The sisterhood of sixteen exchange wary looks over your fourteen-year-old head. Concubine Jasmine turns to me, the one who unwittingly led you to us. ‘Is the child to be trusted, Concubine Swallow?’ she asks.
Before I can speak, Concubine Melodious Songbird cries, ‘The devious Bamboo is in league with the vile castrati! I have seen her in the Pavilion of Immortal Birds, conniving with Hunchback Guo. We must bind her with ropes and drown her in the well. Or she’ll sabotage our plans!’
Concubine Autumn Rains nods in vehement agreement. ‘Concubine Bamboo will betray our plot to murder Emperor Jiajing for her own gain! We must hand her the silken cord and order her to hang herself!’
As more of our sisters vociferously demand that you choke down poison or slit your own wrists, you are strangely calm. You speak to Concubine Jasmine, tremorless and clear. ‘I am prepared to die by whichever method my elder sisters decide upon. .’ Your tormented eyes then seek out mine. ‘. . for what do I have to live for after Concubine Swallow has been executed?’
Your willingness to die for the sake of our harem sisters’ paranoid fears provokes my heart into furious dissent. Your murder is an injustice I won’t allow.
‘What proof is there that Concubine Bamboo is in league with the eunuchs?’ I challenge. ‘Emperor Jiajing is the one who deserves to be murdered, not this child. Why don’t we just gag her and bind her and lock her in the tea chest? That should be enough.’
Outraged, my sisters turn on me. Spittle flits from their lips as they vilify and slander me.
‘How cleverly the child has manipulated Concubine Swallow!’
‘Everyone knows the way to Swallow’s heart is through her voracious cunt. The sly little whore now has Swallow eating out of her palm. .’
‘Give them both the silken cord to hang from the rafters!’
Mercifully, wise and compassionate Concubine Jasmine has heard my appeal. She claps her hands, silencing our harem sisters’ vicious attack. Commanding of stature, Concubine Jasmine asserts her leadership without raising her voice. ‘Enough. We won’t have the murder of a child on our conscience. We will bind her up and lock her in the tea chest. By the time they find her, Emperor Jiajing will be dead, and nothing she can say will bring him back.’
Twelve rolls of foot-binding cloth truss your ankles and wrists. Scarves of silk stuff your gagged mouth. Sixteen pale and baleful faces stare down at you, in the bottom of the teakwood box. I lean into the chest and whisper, ‘Farewell, Concubine Bamboo. May the rest of your days be peaceful after the tyrant’s death. I wish you a long, prosperous life, and I pray that we will meet again in the afterlife.’
A suffocating heap of silk robes is thrown upon the gagged, bound concubine. The dragon-engraved lid thuds down and you are entombed in dark.
XI
Shadow of dusk inches stealthily across the Forbidden City. A flock of black crows soars over the shadowed courts of the Great Within, cawing and thrashing their wings. The end of the Jiajing reign is nigh. The timbers and beams in the Palace of Heavenly Purity creak and sigh of it. The weeping willows by the outer walls whisper sibilantly of it, trailing their branches in the moat. The tormented spirits of those who died in the Leopard Room sing of it, breezing through the chambers, rejoicing at His Majesty’s comeuppance.
Drumbeat in Drum Tower signals the beginning of first watch. Harem-keepers go through the courts to the Palace of Modest Ladies, over slabs of stone polished smooth by a hundred and twenty years of servants scurrying to and fro. Sixteen concubines, naked but for slippered feet and goose-feather quilts, clamber upon the backs of the eunuchs, who carry them to His Majesty’s chambers.
Lanterns blaze in the Leopard Room. His Majesty reclines on the bed, under a canopy of cicada-wing gauze. The sixteenth palace lady is lowered before him, and the last of the eunuchs retreats with her goose-feather quilt. The nine-dragon bolt shudders across the Leopard Room door, locking us in. Sixteen concubines, naked but for our slippered feet, our lips red as rubies, our faces powdered white and our hair elaborately arranged with jewelled pins. Kneeling before His Majesty, we kowtow and touch our foreheads to the cold marble floor.
‘Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing! Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing!’ we chorus.
Emperor Jiajing beckons Tender Willow to join him on the bed. We are mute witnesses as he fondles her breasts then removes a slipper and unwinds her foot-bindings, exposing her pig’s-trotter foot. The Emperor’s red-silk-dragon robe slides open. He squeezes Tender Willow’s broken-arched foot so toes meet heel, and she stifles her screams as he penetrates the crevice with his engorged cock. A few bored thrusts and he withdraws his wilting erection and sprinkles it with aphrodisiac powders from a snuff box. He kicks Tender Willow, who is writhing in pain, from the bed, and she thuds on to the marble floor. Regicidal desire burns in every one of our hearts.
The Emperor of Knives casts his gaze over our bodies, stitched up by eunuchs after the massacres he perpetrated upon them. Years of incarceration and torture have eroded our beauty, and we have toiled over our toilette, smearing nightingale’s excrement and other pigments of white on our scarred skin. But the Emperor is not fooled. He snorts in contempt at our cowering nakedness. Jade goblet of wine raised to his lips, he sips and sneers, ‘How the winds of time have torn the blossoms of youth from the ugly, crooked branches! Imperial Consort Jasmine, what is the meaning of this moth-eaten coven of hags? Where are the airy sylphs? The earthbound goddesses with sweet-as-morning’s-dew cunts? These wrinkles and sagging teats are offensive to me.’
The wine-fuddled Emperor’s speech is slurred. Our exquisitely painted eyelids are lowered demurely throughout his insults, but Concubine Jasmine gazes level with His Majesty, her smile a tranquil crescent moon.
‘Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing! I beseech our Supreme Ruler to look beyond our repugnance, for we are devoted to the fulfilment of His Majesty’s every desire. To elevating our Lord of Ten Thousand Years to the heavens on clouds of erotic delight.’
Emperor Jiajing narrows his eyes. ‘Look at these haggard bodies! These ogresses’ countenances! Clouds of erotic delight indeed! What brazen lies you tell. I am dangerously close, Concubine Jasmine, to calling the Imperial Guards to escort you to the Palace of Punishments to be flayed for deception with horsehair whips!’
In the chill of the Leopard Room, the sweat of foreboding seeps upon my skin. But Concubine Jasmine is serene and unmenaced by his brutal threats. ‘O Lord of Ten Thousand Years, I beg on behalf of your most devoted concubines for a chance to worship you. Has Your Excellency ever had sixteen tongues lapping at him simultaneously? Would Your Majesty consent to try it? If our Supreme Ruler is dissatisfied, then I will willingly submit to being flogged by the Imperial Guards, for brutal torture would be nothing less than I deserve.’
Emperor Jiajing sighs, grudgingly opens his robe and lies on his back, and the sixteen concubines crawl, meek and subservient, upon the Emperor’s vast bed. We surround His Majesty, lowering our mouths to his emaciated, biliously yellow body. The Emperor is vile and bitter-tasting from the arsenic and mercury elixirs secreted through his pores, but our tongues lap passionately, pretending lusty eagerness.
‘Close your eyes, Emperor Jiajing,’ Concubine Jasmine murmurs, hypnotically. ‘There’s no need for Your Majesty to torment his sight with our odiousness.’
The Son of Heaven lowers his eyelids, succumbing to the sensual pleasure. Tongues incessantly licking, we slide our slippers from our feet and work our foot-binding strips loose. His Majesty’s serpent rears up and stares at us with his lone Cyclops eye but, fortunately, does not report its findings to his master. When Concubine Jasmine sees that every one of us has a length of foot-binding cloth in her hands, she ceases licking and raises a phoenix-embroidered pillow over Emperor Jiajing’s head. ‘Now!’ she cries, and smothers the Emperor with the satin pillow, suppressing his screams as three or four concubines restrain each limb and lash it, with foot-binding strips, to a bedpost. Jasmine lifts the pillow and I stuff his mouth with silk scarves and gag him with the sash of his dragon’s robe.