Lady Tang hugged and kissed me one last time. “Remember us kindly,” she whispered in my ear.

  The prince took my hand and in one quick tug pulled me up as I scurried onto the horse behind him. I wondered why Lady Tang would ever worry that I would think of her in any other way. Lady Tang was like a mother to me, though I couldn’t tell her that. I might be scared and anxious about what lay ahead, but thanks to her, I was no longer a peasant girl from the dirty streets of rural Hunan. I was going to serve the emperor.

  7

  On the Road to Peking, 1856

  I was in so much pain.

  The horse was huge so my legs had to spread wide to sit astride him. Sitting up straight to try and keep my balance so I wouldn’t fall off with every jostle was straining my back. Every step the horse took seemed to rattle my very bones. I held tightly to the prince, much too tightly than was proper and made me extremely uncomfortable, but I believed I would fall off and be crushed by the dozens of horses behind us if I loosened my grip. I could feel the muscles in his stomach as my fists clenched his shirt. My face was firmly planted in his back, so I could smell the salt of his sweat. We were both so hot from baking in the hot sun and our bodies being pressed close together. Finally, the prince slowed the horse to a gentle trot.

  “You are killing me, Yaqian,” he said. “Don’t squeeze me so tight.”

  “I am afraid I will fall, Your Highness,” I said, my reply muffled in the back of his shirt.

  He twisted and shrugged his shoulders to force me to let go. “You are not going to fall. Riding a horse is easy, especially from back there. Besides, I wouldn’t let you fall.”

  I slowly opened my eyes and leaned back to put some space between us. I somewhat loosened my grip, but not by much.

  The prince let out a sigh. “Finally I can breathe again,” he said with a laugh.

  I sighed as well, feeling a little relaxed. “How long will the trip take?” I asked.

  “About a month if we are lucky; maybe six weeks if we aren’t.”

  “Six weeks!” I exclaimed. “What am I supposed to do back here for six weeks?”

  “Hopefully you won’t be back there the whole time,” he said. “You better be on your own horse soon.”

  “I am going to be so bored,” I said. “I will forget how to even do embroidery in that time.”

  “You complain a lot,” he said.

  This shocked me. I had never thought of myself as a complainer. I admit that I had become accustomed to a rather comfortable life at Lady Tang’s school, but I had suffered much as well.

  “I think I complain just the right amount,” I replied. “Maybe you are just not used to hearing complaints as a high and mighty prince.”

  “I think I’m just not used to hearing a woman whine so much,” he said.

  “Do you not spend much time around women?” I asked.

  “I have a wife, but court business keeps me from her. My mother is in the inner court, so I don’t see her much either anymore. But I never remember hearing them complain. They are very strong.”

  “So you think suffering in silence is a sign of strength?” I asked.

  “What makes you think they suffer?” he asked.

  “Because they are human,” I replied. “All life is suffering.”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “But your life is about to get much better. If we ever get to Peking, anyway. If the Taiping don’t stop us.”

  “Should we be worried?” I asked.

  “Not for now,” he said. “My force was able to push them back. We hurt them rather significantly. We were able to defeat several of their main brigades. But they have such numbers. I need more men.”

  “China is large,” I said. “Surely the emperor has plenty of men he can call on.”

  “We can call on more, but that doesn’t always mean they come. Many have flocked to the Taiping side. And sometimes farmers and peasants are worse than no men – they are untrained and unarmed. No, I need a real army. A strong army. A well-trained army.” The prince got quiet as he pondered this problem.

  It was strange to me that these rebels had been allowed to run rampant through the country for so long. Why didn’t the emperor stop them? Maybe the emperor was not as strong as I thought.

  “Where will you find this army?” I asked.

  My question woke him from his trance as he shook his head and cleared his throat. “What? Oh, never mind. It is not for you to worry about.”

  By this time, the sun was setting. The group came to a large open area and the prince began barking orders. This was where we would camp for the night. The prince easily jumped down from his horse. He held a hand up to help me down, but I realized I couldn’t move.

  “I can’t move my legs,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” he said, laughing. “You must be quite sore.” He reached up and grabbed me around my waist and pulled me down from the horse. He stood me on the ground, but as soon as he let go, I collapsed. The prince rolled his eyes. “Do you need me to carry you?” he asked.

  I held a hand up to stop him. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest. You just…you go on. I’ll be fine.”

  He hesitated for a moment, but then went on. He had work to do. I managed to crawl over to a nearby tree and lean against it. Even though I was sitting in the dirt with nothing to do, nothing to eat, and no one to talk to, it felt good to be back on solid ground.

  While I rested, the men started several fires and put up some tents. After it was dark, I hobbled over to my trunk and retrieved a bag of roasted silkworms, my pillow, and my blanket. I went over to a fire and laid out a pallet for me to sleep on and munched on my silkworms. Eventually, after all the work was done, a few of the men joined me, along with the prince.

  “What did you find to eat?” he asked.

  “A Hunan delicacy,” I replied. I held one of the hard, round silkworms out to him. “Want to try one?”

  “Sure,” he replied.

  As our fingers touched in the darkness, I noticed his hands were rough, as a soldier’s should be, but for the first time I also noticed how calloused my own fingers were. Thousands of tiny needle pricks over the years had hardened to create protective layers over my fingertips. I placed the silkworm in his hand and he slowly pulled his hand back. I then heard a light crunching sound. I couldn’t help but smile, as if I had gotten away with a very naughty joke. I had learned over time that there was nothing wrong with eating silkworms, but I doubted a royal diet consisted of many grubs.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  “Much,” I said. “I am getting excited. I know I am in over my head. I have no idea what I am getting into, but I can’t wait to find out. Maybe tomorrow I will even try to ride a horse by myself.”

  “Life in the palace will be nothing like your life was up to now,” he said.

  “What will it be like?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to ruin it for you,” he said.

  “Tell me about the emperor,” I said. “Does he employ many embroidery girls?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Well, all the ladies embroider, but I don’t think there are any who only do that work. Honestly, I’m not sure why he sent me for you. I mean, I know he was impressed with your work, but is it that special?”

  “It is,” I declared. “It is something not even embroidery masters know how to do.”

  “I guess,” he said. “I don’t know a fig about sewing. But my brother does love art. Paintings, opera, all art forms. I guess if you are the best, then he has to own you. Has to add you to his inner court.”

  “I don’t like the thought of being ‘owned’ by anyone, even if that someone is the emperor,” I said.

  “You have to belong to someone,” he replied.

  “So I’ve been told,” I lamented. “Oh no!” I suddenly gasped. “I don’t have anyone to help me with washing and binding my feet.”

  “You can’t do it yourself?” he asked.

  “Not very easily. It’s quite painful. At the school, we all helped each other.”

  “You know, the Manchu, we don’t do that to our women. Why don’t you just stop?”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “Even my bones have been reformed. I don’t think they could ever be normal again.”

  “They are sure to bring you lots of attention at the palace,” he said.

  “Really?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Unwanted attention. There are not many women with bound feet in the palace, if any. In the past, Lan…I mean, Imperial Concubine Yi has forced women who come into her service with bound feet to undo them.”

  “I know you do not like my feet or understand our ways,” I said, “but my feet are important to me. They may be tiny, broken, but they carried me out of the countryside and into the house of Lady Tang. And now, they will carry me all the way to the imperial city.”

  “I hear you, Yaqian,” he said. “But when you get there, just be aware of the people around you. Be careful who you trust.”

  I glanced around at the other men near the fire. I saw a few men who were high ranking enough to have tents go into them with some of the chicken girls who were still following us.

  “Am I safe here?” I asked.

  The prince nodded. “I’ll watch over you,” he said.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of weeks, I slowly learned to ride a horse on my own, and the prince would often ride beside me. It was fascinating watching the countryside change: wide-open planes, rocky hills, rushing rivers. The people changed too. Most places we went, I couldn’t understand the local accents. Some of the people we talked to, no one in our group could understand them! The prince could only communicate with them through writing, if they could read. But I loved seeing how their clothes changed. The prince was even kind enough to help me buy and barter for pieces of embroidery by different ethnic groups we passed. I bought some beautiful head wraps, scarves, belts, and wrist cuffs.

  The ride was very boring sometimes. Just siting for hours with no one to talk to and nothing to do. We had to sleep on the ground and eat congee for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But every few days we would come to a fort where we could get washed, a good meal, and a comfortable bed. We would rest for a day or two and then get new horses and set out again.

  The prince and I got to know each other rather well during that time. I had a million questions and he enjoyed answering them. I think he found my naiveté amusing. I didn’t care if he thought I was just a silly girl. He was handsome, educated, and even funny. I relished his attention.

  He told me how the Taiping were ravaging the land in the south. Many people saw them as saviors, their heroes after years of neglect by the emperor. But thousands of people had been killed under their “protection.” The leader of the Taiping, a man who called himself The Sun, forbade relationships between men and women, but he had eighty-eight concubines! The Sun was as corrupt as any man, and more bloodthirsty than most.

  He also told me about wars with foreign powers. He told me about a war that happened long before I was born over opium. I was a little familiar with the dangers of this drug, but I was so sheltered at my school that I didn’t really see its effects myself. The war cost China lots of money, far more than the emperor had, and also lots of land. The prince said his brother was old enough to remember the war and how much their father hated the Westerners because of it. Emperor Xianfeng still hated foreigners, far more than Prince Gong did.

  “You don’t hate them?” I asked.

  “I hate how they treated us unfairly. I hate how they poison our country and our people with this drug. But you cannot ignore their success. ‘The sun never sets on the British Empire’, they say. I think that we could learn from them if we could work together.”

  But China and the foreigners were not working together, and tensions were mounting every day. Some of the foreign generals had offered to help the emperor fight the Taiping, but the emperor rejected them. He didn’t want to owe the foreigners anything. So he was basically fighting a war on two fronts, and not winning either one.

  This caused the prince great stress, but he did his best to support his brother and his policies. The prince was fluent in English and was one of the emperor’s chief diplomats. He tried to teach me a little, so by the time we reached the outskirts of Peking I could say “hello,” “good-bye,” “thank you,” and “big stupid egg.” He got a real kick out of teaching me that last one.

  He told me a little about his life. He talked about growing up in the palace and about his father, the Daoguang Emperor. He admitted that he was hurt when his father didn’t name him as successor, but he respected his decision and understood it.

  He told me about his own family. He had one son and two daughters by his wife and concubine. His son was only a little older than the emperor’s son.

  But who I loved hearing about most was Imperial Concubine Yi, the mother of the emperor’s son. She had entered the palace along with twelve hundred other women the emperor could choose his consorts from. Somehow, Imperial Concubine Yi had managed to stand out from all the rest and catch the eye of the young emperor. She soon became his second favorite and bore him his only son. He also had a daughter, but she wasn’t important. The empress was a woman named Zhen, and she was the little prince’s official mother. The empress didn’t have any children of her own.

  The prince seemed to hover between respecting and despising Imperial Concubine Yi. In many ways he saw her as a spoiled child with ridiculous whims of fancy. On the other hand, her influence over the emperor was preferable to that of his other grandees. The grandees encouraged the emperor’s closed-door policies and incited war. If the emperor would listen to Imperial Concubine Yi more than his ministers, then she would be more useful to Prince Gong as an ally than an enemy.

  I didn’t talk near as much on that journey as the prince did. How could my little life at an embroidery school ever compare to court intrigue? He was interested in my life before the school though, my life in the countryside. He wanted to know what life was like for average people.

  “China is her people,” the prince said. “The court must never forget that. But I feel they often do.”

  The trip was difficult, but I loved every minute of it. I never realized how beautiful my country was. We traveled through Zhengzhou, Shundefu, and Baoding. I saw majestic mountains, wide rivers, and forests that seemed to go on forever. I tried to remember all of it so I could turn them into embroidered scenes later.

  I continued to struggle to understand the Prince’s Peking accent, and sometimes he couldn’t understand me. I made it my goal to become fluent in his foreign-sounding dialect by the time we arrived in Peking. I wanted to make sure the emperor and I would be able to understand each other when we met.

  8

  Peking, 1856

  We had been traveling for four or five weeks when we crested a hill and the prince pointed to the huge city.

  “There it is,” he said. “Your new home.”

  From the road, I could see the city of Peking spread out below me. Innumerable one-story buildings with red roofs that stretched far beyond what I could see. A layer of dust shrouded it in a fine fog from the millions of animals, people, and carts traversing its dirt roads.

  As we made our way down the hill and entered Peking, I thought back to when I first arrived in Changsha and how awed I was by the sight. This place was infinitely more impressive. I felt as though I was on another planet. I had to hold tightly to the reins of my horse as it took small quick steps to avoid running over or into people, carts, and other animals. There were people dressed in funny clothes and animals I had never seen before, even in books. We passed by a long line of huge brown beasts with long necks and humps on their backs. People dressed in long sheets were riding some of them! I could never do that. I saw a woman with a white face wearing long black robes who was leading a long line of Chinese children. I saw a group of men in little hats kneeling on rugs and kowtowing to nothing in particular. I saw people in elaborate costumes singing in a way that sounded like an erhu. I saw a man with several monkeys for sale who was making them do flips. I saw white women in tight dresses with huge hats. There were people yelling, dogs barking, bells ringing, children laughing. Dung and garbage lined the streets. I wondered if the streets were ever swept or if they just waited for the rain to wash it away. After weeks of riding through China’s idyllic countryside, the filth of Peking was shocking.

  Finally, we turned onto a broad thoroughfare wide enough for several carriages to pass abreast of one another. Ahead of us was a large red wall with a brown gate and a red building behind it. The Forbidden City.

  My heart began to race. I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. I needed to straighten my hair and get the dust off my face, but I couldn’t look away as we got closer to the palace. The front gate began to open and a few of the riders ahead of us entered. I could feel myself grinning from ear to ear as my horse neared the gate. I couldn’t blink even though the dust was burning my eyes. I didn’t want to miss a moment of what felt like a triumph for me. A little peasant girl from the Hunan countryside was about to enter the Forbidden City and meet the emperor. If only Mother could see me.

  But then, one of them men grabbed my horse by the reins and turned him to the side, walking away from the gate along the outer wall.

  “Wait,” I screamed as I tried to wrest the reins from him and go back to the front gate.

  “Stop fighting me,” the man said. “You enter this way!”

  “No!” I screamed as I twisted around on my horse and looked back at Prince Gong, who was heading through the front gate. “Wait! What about me?” I yelled at him.

  “What?” he hollered back.