The Disease Named Han (2)
Liu Hong had named no crown prince.
He was twenty-three this year. Since taking the throne at twelve, he had sired sons by the empress and by any number of consorts — and every one of them had died young.
The early death that came for a frail infant was perhaps the one justice that made no distinction between imperial blood and common clay. Liu Hong, it seemed, did not see it that way.
Why is it only the princes who die, and never the princesses?
Is someone trying to cut off Our line of succession?
Or... is the imperial palace of Luoyang itself a cursed place?
Liu Hong had never once opened his mouth on the subject, so all of this was the eunuchs' conjecture. But then, guessing at the emperor's heart was the eunuchs' work.
When at last Liu Hong had a son by Honored Lady He, the eunuchs memorialized that the palace itself might be the trouble. Regular Attendant Zhang Rang was the first to put that counsel forward. Liu Hong thereupon sent Honored Lady He and the boy out of the palace — to the house of a Daoist named Shi Zimiao. For that reason, people came to call the imperial prince Liu Bian Marquis Shi.
Why a Daoist's house, of all places?
Some guessed it was to escape a curse on the palace, and they embroidered the thought with talk of restless grudges left behind by Dou Wu, Empress Dowager Dou, Dong Chong, and the others the emperor had killed. Others guessed it was to shield the boy from Empress Song's jealousy. Those who had no taste for curses and wandering spirits preferred that version.
After all, once Dong Chong was dead, the office of Capital Commandant had gone to the empress's father — the emperor's own father-in-law, Song Feng. A clan like the Songs could reach anywhere inside the palace they pleased, so of course the emperor would send his son Liu Bian and Honored Lady He outside the walls to keep them safe... or so that particular guess ran.
In the carriage bound for Shi Zimiao's house, the eunuch Zhang Rang shook his head.
"Who would dare presume to know the Son of Heaven's mind?"
Last year — the year 178 — Liu Hong had killed his father-in-law, Capital Commandant Song Feng. Empress Song was deposed, and she died in some forgotten room in a corner of the palace. The story put about was that she had fretted herself into a sickness of the heart and perished of it. Zhang Rang, who knew better, shuddered at the cruelty of a man who would murder even the wife he had shared a bed with.
"Terrifying."
Wang Fu had had a hand in the deaths of Empress Song and her father Song Feng — Wang Fu, who two years earlier had come crawling home from the failed campaign against Tanshihuai.
How did Wang Fu win back the emperor's favor?
Zhang Rang was not in the least curious. He could see it plain. Liu Hong meant to let Wang Fu labor under the illusion that imperial favor had been restored — and then, one day, to have him die suddenly in despair, never even knowing why.
The purge of the Song clan had been a settled matter from the start. It was about the struggle for power inside what Liu Hong was forever calling our House of Hejian — about who had the standing to inherit the throne.
The story ran back seven years, to 172.
Seven years earlier, when Liu Hong was sixteen.
"The Prince of Bohai, Liu Kui, is plotting treason, Your Majesty!"
Wang Fu was prostrate at Liu Hong's feet, his voice raw with urgency. Liu Hong showed no particular reaction. Only after a long while did he dig a finger in his ear and answer.
"The Prince of Bohai is the late Emperor's younger brother, isn't he?"
"He is, Your Majesty."
"We succeeded as the late Emperor Huan's adopted son, so by the laws of kinship the Prince of Bohai is Our uncle. An uncle plotting rebellion... now that's a wretched business."
Liu Hong's head tipped slightly to one side.
"Wang Fu."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"This isn't a frame-up, is it?"
Zhang Rang never forgot the way Wang Fu's back shuddered in that instant.
"H-how would this servant dare slander a prince of the blood before Your Majesty!"
A laugh rang through the hall — the clear, bright laugh of a sixteen-year-old boy.
"You took a bribe from Liu Kui."
The shuddering back froze solid. Watching it, Zhang Rang wanted to weep. Terror filled the audience chamber to the rafters. Only Liu Hong's voice went on, delighted with itself.
"He got stripped of Bohai and paid you to put him back, but you didn't actually do a thing — the late Emperor restored him on his own. So of course you never saw the rest of the money. Right, Wang Fu?"
"Y-Your Majesty..."
"You take the money, you do the work. Greed should match the labor. You get greedy without doing the work, and, well... what am I supposed to think of you?"
Liu Hong walked down to Wang Fu and stroked his head. It looked for all the world as if he were deciding how best to take it off.
"You work as much as We favor you. Understood?"
"Y-y-y-yes, Your Majesty! This servant will give his life! No — no, even if only a ghost is left when the life is gone—!"
"If ghosts could work, We'd have plenty of jobs for the late Dou Wu. We're satisfied if you lot just work as hard as the wealth and power We've given you."
Wang Fu could find no answer. He ground his forehead into the floor. Liu Hong tossed the next words at the back of his skull.
"Wang Fu."
"Y-yes, Your Majesty."
"This talk of the Prince of Bohai plotting treason is a little hard to swallow — but Liu Kui already plotted once, in the late Emperor's time. Didn't he?"
"H-he did..."
"Back then the late Emperor couldn't bring himself to kill his own brother, so he only cut the rank of the fief. Then Liu Kui bribed you to put him back up as Prince of Bohai in Jizhou."
"Th-this servant will surrender every unclean coin he took—"
"Nah, keep it. It's not like We can't spend it freely just because you call it yours."
"Yes, Your Majesty! This servant's body, heart, and fortune are all Your Majesty's!"
"A man who's plotted treason once plotting it again... that's only natural, isn't it?"
"The Prince of Bohai believes that he, as the late Emperor's brother, should have inherited the throne—!"
"Ah, he can say whatever he likes. What We care about is... the fact that the Prince of Bohai's consort is the empress's aunt."
In other words, the sister of Song Feng, the emperor's father-in-law. The House of Hejian and the Songs were bound that tightly. In that instant both Wang Fu and Zhang Rang understood where the emperor's will was pointed: use Wang Fu's greed as the opening, and smash the Songs — who, after the Dou clan, were angling to become the next imperial in-laws.
"If we kill the Prince of Bohai we have to kill his consort too. The empress will be so very sad."
Meaning the political cost of stretching the affair all the way to the empress's deposition was still too high.
"We'll say this happened because of your slander, Wang Fu."
Meaning the Song clan's hatred and rage were all Wang Fu's to swallow. The emperor was playing the benighted ruler — wielding every scrap of power there was to wield, and leaving the eunuchs to carry the blame.
"Y-Your Majesty...?"
Wang Fu looked up in shock. The emperor twisted his fingers into his hair.
"If you won't do it, cough up everything you swallowed."
Five years later, in 177, Wang Fu found himself in a position to answer for the failure of the expedition against Tanshihuai. Empress Song fanned the flames. Eunuchs who envied Wang Fu's place whispered in the right ears. The empress's father, Capital Commandant Song Feng, moved his kinsmen and even a portion of the Qingliu.
The emperor's blade, however, turned on Empress Song instead.
"The empress summoned a sorcerer inside the palace to cast curses... this servant is truly unworthy to speak of it, but..."
Wang Fu had the Song clan's hatred concentrated on his own head, so he hurried to slander them first. Whether the slander was taken up or not was Liu Hong's to decide — but Wang Fu no longer had the mind to weigh what came before or after. He had to survive.
Then, last year, in 178, testimony arrived to the effect that someone had hurled a curse at the imperial prince Liu Bian, only for the Daoist Shi Zimiao's power to turn it aside in the nick of time. As with the household of Liu Kui, Prince of Bohai, the household of Empress Song was slaughtered without mercy.
Thus, across some six years, Emperor Liu Hong had cleaned the board of every rival who might call himself the true head of the House of Hejian — and of every clan that had newly aspired to become imperial in-laws.
The eunuch Zhang Rang was on his way now to look upon the result.
"Wang Fu's usefulness is spent, then."
He murmured it with a bitterness that was half pleasure.
When they reached the house of the Daoist Shi Zimiao, two carriages were already waiting. Familiar carriages. Inside, Zhang Rang found his fellow eunuchs Feng Xu and Xu Feng already arrived. They exchanged a glance of greeting and went in, and they bowed to a seven-year-old child and the mother seated behind him.
The son of Emperor Liu Hong and Honored Lady He: Marquis Shi, Liu Bian. And behind him, Honored Lady He herself. She answered Zhang Rang's respects with a face that was genuinely glad to see him.
"Thanks to you, Regular Attendant, this mother and child still live."
That Honored Lady He had become Liu Hong's consort at all was owing to Zhang Rang's patronage — though behind that patronage stood the emperor's own command: Find a beauty, but pick her from a house too lowly to dare become imperial in-laws. The moment Zhang Rang saw that the emperor had his eye on Honored Lady He and the He clan, he approached her younger sister and took her as the wife of his adopted son — his own daughter-in-law. The gladness in Honored Lady He's face, then, was aimed at a benefactor on the one hand and at a kinsman by marriage on the other.
"Seeing the two of you in such good health gladdens even this wretched eunuch's heart."
Zhang Rang, Feng Xu, and Xu Feng withdrew from Honored Lady He and Liu Bian's quarters and made for another part of the mansion. The troops who guarded the house so tightly had been chosen by Zhang Rang and his fellow eunuchs; no one barred their way.
"Master Shi."
At the call, a door opened and a Daoist stepped out.
"Ah. You've come. Please, this way."
The room Shi Zimiao led them into was a clutter of emblems of the Dao. Every vessel and implement reeked of the same school, and through it all the smell of medicinal herbs stuffed the nose until it ached. At the edge of Zhang Rang's vision, the characters for Taiping flickered into view.
Can they be trusted? He still could not be sure. But what was he to do? A eunuch was nothing more than the go-between between the emperor and these people.
There was one more Daoist in the room.
"I am called Ma Yuanyi."
That was all the man offered, his body held back in the shadows. Not a shred of flattery toward eunuchs who held power. Whether "Yuanyi" was a courtesy name — whether it was even his true name — there was no telling. Zhang Rang, Feng Xu, and Xu Feng voiced no complaint. This was not a place for such trifles.
"A great plague has spread, so the Regular Attendants are to tour the provinces distributing medicine... Our Taiping Dao has been faithfully carrying out the mission His Majesty bestowed."
So Ma Yuanyi made his report of results.
"It is not enough merely to swell your following. An organization must be built. At the very least, one that can smash the private troops of the great clans — and the 'righteous militias' those troops would form the core of — in a single stroke."
"Of course. ...But for that we must win still more of the people's hearts. Medicine, yes — and grain as well..."
"The hearts of the people are nothing but a means. Is this Great Worthy Teacher of yours taking the matter seriously?"
Ma Yuanyi's face twisted with a displeasure no other man would have dared wear in front of Zhang Rang.
"The Great Worthy Teacher devotes himself to this cause more than any other living soul."
"We have given everything there was to give. We even conceded letting your Daoist raise Marquis Shi as a 'Daoist emperor,' did we not?"
Zhang Rang leaned in toward the table.