“Then we will have to find another way. We will have to get you out of the Forbidden City.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Do you mean get me out of the city so I can have the baby or kill it?”

  He stared at me, clearly not wanting to speak the words out loud.

  “But, this is your child.”

  “I have many,” he said.

  “And the blood of each one is sacred,” I said. “The emperor is the Son of Heaven; you are the emperor’s son; your sons, your grandsons, for every generation into infinity carry the blood of the Dragon.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “Do you want to have the baby?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Not really. I don’t want to be a mother. I can’t be. But…I don’t know if I can kill it. Would that be right? Wouldn’t that bring the wrath of Heaven down on us?”

  “What is the alternative?” he asked. “Is there anyone who can help? What about your mother?”

  I laughed. “My mother? Her heart is cold as stone. She would never help me.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Your mother struck me as someone who puts her own survival first. Think about it. She sent her only child to an embroidery school even though it meant sending you away because she knew a skill would reap more benefits in the long run than just marrying you to some farm boy.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “And she made a hard bargain for that concubine. She knew the possibility of sons would be better for the family than just money.”

  I sighed and thought about what he said. He had a point. Mother was a survivor and worked hard every day of her life. Maybe the way she treated me didn’t mean she didn’t love me, but meant that she had to do whatever she could to ensure her own survival. It was funny to me how the prince seemed to know Mother and her motivations better than I did after only meeting her once over eight years ago.

  “But how will this baby help her?” I asked. “She will call it one more mouth to feed.”

  “It is the child of a prince. Surely she will see the value in that. I can send money to make sure he is taken care of and I can make sure he rises in government and gets a good education. He can make a good marriage. He can elevate the whole family.”

  “What makes you think the baby is a boy?” I asked.

  “You have to hope for something in order for it to come true,” he said. “Every mother always prays for boys.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I know my own mother prayed for boys. But I wasn’t like other women. I wasn’t married and didn’t want to be a mother at all. I was in the unique position of not caring how the child turned out. I decided to hope for a girl instead, for no other reason than just to spite my mother, but I would never tell the prince that.

  “Oh, I need my robe back,” the prince said. “It was so dark when I left your room, I just grabbed whatever robe I could find. It ended up being one of your purple ones. My wife was not happy when she saw me try to sneak home in it.”

  “I…I burned it,” I said, unable to look at him.

  “What!” the prince nearly yelled. “How could you do that? What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking!” I said. “I was terrified. I panicked. An Dehai was trying to break down my door and Wensong was yelling. I had nowhere to hide it.”

  “So you burned it?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “The empress is going to be furious,” he said. “She has already been asking why I haven’t worn it. I told her I was saving it for very special occasions, but she is going to demand I wear it sooner or later. Can you make another one?”

  “It took a year of my life to make that robe,” I said. “It will take me forever to make another one in just my spare time. And I could never get the materials myself.”

  “It’s a good thing we are already planning on getting you out of town then,” the prince said. “If the empress finds out, she will have our heads.”

  * * *

  I wrote to Mother and included some extra money and pieces of embroidery. I didn’t tell her what was wrong, only that I missed my family and wanted to see her. As expected, I didn’t receive a reply. I told the prince, and he forged a letter requesting my return home. We decided the only other person who could help me was Lady Tang. I would return to her school and beg her for aid.

  A few days later, a letter arrived from my “mother” saying she was sick and dying and wanted me by her side. I went to the empress and begged her for leave. She was not happy about it, but since her own mother had recently died, she was feeling filial. She let me leave with the strict order that I also return to Lady Tang and prove to her that I was worthy of being appointed a master artisan. She said she would also appreciate it if I brought back an apprentice, but she knew that such a thing was a very personal decision.

  In the spring of the second year of the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor, I once again mounted a horse to cross the country. I never thought I would return to Hunan. I had never hoped to. After so long in the imperial city, I could barely remember my life in the countryside. Would they even know me anymore?

  16

  Changsha, 1864-1865

  The trip was extremely difficult for me. I continued feeling nauseous, so I carried a bucket to vomit in with me at all times. Riding the horse was difficult as well. I felt unbalanced and uneasy, so I had to ride much slower than my escorts would have liked. I had to stop and pee every couple of hours. Once again, the trip took more than a month. Even though I was nervous about returning to Lady Tang, I was relieved when the city came into sight.

  After living in Peking for so long, Changsha seemed like a country village to me. The city lacked the diversity I had become accustomed to. There were hardly any women on the streets; Han women were usually kept indoors. The men all dressed the same: white shirts, black pants, long queues. I did not see the colorful costumes or funny hats of the multitudes of ethnic groups I saw in Peking. There were no foreigners. The familiar, pungent scent of chao doufu – stinky tofu – filled my nose, calling me back to my childhood. No one ate chao doufu in Peking.

  We finally arrived at the main gate of Lady Tang’s school. One of the guards helped me down from my horse. I didn’t recognize him, but he opened the gate for me when I explained I was a former student. As I slowly walked up the path, I saw little faces looking out the widows at me. I gave them a small wave and they quickly ran away. A servant opened the front door as I approached. I asked for Lady Tang and was told she was in her office. Smiling, curious faces peeked out of the rooms at me. They seemed so small. Strangely, I realized that the only child I had seen in the last eight years was the emperor, and I didn’t see him often.

  I lightly knocked on Lady Tang’s door. She was sitting at her desk, drawing an embroidery pattern. She looked the exact same as I remembered her. She didn’t look even a day older.

  “Lady Tang?” I called softly as I entered the room.

  “Yes,” she replied, not looking up. I was a bit hurt that she was not responding to me. Was she not proud of me? Surprised to see me? Did she not know who I was?

  “It’s me,” I said. “Yaqian.”

  “I know,” she said, still not responding.

  “Are you not surprised to see me?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I knew you would come back someday.”

  “How could you know that?” I asked.

  “Because you left me too soon.”

  I nodded to myself. She was right about that, but it hardly had anything to do with the reason I had returned. But since I needed her help, I decided humility was the best path to take.

  “You are right,” I said. “You were always right. I was a foolish child when I left and now I have returned. I am here to finish my training…and for your help.”

  She finally looked at me and her eyes widened. “Oh no!” she said suddenly, jumping up from her desk. “Get out! I can’t help you with that.”

  “With what?” I asked.

  “I’ll not help you with any baby! Get out of here before you ruin my school!”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “I can tell!” she replied as she tried to push me back toward the door. “Now go, get out before the other girls figure it out and you give them bad thoughts.”

  I turned away from her and stepped further into the room. “No! I’m not leaving. I need your help. You can’t turn me away.”

  “Yes, I can!” she said. “Go to your mother. That’s what mothers are good for, helping when their daughters become mothers.”

  “Please, Lady Tang, you know I can’t go to that woman,” I pleaded. “She never gave another thought to me after I left her house except to sell me for a second time. She won’t help me if I don’t let her sell me again or sell the baby.”

  “I can’t help you,” she said. “What if people find out one of my girls is a whore? It will ruin me! It will ruin my girls!”

  “I’m not a whore!” I said. “It was one night. And I won’t tell anyone. Just keep me here. If you kick me out, then I will have to tell people what happened, which will ruin both of us. If I stay here, hidden from the world, everything will be fine.”

  “Will it?” she asked. “How will that be? What do I do after the baby comes? What if it is a boy?”

  “I’ll hire a nursemaid, or the prince will. He said he would take care of us.”

  “Prince? What prince?” she asked.

  “Prince Gong, he is the baby’s father.”

  “That man that took you away? You were just a little girl! How dare he…”

  “No, it was nothing like that. Please, it’s a long story, and I had a long journey. Please say I can stay. I beg of you.”

  In the end, Lady Tang allowed me to stay, though she never stopped letting me know what a burden it was to her. I never stopped feeling sick. Everything I ate, I vomited back up. I could only drink weak tea and eat some steamed – never fried – dumplings filled only with vegetables. Anything fried or with meat would make my sickness unbearable. I did gain some weight over the next few months, but not much. I worried about the health of my baby as she struggled to grow.

  Lady Tang tried to limit my exposure to her girls as much as possible. She feared my presence would encourage dreams of love, romance, and babies. She made up a story about the empress giving me in marriage to a cruel general who sent me away to have my child. I didn’t correct her, but I didn’t embellish the story to give it credibility either.

  When I was feeling up to it, though, I was grateful to have time to work on my embroidery. Lady Tang agreed to help me with a few issues I was still having. She listened to my detailed descriptions of the prince’s dragon robe. She agreed to help me recreate it. She, a few of her best students, and I worked together to bring the dragon robe back to life. It was not as beautiful as the original since we worked quickly and I had students helping, but I doubted anyone who was not a master artisan would notice the difference. I would have to take the robe with me back to the Forbidden City when I returned, unless I found a way to get it to him sooner.

  I asked Lady Tang to confer on me the title of master. She said she would consider it, which was all I had the right to ask for.

  The baby finally decided to be born on a cold, wintery morning late that year. I don’t know how long the labor was exactly, at least a day and a night and into the next day. The pain was excruciating and I pushed all I could, but the baby would not come for a long time. I thought I was going to die. Lady Tang sent for a midwife to help me, but there was very little she could do. The midwife was discussing with Lady Tang the possibility of cutting me open when the baby finally ripped me asunder and clawed her way out. The midwife picked up the baby as Lady Tang tried to staunch the bleeding.

  “It’s a girl,” I heard the midwife say.

  “Thank Heaven,” I whispered before collapsing on the pillow into darkness.

  * * *

  When I awoke, I wondered if I had dreamed the last eight years. I was in my bed in Lady Tang’s school. The room was warm even though I could see frost on the outside of the windows. The smell of familiar Hunan spices wafted past my nose. I slowly opened my eyes and saw Lady Tang sitting in a chair across the room holding a little bundle in her arms.

  “You have been sleeping for two days,” Lady Tang said in a gentle voice. “We thought you would die.”

  “What would you have done if I had?” I asked as I tried to sit up. I felt a stabbing pain in my stomach and between my legs that sharply confirmed I had not been dreaming my life away.

  “I would have kept her here and hoped that your embroidery skills had passed onto the next generation.”

  “It is a girl, then?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s a girl,” she said, unable to hide a smile as she looked at me.

  “Good,” I said. “That’s what I prayed for.”

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “The prince told me that all wives pray for a son. I decided that since I was no man’s wife, I would pray for a girl.”

  Lady Tang brought my baby to me and placed her in my arms. She was so tiny, it felt as if I was holding a blanket with nothing in it. Lady Tang said the baby weighed only a little more than four jin, which was very tiny, but she was healthy. She was eating well. Lady Tang had been purchasing goat milk and breast milk from a woman who also gave birth recently to feed her. I tried to nurse her myself, but because of my sickness and since I passed out instead of feeding her right after the birth, my milk did not come in. But holding her as she drank from a bottle was good enough for me. She was warm and smiled in her sleep. I couldn’t ask for more from a baby I never wanted in the first place.

  “What will you do now?” Lady Tang finally asked.

  “I will stay here to recover, but I will have to return to the empress soon.”

  “And the baby?” she prodded.

  I didn’t respond because she knew the answer. She knew it all along. She knew as soon as she saw me standing in her doorway that I needed much more than a place to hide and give birth. I would need someone to raise the baby. I didn’t want to say the words because it was too much to ask of anyone, but the request had been made as soon as I got on my horse and headed toward Lady Tang’s school.

  “I have a business to run,” she said. “I can’t raise her as a daughter.”

  “I know,” I said. “But neither can I. This girl will have no mother. Just raise her as you would your students. You can start training her as soon as she can hold a needle. Just be a good teacher to her.”

  * * *

  In the spring of the following year, while I was still recovering, Lady Tang received a notice that Prince Gong would be paying her school a visit. I had heard nothing from the prince since I left Peking the year before. I had received letters from the empress, but most of them were pleas for my return. The notice from the prince instructed her to have a meal ready for him and his men and rooms prepared for them to relax for a few days.

  Lady Tang ordered me to stay in my room unless the prince sent for me, but I was able to see him arrive from my room’s window. My heart jumped when I saw him, even though he didn’t look my way. He was with a large battalion of men, all of whom looked well worn. The prince and his top men visited with Lady Tang for some time while I sat in my room alone with my baby.

  Finally, I heard his familiar footsteps. I ran my fingers through my hair and straightened my robe for the hundredth time. He knocked on the door and I could barely whisper the word “enter.” When he opened the door, his face must have matched my own. He looked both happy to see me and as though he could cry at once. I was supposed to turn my gaze down and bow, but I could hardly move. I noticed Lady Tang close the door behind him. I wondered what the students must have been thinking. What excuse did he give his men to stop at an embroidery school?

  He took a small step toward me, which broke the silence enough for me to finally kneel to him and cast my eyes to the floor. He ran to me and grabbed my arms to pull me up to him. We hugged and did not stop the tears from flowing.

  “When I didn’t hear anything, I feared you were dead,” he said.

  “I very nearly was,” I said. “Your daughter entered the world as vicious as a tiger.”

  He stood back. “A daughter?”

  I nodded. “I am sure she means nothing to you.”

  He looked around the room and saw the baby sleeping on my bed. I had wrapped her in the new golden dragon robe. He walked over to her and kneeled down. He reached out and touched her hand.

  “Yaqian,” he said. “I have sons. It doesn’t matter that she is a girl. Am I the first man in China that is not disappointed to see a girl in swaddling cloths?”

  I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure how happy to be. It didn’t matter if she was his son because if she had been a boy, she would have no inheritance anyway. Boy or girl, my child was a bastard. I suppose being a girl was no more of a detriment to her. In this situation, it might even be a blessing. As a girl, she could be raised by Lady Tang and have a trade, like her mother. She could work and make her own way in life. If she had been a boy, I would have had nowhere to send him.

  The prince picked up the baby and sat on the bed. My heart froze for a moment when he lifted her from the safety of her bed, but I forgot that he had much more experience with children than I did. I lost count of how many consorts and children he had by this time. I liked forgetting that he had a real family somewhere else in Peking.

  “These are magnificent swaddling cloths,” he said with a smile. “You created two beautiful things while hiding here.” He held the baby to his face and breathed in her scent. “She smells good,” he said.

  “I bathed her before your arrival,” I said.

  “You are a good mother,” he said.

  “No, I know nothing,” I said. “I have a nursemaid who tells me what to do.”