Shan Sa - Empress

The sovereign was affected by the betrayal of those he had believed to be loyal. When he had ordered Shang Guan Yi to write the edict for my deposition, he had been acting out of anger. Now how appalled he was to realize that a marital quarrel had served the purposes of a huge conspiracy! When I had refused to grant Harmony a title as concubine, enraged, the Emperor had realized that my authority overshadowed his own.

After our reconciliation, I was more careful about how I behaved and expressed myself. I was annoyed with myself for neglecting a man’s pride and a sovereign’s sensibilities. The incident dulled Little Phoenix’s appetite for politics. He was tormented by arthritis and headaches; incapacitated by these difficulties, he could no longer concentrate on debates. On the grounds that peace and prosperity reigned over the Empire, he abolished the morning salutations held at dawn every day, and the officials now gathered only every other day. Soon, weary of asking questions and holding discussions in his audiences, he suggested having a gauze screen behind his throne and putting my seat there.

People had known for some time that the sovereign made no decisions without consulting me and that eunuch messengers went backward and forward between the Outer City and the gynaeceum during audiences. This shuttling lost a great deal of time for the government and delayed emergencies. Never in the history of the dynasties had an empress reigned behind a curtain while her husband was alive, but, since Shang Guan Yi’s execution, the dignitaries had been afraid of angering me. The plan received approval from the majority; I stepped outside the City of Women for the first time and attended the audience with my husband.

The first year of the Era of the Crowned Sky was marked by the consecration of Tai Mountain. The splendor of this event erased the shadow cast over Court by the traitors’ executions. Great Remission was granted to the world, and several banished officials saw their exclusion from the Capital reversed. My cousins in their distant postings immediately asked for permission to come and congratulate me. Half way through the seventh moon, both men, who had waited patiently for their turn in the imperial lodgings, were able to prostrate themselves at my feet. In keeping with custom, they offered me specialties from the regions in which they were posted.

I deigned to invite them to a family feast with Mother, Harmony, and Intelligence in the Inner palace. The awnings were raised round the hall, letting darkness glide over our gowns. The wind rustled through the chrysanthemums and breathed its bitter perfume over us. Dancing girls waved their sleeves of orange and mauve brocade. Their melancholy voices sang of the wild geese leaving for far-off lands.

The eunuchs carried in lychee wine brought by my cousins. The elder of the two brothers stood up, poured the wine into my goblet, and offered it to me. I ordered Harmony to test the temperature because, according to legend, this wine was drunk very cold. The Lady of the Kingdom of Wei stood up and emptied the glass.

“Delicious.”

Her voice strangled in her throat. She was gripped by a violent convulsion, and she rolled to the ground, groaning terribly. Then she suddenly stopped moving. Eunuchs and servants ran in. I screamed murder and had my cousins seized. Mother fainted. Intelligence turned over his sister’s stiffened body: Black blood was flowing from the five orifices of her face. She was dead.

The following day the moon was full. The banquet celebrating the middle of autumn was cancelled. The Emperor dined alone with me. He drowned his heartbreak in drunken tears and promised to condemn to death the two men who had failed in their attempt to poison me.

The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.

AT THE AGE of ninety-one, Mother abandoned our sullied earth. The thought of her parting had tormented me for so long that once it had become a reality, it distressed me less. During her lifetime, she had never completely understood me. Now that she was dead, she had joined the divinities that brightened my nights with their gentle shining. Her funeral arrangements provided an opportunity for an extraordinary display of wealth and esteem. The sovereign abstained from appearing at the morning audience three times, and the Court and government followed their master’s example by observing the deep mourning usually reserved for empresses. The Chinese people dressed in linen and hemp to weep her august passing. Monasteries at the four corners of Earth rang their bells and prayed for her celestial journey. The glorious apotheosis that Mother enjoyed after her death was proof of my power. On the day of her burial, the funeral cortege processing out of the town stretched for more than one hundred lis. After the Emperor’s parade and the parade of kings and princesses, came the ministers, foreign princes, dignitaries, and crowds of common people. Over and above all this pomp and splendor, I wanted the woman who had brought me into the world to be paid special homage. The imperial regiments played their horns, blew their war bugles, and beat their battle drums. Like the Princess of the Sun of Ping, an exceptional woman who had fought to found the dynasty, Mother was to leave our world with the military honors granted only to men.

Until her dying day, Mother had cherished and protected Intelligence. It was only after she was buried that I authorized judges to investigate this nephew I could no longer tolerate. His mother and his sister had been imperial favorites, and he himself bore the flamboyant title of Lord of the Kingdom of Zhou: Having power thrust upon him so easily had gone to his head. He was beautiful and captivating, which had given him a reputation as a womanizer. Instead of thinking of his career, he had concentrated on his countless amorous adventures. With a group of affluent young peers, he had squandered his inheritance in the pursuit of unknown pleasures. He had even gone so far as to seduce the girl betrothed to the Supreme Son while she was making an offering in a temple. For fear of being seen, they would meet in secret in an inn beside the serpentine river on the edge of a wood of apricot trees. Their love was discovered by chance; my husband was furious and banished the betrothed girl’s family. While he was in prison, Intelligence screamed that I had poisoned his sister and had had him arrested for fear of his vengeance. The jailors silenced his absurd pronouncements with a sound beating.

Winter had come. My disgraced nephew lost his title and his fortune and was banished from the Capital. I sent a faithful guardsman to give him some warm clothes in his camp on the Mountain of the Extreme. When the lieutenant returned, he presented me with a silk belt on a silver tray. He informed me that, overcome with shame and remorse, Intelligence had asked to be hanged from a tree.

I no longer had any relations from the outside in Court, and this absence weakened my position. My family had been built and dismantled to suit me. I had given every one of them wealth and position, but Elder Sister’s renunciation had been the first betrayal, which had invited others. Instead of following my rise, they had chosen to fall. My childhood was dead; there were no longer any faces around me to remind me of the distant landscape of innocence. Father and Mother had slipped away, and my sisters had followed them. I had to carry on, accompanied by my regrets.

I called my nephews from my father’s clan back from banishment to fill this void. I conferred the title of Father’s heir and head of the clan on Piety, the eldest. One family had been destroyed, and a new one would be built. With my brothers’ and cousins’ sons back in favor, I set up the village of Wu in Court. The younger generation understood that I had power over their success or their demise. They would show fear and adulation for me. I would help them weave a labyrinth of power that would allow me to govern with nothing to fear.