Elegantly coiffed heads shake at me in dismay. Concubine Emerald reaches and squeezes my hand. ‘Forgive her, Concubine Swallow. Every one of us has incised the flesh of others. Who amongst us has been brave enough to refuse the torturer’s blade? The tyrant must be obeyed under pain of death. You must forgive Concubine Bamboo.’
‘Forgive her, forgive her,’ the she-goats bleat. But I can’t. Fury chokes the gullet at the mere thought of you.
‘Concubine Bamboo was no unwilling torturer,’ I spit. ‘Her eyes lit up as she spilt my blood, and with every incision she grew ever more ambitious with the blade.’
‘She is a child of only fourteen years old.’
I hiss, ‘A demonic child. A satanic nymph with a thirst for blood.’
‘At the Emperor’s bidding she slashed her own throat,’ says Concubine Tender Willow. ‘How many cups of blood do you think poured down her gullet? Enough to quench her thirst for good, I should think.’
‘Concubine Swallow,’ Jasmine says sternly, ‘you must let the desire to take revenge on the child go. We have more urgent concerns. Do you know of the Daoist monk One Hundred Trees?’
‘The hermit sage who lives in the enchanted forest on Mount Emei?’
‘Yes. Him.’
Melodious Songbird, Tender Willow and Emerald each speak in turn:
‘One Hundred Trees has come to the Forbidden City to tell Emperor Jiajing of a new cure for mortality. .’
‘The hermit sage says it is the blood that thickens the uterus then seeps from our womanly orifice every moon cycle.’
‘One Hundred Trees told Emperor Jiajing that a cupful every day will prolong his life.’
‘Every day the harem-keepers consult the Ledger of Menstrual Cycles of the Concubines. Those menstruating are ordered to a chamber by the Gate of Obedience. They are forced to lie on a wooden bed, their ankles hooked in stirrups that hang from the ceiling. .’
‘A long, hook-ended needle is the tool that is used. Sometimes the bleeding cannot be staunched afterwards, and some have bled to death.’
‘No one is safe. Not even the princesses.’
My eldest, Lily, is eleven. Has the curse struck her down yet? I must protect her from this atrocity! Outraged, I spit, ‘We must end this barbarous practice! We must bribe the eunuchs to trick Emperor Jiajing with chicken’s blood!’
‘Bribery has been attempted. Concubine Splendid Jade is now subject to torture in the Palace of Punishments.’
‘But something must be done,’ I cry. ‘If Emperor Jiajing harms my daughters I shall. . I shall. .’
‘Murder him?’ suggests Concubine Jasmine with a wry smile.
I look at the fifteen palace ladies on the circular bench, their hands clasped on laps. They look back at me, their eyes glittering and fierce. Together, we are the sixteen mothers of the twenty-six princesses. Now I see. Concubine Emerald continues, ‘We are plotting now, the ways and means. We each accept the sacrifice of our lives, for assassination of the Emperor won’t come without this penalty.’
My heart beats swiftly beneath my flayed and bandaged chest. For the eighteen years I have lived in the Inner Palace, I have shunned my harem sisters. High on my lofty perch of lonely selfregard, I dismissed them as empty-headed and vain. How wrong I was. My courageous sisters are far nobler than I.
‘We invite you to join us, Concubine Swallow,’ says Concubine Jasmine. ‘Will you accept?’
Murdering Emperor Jiajing is a recurring fantasy of mine, but am I willing to die for it? I dwell for a moment upon my wretched and lonely existence. So what of death? I decide. Better to die nobly than to live on wretchedly, listlessly wandering about the Garden of Dispossessed Favourites, slowly wasting from the rot of old age. Better to die having saved my daughters and the entire Celestial Kingdom from the worst Emperor ever to reign.
‘I will be honoured to,’ I tell them, tears glistening in my eyes.
On a circular stone bench in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds, we clasp our pale-as-ivory hands together in solidarity, our pact to kill the Emperor now commenced.
IX
Evening in the palace infirmary. Eunuch physicians unbind my tightly bandaged chest. I lie on the bed and the eunuchs dab at the bleeding and pus-weeping wounds with cotton gauze in tweezers, tutting at my slowness to heal. They unplug the stopper from a bottle of herbal potion, and I claw the sheets as my doused chest blazes like oil set alight.
I go back to the Palace of All Sunshine, aching for the opium pipe, and snow flutters unexpectedly out of the night sky. I gaze up at the spiralling snow, falling to sabotage the winged debut of creatures from cocoons and the burgeoning buds of spring. What does this portend? I wonder. The Gods must be angry indeed, to gust the icy breath of disapproval upon the Imperial City after the coming of spring.
Mesmerized by the snow drifting out of the dark void of sky, I nearly don’t see the girl kneeling in the courtyard of the Palace of All Sunshine. It is Lily, my eldest, and I hasten over, stricken by her bled-dry pallor and the bandages around her neck. But as I draw nearer, my maternal instinct turns to horror and abhorrence. The deceitful night has tricked me again, for it is not Lily, but you. Concubine Bamboo. You shiver in the cold, your shawl of winter mink a pelt of icy tufts. Repentant eyes look up and meet mine. It’s the first time I have seen you since the Leopard Room, and my screams are gagged and bound in my throat. I clench my spitting muscles, gathering saliva. Spittle drips down your cheek, but you don’t wipe it away.
‘Elder Sister Concubine Swallow,’ you cry, ‘I can no longer live with my abominable sins against you. I beg you to forgive me after I am gone. .’
Out of your shawl you withdraw a dagger. Both hands on the ivory handle, you point the blade at your heart and plunge it down. Shocked, I instinctively leap and catch your wrists before the blade penetrates your chest. I grapple the dagger out of your suicidal grip and cast it into the darkness on the other side of the courtyard. Whetstone-sharpened steel clatters unseen upon stone. The pale beauty of your face is seized by shock. You whisper, ‘Concubine Swallow. . Why?’
‘They’ll punish me for your murder, you snivelling brat!’ Then I knock your head sideways with a furious slap. ‘Now go! Get out of my sight!’
I go into my bedchamber and stumble to my dresser, knocking over the bottles of mandrake extract and honeysuckle balm for masking my decay as I grope for my vial of sleeping draught. Unplugging the stopper, I down three nights’ worth in one long swallow. I put out the spluttering oil lamp and sink on my bed into a fathomless sleep.
Spring tide ebbs and the icicles of winter make one last stab. Night and day you kneel in the courtyard of the Palace of All Sunshine, head bowed as though in prayer. Eye to the peephole in my wax-paper window, I watch you risk pneumonia and death to kneel in the snow and prove your remorse, forsaking meals and sleep and clean bandages for the deep cut in your throat, to become a sculpture of ice. I watch you through the peephole and your pain and subjugation sate a dark species of desire within.
On the third night of your vigil you are swaying on your knees, as though struggling not to faint. She won’t survive the night, I think, smiling thinly. Then I put out my oil lamp and go to bed, expecting to sink into a deep, contented slumber. But sleep does not come. Under my quilt my limbs twitch as though possessed by the demons of fidgetiness and, after an hour of restlessness, I get up and go to my dresser. I pull the stopper out of my sleeping draught, upend the bottle between my lips, but not one drop trickles out. I rummage about in my jewellery box, but the opium is gone too. Cursing, I prepare to go out and bribe one of the guardsmen to smuggle a bottle of wine out of the storehouse for me. I throw a fox-fur cape on over my nightgown and unlatch the door, much aggrieved at having to go out into the freezing night.