Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

end of which hung thick satin curtains of imperial yellow with dragons embroidered in scarlet silk. Behind them were heavy doors of carved wood. The Chief Eunuch put the curtains aside, he opened the doors, and motioned to her to enter. This time she went alone. The curtains fell behind her and she stood before the Emperor.
    He sat upright in the huge imperial bed upon a raised platform. This bed was of bronze, the pillars of bronze, and upon them were carved climbing dragons. From the top of these pillars, connected by a framework of bronze, there hung nets of gold thread, woven into patterns of fruits and flowers among curling five-clawed dragons. The Emperor sat upon a mattress covered with yellow satin and his legs were covered by a quilt of yellow satin embroidered in dragons, and behind him were high cushions of the same yellow satin to support him as he sat erect. He wore a bed shirt of red silk, sleeved to his wrists and high about his neck, and his smooth slender hands were folded. She had seen him only the once when he chose her and then he wore his royal headdress. Now his head was bare and his hair was short and black. His face was long and narrow, sunken beneath a forehead too full and overhanging. They gazed at each other, man and woman, and he motioned to her to come near. She walked to him slowly, her eyes fixed on his face. When she was near she stopped again.
    “You are the first woman who ever came into this chamber with her head lifted,” he said in a high thin voice. “They are always afraid to look at me.”
    Sakota, she thought, Sakota had surely come in with her head drooping. Where was Sakota? In what room did she sleep not far away? Sakota had stood here, submissive, frightened, speechless.
    “I am not afraid,” Yehonala said in her soft definite voice. “See, I have brought my little dog.”
    The forgotten concubines had told her how to address the Son of Heaven. One must never speak before him as though he were only a mortal—Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the Highest, the Most Venerable, these were the words of address. But Yehonala behaved toward the Emperor as though he were a man.
    She stroked the little dog’s smooth head again and looked down. “Until I came here,” she said, “I have never had a dog like this. I used to hear about lion dogs, and now I have one for my own.”
    The Emperor stared at her as though he did not know what to say to such childish talk.
    “Come, sit on the bed beside me,” he commanded her. “Tell me why you are not afraid of me.”
    She stepped up on the platform and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him, and she held her little dog. The small creature sniffed the perfumed air and sneezed, and she laughed. “What is this perfume at which my dog sneezes?” she inquired.
    “It is camphorwood,” the Emperor said. “But tell me why you are not afraid.”
    She felt his eyes were upon her, searching her face, her lips, her hands as she stroked the little dog, and she trembled with sudden chill, though it was midsummer and the dawn wind had not yet risen. She bent her head again as if to see the dog, then she forced herself to look up at the man and she forced herself to speak sweetly and shyly and still as though she were a child.
    “I know my destiny,” she said.
    “And how do you know your destiny?” he demanded. He began to be amused, his thin lips curving upward, his shadowed eyes less cold.
    “When I was summoned from my home,” she said in the same shy sweet voice, “I went into the court of my uncle’s house, who is my guardian because my father is dead, and I went to the shrine that stands beneath the pomegranate tree there, and I prayed to my goddess, the Kuan Yin. I lit the incense and then—”
    She paused, her lips quivered, she tried to smile.
    “And then?” the Emperor inquired, his heart enchanted by the beautiful face, so soft, so young.
    “There was no wind that day,” she said. “The smoke from the burning incense rose