Imperial Lady

5

Ahead of the cortege of chariots, carts, horses, and soldiers, some still limping from their encounter with the Red Brows bandits, towered the immense bulwark of Ch’ang-an’s eastern wall. It ran in a straight, splendid line from north to the south, which marked the domain of the Yang and the Sun’s zenith as it soared through the heavens. Silver Snow peered out at the city as her cart maneuvered for place, in company not only with her own party now, but with the thousands of others who thronged into the capital. For the first time since she had started this journey, she was thankful for the heavy curtains that enclosed her. If they left her riding in a constant twilight and prevented her from freely breathing fresh air, at least they protected her father’s daughter from prying eyes as she stared —or tried to stare —at the wonders now rising before her.

Like the Wall that loomed near the home that Silver Snow had resigned herself never to see again, Ch’ang-an’s defenses were wrought of rammed earth and bricks. But that was where the resemblance ended. The Wall at the northern border was old, mounding over in some places: a drowsy dragon covered, as it slept, by snow. Ch’ang-an’s defenses, however, were veritable imperial dragons in comparison, bright with ornament, bearing armed watchmen who peered jealously over each of the three gates that pierced the thick, sloping wall.

Before Silver Snow could stop herself, she reached for the slit that she had made in the curtains of the ox-cart. She had heard much of the gates of Ch’ang-an. Each gate had three separate entrances; each entrance could admit three carts at once. She fancied that even beneath the shaking and lurching of the ox-cart, she could feel the earth tremble as so many carts and horses converged upon one place. Not just thousands of households made up Ch’ang-an, but tens of thousands. Silver Snow had never even thought of so many people, all of them crammed behind the city’s immensely thick barriers. In this hour, laborers shouted and pounded on the walls; their voices reached her from a distance. Uncouth accents of men rounded up from the farthest corners of the Middle Kingdom vied with speech that she knew well.

As her fingers touched the shabby cloth, the lady behind her coughed faintly in reminder and reproof.

“Forgive me, Elder Sister,” said Silver Snow, bowing her head in feigned contrition and true shame, for Lady Lilac, the go-between who had finally rejoined Silver Snow’s wedding procession—such as it was—not two days outside the city, was a woman she could neither respect nor trust. She tucked her hand within her sleeves, lest the lady seize upon its cal-lused, short-nailed appearance for yet another lecture about Silver Snow’s lamentable unworthiness for life in the Palace.

At least her voice was soft and true, and her words appropriately quick and humble! Lilac nodded, a quick, barely perceptible lift of the fur-trimmed hood so bewitchingly framing a face that, though not now in its first youth, had the plump, delicate prettiness that Silver Snow knew that she lacked. Her eyebrows were plucked to mothlike delicacy, and the mouth that smiled grudgingly, as if she had nibbled on a spoiled fruit, yet did not wish to seem rude, had the round fullness of a winter plum, though its smile, like a plum too long preserved, was too sweet to be wholesome. She coughed again, as if to prove that she still suffered from the remnants of the lamentable illness that had compelled her to leave the official’s party at the first suitable magistrate’s estate, sick almost unto death with a cough that racked her, a fever that leeched youth from her face, and shivers that made her teeth chatter in a shockingly unladylike manner. No, even if she had the strength to take this daughter of a disgraced provincial in hand, Lilac would not dream of reproving the girl whom Mao Yeng-shou, the thrice-worthy Chief Eunuch, had dispatched her to guide and guard on her way to Ch’ang-an from whatever barbarous hut in which she had been kenneled. She was only desolate that she could not have tutored Silver Snow all the way back to Ch’ang-an; for, the Ancestors knew, the girl desperately needed training were she to be anything but a laughingstock amidst the refinement and grace of the ladies who, by right, lived within the Ninefold Gates.

Silver Snow lowered her eyes again, and suppressed a sigh. She had come all this way to see Ch’ang-an’s splendid walls; and now it seemed that she would be within them, immured within the Palace itself, and would never have a chance to view them as fully as she would wish. At least, though, she no longer tried to dart a glance of amusement back at Willow. Such sharings were too dangerous for the maidservant. When Silver Snow had first been presented to Lady Lilac in the inner courts of a very grand magistrate indeed, with a great deal of bowing and sleeve-waving of the most decorous type, Lilac had seen Willow in the shadows and had recoiled with horror that, to Silver Snow’s own fear, was only half exaggerated.

For once, perhaps, Silver Snow thought with an irony wholly new to her, the older woman’s reaction had not been feigned. She shrank back, appalled, then turned her gesture into a delicate, dry cough, a reminder of how ill she had been. That cough, as far as Silver Snow could perceive, had been the only trace of illness about her. When she first heard it, Silver Snow had made the mistake of bowing again and, before she had been spoken to, blurting out how much of herbal lore her maid knew. Surely, she suggested, Willow could brew a tisane to ease that cough.

Lady Lilac had glared at the very idea, and Silver Snow had realized that her new go-between was one of the sort of lady who uses illness as an excuse for avoiding a task she loathed—in this case, conveying Silver Snow south to Ch’ang-an. And in an ox-cart! Beyond lamenting that propriety would not permit her to ride, Silver Snow had thought little of its disadvantages as a method of traveling. But Lady Lilac Silk had turned that very unconsciousness into yet another fault: Silver Snow should have swooned until she was presented with a carriage, its wheels wrapped in felt, its windows hung with the finest brocade (and most probably brocade far finer than any robe among her meager store of garments).

Lilac had had, of course, no intention of making the arduous journey north. She had been unable to refuse the command of the Chief Eunuch. Very well, however: it was not her fault that sickness compelled her to drop out of the cortege into the luxurious idleness of the magistrate’s home where she reveled in the attention lavished upon her, as if she had been the illustrious Concubine herself rather than, in her prime, merely a lady of the fourth rank at whom, once or twice, the Emperor had smiled.

She had glared at Willow, before, obviously, dismissing her from the ranks not just of those who mattered, but of humankind. Just as obviously, Silver Snow soon realized, her cough was as false as the smile that she produced, or the affected cries of horror with which she greeted the bow calluses across Silver Snow’s right palm or any other evidence of the total unworthiness of the northern girl for the elevated station to which she was called.

Not, of course, that the Emperor would choose to dignify with his notice a girl whose family was under such a cloud, oh my no! Especially not one as plain of speech, as scant of courtesy, as mannish and as ugly as she made Silver Snow feel. Though Lilac professed never to listen to the gossip of servants or soldiers, in actual fact, she eavesdropped avidly; thus, she had heard of Silver Snow’s battle with the bandits, and she professed horror that any aspirant to the imperial bed could so demean herself.

What would become of Willow if Lilac refused to let the maid accompany her mistress? Silver Snow had no illusions that this far from her father’s estates, Willow could be conveyed back North: no, it would be the poison, the noose, or the slave-market for the faithful maidservant; or worse than death if her secret was discovered, try as Lilac might to pry out what made this odiously self-sufficient northern candidate for the imperial favor and her maid with the ineptly dyed hair and odious limp so very strange.

Silver Snow had tried to placate the elder woman. As might a recruit facing a vastly more experienced adversary, she had opened her arsenal, had recalled and sought to employ each of the tricks that she had seen used in the various inner courts in which she had guested on her way to Ch’ang-an, the die-away whispers, the smiles, the lowered eyes, the professions of utter and abject obedience, even the horror at dirt or cold or any kind of inconvenience. Contemptibly lazy and remiss in her duty Lilac might be, but she was no fool, to be quickly taken in by the mask Silver Snow tried to don. A country girl’s native wits were no match for a court lady’s skill in ruse and falsehood.

Though Silver Snow’s attempts to alter her behavior warmed her go-between not at all, at least they allowed Willow to slink back into shadows, and they enabled Silver Snow to ride in the cart with her sighing, reluctant guardian in at least the semblance of peace.

It might well be, Willow had said, before retreating to a silence that the lady had condemned as sullen, that she resented the role of go-between, casting her as it did into the ranks of elder ladies, those too old to catch the Emperor’s eye or bear a son to win favor and fortune for her and her family.

What, Silver Snow thought suddenly, if she had been able to offer the older woman some gift other than herbal brews? The thought came as a shock. Appalled at the very idea of bribing someone who stood in the place of an imperial representative, she tried to force the thought from her mind, but it stubbornly remained: Lilac had much to teach her, much to impart; but there was a price for such learning. The thought of bribery was abhorrent. Besides that, Silver Snow knew that nothing among her robes and ornaments would attract this lady’s envy. Nor could aught be spared from her exceedingly modest baggage. Nothing, of course, except the jade armor— and that was reserved for the Son of Heaven himself.

She sighed, sounding in that moment like Lilac, and longed to sweep the curtains aside and gape like the meanest but most lighthearted peasant wench as her cart’s wheels jolted into the well-worn ruts in the road that led into Ch’ang-an.

Now, as they were driving up to the great gates of Ch’ang-an, Silver Snow dared not look beyond the travel-stained curtain! It required her long moments of strict self-reproof before she was able to accept that restriction with the dignity that Confucius and her father enjoined upon her. If only Lilac’s condescending chatter had provided her with the advice that she knew that she needed in a city as huge and splendid as Ch’ang-an! Had Lady Lilac been a true go-between or even simply a woman with kindness in her heart, Silver Snow could enter the Palace as fully briefed as a general who had sent out well-trained scouts. Given that kind of information, she could set about her campaign of winning first the Emperor’s attention, and then his devotion.

Failing that, Silver Snow could but do her best and make the most of such information as the lady let drop.

But Lilac Silk spoke only of dear Mao Yen-shou, of the magnificence of the Son of Heaven, the splendor of the First Concubine’s robes (not that she expected Silver Snow ever to reach the illustrious height that she would be clad in such), the fragrance of pavilions built of cassia wood to scent the breezes which, in the spring, made the kingfisher feathers woven into the screens shiver as if they were living clouds. She sighed over the beauty of the round temple south of the city where, every spring, the Emperor worshipped the Sun. She was like a bird with splendid plumage who repeated only what she had heard, and who sang only for those who provided her with seed ... or gold.

The clamor of the Eastern Market rose up about them. Silver Snow had heard of that market. A bloodthirsty roar shook the curtains of the cart, and she shuddered.

“Why shiver, child?” asked Lilac. “Possibly, they execute a thief or a killer. Justice must be served.”

It was fine for Lady Lilac, whose cloak was lined with sable and trimmed with fox—fox! (Willow had taken one look at it and shrunk even further into her silent wretchedness)—to ascribe Silver Snow’s shudders to the cold. She had not faced bloody death, had not seen a man die, shot by an arrow from her own bow, had not wept as an old friend died in anger and pain, then avenged him, all the while in mortal fear of her own actions even more than those of the bandits.

“At least,” Lilac continued, magnanimous in the face of Silver Snow’s uneasiness, “you do not put yourself forward to gape at the market like a peasant. Beyond it, well, perhaps if we are discreet, no harm will be done if you glance out at the palaces as we go by. See the fine, high walls with the trees behind them. Each of those palaces has such gardens as you would not believe. How lovely they are in the spring, when the lilacs bloom!”

They drove past block after block. Used to the meandering tracks of her northern home, Lady Silver Snow found Ch’ang-an’s conformity to a grid oppressive in its regularity. How could so many tens of thousands of families be forced into such narrow spaces? Indeed, the palace walls with their enameled signet tiles and their fine towers were magnificent, but how many poor crowded together in hovels this very moment so that the palace-dwellers could luxuriate in their lavish gardens?

Countryfolk were poor; Silver Snow herself was poor; but she had always had the freedom of the outside air. Now, she must surrender even that.

Glancing sideways, she could see how bright Lilac’s eyes were as the ox-cart rumbled toward the palace gate, which gaped to receive it. The sound of the gate’s closing behind them was the most final noise Silver Snow had ever heard. At a sharp command, the driver stopped the oxen, and the shaking and jolting that had been a part of Silver Snow’s life since leaving the North more than a month ago ceased.

This will be my home for as long as I live! Will it be prison or paradise? In either case, she knew, she must see it—immediately! Longing and fear gripped her just as Lady Lilac sighed in satisfaction. Before she could control herself, her hand— shaking, she noted, much to her shame—jerked out from her furred sleeve to the curtains. Lilac’s hand shot out not a whit more slowly; and its grip was such as to leave pale crescents in the too-weathered skin of her charge’s wrist.

In darkness and shadow, they sat, Silver Snow, the self-assured woman beside her, and, trying her best to simulate the cushions that wedged them into the cart, Willow, whose bright, frightened eyes flicked about her as might those of a fox caught in a snare. This Palace—it could be the greatest snare in Ch’ang-an. Or it might, Silver Snow compelled herself to remember, be the instrument of her success and her father’s pardon. Before Lady Lilac could rebuke her yet again, she straightened the folds of her robes, consciously smoothed away the wariness that she knew tightened her lips and eyes into an expression as hunted as Willow’s, and forced a bland, satisfied look upon her face.

Behind them, the baggage carts that carried her dowry, tribute silk and gold looted from her father’s impoverished estates, clattered to a halt, but here the cries of the drivers were subdued.

Abruptly a beam of light struck Silver Snow’s eyes, and a man’s voice made Lady Lilac gasp in horror.

“Lady,” said the official who had escorted Silver Snow from her father’s house.

He deserved, at the least, thanks for his care of her; and thanks were all that she had to give, thought Silver Snow.

But, as she opened her mouth on words of gratitude, Lady Lilac shook her head.

“No!” she whispered. For the first time since her acquaintance had been forced upon Silver Snow, the horror in the woman’s face was unfeigned—but not unmixed. In the sudden light, fear showed in her lips and eyes, revealing cruelly the skill with which she had applied her cosmetics only that morning and, even more cruelly, the lines and dry skin that they had been intended to conceal.

“The eunuchs will come now. Speak no word!”

Willow had frozen into the stillness of a cornered animal. Even her eyes were glazed now. Silver Snow held herself still, erect, as if she were hunting; but her breath came fast. “Remember, lady, what I said about well-wishing.”

She could not speak to thank him and dared not bow; but she shut her eyes briefly, and hoped that the official would take that for understanding and farewell.

Then the curtain dropped down again, leaving the ladies in darkness. She heard footsteps, a pause, as if men bowed deeply or saluted, and then the official’s voice, commending the Illustrious Lady and her charge, the most worthy Silver Snow, to the keeping of the thrice-esteemed Mao Yen-shou.

A well-kept hand stripped the curtains from the cart, and Silver Snow sat blinking in the unfamiliar light.