Imperial Lady

11

“We are well content with this lady as a bride for our shan-yu," said the old barbarian. “She is very fair, and our kam-quams, those who speak to spirits, tell us that she is most auspicious.”

“I cannot let her go,” the Emperor whispered, more to himself than either to Silver Snow or to the Hsiung-nu. “My lost lady . . . the rustle of a skirt as she walks down the hall. I have lost this lady, dreamed her, and found her. Shall I see her for the first time, only to lose her again?”

The Hsiung-nu muttered among themselves, and the crowds of courtiers and ladies in the hall parted, as if they expected the Hsiung-nu to draw bows in that very instant. Such ripples and eddies in the groups enabled Silver Snow to see Li Ling for the first time since she had entered the hall. To her astonishment (and no little horror), he winked at her.

Then she turned her attention back upon the Hsiung-nu. She could understand, however haltingly, their speech.

“He seeks to take this lady from us and give us some lesser woman, perhaps with a squint or a mole,” said the man called Vughturoi. “Yet we are not prisoners in this city of stone tents. Shall we permit it?”

“Indeed not,” said the eldest of the ambassadors. “Surely if this is the lady promised to the shan-yu, it is an auspicious sign.

Behold her beauty: were the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom not afraid of us, or did he not favor us above all others, would he part with such a treasure to buy peace at our hands?”

Vughturoi snorted something about gilded birds and the impossibility of keeping a peace treaty, given . . . But he was immediately hushed.

Silver Snow found herself looking once again at Li Ling, who had edged adroitly into a position where the Emperor was certain to see him and demand his counsel. He raised a brow at her. Do you wish to stay? he seemed to ask.

If she did not want to leave Ch’ang-an, she might well stay; stay and adorn the Inner Courts as the most illustrious of Illustrious Companions in centuries, perhaps, with a palace full of women to fawn upon her. She could avenge every slight ever dealt her; she could beg to bring her father to court, enrich him, favor Li Ling . . .

Or she could be true to her birth and her upbringing, and could keep her word, which lay in the Emperor’s promise to send her to the frontier. She had the example of her father, who kept faith during the ten years of his exile among the very Hsiung-nu to whom she would be dispatched, and thereafter, when he was condemned as a traitor. She had the example of Li Ling, who continued to serve, though he lost reputation, family, and manh(X)d thereby, but who served because he had vowed to do no other.

Before her stood the Son of Heaven himself, a quiet, moody man who seemed to want her to remain with him. Silver Snow thought that she had made her last throw, but now she saw that yet another throw remained in the game.

She considered it. What if she remained? What would happen to the peace that the Son of Heaven and these Hsiung-nu had just forged? It would be shattered, of course. How long would any such agreement with barbarians last? That was a question she knew that she had to ask. But if she went out to the plains, perhaps it might last for years.

They are not barbarians! she remembered her father’s words.

Well then, what of the men of Ch’in? How long might she expect the Son of Heaven’s favor to last, especially were she to become the cause of a war? He was shifting, changeable, unlike the Hsiung-nu who now confronted him.

“Let us give you another princess, and we will offer you more gold, more jade and silk ...” The eagerness in the Son of Heaven’s voice cut deeply.

“Offer us another princess,” said the Hsiung-nu, “and we shall offer you war!”

The Emperor turned to her, the look of a man whom fate had driven to his limits. “What would you, lady?” he asked, and it was almost pleading.

“This one begs His Most Sacred Majesty to consider the health of the Middle Kingdom, which is our Mother,” she whispered. Tears gushed into her eyes, as she spoke to condemn herself to exile. “This one is nothing beside that.”

“We will give you her weight in gold and pearls!” cried the Son of Heaven, and desperation quivered in his voice.

The Hsiung-nu folded arms across their chests and did not bother to speak. Slowly, the Son of Heaven sank back onto the Dragon Throne. He gestured halfheartedly, and Li Ling was at his side, whispering as the Hsiung-nu grumbled among themselves. Silver Snow knew that the eunuch was trying to convince the Emperor that no woman was worth a war.

“But how will she live out there, among barbarians?” She heard the question, not of an Emperor, but of an anguished man who wished to accord her a protection that she had never known before. She did not know whether to laugh or to rage. Having the right to do neither in the Emperor’s presence, she kept her face expressionless as Li Ling assured the Son of Heaven of her strength, her vitality, her knowledge of the language and some customs of the Hsiung-nu.

“I had forgotten,” came the Son of Heaven’s words, pitched just loudly enough that she could hear them. “This lady speaks the tongue of the Hsiung-nu, and writes, do you say? She writes to her father?”

Li Ling bowed his assent.

“Then, she shall write you too, and I shall read those letters; that much, at the very least, I shall have of her!” the Son of Heaven concluded. “I shall read her letters to her father, and his to her. Thus let it be done,” commanded the Emperor.

Li Ling bowed and left the hall. Silver Snow stood alone, facing the Son of Heaven, terribly conscious of the Hsiung-nu who still observed her as if she were a horse that, after spirited bargaining, they had contrived to buy. Or to steal. The old man bowed and left the hall, and the Emperor Yuan Ti assured the Hsiung-nu that Silver Snow could leave whenever they were prepared.

“The lady,” the young man called Vughturoi gave her title a small, wry stress, “must travel rapidly and with a minimum of companions. She may have her own traveling carriage and a donkey. If she proves able to ride, we may also provide her with a horse.”

For a moment Silver Snow knew anger and embarrassment: did these Hsiung-nu think that she was such a paltry creature that they would not sully the back of one of their horses to carry her? Or did they simply think that she was soft? Despising them, she decided at that moment, could harm her; she must win their respect. Thus, when the information was relayed to her, she nodded.

“I will need no companions beside Willow,” she said. “I came to Ch’ang-an with her, and I will not be parted from her now. That way, I shall require no court ladies, which, I am certain, will reassure all of them.”

She could imagine Lilac accompanying her on this journey, and her ears ached with even the thought of that much weeping and whining.

“That is as well,” said Vughturoi. “The grasslands in winter are no place for sheltered ladies.” Silver Snow did not think that she had imagined the disdain in his voice for such soft, frail creatures. “I shall send riders ahead to summon wives and daughters of our horde to greet and serve the princess.”

Vughturoi raised his head and kept his eyes fixed on a point behind Silver Snow’s shoulder. For the first time Silver Snow quailed inwardly as she wondered what those wives and daughters would make of her. Would they be kinswomen of the shan-yu , forced to yield precedence to a woman of the Middle Kingdom, which had been their enemy for as long as they could remember? For that matter, what of this guide of hers, this Vughturoi? He was said to be a son of the old man who would be—she suppressed a shiver—her husband. Was his mother still alive? What would such a woman do, if the shan-yu required her to call a young woman of Ch’in “elder sister”?

Silver Snow had suffered enough from the spite of the concubines in the Inner Courts to fear that. It was said that the women of the grasslands had much more freedom. Would that freedom of theirs be license to abuse the stranger in their midst?

“I am well content,” she ventured to say to the Hsiung-nu prince. No die-away voice, no overly polite “this one”: those were manners she would leave in Ch’ang-an, like baggage abandoned along the line of march. She would, she thought, be abandoning a great deal more—and she doubted that she would regret it.

Silver Snow gazed about the hall that she knew she would never see again. What was more, she knew that she did not care.

“When will we depart?” she asked.

“It is summer now,” Vughturoi replied, although he gave the impression that he did her a great favor by speaking with her directly. “We have the journey from here to the Wall. But from there to our grasslands where my father the shan-yu holds court is another three months. It would be well to finish our journey before the worst of the winter storms.”

Silver Snow contrived to look unconcerned. A slight cough behind her, which she identified as coming from Li Ling, told her that she was holding her own. Keep your own counsel; never show weakness before these people , she warned herself. You must ever be on guard.

Her father had lived thus among them; so too would she.

“Lady,” whispered Yuan Ti. Silver Snow ventured to meet the Son of Heaven’s eyes, which glistened with more than interest in her journey. “Will you truly do this thing?”

It was her last chance, she thought. If, truly, she did not desire this journey, she had only to say so, and he would keep her in the Inner Courts, or, better yet, by his side. That was a fate that any lady in Ch’in would envy. Yet, if he did so, he would throw away a treaty and involve the Middle Kingdom in war once again, war such as had swept her father and Li Ling almost into ruin. No woman was worth that; and no man, be he general, prince, or Son of Heaven, ought to decide otherwise.

Yuan Ti was a man of strange decisions and passions, Silver Snow decided. At one moment, he wanted to banish her; in the next, he would incite a war to keep her. He turned on his advisors like Mao Yen-shou, then rewarded those whom he had turned on—like her father.

Silver Snow glanced at the rigid, unyielding Hsiung-nu. She rather thought that she would take her chances among them.

“This one, as always, is obedient to your commands,” she told the Emperor. “But if she were permitted her own will, she would act as would best serve the Son of Heaven, who has done her the unutterable honor to make her a princess of Ch’in, the Middle Kingdom, and her father. To this one’s weak mind, desolate as she is to admit it, she might serve best as the shan-yu s first wife.”

She bowed herself at the Emperor’s feet in farewell just as, long ago, she had bowed before her own father.

The Son of Heaven clapped his hands. “You shall be sent to the Wall with all that befits your rank, lady: an imperial chariot, a mounted escort, musicians to enliven your journey, and whatever servants you require. You may bring companions, should you wish. We reserve only the worthy Li Ling, and we charge you to write to him and to your father, that we may profit from your observations.”

The court murmured approval of his words. Then Yuan Ti stepped forward. “As for me, lady,” he said, his voice all but trembling, “once you leave, I shall issue an edict of mourning. The court will fast and wear white robes, as it did”—he drew a deep breath—“the last time that I lost you. And, once you leave Ch’in through the Jade Gate in the West, I decree that it shall ever afterward be called the Gate of Tears.”

Wearied of this courtliness in a language of which he was but an imperfect master, the Hsiung-nu prince stepped forward. “How soon can the princess be ready to depart? We would pass through this Gate of Tears of yours before the frosts.”

Once again Silver Snow glanced up at the Son of Heaven, whose eyes mutely urged delay. Then she looked over at Li Ling, who shook his head, almost imperceptibly. She did him—and herself—no favor by delaying, he clearly thought. Every day that she remained would be a temptation for the Son of Heaven to withdraw his consent to her going and embroil Ch’in in war.

The Hsiung-nu, she understood, were restless, able always to lash up their felt tents and to journey to new pastures. Speed might be the most auspicious beginning of her new life among them. She nodded at Li Ling.

“Behold: already, the princess is a dutiful wife to the shan-yu. As soon as the princess’ chariot is made ready,” Li Ling stepped forward and spoke in the Hsiung-nu’s tongue, “she will depart.”

Seated in the lavishly equipped imperial chariot, Silver Snow could not help but contrast her previous “wedding journey” with the one she now took. Then, shabbily dressed, she had climbed into an ox-cart, her few belongings rolled into it or strapped on pack animals. There had been fewer than ten tens of torches and no musicians, no sounds at all save the clicking and ringing harness of the mounts of her escort and the official in whose train she rode, the least and loneliest. So she had ridden to the bright heart of the Middle Kingdom, the Inner Courts of Ch’ang-an, and had thought never to leave.

Now she went journeying once again. No, she thought. That was not true. The Hsiung-nu were nomads. Henceforward, her life would be one long journey, and never again would she be confined within the walls of a city or a palace— or within any walls at all.

There was no loving, grieving father to say farewell to Silver Snow this time, but Li Ling stood by to oversee the preparations. For the first time that Silver Snow could remember, he had dressed in the full magnificence of silks and sables available to a ranking eunuch, as if to do her honor. It was hard to recognize in the ornately robed official the same friend and teacher who had called, the night before, wearing a worn scholar’s robe, and had presented gifts that, homely as they were, Silver Snow and Willow both esteemed more than furs, jades, or silk. For Silver Snow, he had strips of wood and treated silk, a supply of fine brushes, and a new inkstone. For Willow, he had pouches of dried herbs at which she sniffed and nodded, eyes bright.

He locked her into the chariot, as one must always lock a bride, and presented the key to Vughturoi, who received it as something strange and not wholly welcome. Then, at a gesture, musicians struck up a tune that managed simultaneously to suggest both cheers and wailing.

They puffed, piped, and drummed as her chariot rolled out of the confines of the Palace. Behind her came her companions, behind them an immense baggage train. Packed amid the silks, the gold, the precious spices was a treasure older than them all: the burial armor fashioned fit for an Empress. The Son of Heaven had sent it with her, since she would not stay to use it. Though the sun had risen, torchbearers ran beside it, and outside the yawning gates, she could see a crowd of people, waiting to witness her passing, guarded by soldiers both of Ch’in and the Hsiung-nu.

No sooner than the palace gates closed behind her, she knew that Yuan Ti would keep his vow and plunge the court into the deepest mourning for the lady whom first his indifference, then his oath, had taken from him. She suspected that many in her party—the ladies who had been detailed to accompany her to the Wall—felt that they too risked death in traveling that far from Ch’ang-an and the Son of Heaven. She almost thought that she could hear their weeping; certainly Willow had commented scathingly on fine ladies who used herbs and cosmetics to mask their terror and their tears.

Neither the Emperor nor the ladies who were her unwilling companions could know that Silver Snow regarded her journey as escape from prison.

The wedding procession, if one could call it that, wound through the city and out through the Western Gate.

Willow hissed a curse, and Silver Snow roused from the reverie in which she rode with her eyes turned ever to the West.

“Why such heavy words?” she asked her maid in mild reproof. “In fact, why curse at all?”

Willow simply pointed.

Leering from a spike on the Western Gate, the head of Mao Yen-shou was planted, the last witness in the city to her departure.

Was this a spectacle such as he would have admired? She hardly thought so.

Silver Snow shivered, then turned her gaze back to the West. Already her eyes and mind were fixed on what might lie ahead of her. High above the rumble of horsemen and the clamor of the Ch’in musicians rose the bamboo flutes of the Hsiung-nu, plaintive, free, and more than a trifle wild.