blooming. An-te-hai found that orchid-loving rodents had eaten the plants’ roots. Someone had to have smuggled them in.
My complaints irritated my husband. He thought of Nuharoo as the goddess of mercy and told me to quit worrying. My thinking was that I might be able to deal with one Nuharoo but not three thousand. Anything could happen, since they had made my belly a target. I was nearly twenty-one, and already I had heard about too many murders.
I begged Emperor Hsien Feng to move us back to Yuan Ming Yuan until I delivered. His Majesty yielded. I knew that I had to learn to tuck away my happiness like a mouse hiding its food. For the past weeks I had tried to avoid talking about my pregnancy when the other concubines visited. But it was difficult, especially when they brought gifts for the baby. The Emperor had recently increased my allowance, and I used the extra taels to purchase return gifts of equal value. I was sick of pretending to be glad of their visits.
An-te-hai kept my belly his priority. As it grew bigger, he became more and more involved. Each day he danced on his nerve tips, excited and frightened at the same time. Instead of greeting me in the morning, he greeted my belly. “Good morning, Your Young Majesty.” He bowed deeply and solemnly. “What can I get you for breakfast?”
I began to study Buddhist manuscripts. I prayed that my child would be content to grow inside me. I prayed that my nightmares wouldn’t disturb his growth. If I produced a girl, I still wanted to feel happy and blessed. Mornings I sat in a sun-filled room and read. In the afternoon I practiced calligraphy, part of a Buddhist’s training for cultivating balance and harmony. Gradually I felt the return of peace. Since I had captured His Majesty’s attention, he had visited Nuharoo only twice. Once was upon Lady Jin’s death. After the burial, he called on Nuharoo for tea. According to An-te-hai’s spies, His Majesty talked to her about nothing but the ceremony.
The second time His Majesty visited Nuharoo was at her request. And this Nuharoo told me herself. She did what she believed would please His Majesty-she asked for his permission to add a wing to Lady Jin’s tomb. Nuharoo reported that she had been collecting taels from everyone and had contributed her own money.
Emperor Hsien Feng was not pleased, but praised Nuharoo for her devotion. To demonstrate his affection and appreciation, he issued an edict to add one more title to Nuharoo’s name. She was now the Virtuous Lady of Grand Piety. But that was not what Nuharoo wanted. I knew what she wanted. She wanted Hsien Feng back in her bed. But he was not interested. His Majesty stayed in my quarters every night until dawn, disregarding the rules. It would be dishonest of me to say that I was willing to share Hsien Feng with anyone else, but I did understand Nuharoo’s suffering. In the future I would find myself wearing her shoes. For the moment I tried to get what I could. I thought of tomorrow as a mystery, and I allowed it to reveal itself. The word “future” made me think of the locust war my father had fought back in Wuhu, when the spring fields disappeared overnight.
Nuharoo managed to put on fabulous smiles in public, but the gossip from her eunuchs and ladies in waiting revealed that she was dis-tressed. She moved deeper into her Buddhist faith and visited the temple to chant with her master three times a day.
Emperor Hsien Feng advised me not to “look at other people through the eye of a sewing needle.” But my instinct told me not to take Nuharoo’s hidden jealousy lightly. Yuan Ming Yuan was by no means a safe place. On the surface, Nuharoo and I were friends. She was involved in the preparations for the baby’s arrival. She had visited the Imperial clothing shop to inspect the infant’s outfits. She had also visited the Imperial storehouses to make sure that fruits and nuts were available and fresh. Last she checked on the fish farm. Since fish was said to promote the flow of breast milk, Nuharoo made sure that there was plenty of fish to feed the wet nurses.
The selection of wet nurses became Nuharoo’s focus. She inspected an army of pregnant women whose babies were due at the same time mine was. Then she traveled all the way by carriage to Yuan Ming Yuan to talk to me about the matter.
“I have checked the history of their health three generations back,” she said.
The more excited Nuharoo got, the deeper my fear grew. I wished that she had her own child. Everyone in the Forbidden City except the Emperor understood the pressure Nuharoo was under after several years of marriage and no sign of fertility. That such pressure could lead to strange behavior was common in childless women. An obsession with
The moment after Doctor Sun Pao-tien examined me and pronounced that I would carry the baby to full term, His Majesty summoned his astrologer. The two of them went to the Temple of Heaven, where Hsien Feng prayed that the child would be a son. Afterward he went to Nuharoo to congratulate her.
Nuharoo played her role well. She showed her happiness with real tears. I thought,
When I was five months pregnant, Nuharoo suggested to Emperor Hsien Feng that I be moved back to the Palace of Concentrated Beauty.
“Lady Yehonala needs absolute peace,” Nuharoo said to him. “She needs to stay away from stress of any kind, including the bad news about the country from you.”
I let myself believe that Nuharoo was thinking of my welfare, and agreed to be moved. But the moment I was out of His Majesty’s bedroom, I sensed that I had made a mistake. Soon enough the truth revealed itself, and I never made it back to that bedroom.
As if to add more chaos to my life, Chief Eunuch Shim told me that I would not be allowed to raise my own child. I was considered “one of the prince’s mothers,” but not the only one. “It is the Imperial tradition,” Shim said coldly. Nuharoo would also be responsible for the daily care and education of my child, and she would have the right to take my child away from me if I refused to cooperate with her. The Manchu clan and Emperor Hsien Feng both believed that Nuharoo’s Imperial blood qualified her to be the chief mother of the future prince. No one had ever accused me of being a concubine from a lower class, but my background as a village girl and my father’s status as a low-ranking governor were an embarrassment that the court and the Emperor never forgot.
Fourteen
A MONTH AFTER I was out of his sight, Emperor Hsien Feng took in four new concubines. They were of Han Chinese origin. Since the Imperial rules didn’t permit non-Manchu women in the palace, Nuharoo made arrangements to smuggle them in.
It was hard for me to speak about the pain this caused me. It was like a slow drowning: the air was being shut out of my lungs and death had yet to arrive.
“Their teeny lotus-shaped feet have enthralled His Majesty,” An-te-hai reported. “The ladies were a gift from the governor of Soochow.”
I supposed that it was not difficult for Nuharoo to hint to the governors that the moment had come to please their ruler. An-te-hai discovered that Nuharoo had housed the new concubines in the Emperor’s miniature town of Soochow, within the largest Imperial garden at the Summer Palace, located several miles from Yuan Ming Yuan. The Summer Palace, with its little Soochow, had been built around a lake and was made up of more than three thousand structures on almost seven hundred acres.
Would I be any different if I were in her shoes? What was I crying about? Hadn’t I shamelessly gone to a whorehouse in order to learn man-pleasing tricks?
Emperor Hsien Feng had not visited me since I had left. My longing for him drove me to thoughts of white silk ropes. The little kicks inside my belly brought me back and steeled my will to survive. I reflected on my life, struggling to maintain my composure. Hsien Feng had never been mine to begin with. It was simply the way things were. The irony was that the Emperor was supposed to stay sober and refrain from lovemaking for three months after his mother’s death. He honored only the traditions that suited him. I could not imagine my son being raised the way his father had been. I needed to convince Nuharoo that I would be no threat to her so that I would always be close to my child.
The rumors of His Majesty’s obsession with his Chinese ladies reached every corner of the Forbidden City. I began to have horrible dreams. I dreamed that I was sleeping and someone was trying to pull me off the bed. I
