I had not realized that Scribe of Loyalty could feel jealousy, and his admission filled me with joy. I would have liked to ask his forgiveness and to admit that I was ashamed to let him touch my tired, old skin. I would have liked to reveal to him the secret that I kept hidden: I despaired as I grew old. My heart was calling out for his help, but my pride made me respond with a sigh: “What can I do to improve your standing? The Temple of Ten Thousand Elements has brought you wealth and notoriety. Twice I have appointed you commander of my imperial armies to fight the Tibetans, and I have given you the glorious title of Great General of the Invincible Defense and that of Lord of the Kingdom of Liang. But, as you are unable to rise early, you never attend the morning salutation. How do you expect to earn the Court’s respect if you do not respect its constraints and discipline?”

“Majesty,” Scribe of Loyalty interrupted me, “you know very well that I am not interested in power. If you care for me, if you love me, I ask just one thing of you: give me status. Marry me! Name me your Imperial Husband!”

I was so astonished by what I heard that I could find no words to reply. An emperor’s wife received the Empress’s Seal, but could a female emperor raise a man to the position of Imperial Husband? If an empress were considered to be the mother of the Empire and the most perfect incarnation of feminine virtue, would an imperial husband be the father of the Empire and master of all men? If Scribe of Loyalty received prostrations from the Court and the veneration of an entire people, would he not foster a desire to reign, would he not be tempted to usurp power? The people would never tolerate the image of a former drug peddler to be associated with me. How could I renounce the tomb of my glorious late husband, Celestial Emperor, Sovereign Lordly Ancestor, and lie down in the grave of an ordinary man?

My voice became hard and surly as if I were addressing a minister: “This may be what you dream of, but it is impossible.”

“Majesty,” he insisted, “you have encouraged widows to remarry; you have scorned tradition and created new laws. You have just inaugurated a dynasty and ascended to the throne. An Emperor has an Empress, four wives, nine Concubines, nine Elegant Ones, nine Beauties, nine Talented Ones, twenty-seven Forests of Treasure, twenty-seven Imperial Serving Women, twenty-seven Gatherers, and a huge Inner Palace to satisfy his desires. And you have just one lover whom you have forced to become a monk and who has become a laughing stock for the entire world! Majesty, you need to take just one more step to be equal to a man. Marry me! I will abandon my freedom.” “It is late. I have to rise at dawn. We must sleep.” “Majesty, just one word. Do you want me as a husband?” My heart felt the chill of a strange premonition. Instead of replying I turned my back to him. He shook me and wept as he held me in his arms. Half way through the night, he sat up with a start, leapt to the ground, and disappeared.

While I sat on my raised throne the following morning, I was distracted. During the Celebration of the Double Sun, my nephew Piety presented me with a petition of five thousand signatures in which State officials and common people begged me to take the title of Sacred Emperor who Turns the Golden Wheel. All this glory was now my enemy: I was a divine sovereign, Master of the World, but I was losing my hair, my teeth, and my strength like any lowly creature. The Sacred Emperor who kept time and the fortunes of this world turning was also a prisoner of the wheel that would ultimately lead to downfall. Life, like love, strengthens and betrays, soothes and punishes. I was a usurper. I had stolen a crown, an epoch, a transient illusion.

SCRIBE OF LOYALTY was sulking and avoiding me. He paid no attention to my summons and lay low in his monastery.

In the arms of the imperial doctor Shen Nan Qiu, I found the confidence of which Scribe of Loyalty had robbed me. His body was docile, discreet; it soothed my anxieties and eased my troubles. The news spread through the Forbidden City, and the Court made no effort to hide its joy in seeing the monk losing my favor. The dignitaries who, only the day before, had been proud to call themselves his friends were now eager to speak ill of him. It seems that Scribe of Loyalty, the Lord of the Kingdom of Liang, Great General of the Left of the Invincible Defense, thought of himself as a founding force in my dynasty and chose to play the role of master in the Monastery of the White Horse. He fortified its walls and recruited thousands of young monks who were experts in martial arts. The clash of bamboo poles and war cries rang out all day long: this was Scribe of Loyalty having fun training his soldier-monks. When he came out of his temple and went into the city, he surrounded himself with the most beautiful and vigorous of his disciples. His horse would be decked in a harness of gold set with gems, and around him he would have a troop of young monks carrying the rod of iron and the long saber, marching in time. When they came across Taoists and devout followers of other religions, on a nod from their master, they would attack them, shaving their heads and forcing them to convert to Buddhism. It was not long before the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen, who loathed my lover, begged me to charge him for abducting and sequestering women, for forming an illegal army, and for attempting to usurp power.

Scribe of Loyalty came before me only when he had been beseeched through three imperial summons accompanied by my handwritten orders. I felt my stomach contract when he came into the room: I had not seen him forthree months and had forgotten how beautiful he was.He stood head and shoulders about the other men and walked with a swagger like the heroes of ancient mythology. When he prostrated himself, I noticed that his face was thinner and that his forehead bore the mark of melancholy. I was overwhelmed by emotion: Scribe of Loyalty was suffering!

I indulged him by offering him a seat. Then I asked him gently about his life, and he answered me in brief sentences. I caressed him in my mind. His eyes lingered neither on my face, which had been smoothed of all wrinkles by the latest unguent concocted by the doctor Shen Nan Qiu, nor on the very open neckline of my gown. He seemed to look through me and stare glumly at the screen behind my seat. Our love was damned: the forty years that lay between us were drawing us slowly but inexorably to a tragic conclusion. But, at my age, I had no time for tears. He was the one my desire had chosen!

I would have like to tell him that Shen Nan Qiu had never had permission to penetrate me. The fifty year old had served me as a sleeping draft and a bed-warmer. The affair had been a game, just to have revenge for Scribe of Loyalty’s infidelities, to make him jealous. I would have liked to tell him that I was disappointed by my sons and felt that my grandchildren were strangers, that my nephews could think of nothing but taking my place on the throne, and that he alone-he, Little Treasure, fished out of the mysterious river of destiny-brought light into my life. I was prepared to offer him a flock of young women to keep him close to me as he had been before, like an exuberant talkative child.

I was unable to put all this in words and was afraid that he would blackmail me; instead I spoke of the accusations leveled at him. First he paled, then he sneered“ ”So it is true then, what they say about the doctor Shen Nan Qiu. If you want to be rid of me, nothing could be easier. If you hand me over to Lai Jun Chen, I will tell him everything without being tortured: your obsessions, your fears, your weaknesses, your secret fantasies. You would do better to have me killed straight away!“

Seeing that he had flushed scarlet in his indignation, I smiled.