The Concubine Read Free Page B

could not wait around all day on an emperor’s whim.”
    “Treasonous dogs!” JiYue spat, earning a smile from the girl. “Come, sit with me. I will say that we were carried here together.”
    The girl shook her head and refused to move from her trunks. “I couldn’t! Not in an imperial palanquin!”
    “Of course you can!” But no matter how much Ji Yue waved, the girl did not move. Finally Ji Yue went to her. “What is your name?”
    “Li Fei,” she answered. Then she leaned forward and confided her difficulty. “Mama says I must not sit or I will crinkle the silk.”
    Ji Yue smiled. “I understand. But there will be a great deal of standing to come. Wouldn’t it be better to risk a few creases rather than faint when the emperor at last sees you? And besides,” she added in an undertone, “your mother could not have guessed that the master of the festival would be this tardy!”
    That brought a giggling nod from Li Fei. “Then I shall gratefully join you.”
    So began JiYue’s first friendship within the competition. Ji Yue learned that Li Fei was from an outlying province, that she had many brothers and sisters, but that she was the only daughter of an age to apply as consort. And that she was terribly, terribly nervous about life in the Forbidden City. The next hour flew by as Ji Yue relaxed for the first time since the call went out for eligible daughters. Then a gong sounded. Loud and clear, it silenced everyone who loitered outside the gate.
    “Do you think it is time?” Li Fei asked.
    Ji Yue nodded, her own heart beating painfully in her throat. They both stood, but it was difficult to see, harder still to hear as a eunuch cried out orders. Fortunately, the news was whispered from servant to mistress to porter and beyond. In time, all understood that the girls were to present themselves one by one to the head eunuch, the imperial dowager consort, Kang Ci, and that playboy courtier Sun Bo Tao, master of the festival. The three would decide who was allowed to enter and who would be sent home.
    “But that will take hours,” Li Fei murmured. Ji Yue agreed. So they returned to the palanquin to sit longer, waiting for their inspection. Both tried to talk, but their hearts were not in it, their attention turned to the sounds that came from the front gate.
    At first they heard nothing but the paid criers’ announcements. “Fan Mei Lin is accepted! Fan Mei Lin enters the Forbidden City. Fan Mei Lin!”
    Next came the refused, the sobbing, the wretched, even a few who had fainted dead away. No crier announced them, but whispers traveled quickly. One had been rejected for a limp, another for hair on her neck. Some had breasts too shallow to nurse a babe or ill-fated ears or feet too large. The last charge struck terror in Ji Yue’s heart. Manchurian women were forbidden to bind their feet; that was a characteristic of the defeated Han people. And yet, after one hundred and fifty years of dynastic rule, the Manchu men liked tiny feet. Always the men looked to see the women’s shoes.
    Ji Yue looked down at her shoes. Like the curtain of ivory beads that obscured her face, her feet were adorned with jade and pearl drops. They were, in fact, her most expensive attire. She and her mother had planned this, since her large feet were her most troublesome attribute. But with feet surrounded by jewels, any man would see wealth, not size. Just as any man looking at her face would see ivory beads and think beauty without judging the face beneath. Or so they hoped.
    “We are next,” Li Fei whispered.
    Ji Yue nodded, then gripped her new friend’s hand. After a quick word to the porters to mind the luggage, the two women walked hand in hand to the front gate.
    There was a row of imperial eunuchs, dressed in finery meant to impress. Each was designated inspector of a certain aspect: walk, skin, teeth, ears and yes, feet. A tally eunuch walked with each girl, adding results on an abacus. One count for acceptable