Cixi glanced at the fiery sky again. Last year, just before the signing of the awful Treaty of Tientsin-the treaty that granted the British power to travel within China and sell their filthy opium-a fleet of British ships carrying diplomats, envoys, and thousands of soldiers sailed up the Peiho River near the fortress at Taku. The emperor and his generals didn’t want an armed force coming so close to Taku, and so the emperor sent a message asking them to anchor at a harbor farther north. Although the request was perfectly reasonable and not even inconvenient, the English envoy Wright Frederick-or Frederick Wright, as Cixi supposed the barbarians put the name-ordered the fleet to attack Taku to teach the Chinese a lesson. No doubt to the great surprise of the English, the fortress at Taku had turned out to be more heavily fortified than expected. The automatons and soldiers at Taku had turned back the English forces with little effort. The easy victory emboldened the emperor to declare the entire Treaty of Tientsin in abeyance and the borders closed.
Now, a year later, the English responded in force. They fought their way up the river all the way to Peking, despite the best efforts of the emperor’s generals. Emperor Xianfeng had been forced to flee to the Mountain Palace for his own safety. A difficult thing it had been, too, with hundreds of soldiers, slaves, and eunuchs, and an equal number of mechanical carts filled with their minimal possessions and treasures, preceded by fifty spiders to sweep the road ahead of the emperor’s palanquin and strew the stones with rose petals.
Cixi reached the pavilion doors, gridded with flawless glass, and her maids hurried to slide them open. She glanced about. No sign of Liyang or Zaichun. Ah well. Cixi raised her foot, clad in a bejeweled slipper, to step over the threshold.
“Honored mother!” Her son Zaichun dashed up the steps, his dark eyes sparkling beneath his round cap. He was not quite six, and to him this was a grand adventure that kept him up well past his normal bedtime. Behind him came an entourage of eunuchs and his wet nurse, all of them carrying any toys, foodstuffs, and articles of clothing the boy might need. The servants looked frazzled, and their clothes were in disarray. Cixi made a mental note to have a sharp word with Liyang about that. Servants in the presence of the emperor’s son and the Imperial Concubine had no place to appear less than respectable. Disarray led to fear, fear led to panic, and right now, no one could afford to panic.
“You wished to see me, Mother?” Zaichun continued.
“I did, Little Cricket.” She touched his hair, careful not to the let the long jade coverings on her nails jab his face. “I wanted to see for myself that you were safe.”
“I am. I spoke with Father, too. He even let me ride behind his palanquin so I could watch for invaders!”
“That was kind of him. I hope you remembered to give him your thanks.”
“Of course, Mother. I heard him talking to General Su Shun about how well-mannered I was when we entered the palace.”
“That is good to hear, my son, and I am glad to see that you are safe, but perhaps you should sleep in my pavilion tonight.”
“I can sleep in my own pavilion,” he said sulkily, betraying his earlier good manners. “It’s bigger. And I’m not sleepy.”
“Mother has had a trying day. She hopes her son won’t make things more difficult.”
“I don’t like pink. It’s for girls.”
“Your words are very interesting.” Cixi’s tone remained mild, but her hand dropped to his shoulder, and the points of her nail covers dug into his flesh. He gasped. “But I’m sure you would rather spend the night here, where it’s safer. Is that not true?” She tightened her grasp.
“Yes, Mother.” He was struggling not to show the pain, and she was proud that he didn’t do so, though she didn’t loosen her grip.
“It would be good if the eunuchs knew.”
He cleared his throat. “I believe I will spend the night in my honored mother’s pavilion. See to it.”
The eunuchs bowed and swarmed into the pavilion through a series of side entrances-no one but Cixi and her guests used the main door.
“You are a well-mannered boy. Perhaps you would like to run along now.” She released him, and he fled into the pavilion.
She held out her hand and said, “Tea.” A porcelain cup was placed in it, and she let the warm drink wash the road dust from her throat as she strolled across the threshold. Inside the pavilion, a maid carrying a heavy feather bed froze as she realized whose presence she was in. She tried to bow and keep the precious feather bed from touching the floor all at once, though she didn’t dare flee without permission. Cixi dropped the cup-a spider caught it before it hit the ground-and was about to enter the pavilion fully when she changed her mind and paused in the doorway again. The bowing maid holding the heavy feather bed bit her lip, and sweat was making her makeup run. A bit of down worked its way out of the feather bed and, caught on a draft, drifted out the open door and away to the east, toward the place known as the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake, the emperor’s residence. Cixi watched it go. The fear she had been keeping firmly at bay gave way to a new nervousness she couldn’t name. The feather vanished into the darkness.
“Liyang!” she said.
Liyang came to her side. “My lady?”
“What is the latest news of Peking?”
“The Army of a Thousand Tigers continues to fight the English north of Peking, my lady, while Su Shun and the Dragon Men use the Machines of Wind and Thunder in the south.”
“But who is winning?”
Liyang hesitated. “The Tiger Army is. . rather. . it is encountering quite a challenge, one worthy of its fighting prowess. The Machines of Wind and Thunder fight bravely under Prince Kung and will do so until nothing is left but a pile of melted brass.”
“I see.” They were losing, but Liyang couldn’t say such a dreadful thing to the Imperial Consort. She kept her face calm with effort. “How is the emperor?”
The arms of the bowed maid were now trembling with the effort of holding up the bulky feather bed. Letting the silk cover touch the floor would mean her death. Liyang shot her a glance and said quickly, “I am told he is resting very comfortably.”
Resting comfortably was Liyang’s way of saying Xianfeng had taken a great deal of rice wine. Very comfortably meant he had used his opium pipe as well. Cixi knew she shouldn’t be surprised. The man had turned thirty only last month, and already he had smoked more opium and drunk more wine than any four emperors before him. Small wonder he had produced only one child, and how lucky for Cixi it had been her son. The maid was panting now, and one corner of the bed drooped toward the floor. Another feather floated away to the east, drawing Cixi’s eye with it. The nervousness wouldn’t leave her alone. Two feathers in a row. A sign?
“I heard him talking to General Su Shun about how well-mannered I was when we entered the palace.”
Two drifting feathers. Rice wine and opium. Strange. If Xianfeng had been drinking and smoking long enough to be “resting very comfortably,” how could he have been coherent enough to comment on his son’s manners?
“I believe I will call on the emperor,” Cixi said, then remembered herself and coughed to cover her lapse. “Rather, please let the emperor know the Imperial Concubine would be pleased and honored to find herself summoned to his heavenly presence.”
“But the emperor is resting- Yes, my lady,” Liyang said. He snapped his fingers, and one of his apprentices, a eunuch of perhaps six or seven, rushed up, clutching at the jar at his own belt. “Run to the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake and deliver the lady’s message.”
The boy dashed away. Cixi turned to follow more sedately, and her maids slid the doors shut on the relieved face of the maid with the feather bed.
The palanquin delivered Cixi, her maids, and her eunuchs to the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake, the emperor’s residence at the palace. The palanquin skittered faster than the little apprentice eunuch could run, and he would actually not have been able to deliver the message yet, something Cixi was counting on. Cixi swept towa
rd the main doors of the Hall, and the startled eunuchs on duty hurried to slide it open. Again, she halted in the doorway. Why was she here, ahead of the messenger she herself had sent? Foolishness. This was a strange day, and she was on a strange errand. But her instincts told her to continue, and she had learned to trust her instincts.
“The back of the mind is wiser than the front,” her mother liked to say.
“I wish to proceed completely alone,” she announced, and continued inside.
For the Imperial Concubine, completely alone meant her, four maids (one for each sacred direction), Liyang, his three assistants, and a spider to run ahead with a lantern. At one time, the Hall had been fitted for electric lights, with each lightbulb personally designed and blown by one of the Dragon Men at great effort and expense. The lights were an artistic triumph, each one a delicate work of art that captured the sun itself. But the moment Xianfeng entered his new apartments, he fell victim to a headache that lasted three days. The chief eunuch declared electricity was the cause, and he ordered all the wiring pulled out and every bulb smashed. The Dragon Man had drowned himself in a fishpond, and no electric light had been allowed in the Hall since.
Cixi strode through the dark corridors, following the spider. She could tell the place was bustling with activity as frightened servants rushed about, finding places to store the clothing and treasures brought out of the Forbidden City, but this was merely a sense she had, a change in the night and feeling of tensions. She actually saw nothing-everyone cleared the way for Cixi, and she walked through empty hallways, alone but for her spider, maids, and eunuchs, and eventually she came to Xianfeng’s chambers. Outside the sliding door stood twelve muscled guards with swords, armor, and pistols. All of them sported metal limbs or partially armored skin, as was proper for a soldier and taboo for nobility.
Cixi hesitated. Something was wrong here. The soldiers’ builds weren’t soft and flabby like those of eunuchs. Only a few highly trusted male advisers were allowed to enter the Forbidden City back in Peking, and not one of them was allowed to remain inside after nightfall, not even in the most dire emergencies, because the integrity of the emperor’s wife and concubines had to be protected. Even one man left on the grounds overnight meant the origin of any baby born to a wife or concubine later might not be the emperor’s. Yet here stood a dozen powerful, virile men. True, some rules were bent at the Mountain Palace, but never this one. Cixi’s own integrity could be called into question by just standing in their presence. Why would-
Then Cixi noticed the corner of a bandage sticking out from the waist joint of the armor of one of the guards, and she understood with great relief. These men had only recently been castrated, probably in the last day or two, when it became clear the emperor would have to evacuate the Forbidden City and would need strong guards. She wondered where their jars were.
“I wish for the emperor to know I am here,” she said to one of the guards. “You know who I am?”
“Yes, great lady.” The guards bowed and looked at one another uncertainly. It occurred to Cixi that these guards were unschooled in proper etiquette. A flabby eunuch would have politely enquired about her business, or more likely have long been aware she was coming and admitted her immediately or turned her aside in such a way as to make it seem that leaving were her idea.
“You are honorable men who are guarding the emperor’s heavenly presence during these trying times,” she said. “I am sure he appreciates your service.” And boldly she stepped forward to reach for the door. Horrified, two of her maids leaped forward to whip it open, their fear of the guards overcome by the idea that the Imperial Concubine might touch a door for herself. Cixi sailed through as if she had done nothing at all unusual, and before the guards could decide what to do, her maids and eunuchs also boiled through and the doors snapped shut. The chaos of the evacuation worked in her favor.
Moments later, she was entering Xianfeng’s bedchamber, with its wide, curtained bed, treasure boxes, windup machines, and red wall hangings drilled with spy holes. Eight perfumed lanterns threw down a glow that held back the darkness. A silver nightingale trilled soothing music from a bejeweled cage, and a small crowd of eunuchs knelt around the bed, awaiting the emperor’s slightest desire. Above the bed hung a painting of a seated man dressed in black. His bare head was shaved, and his piercing eyes stared through the viewer. He held a human hand made of brass and jade and a box of blackest ebony inlaid with gold dragons. The man was Lung Fei, China’s first Dragon Man, and his image was prominent everywhere in every imperial palace.
Against one wall, another man dressed all in black occupied a black pillow. A brass salamander curled around his ear with its tail inserted into his ear canal. The man was sitting down in the presence of the emperor, a capital offense for most people, but the disease known as the blessing of dragons made Dragon Men forget many social protocols, and if they were punished or executed every time they forgot one, soon there would be no Dragon Men left, and China needed Dragon Men. They wore unadorned black silk to show they had no time to worry about clothing and to quickly identify their position even to the uneducated.
This Dragon Man held a board and paper in his lap, and he was scribbling madly. “Cixi,” he said without looking up or stopping. “A paper cut. One bleeds without knowing.”
Cixi ignored this nonsense, knelt, and tapped her forehead on the floor at the bedchamber’s threshold, as did her maids and eunuchs. Then she waited, facedown.
“The Son of Heaven won’t give his permission to rise, great lady,” said a voice from a corner. “He is resting very comfortably, and it is a surprise that you were allowed to enter.”
Since the owner of the voice clearly wasn’t on the floor, Cixi remained in her daring mood and took it as a sign that she could rise anyway. She did so, though her entourage remained on the floor.
The speaker, a tall, muscled man in his midforties, moved into the lantern light. He had the swarthy complexion that bespoke hours spent outdoors, and his hair was streaked with gray under his high red cap. His straight nose and long jaw gave him a regal air, and he wore pieces of red-lacquered armor over his Manchu robe and trousers. The armor pieces were purely decorative, indicating his rank. Half the man’s face was covered in intricately etched brass, and riveted brass ringed his neck. The man’s name was Su Shun. Cixi narrowed her eyes. Last she had heard, he was commanding troops in the city.
“One has to wonder,” she said, “what the emperor’s most trusted general is doing in Jehol when he is likely needed in Peking.”
“I like the ducks on the canal,” said the Dragon Man. “They don’t wind down.”
Su Shun ran a finger down the side of his metallic face, almost as if he were scratching. Members of the nobility did not modify themselves with metal-such modifications were reserved for the lower classes. Su Shun was an exception. The blessing of dragons had ruined his face, forcing him to have the disease’s damage repaired by a Dragon Man. Cixi knew Su Shun felt a deep disdain for anyone who had not served in the military, including the emperor. That he looked down on mere women was a given.
“The emperor needs an experienced general to coordinate military movements at his side,” Su Shun replied. “I am, of course, here at his request. Prince Cheng is easily able to command Peking.”
“I believe Prince Kung runs Peking.”
“Prince Kung was not available, and I was forced to turn command of the troops over to Cheng. I am confident he will do a good job.”
“Cheng does admirable work,” Cixi said smoothly. “A hard worker who never speaks for himself. Somehow, his superiors always take credit for what goes right, and Cheng takes the blame for what goes wrong.” She paused. “Who is Cheng’s superior in this conflict, Su Shun? Would he be in this room?”
“The emperor,” Su Shun replied, equally smoothly, “is everyone’s superior.”
“Hm.” Cixi sniffed. The oily perfume of the lanterns was the only scent on the air. On the bed lay Xianfeng, hidden b
eneath a pile of embroidered scarlet coverlets. “I am happy to see that you are here to comfort the emperor in his hour of need, Su Shun, but perhaps the Son of Heaven will require comfort from his Imperial Concubine as well as his general.”
Su Shun stepped forward, between Cixi and Xianfeng’s bed. His partially brass face distorted his expression, giving him a half-dead look. “As the lady can see, he has already been well comforted.”
At that, Cixi noticed for the first time a young woman kneeling among the eunuchs. Her robes indicated her position as a concubine of the fifth rank, the lowest rank. “Who is that?” Cixi demanded, and the girl flinched, though she didn’t rise from the floor or even look up.
“A new nothing,” Su Shun said dismissively. “The emperor wanted company, and I brought her here myself.”
“Into his bedchamber?” Cixi’s voice had nearly become a squawk. The emperor saw only select concubines in his own bedchamber. Lesser concubines he visited in their rooms. A sound came from one of the eunuchs, and Cixi regained control of herself. “That is surprising, Su Shun.”
“Unusual circumstances, one supposes,” he said, his tone still mild. “The journey was difficult, and he wanted comfort.”
“Comfort from an untutored girl rather than his Imperial Concubine or a concubine of the second rank?” Her voice shook at the outrage, though she didn’t know whom she was outraged at. The emperor could do as he wished, of course, and it wasn’t her place to be angry, or even to be mildly unhappy.
“It would seem so.”
The Dragon Men ce-3 Page 5
