Following my example, Lan and Lustrous removed their jewelry, cut their hair and changed into servants' clothes, but Pearl refused. She turned to Guang-hsu and whispered in his ear. My son shook his head and remained silent. Pearl pressed. He shook his head again. Pearl was upset.
"Why don't you talk to the Emperor after we get out of the city?" I said to Pearl.
As if she didn't hear me, Pearl continued to press Guang-hsu for a response.
Guang-hsu hesitated. He glanced around, avoiding my eyes.
A messenger sent by Yung Lu advised us to depart immediately. As I walked toward the gate, Pearl pulled Guang-hsu aside. They began to walk back to the Forbidden City.
Li Lien-ying rushed in. "The carriages we ordered are blocked by the Allies! What are we going to do, my lady?"
"We will have to walk," I replied.
"The throne is not leaving." Pearl Concubine threw herself on the ground in front of me. With my son standing silently behind her, Pearl let me know then and there that she and Guang-hsu were saying goodbye. Pearl, in a vermilion satin robe with a matching scarf around her neck, was stunningly beautiful, like an autumn maple tree. When she raised her chin, I saw determination in her eyes.
Li Lien-ying begged me to hurry. "Men are dying trying to defend your exit route, my lady. Bullets are flying and there have been fires and explosions outside the city."
"You may stay, but my son must come," I said to Pearl.
"His Majesty the Emperor will stay," the girl challenged.
Li Lien-ying got between Pearl and me. "Lady Pearl, we either leave now or never! Yung Lu's men are ready to escort the throne!"
"Pearl, this is not the time," I said, raising my voice.
"But the throne has made up his mind," Pearl insisted.
"Get your concubine moving," I told Guang-hsu.
Loud enough for everyone to hear, Pearl yelled, "Fleeing is humiliating and it will imperil the empire!"
"Control yourself, Pearl," I said.
"Emperor Guang-hsu has the right to defend the honor of the dynasty!"
"The Emperor can talk for himself!" I replied angrily.
"His Majesty is too frightened of his mother to speak his mind."
I asked Pearl to stop embarrassing herself. "I understand that the pressure is almost too much to bear. I promise to listen once we get out of the city and reach safer ground."
"No!" Pearl shouted. "Emperor Guang-hsu and I would like to request our release."
"Pearl Concubine! What are you-"
Before I could finish, a shell exploded in the middle of the courtyard. The earth shook. Both wings of my palace roof collapsed.
Amid clouds of dust, eunuchs and ladies in waiting screamed and ran to hide.
Pearl and I stood face to face in the center of the courtyard, engulfed in dust. Guang-hsu stood a few yards away, distraught and steeped in guilt. I realized what Pearl was up to: she believed that the Western powers had come to rescue Guang-hsu. To Pearl, my departure meant Guang-hsu's restoration to power.
Under any other circumstances, I would have considered Pearl's request. I might even have admired her daring. But at this moment all I could see was Pearl's lack of perspective and consideration for my own and my son's safety.
In a way I felt sorry for Pearl, for she trusted in a strength of character Guang-hsu didn't possess. She saw who he might become instead of who he was.
"Take her with us," I instructed Li Lien-ying.
Several eunuchs began to tie Pearl up. She struggled, calling Guang-hsu for help.
He just looked on in despair.
"Guang-hsu," Pearl yelled, "you are the ruler of China, not your mother! The Western powers have promised to treat you with respect. Stand up for yourself!"
Li Lien-ying emptied a cart and the eunuchs hoisted Pearl into it like a sack of rice.
I ordered my son to get into his palanquin, and he obeyed.
Again we began to leave.
Smoke filled the air. The kitchen woks and lids clanged loudly as the bearers walked quickly toward the gate.
The eunuchs pushed the carts while the ladies in waiting walked alongside, carrying my belongings in baskets and cotton bags.
We didn't get far. Before we reached my own gate, Pearl broke free of the cart and ran toward Guang-hsu's palanquin. She pulled down his curtain and hit her head on the side of his palanquin, knocking down one of the bearers.
I stopped my palanquin and yelled her name. I made it clear that she was not going to stay behind.
The girl kissed Guang-hsu's feet, and then in a sudden motion she sprang back toward the Forbidden City.
Li Lien-ying took off after her.
"Leave her alone!" I called.
"My lady, Pearl is running toward the East Gate, where the foreign troops are."
"Let her," I said.
"She could be raped by the foreign soldiers!" "It is her choice."
"My lady, Lady Pearl might also mean to jump into the well."
Against all reason, I ordered our palanquins to turn around. We went after Pearl, back into the city, heading toward the well. We were not fast enough. In front of my eyes, Pearl leapt. But the well opening was too small. Pearl struggled, using her own weight to pull herself down.
"Guang-hsu!" I screamed.
Hiding inside his palanquin, my son made no response. He didn't know what was going on, or didn't want to know.
Using a knife, Li Lien-ying cut loose the longest bamboo stick of my palanquin. With the help of the other eunuchs, the stick was lowered down the well.
Li Lien-ying threw in a rope.
But Pearl was determined to have her way.
Li Lien-ying cursed and threatened. Eunuchs lit fireballs and threw them into the well, trying to smoke the girl out.
"Leave her to her wishes!" Emperor Guang-hsu cried out from his palanquin.
With Pearl's suicide on everyone's mind, we began our seven-hundred-mile journey northwestward and along the Great Wall. We pushed our carts and walked. Guang-hsu sobbed and refused my comfort.
I wondered what would have happened if I had allowed Pearl to have her way. It wouldn't do, I concluded. Once the powers succeeded in "rescuing" Guang-hsu and taking him hostage, we would lose ground in any negotiation. I would be forced to give up everything in exchange for my life, or my son would be forced to order my execution.
"I wouldn't survive either way," Guang-hsu would tell me later.
Nonetheless, my thoughts returned to Pearl as I played out what I might have said to her. She and I had shared the same fantasy, that my son and her husband had within him the power to transform himself. I had labored on that transformation since the day I adopted him. I credited myself for exposing Guang-hsu to Western ideas, and his fascination with Western culture had been my pride. But it hadn't been enough, I would have said.
I would have also let Pearl know that there are truths a mother knows about her child that she can never share with anyone else. The fact that I had been proud of Guang-hsu didn't mean that I didn't know his limitations. I had challenged his potential with all my might. Submitting myself entirely to his call for reform was a personal decision I had made. I had thrown the dice, prepared to lose everything, and I had.
Believing that my son could outmaneuver a man like Ito Hirobumi had been my weakness. Allowing Guang-hsu to appoint Kang Yu-wei as his chief minister was also a mistake on my part. I had known that Kang was not the man he pretended to be, but I'd said yes to please my son.
I had been devastated by my son's suffering. He couldn't accept his own failure, which I considered more mine than his. If I had been murdered on my own son's order, I would have considered it my fate, for I knew how much he loved me.
The most important thing I might have said to Pearl, however, was that my son, her husband, had been up against forces beyond his controclass="underline" the weight of tradition, the blindness and selfishness of power, history itself. China's great wealth and the glories of its civilization had made it complacent and unfamiliar with change. Resource-poor Japan had been forced to expand, move forward, modernize; the Japanese Emperor had merely led the way for a willing people. China had been surpassed and needed to change, but no Emperor alone could move a nation that was only just wakening to the need for change. No man alone-attempts at such change had already claimed the lives of so many: my husband, my son, Prince Kung, others, and I feared that number would soon include another son.