Consort

The Beautiful Lark

She touched the petals of the barely-blooming flower as she walked past. Sighing dreamily, she stood over the pond in the middle of the garden and stared at the koi with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Imperial Consort Hua."

The deep voice broke her trance as she turned around slowly. He stood there, regal as ever, regarding her with a guarded look in his eyes. In the past week, he had been visiting her everyday, making sure that she was well-taken care of, and well-fed.

"Your Imperial Majesty." She bowed her head, and straightened as he gestured. "Have you been well, Your Majesty? Your Majesty should not take precious time out to see me in such weather, the spring chill might bring harm to Your Majesty's health." As she spoke, she faced the pond once again. She felt him moving closer.

"I come to ensure that your stay here does not bring distress to you. Your crime is not light, and neither is your punishment. Even so, I do not wish for any harm to befall you." She gave him a wistful smile, and resumed her quiet contemplation. His next sentence snapped her attention back to him.

"Why did you admit to the crime? I know that you did not do it. Anyone who has spent sufficient time in the court would have definitely seen your dedication to me."

"I-" She faltered upon seeing the fierce look in his eyes. Taking a deep breath, she steeled her resolve and spoke clearly, chin high. "Your Majesty, is it so difficult to believe that I hold evil intent against you? After all, Your Majesty ordered the destruction of my village. Why should I not order an assassin to kill Your Majesty?"

She saw as his narrowed and he grit his teeth. That was the only indication of his anger, but some part of her was secretly happy that she was the one to induce such a show of emotion from the usually stone-cold Emperor. Her joy was short-lived, when he took another step closer and lowered his voice.

"As Emperor, did you think that I was unaware of the happenings in the palace? I knew that the Empress was unhappy with my decision to make you the Imperial Consort. This is not the first time she has tried to remove one of my Consorts." She inhaled sharply. "Do not look so surprised, my Imperial Consort." His voice trembled sightly with rage, and she noted a fleeting tenseness in his shoulders before it was gone. Panicking, she clung onto his sleeve without thinking.

"Your Majesty, please do not be angry! It was not Her Majesty's fault! It was my fault, for not thinking about my own position, and for trying to act above my station! Please do not punish another for my crime!"

He gave her a gentle smile and lifted his hand to her face. "One as pure-hearted as you could not have possibly orchestrated an assassination. I, above all, know that. Cease your panicking, beloved Imperial Consort. It is no crime to love your husband."

She allowed herself to enjoy his warm embrace, and the two stood in a moment of comfortable silence. Regretfully breaking the silence, she murmured, "Now that I have been confined to my living quarters for a year, I will be no threat to Her Majesty in court. Your Majesty, please do not trouble yourself to visit me, as it will only cause Her Majesty distress."

He leaned back and looked at her. "Do not worry about her. Think only of me and how much this benefits me."

Curious, she tilted her head up to regard him. "Benefit you?"

"Your beauty and charm are well-known throughout my land. Every time word about you is spread, I lose a little of you to my people. I do not like that. This crime was the perfect opportunity to cage my little lark. Within this year, news of your 'betrayal' will spread, and word about you will fall away from my people's mouths. Soon they will no longer speak of you, and I will once again have you to myself." His softly whispered words fell on her ears, and sent shivers down her spine. "For now, I am content visiting you here every day at this place where no one else is allowed." Hearing that, she smiled in content.

"Your Majesty, I was always only yours."

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Author's note:

Hello! I've decided to try my hand at a short story about the ancient Chinese Imperial Court. As it's my first time writing a story, I'd love to receive any feedback about it. Please be nice! >.<

More about the Imperial Court:

The Chinese Court actually had very complicated forms of addressing. The Emperor would have a set of terms for addressing both himself and others below him, and each consort in the harem would have different ways of addressing others depending on whether or not the person was above or below their station. In this story, I have only kept the part where the consort addresses the Emperor. At no point in time was anyone allowed to refer to the Emperor by name, not even his mother. The Emperor also uses a 'Royal We' to address himself, but I decided to keep things simple and leave that out.

Fun fact:

#1: Anything in reference to the Emperor can also be referred to using symbolic dragon references, so the sentence where the Imperial Consort says, "harm to Your Majesty's health", would have been translated directly as "harm to the Dragon Body".

#2: The Emperor had many wives in the form of consorts and concubines, but he could only have one Empress. This was largely consistent across all dynasties. The Empress was head of the harem, and dealt with matters regarding it.

#3: Ladies in the harem would refer to each other as sisters, with the higher ranking ones being the older sisters. In Chinese, older sister and younger sister are different words (jie jie and mei mei respectively), and hence the distinction is clear.
#4: Yes, the Emperor and court ladies do speak that formally to each other! Living in court is all about formalities, and it doesn't matter that they're husband and wife.

I hope you enjoyed the story, and thank you for reading!