Empress

How could I dupe myself? I was worn down by frequent intestinal complaints. My strength was slipping away like water from a cupped hand. I walked more slowly, grew short of breath more easily, forgot people’s names or important dates, and Gentleness acted as my memory. I had difficulty heaving myself onto my charger. My doctors first forbade me from cantering, then from riding altogether. I would suddenly be gripped by violent rages and then would be despondent for days on end. Without a horse, I had no energy or enthusiasm. I was no longer myself.

On some days, then, as dusk fell over the Imperial Park, I would ask to be taken to the top of a hill, and I would sit out on the terrace of a pavilion. On a sign from me my eunuchs would raise flags, and Earth would tremble as hundreds of horses surged out of the forest and stampeded around a track at the foot of the hill. I watched, fascinated, their every muscle was tense, their manes streamed in the wind. My most able young horsewomen would stand on their saddles and perform acrobatic displays. Their supple movements, so perfectly attuned to the rhythm of the gallop, lifted me out of my motionless body. On the distant horizon, night closed in like a rising tide, eating away at my life a little at a time, the races and the battles, the turmoil and the rage.

My friends and mistresses had disappeared! Every month the government presented me with a list of the dead, and I recognized the names of exiled enemies, retired servants, poets, and monks. They had all closed their doors, leaving me in a world where-sunbeam by sunbeam-their light was dimming.

The hillside would succumb to the darkness and my servants would light lanterns and braziers. Somewhere musicians played. My world had shrunk to the confines of that tiny pavilion. Candles lit the faces in the frescoes that would line my tomb: Gentleness, seen in profile with her pensive brow, holding a writing case in her hand. Behind her, Court ladies and serving women all painted according to traditional codes, perfectly proportioned and with a melancholy beauty. In the background, little eunuchs in brown tunics and black lacquered linen caps merged into the balustrades. The moon, pi

ONE NIGHT THE town of Long Peace appeared to me in a dream. The gates and archers’ towers of its Forbidden City loomed through golden clouds. Flocks of birds circled over its crimson walls. Its avenues filled with cherry and wild orange blossom had the outdated charm of an abandoned concubine. Overcome by a pain I could not name, I woke.

All of Luoyang trembled and the order was given: My Court and dignitaries packed up the furniture, the tableware, and the animals. The Southern Gate opened, and the city reverberated to horses’ whi

The smell of meadows seeped through the pearl-edged brocade door hangings. Soon my sleep was haunted by the breath of the Yellow Earth and the slow music of its rivers. Memories of a former life came back to me in snatches: I was in a carriage heading for Long Peace, huddled in my seat weeping, my stomach knotted with fear. I missed Mother and Little Sister. Why did I have to grow up?

I sat up with a start, thinking I could hear thunder. Thousands of voices were chanting, “Ten thousand years to the Sacred Emperor, ten thousand years to the Sacred Emperor, millions of years of health and happiness to the Sacred Emperor of the Celestial Mandate and the Golden Wheel!” Through the window of my carriage, I could see endless horsemen with stirrups of gold and silver, countless crimson ba

My eyes filled with tears. I suddenly remembered a smell from the past, familiar figures forgotten for half a century. Their high foreheads, their distant eyes, their slow, precise footsteps: serving women and governesses from the Palace who had come to greet the new Talented One.

I was so young then and I am now so old!

The door hangings were drawn apart. Great ministers prostrated themselves and asked me to alight. I decreed the Great Remission and the begi

After the fevered excitement of the first months, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion and my hands started to shake violently. My calligraphy, always a source of such pride, became tortured scribbling. I sometimes tripped when there was nothing in my way. I saw a succession of doctors and was deluged with their diagnoses: unhinged winds, warring hot and cold elements, internal disorders. Some prescribed herb teas, baths, ointments, whereas others would have me bled, counsel acupuncture, and breathing exercises. The morning salutation was a challenge that I renewed daily. I should get out of bed, walk, get into a carriage, and endure the difficult journey to the Outer Court.

But I myself had found the best remedy against old age: never stop working, continue to invent. Amid the affairs of state and celebrations, I forgot the trembling of my body. I set up the military Imperial Competition and I myself corrected the papers on strategy and arbitrated the tournaments. I received ambassadors from Japan who, after a thirty-three-year hiatus, had crossed the boiling seas once more to prostrate themselves before the sovereign of the Celestial Empire. I sent my son Miracle to command my forces in war against the Tatars who had rebelled once again in the northwest. I arranged a marriage between a princess and a Tibetan king. When the King of Sinra died, I quickly sent an emissary to help his younger brother take the throne. The judicial mistakes made in the days of the torturer-prosecutors were corrected and the condemned rehabilitated. I reclassified the books in the Imperial Library. My nephew Spirit oversaw a hundred archivists and scholars compiling the a