Resentment at Changmen Palace - Chapter 4

“Your Highness. Do you want to leave?”

His quiet voice drew me back to the present.

After a long silence, I answered, “My parents are still alive. I should not travel far from them.”

“You are the princess’s only daughter. Surely she wants you to spend the rest of your life safe and happy.” He watched me a little longer. “Is it His Majesty you cannot bear to leave?”

“No,” I said too quickly.

He lowered his head, hiding the loneliness in his eyes.

“I will wait for you, Your Highness. Whenever you wish to go, I will take you.”

“Thank you, Chang Qi.”

After that, he settled into Changmen Palace. When I painted or read, he lay on a ceiling beam. When I fed the fish or admired the flowers, he concealed himself among the ornamental rocks. Sometimes, when boredom left me staring out the window, I would see him standing with folded arms in the great silk tree, half lost among its bright blossoms.

Once again, I underestimated how closely A-Zhi watched me.

It was around the middle of the eighth month. The weather was oppressively hot, and the cries of birds and beasts carried on without end. A letter arrived.

Inside was a silk-tree blossom stained with blood.

I thought of Chang Qi at once. I threw open the window and called for him.

No one answered.

He had been taken.

I knew A-Zhi was responsible. I had to see him.

For a deposed empress to force her way into the imperial palace at night would be an act of grave disrespect, one that could implicate her entire family. I could not go. I could only write letter after letter and send them in.

When I sent the tenth, he finally gave the little eunuch carrying it a message for me.

You are not sincere.

I knew he meant to make me bow my head. Of course he did. How could the emperor, who held himself above everyone, endure my humiliation of him? He would have his repayment somehow.

So I paid a thousand pieces of gold for a rhapsody about a forsaken woman’s sorrow in the palace, begging him to relent and see me once.

The Lament of Changyuan entered the palace in the morning. By evening, children were singing it in the streets.

An abandoned wife begging for pity. How pathetic.

I heard that A-Zhi had called it a fine composition. Not a single word for me.

I thought my hopes had been dashed again. That night, however, a small sedan chair came to carry me through the darkness to the imperial palace I had not seen in so long.

A-Zhi stood with his back to me at a window. His cloak trailed on the floor. He looked utterly alone, a slant of moonlight laying broken silver over him.

“I hang the bright moon to light my solitude; in these secluded chambers, the clear night passes.”

His voice was still beautiful. It no longer held the clear, flowing brightness it once had.

“Where is Chang Qi?”

I had no patience for him reciting the Lament of Changyuan to humiliate me.

“Chang Qi. Chang Qi. Always Chang Qi.”

He spun around, seized my wrist, and forced me against his desk. The books and scrolls scattered across it dug painfully into my back.

“Let go.” I struggled to wrench free, but could not.

“Jiejie, why is there always room for so many people in your heart? First Liu Zhao, then Chang Qi. What about me? What am I to you?”

He spoke against my ear. The reek of wine made my head swim, and for a moment I could not make out his words.

“What drunken nonsense are you talking?”

“Yes. I’m drunk. That is why I can say these things to you.” He gave a soft laugh and lifted his head enough to meet my eyes.

He had never held his wine well. Usually it left his face deathly pale, with only a trace of red at the corners of his eyes, just as now.

Perhaps I imagined it, but he looked so pitiful that my heart softened.

“A-Zhi, get up. Let us talk properly.”

“All right.”

Abruptly obedient, he moved away and even helped me up.

“Release Chang Qi. He fought for you. More than once, he barely escaped death bringing you an enemy’s head. You should not treat him this way.”

“Fought for me? Risked his life for me?” He lingered over the words, laughing softly, then stared into my eyes. “We both know whether it was for me or for you.”

“We were husband and wife. What he did for me, he did for you.”

“Were?”

He gave a cold snort and closed his eyes, as if burying some emotion. When he looked up again, they shone with a chill light.

“I am his sovereign. He is my subject. If I choose to have him killed, what can you do about it?”

“A-Zhi!”

Anger surged through me. I slapped him.

“You struck me for him.” His long fingers touched the red mark on his face. “How very good of you, Jiejie.”

I said nothing.

“Instead of hitting me, cursing me, or trying to reason with me, consider what you have to offer. Something worth his life.” Contempt crept across his face.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to return to the palace.”

“Why are you so determined?”

“My aunt helped me win the throne. I owe her a debt. I cannot bear to disappoint her.”

“And bringing me back will repay my mother?” I did not know where this sudden gratitude had come from. “After your accession, you suppressed her family and destroyed the influence she had spent half her life building. Why did you not mind disappointing her then?”

He looked down at me. Countless feelings seemed to pass through his eyes before sinking into darkness.

“If you will not return, then spend one night with me.”

He pulled at my collar and bent to suck at my neck, forcing kiss after kiss on me, as ruthless and heedless as an animal seizing its prey.

“You’re mad.”

I pushed and struck at him. He overpowered every attempt.

“Then let me be mad.”

He paused for barely a moment before lunging at me again.

“A-Zhi, don’t. Please don’t.”

I had never seen him like this. Fear took hold of me.

“Don’t cry, Jiejie.” He kissed the tears from the corners of my eyes. His voice softened, but he did not stop. “We used to do this all the time. You liked it.”

As I struggled, my hand found a hairpin. Without time to think, I drove it into his back.

Blood ran down and dripped onto my clothes, spreading crimson across the fabric.

He had not believed I would hurt him. For an instant, he froze.

I tore free and pressed the hairpin to my own throat.

“Let him go.” My voice had gone hoarse.

He remained half braced against the desk, as though he had yet to understand what had happened.

“Jiejie, you hurt me for him.” He turned his head and saw the hairpin at my throat. “Will you die for him too?”

“A-Zhi, who is this show of devotion for?”

Grief choked me. Heavy tears spilled down my face.

“You accuse me of being entangled with Chang Qi, but before I moved to Changmen Palace, I had not seen him in ten years.

“You blame me for having been betrothed to Liu Zhao. I was nine when that betrothal ended. I did not even know what love was.

“I have only ever loved you. Truly, with my whole heart, only you.

“I married you, and my entire family spent nine years planning and struggling to make you emperor.

“And how did you treat me? You promised me a house of gold and never gave me one. You left me alone in Jiaofang Hall while you bedded a dancing girl. You repaid kindness with cruelty, broke my mother’s family’s power, and ruined the careers of its young men.

“A-Zhi, I owe you nothing.

“For the sake of what we once shared, let me go.

“I will live alone at Changmen Palace. I will never see Chang Qi again. I will spend the rest of my life in prayer before the Buddha, faithful to you and no one else.

“Please, A-Zhi. Let us go.”