THE EMPEROR’S RING
by
Joy Shayne Laughter
Published by Open Books Press, USA at Smashwords
www.openbookspress.com
An imprint of Pen & Publish, Inc.
Bloomington, Indiana
info@PenandPublish.com
www.PenandPublish.com
Copyright © 2010 Joy Shayne Laughter
Discover other titles by Joy Shayne Laughter at Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
The reason I experience great evil is
That I have a persona.
If I have no persona:
What evil could I experience?
—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
German tr. Richard Wilhelm, English tr. H. G. Ostwald
A long time ago, a small piece of yellow jade was found in one of the Ten Kingdoms that comprised the land of China. The yellow jadestone came to a craftsman’s table in the Imperial Workshops at the palace of the Han Emperor. The craftsman rolled the stone around in his hands and looked deeply into its colors and character. He listened to what his ancestors whispered about the jade’s soul; about its powers; about the long, long, long road it would travel through years and across seas.
The craftsman set about the slow, careful process of carving the jade. He fashioned it into a ring, large enough for a strong man’s finger, with a turtle as the guardian spirit of the wearer’s long life.
The ring settled upon a finger of the broad hand of a Han lord – a man who eventually became Emperor. One of the jade’s powers was listening to, and keeping safe, the life and thoughts of the human whose flesh-warmth fed its soul. The jade turtle ring grew heavy with its story, and held it even after the yellow jade circle had been cut away and the turtle was transformed into a pendant on a string.
More than two thousand years after this transformation, a Sensitive man held the golden turtle pendant in his hands, and the jade released its story into his consciousness. The Sensitive man shivered with the rush of understanding. He was hearing two voices from the jade—for two people had worn the turtle ring in the Han palace.
~
My son is angry with me because I have taken a new concubine.
He has given me his ring.
There is merit in his anger; I have caused him to lose face.
The golden turtle, a jade the color of firelight. The turtle signifies longevity. Not immortality, understand.
It will have to be so. The girl shines too brightly to leave her on this mountain.
He means it as a protection for me.
I look at her; I listen to her discourses, her poetry and recitations; in my presence she performs the lightly dancing movements that cultivate immortality; I can feel immortality growing in me as I watch; a precious gift the Son of Heaven did not expect.
He wore it on a finger, I wear it on a thumb. I have never worn jade as an ornament except in my hair, even after more than a year in the Imperial Palace. Strange how the stone grows warm on my flesh.
Her name is Water Song.
Protection. Another shell to cover me in this dead world of endless walls and gardens. Endless rooms, endless screens. Endless servants piercing me with their dead eyes.
After the temple’s festival day, I lie in my pavilion and speak that name to the softly billowing tent roof: Water Song.
But when I wear this turtle, the whispers will stop. The cruel comments and pranks, the pokes and pinches, the murmured threats and rumors of poison will stop. Must stop. Because this jade is a sign of the Emperor’s regard. His affection. His protection.
The next day I sit in a hall with the girl and her Masters, and debate with her—with a fourteen-year-old girl! And we make each other laugh!
I have been two people ever since putting on the Emperor’s silks and stepping into his palanquin.
The second night, I lie in my pavilion and think of the great Imperial Palace, the seat of the Son of Heaven. It seems a very dark place, without Water Song in its halls and courtyards.
An absurd tale says that the Emperor’s gaze created the whole world as he looked down from heaven, before taking birth in the human realm. I do know that the Emperor’s gaze created a second Water Song.
How can I explain this to my son?
Water Song, the concubine. A girl from no family, raised to unheard-of status and carried off to the Imperial Palace! A character in a poem, now sung everywhere in the Ten Kingdoms.
The others hardly matter. My son Jade Mountain has lost face and I have a duty to his honor as much as he has a duty to mine.
My Temple Masters forbade me to think of this as a cruel fate. Everything is the Way, the Tao, they said. Do not resist, let the Tao’s movements guide you, become one with their current.
Here is how it shall be done: The choice to become a bright jewel of the Imperial Household shall belong to the girl.
But I am not one. I am two. I am myself, she who dances the movements of immortality, who unites with life itself. And I am Water Song the Imperial Concubine … dressed, painted, beaded, bathed, perfumed, paraded, instructed, protected … and despised because I have not yet entered the Emperor’s bed.
If she enters the life of a concubine of her own accord, who has been harmed? My son can be pacified by this, and so can those pestering voices around us.
I am still a virgin.
And she has no family! Is it possible to describe the freedom in this? She is an open door, a clear sky. Not even my First Wife can accuse me of having a political purpose in elevating this girl. Surely my son will understand this.
To the other concubines and the many Wives, to their eunuchs and maids, I am a monster.
Water Song is angry with me, too.
I have a friend.
I remind her that coming with me was her choice. She retorts: “Whatever it pleases the Emperor to offer is a blessing from heaven and cannot be refused.” Another proper sting, given fearlessly … yet with eyes cast down and a quiet demeanor—which is not the air of the quick debate mistress who made me laugh.
In the first week of my new life as an Imperial concubine, I joined the entire group of Wives and concubines for a dinner. After the meal, a musician appointed to our Court told humorous stories and sang poems, all of his own invention. He was young, only a few years older than myself, with dimples like two extra smiles on his moon-round face. His nickname, I learned, was Cookpot, because he bubbled with surprises. It was true—he wove his anecdotes and jokes into designs that revealed the Way’s teachings. I laughed with delight! It echoed in the room. No one else even chuckled.
There are shadows in this situation. If the Son of Heaven cannot bestow the gift of free choice, what is his true power?
The Emperor’s Wives and concubines seem as varied as a quick-fry dinner, but underneath their robes they are all vegetables from the same patch. At that moment they looked at me with one expression: contempt. I was a bumpkin from nowhere, to laugh so. I was ignorant, to feel so much pleasure. I was a fool, to show what I felt.
Here is how it shall be done: Water Song is a gift of freedom to me because she has no family. I shall gift her with as much freedom as can be granted to a concubine. I shall invent such freedom for her that Emperors a thousand years from now will honor their favored women in the same way.
There was one who did not look at me. That was First Wife.
The first and greatest freedom is this: The Silence of a Hundred Paces, no listeners or watchers for that distance around us, so that Water Song and I may speak as man and woman.
Her cushion raised her higher than the other Wives, for she is not only the first woman taken to consort with He who ascended the Dragon Throne, she is the mother of the Emperor’s first-born son. The other mothers of the Emperor’s children sat on cushions that raised them higher than the still-childless concubines. First Wife does not need a cushion in any case. She is long of limb and waist, with an extended neck like a swan’s, and her face sweeps up from a pointed little chin to a wide forehead perfect for carrying elaborate swirls of hair and jewelry. It is evident that she considers herself an Empress, even though the Emperor has not named his First Son, her child, as his heir, which would officially elevate her to the rank and title.
The second freedom is this: Water Song shall enter my bed only as her own desire dictates. I shall not force her. But I shall win her. It shall be a campaign the great scholars of war never imagined!
This Jade Crane of Heaven did not look at me when I laughed. Instead, she slowly lifted her fan and wafted it back and forth. As if dispersing a stink.
She asks for the use of the large garden, the Sunrise Garden, for her exercises. Well, why not? The other conditions, though—they are somewhat more complicated. No guards visible. And one blind, mute music master to accompany her movements. Well, if the Son of Heaven can create the Silence of a Hundred Paces, he can create a garden where no one watches a girl exercise.
The other Wives and concubines looked away from me and did exactly the same. It wasn’t another breath before the many eunuchs in attendance had their fans out as well. Waft, waft, waft. What a breeze.
She is less angry than before. Perhaps she is getting used to life in the Palace. A good bed and good food—who wouldn’t prefer that?
My face flooded hot with shame. I knew what this meant for me from now on.
But my mind tingled—the feeling that someone was looking at me.
It was Cookpot. Holding my gaze, he lifted one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth, so that one dimple winked just for me.
“Why bother with them?” was his message.
I gave Cookpot a smile of gratitude. A small one. I had learned that much in one day.
We have been friends ever since, in the small ways that are the only ways possible in this world of protective shells and peeping eyes. Although he is not a eunuch, Cookpot is permitted to enter the Women’s Palace for entertainments due to his artistry. Fortunately this same artistry makes him unfit to wield power in the Emperor’s government. Music has un-manned him in the eyes of the law. Everyone in the Women’s Palace knows what punishment our funny poet would suffer if he were caught in a liaison with one of the Emperor’s women; some of the concubines find this exciting, but I am content to observe the customs of this matter, to preserve his life.
Yet when he made a simple gesture of kindness to me, a suffering concubine, I felt such a suffusion of emotion throughout my flesh that I wondered at it, before remembering—such sweetness is the welcome of friendship.
“A poor poet, long building a shaky tower of inkstrokes, seeks the sure foundation stone of your understanding,” he wrote to introduce a roll of poems sent for my commentary.
“What does the nightingale remember of flight among the stars? Fill your ears with stars, and listen,” read one of them.
Small things like this landed like drops of rain on a drought-sickened earth.
I have often stood in the woods, or on the stones of the mountain, and lifted my face to receive the rain. I would make my mind unite with its downward-blessing rush, until I could feel myself rise into the air with the dew and ride the wind like a cloud. Then, when my mind came to my body again, I looked out upon a new, clean world.
In this way I closed my eyes in the gentle rain of friendship with Cookpot. And when I opened them again I found a different world, where I had no more wisdom, nor any ground under my feet.
Rebellion has broken out in one of the Kingdoms.
If I were a cruel Son of Heaven, straightaway I would harness hunger and desperation as my Generals. These two masters drive the most ragged and untrained peasants to a ferocity that overwhelms even Imperial soldiers.
Once again, the peasants of a poor farming region have rallied behind a self-appointed savior who will liberate them from the heartless Emperor. My father dealt with many uprisings like this, and I saw such rebels first hand in my military youth.
This time, it seems that no one knows who the rebel General is. He rides masked, and goes by several code names. His peasant army has already liberated seven granaries and redistributed thousands of head of cattle. Some rustic poet has even composed a bawdy song about him and his army.
This is no ordinary country hero, then. He does not boast of his name for local glory. He understands the uses of drama and mystery.
I went to an archery contest. Cookpot invited me.
His special place in the Imperial Court, in addition to being the foremost student of the Emperor’s best musicians, is as shih to Third Wife’s child, one of the Emperor’s sons. This prince had challenged some of his brothers and other young men of the Court to best him in archery. It was all a matter of fun, a chance to gamble and enjoy being outdoors. I wanted to see Cookpot match wits with the other shihs, improvising poetry as they counted the hits and misses.
I must send an army to crush this rebellion, even as my ministers and their deputies scurry to gather reports from the region on the conditions that inspired it.
I sat in a pavilion with the other concubines. They tolerated me in public but could be vicious in our private apartments. Needles in my food, for instance. Mice in my bedding. “Oh, look, your country cousin has come to visit!” they would laugh. In public they merely joked about me behind their fans. It was easy to ignore them and watch the contest.
Even as I enjoyed the action and antics, sadness misted the edges of my mind to see that the Imperial Court considered this to be “outdoors.” Really it was a large garden, surrounded by high walls wide enough for guards to stroll on the top. My mountain temple and its forests seemed to be a heaven on the other side of the sky.
Here is another chance to test a son’s character. First Son is already away suppressing barbarian incursions on the Southern border, so this rebellion will be Jade Mountain’s task.
By his own merit and effort, he has regained the honor my new concubine cost him. He defeated all challengers in a recent archery contest. An industrious Prince, indeed! We shall see what lessons he teaches to the masked General.
My mind tingled. Someone was looking at me.
It was the Prince, Jade Mountain. The son of Third Wife; the Prince who had mounted the contest. All day his happy smile and natural way with the Court made the competition a relaxed, festive affair.
He was definitely looking at me. One hand on his hip.
I will never forget this memory of him. It was like a break in the clouds, for someone to look at me in a clean way, without contempt. It could only mean he had no idea who I was.
This memory is still as sharp as sunlight. The blue and black of his tunic, the tight topknot of his raven-black hair, the red cords on his boots. The sweeping black wings of his eyebrows. His face, pale gold and shining slightly in the late summer heat, had an afternoon’s beard shading his smooth, broad cheeks. He was not exactly smiling, but rather puzzled and held by the sight of me.
The Prince called Cookpot to his side. Cookpot knelt with happy obedience. The Prince posed a question. Cookpot glanced at me, then answered. The Prince dropped his hand from his hip, but he kept looking at me. The serious curiosity in his face changed to something else, something that shifted like a bright river. What was it?
Then I remembered that this was the Prince who refused to come to the temple festival, so as not to burden the female Seekers with the gaze of a young man looking for a wife. He had lost much face when the Emperor walked out of the temple with a new concubine.
No wonder his expression was full of unreadable emotions, seeing me.
I had learned some of the messages that could be passed back and forth by movements of a fan. I rarely used them, since no one would talk to me and I talked to no one besides the Emperor and Cookpot. But I drew my fan from my sleeve and touched it to my left shoulder, for the Prince. I had no hope of going unobserved, but at least I would not disgrace him. My fan movement meant, “I honor one of true heart.”
He blushed. He blushed! I could control the shape of my mouth by this time, but I know a smile of delight filled my eyes.
Then the Prince was called away to the archery contest, with his shih attending. I was left alone with the concubines. But something wonderful had happened.
I felt like one person again.
~
A few days after the archery contest, another roll of writings came from Cookpot for my commentary and suggestions. Folded in with the bamboo wood strips of poems and funny anecdotes was a piece of silk. One of the most exquisite passages from Lao Tzu was written on it in delicate inkstrokes. At the bottom was a line of characters in a different hand. It read, “If the Way could be foretold, it would not be the Way. With great respect— “ and the red stamp of the Prince Jade Mountain.
I stared at the silk for I don’t know how long. The light in the room had changed by the time my mind came back to my body. I heard the heavy padding of an exceptionally fat eunuch coming down the corridor. It was time for one of my private visits with the Emperor.
For the first time in my life, I had something to hide—in a room where servants and enemies were always poking around! I stuffed the silk into my robe, under my breast. The eunuch opened the screen to find me going over Cookpot’s poems.
The march to the room set aside for my visits with the Emperor follows a strict order, to protect us both. First the Exceptionally Fat Eunuch retrieves me from my quarters and escorts me to the edge of the concubines’ compound. There we pick up three more eunuchs for a trip across a courtyard. In the next compound we are joined by two guards, fully armed. This group trots along a shortcut through two more compounds—I have never known what they house—to a very large gate where we are met by more guards, two of whom take their places in our group. Now we are in the Emperor’s private household. Four guards striding foursquare, four eunuchs in diamond formation, and in the middle, me.
I am always glad of the thick bodies around me in the Emperor’s household. Somewhere in these halls lives First Wife. Her ability to spy on and torment her rivals is legendary. The stupider concubines whisper that she is the daughter of a spider, so that all the spiders in the walls and rafters must bring her news of the entire court and even the entire Empire.
The Emperor has arranged that our visits are within the Silence of a Hundred Paces. That means no watchers, no guards, no spies, no servants at all for a hundred paces all around.
I enter the room first, and kneel on a cushion in the center. Painted silk screens are placed around me. There is a short wait, and then the screens are whisked away. There before me sits the Emperor. The servants carrying the screens disappear fast. Thus we have something like privacy.
It would be false to say I do not enjoy these visits. Cookpot is a privileged servant in the Court, but he is still a servant, and I have to be very careful in my communications with him. The Emperor, on the other hand … well, he is the Emperor, but he is also a man of intelligence and spirit, with an interesting character. We were at ease with each other from our first debate in the temple. We made each other laugh! I remember thinking that night that I would not mind debating the Emperor again, should he decide to visit again.
Now here I am his concubine, isolated inside a maze of palaces and spies, and he is the only human being I can really talk to.
With that scrap of silk tucked under my breast, I knew I was betraying him.
I was two people again.
Once back in my rooms, I hid the letter in the little box that holds my clean monthly bloodrags. Not even the eunuchs like to poke in there.
~
The Emperor gave me use of the large garden, called the Sunrise Garden, for my exercises, the movements that cultivate immortality. To accompany me, Cookpot chose a blind musician who seemed to see with the strings of his instrument. For a while, I could forget that I was in a walled garden with armed guards posted just out of sight.
And then, one day … tingle.
Someone was looking at me.
My eyes could not see anyone concealed in the bushes or lying on top of the wall. I returned to my exercise, and sent a question to the bushes, trees and sky.
They replied, and showed me a tree. Someone was hiding in it among the thick golden leaves. I couldn’t see him with my eyes, but he was there. Like a rock in the flow of a brook.
A guard? No, it did not feel like a guard. The flow of the brook said this rock was not a guard.
There is always a point of choosing. You can resist, or flow. You can open a gate and step through, or lock it shut. I could have called for a guard. I could have walked up to the tree and shouted, “Hello, who’s that?”
Instead, I focused my light, dancing movements on the person in the tree. As if I were dancing for him, or as if we were in a kind of friendly combat.
I wanted this person to join me in my dance, whoever it was.
This was a game I used to play with my Masters and the brother and sister Seekers in the Temple. A screen would be set between us. The game was to dance together and respond to each others’ movements, without being able to see each other. Later on, we progressed to blindfolds in a room, or a courtyard, or a snowstorm. Always we would dance together, sometimes touching, sometimes not, but always feeling and responding to each other’s movements.
Many people think this exercise is intended to improve combat skills. What a misunderstanding. The exercise is not possible if your intent is to kill or harm the other person. The movements are destructive to both body and spirit if their source is anger.
The exercise is an increase in lightness and joy. To be done properly, you expand your welcome and embrace of all life, refining each perception and response to the most subtle levels. It is teasing play, where two minds learn to meet, speak together in silence, and then have a witty debate in movement.
That was how I embraced and teased the person in the tree. To make a quicker journey to the subtle lights, I wrapped my scarf over my eyes. The Sunrise Garden was a place of waving colors and light behind my blindfold, as if all the trees and plants were made from illuminated silks paddling in a breeze.
First I met the awareness of the person in the tree, then embraced it—as if gently picking up that rock in the brook. I danced with that awareness until the rock softened and wriggled, and became a small dragon in my hands. I let it run up my arm and then across my shoulders, down my back, around my waist, circling my legs. The musician heard the extra fire in my movements, and added flame to the peppering melody plucked on his instrument.
Thus I danced with a dragon in that garden of lights.
I ended the exercise resting on one foot, with the other leg and arm extended. I released the dragon back to the air, and to the tree, so he would reunite with the body of the person who had been watching me. The musician sensed my completion, and brought his melody to an end.
In the garden’s sudden quiet, I removed my blindfold and turned to the tree that I knew held the watcher. I still could see nothing there with my eyes.
But I bowed deeply to the tree, and then left the garden, touching the musician on the arm so he would follow me. My watcher should have as safe a passage out of his tree as he had getting there.
It was not even a full day before I found out who had been watching me.
I received another silk, tucked into a roll of bamboo strips from Cookpot.
“Forgive me,” it read, in Jade Mountain’s hand. “I heard such stories of your immortality dance at the temple festival, I convinced Cookpot to help me hide in the garden to see you for myself. Please have no anger towards Cookpot. I had to win a bet with him before he would consent to expose his friend in obedience to his lord.”
And then, his stamp.
Nothing more than that.
Irrational anger rose up in me. Nothing more than that?
I found my own set of brushes and inks. I turned the silk over and prepared to write, “I hereby give Cookpot permission to hide you anywhere you would command. I understand the Imperial Stables are well-guarded and full of secrets. Please tell me what you find there.” Fortunately I stopped my hand.
Probably he did not want to speak of his experience in the tree, or perhaps he couldn’t find the words to speak of it.
Finally I wrote, “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao.” I hesitated, wanting to write more but not daring. Did I need to ask the Emperor’s permission to correspond with one of his sons? “I am grateful in excess for Cookpot’s friendship,” I added, and set my own red stamp on the letter to end it.
I re-rolled the silk into the bamboo strips and reached for the door to call a servant—then stopped myself again. Why would I send back Cookpot’s writings, when I had just received them? That would raise all kinds of gossip among the servants.
I hugged the bamboo roll tight and just sat there. I didn’t even want to read Cookpot’s poems.
Suddenly I unwrapped the bamboo strips, shook out the silk and picked up my brush again.
Beneath the line, “I am grateful in excess for Cookpot’s friendship,” I added in very small characters, “And yours.”
The next day I sent the bamboo strips back to Cookpot. I still had not read his poems.
That night we concubines sat with the Emperor at dinner. Some of the Emperor’s Sons were also in attendance, along with much of the Court. The air among the men was that some important matter had been settled, and festivities were in order to raise a screen around their already buzzing plans.
Jade Mountain was there, beside the Emperor. At closer range, I could see that his eyes were not entirely black, but lightened with green.
I could not rest my gaze on him for very long, because of course the concubines were on display. To signal with my fan was impossible, in this setting. Yet the heat of Jade Mountain’s gaze was palpable.
My hand surrendered to that heat. It rose and caressed my hair, as if checking the balance of my pins and ornaments. Slowly, it circled my ear and traced the line of my jaw. Slowly, it lowered across my body, touching my robes, and finally came to rest in my lap.
He blushed again.
Someone spoke to him and he turned away … but the heat diminished only slightly. Food arrived. Jade Mountain carefully lifted a morsel of meat to his mouth and ate it. Slowly. Staring at me with that heat. Even without looking directly at him, I could feel the strength of his jaw and melting of the meat. I took a morsel of the same meat from the same dish at the concubines’ table, and ate it, slowly.
We spent the evening like that: eating, talking lightly with others, attending to the Emperor’s remarks, but always in that subtle communion. Savoring each other. The room’s width between us was nothing. The Imperial Court nodded around us like flowers in a breezy garden.
My next roll of bamboo strips from Cookpot bore this note from that dear shih: “Dear Fragrance (his name for me since my laughter was fanned away), I have gratitude as high as the Yishan mountains that you should desire ever more invention from my ragged brush. It is with some panic, then, that I advise you of my increased duties in service to my lord the Prince. Thus if my poem-rolls are to remain the same size, I must include some old works. I hope you will forgive me, and perhaps find a familiar pleasure in these tales re-told.”
I untied the bamboo strip rolls and saw that not only were these old works, they were drafts of poems I hadn’t liked much. Puzzled and disappointed, I unrolled one more layer of strips … and stopped.
The middle of the roll had been cut out, so that the whole of it was fashioned into a secret box. It held a narrow roll of silk, and a cloth belt.
The belt was embroidered with a garden’s worth of flowers. Twining in the midst of them, a dragon held the moon in its mouth.
I turned the belt over and over in my hands and fingered its entire length. It was fine quality stitching from the Imperial workshops. And, oh – the backing opened up. In fact, this was a long, secret pocket disguised as a belt.
Did I hear a shifting outside my door? I may have imagined it, but fear stabbed my ribs. It would be so easy to be caught, in this spiders’ nest! I made myself laugh, and begin singing one of Cookpot’s poems, as if I were reading an old favorite.
I had an idea what the belt was for. The rolled silk confirmed it. It was a letter from Jade Mountain.
Bright Maiden, it began, and my heart leapt – then sank as he revealed that the matter underlying last night’s dinner was the peasant rebellion going on in a remote Kingdom. It had been decided that Jade Mountain would lead the army to crush it. In three days he would leave the Imperial Palace. I never thought that presenting an archery contest made a man fit to command Imperial soldiers, but apparently my father holds these things differently, he wrote.
I will not tempt the gods by saying when I hope to return, he continued. Until then, Cookpot remains behind at the palace to take care of my affairs here, and—most importantly—to receive and post my correspondence with my mother. You can imagine there may be a letter not addressed to her! To maintain your safety, the belt enclosed here can hide the silks. If you examine my livery as I ride out, you will see that I have taken similar measures for my silks from you. I have grown to manhood in this Imperial puzzle-box, and will keep us both safe from its intrigues.
I must take my leave of you now, dear Maiden, in haste, but with this final confession: I envy Cookpot. He, and not I, once heard you laugh.
And his red stamp.
I had fallen silent while reading. I began to sing another one of Cookpot’s older poems. At the same time I hurriedly stuffed the letter into the belt. I added the first silk letter from its hiding place among my bloodrags, and tied the belt around my waist. I then removed the roll of blank silk and tucked it among the bloodrags. Then I re-rolled and tied the bamboo strip bundle and laid it beside my writing desk, where I always kept Cookpot’s works.
I finished singing the poem, stretched out on the floor and stared at the ceiling. I wondered if I could die just by willing myself to float through the dark-stained wood.
I had never given up my hope that the Emperor would tire of me and send me back to the Temple. That somehow, some year, I would return to my Seeker’s robes, and once again live stripped down to essential Life. Like a stubborn child I silently vowed to never, ever fall in love with the Emperor.
It never occurred to me that I might fall in love with his son.
Three days later I sat with the concubines to watch the army depart through the main Palace gates. The autumn sun was unusually warm and the crowd’s fans fluttered like a field of butterflies. I sat still and waited.
I am surprised to see Water Song join the concubines at the grand departure of Jade Mountain and his army. There she is, the youngest in my box of pearls. Her hairstyle and ornaments are less elaborate than the other concubines, and far less so than the Wives. As always, it is her eyes, her gaze, that captures me. The other pearls, I can almost taste the warming spices of their mouths and smell their individual perfumes, hear echoes of their various love-cries. When I see Water Song, I wonder what she is thinking.
Jade Mountain rode past. He saluted the Wives’ pavilion, where his mother sat. He did not salute the concubines.
A colorful embroidered belt peeked between the layers of his armor.
Jade Mountain passes my seat and salutes me. I think, “I hope he returns.”
Please let him return, I prayed to the gods. Please, please let him return.
~
Autumn has turned to midwinter, and still Jade Mountain stalks the rebel General.
The weeks have dragged on through the autumn and into winter, with no letter from Jade Mountain. I have dared send off only two to him—both were short. It seems my heart has begun speaking a language I don’t understand. I have scoured the scriptures seeking the wisdom that can translate myself to myself. To Jade Mountain I could only send scraps of scriptures and poems, with brief remarks of my own.
I have begun to hunger for the hours with Water Song.
There are times in our empty room that we do not speak, and barely move. I simply need the silence, and her presence. It is not entirely freedom, but it is close enough to give me ease.
Yet her gaze searches me intently now, and her face is more open. Could it be that she is warming towards me?
The Emperor, too, is worn down and silent. I search his face for the beginnings of Jade Mountain’s face. If the Prince does not return, the Emperor will be all I have of him. Then, Cookpot sends the roll of “old poems.” Inside the hidden compartment is a bundle of silk rolls from Jade Mountain. Cookpot can only shrug – a large delivery of letters and messages came all at once through the winter snows.
There are several short notes, each beginning, “Written in haste -,” and saying merely, “I think of you often,” and describe some phenomenon of the weather or landscape that brought me to mind. There is one long scroll.
Bright Maiden, it begins, and my heart leaps as if no time had passed since autumn. But again it sinks, for the leisure to write comes at the price of a battle wound.
My account of the hardships and horrors we have seen, endured, and caused (worst of all!) would be a standard tale of war, he writes. I have asked Cookpot never to write of a campaign’s glory, for there is none. At best it is a world fully opposite the sedentary frivolity of the Imperial Court. Your two notes (why no more?) lifted my heart with their reminder of a third world, a peaceful way of Natural Life.
Again I will not tempt the gods, but will say that when I return, I will ask my father for a formal introduction to you, and request to be allowed some hours in your presence. I have seen and done things that I would discuss with you, as a Seeker who is also a Prince.
If this purpose is agreeable to the gods, I will indeed return and we may indeed develop a friendship, with my father’s approval. Some days this hope is all the brightness I possess.
I spend the next three days praying feverishly that such a purpose would indeed please the gods.
I cannot help but compare the feeling of peace in Water Song’s presence, with the feelings when I courted my First Wife … nearly twenty years ago! Such an extraordinary beauty! I called her my willow tree. I craved the sight of her, arching her neck, raising her face to the sky to reveal her endless white throat. She knew her throat could mesmerize. She knew I was caught. She knew I dreamed of possessing her. She knew I was determined to have her in my house, as my consort, and Wife when she became the mother of magnificent sons.
That was only the first step towards her ambition. I am not the great passion of her life. But I am necessary to achieve it.
She wants to be Empress. She has thought of nothing else since feeling my eyes upon her throat. This was long before I assumed the burden of Son of Heaven, but no matter. When she gave me my First Son, her desire only burned hotter. Even so, I did not immediately name First Son as my heir when the Kings and Lords proclaimed me Emperor. Had I done so, she would have been assured of becoming Dowager Empress upon my death. Perhaps I relished holding her great desire just out of her reach. Let her be mesmerized for a change.
Frankly, by the time I had maneuvered my way to the Seat of the Son of Heaven, I had seen enough of First Wife’s family. In fact, some years after First Son’s birth, while I was still a Lord of three Regions, I realized with shock that most of my ministers and their deputies were First Wife’s uncles and cousins. They were competent and diligent, but I cursed myself for allowing such nepotism to grow like a mold as I slept in the luxury of my First Wife’s body. Her voice had caressed each name with the same intoxicating murmur that she murmured on our pillow; I looked no further than that name for many of my highest-ranking officials. I was happy to shuffle most of them out to new duties in remote regions when I moved to the Imperial Palace.
Perhaps I can speak of all this one day to Water Song, in the Silence of a Hundred Paces. I would have her know what a treasure she is to me, because when we are together we are somewhere outside the tangled walls of family.
First Son has returned from the South, successful in his campaign against the barbarous tribes. Privately he confesses to me that the barbarians were easily routed this time—it wasn’t much of a campaign. Nor was it a demonstration of the skill an Emperor should hone in battle.
“No matter,” I sigh. “Your mother still polishes the throne.”
His response is surprising. He smiles sadly, and says, “Father, it gives me a pain, too.” We look at each other, suddenly understanding that we are two men yoked to a blind woman. And we laugh together.
In our laughter is a kind of freedom. So many things become possible.
One possibility is this: First Son might deserve a certain pearl as a gift … if that pearl will not choose an old man for her consort.
A messenger arrives from Jade Mountain. Prisoners have divulged the name of the rebel General. It is an odd name: Bird Bird.
I receive this information in the company of several of my ministers. One of them makes a silly little hiccup that sharply annoys me. I turn to rebuke him—and see that his hiccup was actually a gasp. His elderly face is ashen. He tries to suppress his reaction, but it’s even more evident in his watery eyes.
Immediately I demand to know why this name “Bird Bird” should cause such emotion. The minister falls to the floor and launches a volley of pleas, praises and wheedling babble that infuriates me. I practiced this kind of diplomatic word-stampede when I was securing my place as heir to the Dynasty, but now I have no patience for it. I bark a demand for the truth, in a single word.
The minister rises shakily to his knees and whispers one word—the family name of my First Wife.
“Bird Bird” is the childhood nickname my First Wife gave to a distant cousin, the minister explains. I blink and remember that this aging minister is one of those kin my First Wife murmured of in our private chambers. He had proven enough skill and intelligence in government to follow me to the Imperial Palace. But as he implicates First Wife in this rebellion, he implicates himself and his whole family.
My bones turn to ice. It is the cold of knowing one is surrounded by enemies with drawn bows.
I say quietly to my ministers that this news will not go beyond us for now. Word will be sent back to Jade Mountain that the prisoners who provided this name are to be brought back to the Imperial Palace alive. And Bird Bird is to be brought back dead.
I dismiss the old minister who revealed Bird Bird’s identity, with this reward: that he may immediately begin a quiet retirement in a far kingdom, studying in a hermitage. The old man crawls backwards out of the room, mewling gratitude.
When he is gone, I command my Minister of Internal Affairs to make a secret investigation into all of First Wife’s kin who hold government positions, no matter where they are. I am especially interested in how easily they are bribed.
I speak all of this in a whisper. My ministers are utterly still. They make obeisance and leave me, in silence. I am left in the empty room, the Son of Heaven turned to ice.
I can say nothing of this to Water Song.
Instead, I ask her to teach me the dancing movements that cultivate immortality.
She points out to me that it is spring, and we can practice in the Sunrise Garden where she exercises. Has it really been a whole year since I first saw her brilliant face?
If only the springtime sun would warm these icy bones of mine. Lift hands, turn, shift weight, lift foot, follow Water Song’s impeccable form. “These are the motions of combat,” I tell her, “only too slow to be of any use.”
Without warning Water Song’s tiny form, a silhouette in the simple tunic and trousers of her temple, explodes upwards into the air. Her foot extends and kicks a deadfall branch off of a tree limb five feet above ground. She lands with barely a sound.
“Ask the gardener to decide its use,” she says, smiling.
Challenged, a fire rises in me. My gaze picks out a thick, healthy branch the same height from the ground. I shriek and leap with a fury like a dragon breaking free of a stone prison. My foot lashes out. The branch and its limb shatter, down to the trunk.
Water Song is somber. The dragon’s fury has spoken to her.
“The tree has lost half of itself, and may have to be cut down completely,” she says. “Again, I would ask the gardener to decide the victory.”
I stand shaking, full of heat. The ice is gone. “Enough poetry,” I say hoarsely. “Take this—” I point at the shattered branch, “—and make it immortal. It will be cut down, another tree planted in its place. No one will know the difference! The new tree will blossom and shed just like the old one. No one will remember the old tree! Where there is no memory, there is no immortality!” My voice has become a shout.
Water Song’s silence is her response. Her silence, and her unbroken gaze.
The gentleness of it is both a rebuke and a caring hand on my hot, hurting soul.
Water Song walks to the shattered tree and lightly touches its white ripped flesh. “One day you will not see an enemy,” she says.
Maybe she can hear my muscles stiffen in readiness, and my eyes narrow. Like a great warrior or a foolish child, she turns and looks me full in the face. “You will not see an enemy,” she says again. “Instead, you will know that there is no difference between you and any person or thing around you. You will not see an enemy, even when weapons are flying. You will see only the Way. Only the life that never ends.”
The Son of Heaven can create the Silence of a Hundred Paces, but Water Song has created a silence that truly is silence. It is a silence within all things … even within an Emperor.
“Tell me if it is possible to be both a deadly warrior and a Master of the Way,” I say at last.
Still her gaze upon my face is unbroken. But she smiles the tiniest of smiles.
“That is a very good question,” she says.
After a moment, I bow to her like I bowed to my Masters when I was a boy. And I leave the Sunrise Garden.
No enemy, only the life that never ends.
The silence Water Song created lasts until I step through the garden’s doors back into the Imperial palace, and I am engulfed again in ministers, advisors, generals and diplomats. Perhaps my next question to Water Song will be whether there is more than one life that never ends.
~
Jade Mountain sends word: he is coming home, successful in his task.
All spring my Minister of Internal Affairs has been setting snares for the little mice in this plot. “To understand the large disturbance, study the small ones,” is his motto. And oh, what a number of little mice he has found! Most of them are relations of my First Wife, or clerks working under her kin.
The real cause of the rebellion is price manipulations coming out of the local Agriculture office. Farmers have been forced to sell their harvests for next to nothing, while the transport fees have been raised. First Wife’s cousin, the regional Governor, helped the Agriculture deputy carry this out by looking the other way. He then shared in the profit skimmed from the grain sales on the open market.
In this situation, the region’s local Public Works Ministry has been flooded with hungry farmers looking for work—a road, a bridge, a swamp draining, anything! But the local Deputy has been undermining projects in that region for years with delays, canceled projects, or inadequate tools and planning. Or he just didn’t pay the workers. Of course it was all blamed on the Emperor’s policies, while the Deputy pocketed the unspent Imperial funds.
How easily Bird Bird raised a rebel army from such a desperate population! Only the gods know what the Deputy expected to gain from rebellion. His name is hated throughout the region.
And then there’s the Department of Accounts! There, the Deputy is one of First Wife’s most ineffectual kinsmen, a figurehead for his clever Clerk. That Clerk has been short-counting the region’s food production, and sending the difference to Bird Bird’s troops. Apparently he aimed to be a Senior Minister in Bird Bird’s power structure.
As Jade Mountain’s campaign encircled Bird Bird, the snares snapped and the little mice ran to their holes—to no avail. The Public Works Deputy hung himself, which saddened no one except a few in his immediate family. The regional governor drank poisoned tea, which is being reported as a sudden fatal illness.
These news items have been kept from circulation as much as possible. I know my lovely First Wife has her own spies swarming the Imperial Palace and the surrounding city. I don’t expect to keep much from her, but I am saving the choicest revelations for a private audience.
The army returns home as spring swells into summer. Jade Mountain rides at the head, alive but changed. It’s in his back, his face, his eyes gone shining and full of purpose. It’s in the still-red scar high on his left cheek. It’s in the soldiers, who instantly fall to one knee when Jade Mountain dismounts his stallion. The Prince with the happy smile has vanished.
Jade Mountain’s triumphant entry through the Imperial Palace gates is a stunning spectacle. Returns usually are. Departures for war are all hopeful agitation, an excitement that has the horses dancing and the infantry marching in sharp unison. Returns are quieter, slow with fatigue and the memory of what has been done. The welcoming crowds search the ranks of the returning army for the faces that are missing.
I am seated under the great canopy at the top of the grand stairclimb in the Palace’s most impressive courtyard. I know my little Imperial City is small when compared to the deserts and river valleys of my empire, but when all the Imperial Court is gathered in this courtyard, their glory invites the very gods to admire and praise.
Yet, for all of this … it is Jade Mountain who captures my gaze. He is no longer just a prince – he is a man, transformed by battle. A fresh scar high on his face says he has earned his breath and heartbeat. His once easy smile comes more slowly, after watchful consideration. His eyes are open. His back is straight and his seat on the black stallion is assured.
There are two baskets hanging off his saddle, one on each side. Each is just big enough for … oh, but I will have such a surprise for First Wife very soon!
And the soldiers—I almost forgot to observe them. They take their every cue from Jade Mountain: the pace of their march, their reserved demeanor. Grooms appear at his horse’s side even before he raises his hand for the halt and dismount. As his foot lands on the courtyard paving, the whole army as one drops to one knee, landing on the paving at the same moment. It is thrilling.
Now Jade Mountain holds out his hands and the grooms give him the handles of those baskets. Jade Mountain will carry those baskets to me himself, up the steep stairclimb. This is perfect – his instinct couldn’t be better. He is doing this menial yet symbolic task himself, and his soldiers love him for it.
And all this time, since entering the courtyard, Jade Mountain’s gaze has never left my face. It is a bold challenge, and exhilarating. With each step I am convinced that my young prince is now a man to be respected. But I keep my face stern and blank, and let him play out the scene.
Jade Mountain reaches my seat, breathing deeply but evenly from the climb. He sets one basket before me. “My Emperor, Son of Heaven, here is the rebel general,” he says. He sets the other basket before me. “And here is the rebel general’s second in command. May you be pleased with the efforts of your devoted sons, these soldiers, and your son, this prince.”
With all my heart I want to clasp his shoulders and at this moment proclaim him my heir. Shout it to the court, and to hell with anyone who would lose face. To hell with First Wife and her damned ambition.
Instead I simply lower my eyelids. It is as much as a nod, an affirmative. Well done. No one loses face. My selection is made in my heart. The tests and preparations, from now until the elevation, are nothing but pageant.
To begin, there is a certain question I would like to ask Jade Mountain. I will invite him to sit with me at a small dinner.
I hear nothing from Jade Mountain for days. Cookpot is rushed with new business for his lord, and has no time for more than a note saying that the Prince is well and will contact me soon.
My First Wife arrives in the private audience room. I have a basket beside me, hidden behind a screen.
I ask after her health, her mood, her satisfaction in general. Excellent, thinking of me every day, in general feeling blessed. I ask after her family. We never meet one another outside of the business of running an empire. She replies that as far as she knows, everyone is content, but as a Wife she doesn’t get out much.
No, you command the whole world to come to you, I think. “You received word of your cousin the governor’s fatal illness?” I inquire.
“Oh, yes, and I sent the funeral gifts straightaway,” she replies. “It was terrible to come in the middle of an uprising. It must have been the emotion, it was too much for him to see his people so brutal and foolish!”
“Perhaps so.”
“I would like to give Jade Mountain a special gift at his birthday celebration this year,” she says, “in gratitude for his bravery.”
“That would be appropriate,” I say. “And speaking of gifts, an extraordinary message came back with Jade Mountain. A greeting from one of your kinsmen, one we haven’t heard from in a long time. Odd that he’d be out that way, in such a remote kingdom. But there he was, and he gave something to Jade Mountain, which I’ll pass on to you ….”
I reach behind the screen, into the basket, and bring forth Bird Bird’s head. It is well-preserved in honey, so that its features are still quite moist and natural.
First Wife stares, mouth slowly opening wide, then wider.
“Oh yes, his name was Bird Bird!” I say. “Same name as the rebel general, strangely enough!”
First Wife’s eyes roll back in her head and she faints dead away on the floor.
I put Bird Bird’s head back in its basket and wonder if the woman has been lying to me this whole time.
I do not see First Wife again, but for the next several days every hour brings a new message from her: she denounces Bird Bird, she denounces every member of her family who helped him or profited from the rebellion. She calls for executions and exiles. She offers her own suicide to protect First Son. And on and on.
Suddenly, for some reason, the constant harassment and teasing I endure increases. Dead spiders float in my teapot, or sprinkle my food. A minor concubine sends her eunuch to me to tell my fortune; I have nightmares over it for days. Finally, one evening I hurry alone down a darkening corridor, returning to my rooms from the toilet—and I am grabbled from behind by the hair. A hand claps over my mouth before I can scream. I am turned around—it’s First Wife. But I hardly recognize her. Is she drunk? Her hair is coming undone and her face is halfway to oblivion with hate.
“Your plan will fail,” she hisses. “Your Temple of demons—they sent you to poison him. Tantalize him with a virgin … it will fail, you evil scorpion, it will fail!” And she slaps me across the face. She has to let me go to do it, and I scramble madly down the corridor back to my room.
I have just set my seal on the orders for three executions in the rebel region: two from the Accounts department, and one from Agriculture. Besides the Grand Controller of Agriculture, who alerted me to Bird Bird’s real identity, First Wife’s uncle is also retiring, from the Office of the Imperial Family Records.
The rest of First Wife’s family will cower behind closed doors. After all, it is the custom of long standing that the families of traitors should be executed, to three levels beyond the criminal. I have not ordered these conventional executions, because they would include both First Wife and First Son. Let First Wife and her family quiver in fear, then, while I sort out what action is best.
I send an urgent message to Cookpot, begging for advice—is it possible she knows about Jade Mountain’s letters? No, Cookpot replies, her actions were too wild. When she is sure, her moves are quiet and elegant, like her contemptuous fan wave over my laughter. But Cookpot is shaken by the tale. There is something happening in this court that is not reaching this monster virgin’s ears.
There is a mountain of work to do to set things right in the rebel region. New Deputy Ministers to appoint, new work projects that will employ the farmers until the next planting.
I smell smoke.
A servant rushes in to tell me First Wife is burning every family memento in her possession.
I send the servant back with a command that she will stop this blasphemy at once and take control of herself. She is still my First Wife and her child is still my firstborn son.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-33 show above.)