China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

the ability to do such a thing. I daresay she never had any wish to be empress in the first place. It’s not as if anyone would have asked her what she wanted.

They stayed in the room chatting for a while, talking about what they should wear and how they might do their hair and whether they should visit one of the nine islands that afternoon. Then the Noble Consort gave me a sign that I should go, and I didn’t see her again that day.

—

But where was the emperor? That’s what I wanted to know. If I could just observe him and the Noble Consort together, then I might get some idea of how things stood between them—and therefore what my own fate was likely to be. Was he getting bored with her? How long had I got before she fell out of favor and I was cast out of paradise?

I soon learned where he was physically. Close by the residential compound was the Audience Hall, where the emperor might receive ministers, provincial governors, or even the envoys of subject peoples from faraway lands; and a short distance from that was a courtyard complex called the Hall of Diligent Government, where palace people conducted the imperial administration. When the emperor was not secluded in his private apartment, he was usually in one or the other of these business places.

Over ten days or so, I saw a governor, several ministers, and other great men making their way into the Audience Hall. But although people went about quite freely in the open grounds of the Summer Palace, I never once in that time caught a glimpse of the Son of Heaven.

—

Until I made a new friend. Though the other palace people were all pleasant in their manner towards me, they all knew I shouldn’t be there, so I couldn’t expect any of them suddenly to become my new best friend. But Mr. Ma was different.

I discovered him by accident when I was walking by myself one afternoon and noticed a fenced enclosure. Being inquisitive, I looked in.

The space reminded me of the lacquer workshop where I’d first gone as an apprentice. Along each side were long, low sheds. The middle was filled with tables upon which stood dozens of miniature trees in shallow pots. And when I say miniature, I mean that many were hardly two feet high. But they’d been bound with ropes, to constrict their growth and twist them into curious shapes.

I’d found the nursery of the penzai trees. And Mr. Ma was their keeper.

He was very old and bent. He’d been a gardener all his life. His face was rather hollow and his eyes watered, but when they peered up at you, they were surprisingly clear.

Since I like the finer things of life and always want to know how works of art are made, it wasn’t long before I got to talking to Mr. Ma. I don’t think he welcomed visitors to his domain, but once he saw I was genuinely interested, he decided to tolerate me.

“You’ve heard of the land of Japan, across the sea?” he asked, and I said I had. “Well, they have trees like this. They call them bonsai. But they didn’t think of the idea themselves, you know. They stole the idea from us. Almost everything those people have comes from us.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’re the center of the world.” This answer seemed to satisfy him.

“I put the trees out on tables during the summer, and they go into the sheds for the winter. All the penzai trees in the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City come from my nursery.”

“May I return?” I asked, and he didn’t say no.

A few days later I looked in there again. Mr. Ma was busy adjusting the ropes on one of the trees. I watched him from a distance but didn’t interrupt him.

When he’d finished, he beckoned me over. “What do you notice about this tree?” he asked me.

“You have made the branches grow horizontally,” I answered.

“What else?”

“The crown of the tree spreads out like a fan,” I said.

“Good. That is the Beijing style.” He nodded. “When we bind the penzai tree with ropes, we do not stop it growing, but we compress the tree’s growth into a small space. As a result, the tree looks delicate, but it is very strong. All its essence, all its energy, is held contained.”

“That is like a work of art,” I told him. “All the natural energy is forced into a pattern from which it can never escape.”

He’d just started to nod his approval when something else caught his eye. His thin hand grabbed my arm and dragged me down with him as he fell to his knees. Looking towards the entrance, I saw that a single man was standing there, accompanied by two eunuchs. Mr. Ma began the kowtow, so I knew who it must be.

I suppose I’d expected the emperor to be richly dressed in imperial yellow, the way one sees emperors in official portraits; but he wasn’t dressed like that at all. Actually, he was in a loose brown robe tied with a girdle, like a monk or scholar, with a simple red conical hat on his head, the same as the two eunuchs accompanying him. He was still quite a young man, not even thirty, but his face looked strained, his eyes hollow. Was there a nervous tic by one eye? I wasn’t sure. I’ve seen similar expressions on ragged poor people in the street. But to see a youthful emperor in such a state? That was a bit of a shock.

As soon as we were on our feet, I drew back while the emperor addressed himself to the old gardener.

“We need three or four more trees in the apartments, Mr. Ma,” he said very pleasantly. “Will you help me choose them?”

They spent several minutes selecting the trees, the emperor asking questions, and old Mr. Ma answering in a soft voice. I heard