Shan Sa - Empress

I struck my forehead against the ground several times, repeating the words: “Majesty, your servant shall never forget your goodness.”

The Lady Mother eyed me with a hostile sneer and went on: “Talented One, you are already familiar with the laws of the Inner Court, and I shall not enumerate them for you. The Empress rewards worthiness and punishes crime. She may occasionally choose to offer lapsed women a second chance, but she expects absolute obedience in exchange for this clemency. To ensure that you do not commit a further error that would cost you your life, Her Majesty has instructed me to warn you against a particularly perverse and dangerous person: Lady Xiao. She was born into a lowly, fallen family. As a child she knew poverty and trailed through the streets of the eastern capital. Our family took her in out of pity, and I appointed her as a maid to Her Majesty during her childhood. We lavished her with care, and this creature-so full of bad manners learned in the depths of Luoyang – metamorphosed in a few short years. When Her Majesty was married to the sovereign, she took Lady Xiao with her to Long Peace. Unbeknown to her mistress, Lady Xiao seduced the prince and plotted to ensure that she was raised to the rank of Resplendent Wife. This distinction only fuelled her excessive ambition and her insatiable greed. Under her evil spell, the Emperor is forgetting his duties and losing his mind. The Empress called you back to the Palace because she is counting on you to exorcise the sovereign and to help him return to the path he must tread.”

The Lady Mother’s words clarified the ambivalent nature of the hasty ruling made on my behalf. Jealous of the favors enjoyed by the Resplendent Wife, the Empress wanted to use me to deflect the sovereign’s passion. On my return to the lodgings in the Side Court, I came across a woman whose beauty was stupefying. The Resplendent Wife Xiao feigned surprise and introduced herself to me. She was sheathed in a dress of crepe and a muslin tunic, and above her right breast she flaunted a beauty spot in the form of an avaricious wasp.

I curtsied deeply before her.

She returned my greeting and said in an eager, affable voice: “It is indeed you, the Talented One of two reigns! I have heard that you are twenty-eight, but you look ten years younger. Is it true that the nuns have magic recipes to preserve eternal youth? It seems that your friends, the monks, know the secrets of ecstasy and are more virile than ordinary men. Come and talk to me of all this when your Empress gives you the time. I invite you to take lunch on my boat. The poor girl must have spoken to you of me, anyway. I expect that, once again, she ground her teeth and shed many tears! So much the better if her morbid jealousy drives her insane! She is barren, and she resents every belly capable of bearing a child. No one is stopping her from conceiving, but her own perfidious nature has dried her out!”

She came closer to me and hissed in my ear: “I know that the Empress had you brought back to the Palace to steal the sovereign from me. You should know that she has already pushed a number of unfortunate girls into his arms. Alas for her, at the moment, it is I who command His Majesty’s heart in this Inner Palace. Every woman who has tried to dispute his favors with me has met an unpleasant end. Some died, struck down by the lightning wrath of the heavens; others were sent away to the Cold Palace. Do you know that frozen place where women fester in dank dungeons and in their own excrement? It makes me laugh to think of the beauties who have ended up in those dung heaps. Only the other month, the Emperor authorized me to expedite some shrew who wanted to poison me. Do you know what became of her? I had her arms and legs cut off and threw her into a vat of wine. She died blind drunk!” Then, with a peel of laughter, she walked away.

IN THE CLOSED world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyond the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavilions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other to the point of madness? Why did they loathe one another so vehemently, and why did sworn enemies feel such horror and fascination for one another? Why should furious hate become obsession, then intoxication and the very reason to live?

Because love and hate were the two heads of the demon.

The Empress had been married at fourteen, and now, at twenty-two, her stomach was still flat, while in the other palace, a succession of concubines and slaves brought imperial children into the world. Infertility is a major crime committed toward the ancestors, and any man whose wife is sterile is free to repudiate her. Many former Empresses had lost their title on these grounds, and the Empress Wang was well aware of the danger that threatened her.

Like the noble women who grew up in the closed world of the gynaeceum’s apartments, she valued the comfort and refinement of an artificial existence. She was afraid of life’s urges and enthusiasms, bored by copulation; from the very day she was married, she had received the Emperor’s advances by playing dead. But, to conceive a son, she would suffer anything, even rape. At first light every day, she prepared herself feverishly to appear beautiful. Her Lady Mother forced her to drink medicinal infusions for fertility and to have warm fluids injected between her thighs. As the sun began to fall still, there would be no sign of the Emperor. She would sit in the middle of her day room, with her hands on her knees, a black silhouette against the vermilion silk carpets covering the ground, and her heart would curse him. She swore to herself that she would no longer live in such humiliation once she had delivered a son. Night stole through the palace, and servants lit candles and lanterns. Her face lit up at the tiniest rustling sound; she would get up and run to the door. The women she sent out as spies came back one after the other: His Majesty had finished dining! He had ordered his litter to be prepared. His Majesty was about to leave his palace! He was heading for the apartments of the Resplendent Wife!

The Empress would collapse, and her shrill cries would echo round the room: “Snuff out the lights! Snuff out the lights!” She would shrug off every hand offering to help her and would spend the night on the spot where she had fallen. With day break the servants would come and open the shutters. The hope and disappointment began again with the sun as it circled endlessly across the sky.

Her rival, the Resplendent Wife, had had her belly filled three times, and her son had been given the crown of Yong, the kingdom-province that boasted the capital Long Peace and one that was usually reserved for the eldest son of the Mistress of the Palace. Every time the Empress heard her accursed name, she faltered and dissolved into tears: She wanted to drive this whore out of the Forbidden City. She accused her of practicing black magic to make her sterile; she was a demon incarnate in a woman’s body who wanted to steal her throne and destroy the Empire!

At twenty-three the Resplendent Wife’s heart was ravaged. The more the emperor cherished her, the more she feared. At the height of her beauty, aging obsessed her and she trembled to be abandoned one day. In government, ministers despised her very existence, and in the gynaeceum the women leagued against her. Her desperate loneliness, her violent sensuality, and her fierce struggle to survive had a strange hold over the Emperor, who was weary of bland, characterless women. With the Empress he had to observe rituals and ensure he spoke in imperial vernacular. Sleeping with the Mistress of the World was a sacred duty, an attempt at procreation, an anxiety that chilled his entrails. In his favorite’s palace, he could dispense with the solemn poses and courteous conventions. His pleasure had only one aim: to be satisfied.