Shan Sa - Empress

The Emperor accepted my suggestion and granted a special audience to General Li Ji, who had recommended me to the Court sixteen years previously. The warrior had been promoted and was now an eminent member of the Council of Great Ministers. His face had not changed, and his silvery beard was still magnificent. From his embarrassed expression, I could see that there was nothing about me that resembled the little girl devastated by mourning for her beloved father. I had become a woman who could exercise both charm and authority over him. Sixteen years after our first meeting, the conversation had changed, but time had not broken our bond. He had been put to the side by Wu Ji, who had been contemptuous of his commoner’s origins, and he was now prepared to offer me his loyalty and to defend the sovereign’s authority.

My belly was growing smaller, and my agility was returning. Childbirth had been a trial, an initiation from which my strength had emerged all the greater. The Emperor put his trust in me blindly. The chief eunuchs, the Great Intendants of the six inner ministries, and the directors of the twenty-four departments took orders only from me. I was no longer an anonymous woman among ten thousand beauties, but the true mistress of the Inner Palace.

At that time I was maneuvering to regain the supreme power that had been confiscated by the ministers. I worked day and night urgently sorting through case files so as to pre-empt Wu Ji’s decisions sent out by his chancellery. As I toiled, I forgot the rancorous feelings that were never far away.

One afternoon when Little Phoenix and I were riding through the Imperial Park, Ruby, Emerald, and a group of eunuchs appeared at the end of the track. They threw themselves to their knees and beat their chests, wailing lamentations.

“Your slaves deserve a thousand deaths!” they cried. “The imperial infant has just departed this life!”

My head spun, and my voice was strangled: “Only this morning she was laughing with me.”

Ruby struck her forehead on the ground so forcefully that she split her scalp. The blood flowed down over her face, and she wept as she explained: “Majesty, Highness, early this afternoon the Empress came to see the infant. She took her in her arms and played with her. Looking into the cradle a little later, the nurse noticed that the baby had turned blue. She had stopped breathing!”

I faltered, my ears were buzzing, and somewhere I thought I heard Little Phoenix sobbing: “The Empress has dared to poison my daughter!”

The cortege returned to the Inner City. I let myself be led, stiff, mute, dead. I do not know how I was able to dismount and climb onto a litter. Trees, pavilions, walls, countless faces… all these things appeared before me and only deepened my pain. My governesses, servants, and valets were all kneeling at the gates of my palace. Our two litters were borne across a garden seething with people, a place already like the most dismal of cemeteries. Emerald brought the tiny babe to the Emperor, and he bathed her with his tears. I refused to touch her ice-cold body.

For seven days, I stayed huddled in my room with the shutters closed, and I did not open my eyes. For seven days I could not keep food down; everything seemed to taste of fish. I would hear a baby crying, and panic would surge through me. I would call Ruby: “Why does the Princess keep crying? We must change her wet nurse!”

Emerald and Ruby concluded from this strange behavior that I had been put under a spell. They suggested secretly calling for an exorcist, but Mother rejected this practice that was forbidden in the Palace and had a statue of Buddha installed in my room. The monotonous droning of her prayers filled my heart that had been so dried by grief. Deprived of food, my body became lighter and lighter, and one day it flew away. I slipped into a moonless, starless night. I struggled in vain to find a glimmer of light, then I realized that I had become deaf and dumb. I was dead! Dead? No, I must live and have my revenge. I was not yet defeated! It was then that two faces appeared in the darkness: Father and the Eternal Ancestor. Their features became confused and formed one dazzling moon that started to speak: “The Resplendent Wife and the Empress have been exposed. They summoned sorcerers to the gynaeceum and wanted to see you dead. I have had the objects of their curses burned and those two madwomen imprisoned. Now your sickness will expire; you can sleep in peace.”

I opened my eyes. Little Phoenix was lying beside me on my bed, resting his head on his arm, and watching me lovingly. I turned my head: Mother had disappeared, but in the center of my room, lit up by hundreds of candles, was a gleaming golden statue of Buddha.

He drew me into his arms and asked me if I would like to have some soup. I remembered then that my daughter was dead. My tears fell for the first time since her death.

A servant brought a tray. Little Phoenix wiped my tears with a handkerchief, then he picked up the bowl and fed me with a spoon.

“Heavenlight, when I met you, you were no taller than I, and you were galloping on a magnificent horse. When you came over to greet me on that day, it felt to me as if every part of you was entering into my body, and I told myself: ”I would like to marry a woman like her.“”

He paused for a long time and sighed: “Then I became a man. Women revealed their mystery to me. I became the prey of my desires, explored passion and sensuality, the sweet tragedy of love. Young girls fought one another off to please me, but, in exchange, I had to satisfy their sexual demands and sentimental wants. I would have liked to experience the thrill and the agony, but I knew only scheming, self-interested embraces: One wanted a relation to be nominated for government, another demanded a golden necklace, a third wanted a bigger palace and to wear new dresses. So I opened the treasury wide; I squandered it. I learned to lie in order to console, to promise in order to escape. I alternated between compliments and lecturing because I am weak and a coward. The feigned tenderness, the jealousies, the treats, and the tears sickened me, but I was so very afraid of being alone!

“When you returned from the monastery, you were so changed: You had become more intense, more determined. By your side, I felt free, at my ease, delivered. I was so happy to be able to count on your strength once again! And yet, even in those moments of happiness, I still did not know that it was love. You were merely a breath of reason in all the madness, a dependency that did me some good, a habit that made my life a little easier…

“When I came to see you yesterday, your face was ashen. Your hair was wrapped around you like a black shroud. Thinking you were dead, I screamed in despair. It was then that I realized that you alone exist, that we two alone exist in this world, and that the rest is just shadows, ideas, and absurd dreams. A wave of heat surged through me. Borne by this extraordinary force, I knew that I would readily die for you. All the anxieties and the nameless torments that have haunted me since my childhood suddenly disappeared. Heavenlight, now I know what it is to love!

“Heavenlight, I want to prove to you that I love you, I want to protect you from the slander, the poisons, and the black magic. I want to offer you the honor you deserve. The world shall prostrate itself at the feet of the woman who has brought me grace. The Empress will be dismissed. You shall take her place. Together we shall reign over Earth for a thousand years, for ten thousand years, until the skies fall in.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. Did I deserve such distinction? The sovereign had chosen me among the thousands of women in his gynaeceum. He was offering me the supreme title, proof of absolute love. What could I give him in return? I was already his slave; I had already given him my body and my soul. He was the only man I had known. Like a dog devoted to his master, like a newborn babe clinging to the breast that feeds it, had I loved him wholly and sincerely? Little Phoenix was my destiny, and I was his Heavenlight. He freed me from the prison of those women condemned to a slow death, I delivered him from his frigid existence in the Forbidden City. We were two children joined together by pity and a feeling of revolt.