Shan Sa - Empress

A few months later, the prosecutors made the charges again, issuing a writ against Prosperity for annexing good farmland so that he could extend his residence. Once again I had to negotiate with the government, and the young man was punished with a fine.

Prosperity lay weeping in the gynaeceum, tears rolling down his lovely face, transparent droplets, morning dew on a pale peony. When he was tormented and distressed, he was even more intoxicatingly beautiful. I secretly relished his charms as he wept, and I forgot to scold him for his lack of judgment. I promised I would remove his enemies from power-just to see him smile.

The world did not know that Prosperity’s idleness meant as little to me as the government’s obsessive tendency to see him as a challenge to the Supreme Son. I wanted to be done with it, and I was afraid of dying. I was making preparations for my final hour, and all the while hoping for another outcome. I concentrated what little strength I had left on fighting the terror every night before I fell asleep. One day I should never awake.

THE TEMPERATURE HAD plummeted in Luoyang, and autumn rains had turned to winter snow. The sky never cleared and was heavy as a sheet of iron. The roads became impassable and travel along the rivers had been stopped. Cut off from the world, the Capital began to deplete its reserves. I ordered for the imperial grain stores to be opened to save the poor, and for blankets to be handed out to vagrants.

The city was struck by an epidemic. Despite its deep ditches, high crimson walls and closed gates, the plague penetrated the Inner City. Nothing could hold it back, neither the medicinal herbs I had burned, nor their thick smoke that hung in every room, nor the monks’ prayers and conjurations against the spirits spreading this sickness. Along with many of my officials, I succumbed to a violent fever. I lay in bed in the Pavilion of Gathered Immortals and lost all notion of time.

Shadows danced against the walls; sobbing and murmuring came to me as distant waves. I was wandering through the dark, murky corridors of a world with only two seasons: winter, which turned me to ice, and summer, which grilled me in the sun. All of a sudden I stepped over the horizon and saw a lilac-colored sky dotted with mysterious twinkling. A moment later I realized I was seeing my embroidered velvet bed-hangings. I summoned my strength to turn my head to one side. In the lamplight I saw Simplicity and Prosperity sleeping on the bare floor, huddled together like two lost, frightened children. My heart beat with fierce emotion and images came back to me: I remembered Prosperity soothing my burning brow with ice-cold cloths, and Simplicity cradling me in his arms to feed me. I looked at their beautiful, pale faces and thought of their future, which was no longer a future. A son’s Court would take revenge on his mother’s favorites. All the pomp and wealth of the present would be their downfall. In the glory they enjoyed today was inscribed the punishment they would suffer tomorrow.

Outside the wind rattled through the bells hanging under the eaves, and their mournful tinkling made my pavilion seem even more dismal.

What season is it? Am I still alive? Have I already stepped into eternity, and are my two lovers-lying huddled and motionless-two bodies sacrificed in my name, two souls imprisoned in my tomb?

THE MOON WAXED and waned. The powerful infusions prescribed by my doctors quelled the burning fever in my body but upset my inner balance, and I was struck down with violent stomach cramps. Every morning the heir and my ministers would prostrate themselves before the gates of my palace, but I would send them away. I did not want them to see my ravaged face, my ashen complexion, or my withered body. I was not yet dead; my son would have to wait.

Like a silk worm curled in its opaque cocoon, I was wrapped in my lovers’ tender care: Simplicity pushing back his crimson sleeves, revealing the plum-colored lining, to bathe me; Prosperity weeping as he wiped my bed sores with a green handkerchief; Simplicity’s cheeks glowing from the dancing flames as he stood over the oven boiling my medicinal infusion; Prosperity’s cherry red lips blowing on a bowl of hot soup with a coriander leaf floating in it; Simplicity’s fine fingers plucking the seven horizontal strings of a zither; Prosperity, a vertical silhouette in the doorway, playing his bamboo flute.

My body slowly recovered its equilibrium, my appetite returned, and I was able to speak again. Now that I was out of danger, Prosperity and Simplicity went back to live in their residences outside the Forbidden City. The first night they did not sleep at the foot of my bed, I could not sleep. I was jealous, imagining Simplicity kissing a beautiful courtesan, and Prosperity, already drunk, letting himself be undressed.

From my bed, I began dealing with affairs of State again. Reports from my judges accused the Zhang brothers of harboring dark plans to usurp power. They claimed that a physiognomist had identified the features of an emperor in Prosperity’s face and that, having been told this, the young man had commissioned a temple in the province of Ding, choosing the site to favor his imperial destiny.

The prosecutors gathered by the door to my bedchamber, clamoring for the immediate arrest of the alleged culprit. Prosperity knelt beside my bed, so overwhelmed with tears that he could not speak. I eventually handed him over to them under the condition that the interrogation took place within the walls of my palace.

Eunuchs shuttled backward and forward to keep me abreast of the trial. I soon learned that Prosperity had refused to answer any questions but, in a rush of courage, had started insulting the Great Ministers and magistrates. The overseer Song Jing was furious and called for his instruments of torture.

Gentleness was sent immediately to announce my imperial clemency, and Prosperity was carried back by a eunuch, bathed in his own blood. This boy who cried so easily did not shed one tear; he prostrated himself to thank me and passed out. My lovers took up residence in my palace and, for fear of being arrested or assassinated, they no longer left that closed world. I had succeeded in keeping them by my side.

The pains and ills vanished from my body one after another. The Zhang brothers’ attentions had been more effective that any medicine. I started getting out of bed and forced myself to take a few steps. The year was drawing to a close; as one cycle ended, hope for a new beginning dawned. From within my palace, I granted the world the Great Imperial Remission: With the exception of rebel leaders, everyone who had been condemned for participating in conspiracies against my authority was pardoned. I dictated a proclamation changing the Era of Long Peace into the Era of the Divine Dragon. May the dragon’s squally breath blazing to the very skies give me the strength to defy death!

In the south, spring had already set light to the River Long. Another moon phase and it would reach the Sacred Capital: The River Luo would thaw, the sun would disperse the clouds. I would reach that miraculous pinnacle of longevity: My eightieth birthday would be a triumphant celebration. The peonies in the Imperial Park would bloom once more, and my eunuch gardeners would bring me new varieties- green, mauve, black, pearly, gold… I would live.

THE SNOW DANCED and swirled, cedar-wood crackled in bronze braziers. I only had to cough for my serving women to light their candles hastily and bring me hot tea. In that first year of the Era of the Divine Dragon, on the twenty-second day of the first moon, I was happy to wake. I looked up at the ceiling and down the scarlet pillars, and my eyes came to rest on a huge branch of plum blossom that Prosperity had brought me. I urged my hairdresser and makeup women to hurry and finish their torture. Then I put on a saffron-colored tunic with a dark, inky lining, and a purple brocade coat lined with crimson. I lay on my bed and made sure that one end of my sash trailed along the floor; it was painted with mountains in winter and frozen rivers, birds flying over naked trees, a deep cave where the goddesses of water played a game of go.