Prosperity had come, the end was beginning. A bamboo flute was guiding me through the darkness to the mouth of the labyrinth. It had all been written.
The very next day I sent a message to Moon, and that evening the princess sent her lover to the Inner Palace and offered him to me.
HOLDING PROSPERITY IN my arms, I realized I was no longer the same woman, no longer ashamed of my old age or filled with self-loathing. The despair had vanished. This coming together of two bodies had been inscribed in the Book of the Earth. Prosperity was a present from God. He was bringing me new life even as he announced my death.
When the Mistress of the World, Emperor of the Zhou dynasty, quivered to a man’s rhythms once more Tai Mountain crumbled, the Yellow Sea boiled, wild animals roared in the forest, and the whole universe shivered with joy and amazement. It was a long time since I had had an official favorite, and the Court was bowled over by the news.
Urged on by my Great Ministers, the imperial doctors recommended that I should be examined immediately, and they forbade violent orgasms that might prove fatal. Their eager concern amused me. From the very first night with my new lover, I knew that my pleasure was no longer the physical contractions. In my dotage, death’s mystic light was blinding me. My erotic pleasure was almost a breathing exercise, an elation that lay along the torturous path of caresses on my skin. It was a dreamlike pilgrimage toward the kingdom of the immortals.
A month later, for my entertainment and to ensure that he was no longer the only man in the gynaeceum attracting jealousy, Prosperity brought his elder brother Simplicity to my bed. The boy was eighteen. Their fresh faces, their soft skin, and their exquisite smell of crisp green leaves overwhelmed me. I had been neither a good mother nor a good lover. The Zhang brothers were my last chance to savor the joys of ordinary women. They were my last rays of sunlight before the ultimate sunset.
I gave them the most beautiful things in my possession. Sumptuous palaces had been raised for them close to the Forbidden City. Their stables were filled with the rarest chargers, gifts from kings in the west. Imperial peonies bloomed in their beautiful gardens where little boats glided over serpentine lakes, and cranes danced under canopies edged with gold bells. I gave noble titles to their mother and brothers, and all five boys from the family now had honorable positions. I indulged their faults in a way I never had my husband, and I was tender with them as I never had been with Scribe of Loyalty. I had stopped questioning my every move and forbidding myself pleasures. I had given up worrying about betrayal and usurpation. Simplicity and Prosperity’s delicate virility erased memories of the presumptuous phallus of man. I was no longer an assailed female, a conquered land. The love that I had always thought of as a theft was offered as a soothing balm.
Spring spread its fragrance. Swallows flew back to the eaves of the Palace. With the first mild breeze, the willows flowered. Soon their downy, silvered catkins were fluttering. The court ladies fixed colored kites to lengths of red string and made them dance in the sky. Waking became a delicious treat. The eunuchs congratulated me on my glowing good health so frequently that I felt young again. Where I had lost a tooth, a new one was growing: This miracle flooded me with childish joy. My frugal soul had been seduced by pomp and splendor. My thrifty mind stopped counting the cost. I gave sumptuous banquets and let the Zhang brothers organize extravagant shows with fireworks, animals, and acrobats from the western kingdoms.
Death was no longer an ice-cold bed, a fatal boredom. I wanted to leave this world in a whirlwind of celebrations. Politics were no longer a priority. Like a peasant who has worked hard all his life and resolves to enjoy his accumulated wealth, I decided to appoint an heir. I had to choose between my nephew and my son. The problems were still the same, but I felt less anxious when I confronted that tangle of hopes and frustrations. I was determined to be done with it. The ministers dared to give me frank advice, “Years ago the Emperor Eternal Ancestor braved the wind and the rain, and bared his life to the blade of the sword. He himself led his troops into battle to overcome disorder in this world. He founded the Tang Dynasty so that he could hand it on to his descendants. Before he died, the Emperor Lordly Ancestor entrusted his sons to you so that you might make great sovereigns of them. If Your Majesty now chooses to offer the throne to strangers, her actions would betray his wishes! Which is the more intimate connection, between a mother and her son or between a mother and her nephew? If Your Majesty appoints her son as successor, she shall still be receiving offerings in the Temple of Ancestors in ten thousand years’ time. If Your Majesty appoints her nephew… your servants have never heard of a nephew building a temple to honor his aunt!”
Lai Jun Chen was no longer there to pick out the dark plans for restoration beneath these words. Without his hissing comments, I myself was less susceptible to doubt. Granted, the imperial banners bore my colors, I had altered the calendar and the Empire venerated my ancestors as the founding sovereigns… but my husband’s Tang Dynasty lived on through his descendants and through me. Heaven’s wishes were more powerful than my own. I could not devour my own children so I decided my dynasty should not be the cause of radical revolution, no blood should flow. The forces of destiny had unarmed me for such was the destiny of the Empire. Piety the despot and Miracle the powerless emperor would see their claims brushed aside. I would call Future back from exile. This unworthy son had neglected his principle responsibility. His fourteen years banished from the Court might have put some polish on his flippancy. Now that his youth was buried in the wild mountains, he would come to me with no hint of arrogance.
AT THE BEGINNING of the first year in the era of the Divine Calendar my third son returned from the distant region in the south. At forty, the chubby, jovial prince had become a thin, stooped man with a graying beard. When he threw himself at my feet calling me “Mother” and “Majesty,” my eyes filled with tears. It was like hearing Splendor’s voice, and Wisdom’s, the echoes of their cries as tiny babies. I remembered the polo matches, the noisy celebrations with all four of my sons fighting for the golden goblet in my husband’s hand.
The past was a hurricane blasting through my dreams. How strange, how sad, to be receiving grandchildren-flesh of my flesh-who were strangers and already head and shoulders taller than me! Some had features vaguely like mine, others were like the Emperor Lordly Ancestor or their grandfather the Emperor Eternal Ancestor. Peaceful Joy, the daughter who was born on the road to exile, delivered into her father’s tunic, had grown into a princess whose beauty was mysterious and proud. Fourteen-the age at which I had come to the Imperial City for the first time. And this young girl who grew up in the wilds of the countryside like Heavenlight, was she too reeling and disorientated?
When he heard that his eldest brother had returned, Miracle was eager to offer him his title as Imperial Descendant. He made the request three times in writing. In the ninth month of that year I appointed Future as Supreme Son and his eldest son, Progress, as Supreme Grandson. At the same time I pronounced a Great Amnesty and gave banquets for the people. All the pomp of the celebrations was interrupted by Spirit weeping in grief: Piety had just died! He had been struck down as his father had been sixty years earlier.
General jubilation became imperial mourning. Laughter and congratulations turned to tears and lamentations. My nephew’s body went into the belly of Mount Mang. He would rest in an underground palace with funeral treasures fit for a powerful king who could so easily have been emperor. The entire Court and all of Luoyang was there to witness his journey toward Heaven. My nephew kings and my great nephew county princes wept, and their tears devastated me. I had just dashed their hopes for the future. The defeated were now open to reprisals from their victorious rivals.