Nuharoo was silenced but didn’t surrender.
Tung Chih started to sneeze.
No longer able to control myself, I went to the tub and pushed the maids away. I grabbed Tung Chih and ran inside.
The ceremonies and festivities went on and on. In the middle of it all a gardener discovered a fetish doll buried in my garden. On the doll’s chest were two black characters spelling out “Tung Chih.”
Emperor Hsien Feng summoned the wives and concubines-he wanted to solve the crime personally. I dressed and went to Lady Yun’s palace. I didn’t know why we had to meet there. I ran into Nuharoo on the way. She had come from another palace and had no idea what was going on either.
As we approached the palace we heard sounds of sobbing. We hurried into the hall and found an angry Emperor. Hsien Feng was in his sleeping gown, and next to him stood two eunuchs, each holding a whip. On the floor knelt numerous eunuchs and servants. Among them, in the first row, was Lady Yun. She was in a pink silk gown and had been the one sobbing.
“Quit crying,” Emperor Hsien Feng said. “As a noble lady, how could you lower yourself to this?”
“I didn’t do it, Your Majesty!” Lady Yun threw her head back to face him. “I was overjoyed by the birth of Tung Chih. I couldn’t celebrate enough. I will not close my eyes if I am hanged because of this!”
“Everyone in the Forbidden City recognizes your handwriting.” The Emperor raised his voice. “How could everyone be wrong?”
“My calligraphy is not a secret,” Lady Yun protested. “I am known for my art. It would be very easy for anyone to copy my style.”
“But one of your maids caught you making the doll.”
“It must be Dee. She made this up because she hates me.”
“Why does Dee hate you?”
Lady Yun turned around. Her eyes spotted Nuharoo. “Dee was given to me by Her Majesty Empress Nuharoo as a gift. I never wanted her. I punished her several times because she sniffed around-”
“Dee is only thirteen years old,” Nuharoo interrupted. “Accusing an innocent in order to cover your crime is shameful.” She turned to me as if for support. “Dee is known for her sweetness, isn’t she?”
Unprepared to respond, I lowered my head.
Nuharoo turned to Hsien Feng. “Your Majesty, may I have your permission to perform my duty?”
“Yes, my Empress.”
At this Lady Yun screamed, “All right, I will confess! I know exactly who set this up. It is an evil fox in a human’s skin. She was sent by the demon to destroy the Ch’ing Dynasty. But there is more than one fox in the Forbidden City. The evil fox has called in her pack. You,” she pointed at Nuharoo, “are one of them. And you,” she pointed at me, “too. Your Majesty, it is time to reward me with the white silk rope so that I will have the honor of hanging myself.”
This caused a brief commotion in the hall. The noise settled when Lady Yun spoke again.
“I want to die. My life has been hell. I have given you a princess,” she pointed at Emperor Hsien Feng, “and you treat her like a piece of rubbish. As soon as she turns thirteen, you will give her away. You will marry her off to a savage from the borderlands in order to make peace. You will sell your own daughter…”
Lady Yun broke down. Her two dimples were making a strange grin. “Don’t think I am deaf. I have been hearing you and your ministers talk about this. I have not been allowed to speak about my misery. But today, like it or not, you will hear all that I have to say. Of course I am jealous of the way Tung Chih is treated. Of course I cry for my daughter Jung’s misfortune, and I question Heaven why I was denied a son… Let me ask you, Hsien Feng, do you know when your daughter’s birthday is? Do you know how old she is? How long has it been since you last visited her? I bet you have no answers for any of my questions. Your heart has been chewed up by the foxes!”
Nuharoo took out her handkerchief and began to pat her face. “I am afraid that Lady Yun is leaving His Majesty with no choice.”
“Finish the business for me, Nuharoo.” Emperor Hsien Feng stood and walked out of the hall in his bare feet.
Lady Yun hanged herself that night. The news was brought to me by An-te-hai the next morning while I was having breakfast. My stomach turned upside down. For the rest of the day I could see Lady Yun’s face behind every door and in every window. I asked An-te-hai to stay nearby while I checked and rechecked Tung Chih’s cradle. I wondered about Lady Yun’s daughter, Princess Jung. I wished I could invite the girl to stay with me for a while and spend time with her half-brother. An-te-hai said that the toddler had been told that her mother had gone on a long journey. The eunuchs and servants were ordered to keep Lady Yun’s death a secret. The girl would find out about it in the cruelest way: she would learn of the death from gossip, from Lady Yun’s rivals, who wished to see the girl suffer.
Nuharoo came unannounced at midnight. Her eunuchs knocked on my gate so hard that they almost broke it down. Nuharoo threw herself on me when I greeted her. She looked ill and her voice choked. “She is after me!”
“Who is after you?” I asked.
“Lady Yun!”
“Wake up, Nuharoo. It must have been a nightmare.”
“She was standing by my bed in a greenish transparent dress,” Nuharoo sobbed. “There was blood all over her chest. Her neck was cut from the front, as if with an ax, and her head was hanging on her back, connected to her neck by only a thin piece of skin. I couldn’t see her face, but heard her voice. She said, ‘I was supposed to be hanged, not beheaded.’ She said that she was sent by the judge of the underworld to find a substitute. In order to come back for her next life, she had to make the substitute die the same way she did.”
I comforted Nuharoo, but was scared myself. She returned to her palace and devoured every ghost book she owned. A few days later she visited me and said that she had discovered something that I’d better know.
“The worst punishment for a female ghost is being dumped in the ‘Pool of Filthy Blood.’” Nuharoo showed me a book with lurid illustrations of the “Department of Scourging” at work in the underworld. Severed heads with long hair floated in a dark red pool-they looked like dumplings in boiling water.
“See this? This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Nuharoo said. “The blood in the pool comes from the filth of all women. Also in the pool are poisonous snakes and scorpions that feed on the newly dead. They are the transformations of those who committed wrongdoings in their lives.”
“What if I commit no serious wrongdoing during my lifetime?” I asked.
“Orchid, the judgment of the underworld is for all women. That is why we need religion. Buddhism helps us repent the crimes we commit simply by being women and living a material life. We need to forgo all earthly pleasure and pray for Heaven’s forgiveness. We must do everything we can to accumulate virtue. Only then may we have a chance of escaping the Pool of Filthy Blood.”
Sixteen
ON HIS FIRST BIRTHDAY my son would be presented with a tray filled with a variety of items. He was expected to pick one that would give the Imperial family a clue to his future character. This was called Chua-tsui-p’an, Catch the Future in a Pan. Important court members were invited to observe.
Tung Chih’s eunuchs had been busy all week in preparation for the event. The walls, columns, doors and window frames of my palace were freshly painted in vermilion. The beams and bracket sets were accented with blue, green and gold. Against the bright northern sky, the yellow tile roof glistened like a gigantic golden crown. The white marble terraces vibrated with their exuberant carvings.
The ceremony opened in the Hall of Bodily Mercy, in the east corner of the palace, where an altar had been set up. Above the altar was a broadside explaining the ritual. In the center of the hall sat a large square redwood table. On top of the table stood a tray the size of a mature lotus leaf, larger than a child’s tub. On the tray lay symbolic items: an Imperial seal, a book of Confucius’s On Autumn and Spring, a brush pen made of goat hair, a gold ingot, a silver ingot, a riddle, a decorative sword, a miniature liquor bottle, a golden key, ivory dice, a silver cigarette box, a musical clock, a leather whip, a blue ceramic bowl painted with landscapes, an antique fan with a poem written by a famous Ming poet, a green jade hairpin crafted with butterflies, an earring in the shape of a pagoda and a pink peony.