My Last Empress by Da Chen

Author:Da Chen [Chen, Da]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780307381309
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Upon reading these words, I nearly fainted.

Could this be the same H, as in Hawthorn, the progenitor of my darling Annabelle? Could this young patient on the gurney, under Margo’s pen, be my very own heart and soul?

My bleeding Annie, my wounded Annabelle! I trembled like a shaken sieve while urging my dewy eyes further along the rows of scribbling ink. Even though Q and the incapacitated hospital administrator were near and reading the pages as avidly as I, it seemed as if I was alone with this vital account recounted in this precious volume by one sinning nurse.

And for that duration of time before the eventful night in the hospital I am describing—dark wintry months—H suffered much and alone in the confinement of his attic. He became a fugitive of delirium and despondence. He was never whole again no matter the tenderness and love I offered. The few times he sought me, as he always did in times of trial and uncertainty, he seemed lost, not in ways of our intimacy but in ways of his soul.

He was vengeful, brooding over an ugly outcome—his daughter’s pregnancy. He was bent on purging the ill seed of Wang Dan from his daughter’s young body, and so anguished that he even dared suggest that I slaughter the bastardly life, concocting a scheme to have her drugged by a devout herbalist parishioner and dragged down to a crypt beneath his chapel to have me cleanse her young womb with a knife or pessary. Bitterly I rejected his request. But today, as I watched H’s daughter nearly die on the table in the pains of childbirth, I wondered if this had been the right decision.

The young surgeon was able to do what needed to be done. A cesarean birth was skillfully conducted, and mother and daughter were saved. Before the young mother opened her eyes again, fate was decided for the newborn: she was to be declared stillborn and the secret kept from the mother forever. The child was to be given to no other than my old friend, Prince Qiu, whose sterility has long deprived him of an offspring. Such arrangement would not only resolve the headaches of H, who knew nothing of the infant’s placement, only knowing it would be rightly taken care of, but it would also dissolve the knot of international political intrigue. Yet for days and days afterward, guilt consumed me so, until I could no longer contain myself. In a moment of weakness, I sent the young mother a secret note laying bare all the facts about her child.…

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