A pain wrenched my chest, but I controlled my trembling. I looked slowly over those ashen faces and picked out Li Zhan, Lieutenant General of the Guard of the Right.
“I have heaped honors and wealth on you and your father,” I told him: “Why are you here today?”
He kept his eyes lowered, stayed silent and impassive.
Then I turned to Great Secretary Cui Yuan Wei, “While others owe their promotion to ministerial recommendations, you alone have been trained under my supervision throughout your career. What are you doing here? Are you not ashamed of what you have done?”
He backed away on his knees and prostrated himself, keeping his head to the floor.
“Future, there is no point in hiding. I can see that you are here too, to ”reassure‘ me. Now that the usurpers are dead, you may go back to your palace!“
He paled, struck his head against the ground, and headed for the door. The Magistrate Huan Yan Fan caught hold of his sleeve and cried, “Majesty, the Supreme Son must not return to his palace! Long ago the Emperor Lordly Ancestor entrusted his education to you, but he is a grown man now. It is the wish of the heavens and of your people that you should hand over power to him now!”
“Who is so insolent that he speaks for the imperial heir?” I asked. “Remove him!”
Future tore himself from his servant’s grasp and fled.
“Majesty,” said Great Minister Zhang Jian Zhi, prostrating himself again, “the Supreme Son is ready to reign. Please trust in him!”
“The Supreme Son has left. Why are you still here?” I said, turning my back to them. Without the Heir, the conspirators were quickly discouraged and withdrew one by one. I could hear Court ladies weeping, and the serving women I had sent to find Simplicity’s and Prosperity’s bodies returned: The entrance to my pavilion was guarded by soldiers and no one could leave. I learned that Gentleness would not be coming-it was she who had opened the door of my palace to the insurgents.
Filled with extraordinary energy, I rose to my feet. The Sacred Emperor who held the Celestial Mandate and the Golden Wheel would open every closed door. She would find her lovers’ bodies and bury them with her own hands.
As I stepped out of my palace, the North Wind pierced right through me. I who had outwitted every plot, how had I not foreseen this one? Had I been reduced to this? I felt overwhelmingly faint and coughed until I spat blood. The soldiers’ gleaming lances became stars scattered across the night sky.
Ministers slash the still-twitching bodies. Soldiers throw the corpses onto a carriage and abandon them by a river. Snow falls, clouds of furious butterflies. Snow brushes over the black peonies of gaping wounds. Snow melts into open eyes, empty holes drinking in the sky. Crows spread their wings and hop down from the trees, cawing. Lean wolves and jackals come out of the woods, bellies brushing through the powdery snow. Pointed beaks lacerate those purple faces, and bloodied jaws delve through the exposed entrails. A starving fox circles round the carcasses then lunges, snatching Prosperity’s sexual organ before fleeing across the plain.
I was woken by the sound of my soul screaming.
In that overheated room with its glowing braziers, the feeble crying of my serving women was punctuated only by my own rasping breath. A fever burned in my chest but my limbs were icy cold. The pain spreading through my body only aggravated my unbearable suffering. With the shutters closed and curtains lowered, I did not know whether it was day or night. The flames projected shadows on the walls, and I thought I could see Prosperity’s silhouette among them. It was all a nightmare! The Zhang brothers would wake me from this anguished sleep, slipping under the covers with me. With their cool skin against mine, we would wait and see dawn break: The windows would open and the light would wash away the painful memories.
A man started speaking. Startled, I turned toward him and recognized Great Chancellor Zhang Jian Zhi kneeling beside my bed. His words dug deep into my ears. His very presence reminded me there had been a massacre. It was all over: Simplicity and Prosperity were dead!
The wicked traitor tried in vain to justify his actions and to persuade me to sign a decree of abdication. His droning monologue was maddening; I did not even know how long he had been there, worrying at me. Seeing that I remained silent and unmoved, he withdrew, and my nephew Spirit took over trying to make me understand how serious the situation was. Even he had betrayed me!
Eventually my daughter Moon appeared. She talked about my health and how I needed to rest. She said that an empire could not survive without a master, and that the time had come to hand over the reins of power. Her words made perfect sense; they reminded me of Mother: Just like her, my daughter had never understood me.
I interrupted her explanations: I would sign my abdication if she gave the Zhang brothers a decent burial in a monastery on Mount Mang.
“I have carried this crown to save the Palace from discord and to delay the fall of the world. Ambitious men have urged your brother on, and he is now claiming it as his. I shall give it to him!”
Moon left with the document on which I had put my seal and my thumbprint. The silence rekindled my pain. I closed my eyes and could picture a troop of soldiers marching; I could hear the clatter of their weapons, their officers shouting, their feet stamping. Simplicity and Prosperity are running away through the snow. Simplicity’s face is suddenly twisted, his eyes roll back; he totters and falls. Prosperity carries on running toward my pavilion. He has lost his shoes, he trips over the bodies of serving women, crying “Majesty, help me!” An arrow carves through the air and strikes him in the middle of his forehead. His body freezes, his pupils dilate. He opens his mouth to give a silent wail and falls to his knees. A bright, frothy trickle of blood runs down between his eyes and over his nose. His face becomes so transparent that I read his last interrupted thought, his shattered poetry and evaporating breath.
Simplicity and Prosperity were dead. The last music in my life had fallen silent. What did anything else matter to me?
FUTURE ASCENDED TO the throne and gave me the title of August Emperor of Celestial Law. To distance me from my followers, the Court ousted me from the Forbidden City and set me up in a summer palace on the southern bank of the River Luo, to the west of the city. Every five days, the New Empress and Princess Moon would come to my door for news of my health, accompanied by Gentleness who now worked for my son and had been raised to the rank of Delicate Concubine. Every ten days, Future and his high dignitaries would raise an imperial cortege, and he would come to offer me his respectful salutation. The Court longed for me to die. All this artificial commotion was just play acting, to fool the people and the history books.
Despite the orders sent out to cut me off from the world, information filtered through those high, well-guarded walls. The Zhang brothers’ clan had been decimated. Officials and artists known to be their friends had been beheaded. There were countless heads displayed outside the Southern Gate of the Forbidden City, exposed to the abuse of passersby. The Empress, who wanted to start everything afresh, had driven out three thousand palace servants and Court ladies.
The activities of the Forbidden City no longer affected me. The anguish of my grief had stripped me of my vanity as if casting off unnecessary garbs. I was reduced to skin and bone, but I would not succumb. My will to triumph had come back with new vigor. As I lay on my bed, drawing each painful breath through my mouth, I decided to stop shedding tears over my fate and to accept the will of Heaven with my eyes open.