A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones Read Free Book Online Page B

sill, around the spirit wall. There was a boy, right in front of him, eyes wide and face as round and tight-skinned as a plum. The nursemaids around him fell to the ground in reverence.
    â€œWho was it?” he gasped to Geng Tie, now lurching up behind him.
    Geng Tie understood. He meant the woman. “It was a little slave from Guizhou,” he answered. “Right after Spring Festival six years ago. We hid her in this court until she delivered.”
    Vaguely, Xuantong recalled the encounter. He had been walking back to his quarters from an audience with his ministers. His retainers walked a short distance behind. He surprised a girl with a covered bowl stepping out of an arched gateway. Their eyes met and there was an insouciant smile to her, a careless light of laughter, until she realized who he was and froze. He found this diverting. She set the bowl on the sill and made to lower herself to
koutou,
but he stepped close to her and stopped her. He didn’t want a reverence from her. Instead, he parted her skirts and slid one hand between her legs. He could feel her trembling. After a minute he pulled her skirts all the way up. He lifted her a few inches to sit on the edge of the stone wall, and he favored her, without thinking about it, opening her jacket to play with her at the same time. It only took a few minutes. The eunuchs stood back on the stone path, watching.
    A quick pleasure with a slave. He had forgotten it. “Does she still live?”
    The eunuch nodded.
    â€œElevate her rank. And the child . . .” Xuantong considered. Continue to keep him a secret, or name him crown prince right away? He had a son!
    Now, approaching the Temple of Heaven, he felt connected to all the earth for the first time. He watched the pale iridescence come alive on the marble under the rising sun. Flawless, he thought. As perfect as the sacred porcelains waiting on the altars within: the red, yellow, blue, and white, colors of the sun, the earth, heaven, and the moon. Perfect as his paintings, his jades and bronzes, but most especially his porcelains. Porcelain lived forever. And the potters at Jingdezhen were doing magnificent work, the best since the reign of Xuande. He was about to commission them to make a set of wine cups, in honor of his son. The prince.
    Xuantong saw a hen-and-chicks motif, after the Song painter Huang Chuan. It was a supreme paternal symbol. And it echoed the design of a much more ancient ritual cup pictured in the Book of Rites. The cups, the chickens scratching in the dirt with their little babies all around, would invoke the love of a parent for his children, of an emperor for his subjects. They would be truly celestial.
    At last the deep tolling bell ceased. He glanced across the great expanse of trees to the tiled roofs of the capital. He knew that throughout the city, men, women, and children had heard the bell and emerged from their homes. They would be standing in their lanes now, facing the Temple of Heaven, facing him, the Son of Heaven. He smiled. His face was lit with an easy benevolence. In his mind’s eye he saw the chicken cups.
    â€œI found a fake,” she blurted out the instant Zheng picked up the phone. She’d been beside herself waiting to call him. She knew exactly when he got to his office, when he clicked the lid off his steaming mug of tea. She knew just when he’d be ready to pick up his private line.
    â€œA fake what?”
    â€œA Chenghua chicken cup! Can you believe it?”
    â€œHmm,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Audacious.”
    â€œOh, it’s good too,” she assured him, “it’s beautiful. The clay color is fantastic.”
    â€œHow did you know?”
    â€œThe painting—the painting is awfully good. But it’s too intentional. You know.”
    â€œOh yes.”
    â€œAnd the reign mark is too clear. Too nice. You know, the artist thought of everything. Even the wear marks are random. But