Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

Author:Anchee Min
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical, Biographical fiction, Asia, Fiction, China, Historical fiction, Erotica, General, Empresses, History
ISBN: 9780618562039
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2005-03-14T05:01:54+00:00

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 Emperor was supposed to stay sober and refrain from lovemaking for three months after his mother’s death. He honored only the traditions that suited him. I could not imagine my son being raised the way his father had been. I needed to convince Nuharoo that I would be no threat to her so that I would always be close to my child.

The rumors of His Majesty’s obsession with his Chinese ladies reached every corner of the Forbidden City. I began to have horrible dreams. I dreamed that I was sleeping and someone was trying to pull me off the bed. I struggled but was unsuccessful and was dragged out of the room. In the meantime I clearly saw that my body was still on the bed, unmoving.

Also in my dreams I saw red berries prematurely dropping from trees. I could even hear them as they fell—pop, pop, pop. Superstition hinted that this was an omen for miscarriage. In a panic, I sent An-te-hai out to check if it was true that the berry trees behind my palace had started dropping their fruit. An-te-hai came back and reported that he had found no berries on the ground.

Day after day I heard the popping sounds in my sleep. I suspected that the berries might have gotten caught between the roof tiles. To comfort me, An-te-hai climbed up a ladder to the roof.

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