Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [102]
Everybody congratulated Nuharoo. When she picked up the baby from my arms and proudly showed him to the others, my fear returned. I kept thinking: Now that they have lost the chance to kill my son in my belly, will they kill him in his cradle? Will they poison his mind by spoiling him? One thing I was sure of was that they would never let go of the idea of getting even with me.
I was granted a new title by Emperor Hsien Feng, the Auspicious Mother. Gifts and cases of taels were sent to honor my family. Still, my mother and my sister were not permitted to visit me. My husband didn’t come either. My “filthiness” was believed to be capable of bringing disease to His Majesty.
I was served ten meals a day, but I had no appetite and most of the food was wasted. I was left alone to drift in and out of sleep. In my dreams I chased people who came in disguise to harm my son.
A few days later, the Emperor visited me. He didn’t look well. The robe he wore made him look thinner and frailer than before. He was concerned about the size of his son. Why was he so small, and why did he sleep all the time?
“Who knows?” I teased. How could the Son of Heaven be so innocent?
“I went to the park yesterday.” His Majesty passed the baby to a maid and sat down beside me. His eyes wandered from my eyes to my mouth. “I saw a dead tree,” he said in a whisper. “On top of its crown grew human hair. It was very long and draped down like a black waterfall.”
I stared at him.
“Is it a good sign or a bad sign, Orchid?”
Before I could answer, he went on. “That’s why I came to see you. If there is a dead tree on the grounds of your palace, have it removed immediately, Orchid. Will you promise me?”
His Majesty and I spent some time in the courtyard looking for dead trees. There was not one, and we ended up watching the sunset together. I was so happy I wept. His Majesty told me that he had learned from the gardener that the hair he saw in the park was a rare kind of lichen that grew on dead trees.
I didn’t want to talk about dead trees, so I asked about his days and his audiences. He had little to say, so we walked quietly for a while. He rocked the baby to sleep. It was the sweetest moment in my life. Em-peror Hsien Feng didn’t stay the night, and I dared not beg him to.
I told myself that I should be glad that my delivery had gone smoothly. I could have died under Chief Eunuch Shim’s whip, or a hundred different ways. The Imperial concubines had lost, and I regained His Majesty’s attention because of the newborn.
The next day Hsien Feng came again. He lingered after holding the baby. I made it a rule not to ask him any questions. He began to visit me regularly, always in the afternoon. Gradually we started to talk again. We chatted about our son, and he described the goings-on at court. He complained about how long everything took and the impotence of his ministers.
I listened most of the time. Hsien Feng seemed to enjoy our discussions and started to arrive earlier in the day. We were never intimate, but we were close.
I tried to be content with what I had. But part of me wanted more. After His Majesty had gone for the night, I couldn’t help imagining him with his Chinese women—surely they performed better tricks than my fan dance. I became miserable trying to understand why he was no longer attracted to me. Was it the change in my body shape? My red eyes? My milk-enlarged breasts? Why did he avoid coming near my bed?
An-te-hai tried to convince me that His Majesty’s lack of interest had nothing to do with me. “He isn’t in the habit of returning to women he has slept with. It doesn’t matter how much he praised their beauty or how satisfied he was in bed.”
The good news for me was that I had heard no report of any other pregnancy.
From Prince Kung’s letters I learned that Emperor Hsien