Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [97]
“I have checked the history of their health three generations back,” she said.
The more excited Nuharoo got, the deeper my fear grew. I wished that she had her own child. Everyone in the Forbidden City except the Emperor understood the pressure Nuharoo was under after several years of marriage and no sign of fertility. That such pressure could lead to strange behavior was common in childless women. An obsession with yoo-hoo-loos was one manifestation; jumping into wells was another. With Nuharoo, I still couldn’t tell what her true intention was.
The moment after Doctor Sun Pao-tien examined me and pronounced that I would carry the baby to full term, His Majesty summoned his astrologer. The two of them went to the Temple of Heaven, where Hsien Feng prayed that the child would be a son. Afterward he went to Nuharoo to congratulate her.
But she is not the mother of your child! I shouted in my head.
Nuharoo played her role well. She showed her happiness with real tears. I thought, Could I be wrong about her? Maybe it was time for me to change my view. Maybe Nuharoo had turned herself into a true Buddhist.
When I was five months pregnant, Nuharoo suggested to Emperor Hsien Feng that I be moved back to the Palace of Concentrated Beauty.
“Lady Yehonala needs absolute peace,” Nuharoo said to him. “She needs to stay away from stress of any kind, including the bad news about the country from you.”
I let myself believe that Nuharoo was thinking of my welfare, and agreed to be moved. But the moment I was out of His Majesty’s bedroom, I sensed that I had made a mistake. Soon enough the truth revealed itself, and I never made it back to that bedroom.
As if to add more chaos to my life, Chief Eunuch Shim told me that I would not be allowed to raise my own child. I was considered “one of the prince’s mothers,” but not the only one. “It is the Imperial tradition,” Shim said coldly. Nuharoo would also be responsible for the daily care and education of my child, and she would have the right to take my child away from me if I refused to cooperate with her. The Manchu clan and Emperor Hsien Feng both believed that Nuharoo’s Imperial blood qualified her to be the chief mother of the future prince. No one had ever accused me of being a concubine from a lower class, but my background as a village girl and my father’s status as a low-ranking governor were an embarrassment that the court and the Emperor never forgot.
Fourteen
A MONTH AFTER I was out of his sight, Emperor Hsien Feng took in four new concubines. They were of Han Chinese origin. Since the Imperial rules didn’t permit non-Manchu women in the palace, Nuharoo made arrangements to smuggle them in.
It was hard for me to speak about the pain this caused me. It was like a slow drowning: the air was being shut out of my lungs and death had yet to arrive.
“Their teeny lotus-shaped feet have enthralled His Majesty,” An-te-hai reported. “The ladies were a gift from the governor of Soochow.”
I supposed that it was not difficult for Nuharoo to hint to the governors that the moment had come to please their ruler. An-te-hai discovered that Nuharoo had housed the new concubines in the Emperor’s miniature town of Soochow, within the largest Imperial garden at the Summer Palace, located several miles from Yuan Ming Yuan. The Summer Palace, with its little Soochow, had been built around a lake and was made up of more than three thousand structures on almost seven hundred acres.
Would I be any different if I were in her shoes? What was I crying about? Hadn’t I shamelessly gone to a whorehouse in order to learn man-pleasing tricks?
Emperor Hsien Feng had not visited me since I had left. My longing for him drove me to thoughts of white silk ropes. The little kicks inside my belly brought me back and steeled my will to survive. I reflected on my life, struggling to maintain my composure. Hsien Feng had never been mine to begin with. It was simply the way things were. The irony was that the