Forbidden City: Blood Blossoms

Chapter Two: Crimson Walls

It was still light when Lady Zhuang stepped carefully over the threshold of her palace gates, leaning heavily on her maid's outstretched arm.

She was still dressed in her afternoon robes of pale pink and white. Her lotus feet, she sheathed them in soft silken shoes of the faintest peach with the barest of embroidery. If she has to meet her fate, she might as well meet it simply. The Emperor is beyond caring anyway.

A sudden breeze rose.

Red autumn leaves fluttered around the gate entrance before swirling across the gleaming tiles of the wide palace corridor. The walls of the Forbidden City were a deep crimson red in the slanting golden bars of the sunlight. Just a short distance away, Chief Eunuch Yuan was already waiting outside with a sedan and four sedan carriers.

Zhuang felt faint. She wanted to run screaming, raging and tearing at the red walls. One man's selfishness! One man's cruelty! Even in death, he holds power over every single one of them in the palaces!

Xiaoyu must have felt her trembling body. Her arm still underneath Zhuang's cold fingers, she clasped her mistress' fingers to steady her.

Zhuang's mind cleared, as if a sudden wind had blown a mist away.

Xiaoyu has been her faithful companion and shadow since childhood. If not for Xiaoyu, she would have died in the lake that dark, moonless night so long ago. She cannot afford to be weak now. There are people she still has to protect.

She withdrew her hand coolly from Xiaoyu and without looking at her, said, "You do not need to accompany me. Stay here."

Where it is safe.

Xiaoyu threw her a quick alarmed look. Her mistress had never left her side before.

Then seeing the eunuch chief flick his eyes towards Xiaoyu in interest, Zhuang continued in a louder and sharper tone, "I expect my beauty mask to be ready when I return. You will be beaten like the last time if you ruin it again."

Xiaoyu turned white and dropped to the ground on her knees in apparent terror. "Spare me, Mistress! This slave is stupid! This slave will watch the boiling carefully this time!"

Zhuang glanced down icily at her maid. Xiaoyu's head was bowed down to the ground and Zhuang could see the copper hairpins in her tresses shaking from her sobs. Her father had plucked Xiaoyu from the streets from a life of hunger and thievery to be her companion many years ago. Xiaoyu is quick-witted, he told Zhuang, she will be your eyes and ears, and your able assistant.

Xiaoyu continued making small crying noises. Out of the corner of her eye, Zhuang saw that the eunuch chief was still standing bowed by the sedan, but now he was looking to one side, bored and disinterested.

Ah, the capriciousness of the women in the palaces. He must have seen such a scene one too many times. The lives of the palace servants are like grass swept whatever way by an uncaring wind; their lives are governed by the whims, fancies - and jealousies of their mistresses.

Last month, one of the maids at the Palace of Great Benevolence had broken a teacup set. As punishment, she was made to kneel on the ground, out of sight in a secluded courtyard, while holding a basin of water over her head. Normally, the mere disciplining of a maid would not have been significant news. But it had been a stormy week. The rain had poured relentlessly day and night.

As thunder boomed outside Zhuang's chambers, Xiaoyu poured rose water with crushed pearls over her mistress' delicate hands. The ill-fated maid's name is Keren, she told Zhuang quietly, and she has large, clear innocent eyes like a doe. Once, during a visit to the Palace of Great Benevolence to see Lady Rong, the Emperor had stopped to look at Keren and ask for her name.

The thunderstorm continued to rage outside. It did not abate until three days later.

They found Keren collapsed on the slate tiles, unconscious with a high fever. One week later, Keren passed away without a physician coming to see her. The burial was quick and silent - a hasty affair with a few spadefuls of earth in the unkempt graveyard for lowly servants and forgotten concubines. Zhuang's kitchen cook was from the same village as Keren, and her shoulders shook as she described the scars and injuries on Keren's back.

The next time Zhuang saw Lady Rong feeding fish at the palace lake, she commented passingly on Lady Rong's hairstyle and her love of hairpins. She must have a large collection of hairpins. She never seemed to wear the same one twice. Lady Rong laughed and said that women can never have too many hairpins, they are useful for too many things.

The autumn leaves rustled against Zhuang's skirt.

The sedan carriers had raised the sedan door cloth opening and were waiting for her.

She waved away Yuan as he stepped forward to help her into the sedan. She will not be needing the pity of a spy eunuch.

Zhuang gazed out of the sedan, with one hand holding up the sedan door cloth.

Xiaoyu was still kneeling on the ground, with her head to the ground.

It might be her last time seeing her.

Goodbye, Xiaoyu.

As she let the sedan cover drop, she heard Xiaoyu call out the customary greeting, "Ten Thousand Fortunes! This slave will wait for the mistress to return!"

Zhuang blinked. Hot tears stung her eyes.

"Raise the sedan." she commanded.