Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [119]
I was doomed when I realized that my talent was not to rule but to feel. Such a talent enriched my life, but at the same time destroyed every moment of peace I had gained. I felt helpless toward what was being done to me. I was the fish on the golden plate, tied with the red ribbon. Yet no one would bring me back to the lake where I belonged.
Trying to keep up appearances exhausted me.
Yung Lu sensed it. The color of his face changed. It reminded me of the city’s rose-colored walls.
“The audience is over,” I said weakly.
Yung Lu bowed, turned and marched out.
Seventeen
IN MAY OF 1858, Prince Kung brought the news that our soldiers had been bombarded while still in their barracks. The French and English forces had assaulted the four Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho. Horrified at the collapse of our sea defenses, Emperor Hsien Feng declared martial law. He sent Kuei Liang, Prince Kung’s father-in-law, now the grand secretary and the court’s highest-ranking Manchu official, to negotiate peace.
By the next morning Kuei Liang was seeking an emergency audience. He had rushed back the night before from the city of Tientsin. The Emperor was again ill, and he sent Nuharoo and me to sit in for him. His Majesty promised that as soon as he gathered enough strength he would join us.
When Nuharoo and I entered the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing, the court was already waiting. More than three hundred ministers and officials were present. Nuharoo and I were dressed in golden court robes. We settled in our seats, shoulder to shoulder, behind the throne.
Minutes later Emperor Hsien Feng arrived. He dragged himself onto the platform and landed breathlessly on the throne. He looked so frail that a breeze might have caused him to fall. His robe was loosely buttoned. He hadn’t shaved, and his beard had sprouted like weeds.
Kuei Liang was summoned to come forward. His appearance shocked me. His usual placid and benevolent expression was replaced by extreme nervousness. He seemed to have aged a great deal. His back was hunched and I could barely see his face. Prince Kung had come with him. The dark shadows under their eyes told me that neither had slept.
Kuei Liang began his report. In the past I recalled his countenance as one full of intelligence. Now his words were inarticulate, his hands palsied, his eyes dimmed. He said that he had been received with little respect from the foreign negotiators. They used the Arrow incident, in which Chinese pirates were caught sailing under a British flag, as an excuse to shun him. No evidence had been provided to substantiate their claims. It all could have been a conspiracy against China.
Emperor Hsien Feng listened grave-faced.
“In the name of teaching us a lesson,” Kuei Liang continued, “the British launched an assault on Canton, and the entire province was brought down. With twenty-six gunboats between them, the British and French, accompanied by Americans—‘impartial observers,’ they said—and by Russians who joined for the spoils, have defied Your Majesty.”
I didn’t have a full view of my husband’s face, but I could imagine his expression. “It is against the terms of the previous treaty for them to sail upriver toward Peking,” Emperor Hsien Feng stated flatly.
“The winners make the rules, I am afraid, Your Majesty.” Kuei Liang shook his head. “They needed no more excuse after attacking the Taku forts. They are now only a hundred miles from the Forbidden City!”
The court was stunned.
Kuei Liang broke down as he offered more details. As I listened, an image pushed itself in front of my eyes. It was from the time I witnessed a village boy torturing a sparrow. The boy was my neighbor. He had found the sparrow in a sewage pit. The little creature looked like it was just learning to fly and had fallen and broken its wing. When the boy picked the bird up, the feathers dripped with dirty water. He placed the bird on a steppingstone in front of his house and called us to come and watch. I saw the tiny heart pumping inside the bird’s body. The boy flipped the sparrow back and forth,