Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  “Mao Yen-shou is a skilled artist, well able to judge beauty. However, all that he can do is judge; for he is a eunuch, and doubtless possesses the eunuch’s appetite for power. All of which he may indeed arise to in the course of this choosing and judging.”

  But what has this to do with me? Silver Snow wanted to ask. For the first time in her life, she was impatient with her father’s measured fashion of imparting news.

  Chao Kuang leaned forward and caught Silver Snow’s chin in his callused fingers, raising her face so that their eyes met squarely once more. “My daughter, this ancient one may be disgraced and degraded; yet word of his young, beautiful daughter has reached the Administrator of the Inner Courts; and you have been summoned.”

  Silver Snow gasped. Tears stung her eyes, whether born of fear or excitement, she knew not. Out of all the maids in the Middle Kingdom, to be one of five hundred beauties selected for the Inner Courts, perhaps to become the next Brilliant Companion who would heal the heart of a grieving Emperor . . . it was beyond dreaming.

  “Aye, you do well to weep, child of mine. For this means our farewell. Those ladies who enter the Inner Court—unless it pleases the Son of Heaven to dismiss them—never again see their homes. Nor, let me caution you, is their life all fine robes, sweet food, the Hall of Splendor, and an Emperor’s favor. Many, indeed, never see the Son of Heaven, much less bear him a son. Yet, such as they, too, are as firmly bound within the Inner Courts as the meanest slave.”

  “But this insignificant wretch has been summoned,” Silver Snow murmured. Her heart raced. She was beautiful. Even her father, who had the most reason of all people in the world to wish her to be humble and modest, said so. She was brave; she was true. She had only to gain the favor of the Emperor, and everything that her father had lost would be restored. For it was well known that a favorite concubine was free to advance any of her house.

  “You go to exile and, though it be not open battle, to another type of risk, my daughter,” said Chao Kuang. “The ladies of the Inner Courts engage, I am told, in their own wars; and their weapons are guile at the best; at the worst they spin plots, set snares, and, at length, deal even with poisons. You have been raised to much—perhaps to overmuch—freedom; you may find the life behind the walls of such courtyards as arduous as I found my own captivity. And yet . . .” Her father drew a deep sigh.

  Silver Snow held her breath. It was not often that her father would speak—could bear to speak, she thought—of his ten years in captivity.

  “Ever since the hour of my surrender until now, I have lived, destitute, with the bitterness of my grief aching like an unhealed wound. Even now I see in dreams the barbarians around me. That distant whole country was stiff with black ice, and I heard naught but the moaning of the bitter winter winds beneath which my hopes of return dwindled.

  “And yet, my daughter, and yet, since I have returned, there have been days when it has seemed to me that my life among the Hsiung-nu was not wholly bad. What does the poet say? ‘When I fell among Hsiung-nu and was taken prisoner, I pined for the land of Han. Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into Hsiung-nu . . . A Han heart and a Han tongue, set in the body of the Hsiung-nu.’ My years apart were not all ill, I think now.”

  “When one finds himself in a foreign civilization, one adapts to foreign customs,” Silver Snow adapted a maxim from the Analects. The city of Ch’ang-an would be as foreign to her as the lands and yurts of the Hsiung-nu had been to her father; but she would behave with no less honor. For all that she was a female, she was his heir.

  Chao Kuang nodded warm approval. The lamplight struck sparks of light from his fur collar, shone on his vermilion sash, reflecting upward until the broad, familiar face appeared to be bathed in light.

  “It may be that you too may come to ‘adopt foreign customs’ to such an extent that you esteem your exile. Assuredly, I shall pray to the Ancestors that you do so. My disgrace meant that I might not betroth you as befitted your station. Nevertheless, I had always meant, insofar as propriety might permit, and perhaps somewhat further, to allow you what latitude I might in a choice of husband. But alas, my child, to this summons I can allow no indulgence.”

  Silver Snow bowed to the mats. Had she been betrothed, she would not have been offered this dangerous blessing, this opportunity to act to retrieve her father’s honor.

  He gestured at the chest at the outer reaches of the firelight. “The twenty rolls of tribute silk and two hundred ounces of gold . . .”

  So much? That would beggar their house! Silver Snow, who oversaw the household records as might a first wife, gasped, then flushed scarlet with shame. Her father continued as if he had not heard her outburst.

  “ . . . are ready for presentation to Mao Yen-shou upon your arrival. You have the jewels and robes that were your mother’s and my First Wife’s, as well. And, there is this.” Laboriously Chao Kuang rose. Obedient to his wish that his daughter not witness his infirmity, Silver Snow averted her eyes until the thump of his cane upon the mats indicated that he had reached the other mysterious carved chest that she had earlier noted.

  At his gesture, she rose and approached. The lid lay back, and lamplight glittered off a splendor of jade plates and gold wire wrought into the replica of a man fully clad, even to the hood for the face, and the booted feet, in armor. Silver Snow bent close to eye the jade. Its color was that of stone precious in value, brought from across the Land of Fire and through the Jade Gate into the heart of Han. In itself, this armor was burial gear worthy of Heaven’s Son—or Heaven itself.

  “There is another such beneath the rolls of silk and the gold,” said her father. “They were carved long ago to serve as shrouds, when our Ancestors were princes in this land. Alas, we have fallen far; and the last and greatest of our falls has been mine own. The Son of Heaven may have once heard that such a treasure lies in our possession, or he may not. Still, should you be so fortunate as to receive his favor, I charge you to present these suits of jade armor to him. He may wish to save one for himself, another for you; or he may throw them to his slaves: I care not.”

  But he did, Silver Snow thought. He did. The jade armor was the last great treasure of their house, and he entrusted it to her as a general might entrust a banner to the youngest of his warriors to hearten him for a test.

  “Perhaps when you present this gift, he will recall the most humble, unworthy, and wretched of his servants,” said Chao Kuang. His voice roughened, and he turned rapidly away.

  For a long time, her father and she maintained silence. Silver Snow heard the clatter of dishes and voices raised in other courtyards in the house. The banquet in honor of the official who brought the edict—it must be under way, and her father had left it to speak with her, mere girlchild though she was. She tilted her head to listen, and he nodded.

  “Indeed, I should return to my guests, but my heart is heavy within me. For, daughter, this must be our farewell. Tomorrow’s dawn will see the official go from here; and you must go with him. You shall have your gifts, and your maid, and whatever escort can be contrived. And you go with my blessing—” Silver Snow dropped to her knees.

  “I do not expect that life will treat you too harshly,” said her father, limping back to his cushions. “For is it not written in the Analects that to be fond of learning is close to having wisdom? I know that you are fond of learning; and, in the Inner Courts, you may have opportunities to learn much that is lacking here.”

  Silver Snow’s tears spilled over onto her sleeves, leaving round marks on the embroidered silk. “But not from you, honored father,” she whispered.

  To her astonishment, just as he had done when she first saw him, he held out his hand to her. With small, hasty steps, she went to him and took it; and he drew her into a close, warm embrace.

  “May all our Ancestors smile upon you, my daughter,” he said. “It may yet be that you shall bear a son to worship them, and our line shall not live in disgrace or die out altogether.”
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  For a moment longer, he held her, and she smelled the camphor in which, all summer, his sables had been preserved.

  “Now,” he said, “I must indeed return to my guests. I congratulate you on the success of today’s hunt: a good one for your last.” Deliberately, as befitted a disciple of Confucius, he kept his voice even, seeking to return them both to the wholesome serenity of conduct that the Master taught.

  Silver Snow withdrew from her father’s embrace, blinked once, furiously, and commanded her lips not to tremble.

  “I shall see you depart tomorrow,” said her father. “But this shall be our true farewell. If you have time and the means, I charge you, write to me.”

  She bowed deeply, and listened to her father’s uneven tread and the measured thump of his ebony cane as, slowly, painfully, he descended the stairs, and walked across the courtyard toward the room in which feasted the official and his officers who would, tomorrow, whisk her away from the only life that she had ever known.

  The air in the room was fragrant with pine, almond, and artemisia; and the lamp shone brightly upon her as she curled into the cushions where her father had sat, weeping as she bade farewell to her home. Though excitement and splendor, she knew, might well lie ahead of her, she wept as if there were no end to tears in her whole world.

  CHAPTER 3

  As the daughter of a degraded noble, Silver Snow had never dwelt long on what her wedding might be like, knowing that any marriage her father would be able to arrange would not be a mating between equal ranks. Consequently, she could not complain of a limited dawn farewell upon leaving her father’s home; nor that she wore, instead of the crimson and face-enshrouding headdress of the bride, serviceable sheepskins and ancient furs over her heaviest robes; nor that she was handed into a sturdy, enclosed, two-wheeled cart rather than into a chair hung with bells and bright trappings. True enough, her dowry—the tribute silk and gold stripped from her father’s already impoverished holdings—was loaded into carts and onto packbeasts to make the month-long journey west and south to Ch’ang-an, the capital.

  Also packed were whatever robes and ornaments she and Willow had contrived from her own and the remnants of her mother’s and the First Wife’s belongings. Hidden among the rolls of silk was that great treasure that Chao Kuang had entrusted to her in hope of melting the Son of Heaven’s heart: the jade funeral armor far too fine for anyone but an Emperor and his consort.

  Oboes, pipes, and drums were supposed to accompany marriage processions. The only music for her was the ringing of harness bells from the chariot of the official who had brought the Son of Heaven’s edict.

  To be sure, light from lanterns and torches, such as might grace a bridal procession, bobbed and flickered about her, casting an austere glimmer on the axes and lances borne with such pride by the messenger’s carriage. The steam of their breaths rose above the lantern-bearers and the soldiers, as the official, muffled to the eyebrows in fox furs (Willow’s mouth twisted at the sight of those), took the place of honor in his splendid equipage.

  Cloaked somewhat by the interplay of light and shadow, her father looked as wasted and wan as after his escape from the Hsiung-nu. From behind the cart’s curtains, Silver Snow peered at him, desperately eager in these last few moments to record each line of his weathered face deep in her memory. She knew that, be her fortune fair or ill, she was looking upon him for the last time. That he had done her the favor of rising and dressing to see her off was precious to her. Of recent years, he usually awoke coughing in the morning. This morning, however, he was not rasping of breath, perhaps because of the potion that she had made, by Willow’s teaching, yesterday. She dared now to twitch aside the curtain, and when he glanced at her, she bowed in proper leave-taking.

  There was, of course, no groom, no real parade of family to accompany her, unless Silver Snow could count Willow, who sat beside her in the ox-cart, her green eyes downcast, and her nurse. Then there were the household guards whose patched uniforms and aged horses made such a poor showing alongside the uniformed half troop riding glossy mounts, with their necks proudly arching, breaths steaming in the winter dawn.

  Still, custom had to be followed as far as possible, which, in this case, was not all that far. Save for Willow and the nurse, Silver Snow was the only woman in the party; and certainly the only lady of rank. She had no bevy of ladies, no elder go-between, to escort her to the capital and instruct her in the ways of the court; only a week out of Ch’ang-an, the Lady Lilac intended for the post of mentor had fallen ill on the road and had had to be left at an estate along the way. The official had almost deigned to apologize to her father for this lack of proper company, which a noble who was not in disgrace would be certain to regard as an affront. Her father, of course, did not dare to take offense. Silver Snow, while regretting the slight to her father and her house, was relieved. There would be enough strangeness in simply traveling without the need to adapt quickly to the ways of a great lady of the court.

  Because Silver Snow rode in a cart, not a chair, she could not be locked from sight. Nevertheless, her father solemnly presented a key to her escort as a token of their obligation to guard her, then bowed for the last time. The official gestured imperiously to his groom, and Silver Snow, peering from behind the curtains, saw her own driver prod his oxen.

  She drew a deep, shaky breath. To leave her home, her land, all she had ever known, for what might mean forgiveness for the House of Chao, or just as likely leave her sequestered within the palace women’s quarters forever, a prisoner of exalted rank! It was frightening! The torchlight swam in a rainbow haze as she blinked quickly. Willow grasped her mistress’ hand reassuringly.

  The oxen lumbered forward, and with many a shake and many a giddy sidewise swing, the cart rolled down the familiar hill that she would never again see on the first leg of the journey to Ch’ang-an. Dawn wind cast a delicate spume of snow against her face as it brought her the last words that her father spoke before he, leaning heavily upon his stick, entered his now-daughterless house.

  “A turn of the hill, a bend of the road and you are lost to sight;

  All that is left is the track on the snow where your horse’s hoofs trod.”

  After several nights on the road, the train of official and soldiers transporting Silver Snow toward Ch’ang-an stopped for the night in a town where they could seek more comfortable shelter in the home of a magistrate, who appeared, bowing double at the gates, in a frenzy of apology lest the thrice-honored official from Ch’ang-an find his hovel (for thus he spoke) and his First Wife’s untutored efforts beneath contempt.

  Silver Snow’s nurse, who had been ill throughout the journey, promptly fainted; and her mistress sighed with relief as the old woman was carried within. Here, she might be tended and might rest until someone might be found to return her to her home. Her young mistress glanced at Willow, who nodded and pulled her hood farther down upon her head. How strange Willow looked! At the last halt, she had vigorously rubbed her hair with lampblack lest its ugly, ominous red hue draw comment among the ladies of the magistrate’s inner courts.

  “That is not necessary,” Silver Snow had protested, but Willow had been silent, stubborn. Even the old nurse, from her swathings of sheepskins, had spoken (between moans and sneezes) a brief word of approbation and relief.

  They were waiting for her now, judging from the hisses and giggles that she heard from outside the circle of torch- and lamplight. This far from the capital, they too must be eager for news, more eager still to see a lady who might, one day, be the most honored among all women. Straightening her furs as best she could, Silver Snow stepped down from the cart, resting her hand for the briefest of moments on the arm of a guard. Then she walked quickly toward what looked like an inviting circle of light and warmth—into a new world.

  She had expected courtyards much like her own, old, shabby, and relatively bare, either of furnishings or of people. Here, however: light, colors, and smells erupted so she blinked, bewildered, gla
ncing from elaborate hangings to wall paintings to what seemed like a veritable army of high-born ladies. Most seemed to be regarding Silver Snow with pursed lips and incredulous eyes beneath high-arched brows. Each, from First Wife to youngest concubine, wore new, intricately wrought silk garments, their full sleeves nearly brushing the matted floor. All of the robes were embroidered with flowers; and each lady wore the scent of the blossom stitched upon her robes. Now they bowed, each as befitted her own rank, until the play of color and scent made them resemble a garden in a spring breeze.

  Overwhelmed by colors and scents, as well as the unfamiliar warmth of these courts, Silver Snow stepped backward—just in time to miss the ceremonious greeting of the First Wife. She recovered almost the instant thereafter, and bowed the more deeply to make amends; but, as she realized with a sinking heart, it was too late. Gossip had already begun: rustles of silk as hidden hand plucked gleaming sleeve; a gleam of moonbright cheek laid against powdered cheek; a hiss of sympathy for the slight to the First Wife; and, above all, the whispers, like the sighing of a bleak wind.

  “Did you see, she strode into the house as if she had done no more than walk from one court to the next? She neither wept nor swooned. How robust! How very coarse.”

  “At least, the crone, her nurse, had to be carried in. I know that I would be prostrate, were I forced to make such a journey . . . ”

  “Such a strange appearance: no proper go-between, and only that ugly maid . . .”

  “Keep her shadow away from me!” squealed one of the concubines. “I am with child; I would not have our master’s son born lame.”

  Foolishness, Silver Snow wanted to cry as Willow shrank back into her mistress’ shadow.