Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [8]
“The voice of the minister of the Imperial household echoed in the hallway. ‘Your Majesty the Empress, on your way, please!’ To protect her son from seeing the horror, Empress Chu An ordered me to take Hsien Feng away. It was the hardest thing I ever did. I stood like a dead tree trunk. Her Majesty came and shook me by the shoulders. From her wrist she took off a jade bracelet and tucked it in my pocket. ‘Please, Fann!’ She looked at me pleadingly. I woke to my senses and dragged the screaming Hsien Feng away from his mother. Outside the gate stood the minister. He was holding a piece of folded white silk—the hanging rope. Behind him were several guards.”
I wept for the young boy Hsien Feng. Years later he would become my husband, and I kept a tender spot for him in my heart even after he abandoned me.
“A tragedy foreshadows good luck. Let me tell you, Orchid.” Big Sister Fann took the pipe from her lips and knocked the ashes out on the table. “And this applies exactly to what happened next.”
In the shadows of the candlelight, the story of my future husband continued. It was autumn, and the aging Emperor Tao Kuang was ready to choose a successor. He invited his sons to Jehol, the Imperial hunting ground in the north, beyond the Great Wall. He wanted to test their abilities. Six princes joined the journey.
The father told the sons that Manchus were known as great hunters. When he was their age he had killed more than a dozen wild animals in half a day—wolves, deer and boar of all sorts. Once he took home fifteen bears and eighteen tigers. He told the sons that his great-grandfather Emperor Kang Hsi was even better. Every day he rode six horses to exhaustion. The father then ordered the sons to show him what they could do.
“Knowing his own weakness, Hsien Feng was depressed.” Big Sister Fann paused for a beat. “He knew that he wouldn’t survive the competition. He decided to withdraw but was stopped by his tutor, the brilliant scholar Tu Shou-tien. The tutor offered his student a way to turn defeat into victory. ‘When you lose,’ Tu said, ‘report to your father that it was not that you couldn’t shoot. Say that it was your choice not to shoot. It was for a virtuous reason such as benevolence that you refused to perform your hunting skills to their fullest.’”
In Big Sister Fann’s words, the autumn hunting scene was grand. The bushes and weeds were waist high. Torches were lit to flush the wild animals. Rabbits, leopards, wolves and deer ran for their lives. Seventy thousand men on horseback formed a circle. The hunting ground thundered and quaked. The men slowly closed in. Imperial guardsmen followed each prince.
On top of the highest hill stood the father. He was on a black horse. His eyes followed his two favorite sons. Hsien Feng was dressed in a purple silk robe and Prince Kung in white. Kung charged back and forth. The animals fell one after another before his arrows. The guards cheered.
The sound of a trumpet called the hunters back at noon. The princes took turns presenting their father the animals they had shot. Prince Kung had twenty-eight. His handsome face was marked by the scratch of a tiger claw. The wound was seeping blood. His white robe was stained. He smiled with elation knowing that he had performed well. The other sons came. They showed their father the animals tied under the bellies of their horses.
“Where is Hsien Feng, my fourth son?” the father asked. Hsien Feng was summoned. He carried nothing under the belly of his horse. His robe was clean. “You didn’t hunt.” The father was disappointed. The son replied as the tutor had instructed: “Your humblest son had trouble killing the animals. It was not because I