The Incarnations

18. Sixteen Concubines

Ming Dynasty, 1542

I

AFLEDGLING, NOT YET fifteen years old, borne in a palanquin through the Forbidden City’s west gate. Chair-bearers lower poles, the curtains divide and you emerge. Girl in a silk robe, plaits coiled into spirals, three-inch lotus feet bound tight as buds. The harem-keepers greet you, usher you into the Inner Palace. Through peepholes poked in the wax-paper windows of the Palace of Earthly Tranquillity, we peer out. We see through your eyes the magnificence anew. The acres of grand halls, deepest red with thrones and ceremony within. The endless armada of yellow-tiled roofs.

Whispers Imperial Consort Luminous Moon, ‘She has an inauspicious face. A widow’s peak. The harem physiognomist must be sleeping on the job.’

Elsewhere in the chamber, tea is sipped, ivory mah-jong pieces shuffled about. A eunuch messenger appears at the door. The Emperor requests three bedmates for tonight. Names are named in a falsetto, and blood drains from faces, fingernails digging crescent moons in palms. The tea soothes me with breath of steam, the coal-fired kang warms my backside. I have not been summoned to the Leopard Room in years. I am one of the fortunate few.

II

The Imperial Gardens on a midwinter day. Frozen silver-baubled spider-threads dangle from the gnarled branches of the juniper trees. The winding pebble-mosaic path is slippery with frost. I sit on a chair of deer antlers in the Belvedere of Crimson Snow, the seat polished wood, the chair-back entangled horns curved to embrace the sitter, threatening to stab the sitter in retaliation for any false move. My fingers fiddle with embroidery, fumble with needle and thread. I abhor needlework and would like to read stories instead, but they keep us harem slaves as illiterate as she-goats.

The tapping of wooden-heeled slippers on the stone path disturbs my thoughts. Every so often the wooden heels cease tapping as one of the twenty pavilions is peered into. The Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds. The Pavilion of the Immortal Birds. The Pavilion of a Thousand Autumns. I scowl as you enter the Belvedere of Crimson Snow. Why have you come to disrupt my peace? I risk influenza for these solitary hours. To flee the idle gossip and stifling unhappiness of concubines.

Your pretty face is pink with cold, and a shawl of winter mink is thrown over your robe. You bow deep and low. ‘Boundless happiness to my Elder Sister Concubine Swallow.’

I murmur, ‘Boundless happiness to you, Concubine Bamboo.’

Needle and thread jerk up. You peer curiously at my embroidery: tufty feathered mandarin ducks on little slippers for maimed feet. You stand respectfully but within pace restlessly to and fro.

‘Concubine Swallow, I saw a girl dash out her own brains last week.’

Your voice is tight and high. Thread slips from the eye of the needle. Saliva glistens on the tongue-dampened thread as I poke it through again. ‘Ah yes, Imperial Consort Virtuous Purity.’

‘Yes. Her. Aged only twenty she charged into a lacquered pillar of the Gate of Divine Prowess. Staved in her own skull. I saw her brains splashed scarlet in the snow.’

I tut. ‘I know. I saw. A dreadful mess.’

‘Ethereal Dawn scraped the gold paint from her jewellery box. Swallowed it and died from poisoning.’

‘So I hear.’

‘Pale Sapphire slit her wrists with a jade-handled letter opener. She survives nursed by eunuchs in the palace infirmary. But when she recovers she will be executed for betraying Emperor Jiajing. Two deaths, back to back. .’

You tremble with fear and say, ‘Beloved Elder Sister, why do so many girls in the harem want to kill themselves?’

Needle tugs thread taut. The second web-footed duck is nearly complete. Yellow-beaked bird with feathery tufts of green and blue.

‘Brain fever,’ I say.

A glare. Another tug of cotton thread.

You whisper, ‘I hear things about His Majesty. That he tortures concubines in the Leopard Room. That he “operates” on them with scalpels. That he has dispatched two hundred palace ladies early to the grave. .’

Chin quivers and tears fall. O why did you come here, foolish child? Spoiling my solitude with your woes. One of the eunuch servants, Hunchback Guo, creeps near, cowering beneath his craggy hump of spine, sweeping the already swept pebble-mosaic path.

‘What do you want from me?’

Silence. More tears. Sprinkling tear ducts that rouse disgust.

‘Listen to me, Concubine Bamboo. To be born a woman is to be born into suffering. Our feet are mutilated claws. Our cunts bleed. Wombs suffer cramps, childbirth. Sex too brings pain, but a night with the Son of Heaven is an honour worthy of the Death by a Thousand Cuts. Pray to the Goddess of Mercy if you must. Grow a spine. Endure.’

Gathering up embroidery, I leave the deer-antler embrace of the chair. Out of the Belvedere of Crimson Snow, I spit at the feet of smirking Hunchback Guo. I hiss, ‘You crooked teapot with a broken spout. Repeat a word of what you just heard and I’ll cut out your tongue and boil it for soup!’

Without a backward glance, I go to the Pavilion of a Thousand Autumns. Sit on a stone bench by a statue of the Lord Buddha. Embroidery hoop on lap, glaring at the arched doorway. Pull the thread so hard it snaps.

III

Drumbeat in Drum Tower signals the fall of night. The beginning of First Watch.

‘Draw the bolts! Mind the lanterns!’ cry the eunuch guards, as the Forbidden City seals its gates.

In the bathhouse, concubines wallow in bronze tubs of petal-bestrewn water. Maidservants pour water over their mistresses from pretty cloisonné jugs. It cascades over dark raven’s hair, shoulders and breasts. The elder concubines wag their tongues. The younger novices are silent out of respect. ‘Toilet!’ I call before I bathe. A chamber pot appears. A maid offers, on a velvet pillow, a silken sheet manufactured by the Department of Toilet Paper. They shroud me with screens as I crouch over the pot. When I am finished, they whisk away my leavings for the eunuch scribe to record in the Ledger of Bowel Movements and Menstrual Cycles of the Concubines. I lower my chilled, goosepimpled skin into the water, slipping into the circling conversation. Steeping in our baths, we poach ourselves pink and talk of the famine that blights the empire.

‘The Gods disapprove of the Emperor Jiajing. They punish his subjects with poor harvests and starvation. Millions have died.’

You, recent arrival from the famine-stricken world beyond the Forbidden City, pipe up excitedly. ‘I saw, I saw! The peasants stagger from countryside to town, begging for work. They sell their children for a bowl of rice. They clutter the roadside with their heaped corpses. Flies buzz around them.’

‘Who spoke? Apprentice concubines should not speak! Someone ought to spank the saucy bitch.’

Daggers fly and silence you.

‘The Department of Astrology has charted many ill omens. On the Terrace of Spirits they observed with astrological instruments a star crashing from the sky in portent of war, the merging of lakes on the moon in portent of floods.’

‘Japanese pirates attack the east coast of the Celestial Kingdom. The Mongol army loot and raid us from the north. The Gods are angry indeed.’

‘The Stone Lions weep at the palace gates. Tears of stone drip from their manes. They weep over the ruination of the empire.’

‘The reign of Emperor Jiajing is inauspicious indeed.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’

Twenty bronze tubs of concubines in ponderous silence. Forty knees above water. Forty submerged three-quarter-moon breasts.

‘His Majesty has no interest in the affairs of his empire. He neglects his imperial duties. He is obsessed with his Daoist longevity ceremonies and immortality elixirs of arsenic and silver that turn his skin yellow, his breath like that of a corpse. .’

‘He dreams of eternal life. He disappears for days in dark temples of incense smoke and Daoist monks chanting immortality prayers. .’

‘I hear His Majesty has invited the hermit sage Filthy Zhang to his quarters,’ I say. ‘The pills of filth collected by Filthy Zhang as he rubs his finger on his skin are said to lengthen life. I believe Emperor Jiajing has imbibed a few of these.’

Peals of laughter. The maids’ smiles show teeth, which they hastily conceal. Drum beat in Drum Tower signals second watch. Bathtime is over. Bodies rise from the water into kang-warmed towels. The older concubines, with our Leopard Room-scarred flesh, are grotesque to behold. Your virginal body is pure and pale as almond milk. You shudder at the sight of what awaits. A whisper: ‘They are building his tomb in the valley of Mount Tianshou.’

‘Then pray he outlives us. Pray he doesn’t die. For we’ll be immolated with him when he does. And should we accompany him to the afterlife, he will torment us there with knives.’

IV

Alone in my chamber in the Palace of All Sunshine. A bedchamber not shared with others now I am a concubine of first rank who has borne Emperor Jiajing three daughters. Princesses aged two, five and eleven, reared by nurses in the palace nursery. Princesses who cry and wriggle out of Mama’s arms during my brief visits. Alone in my chamber, but for my dearest companions, opium and wine, I am thinking with regret of my daughters, Lily, Chrysanthemum and Azalea, when there is a knock at my door. Swaying and inebriated, I open the door to my eldest, Lily. O beloved Lily, come to Mama at last! Then I blink my wine-befuddled eyes, and I see it is not Lily, but you, Concubine Bamboo, a winter mink over your shoulders, shivering in the courtyard.

‘Honourable Elder Sister Concubine Swallow. Forgive my grave insolence, but may I speak with you?’

Surly hostess swings wider the door. ‘Come in.’

I go to the dresser, my back turned on you. I drag a gem-studded comb through my tangled mane.

‘The Emperor has summoned me to his chambers tomorrow night. To the Leopard Room.’

‘Oh?’

You stammer on, ‘I hear he carved out Concubine Jasmine’s bellybutton. Used the flesh for a soup for eternal life. The eunuch physicians attend to the. . cavity he made.’

You stammer on, ‘I hear the Jiajing Emperor favours you. Pardons you from the Leopard Room. I hear, Elder Sister Swallow, that you are his luncheon companion on the twelfth day of the first lunar month. Tomorrow. Honourable Elder Sister, would it be possible for you to ask him to spare me? Please? I am only fourteen. I am too young, not ready to suffer and die. .’

I loosen my sash and shrug my shoulders so my robe slides to my feet. The stitches that criss-cross my body are like puckered seams, holding together my patchwork of skin. ‘Do these scars count as evidence that His Majesty favours me?’

Mesmerized, not appalled by my scars, you murmur, ‘I hear Emperor Jiajing has allowed you special privileges for years.’

‘By speaking on your behalf, I may provoke his ire. Concubine Bamboo, what will you give me in return?’

As we both know, you have only one thing worth giving and, having researched my predilections, you give it. I fondle and taste every part of your lithe, paler than moonlight body. I bury my teeth in you without breaking the skin. You lick the cleft between my legs until I am sated and permit you to stop. It is daybreak by the time it is over. You peel apart from me, sticky with my fluids, my sweat. Can’t look me in the eye.

‘Why so humiliated? I am not a man. I did not pierce you or touch you there. I know the folly of depriving you of the trickle of blood that must stain his sheets. Why are you crying, Concubine Bamboo? You miss your mother? Forget her. She’s to blame you are here in the first place.’

Naked, you stare into emptiness, knees hugged to chest. I scrape my long and tapered fingernails across your scalp. Clutch a fistful of hair. I promise to speak to the Emperor for you, I promise to do my best.

V

The drum bangs to signal dawn. Lanterns are lit all across the Palace of Heavenly Purity and Emperor Jiajing rises. ‘Ten Thousand Blessings to His Majesty!’ cry the eunuchs as they attend to his morning ablutions. They bath him, comb and trim his beard and clean the wax from his ears. They dress him in a padded blue silk, fox-fur-trimmed robe, brocade leggings and sheepskin-lined boots (recorded by a eunuch scribe in the Ledger for the Department of Wardrobes). The winter day is cold. All across the Forbidden City eunuch servants swish brooms back and forth, sweeping clean the courtyards. The Go-betweens of the Grand Secretaries present to the Emperor trays of scrolls, reporting of famines, droughts, peasant uprisings and warlord rebellions across the empire; trays of official decrees for His Majesty to approve and sign to quell these calamities. But Emperor Jiajing waves the triple-kowtowing Go-betweens away. He has a meeting with a Daoist sage who has journeyed from Yunnan with the waters of a legendary stream, promised to add to a lifespan fifty years.

The Hall of Literary Brilliance. One hundred serving eunuchs march in holding silver platters aloft. They cry, ‘Transmitting the viands! Transmitting the viands!’

The eunuchs lower the one hundred silver platters on six round tables before His Majesty, then withdraw to the edges of the room. Heavy-lidded on his throne, Emperor Jiajing scarcely stirs as the serving eunuchs whirl around him, pouring his much-loved elk-horn and deer-penis brew into a porcelain cup. He scarcely acknowledges Concubine What’s Her Name, mother of three of his daughters, genuflecting on her hands and knees, touching her forehead to the cold stone floor. The she-goat bleats, ‘Ten thousand blessings to Your Majesty! There is no greater honour than to be invited to dine with our Supreme Ruler today!’

Wretched Concubine What’s Her Name, with her defective girl-bearing uterus. Her man-hating womb, castrating his foetal sons so only daughters are born. Arising from her knees, Concubine What’s Her Name, head bowed with humility and deference, goes to stand at His Majesty’s shoulder. His rage blows over. The Emperor is hungry, his stomach growls with impatience.

‘Remove the covers!’ commands the Chief Serving Eunuch.

One hundred serving eunuchs scurry from the peripheries of the Hall of Literary Brilliance, remove the silver-domed platter lids and carry them away. What a feast! The Emperor licks his lips and points at a dish of noodles. The Eunuch Food-taster cries, ‘Appraising the viands!’ and pincers some dangling threads of noodles with his chopsticks. The Eunuch Food-taster nibbles, nods that the noodles are unpoisoned, and the Emperor proceeds to eat. Concubine What’s Her Name hovers out of eye-shot, at the shoulder of His Majesty’s fox-fur-trimmed robes. Concubine Meek and Timid. O how ashamed of her I am. But to behave in any other manner is to provoke his wrath. To dine with Emperor Jiajing is not to eat oneself but to stand beside him, encouraging him and praising him for every mouthful he masticates. A sip of elk-horn and deer-penis brewed tea necessitates a cry of, ‘O how this revives the blood, enhances potency, o Emperor of Ten Thousand Years!’

(The Hall of Literary Brilliance is a curious venue for luncheon, as the Jiajing Emperor does not possess a scholarly bent, never reads the accumulated works of Chinese civilization crowding the shelves. .)

‘Your Excellency, why not have some steamed one-hundred-year-old turtle in ginseng soup? Ginseng strengthens cardiac function, will keep your heart beating vigorous and strong!’

(. . the five-thousand-volume encyclopaedia, the Tang Dynasty poetry and the scrolls of Song Dynasty paintings. .)

‘Your Majesty, may I be so bold as to suggest some wolfberries and snow peas to aid digestion? Though I must say, Your Majesty’s selection thus far has been exemplary!’

(The Emperor does not care about ancestor worship, or the historical records of the empire. Emperor Jiajing’s solipsism limits pursuit of knowledge to mortality cures. .)

‘I see now that His Majesty is sated. I must compliment His Majesty on the judicious array of delicacies of earth and sea selected for his luncheon today!’

(Selfish as a newborn, nothing that exists beyond His Majesty is worth a moment’s thought.)

Emperor Jiajing toothpicks from his canines shreds of pork and flicks them aside. One of the serving eunuchs falls upon the sacred toothpicked debris, gathering them to stow in a locket around his neck, thus bringing this mere castrato closer to Heaven’s Son. Emperor Jiajing speaks to me for the first time, his back to me as I stand behind his throne.

‘Imperial Consort, you do not dine. You have my permission to do so now.’

‘Your Majesty, to dine is nigh impossible when you are near. When you are near all corporeal need flees my body. All thoughts leave my head.’

‘As one expects. Women’s brains are anatomically very tiny. I expect scant few thoughts rattle about the confines of your skull to begin with. Thoughts of dressmaking and other silly frivolities.’

‘Your Excellency is correct. I am dim-witted as a she-goat. ’Tis a pity, but there is nothing to be done.’

‘How are my daughters?’

‘Your daughters fare well. Azalea has recently been weaned from the breast, Chrysanthemum had her feet bound last week, and everyone is of the opinion that Lily’s embroidery is the finest of all the princesses’!’

The Emperor yawns wide his rotting-molars-and-gum-pits-stinking breath.

‘Imperial Consort, you bore me tremendously. Do you have anything of noteworthy interest to say to me at all?’

Armpits sweating, the seams of my sapphire silk gown straining. My breath resists my attempts to reduce its speed, to make breathing inconspicuous.

‘Actually, Your Majesty, I do have one suggestion, if Your Majesty would do me the honour of lending his much revered ears. My lowly opinion concerns Imperial Consort Bamboo. I think she is unworthy of serving the Emperor. The low-breed slut ought to be demoted to a maidservant.’

The Emperor lifts his porcelain cup and drains the last of his elk-horn and deer-penis beverage.

‘Is that all?’

‘That is all, Your Majesty.’

Emperor Jiajing gestures that luncheon is over with a wave of the hand. He moves to the doorway where the sedan-chair-bearers await, without glancing backwards at Concubine What’s Her Name, who is nervously wringing her hands. The servants part the curtains and the Emperor enters the silk-veiled carriage. He murmurs his destination, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the bearers lift the poles and carry him away through the courtyards of the Forbidden City.

Alone in my bedchamber, I seek solace in the opium pipe and wine and I strum upon my zither a melody called ‘The Calamitous Golden Eel’. I doze and dream of you, my fingers fiddling under my skirts, masquerading as your tongue, and I wake to emptiness, aching temples and a dry mouth. Dusk has cloaked the Palace of All Sunshine. There is a knock at the door. Eunuch Li of the Bureau of Affairs of the Bedchamber has come.

‘Concubine Swallow, the Emperor Jiajing requests your attendance tonight in the Leopard Room.’

Heart stops, breath caught in throat. Nearly three years since I was last impaled on the imperial cock.

‘Shall I go to the bathhouse and have the maidservants prepare me?’

‘His Majesty has requested you as you are.’

‘Then the Emperor’s wish shall be granted.’

I strip out of my robe. Legs shaking so much I can barely stand, I rinse my stale mouth with water and splash my face. Naked but for slippered feet and a feather duvet worn as a cloak, I climb on Eunuch Li’s back and we proceed thusly to the Leopard Room.

VI

In the vermilion-pillared Leopard Room magical cranes fly across the lapis lazuli ceiling panels. Blazing lanterns dangling silk tassels hang from hooks. On the four-poster bed is Concubine Bamboo, naked but for a jewelled tiara. Your eyes are vacant, your pale skin unsullied, but for some slight discolorations where I feasted too keenly the night before. Eunuch Li takes my feathered duvet and backs out of the room. His conscience is besmirched by what occurs in the Leopard Room, the concubines he carries out to be stitched up afterwards, and the ones that pass away. But what is to be done? The Emperor’s wishes must be granted, his every desire fulfilled.

Emperor Jiajing emerges from an annex with silk rope and I am palsied with terror. He orders me to stand against a vermilion pillar and binds my wrists around the pillar behind my back. I tremble, grovelling like a whipped dog. ‘O, Your Excellency, I beg your forgiveness. I sincerely regret having spoken this afternoon. Please be compassionate to the mother of your three daughters. .’

‘Quiet.’

His Majesty turns to you on the bed. The maidservants have bathed you, prepared your toilette for the Leopard Room. Perfume scents your pulse beats and your lips are red as rubies. Emperor Jiajing directs a question to the pale masque of your face. ‘Concubine Bamboo, your elder sister Concubine Swallow has been spitting vinegar. Do you know why?’

You shake your head with those ever-vacant eyes. The precious gems of your headpiece glitter with the changing angle of striking light. Emperor Jiajing laughs.

‘Sweet Bamboo, how innocent you are! Let us take a look at your elder sister. Do you know she has given birth to three children? Do you know what childbearing does to a woman’s body? The teats sag like cow udders, the stomach flops and folds over. As for her cunt, well. .’ His Majesty chuckles. ‘. . if the barbarians invade Beijing we have a vacant storehouse for the imperial jewels! I have not lusted for her for years, but the wretched hag still lusts for me. So much so she has tried to warn me away from you, my sweet Concubine Bamboo. We’ll teach her a lesson, shall we?’

Barely perceptibly, you nod. To me, the Emperor hisses, ‘Now watch me split the bamboo.’

His Majesty throws off his padded blue silk, fox-fur-trimmed robe, proceeds towards you. Emperor Jiajing is underweight, asthmatic, feeble and sickly weak but, after smearing his erection with verdigris and snake dung and snorting powdery aphrodisiacs up the nose, he is convinced of his invincibility. The only man in the Forbidden City with his genitalia intact, His Majesty is virility itself. You are quiet as he parts your legs and mounts you. Perfectly still, but wincing in virginal pain as yet another member of the imperial household makes use of your young body. Despite my fear of what post-coital punishment awaits, the sound of him sliding up and down inside you and your whimpers and moans arouse me, make me want you too. After the snake has spat he collapses on you, as though his heart has arrested and he has died a little death. Beneath him, you lie still. You roll your head to the side. Your eyes are still blank. Let this be it, I beg the Heavens above. Let my only punishment be to watch him writhe above another. Let his ego imagine my ‘jealousy’ is torture enough.

Emperor Jiajing slowly revives on the bed, conceitedly muttering of his sexual prowess in your ear, prodding you there and dabbing his bloody fingerprints on your collar bone. He molests you in this way for a while, then calls to me from across the room.

‘See. You don’t compare to sweet young Bamboo. Confronted with your haggard body, my cock dies a whimpering death.’

I hang my head as though tormented, and the Emperor quotes from the Book of Odes:

‘Women with long tongues

Are harbingers of evil.

Disasters are not sent down from Heaven

But originate in the female of the species.

‘See how pale she is, my sweet Bamboo? The God-awful pallor of her lips and cheeks? I think we ought to rouge them for her, don’t you?’

He whispers in your ear and you giggle impishly. The Emperor smacks your bare bottom as you slide from the silk sheets. You scamper over to me, touch your finger to the bleeding palette between your legs, then smear the blood on my lips and rub your finger in circular motions on my cheeks. I stare into your traitorous eyes. You are blank as ever, though you turn to the Emperor to giggle every so often. The Emperor stands, walks away from the bed.

‘What do you think, Concubine Bamboo? Do you think her complexion has improved?’

You shake your head no. Emperor Jiajing walks to the dresser and opens a jewellery box of knives and other sharp instruments of torture. The Emperor removes a silver scalpel from the velvet-lined case. Acrid wine-tasting vomit spills down my chest. The Emperor laments, ‘Oh dear, she is paler than ever now! What do you think, Concubine Bamboo?’

He hands you the silver scalpel. You turn to me and treacherously utter, ‘More rouge.’

VII

Concubine Jasmine spoons herbal soup between my parted lips and I struggle to choke it down.

‘One more spoonful, dear sister Concubine Swallow,’ she encourages, dabbing my chin with lace cloth. ‘You need nourishment to strengthen and heal.’

Concubine Jasmine smooths the cotton bedsheet that covers my torso, bound tight by bandages. Her beauty and kindness contrast starkly with the portrait of the Emperor of Knives staring at me from the wall opposite the infirmary bed. Though I am no longer in the Leopard Room, my torture is ongoing, for every night the eunuchs unwind the gauze from my crudely stitched chest and douse my flayed skin with fiery medicinal concoctions. My teeth bite down on rags stuffed in my mouth and my hands claw the bedsheets, until a tide of darkness comes, sweeping the pallid, tittering eunuchs away.

Imperial Consort Jasmine, a high-ranking concubine like me, knows the monotony of the infirmary, has spent weeks convalescing there herself. So she smuggles in a Siamese kitten to amuse me by chasing balls of yarn, and some bamboo paper, ink-brush and ink, so this recuperating concubine can churn out imitation Song Dynasty landscapes. Puffing on the opium pipe together, we transcend into a giggling realm of lightness and ease as Concubine Jasmine reads to me from illicit, bootlegged erotic novellas (swearing me to secrecy, for if the eunuchs knew she was literate, they’d gouge out her eyes). She reads the tale of a cuckolding wife who romps with a gang of servant boys behind her master’s back, and she acts out each part with comic timing, changing her voice for each character, exaggerating carnal moans. Spellbound by her deft tongue moving behind her luscious lips and her eyes widening during climactic scenes, I reach and touch her lovely breasts. Concubine Jasmine ceases reading. She takes my hand in hers and kisses it tenderly.

‘O dearest beloved sister Concubine Swallow. Believe me, I wish I could. But it is my misfortune that I am not that way inclined.’

VIII

When I am pronounced well enough to return to the Palace of All Sunshine, Concubine Jasmine and I celebrate by wandering arm in arm about the Imperial Gardens. The spring thaw has begun. Many species of flowers are budding and numerous winged insects hover about the shrubs. Our little bound feet, three silk-cocooned inches peeping from under the hems of our robes, tap tap tap along the winding pebble-mosaic path as we admire the songbirds on the branches of the cypress, catalpa and scholar trees. Under my bandages, the stitched lesions protest movement with lacerating pain, but I hobble on. Concubine Jasmine has sought permission for us to enter the Emperor’s Menagerie to see the tributes from the kings of other lands: the elephant from Laos, the African zebras and the strutting ostriches with feathery bums and uppity beaks thrust to the sky. We stroke the zebras’ black-and-white-striped hides and laugh and clap our hands as the stable boy climbs astride the elephant and gets a backward hosing from the wrinkled grey trunk.

Back in the Imperial Gardens in the late afternoon we hear a tinkling of voices in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds.

‘Ah, who might that be?’ stage queries Jasmine.

On the circular stone bench within is a gathering of palace ladies, resplendent in shimmering robes, jewelled combs in their impeccably coiffed hair. They arise as we enter the pavilion. ‘Concubine Swallow!’ they cry, and flock to me.

‘O precious Concubine Swallow, we prayed to the Goddess of Mercy for your swift recovery. We requested permission to visit you, but the eunuchs wouldn’t allow it.’

They embrace me and caress my chilled early-spring cheeks. Fourteen of my harem sisters, each a faded beauty of more than thirty years with age-spun webs around her eyes. A stove blazes in the corner and on the table are porcelain teapots and cakes baked in the moulds of butterflies. The party is in my honour. They present me with gifts prepared during my convalescence: peony-stitched satin slippers, pouches embroidered with Buddhist emblems and a balm of crushed petals to perfume my wrists. Silly frivolities that show how limited in skill and artistic expression the harem women are, but I battle my inner contempt and express gratitude for the gifts. For years I have rejected my sisters, and superiority is a hard habit to break. We sit on the circular bench. Surreptitious breezes sneak through gaps in the wax-paper windows to stir the pavilion air. Concubine Jasmine begins, ‘We may speak without restraint, Concubine Swallow. Maidservants have been dispatched along the paths to look out for spies such as Hunchback Guo.’ She lays a hand on the carved gully where her bellybutton used to reside. The afternoon stroll has aggravated Concubine Jasmine’s wound.

‘We have news of a tragedy that occurred last week,’ continues Concubine Autumn Rains. ‘Imperial Consorts Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid, Bamboo and Joyous Abundance were summoned by Emperor Jiajing to the Leopard Room. As the Emperor engaged in coitus with each in turn, he became convinced they were giggling at him. His Majesty confronted them with his paranoid imaginings, then handed them each a knife and ordered them to commit suicide. Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid and Joyous Abundance successfully put themselves to death. But Concubine Bamboo survives in the infirmary.’

Under my bandages, the lesions on my chest scream as the maggots of ire writhe. ‘Bamboo is not dead? She survives? Indeed, that is a tragedy! I must go at once and finish the job!’

Elegantly coiffed heads shake at me in dismay. Concubine Emerald reaches and squeezes my hand. ‘Forgive her, Concubine Swallow. Every one of us has incised the flesh of others. Who amongst us has been brave enough to refuse the torturer’s blade? The tyrant must be obeyed under pain of death. You must forgive Concubine Bamboo.’

‘Forgive her, forgive her,’ the she-goats bleat. But I can’t. Fury chokes the gullet at the mere thought of you.

‘Concubine Bamboo was no unwilling torturer,’ I spit. ‘Her eyes lit up as she spilt my blood, and with every incision she grew ever more ambitious with the blade.’

‘She is a child of only fourteen years old.’

I hiss, ‘A demonic child. A satanic nymph with a thirst for blood.’

‘At the Emperor’s bidding she slashed her own throat,’ says Concubine Tender Willow. ‘How many cups of blood do you think poured down her gullet? Enough to quench her thirst for good, I should think.’

‘Concubine Swallow,’ Jasmine says sternly, ‘you must let the desire to take revenge on the child go. We have more urgent concerns. Do you know of the Daoist monk One Hundred Trees?’

‘The hermit sage who lives in the enchanted forest on Mount Emei?’

‘Yes. Him.’

Melodious Songbird, Tender Willow and Emerald each speak in turn:

‘One Hundred Trees has come to the Forbidden City to tell Emperor Jiajing of a new cure for mortality. .’

‘The hermit sage says it is the blood that thickens the uterus then seeps from our womanly orifice every moon cycle.’

‘One Hundred Trees told Emperor Jiajing that a cupful every day will prolong his life.’

‘Every day the harem-keepers consult the Ledger of Menstrual Cycles of the Concubines. Those menstruating are ordered to a chamber by the Gate of Obedience. They are forced to lie on a wooden bed, their ankles hooked in stirrups that hang from the ceiling. .’

‘A long, hook-ended needle is the tool that is used. Sometimes the bleeding cannot be staunched afterwards, and some have bled to death.’

‘No one is safe. Not even the princesses.’

My eldest, Lily, is eleven. Has the curse struck her down yet? I must protect her from this atrocity! Outraged, I spit, ‘We must end this barbarous practice! We must bribe the eunuchs to trick Emperor Jiajing with chicken’s blood!’

‘Bribery has been attempted. Concubine Splendid Jade is now subject to torture in the Palace of Punishments.’

‘But something must be done,’ I cry. ‘If Emperor Jiajing harms my daughters I shall. . I shall. .’

‘Murder him?’ suggests Concubine Jasmine with a wry smile.

I look at the fifteen palace ladies on the circular bench, their hands clasped on laps. They look back at me, their eyes glittering and fierce. Together, we are the sixteen mothers of the twenty-six princesses. Now I see. Concubine Emerald continues, ‘We are plotting now, the ways and means. We each accept the sacrifice of our lives, for assassination of the Emperor won’t come without this penalty.’

My heart beats swiftly beneath my flayed and bandaged chest. For the eighteen years I have lived in the Inner Palace, I have shunned my harem sisters. High on my lofty perch of lonely selfregard, I dismissed them as empty-headed and vain. How wrong I was. My courageous sisters are far nobler than I.

‘We invite you to join us, Concubine Swallow,’ says Concubine Jasmine. ‘Will you accept?’

Murdering Emperor Jiajing is a recurring fantasy of mine, but am I willing to die for it? I dwell for a moment upon my wretched and lonely existence. So what of death? I decide. Better to die nobly than to live on wretchedly, listlessly wandering about the Garden of Dispossessed Favourites, slowly wasting from the rot of old age. Better to die having saved my daughters and the entire Celestial Kingdom from the worst Emperor ever to reign.

‘I will be honoured to,’ I tell them, tears glistening in my eyes.

On a circular stone bench in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds, we clasp our pale-as-ivory hands together in solidarity, our pact to kill the Emperor now commenced.

IX

Evening in the palace infirmary. Eunuch physicians unbind my tightly bandaged chest. I lie on the bed and the eunuchs dab at the bleeding and pus-weeping wounds with cotton gauze in tweezers, tutting at my slowness to heal. They unplug the stopper from a bottle of herbal potion, and I claw the sheets as my doused chest blazes like oil set alight.

I go back to the Palace of All Sunshine, aching for the opium pipe, and snow flutters unexpectedly out of the night sky. I gaze up at the spiralling snow, falling to sabotage the winged debut of creatures from cocoons and the burgeoning buds of spring. What does this portend? I wonder. The Gods must be angry indeed, to gust the icy breath of disapproval upon the Imperial City after the coming of spring.

Mesmerized by the snow drifting out of the dark void of sky, I nearly don’t see the girl kneeling in the courtyard of the Palace of All Sunshine. It is Lily, my eldest, and I hasten over, stricken by her bled-dry pallor and the bandages around her neck. But as I draw nearer, my maternal instinct turns to horror and abhorrence. The deceitful night has tricked me again, for it is not Lily, but you. Concubine Bamboo. You shiver in the cold, your shawl of winter mink a pelt of icy tufts. Repentant eyes look up and meet mine. It’s the first time I have seen you since the Leopard Room, and my screams are gagged and bound in my throat. I clench my spitting muscles, gathering saliva. Spittle drips down your cheek, but you don’t wipe it away.

‘Elder Sister Concubine Swallow,’ you cry, ‘I can no longer live with my abominable sins against you. I beg you to forgive me after I am gone. .’

Out of your shawl you withdraw a dagger. Both hands on the ivory handle, you point the blade at your heart and plunge it down. Shocked, I instinctively leap and catch your wrists before the blade penetrates your chest. I grapple the dagger out of your suicidal grip and cast it into the darkness on the other side of the courtyard. Whetstone-sharpened steel clatters unseen upon stone. The pale beauty of your face is seized by shock. You whisper, ‘Concubine Swallow. . Why?’

‘They’ll punish me for your murder, you snivelling brat!’ Then I knock your head sideways with a furious slap. ‘Now go! Get out of my sight!’

I go into my bedchamber and stumble to my dresser, knocking over the bottles of mandrake extract and honeysuckle balm for masking my decay as I grope for my vial of sleeping draught. Unplugging the stopper, I down three nights’ worth in one long swallow. I put out the spluttering oil lamp and sink on my bed into a fathomless sleep.

Spring tide ebbs and the icicles of winter make one last stab. Night and day you kneel in the courtyard of the Palace of All Sunshine, head bowed as though in prayer. Eye to the peephole in my wax-paper window, I watch you risk pneumonia and death to kneel in the snow and prove your remorse, forsaking meals and sleep and clean bandages for the deep cut in your throat, to become a sculpture of ice. I watch you through the peephole and your pain and subjugation sate a dark species of desire within.

On the third night of your vigil you are swaying on your knees, as though struggling not to faint. She won’t survive the night, I think, smiling thinly. Then I put out my oil lamp and go to bed, expecting to sink into a deep, contented slumber. But sleep does not come. Under my quilt my limbs twitch as though possessed by the demons of fidgetiness and, after an hour of restlessness, I get up and go to my dresser. I pull the stopper out of my sleeping draught, upend the bottle between my lips, but not one drop trickles out. I rummage about in my jewellery box, but the opium is gone too. Cursing, I prepare to go out and bribe one of the guardsmen to smuggle a bottle of wine out of the storehouse for me. I throw a fox-fur cape on over my nightgown and unlatch the door, much aggrieved at having to go out into the freezing night.

Out in the courtyard you are lying on the ground. Don’t go near her! warns a vengeful voice in my head. Death is what she deserves! But my three-inch bound feet shuffle nearer and I crouch to peer at you. Your skin is pale as ice and your stillness that of a corpse. Are you sleeping or are you dead? Whereas my breath emerges in thick white puffs, yours isn’t visible. You look so much like my eldest, Lily, I can’t bear it. Leave her! warns the voice. Remember how sadistically she carved up your breasts! But I can’t leave you. My bandaged wounds in agony, I heave you into my arms and carry you into my chamber. How can I let you die, when you look so much like my own child?

I lay your frozen body on my bed and you revive in the warmth of the briquette stove. Your blood thaws and circulates again, flowing back to your cheeks. You wake, blinking with eyes that wonder, Where am I? then shine with gratitude as they meet mine. Knowing you have not had any water for three days, I pour a glass from my carafe. Now throw her out! I think as you sip feebly at the water. Bamboo is a frozen snake brought in from the cold. Now recovered, she will sink in her fangs! But you are so sickly I daren’t send you back into the bitterly cold night. I cover you with my goose-feather quilt, cursing my sentimental heart.

I drowse until the hour before dawn, when you wake me by loosening my foot bindings to rub my hump-backed arches and toe-claws. At the deft touch of your hands, that cruel mistress lust stirs within and I don’t resist as your lips flutter like moth wings against my legs and thighs. You pilgrimage to my sacred place and worship there, the lapping waves of pleasure rising to a crescendo and my shuddering release.

The drum bangs to signal dawn. The sun rises over the Forbidden City and the fearful symmetry of courtyards and palaces within. Your weary head on the pillow, you murmur that you love me. That you loved me before we even met. Your eyelids droop shut and I stroke your raven’s tresses back from your inauspicious widow’s peak. I am tranquil as I watch you slumber. The fury I was certain would seethe unto the grave is gone.

How did my defences fall so swiftly? I wonder. You came for my forgiveness, and how willingly I gave it away.

X

In the Palace of Sleeping Cicada fifteen aspiring murderesses gather in a sewing circle, embroidering silken slippers for our broken, mutilated hooves. Steam rises from our cups of aromatic tea. Lotus blossoms and golden peonies bloom from our needles and thread. More sinister things bloom from our tongues and mouths. How will His Majesty die? By poison or the dagger? Or, if time kindly permits, by the Death by a Thousand Cuts?

Out in the Garden of Dispossessed Favourites bronze bells are tolling in the fitful breeze. There’s a knock on the door of the Palace of Sleeping Cicada and our sixteenth sister, Concubine Jasmine, rushes in. Her eyes are shining bright and her tongue is taut as an archer’s bow drawn to fire arrows of speech.

‘My beloved sisters! Our time has come! Tonight we are summoned to the Leopard Room. Tonight the reign of the Emperor Jiajing will end!’

Fifteen wagging tongues are stilled. Fifteen needles freeze mid-stitch. Fifteen hearts leap up into throats. ‘How?’ we gasp. Concubine Jasmine lowers herself on to the kang in a perfumed cloud of silk. Kingfisher feathers of silver filigree tremble in her hair.

‘Today I had the honour of luncheon with His Majesty in the Belvedere of Ancient Catalpa.’

Concubine Jasmine piously widens her eyes and reverentially bleats, ‘O Supreme Ruler! O Lord of Mankind and all under Heaven! There is no greater honour than to be invited to dine with His Majesty today! Well. . as His Majesty feasted on a dish of stewed meat dumplings, I crawled under the table, lifted up the imperial robes and feasted on His Majesty’s dumplings. At first he was outraged. . not to mention flustered, in front of the one hundred serving eunuchs!’

Fifteen aspiring murderesses titter to imagine the horror of the pallorous castrati.

‘But he soon surrendered with moans of pleasure and, by the time I had imbibed His Majesty’s seed, his luncheon had cooled on his plate. Then, whilst he was in an agreeable mood, I suggested a rendezvous in the Leopard Room tonight. I begged permission to choose his bedmates, promising His Majesty seductresses versed in the erotic arts who will send him to Heaven on clouds of transcendent bliss. Emperor Jiajing consented and waved me away, and I rushed at once to the Bureau of the Affairs of the Bedchamber and named our sixteen names. Tonight we will each be summoned to the Leopard Room! Tonight the Jiajing reign will end!’

Our sewing circle of fifteen concubines is effusive in its praise.

‘Oh how brave you are, Concubine Jasmine!’

‘How audacious! How sly and cunning!’

‘Our hearts are brimming with admiration, truly they are!’

‘Beloved sisters,’ Concubine Jasmine says warmly, ‘it was our sisterhood that lent me the courage and the strength.’

Then silence descends upon the Palace of Sleeping Cicada. Our regicidal fantasy is about to be fulfilled, but His Majesty’s death is our death too, and fear and sorrow drum loudly in our chests. Concubine Emerald wrings her hands in her lap and whispers, ‘Beloved sisters, I must confess that I am afraid. .’

‘Afraid of what?’

I speak before I know I am speaking, with a scathing that can’t be reined in: ‘Of death? Isn’t life as a harem slave already a waking death? Punished for the sin of pulchritude, we are prisoners here in this gilded cage, subject to the tyrant’s every sadistic whim! My sisters, we died long ago. Each of us died the moment we were borne by palanquin through the Forbidden City’s western gates.’

Concubine Jasmine reaches and clasps both of Concubine Emerald’s hands in hers. ‘We will be duly rewarded in Heaven for protecting our daughters and taking revenge on him for our murdered ancestresses,’ she says. ‘The Gods approve of our plot to end his tyrannical reign. The Gods have revoked the Mandate of Heaven and tonight we act in their stead. .’

A pause. A muffled cough from the periphery of the chamber. Embroidery hoops tumble from laps as concubines flutter up like birds startled by a gunpowder shot.

‘Who? Where?’

‘An intruder! A spy!’

‘Under the lid of the tea chest!

Concubine Moonbeam bounds over to the teakwood chest and throws the dragon-engraved lid open on creaking hinges. A colourful tumult of finely woven robes are flung through the air as she rummages for the interloper, whom she hauls up by her braids.

‘Concubine Bamboo!’ the sewing circle hiss.

You wince in pain as Concubine Moonbeam drags you to the centre of the Palace of Sleeping Cicada by your plaits. Sixteen elder sisters gather around you, and you cower beneath sixteen pairs of glaring eyes.

‘Who sent you?’ Concubine Melodious Songbird demands.

‘Why are you spying on us?’

Your innocent eyes brim with tears and you lisp childishly, ‘I was playing hide and seek with the other novice concubines and. .’

Concubine Jasmine laughs incredulously, then slaps you hard across the cheek. ‘Your lies insult us. Speak the truth!’

Your cheek reddens with the mark of her hand. Recognizing that your elder sisters won’t be duped, you start again,

‘Honourable Elder Sisters, I beg you to forgive my trespassing. I suspected that Concubine Swallow was part of a secret plot and, fearing for her safety, I hid in the tea chest to learn what it was. Now that I know, I swear on my ancestors’ graves to keep your secret.’ You narrow your eyes with enmity. ‘I hate the Emperor of Knives as much as you do, and will rejoice with the rest of the Celestial Kingdom to see him dead.’

The sisterhood of sixteen exchange wary looks over your fourteen-year-old head. Concubine Jasmine turns to me, the one who unwittingly led you to us. ‘Is the child to be trusted, Concubine Swallow?’ she asks.

Before I can speak, Concubine Melodious Songbird cries, ‘The devious Bamboo is in league with the vile castrati! I have seen her in the Pavilion of Immortal Birds, conniving with Hunchback Guo. We must bind her with ropes and drown her in the well. Or she’ll sabotage our plans!’

Concubine Autumn Rains nods in vehement agreement. ‘Concubine Bamboo will betray our plot to murder Emperor Jiajing for her own gain! We must hand her the silken cord and order her to hang herself!’

As more of our sisters vociferously demand that you choke down poison or slit your own wrists, you are strangely calm. You speak to Concubine Jasmine, tremorless and clear. ‘I am prepared to die by whichever method my elder sisters decide upon. .’ Your tormented eyes then seek out mine. ‘. . for what do I have to live for after Concubine Swallow has been executed?’

Your willingness to die for the sake of our harem sisters’ paranoid fears provokes my heart into furious dissent. Your murder is an injustice I won’t allow.

‘What proof is there that Concubine Bamboo is in league with the eunuchs?’ I challenge. ‘Emperor Jiajing is the one who deserves to be murdered, not this child. Why don’t we just gag her and bind her and lock her in the tea chest? That should be enough.’

Outraged, my sisters turn on me. Spittle flits from their lips as they vilify and slander me.

‘How cleverly the child has manipulated Concubine Swallow!’

‘Everyone knows the way to Swallow’s heart is through her voracious cunt. The sly little whore now has Swallow eating out of her palm. .’

‘Give them both the silken cord to hang from the rafters!’

Mercifully, wise and compassionate Concubine Jasmine has heard my appeal. She claps her hands, silencing our harem sisters’ vicious attack. Commanding of stature, Concubine Jasmine asserts her leadership without raising her voice. ‘Enough. We won’t have the murder of a child on our conscience. We will bind her up and lock her in the tea chest. By the time they find her, Emperor Jiajing will be dead, and nothing she can say will bring him back.’

Twelve rolls of foot-binding cloth truss your ankles and wrists. Scarves of silk stuff your gagged mouth. Sixteen pale and baleful faces stare down at you, in the bottom of the teakwood box. I lean into the chest and whisper, ‘Farewell, Concubine Bamboo. May the rest of your days be peaceful after the tyrant’s death. I wish you a long, prosperous life, and I pray that we will meet again in the afterlife.’

A suffocating heap of silk robes is thrown upon the gagged, bound concubine. The dragon-engraved lid thuds down and you are entombed in dark.

XI

Shadow of dusk inches stealthily across the Forbidden City. A flock of black crows soars over the shadowed courts of the Great Within, cawing and thrashing their wings. The end of the Jiajing reign is nigh. The timbers and beams in the Palace of Heavenly Purity creak and sigh of it. The weeping willows by the outer walls whisper sibilantly of it, trailing their branches in the moat. The tormented spirits of those who died in the Leopard Room sing of it, breezing through the chambers, rejoicing at His Majesty’s comeuppance.

Drumbeat in Drum Tower signals the beginning of first watch. Harem-keepers go through the courts to the Palace of Modest Ladies, over slabs of stone polished smooth by a hundred and twenty years of servants scurrying to and fro. Sixteen concubines, naked but for slippered feet and goose-feather quilts, clamber upon the backs of the eunuchs, who carry them to His Majesty’s chambers.

Lanterns blaze in the Leopard Room. His Majesty reclines on the bed, under a canopy of cicada-wing gauze. The sixteenth palace lady is lowered before him, and the last of the eunuchs retreats with her goose-feather quilt. The nine-dragon bolt shudders across the Leopard Room door, locking us in. Sixteen concubines, naked but for our slippered feet, our lips red as rubies, our faces powdered white and our hair elaborately arranged with jewelled pins. Kneeling before His Majesty, we kowtow and touch our foreheads to the cold marble floor.

‘Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing! Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing!’ we chorus.

Emperor Jiajing beckons Tender Willow to join him on the bed. We are mute witnesses as he fondles her breasts then removes a slipper and unwinds her foot-bindings, exposing her pig’s-trotter foot. The Emperor’s red-silk-dragon robe slides open. He squeezes Tender Willow’s broken-arched foot so toes meet heel, and she stifles her screams as he penetrates the crevice with his engorged cock. A few bored thrusts and he withdraws his wilting erection and sprinkles it with aphrodisiac powders from a snuff box. He kicks Tender Willow, who is writhing in pain, from the bed, and she thuds on to the marble floor. Regicidal desire burns in every one of our hearts.

The Emperor of Knives casts his gaze over our bodies, stitched up by eunuchs after the massacres he perpetrated upon them. Years of incarceration and torture have eroded our beauty, and we have toiled over our toilette, smearing nightingale’s excrement and other pigments of white on our scarred skin. But the Emperor is not fooled. He snorts in contempt at our cowering nakedness. Jade goblet of wine raised to his lips, he sips and sneers, ‘How the winds of time have torn the blossoms of youth from the ugly, crooked branches! Imperial Consort Jasmine, what is the meaning of this moth-eaten coven of hags? Where are the airy sylphs? The earthbound goddesses with sweet-as-morning’s-dew cunts? These wrinkles and sagging teats are offensive to me.’

The wine-fuddled Emperor’s speech is slurred. Our exquisitely painted eyelids are lowered demurely throughout his insults, but Concubine Jasmine gazes level with His Majesty, her smile a tranquil crescent moon.

‘Ten thousand blessings to Emperor Jiajing! I beseech our Supreme Ruler to look beyond our repugnance, for we are devoted to the fulfilment of His Majesty’s every desire. To elevating our Lord of Ten Thousand Years to the heavens on clouds of erotic delight.’

Emperor Jiajing narrows his eyes. ‘Look at these haggard bodies! These ogresses’ countenances! Clouds of erotic delight indeed! What brazen lies you tell. I am dangerously close, Concubine Jasmine, to calling the Imperial Guards to escort you to the Palace of Punishments to be flayed for deception with horsehair whips!’

In the chill of the Leopard Room, the sweat of foreboding seeps upon my skin. But Concubine Jasmine is serene and unmenaced by his brutal threats. ‘O Lord of Ten Thousand Years, I beg on behalf of your most devoted concubines for a chance to worship you. Has Your Excellency ever had sixteen tongues lapping at him simultaneously? Would Your Majesty consent to try it? If our Supreme Ruler is dissatisfied, then I will willingly submit to being flogged by the Imperial Guards, for brutal torture would be nothing less than I deserve.’

Emperor Jiajing sighs, grudgingly opens his robe and lies on his back, and the sixteen concubines crawl, meek and subservient, upon the Emperor’s vast bed. We surround His Majesty, lowering our mouths to his emaciated, biliously yellow body. The Emperor is vile and bitter-tasting from the arsenic and mercury elixirs secreted through his pores, but our tongues lap passionately, pretending lusty eagerness.

‘Close your eyes, Emperor Jiajing,’ Concubine Jasmine murmurs, hypnotically. ‘There’s no need for Your Majesty to torment his sight with our odiousness.’

The Son of Heaven lowers his eyelids, succumbing to the sensual pleasure. Tongues incessantly licking, we slide our slippers from our feet and work our foot-binding strips loose. His Majesty’s serpent rears up and stares at us with his lone Cyclops eye but, fortunately, does not report its findings to his master. When Concubine Jasmine sees that every one of us has a length of foot-binding cloth in her hands, she ceases licking and raises a phoenix-embroidered pillow over Emperor Jiajing’s head. ‘Now!’ she cries, and smothers the Emperor with the satin pillow, suppressing his screams as three or four concubines restrain each limb and lash it, with foot-binding strips, to a bedpost. Jasmine lifts the pillow and I stuff his mouth with silk scarves and gag him with the sash of his dragon’s robe.

Emperor Jiajing is apoplectic, his bulging eyes threatening to leap out of their sockets. His Majesty struggles against the restraints but, weakened by poisonous elixirs, he barely strains the knots.

Our sisterhood of sixteen leaps from the Emperor’s bed and dances around the Leopard Room. As we dance, we parade around His Majesty’s bed as though we are Heavenly enchantresses. As we dance, the spirits of our ancestresses descend into us, and our levity is as though we dance upon air. Amusingly, the Emperor’s serpent rears up in defiance of his master’s fury, staring with its Cyclops eye as though beguiled. As we dance, we serenade Emperor Jiajing with sacrilegious song. We sing the truth that sycophantic officials daren’t speak:

‘You are the worst Emperor the Ming Dynasty has known.’

‘The worst Emperor the Celestial Kingdom has ever known.’

‘The history books will condemn you, Emperor Jiajing.’

‘You are a tyrannical despot, atrocious and weak.’

‘Your subjects will not mourn you and your crippling taxes.’

The truth is like bamboo splints in Emperor Jiajing’s ears. His Majesty turns a livid shade of purple, and he thrashes against the foot-binding strips that fetter him to the bedposts; his groin bucking up and down and his shoulders nearly wrenching out of their sockets.

Concubine Jasmine cries, ‘Bid your kingdom farewell, Emperor Jiajing! The time has come to die!’

The sisterhood of sixteen leaps back on the vast bed, and our Son of Heaven goes limp. Now His Majesty is staring death in the face, he’s so petrified he can’t move. Splendid Jade and Autumn Rains fasten the strangling cord around his neck, and tears of desperation leak from Emperor Jiajing’s eyes. We tug on the ends of the foot-binding cloth with all our strength.

‘Pull!’ we cry. ‘Pull. . pull. . pull!’

The Emperor chokes and chokes. Enough time passes to kill a man, but still he won’t lose consciousness. We are panicking and confused.

‘The slip-knot is wrong!’ cries Concubine Melodious Songbird. ‘He is still able to breathe. We must tie it again. Quick!’

But it’s too late. Heavy boots stampede across the Great Within, and the door of the Leopard Room bursts open. Troops of armoured Imperial Guards charge in with spears.

Pandemonium. Shrieking terror and wails of dismay. Some concubines scatter by the instinct of flight to the peripheries of the chamber. Others weep piteously in each other’s arms. Enraged that the Emperor of Knives has escaped death, I pull a silver hairpin out of the hair spiralled up on my head and stab it in Emperor Jiajing’s wildly staring left eye. Blood spurts out and I smile. The Imperial Guards then drag me from the bed and slash through the fetters that lash Emperor Jiajing to the bedposts. They remove the gag from his mouth, and the Son of Heaven, more mortal than divinity, lets out a howl of agony.

They destroy us as the God of Thunder smashes tofu. They blacken our eyes, shatter our ribs and stave our skulls against the vermilion pillars. They beat us nearly to death, then haul our limp, insensible bodies out of the Leopard Room. As they drag me through the courtyard of the Palace of Heavenly Purity, my haze of excruciating pain parts long enough for me to see the saboteurs of our murder plot watching by the marble wall. Hunchback Guo and his mistress in a shawl of winter mink. Imperial Consort Bamboo. Concubine, fifth rank.

XII

On the day of the executions the Forbidden City is lost in opaque fog as the spirits of our ancestresses weave around the sixteen concubines, gathered in the courtyard by the Meridian Gate. Our ancestresses caress us and stroke our hair, soothing in whispers, ‘You have honoured us. We are proud of you. You will be rewarded in Heaven.’

A distinguished crowd attends the executions. Empresses and princes and princesses. Grand secretaries and high-ranking officials in resplendent padded silk robes. Emperor Jiajing, however, has not come. Humiliated by the empty socket of his eye, His Majesty has withdrawn into exile in the Inner Palaces. His Majesty’s third wife, Empress Bamboo, attends in his stead. High upon your throne, with the symbols of double happiness emblazoning your robe. What lurks behind your impervious mask, unknown.

The executioner swings his axe, and I weep and shake as each of my sisters is put to death. But when it is my turn to kneel before the blood-sodden chopping block, I am calm. As the axe swoops down through my neck, I do not regret departing this life.

When we are dead and dismembered, the distinguished crowd goes back to their sedan-chairs, keen to return to their stove-heated chambers, opium pipes and pots of aromatic teas. Emancipated from our remains, the sisterhood of sixteen rises up too. We soar over the Meridian Gate, where our heads are soon to be exhibited on spikes, and at the Gate of Heavenly Purity, we go our separate ways. My fifteen sisters soar onwards to the Otherworld, and I soar through the Forbidden City in pursuit of you: Empress Bamboo in her palanquin, borne upon the shoulders of gelded men. I pursue you to the Palace of Earthly Tranquillity, and linger in your chamber after your ladies-in-waiting have been dismissed.

You stand before the bronze mirror, admiring the sapphire crown in the dark tresses swept up from your widow’s peak. I weave around you in your embroidered robes. I soar through you, again and again, determined to break through the vault of your heart.

‘Concubine Bamboo. This is your elder sister, Swallow. Does your conscience pain you? Was it worth betraying us for the crown on your head?’

As you gaze in the mirror, you sense my presence. Your piercingly dark eyes light up as you smile: ‘It’s Empress Bamboo now.’

And I soar through you again and again, but your conscience remains as stone.