Future brought an end to the Zhou Dynasty I had inaugurated, closed the Sacred Temple of Ten Thousand Elements and expelled my ancestors from the Eternal Temple. The Empire bore the name Tang once more. The ministries went back to their former names, and banners and official tunics returned to the colors of old. The Court abolished the writing I had invented, and Luoyang was demoted, conceding its precedence as Capital to Long Peace. The world I had built was annihilated and I barely suffered from this appalling waste. The children I brought into the world, the ministers I trained and Gentleness who I set free had all betrayed me. But I was not haunted by the agonies of betrayal. I had not followed prosecutor Lai Jun Chen’s advice and had not exterminated my two families. I had not had Gentleness killed when told of her secret liaison with the woman who had become Empress. My indulgence was not a mistake, it was a renouncement. Just as beauty begins to fade the moment it blossoms, so I had already accepted that my Zhou Dynasty was the briefest episode in the great dream of History.
Yesterday Master of the World, today a humiliated prisoner, captive in my own paralyzed body, confronting the final trial of my existence. I did not loathe Zhang Jian Zhi and his followers who had snatched power from a sovereign weakened by old age. I forgave the heir his cowardice, taking the crown from his dying mother. I understood the choices my nephews had made as they struggled to stay on top of the churning waves. All those people had to carry on with their fears and efforts, and I no longer needed a mirror or a seal. I had freed myself from all that posturing; I was relieved of my burden.
Spring came once more. Prosperity and Simplicity would not see the peonies flower and the swallows return. My heart was at peace. The Court hoped that I would die but I was breathing. Defying illness, opening my eyes, throwing myself into life every morning were my duties. I had to finish writing in my mind the book of my life.
The frustration of an heir who had waited too long turned into the dissipation of an emperor too eager to enjoy his power. Future was permanently drunk, reeling from one party to another. Zhang Jian Zhi and Spirit vied for power in the Outer Court, and in the Inner Court the Empress Wei found a formidable rival in Moon, appointed by her brother as the Great Imperial Protector. Both women interfered with political decisions and fought to influence the weak sovereign.
Officials were already secretly regretting the end of my reign. Messages from them reached me, stitched into belts worn by my eunuchs. Too late! My body was still in this world, but my spirit had already left. One night, Spirit was let into my bedchamber. He threw himself at the foot of my bed and shed copious tears. This wily nephew had changed his tune: He promised to free me and to avenge Simplicity’s and Prosperity’s deaths. He tried in vain to obtain my signature authorizing him to overthrow Future. I watched him pityingly: I refused to give my dying name to another massacre. My lovers’ assassination would not be avenged; the Zhou dynasty would die with me. No more blood would flow in my lifetime. The Empire would not descend into chaos.
The news and messages dried up: My faithful eunuchs had in turn been driven out of the Palace, and I was now watched over by cold, aloof women. I was seen by a succession of imperial doctors. They too were new faces and, instead of curing me, their prescriptions weakened me.
From then on I refused every remedy, and the Court had to accept that their revelries must wait a little longer: So long as I was alive, I acted as a stern conscience, a pitiless mirror for them. My serving women no longer helped me change position; they had probably been given orders to let my flesh rot. Suppurating wounds gnawed at me day and night. My hair and nails kept on growing. The women filled my room with budding flowers and baskets of fruit to smother the fetid smell of their crime. The Emperor and his Court had stopped their salutations; Moon and Gentleness no longer came to see me. They wanted to kill me by forgetting me.
A rainstorm battered the peach blossom, and summer was upon us. A mysterious vitality within me still refused to capitulate. My pavilion was full of life: Simplicity and Prosperity, dressed in white lilac tunics and gazing at me dreamily, filled the air with their exquisite perfume; Mother leaned on her cane and described the marvels of the Pure World of Buddha; Little Phoenix rushed in and out, my celestial husband was always eager to set off on some journey. Ships with their sails ballooning in the wind navigated across my face and sailed off onto the ocean.
Then hundreds, thousands of horses made the floorboards thrum, galloping across my room with their hectic manes flying.
My ecstatic smile converted the women watching over me. They saw a golden light radiating from my body, and they prostrated themselves at my feet, venerating me feverishly. When they had washed me, fed me, and arranged my hair, I had my bed moved over to a window. Robins, magpies, crested parrots, and peacocks pecked at the garden where the irises had wilted and the orchids were shyly opening their buds. A wide path snaked through thickets of bamboo, its paving stones untouched by visitors’ feet for many months and covered in damp moss. I watched the lotus flowers blooming in the middle of a pond, aware I was seeing them flower for the last time.
I bid good-bye to the autumn as it left forever, then winter held me in its grip. Snow fell from the sky. I remembered the same time the previous year, watching Simplicity and Prosperity throwing snowballs at my court ladies. Their laughter and shouts still echoed but their silhouettes had already blended into the withered trees. Simplicity and Prosperity were gone. I did not know what had happened to my women. The silent falling of those white flowers had strung a net between the earth and the sky, where the living frolicked and played.
In the first year of the Era of the Divine Dragon, on the night of the twenty-fifth day of the eleventh moon, the snow stopped. Prosperity appeared beside my bed. He prostrated himself and then played his bamboo flute. Pearls of crystal streamed around me. The moon turned into a silvery river carrying me off in its glittering currents. I saw jade palaces in the skies, misty plains, and fields of light!
The following morning I asked for my topknot and makeup to be done as soon as the sun was up. Wearing my most beautiful jewels and dressed in a flame-colored tunic over a dazzling white gown, I dictated the epitaph that should be engraved on my funeral stela to be erected beside my husband’s.
I would reveal the beauty of the Zhou dynasty to any man who stopped before my tomb. He would learn of its prosperous towns, swift horses, deep forests, and magical rivers. He would admire the way the arts flourished and would praise the glory of its poetry. I described my pride in adoring the gods, venerating the ancestors, subduing men’s struggles, sanctifying Heaven, and reigning in the Temple of Clarity. I drew a portrait of myself as a humble sovereign, bowing to the will of one true God, the source of all divinities. The end would be the beginning; the ephemeral would become the infinite. My trials over, I would return to the skies.
At dawn the next day, the silence in my bedchamber was broken by the sound of horns and drums. Other sounds-horses whinnying and men shouting-were carried to me on the wind: Future and his Court were beating through the imperial forest.
Banners cracked in the wind. Leopards and hunting dogs ran ahead of the horses as stags fled through the undergrowth. Branches drew closer, whipping the intruders’ faces, then parted. Snow heaped on the tops of trees collapsed and fell in a fine powder. Breathing more labored. Heart beating, fit to burst. Suddenly, there was a lake, a block of ice, a mirror on eternity.