Thankfully for the emperor, Empress Cixi had left him an empire that was running like a well-oiled machine. There were no rebellions, no wars abroad, and the economy was flourishing. If things continued in this manner, China could one day become a world power equal to those of Europe. Because of this, the emperor’s life was mainly routine. Making appointments, approving agreements, settling minor disputes. With the empire running so smoothly, his main concern should have been having children. Yet, he could not be doing less to do so. Even if he sired a child on the outside, it could never be brought into the Forbidden City. Its parentage could never be verified. He had to sire children upon his official consorts.

  Sitting in Empress Cixi’s main hall, the silence was deafening. Now that she had officially retired, she had no daily administration to see to. She felt as though she had nothing to do. This left her all the time in the world to simply worry. And she worried about her son having children.

  I probably felt her anxiety more than anyone else. Everyone else had only heard rumors, but I knew the truth. But if I told the empress what I knew, she would confront the emperor about it, and he would know the information came from me.

  These were the sorts of thoughts that plagued my mind when Empress Alute came to call on Empress Cixi. The young empress was brought to Empress Cixi’s palace carried in a palanquin. Several eunuchs helped her step out of her grand carriage and half a dozen attendants followed her inside. All of us, including Empress Cixi, got down on our knees as she entered. For the first time in my life, Empress Cixi kneeled as low as I did, as though we were equals. I couldn’t help but smile. Of course, Empress Alute then motioned for her mother-in-law to stand, a privilege she would never allow someone as lowly as me.

  Empress Alute presented Empress Cixi with several exotic flowers for her to plant in her garden. Empress Cixi motioned for me to retrieve an embroidered fan to give to Empress Alute as a gift. Then the two empresses sat close together and shared their troubles. I was too far away to hear everything they said, but it was clear they were talking about the emperor and his lack of attention to his wife. At one point, the young empress burst into tears. Empress Cixi took her daughter-in-law in her arms. The lonely life of a consort was one she knew well.

  After a couple of hours of shared commiseration and comfort, the young empress took her leave, but her troubles stayed behind. Empress Cixi seemed to have aged in the months since her son had taken the throne. Empress Cixi was still quite young, only in her late thirties. She was now a lady of leisure with decades of peace and freedom ahead of her. But the stress of knowing her son was not doing his duty by his wife weighed heavily on her. She paced the room in dark silence.

  Finally, I could take it no longer. I approached the empress and asked for a private audience. She motioned for everyone else to leave the room and she returned to her throne and I sat on a stool nearby.

  “Your Majesty,” I said. “I have something to tell you that is very hard to say and very sensitive in nature.”

  She nodded.

  “There is a tree over my house. It is very old and full of squirrels and bats. They climb and fly over my house every night. I fear they are causing all sorts of damage to the building and it is hurting my ability to sleep, which affects my ability to make lovely embroidery for you.”

  “You asked for a private audience to complain about squirrels?” she asked, hardly bemused.

  “Yes,” I said. “The squirrels are causing many, many problems. All three squirrels…”

  She stared at me for a quite a while, as if she knew I was trying to tell her something, but she was having trouble putting it together.

  “Tell me more about this tree,” she said.

  “It is a very old, very large tree. The trunk is outside of the palace wall, but its branches hang inside, allowing the squirrels free reign.”

  She nodded. “I see. Well, I will send someone to deal with this tree.”

  “Your Majesty,” I said. “The squirrels will know I asked you for help. I am the only person the squirrels bother.”

  She nodded again. “I’ll find a way to be discreet,” she said.

  I endured the pitter patter of feet across my roof for several more nights, but then there was a big storm. There was plenty of thunder and lightning and rain was on the way. I was lying in my bed, enjoying the rumbles from the night sky when I started to smell smoke. I quickly jumped out of bed and checked my fireplace, but the fire was contained. I went outside, and I noticed smoke rising from behind my house. The tree was on fire! I called for help and several maids and ladies came to see what the trouble was, but no one came to put out the fire. The fire grew and soon had engulfed much of the tree. Finally, palace guards and eunuchs arrived and worked to douse the flames. Thankfully, since most of the tree was on the other side of the wall, there was no damage to my building. After the fire had died down and everyone was returning to their rooms, one of the empress’s eunuchs approached me.

  “Excuse me, Mistress Yang,” he began. “But the empress wanted me to tell you that lightning from the storm must have struck the tree, causing the fire.”

  I nodded to the eunuch and he left just as the storm’s rains began to fall.

  20

  The Forbidden City, 1875

  After the loss of the great tree, the emperor began rebuilding the Summer Palace. The empress dowagers were delighted. They had both so loved the palace and were heartbroken at its destruction. The emperor said the palace would be their retirement home so they could live in peace away from the busy court. But it never came to be. Several of the palace’s buildings were restored, but the emperor chose to live there himself most of the year, leaving his mothers and his wives behind in the Forbidden City. Empress Cixi could not burn enough trees in the world to force her son to do his duty by his empress.

  Two years after the emperor was married and took the throne, he contracted what everyone thought was smallpox. As a protected child, he never contracted the illness while he was little. The dowager empresses, who both had smallpox as children, stayed by their son’s bedside constantly. The emperor’s wives, though, were forbidden from going near him. The illness hit him very strongly and many feared he would die. Prince Gong returned to court to be near his nephew and to help with administration while the emperor was bed-ridden. Prince Gong and the other grandees asked the empress dowagers to resume their duties as co-regents as they had before the emperor came into his rule. The empresses agreed, but they were quite preoccupied with their son’s well-being.

  The emperor languished for several weeks. Finally, he showed signs of improvement. His pustules burst and his fever lowered. He was able to sit up and gave formal approval for his mothers to help with the country’s governance while he was ill.

  But the relief everyone felt at his improvement was short lived. Suddenly, the emperor took ill again and everyone realized he had been misdiagnosed. What everyone thought was smallpox was actually what we called big pox, a disease contracted from whores. Only days after the doctors thought the emperor was on the mend, the emperor died.

  The dowager empresses were inconsolable. Cixi refused to leave her son’s side while Ci’an was taken to her bed, which she did not leave for weeks. When the eunuchs went to remove the body of the emperor to prepare it for burial, Cixi would not let them take him. Eventually, Prince Gong sent for me, to see if I could help console her. When I entered the room, she was kneeling by his bed, holding his hand in hers as she continued to weep. I sat by her side and put my arms around her.

  “My beautiful boy,” she said. I didn’t reply. How could I ever understand her pain? “I have no other,” she lamented. “My husband had no other. He was everything. What am I to do?”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” I said. “The empire is in good hands for now. You simply need to rest. You need to be strong to face the coming days.”

  “I am tired of being strong!” she cried. “I have been strong for everyone else for decades! This is not supposed to be my burden.”

  “Isn’t it?” I asked. “If this is the burden Heaven has laid upon you, isn’t it a burden you are meant to bear?”

  “Why would Heaven take my boy? Why would Heaven leave China with no Son of Heaven to lead it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I do know that no man on earth has a more capable mother than your son.”

  “You think too highly of me,” she said. “How I wish I could be like any other mother. I want only to weep and cry and be locked away from the world in my grief.”

  “You can do that if you wish,” I said. “But while you do that, you must allow the priests to take him away and prepare him to journey to his ancestors. He cannot stay here.”

  At this Cixi began to weep again, but she clung to me and let go of her son’s hand. As I held her and rocked her, the priests and eunuchs quickly moved in to wrap up the body and take him away.

  “Wait!” she called out. “Please, he can’t go alone!”

  “He will not be alone, Your Majesty,” I said. “He will have plenty of attendants with him.”

  “No, that’s not right. He needs a woman with him. Someone to care gently for him.”

  “You shouldn’t go,” I said. “You shouldn’t see him that way.”

  “Will you go?” she asked. “Will you wash his hands and his face and his hair?”

  I had not expected this, but nodded. It was out of the ordinary, but no one was going to deny a grieving mother any request, no matter how unorthodox. The prince called for the rest of the empress’s ladies in waiting. They took the empress in their arms and led her out of the room. I started to follow the priests who were carrying the emperor’s body. The prince walked beside me.

  “You don’t have to go,” he said. “The empress won’t know if you don’t go.”

  “I’ll know,” I said. “I can do this thing she asks of me.”

  The prince nodded and I followed the priests. We went into a large room where they laid the body on a marble slab. They brought over buckets of soapy water and began to unwrap the body. I walked up and stood over the emperor’s head. He was still so beautiful, just as his mother had said. And so young, only eighteen years old.

  I held out the emperor’s queue and undid the long braid. I ran my fingers through his hair and a few strands fell out. I wetted my hands in the water and then ran them over his long, sleek hair. I carefully but thoroughly washed his hair. I then oiled the hair and ran a wide tooth comb through it one hundred times. I braided the hair and securely fastened it with a red cord. I then took a silk cloth and washed the emperor’s face, neck, and hands. I carefully gathered up all of the emperor’s strands of hair that had fallen loose as I left.

  I returned to my room and found a large piece of silk that had a wider weave than what was typically used for clothes or decorations. Usually, the weave of the cloth had to be very tight, almost seamless, because I would use the thinnest threads possible. But in this case, since I could not make strands of hair thinner, I used a larger weave cloth. For days, while the empresses rested and funeral preparations were made, I embroidered a piece of cloth with the hair of Cixi’s son.

  Even though the emperor had died a man, I knew a woman’s child would always be little in her eyes. So I embroidered a scene of ten children playing, boys and girls, some with pigtails and some with queues, some in tiger clothes and some with flower dresses, some playing with kittens and some swinging from a tree. It was a precious sight, one that caused me to cry many times while making it.

  When the piece was finished, it was not the most beautiful piece I had ever made, but it wasn’t supposed to be. There was no shading or gradations, only the simple black and white images of children playing in a courtyard. I had one piece of hair left after I was finished. I suppose I could have used it to add some more flowers or to embellish a piece of clothing, but, for me, when a piece was done it was done. I could not make any changes to it, so I added the last strand of the emperor’s hair to my collection of thread memories.

  I presented the embroidered children to her majesty, and she held the piece and me in her arms for a long time. We didn’t speak, but it was clear that any past animosity or hurt we had been hanging onto over the years was gone. She had the piece framed and hung in her sleeping chamber across from her bed so she could look at it every morning and every night. She said it was a way to keep her son close to her and remind her of the precious child he had been.

  That night, I sought out Prince Gong. He was making plans to leave.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “I can’t be here for now,” he said.

  “But the empress needs you,” I said.

  “Yes, she needs me to be gone, just as she did before,” he said.

  “She isn’t staging a coup,” I said.

  “Isn’t she?” he asked. “Empress Alute should be the dowager empress now, but that is not going to happen. She’ll probably find arsenic in her tea if she doesn’t look out.”

  “Don’t say such things!” I snapped.

  “Cixi will be the dowager empress again,” the prince said. “But I can’t be seen having a hand in it. She won’t need my support anyway. The grandees, the magistrates, the governors, even the western diplomats all want her to take over again.”

  “Who will be emperor?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. Hopefully none of my sons.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because then I would lose all of my positions and the child. I wouldn’t be part of his life or the court. Plus, what sort of life would he lead? Look at how things ended for my brother, my nephew. No, being emperor is its own kind of death sentence.”

  “Where will you go?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe Jehol, to the hunting lodge. I could use a rest.”

  “Can you do something for me?” I asked.

  The prince took my hand and kissed it and then he gently touched my cheek. “Anything.”

  “Would you return to Changsha and bring me my daughter?”

  The prince hesitated. “That is a dangerous thing you ask,” he said. “Do you want me to take her to my home? We could arrange for you to see her there.”

  “No,” I said. “Bring her here. After what I saw the empress go though, I can’t bear to be apart from our little girl any longer.”

  “But what will you say?” he asked. “People will surely realize…”

  “The empress has been pressuring me to take an apprentice. I will tell her the girl is a cousin of mine or something who has been training with Lady Tang and comes highly recommended.”

  “Still, you are playing with fire, my love,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “But will you please do it?”

  The prince nodded. We kissed and he mounted his horse and rode away.

  * * *

  The prince was right. Not only did every man in the country, foreign and Chinese, want Cixi and Ci’an to take the reins of power back, they handed them over willingly. They all agreed there was simply no one else in a position to do so. With Prince Gong out of the city and Empress Alute also ill – apparently starving herself to death so she could join her husband – the dowager empresses had no choice but to accept the heavy burden of rulership.

  The prince was also right about another thing: the appointment of the new emperor. Cixi completely overlooked Prince Gong’s sons and looked to Prince Chun’s. Prince Chun had only one living son at the time, Zaitian, who was four years old. Prince Chun and Lady Rong’s hearts were broken over the selection. Their three older boys had all died and Lady Rong was suffering from ill health. She most likely would not be able to have more children. The prince begged Cixi not to select Zaitian. He kowtowed to her, beating his forehead to the floor until he passed out. Cixi had the prince unceremoniously removed from the audience hall and sent some grandees to collect the child.

  Empress Ci’an had no say in the selection of the new emperor. As always, she left administrative tasks to Cixi. Empress Dowager Cixi could have selected someone older so she would not have needed to rule as regent for so long. She also could have waited to name a successor until one of the other princes proved himself worthy of the title. But she opted for the youngest prince available so she could raise him, groom him, herself to be the emperor she needed him to be. She had her work cut out for her though. Zaitian was small, frail, and easily frightened. He had none of the demanding, commanding airs her son had already had at that age. He was a precious and darling boy, though, who loved toys and music and art. He probably had a far more delicate countenance than required for the task he had been selected.

  * * *

  A couple of months after Prince Gong had left court, he returned to pay his respects to the new emperor and to present my new apprentice to the empress as a gift. Finally, after the girl had been properly presented, Prince Gong brought her to me. I had not seen her since I had left her with Lady Tang when she was only a few months old. She was even more beautiful than I had imagined she would be.

  She wore a pink and white chaopao with matching pink and white pants, both embroidered with lovely pink butterflies and orchids. Her hair was braided and pinned up on each side, revealing adorable ears that stuck out a little too far. Her eyes were big and dark and her nose and lips were perfectly balanced. Her skin was a lovely fawn shade. She stood nervously chewing on one of her fingers. Her feet were, thankfully, not bound. I was so grateful to Lady Tang for honoring my request in this.