Chapter 19: A Pregnancy Pulse—Three Months Along!

Attendant Liu and First Attendant Qian jumped, their faces turning white. They didn’t know what they had done wrong, but the Empress Dowager’s tone was so frightening that their knees gave way and they dropped to the floor.

“Y-Your Majesty…” Liu’s voice trembled.

Without a glance at them, the Empress Dowager came directly from the innermost table, moving swiftly and steadily between the banquet tables, her skirt brushing the floor. She stopped before Shen Zhiyi and looked down at the pale young First Attendant.

Zhiyi had straightened, but she still looked dreadful; the last color had drained from her lips. Holding the table’s edge to steady herself, she saw the Empress Dowager and hurried to pay her respects. The older woman caught her hand and prevented her from kneeling.

“Good child.” Her voice was suddenly soft and gentle, utterly unlike the one that had just scolded Liu. “Are you feeling nauseated?”

Zhiyi looked up. The Empress Dowager’s eyes shone with urgency. With the wine no longer thrust under her nose, Zhiyi felt a little better and could breathe more easily. She steadied her voice and answered truthfully.

“Yes, Your Majesty, I do feel sick. I didn’t mean to make a scene, and I wasn’t being difficult. I really couldn’t help it.”

The light in the Empress Dowager’s eyes grew brighter. She patted Zhiyi’s hand, her well-tended fingers pressing a little harder than usual with barely contained excitement. Lowering her voice, she asked a question that made everyone nearby strain to hear.

“Has your monthly period come?”

Zhiyi lowered her eyes. Her voice was quiet, but in the silent hall everyone could hear. “My periods have never been very regular. I haven’t had one for two months.”

The hall fell still. A missed period. Nausea and retching. An inability to bear the smell of wine. Together, the three symptoms pointed toward an answer no one dared believe, yet everyone couldn’t help considering.

The Empress Dowager drew a deep breath. Her voice changed pitch, ten years of suppressed anticipation threatening to burst forth. “Good, good, good!” Her hand trembled again.

She turned toward the door and called urgently, “Someone! Summon a physician! Quickly!” Her voice cracked and echoed through Chonghua Palace. The eunuchs outside jumped and scrambled off to the Imperial Medical Academy.

The atmosphere in the hall changed completely. Every gaze fixed on Zhiyi: shock, jealousy, disbelief, private resentment, and a tense suspense that had hung over the palace for ten years and now rose into everyone’s throat.

Li Xuandu stood so quickly that his chair scraped backward with a piercing sound. He didn’t notice. He strode through the banquet toward Zhiyi, so fast that Zhao Quan’an could barely keep up at a trot.

He stopped in front of her. Seeing her pale face, faintly knitted brows, and the way she was struggling to hold herself together, he felt something stir in his chest. He reached out and gently patted her shoulder.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice lower and gentler than usual, though he didn’t seem aware of it. “The physician is only going to examine you.”

Zhiyi looked up. He stood against the light, his expression difficult to see, but she heard the deliberate steadiness in his voice. He was pretending to be calm, and doing it well enough; still, she could feel his fingertips trembling against her shoulder. She didn’t need to guess what an emperor without a child after ten years on the throne was thinking.

She nodded obediently. “Mm.”

Before long the physician arrived: Imperial Physician Zhang, head of the Imperial Medical Academy, a man in his sixties with graying hair and a somewhat unsteady gait. Today he had run faster than a young man and was almost carried through the door. Sweating and breathless, he fell to his knees. “Your Majesty, Your Majesty the Empress Dowager—”

“Enough, enough,” she interrupted impatiently. “Get up and take First Attendant Shen’s pulse!”

Zhang dared not delay. He moved on his knees to Zhiyi, took a pulse cushion from his medicine box, and placed it respectfully on the table. Zhiyi extended her arm, and Qingluo hurried forward to roll back her sleeve, exposing her pale wrist.

Zhang drew a deep breath and placed three fingers on her pulse. The hall was utterly silent. Everyone watched him.

His brow tightened, then smoothed. His eyes widened; his fingers trembled slightly on her wrist. He closed his eyes, as if confirming what he felt. Three breaths later he opened them, his grave expression giving way to wild joy.

He turned to the Empress Dowager and emperor and bowed deeply, his voice shaking. “Congratulations, Your Majesty! Congratulations, Your Majesty the Empress Dowager! First Attendant Shen has a slippery pulse—smooth and flowing, like pearls rolling on a plate. It is unquestionably a pregnancy pulse! She is three months along!”

The hall erupted. A pregnancy pulse. Three months. The words struck like stones in a still lake, raising wave upon wave.

The Empress Dowager froze, then seized the hand of the senior attendant beside her, her eyes reddening. “Did you hear? A pregnancy pulse? Three months?”

“Absolutely certain, Your Majesty!” Zhang’s voice rang high and clear.

She drew a deep breath, as if to release ten years of pent-up worry. Her hands were still shaking, but she stood straighter; she couldn’t hide her smile, and her bright eyes made her look ten years younger.

Li Xuandu stood motionless. He did not smile or shout or make any extravagant display. He only looked at Zhiyi, his gaze settling on her pale face, then her flat abdomen. His throat moved as though something had lodged there, neither swallowed nor spoken.

Ten years. Ten whole years. He had gone from a young emperor full of ambition to a middle-aged ruler whose ministers openly and privately discussed his lack of an heir. Prince An’s family appeared before him; memorial after memorial urged adoption; his mother pressed him again and again. He had remained outwardly impassive while a volcano built inside him. Now it had finally found an outlet.

He looked at neither his mother nor the physician nor the women filling the hall. He looked only at Zhiyi. His voice was low and steady, as though stating something self-evident.

“Promote First Attendant Shen to Noble Lady. Her title shall be Tang.”