Imperial Woman

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Leave me,” she told her ladies. “And do not let another enter,” she told her eunuch.

  When all were gone, she looked up at Jung Lu and he looked down at her.

  “Speak,” she said faintly. “Tell me what to do.”

  “I had the guards ready to escort the foreigners to the coast,” he said in his deep sad voice. “Why did you not obey me?”

  She turned away her head and wiped the corners of her eyes with the kerchief hanging on her jade button.

  “Now having disobeyed me,” he went on, “you ask me what to do.”

  She sobbed softly.

  “Where will you find the monies to pay these Boxers?” he demanded. “Do you think they work for nothing?”

  She turned her head again to look up at him to beg him to advise her, help her, save her once more, and lifting up her eyes to his face she saw him suddenly turn ashen gray and clutch his left side and then before her eyes sink to the floor.

  She ran to him and lifted his hands but they were listless and cold. The lids of his eyes fell halfway down, the pupils of his eyes were fixed and staring, and he drew his breath in great gasps.

  “Oh alas, alas!” she cried in a loud voice, and at the cry her ladies came running into the hall and seeing the Empress kneeling beside the tall form of the Grand Councilor they screamed in turn so that eunuchs hastened in.

  “Lift him up,” the Empress commanded. “Put him upon the opium couch.”

  They lifted Jung Lu up and laid him upon a double opium couch at the far end of the hall, and they put a hard pillow under his head, and while they did this the Empress sent a small eunuch flying for the Court physicians, who came instantly when they heard the news. And in all this Jung Lu did not move or cease his labored breathing.

  “Majesty,” the chief physician said. “The Grand Councilor rose from a sickbed to come to you.”

  The Empress turned on Li Lien-ying with terrible eyes. “Why was I not told?”

  “Most High,” Li Lien-ying said, “the Grand Councilor forbade it.”

  What could she say ? She was confounded by the steadfast love of this man, who had given up all he was or could be for her sake. She controlled the turmoil of her heart, her love and fear equally to be hidden, and she made her voice calm. “Let him be carried to his own palace, and do you, imperial physicians, stay by him night and day. And send me news of his health every hour, day and night. As for me, I shall go to the temple to pray.”

  The eunuchs stepped forward to obey and the physicians after obeisance followed, and when all were gone the Empress rose and without speaking to her ladies, who circled behind her, she walked to her private temple. It was now the Hour of the Dog, after day and before night, and twilight filled the courts. The air was sad and still, the sun’s heat still lingering and the night winds delayed. She walked slowly as though she bore an infinite burden and when she came to the temple she went to her beloved goddess, the Kuan Yin. Lifting three sticks of sandalwood incense, she lit them at the flickering candle and thrust them into the ashes of the jade urn upon the altar. Then she took up the rosary of jade beads which lay upon the altar waiting always for her hand and as she counted the beads she prayed in her heart the prayer of a lonely woman.

  “You who are also lonely,” she prayed silently to the goddess, “hear the prayer of Your younger sister. Deliver me from my enemies, who would take this glorious land which is my inheritance, and cut it into pieces like a melon to be eaten. Deliver me—deliver me of my enemies! This is still my first prayer. And next I pray for the nameless one whom I love. He fell before me today. It may be this is his hour to die. Sustain me! But intercede, I pray You, Elder Sister, before the Old Man in Heaven and let the hour be postponed. I am Your younger sister! If the hour cannot be postponed, then dwell in me that I may in every circumstance, even in loneliness and in defeat, bear myself proudly. You, Elder Sister, look down upon all mankind with unchanging face, Your beauty untouched, Your grace unmoved. Give me the strength so to do.”

  She told the beads one after the other until her very prayers were drained away and only the last bead remained. And now she felt her last prayer was answered. Though her enemies prevail, though her love die, she would not let her face be changed nor her beauty fade nor her grace be moved. She would be strong.

  Alone now the Empress lived through the days, while war raged about her, each day a month in length and weight, and into her awful loneliness few voices penetrated. She heard the voice of Prince Tuan.

  “Majesty,” he implored her, “these Boxers have a secret talisman, a circle of yellow paper which each carries on his person when he goes to battle. On this paper there is a creature painted in red, a creature not man nor devil. It has feet but no head, and its face is pointed and surrounded by four halos. The eyes and eyebrows are exceedingly black and burning. Up and down its strange body are written these magic words, ‘I am Buddha of the Cold Cloud. Before me the black God of Fire leads my way. Behind me Lao Tzu himself supports me.’ In the upper left hand corner of this paper are these words: ‘Invoke first the Guardian of Heaven’ and on the lower right hand corner are written these words: ‘Invoke secondly the Black Gods of Pestilence.’ Whoever learns these mystic words destroys by each incantation a foreign life somewhere in our country. Surely, Majesty, it does no harm to learn the magic words.”

  “It does no harm,” the Empress agreed, and she learned the mystic words and repeated them seventy times a day and Li Lien-ying praised her for each time, while he counted how many foreign devils were gone. And he told her that wherever the sword of a Boxer touched, whether on flesh or on wood, flame burst out, and he told her that whenever an enemy was captured alive the Boxers sought the will of Heaven by this means, that they rolled a ball of yellow paper and set it afire, and if the ashes went upward, the enemy was to be killed but if the ash fell to the earth, he was not killed. Many such stories this eunuch told the Empress and she doubted them yet was so hard pressed that she half believed them, too, wanting much to believe that somewhere help could be found.

  Yet what help was there? As if the angry foreigners were not woe enough, there came up from over the whole country murmurings and complaints of great floods and starving villages, of harvests not reaped and seed not sown. The people in despair rose up throughout the realm, they plundered the rich and robbed those who had a little food and among those who were so attacked there were also foreign priests who had always food and money. Among thousands who were plundered a few white priests were also found, but the foreign ministers protested the death of even one such priest and they declared that unless the people were put down their governments would send still more armies and warships. In all the world there was not one nation nor even one man to whom the Empress could turn for help while Jung Lu lay helpless upon his bed, speechless and deaf. When she inquired of her General Yuan Shih-k’ai what she should do, he replied only that the Boxers were fools, that he had ordered twenty of them stood up in a court before him to be shot and he himself had seen them fall and die like common men. And he begged the Empress not to put her faith in these charlatans, but he did not tell her in whom to put her faith and she found no help.

  Meanwhile, Prince Tuan was always beside her throne and he boasted that he could drive the barbarians into the sea and he begged for the word of her command. Still she delayed and hoped for peace and while she delayed Prince Tuan began to force her secretly by allowing angry men, here one and there one, to attack the foreigners in their legations. Her old and loyal Viceroy in the southern city of Nanking sent a memorial and he wrote beseeching her not to allow such attacks, and he begged her to protect the foreign ministers and their families and followers and the priests who lived in the outer provinces.

  “The present war,” he wrote, “is due to bandits spreading slaughter and arson on the pretext of paying off a grudge against Christianity. We are face to face with a serious crisis. The foreign governments are already uniting to send troops and squadrons to attack Ch
ina on the pretense of protecting their subjects and suppressing the rising rebellion. Our position is critical and I have made necessary preparations in my province so as to resist them with all my might.

  “Nevertheless, Majesty, let benevolence and power move together. Respectfully I suggest that you inflict stern and exemplary punishment on all those rebels who attack officials and missionaries, who are innocent. Thus let benevolence and righteous wrath be displayed together, manifest and bright as the sun and the moon.”

  When the Empress received this memorial she considered its writer, the Viceroy, and how good a man he was and faithful to her as sovereign and she replied to him by special couriers who ran in relays more than two hundred miles a day, and thus she said, brushing the characters with her own skillful hand:

  “We would not willingly be aggressors. You are to inform the various legations abroad that We have only calm and kindly feelings toward them and urge them to devise some plan whereby We may make a peaceful settlement, to the interest of all.”

  When she had sent this dispatch, she pondered and wrote a public edict, an edict in which she spoke thus to the whole world:

  “We have endured a succession of unfortunate circumstances following one upon another in rapid confusion, and We are at a loss to account for the situation which has brought about hostilities between China and the Western powers. Our envoys abroad are separated from Us by the wide seas, and they are not able therefore to explain to the Western powers the real state of Our feelings.”

  She then described the present war, how Chinese rebels and disorderly persons in every province had combined to create disturbance and how, had she not intervened for mercy and put down such persons, every foreign missionary would have been killed in every province. The further misfortune of the German minister had then occurred, and the insistence of the foreign warriors to take the Tientsin forts, which the Chinese Commandant could not accept, whereupon the foreign warriors had bombarded the forts.

  She concluded thus:

  “A state of war has thus been created, but it is none of Our doing. How could China be so foolish, conscious as she is of her weakness, as to declare war on the whole world at once? How can she hope to succeed by using untrained bandits for such a purpose? It must be obvious to all. This is a true statement of Our situation, explaining the measures forced upon Us to meet it. Our envoys abroad must explain the meaning of this edict to those governments to whom they are accredited. We will and do instruct our military commanders to protect the legations meanwhile. We can only do Our best. In the meantime, you, Our Ministers, must carry on your duties with renewed care. None can be disinterested spectators at such an hour.”

  Yet the Empress was not satisfied that she had done all she could and under her own hand she sent telegrams to the most powerful sovereigns of the outer world. To the Emperor of Russia she sent greetings and then she said:

  “For more than two and a half centuries Our neighboring empires have maintained unbroken friendship, more cordial than those existing between any other powers. Nevertheless recent ill feeling between converts to Christianity and the rest of Our people have given opportunity to evil persons to foment rebellion until the foreign powers themselves have been persuaded that the Throne opposes Christianity.” She then described how this had been done and she ended with these words:

  “And now that China has incurred the enmity of the Western world by circumstances beyond Our control, We can only rely upon Your country to act as intermediary and peacemaker on Our behalf. I make this earnest and sincere appeal to Your Majesty to come forward as arbitrator and save us all. We wait Your gracious reply.”

  And to the Queen of England, the Empress gave a sister’s greeting and she reminded this Queen that most of China’s trade was done with England, and concluded thus:

  “We therefore ask You to consider that if by some circumstance the independence of Our Empire should be lost the interests of Your country would suffer. We are striving in anxiety and haste to raise an army for Our own defense and in the meantime We rely upon You as Our mediator, and will await hourly Your decision.”

  And using the name of the Emperor with her own she wrote last to the Emperor of Japan, sending her letter through her minister in Tokio, and she wrote:

  “To Your Majesty, greeting! The Empires of China and Japan hang together, like lips and teeth. Therefore as Europe and Asia face each other for war, Our two Asian nations must stand together. The earth-hungry nations of the West, whose tigerish eyes are now fixed in greed upon Us, will certainly one day glare also at You. We must forget discord and think of Ourselves only as comrade peoples. We look to You as Our arbitrator with the enemies that surround Us.”

  To all these messages the Empress received no reply. She waited day and night, unbelieving, and day and night Prince Tuan and his followers pressed about her. “Friend or enemy to the Throne, minister or rebel,” Prince Tuan said, “all are united in this one hatred against these foreign Christians who have come here against our will to trade and preach.”

  How monstrous now was her loneliness, encompassing the earth and high as Heaven! No human voice could reach her and no god spoke. The Empress sat in her Throne Hall day after day. The ministers and princes were silent when Prince Tuan and his followers spoke. Silent were the majesties abroad and silent Jung Lu lay upon his bed. The summer days passed by, one after the other, equal in brilliance, and no rain fell. While the people surged and strove and complained, the skies stretched over all without cloud or shadow. Last year there were floods and now came drought and the people cried out that the times were too evil and that Heaven was wroth. And while she meditated, outwardly as calm and still as the goddess Kuan Yin, within she was numb with confusion and despair. The city filled with rebels and Boxers, and all good people hid inside their houses. The foreign legations were preparing for attack, their gates were locked, and guards waited with their guns ready.

  On the twentieth day of the fifth moon month the Empress knew that waiting was useless. Nothing now could stay destruction. At dawn the city blazed into fire. More than a thousand shops were set on fire by rebels and Boxers and rich merchants fled the city with their families. Now the war was not only against the foreigners but also against the Throne and against her.

  On this day she received two memorials from the ministers Yuan and Hsü, both in her Foreign Office. They reported that they had themselves seen the bodies of dead Boxers in Legation Street, where they had been killed by foreign guards. Yet, they said, these guards were not to be blamed for what they had done, for the Western envoys had promised the Throne previously that their guards were summoned in larger numbers than usual only for defense, and when the storm was over they would be detached again from the city. The Emperor had inquired of the minister Hsü after audience only a few days before whether China could resist attack from abroad, he had caught hold of the minister’s sleeve in his anxiety, and he had wept when Hsü replied that China must expect defeat. And the minister Yuan said when he heard the legations had been attacked, that it could only be called a grave breach of international law.

  Still the Empress could not move. Where, she inquired of silent Heaven, could she turn? The insolent memorials heaped reproach upon her.

  Again days passed. Within the legations the foreigners locked themselves as into a fortress. She heard that the foreigners starved and in her anxiety for them she sent them food, but it was returned, for they feared it was poisoned. She heard that their children were ill and fevered with lack of water, but when she sent kegs of clean water these, too, were returned.

  On the fifteenth day of the sixth moon month the last blow fell from the hand of Heaven. Hundreds of Chinese Christians were murdered by the Boxers outside the gates of a prince’s palace and the Empress, when she heard of the innocent dying with the guilty, put her hands to her ears and trembled. “Oh, if the Christians would but recant,” she moaned. “Then I would not be compelled to this evil war.”

  But they
did not recant and this angered the Boxers still more. One morning the Empress was drinking her morning tea. The sun was not yet shining over the wall and the dew was cool upon the lilies outside the door of her palace. In the midst of the turmoil and the battle in the city she was grateful for such a moment as this. Suddenly she heard loud shouts and the beat of tramping feet upon the stones of the outer terraces. She rose and hastened to the gate of her own palace, and there she saw a horde of noisy drunken men, their faces crimson, their broadswords drawn. At their front, half frightened, half boastful, she saw the tall thick form of Prince Tuan himself.

  He clapped his hands when he saw her and motioned to his followers to be silent and arrogantly he addressed her.

  “Majesty! I cannot hold back these true patriots. They hear that you are sheltering those devils’ pupils, the Christian converts. More than that, they are told that the Emperor himself is a Christian. I cannot be responsible, Majesty—I will not be responsible—”

  Her jade tea bowl was still in her hands and she lifted it high above her head and crashed it to the stone upon which she stood. Her huge eyes glowed and shone with cold fire.

  “You traitor! Stand forth!” Thus she commanded Prince Tuan. “How dare you come here in the early morning when I am drinking tea and make a commotion? Do you dream yourself the Emperor? How dare you behave in this reckless and insolent fashion? Your head sits no more tightly on your shoulders than the head of any commoner! It is I and I alone who rule! Do you think that you can approach the Dragon Throne unless I speak?”

  “Majesty—Majesty,” Prince Tuan stammered.

  But she would not stop the fountain of her anger. “Do you think because the times are confused that you can come here and create a riot? Get back to your place! For a year you will receive no salary. As for these vagabonds, these scavengers who follow you, I will have them beheaded!”