You, recent arrival from the famine-stricken world beyond the Forbidden City, pipe up excitedly. ‘I saw, I saw! The peasants stagger from countryside to town, begging for work. They sell their children for a bowl of rice. They clutter the roadside with their heaped corpses. Flies buzz around them.’
‘Who spoke? Apprentice concubines should not speak! Someone ought to spank the saucy bitch.’
Daggers fly and silence you.
‘The Department of Astrology has charted many ill omens. On the Terrace of Spirits they observed with astrological instruments a star crashing from the sky in portent of war, the merging of lakes on the moon in portent of floods.’
‘Japanese pirates attack the east coast of the Celestial Kingdom. The Mongol army loot and raid us from the north. The Gods are angry indeed.’
‘The Stone Lions weep at the palace gates. Tears of stone drip from their manes. They weep over the ruination of the empire.’
‘The reign of Emperor Jiajing is inauspicious indeed.’
‘Indeed, indeed.’
Twenty bronze tubs of concubines in ponderous silence. Forty knees above water. Forty submerged three-quarter-moon breasts.
‘His Majesty has no interest in the affairs of his empire. He neglects his imperial duties. He is obsessed with his Daoist longevity ceremonies and immortality elixirs of arsenic and silver that turn his skin yellow, his breath like that of a corpse. .’
‘He dreams of eternal life. He disappears for days in dark temples of incense smoke and Daoist monks chanting immortality prayers. .’
‘I hear His Majesty has invited the hermit sage Filthy Zhang to his quarters,’ I say. ‘The pills of filth collected by Filthy Zhang as he rubs his finger on his skin are said to lengthen life. I believe Emperor Jiajing has imbibed a few of these.’
Peals of laughter. The maids’ smiles show teeth, which they hastily conceal. Drum beat in Drum Tower signals second watch. Bathtime is over. Bodies rise from the water into kang-warmed towels. The older concubines, with our Leopard Room-scarred flesh, are grotesque to behold. Your virginal body is pure and pale as almond milk. You shudder at the sight of what awaits. A whisper: ‘They are building his tomb in the valley of Mount Tianshou.’
‘Then pray he outlives us. Pray he doesn’t die. For we’ll be immolated with him when he does. And should we accompany him to the afterlife, he will torment us there with knives.’
IV
Alone in my chamber in the Palace of All Sunshine. A bedchamber not shared with others now I am a concubine of first rank who has borne Emperor Jiajing three daughters. Princesses aged two, five and eleven, reared by nurses in the palace nursery. Princesses who cry and wriggle out of Mama’s arms during my brief visits. Alone in my chamber, but for my dearest companions, opium and wine, I am thinking with regret of my daughters, Lily, Chrysanthemum and Azalea, when there is a knock at my door. Swaying and inebriated, I open the door to my eldest, Lily. O beloved Lily, come to Mama at last! Then I blink my wine-befuddled eyes, and I see it is not Lily, but you, Concubine Bamboo, a winter mink over your shoulders, shivering in the courtyard.
‘Honourable Elder Sister Concubine Swallow. Forgive my grave insolence, but may I speak with you?’
Surly hostess swings wider the door. ‘Come in.’
I go to the dresser, my back turned on you. I drag a gem-studded comb through my tangled mane.
‘The Emperor has summoned me to his chambers tomorrow night. To the Leopard Room.’
‘Oh?’
You stammer on, ‘I hear he carved out Concubine Jasmine’s bellybutton. Used the flesh for a soup for eternal life. The eunuch physicians attend to the. . cavity he made.’
You stammer on, ‘I hear the Jiajing Emperor favours you. Pardons you from the Leopard Room. I hear, Elder Sister Swallow, that you are his luncheon companion on the twelfth day of the first lunar month. Tomorrow. Honourable Elder Sister, would it be possible for you to ask him to spare me? Please? I am only fourteen. I am too young, not ready to suffer and die. .’
I loosen my sash and shrug my shoulders so my robe slides to my feet. The stitches that criss-cross my body are like puckered seams, holding together my patchwork of skin. ‘Do these scars count as evidence that His Majesty favours me?’
Mesmerized, not appalled by my scars, you murmur, ‘I hear Emperor Jiajing has allowed you special privileges for years.’
‘By speaking on your behalf, I may provoke his ire. Concubine Bamboo, what will you give me in return?’
As we both know, you have only one thing worth giving and, having researched my predilections, you give it. I fondle and taste every part of your lithe, paler than moonlight body. I bury my teeth in you without breaking the skin. You lick the cleft between my legs until I am sated and permit you to stop. It is daybreak by the time it is over. You peel apart from me, sticky with my fluids, my sweat. Can’t look me in the eye.
‘Why so humiliated? I am not a man. I did not pierce you or touch you there. I know the folly of depriving you of the trickle of blood that must stain his sheets. Why are you crying, Concubine Bamboo? You miss your mother? Forget her. She’s to blame you are here in the first place.’
Naked, you stare into emptiness, knees hugged to chest. I scrape my long and tapered fingernails across your scalp. Clutch a fistful of hair. I promise to speak to the Emperor for you, I promise to do my best.
V
The drum bangs to signal dawn. Lanterns are lit all across the Palace of Heavenly Purity and Emperor Jiajing rises. ‘Ten Thousand Blessings to His Majesty!’ cry the eunuchs as they attend to his morning ablutions. They bath him, comb and trim his beard and clean the wax from his ears. They dress him in a padded blue silk, fox-fur-trimmed robe, brocade leggings and sheepskin-lined boots (recorded by a eunuch scribe in the Ledger for the Department of Wardrobes). The winter day is cold. All across the Forbidden City eunuch servants swish brooms back and forth, sweeping clean the courtyards. The Go-betweens of the Grand Secretaries present to the Emperor trays of scrolls, reporting of famines, droughts, peasant uprisings and warlord rebellions across the empire; trays of official decrees for His Majesty to approve and sign to quell these calamities. But Emperor Jiajing waves the triple-kowtowing Go-betweens away. He has a meeting with a Daoist sage who has journeyed from Yunnan with the waters of a legendary stream, promised to add to a lifespan fifty years.
The Hall of Literary Brilliance. One hundred serving eunuchs march in holding silver platters aloft. They cry, ‘Transmitting the viands! Transmitting the viands!’
The eunuchs lower the one hundred silver platters on six round tables before His Majesty, then withdraw to the edges of the room. Heavy-lidded on his throne, Emperor Jiajing scarcely stirs as the serving eunuchs whirl around him, pouring his much-loved elk-horn and deer-penis brew into a porcelain cup. He scarcely acknowledges Concubine What’s Her Name, mother of three of his daughters, genuflecting on her hands and knees, touching her forehead to the cold stone floor. The she-goat bleats, ‘Ten thousand blessings to Your Majesty! There is no greater honour than to be invited to dine with our Supreme Ruler today!’
Wretched Concubine What’s Her Name, with her defective girl-bearing uterus. Her man-hating womb, castrating his foetal sons so only daughters are born. Arising from her knees, Concubine What’s Her Name, head bowed with humility and deference, goes to stand at His Majesty’s shoulder. His rage blows over. The Emperor is hungry, his stomach growls with impatience.
‘Remove the covers!’ commands the Chief Serving Eunuch.
One hundred serving eunuchs scurry from the peripheries of the Hall of Literary Brilliance, remove the silver-domed platter lids and carry them away. What a feast! The Emperor licks his lips and points at a dish of noodles. The Eunuch Food-taster cries, ‘Appraising the viands!’ and pincers some dangling threads of noodles with his chopsticks. The Eunuch Food-taster nibbles, nods that the noodles are unpoisoned, and the Emperor proceeds to eat. Concubine What’s Her Name hovers out of eye-shot, at the shoulder of His Majesty’s fox-fur-trimmed robes. Concubine Meek and Timid. O how ashamed of her I am. But to behave in any other manner is to provoke his wrath. To dine with Emperor Jiajing is not to eat oneself but to stand beside him, encouraging him and praising him for every mouthful he masticates. A sip of elk-horn and deer-penis brewed tea necessitates a cry of, ‘O how this revives the blood, enhances potency, o Emperor of Ten Thousand Years!’