“Well, well,” the Empress rejoined, “a priest, I suppose—”
“No priest, Majesty,” the lady insisted, “but only bald like a priest. Perhaps he was a Thibetan monk—ah, but he wore no yellow robes! No, he was black from neck to feet and taller than any man I ever saw, and he had such great hands! Yet, Majesty, the gates are locked, and none save eunuchs are here inside the walls!”
The Empress turned her eyes toward the sky. The sun had set, and the soft red light of afterglow poured into the courtyard of the pavilion. Indeed, no man should be here now.
“You are dreaming,” she said to the foolish lady. “The eunuchs are on guard. No man can enter.”
“I saw him, Majesty, I saw him,” the lady insisted.
“Then I myself will find him,” the Empress declared firmly. So saying she sent the serving woman to bring the Chief Eunuch to her, and when he heard the tale he called twenty lesser eunuchs and they lit lanterns and held swords, and encircling the intrepid Empress, they searched long and found no one.
“We are fools,” the Empress cried at last. “That lady had a nightmare or she was drunk. So you, Li Lien-ying, bid the eunuchs carry on the search while you hold the lantern for me.”
So they two walked back, he ahead to light the way, until she returned to her library room. She had but crossed the threshold when lifting her head she saw upon the writing table a long sheet of red paper whereon were brushed in huge bold strokes these words, “I hold your life inside the hollow of my hand.”
She seized the paper and read it twice and threw it at the waiting eunuch.
“See this!” she shouted. “He hides here—an assassin! Get back to the search.”
By now her ladies flocked about her, and while Li Lien-ying made haste away, they consoled the Empress with many words and sighs.
“Be sure, Majesty, the eunuchs will find him,” they said, and they declared that now since all knew the hairless man was real and not a dream, he could be quickly found.
They lit candles, a score or so, and led the Empress to her sleeping chambers, saying that she must not fall ill with weariness, and they would stay with her all night. But as they entered into the chamber they saw a sheet of red paper pinned on her yellow satin pillow and upon it with the same bold strokes were brushed these words:
“When the hour comes, I bring my sword. Asleep or waking, you must die.”
The ladies shrieked but the Empress was only angry. Then suddenly she seized the red paper and crumpled it into a ball and threw it across the floor. She laughed, her black eyes aglitter. “Now come,” she commanded, “be silent, my children. The fellow is some clown who loves to tease. Go to bed and sleep and so will I.”
They made a chorus against her. “No, Majesty, no—no, Majesty, we will not leave you.”
Still smiling, she yielded, and with her usual grace she let them undress her and put her to bed. And six ladies lay on mattresses the serving women brought and put upon the floor, while others went to their rooms to sleep until midnight and then another six would take their place until dawn. Meanwhile Li Lien-ying had summoned the eunuchs and they surrounded the sleeping chamber, standing with their swords drawn, until the night was spent.
At dawn the Empress woke, she yawned pleasantly behind her outspread hand. She smiled and said she felt the better for the commotion of the hairless man. “I am lively,” she declared. “We have been too indolent in all this beauty of our palace.”
She went out from her chamber that morning, bathed and dressed, her hair set with fresh flowers, to eat her early meal, her eyes looking everywhere to see that all was in usual order. Suddenly she saw, laid upon the dishes, the red sheet of paper, and the same strong strokes of black.
“While you slept, I waited,” the black words declared.
The ladies screamed again, some wept aloud, and the serving women ran in and struck their cheeks with their palms. “But we put out the dishes only now and we saw no man come in!”
“He will be found,” the Empress said lightly, and again she crumpled the paper and threw it to the floor. Nor would she allow the dishes to be removed, although the ladies shuddered and implored, saying that the meats might be poisoned. No, she ate as usual and felt no pains, and during that whole day the search went on. None saw the man, but four more red sheets of threats were found here and there.
So went this search for two full months, by day and night, a zealous search, for now and again a lady or a eunuch saw a glimpse of the hairless man, in black from neck to feet, and his pale face and head all of a color. One lady indeed fell into sickness and her mind went weak because she said when she had opened her eyes one morning from her sleep she saw the man’s face staring at her, but upside down as though he hung from the roof, and when she screamed the head went upwards.
Nevertheless the Empress would not be afraid, although day and night the eunuchs stood on guard. No one outside the walls knew the story, for the Empress had forbidden one word to be told lest the city be disturbed and rascals come out from among them to seize the chance of some confusion.
One night, while the Empress lay sleeping in her chamber, the wakeful eunuchs stood on guard as usual in the halls outside and in the courtyards about. In the still hours between midnight and the dawn they heard a door creak open slowly and against the faint moonlight a black foot appeared, a leg, a thigh thrust in the narrow space. The eunuchs sprang together to lay hold upon that secret being. He fled, but eunuchs everywhere were waiting, and in a garden behind a great rock the Empress had ordered from a distant province they caught the hairless man between their hands.
The Empress was awakened by the eunuchs’ shouts and cries. She rose swiftly from her bed, for she had commanded that whatever hour the man was caught, he must be brought before her. Her women wrapped her in her robes and set her headdress on her head, and in a moment she sat upon her throne in her Audience Hall. Here the eunuchs brought the man with ropes wound about his body.
He stood before the Empress and he would not bow, though eunuchs seized him by the neck to force him down.
“Let him stand,” the Empress said, and her voice was mild and cool.
She stared down upon the tall bold figure, a young man, his head shaven, and she saw his strange tiger face, the sloping forehead, the tight-drawn mouth, the slanting eyes. A black garment, cut to his shape, fitted his thin body like a skin.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I am no one,” the man said, “nameless, of no significance.”
“Who sent you here?” she asked.
“Kill me,” the man said carelessly, “for I will tell you nothing.”
At such impudence the eunuchs shouted and would have fallen on him with their swords but the Empress put up her hand.
“See what he has on his person,” she commanded.
They searched the man while he stood carelessly at ease, indifferent to them, and they found nothing.
“Majesty,” Li Lien-ying now said, “I pray you give this fellow to me. Under torture he will speak. And I will see that he is beaten slowly with bamboos split thin and sharp. He shall not move, for he shall be laid upon the ground, his arms and legs outspread and fastened down with wire tied to stakes. Leave him to me, Majesty.”
All knew how Li Lien-ying dealt torture, and all approved with groans and cries.
“Take him and do what you will,” the Empress said. As she spoke she met the man’s eyes full, and she saw that they were not black like other human eyes but yellow, and as impudent as are the eyes of wild beasts which fear no human. She could not turn her own gaze away, so loathsome and yet strangely beautiful were those yellow eyes.
“Do your work well,” she bade the eunuchs.
Two days later Li Lien-ying returned to make report.
“What names did he speak?” the Empress asked.
“None, Majesty,” he said.
“Then continue torture but make it twice as slow.”
This was her command but L
i Lien-ying shook his head.
“Majesty,” he said, “it is too late. He died as though he willed it, and he did not speak.”
For the first time in her life the Empress felt afraid. The strange yellow eyes seemed still to watch her. Yet when had she allowed herself to fear? She put out her right hand and plucked a jasmine flower from a blooming tree set in a porcelain pot nearby, and held the fragrance to her nostrils and breathed it in for comfort.
“Now let him be forgot,” she said.
Yet she it was who could not forget the hairless man. He left behind him the shadow of darkness and suspicious doubt. The beauty of her palace was dimmed, and though she walked in her gardens every day and showed her old zeal for each flower and fruit in season, and though daily she commanded the Court actors to present some merry play, her easy joy was gone. She had no fear of death, but what she felt was a heavy sadness, since somewhere there were those who wished her dead. Could she have found those enemies, she would have killed them, but where were they to be found? None knew and all were troubled.
One day in late afternoon she sat among her ladies on the great marble boat and she saw Li Lien-ying come near. She had played gambling games all day and still she played, her tea bowl in one hand while with the other she moved her pieces here and there to win the game.
“Majesty, your tea is cold,” the eunuch said. He took her bowl and let a serving eunuch fill it. When he put it down upon the table near her he whispered that he had news.
She seemed not to hear, she played her game out and then she rose, and with a look she summoned him to follow her.
When they were alone in her own palace, her ladies standing at a distance since they knew the eunuch had some business to report, she waved her fan to signify he should not kneel and nodded to him to begin what he had to say.
“Majesty,” he said, his hissing whisper near her ear.
She struck him slowly with her fan. “Stand back,” she cried imperiously. “Your breath is foul as rotting carrion.”
He put up his hand then to hold back his breath and began his tale.
“Majesty, there is a plot.”
She turned her face away and held her fan before her nose. Oh, cursed delicacy, she thought, that made her smell twice as keenly as another might all stinks and odors! Did not this eunuch serve her with his whole heart, she would not keep him near her.
“Majesty,” he began again, and thus he unrolled the plot. The young Emperor now listened to his tutor Weng Tung-ho, who urged him that the nation must be made strong, or it would surely fall at last into the hands of waiting enemies, their jaws open and their saliva dripping, to eat up the Chinese people. The Emperor, Li Lien-ying went on, had asked what should be done, to which the tutor had replied that the great scholar, whose name was K’ang Yu-wei, must give advice, for this scholar was wise not only in history but in the new Western ways. He alone could advise how to build the ships and railroads and the schools for young men who could renew the nation. The Emperor had then sent for K’ang Yu-wei.
The Empress turned her head somewhat, her fan still between her and the eunuch. “And is this K’ang already in the Forbidden City?” she inquired.
“Majesty,” the eunuch said, “he is daily with the Emperor. They spend hours together and I hear that he declares the Chinese men must cut their queues off as the first reform.”
At this the Empress dropped her fan. “But their queues are the sign of subjection these two hundred years to our Manchu dynasty!”
Li Lien-ying nodded his heavy head up and down three times. “Majesty, K’ang Yu-wei is a Chinese revolutionist, a Cantonese. He plots against Your Majesty! Yet I have worse to tell. He bade our Emperor send for Yuan Shih-k’ai, the general who commands our armies under Li Hung-chang, as you know, Majesty. This Yuan has imperial orders now to seize you by force, Majesty, and keep you imprisoned.”
The eunuch gave a mighty sigh, so foul a blast that the Empress put up her fan again in haste to shield herself. “Doubtless my nephew plots to have me killed,” she said too mildly.
“No, no,” the eunuch said. “Our Emperor is not so evil. It may be that K’ang Yu-wei has so advised, but my spies tell me that the Emperor has forbidden harm to your sacred person, Majesty. No, he says you shall only be imprisoned here in your Summer Palace. You are allowed your pleasures but all your power shall be stripped away.”
“Indeed,” she said. She felt a strange sweet strength invade her blood. To do battle was still delight and she would have the victory yet again.
“Well, well,” she said, and laughed. Then Li Lien-ying, at first astonished at her high humor, laughed with her silently, his ugly face made more hideous by his mirth.
“There is none like you under Heaven,” he said tenderly. “You are not male or female, Majesty, but more than either, greater than both.”
They exchanged look for look in mutual mischief, and she struck him gaily on the face with her folded fan and bade him be off.
“And close your mouth and keep it closed,” she said, “for I swear that vile gusty breath of yours surrounds you as you go.”
“Yes, Majesty,” he said gaily, and put up his hand, thick as a bear’s paw, against his smiling mouth.
It was not her imperial way to make haste in any cause. She meditated much on what her spy had told her. While she let days pass in idle pleasure she showed no fear. The summer passed, one long lovely day upon another, and she pursued her habits, taking pleasure in a large northern dog, his coat as white as snow and he snarling at all except her, his mistress. To her only he showed devotion, and he slept beside her bed at night. Her small cinnamon-colored sleeve dogs were jealous and she laughed much to see them circling the great dog like angry imps. But while she walked in gardens, or picnicked on the lake, or sat in her theater to watch the plays she loved, she was thinking deeply always of the world beyond and what price she must pay to keep peace and beauty living. Twice those island enemies, the men of Japan, had been bought off from war, once by gold and again by yielding to them rights over her tribute people of Korea. Ah that, she now felt, was the weakness of her faithful Viceroy Li Hung-chang, and had he not persuaded her twice to yield, these small brown island dwarfs would not now dream of swallowing her whole vast realm. War, open war against the enemy, brave attack if not on sea then on land, must be her defense at last. And Yuan Shih-k’ai must begin the war, not on Chinese soil but in Korea and from there drive the Japanese into the sea and so to their own bitter rock-ribbed islands. Let them starve there!
On the loveliest afternoon in summer she so shaped her mind and will, and at the same moment she was listening to a love song chanted by a young eunuch dressed as a girl, in that ancient play The Tale of the Western Pavilion. The Empress smiled and listened, and she hummed the tune of the love song and all the while within her heart and mind she planned war. That night she summoned Li Hung-chang and laid down her commands, and would not heed his moans and sighs that his armies were too weak, his ships too few.
“You need no great armies or vast fleets,” she said, “even if at worst the enemy attack Chinese soil, why, then, the people will rise up and drive them into the sea, and the waves will drown them.”
“Ah, Majesty,” he groaned, “you do not know the evil times! Here in your palaces you live apart and dreaming.”
And he went out sighing loudly and shaking his troubled head.
Alas, the year was not spent before war was made and victory lost. The enemy came quickly and inside a handful of brief days their ships had crossed the seas. That general, Yuan Shih-k’ai, was driven from Korea and the enemy was next on Chinese soil. The Empress for once was wrong. Her people yielded. Her villagers stood silent when the short strong men of Japan marched up their streets and toward the capital itself. They carried guns, these men, and villagers have no guns and being prudent they did not show knives and scythes which are no more than toys. When the enemy demanded food and drink the villagers, still mute, set forth wine and tea and b
owls of meats.
At this evil news the Empress moved quickly. She was a good gamester who played to win but well she knew when she could not. She sent word to Li Hung-chang to surrender before the realm was lost and to accept what terms he must. A bitter treaty then was forged, the terms of which shook even the haughty heart of the Empress so that she retired for three days and nights and would not eat and sleep, and Li Hung-chang himself went to the Summer Palace to comfort her. He told her that the treaty was indeed bitter but the throne had a new friend to the north, the Czar of Russia, who for his own sake would not have Japan grow strong.
The Empress listened and took heart. “Then let us get these yellow foreigners from our shores,” she said. “At any price they must be got away. And from now on I shall spend my whole strength until I devise some plan to rid myself of every foreigner, white or yellow, and none shall be allowed to set foot upon our soil. No, not until the end of time! As for the Chinese whom we Manchus rule, I will win them back again, save for those young men who have breathed in foreign winds and drunk down foreign waters. My Grand Councilor Kang Yi said but the other day to me that we should never have allowed the Christians to set up schools and colleges, for they have encouraged Chinese to be ambitious to rule themselves and the young Chinese now are wily and rebellious and puffed up with false foreign knowledge.”
She struck her palms together and stamped her right foot. “I swear I will not die or let myself grow old until I have destroyed every foreign power upon our soil and have restored the realm to its own history!”
The General could not but admire the woman and his sovereign. The Empress was still beautiful, still strong, her hair as black, her long eyes as great and sparkling as ever they had been in youth. Her will, too, had not abated.
“If anyone can do this, it is only you, Majesty,” he said, and then he swore a simple oath to serve her always.
So time passed. Again the Empress seemed to play the idle days and months away, now painting her dream landscapes, now writing poetry, now toying with her jewels and designing new settings for her emeralds and pearls and buying diamonds from Arab merchants. Yet behind all such employments she wove her plans. She seemed indifferent to the Emperor and his tutors. But at night when all the palaces were still and dark, she listened to the stories that her spies brought to her lonely chamber and thus she knew from day to day the plots of the Emperor and his advisors. Against their plots she thus prepared herself. First she lifted Jung Lu up again, this time to be the Viceroy of the province, and it was made easy by the death of Prince Kung who, if not her enemy, had long not been her friend. On the tenth day of the fourth moon of this severe year he died of lung and heart diseases.