Shan Sa - Empress

My daughter disappeared, and I received Gentleness whom I had freed from the Cold Palace. The girl had been spared the one hundred strokes on my orders, but she had suffered the harsh treatment meted out to all imperial prisoners. In only a few days, she had become thin as a reed.

“I can make you powerful or take your life, do you know that?”

She prostrated herself at my feet in tears, and I sighed: “I know that, here in the Inner Court, Court Ladies, officials, and overseers are only too eager to obey you, and outside these walls, princesses shower you with compliments, and ministers and magistrates bend over backwards to please you. Your mother has been raised from the position of seamstress in the Side Court to the ranks of nobility once more. She has taken up residence in a palace, and I myself have given her precious stones and countless servants. You already have everything a woman could dream of! If you want to take a lover, choose one from among the princes and kings. Leave Little Treasure to me. He is mine.”

In my bed chamber that evening I dismissed my serving women and ordered Little Treasure to kneel. My mind was made up: If he did not love me and wanted to leave, he would be killed at the gates of the Forbidden City. If he loved me and decided to become a monk, I would give him honor and glory.

I eyed him sternly.

“You will not be executed or mutilated. I shall give you your freedom.”

A little shiver ran through him.

“Will I still be able to see Your Supreme Majesty?” he whispered.

As I gave no reply, he looked up. His beautiful face was bathed in tears: I had not realized that this hard-hearted man could falter too.

“Supreme Majesty, I beg you. Keep me. Don’t abandon me! Think of your servant as a dog who asks only for a little food and to stay by your side.”

I contained my emotions as I told him, “I cannot keep a man in the Inner Palace.”

“Then have me castrated! What does that matter to me now! Never mind if I can no longer give you pleasure and if I become like all the other eunuchs with their flaccid flesh and cloying eyes. I only hope my heart will stay intact and will still love you.”

“I would not let you leave as you arrived,” I said, trying to test him. “Once outside the Palace, you would be rich. The money I give you would be enough to buy the most beautiful concubines, to start a large family, set up a business, and become a respectable man. Why do you want to remain a slave when you could be a master with women and land? If you wanted you could own merchant ships that could transport you up and down the Empire with their scarlet sails billowing in the wind.”

The young man only wept more desperately: “Supreme Majesty, forgive me for hiding the truth from you. I did not leave my village because of an arranged marriage. The great epidemic in the first year of the Era of Eternal Purity killed my parents, my grandparents, and my brothers and sisters. I fled after burying all their bodies in the fields. After that I roamed around Luoyang with death hovering over me. In five aimless years I was beaten, robbed, and raped; I was spat at, kicked, and insulted. You are the first and only woman who took me in her arms as anything more than a tool. No woman in the world, not even my mother, looked at me with the tenderness that you do. Supreme Majesty, forgive me. Keep me in your gynaeceum or have me killed! Don’t abandon me!”

Little Treasure’s words tore me apart. His distress awakened my own. I sighed and drew him into my arms: “Then you must listen to me and do as I ask. You, the son of a peasant, the vagrant, the aphrodisiac-seller, you shall be respected by the world. If you obey me I shall make you, a man off the streets of Luoyang, into a glorious Lord in the Imperial Court.”

LITTLE TREASURE’S SUFFERING was that of my people, and I felt ashamed for living in artificial abundance within a fortified city. This Court bathing in its happiness was a miraculous island in an ocean of misery. When I resolved to change Little Treasure’s fate, the fate of one child picked up by the wayside of life, it was not merely to reward his devotion: He was my window to this world of despair. The Mandarin Competitions had allowed thousands of scholarly individuals to enjoy a better life, but diplomas could in turn become barriers, and opening doors could transform into exclusion. Peasant children, orphans, and abandoned youngsters still had no right to fulfill their talents. Little Treasure was one of these battered, frustrated creatures, and I was offering him a chance.

On my orders, the young man shaved his head and became a monk. As a member of the bonze community, he broke with his past and became unimpeachable. He surrendered the name Feng and the common first name Little Treasure, and I gave him the Buddhist title of Scribe of Loyalty. I asked my daughter’s husband, Xue Shao, to recognize him as a distant uncle, and from then on, he bore the name of the famous aristocratic Xue clan.

The impostor proved to be a genius: Scribe of Loyalty had that raw intelligence that has never been damaged by academic study. His time as a vagrant had sharpened his intuition, which was more effective than any bureaucratic reflections. His audacity and imagination made his tongue more agile than the wooden-mouthed administrators. His many experiences in his past life had metamorphosed into peculiar knowledge. Although he knew nothing of design, he restored the monastery of the White Horse with great aplomb. After leafing through some sutras and memorizing a few formulaic prayers, he stepped up onto the stage and preached with thundering conviction. All of Luoyang gathered round to hear sermons by the imperial lover. They found a magnificent temple filled with white lotus flowers and columns of incense escaping from huge basins to darken the sky. Through this intoxicating fog, monks could be heard chanting a steady, dull drone. Suddenly Celestial Kings loomed up taller than mountains, and a long line of bodhisattvas opened out, beaming with light. The faithful would eventually find Scribe of Loyalty in the very depths of the hall, sitting with his hands joined in prayer in the middle of a golden lotus glittering with millions of diamonds. With his wide forehead, lowered eyes, and bulbous earlobes, he was almost a celestial apparition. He himself started rumors that quickly spread throughout the city; soon the Capital was venerating him as the reincarnation of a famous Indian monk who had the gift of healing and magical powers.

A man’s glory lies in his clothes. When my guards removed the lacquered linen cap, ivory tablet, and jade-studded leather belt from a disgraced minister, the statesman with his unruly hair and wild eyes lost all his imposing presence, already reduced to a convict or a slave. Wrapped in his purple tunic, astride an imperial charger, preceded by palace eunuchs and followed by his acolytes, Little Treasure, the aphrodisiac-seller, had no trouble establishing himself as the most elegant aristocrat in the Imperial City.

The more prudish ministers in the Outer Court eyed the scandalous Scribe of Loyalty scornfully and sent me letters of protest, reminding me of stories I already knew: Sovereigns besotted by their favorites neglected their duties; their passions had been the ruination of dynasties. Others, always alert and at the ready, fought for opportunities to win favor with this new figure of power. Generals prostrated themselves before the monk, addressing him as Master. My nephews-arrogant, impetuous princes-held his bridle for him as he mounted his horse. I watched these scenes from my lofty position on my throne with a sly smile.

Scribe of Loyalty was a lie that had become a truth.

Scribe of Loyalty was the merciless mirror I held up to this absurd world.

IN THE SECOND year of the Era of Lowered Arms and Joined Hands, I put my second invention into operation: At the entrance to the Forbidden City, I installed a giant bronze urn embossed with inscriptions worked in pure gold by my goldsmiths. The urn was divided into four compartments and was to be used to receive letters from the people.