the floor that is a little darker than the rest.
Even though there is no evidence that the eunuch was acting under order from Lady An, I did not speak up for her. I did not plead for mercy. No one did. The emperor was so angry, I think he would have killed anyone who questioned his judgment.
I think about how very close to death I could have been had all the focus not fallen on Lady An. It was eventually discovered that I had been the one to scream and alert everyone to the intruder. When asked why I had been outside the empress’s palace that night, I only said that I could not sleep and heard a noise, which I then followed. I think everyone was so relieved that the eunuch had been caught, no one thought to question my story.
But they still could.
When all is said and done, when Lady An is dead, when the prince is born, even then, no one will forget that night. No one will forget the assassin in the empress’s bed-chamber. No one will forget the concubine who was so jealous she sent her own eunuch to kill the empress and the unborn prince. People will talk about that night for years to come, I am sure of it. And my name—the name of Lihua—will be remembered too. In all the times the story and told and retold, will someone eventually question why I was truly there that night?
I had thought that my position as the emperor’s favorite made me invincible. No one would suspect that I was having an affair with the prince. No one would question the identity of any child I might conceive.
But I had been a fool. Stupid. Reckless. There is no proof that Lady An was the person behind the plot on the empress’s life. She has never wavered in protesting her innocence. Yet everyone believes she is guilty. The emperor believes it. And she will die because of that belief, whether she is guilty or not.
The same thing could happen to me. If the emperor ever suspected, ever doubted my loyalty, he could put me to death without question. And just like Lady An, no one would speak up for me.
The empress starts and wakes with a gasp.
“My lady?” I ask, lightly touching her arm and then her forehead to check for a fever.
“Lihua,” she says as she tries to adjust her position.
“Don’t strain yourself,” I tell her as I move the pillows to make her comfortable. “What’s wrong? Do you need some water?”
“No. No…” she says as her eyes adjust to the light. She pushes her hair, now only chin-length, behind her ears. “I had a dream. A terrible dream.”
“I’m sure it was nothing,” I say to reassure her. But as she wakes more, I can see the worry on her face.
“I dreamed I was standing on the edge of a cliff,” she says, “overlooking a beautiful valley. There were endless green trees and a winding river down below. The wind was gently blowing around me. And in my arms, I held my newborn son.”
“That sounds like a good omen,” I say. I know some people put great importance on the meanings of dreams. I do not know if dreams carry messages from the ancestors or not. I can only say that I have never had one to make me believe it is so.
“No,” she says, shaking her head as her eyes water. “For we were dressed in white, me and my son. And I could not see his face.”
I do not know what to say to this, and I can see why she is scared to have dreamed of herself in the color of mourning.
“When I looked out over the valley, there on the breeze, a white scarf danced by.” As she wipes tears from her cheeks, a heavy stone lodges itself in my stomach.
“Lihua,” Caihong says, gripping my arm, “has there been a terrible mistake? Is Lady An innocent? Are the gods going to demand my death and the death of my son as payment?”
“No!” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. “You have had nothing to do with her. The assassin killed himself. The emperor sentenced Lady An to death. You are completely innocent in all of this. It was only a dream, nothing more.”
“Do you really think so?” the empress asks.
I do my best to give her a reassuring smile, but I am not sure if I am successful. “I’m sure of it.”
The door to the empress’s bed-chamber slides open and a maid steps in with a tray of tea things. I help the empress sit up in her bed. Before, I think the empress only feigned helplessness because she enjoyed being doted on. But now, now I do believe that fear and stress have made her weak. All of us ladies wait on her every moment and help her at all hours without complaint. Any energy she has must be conserved to birth the prince.
After the maid prepares the tea and hands it to the empress, she then leaves the room to attend other duties. The empress has only taken a sip when she turns to me.
“Lihua, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course, my lady.”
“I need you to go to Lady An in the Cold Palace.” My heart drops and I am so frightened I nearly run away. My fear must be clear on my face because the empress grips my arm and continues. “Please, do this for me.”
“I cannot,” I whisper. The last thing I want is for the emperor to hear that I spoke with Lady An. What if he thinks I was part of her scheme?
“You must,” she says, her eyes wild. “I must know the truth! Go to her, beg her to tell you what really happened. She is going to die today no matter what. What is the point in maintaining her lie? Surely it would be better for her to die with a clear conscience.”
“But…to what end?” I ask. “Is it not enough that she will die for her crimes against you?”
“I cannot send an innocent woman to her death!” she says, dropping the teacup to the ground and grabbing both of my arms. She looks me in the eyes so intently, I fear she can read my very mind. “If she is innocent, I know I shall die too! The gods of justice will demand it! Please, please go to her. Get her confession. Set my spirit at ease.”
I don’t want to do it. I would almost rather throw myself into a well and drown than speak to Lady An. But I know I must. I cannot defy my empress. And, in truth, a part of me is curious as well. If Lady An is guilty and admits is, I know I would rest easier.
“Fine,” I say. “I will do as you ask.”
She breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Go, now, while it is still early. Before it is too late.”
I bend down and pick up the broken shards of the teacup and then bow my way out of the room. I put the pieces of porcelain into a rubbish basket and then dust off my hands. I return first to my own palace to wash my face and change my clothes. Suyin brushes my hair and pins it up in a simple style merely to keep it off my neck and out of my face. She does not even bother with a bianfang. When I tell her, Jinhai, and Nuwa what the empress has ordered me to do, they are horrified and try to convince me not to go. But I must. I order all of them to stay behind. Should the emperor fault me for my actions, I do not want them to be punished as well.
With a heavy heart and my shoes feeling as though they are made of boulders, I make my way to the Cold Palace alone.
The Cold Palace is located in a shady, isolated part
of the Forbidden City. I had thought the palace was named such simply because it is where ladies are sent to be punished, but I now see that the meaning is much more literal. The palace, even from the outside, appears cold and drafty, with the lattice shutters falling from their hinges and the door showing a splintered crack. The building has not been maintained for some time.
On either side of the door, two guards stand sentinel, and they eye me suspiciously as I approach.
“The empress has sent me to speak to the prisoner,” I say. One of the guards holds his hand up to stop me.
“No one is to speak to her,” he says. “She should already be dead.”
“Is she already dead?” I ask, eyeing the door. I see movement through the crack and realize that she is not.
“She has refused the carry out the emperor’s orders so far,” the guard says. “But she will either hang herself, or she will starve. Her choice.”
I hear a whimpering and realize that Lady An can hear us. The pitiful sounds of her cries tug at my heart. I raise my head and speak with more conviction than I feel.
“Would you dare defy the empress?” I ask. “The empress is the head of the inner court, not his majesty. She has ordered me to exact a final confession from Lady An and I will not leave until I have carried out my task.”
The guard looks to his companion, who shrugs. He hestiates, but finally he steps aside.
“Be quick about it,” he orders. I nod as I walk past and go to the door. I try to open it, but it is locked fast. I look to the guards, but their backs are to me. I decide not to press my luck by asking them to open the door. I kneel down to where the door is cracked.
“Lady An?” I say.
“Who…who is there?” she asks. “Fenfang? Is that you?”
“No,” I say. “It is not the dowager. It’s only me, Lihua.”
She is quiet for a moment, and I think she is refusing to speak to me, but then I hear her voice.