Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [110]
Nuharoo took out her handkerchief and began to pat her face. “I am afraid that Lady Yun is leaving His Majesty with no choice.”
“Finish the business for me, Nuharoo.” Emperor Hsien Feng stood and walked out of the hall in his bare feet.
Lady Yun hanged herself that night. The news was brought to me by An-te-hai the next morning while I was having breakfast. My stomach turned upside down. For the rest of the day I could see Lady Yun’s face behind every door and in every window. I asked An-te-hai to stay nearby while I checked and rechecked Tung Chih’s cradle. I wondered about Lady Yun’s daughter, Princess Jung. I wished I could invite the girl to stay with me for a while and spend time with her half-brother. An-te-hai said that the toddler had been told that her mother had gone on a long journey. The eunuchs and servants were ordered to keep Lady Yun’s death a secret. The girl would find out about it in the cruelest way: she would learn of the death from gossip, from Lady Yun’s rivals, who wished to see the girl suffer.
Nuharoo came unannounced at midnight. Her eunuchs knocked on my gate so hard that they almost broke it down. Nuharoo threw herself on me when I greeted her. She looked ill and her voice choked. “She is after me!”
“Who is after you?” I asked.
“Lady Yun!”
“Wake up, Nuharoo. It must have been a nightmare.”
“She was standing by my bed in a greenish transparent dress,” Nuharoo sobbed. “There was blood all over her chest. Her neck was cut from the front, as if with an ax, and her head was hanging on her back, connected to her neck by only a thin piece of skin. I couldn’t see her face, but heard her voice. She said, ‘I was supposed to be hanged, not beheaded.’ She said that she was sent by the judge of the underworld to find a substitute. In order to come back for her next life, she had to make the substitute die the same way she did.”
I comforted Nuharoo, but was scared myself. She returned to her palace and devoured every ghost book she owned. A few days later she visited me and said that she had discovered something that I’d better know.
“The worst punishment for a female ghost is being dumped in the ‘Pool of Filthy Blood.’” Nuharoo showed me a book with lurid illustrations of the “Department of Scourging” at work in the underworld. Severed heads with long hair floated in a dark red pool—they looked like dumplings in boiling water.
“See this? This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Nuharoo said. “The blood in the pool comes from the filth of all women. Also in the pool are poisonous snakes and scorpions that feed on the newly dead. They are the transformations of those who committed wrongdoings in their lives.”
“What if I commit no serious wrongdoing during my lifetime?” I asked.
“Orchid, the judgment of the underworld is for all women. That is why we need religion. Buddhism helps us repent the crimes we commit simply by being women and living a material life. We need to forgo all earthly pleasure and pray for Heaven’s forgiveness. We must do everything we can to accumulate virtue. Only then may we have a chance of escaping the Pool of Filthy Blood.”
Sixteen
ON HIS FIRST BIRTHDAY my son would be presented with a tray filled with a variety of items. He was expected to pick one that would give the Imperial family a clue to his future character. This was called Chua-tsui-p’an, Catch the Future in a Pan. Important court members were invited to observe.
Tung Chih’s eunuchs had been busy all week in preparation for the event. The walls, columns, doors and window frames of my palace were freshly painted in vermilion. The beams and bracket