A Gift Returned

In her gilded cage at the Summer Palace, Cixi had settled into a routine of patient, venomous waiting. The reports she received daily from her remaining loyalists in the Forbidden City were confusing, a frustrating tapestry of conflicting information. One day, the boy Emperor would appear pale and lethargic, barely able to sit through his lessons. The next, he would seem bright and full of an unnatural energy, engaging his tutors in exhausting debates.

Cixi attributed these inconsistencies to the slow, unpredictable work of the poisons. She imagined them seeping into his system, a rising tide of sickness that ebbed and flowed, but was inexorably pulling him under. Her poison master, the unassuming gardener Old Wu, assured her that this was the nature of their work. It was not the swift strike of an axe, but the slow, patient growth of a root that would eventually split the stone. Cixi, a woman who had built her career on patience, was content to wait.

One afternoon, a grand procession arrived from the Forbidden City. It was a series of gifts, sent by the Emperor himself as a gesture of "filial piety and concern" for the well-being of the retired Empress Dowager. Cixi received the news with a flicker of triumphant satisfaction. She saw it as a clear sign of the boy's weakening spirit, a sick child instinctively reaching out to the maternal figure who had once dominated his world. She ordered the gifts to be brought to her personal chambers and pavilions.

The gifts were all beautiful, living things, tokens of life and vibrancy. The first was a series of large, ornate porcelain pots containing magnificent, flowering orchids, their petals a cascade of vibrant color. The second was a large, elegantly crafted cage holding a dozen rare songbirds from the southern provinces, their feathers a jewel-toned rainbow. The third was a heavy, bronze brazier, intricately decorated, accompanied by several boxes of a special, fragrant incense, a blend said to be used by monks to aid in meditation and bring about a state of calm.

Cixi was delighted. The gifts were not only beautiful, but they were also a public acknowledgment of her status, a sign to the court that the boy still revered her. She ordered the orchids to be placed throughout her bedchamber to purify the air. The cage of songbirds was hung on her favorite veranda, their cheerful song meant to lift her spirits. And she commanded that the new incense be burned in her presence every evening to help her sleep.

The gifts were, of course, weapons. They were the very poisons she had been sending to the Emperor, now collected, concentrated, and returned to sender with a cold, precise irony.

The operation had been masterminded by Ying Zheng and executed by his two former assassins. Over the past weeks, Ying and Lotus had meticulously intercepted and collected the toxic agents meant for their master. The poisonous pollen that had been dusted onto the Emperor's bed curtains was carefully gathered and used to feed the beautiful songbirds, rendering their droppings, which would dry and turn to dust in their cage, a potent respiratory irritant.

The soil of the exquisite orchids was not soil at all, but a carefully prepared mixture of dirt and the powdered roots of a plant that, while harmless to the orchid, would release a slow-acting neurotoxin into the air as the plant was watered and the soil warmed by the sun. It would take weeks, but it would lead to trembling hands and clouded thoughts.

And the calming incense was the most diabolical of all. Shen Ke's analysis of the incense burned in the Emperor's own chambers had revealed a complex blend of soporifics mixed with a derivative of a hallucinogenic mushroom. It was designed to cause deep, unrestful sleep, filled with vivid nightmares and paranoia. Ying and Lotus had simply prepared a new batch, tripling the concentration of the hallucinogenic compound.

Ying Zheng was launching his counter-offensive on the same silent, biological front Cixi had chosen. He would give her a taste of her own insidious medicine. He would not just defend himself; he would turn her own apartments into a beautiful, fragrant poison trap. He would amplify the very symptoms he had once accused her of having, transforming the subtext of his "innocent" observation to the French doctor into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The first effects were subtle. Cixi began to wake in the mornings feeling unrested, her head fuzzy, her memory of the night filled with unsettling, half-forgotten dreams. She dismissed it as the damp lake air. She developed a persistent, dry cough, which she attributed to the changing seasons, never suspecting the beautiful birds that sang so sweetly on her veranda.

Her moods, already volatile, became more erratic. She would fly into a rage at a servant for a minor infraction. Her thoughts would drift during meetings with Li Lianying, her concentration failing her. She complained to her physicians of a growing sense of anxiety and a feeling that she was constantly being watched. They prescribed her calming teas and tonics, which only served to make her more lethargic.

Old Wu, her poison master, was mystified. He would visit her, disguised as a simple gardener, and she would demand to know why the Emperor's health seemed so erratic while her own was beginning to fail. He had no answers. He tested the air, the water, the food in her kitchens, and found nothing he could identify. He was a master of his own poisons, but he did not recognize their scent when they were returned to him in a different form.

Cixi, a woman whose entire life had been defined by her iron will and sharp intellect, found herself trapped in a fog of confusion and ill health. She began to wonder if the French doctor had been right. Was she truly sick? Was her mind, her greatest weapon, beginning to betray her? She would stare at her reflection in her bronze mirror for hours, looking for signs of decay, her famous self-confidence slowly, inexorably being eroded from within.

The beautiful gifts from her "loving nephew" continued to arrive. Each one was another nail in the coffin of her well-being, another turn of the screw in a campaign of psychological torture so subtle and so perfect that she could never prove its existence. She was being besieged in her own fortress, not by an army, but by flowers, by songbirds, and by the very air she breathed.