My Last Empress (8 page)
Finally a midnight knock on my door left me, the shivering Pickens—she arrived scantily wrapped—no choice but to imbibe in what little warmth a cold night had to offer. A handful of ensuing trysts with Midnight Martha left me gasping for life, while she, her spinsterly self boasting a primal glow, kept diving more deeply for more, as a seasoned pearl-diver would with long and hearty breath. Spinster she might be, but naïve she was never meant to be. The tables quickly turned in our ritual of coition: a certain manliness leaped out of her, anointing her the domineering one of us two. Her assertiveness with certain positional demands and familiarity with all her vital organs and mine alike, shocked me, as did the boldest and the most sodomistic acts she suggested, which sadly only emboldened my dominatrix to resort to even raunchier devices, of which I shall deign myself from inking.
The affair, as you might expect, didn’t outlast the storm. In one outburst of youthful whim following a rigorous coition, the Iowa-bred book-duster dragged me into the wet courtyard, wishing to relive a wintry girlhood something.
In her first attempt at rope-skipping, warning proffered, her left foot slipped while the right one was caught sideways by the loop, causing her to fall backward, breaking three lower vertebrae, necessitating her to be sedated for the foreseeable future in the renowned Rockefeller-built Union Hospital.
A brief visitation to Martha’s hospital ward, and a bundle of Peking peonies as long-stemmed as she, was the last I saw of her. Later reportage from the legatine confirmed her slow
recovery and eventual marriage to a jealous and, might I add, vindictive Harvard man, thusly freeing her, at least temporarily, from the urge to prey on future guests of the meager accommodations that offered little accommodating comfort except her own cold frame.
For all that I had nightly contributed to her unsplintering, Martha fulfilled my petty wish, lending me the key to a file merely labeled as “Rape of H’s Daughter.” (Oh the fire of anger was aflame already!)
The legal memorandum to the office of the ambassador drafted by Bernard Buchanan, Esq. (Columbia, LLB), to find legal ground to initiate the act of war, outlined the barebones known facts: innocent A abducted and raped by a thugly village lord named Wang Dan, who was a scion of a tea trade fortune who forfeited the chosen path of his forefathers to take up the sword and form a hedonist sect with its members numbering in the tens of thousands and who had anointed himself the son of God.
Our buccaneering Bernie went on to paint with valiant strokes the sparring feuds, predating A’s rape, between Reverend H and the self-made messiah over provisions, parishioners, and properties.
H (Phillips Andover, Yale) was no cowardly man of the cloth. Impinging on the principles he held steadfast, guns were secretively requisitioned from a British supplier, Dunhill, Moore & Bro. of London, via the stinking port named Fragrant Island. His flocks of Rice Christians were immobilized, and skirmishes were had with Wang Dan’s hooded
swordsmen and robed arsonists, making the regions southeast to Peking into a present-day crusaders’ Holy Land. Bloodshed, not quite, but battles galore. A series of diplomatic and governmental interference—Americans asking the Manchurian Court to calm its subjects down, which was duly regarded as an insulting and inciting gesture—only heightened the stakes and worsened the hostility. H’s unbending commitment to his daughter’s honor made him a hero, making the Hua Cun Congregational Church of northern China a strong hold of sorts among other foreign fanatics deadly bent on saving Manchurian souls.
The lone Brit merchant of war supplies no longer sufficed. In war, all churches and chapels were brothers. An arsenal of Italian bullets, German rifles, American grenades, and Russian sabres was stacked behind the towering H.
On the opposition, Wang Dan, H’s crusty counterpart, a prior anti-Confucius atheist in the eyes of his countrymen, now stood an icon of patriotism. More hooded swordsmen swore their legions, and robed arsonists aided Wang’s ascension. It was war or nothing, fingers on the trigger, swords unsheathed. But on the day of the planned confrontation, upon the testy abutting ground that would soon be soaked with blood, in walked my pubescent blonde, my Annabelle, a Bible in one hand, a basket of freshly picked wild flowers in the other, singing hymnal songs in Mandarin. She wore white that day, a token beseeching peace and a symbol of hymenal purity. The shouts of men at war poured forth from opposite camps, H’s command being most audible, but undaunted was my angel of faith and dove of goodwill. Buchanan’s narration understandably faltered under the weighty import of such a
moment forthwith, but the scribe rose up to the occasion as a good sergeant would do, albeit on paper, and penned with gut-wrenching acute vividness the following thematic passage, which I must quote verbatim in order not to undo the gallantry of the scene to follow:
Imminently guns were lowered on H’s camp; swords and daggers were sheathed on the other. In the golden wheat field the battle cries suddenly quieted into a silence of disbelief. When Miss A reached the vast middle ground field, the Christians, at least some of them, broke their line, dashing after her, guns in hand, aiming to recall her into their ranks. A handful of Wang’s camp also raced toward A, swords and spears in hands
.
A paused in her advance and stood still as she beckoned them with waving hands, inviting them to join her in singing hymns. Those who witnessed this recounted seeing her twirl, sway, and jump with her thin arms swinging, as if performing her favorite rice dance, a Manchurian ritualistic art to celebrate the seasonal bounties
.
As the combatants narrowed around her—men of thuggery righteous in their own minds, arms ready, eyeing each other with ancient hatred and disgust for one another—A threw herself suddenly prostrate on the ground, her hands clasping her precious Bible after casting away the basket of flowers, shouting or rather singing out her prayers to God
.
The soldiers of souls reached over, pulling on her four limbs, to clear the path of war. One eyewitness recounted that Miss A brandished her family Bible, a treasure given
upon her birth that she placed by her pillow by night and carried in the silk jacket handmade by Mrs. H by day. The corner of God’s book caught on a corner of a soldier’s eye, causing him to let loose a scream of pain in that vital moment of vulnerability. In the next fleeting moment, Miss A snatched the handle of his sword out of his gripping hand. The sword in one hand, Bible in the other, posed no threat to anyone. They shouted her to depart this focus of contention. The walls of men came closer to one another. Among the encroaching men was Reverend H running among his followers with a bayoneted rifle. From the opposite end came Wang Dan astride a Gobi stallion, his right hand pointing a sword, in the other hand holding a red-jacketed holy scripture of his own invention, with thousands of his footmen guarding his flanks
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The meeting of hostility was imminent. The sound of galloping hooves shook the ground and the fury of men raced the wind
.
Miss A appeared, holding her gleaming sword blade to her thin throat, shouting the words, “Leave this battleground now or I shall kill myself with this sword!”
A Christian scout tried to approach her, which only caused her to throw her Bible in the air and slice it into pieces with her sword in warning. She ran barefoot down the line to separate the men ready to kill, from south to north. Then again she ran, widening that belt of peace until the soldiers were safely apart. A few stubborn Christians, our witnesses included, who were slow to retreat, nearly had their toes cut off by her sword
.
Now in view of thousands, she turned, sword still to
her throat, and bowed to her father, then turned to face that stallion in the distance, rearing on its hind legs, and walked past Wang Dan’s parting men, looking to the one commanding them. She began to run, heading toward the archnemesis of her own father, of her own God
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Mr. Wang climbed down to help her onto his saddle, holding her from behind. The horse galloped away, trailed by his men, leaving behind an empty field and an army of disheartened and much-puzzled Christians
.
At this conjuncture, Reverend H, instead of calling his army to arms, collapsed. Weak and delirious he begged to be taken back to his home. All his will and fortitude seemed thwarted, thus ending that day bloodless
.
The fate of our Joan of Arc, a true heroine, in the aftermath of her captivity, was kept unknown, except for rare glimpses by the paid spies who occupied the inner sanctum of Mr. Wang’s township. Such scouting was, at best, sketchy, speculative, and second- or third-handed, gleamed from the maids and manservants toiling within Mr. Wang’s ancestral estate
.
One account revealed the sight of red lanterns being hung on the very night of said failed battle, hinting at festivity of uncommon significance. Only weddings and Lunar New Year deserved this lengthy protocol. The rest of the year those silken-clothed, bamboo-ribbed symbols of liveliness and tools to drive away the presumed evils were carefully wrapped with long sheets of fabric and retired to storage until occasion would call on their use again
.
Could it be that Mr. Wang, who had been known far and near as a married man many times over, had
taken another bride, this time of white skin, the daughter of his enemy?
The other account, this one from a nephew of a butcher within the estate, claimed that ever since the Ocean Bride’s arrival, the lord’s meals had secretively taken on an aphrodisiac flavor prescribed by a famed doctor from the inner city of Peking to shore up his dwindled libido. Additional food items included daily supplies of oysters to be sucked raw with a dash of vinegar and soy sauce, four sets of mountain goat testicles simmered with ginseng roots, and blood-curd spilled from virgin pheasants weighing no more than nine lian (less than a pound)
.
Another more serene and soothing account originated from Colonel Winthrop’s own cobbler, who had a widowed aunt serving as an
amah,
a tea lady, to Wang Dan’s third wife. Our
amah,
on several occasions, reported seeing the foot masseuse rubbing oil onto the Ocean Bride’s bare feet and thighs to warm her up for the coming night with Mr. Wang
.
The above observation suffices to negate the unfounded claim that Citizen A was the object of torture and that her abduction was impinged upon her rather than a volunteer act
.
All the above witness accounts unfortunately could aid us no further in our evidentiary exploration into the matter at heart
.
Buchanan’s memorandum ended abruptly. The entire legation was reluctant to engage me in this subject matter or tell me what had become of Buchanan. I shunned the
ambassadorial staff who had long deemed me an insufferable creature lurching about their domain, overstaying my welcome, and instead I tried to befriend the kitchen staff. They were a sweaty bunch: a sous chef of Swiss descent, who after downing several shots of U.S. government issue whiskey, confessed in his Franco-English to having heard of Buchanan’s sudden discharge from legatine duty, and later his hush-hush tragic end aboard the Canton Express to Wu Hang, a central city of rebels and warlords, with assassins still at large and unpursued. I aimed to cajole the chef for further disclosure, but the single malt had kicked in and all he could do was cry and talk of his childhood spent in a Lausanne orphanage.
The fate of my Annabelle eluded me at each step. But fate shall alter—it always does, mine and hers. Alive or ghostly, the myth and the mythology were to unveil themselves within that forbidden life awaiting me. All these entanglements are but precursors of what is to befall me.
That day of my entrance into the royal palace, I was met by the High Prince Yun, the birth father of the emperor, at the Gate of Valor. Prince Yun was a man of average height, with a pair of bushy, slanting eyebrows hanging over long slender eyes. After pleasantries were duly exchanged, Prince Yun read me a lengthy royal decree of things that were to come my way. Among the listings, I was to receive the fourth highest rank of officialdom among the Court personage, allowing me the privilege to ride on a four-manned sedan and be gifted with an apartment within the palace grounds. The offerings were long and tediously delivered, detailing such trivialities as the meals and petty household upkeep privileges.