The Emperor's Empty Coat

The emperor of a small bright country owned four hundred coats. He owned seventy hats with feathers, and a room of boots lined up like soldiers. What he did not own was much interest in the country itself.

“The harvest is poor,” said his steward one grey morning.

“Then have the tailors use less gold thread,” said the emperor, and turned back to his mirror.

He changed clothes seven times a day. Each time, he felt a small lift, like a door opening. Each time, the lift faded by dinner.

So when two strangers came to the gate, dust on their boots, he listened.

“We weave a cloth,” said the taller one, “so fine it is invisible to anyone unfit for his post.”

The emperor’s eyes went wide. “To anyone foolish?”

“To anyone who should not be standing where he stands,” said the shorter one.

That was the hook. A coat that sorted people. He would know who was clever and who was not, and he would look magnificent doing it.

“Weave it,” he said. “You will have gold and silk and anything you ask.”

He paid them from the treasury that afternoon. He gave them a room near the great hall, with tall windows and a good lamp. He told no one why. He wanted to watch the faces of his court when they could not see his coat.

***

The two strangers carried in a loom. It was plain wood, older than the palace, and they set it by the window where light fell across the frame.

Then they sat down and did not thread it.

“More silk,” said the taller one to the servant, and the servant brought silk. It went into their bag.

“More gold,” said the shorter one, and the gold went into their pockets.

All night the lamp burned. All night the loom clicked, because the taller one tapped a spoon against the frame, slow and steady, like a shuttle.

“Listen,” he whispered when the servant peeked in. “That is the sound of it.”

The servant saw nothing on the loom. He saw the lamp and the empty frame and two men with bright eyes.

“Beautiful,” he said, because he did not know what else to say.

By morning the strangers had eaten the palace bread and drunk the palace tea. They had folded nothing into a chest and called it finished.

“Tell the emperor it is ready,” said the taller one.

The servant hurried off. Behind him, the loom clicked one more time, just for luck.

The old minister was the first to be sent. He was a careful man who had served three emperors and remembered all their birthdays. He walked to the workroom with his hands behind his back, because that is how careful men walk when they are nervous.

The loom stood by the window. Sunlight lay across the empty frame. The two strangers bowed low and waved at the space between the threads. “Come closer,” said the shorter one. “See how the pattern turns at the corner.” The minister leaned in until his nose almost touched the wood. He saw the frame, the dust, the light. He saw no cloth at all.

His stomach went cold. Am I unfit for my post? he thought. Have I been a fool all these years and never noticed? He straightened his coat and smiled a wide, warm smile. “Magnificent,” he said. “The finest weave I have ever seen. I will tell the emperor at once.”

“Tell him about the colours,” said the taller one. “How they shift in the light.”

“The colours,” said the minister. “Yes. I will mention those especially.” He backed out of the room, bowing, and did not look at the loom again.

That evening he stood before the emperor and described the cloth in great detail, because he had spent the whole walk home inventing details. He spoke of silver threads and green ones, of a pattern like running water, of a border that seemed to glow. The emperor listened with his chin in his hand. “Then I must see it myself,” he said. “Tomorrow, before the parade.”

The minister bowed. “You will not be disappointed, sire.”

***

In the morning the emperor came to the workroom with his whole court behind him. The strangers had swept the floor and opened every curtain, so the room was bright and empty and full of light. “Show me,” said the emperor.

The taller stranger pointed at the loom. “There, sire. The robe. The cape. The train.” The shorter one held up his hands as if carrying something heavy and soft.

The emperor looked. He saw the frame. He saw the window. He saw two men holding nothing at all. His mouth went dry. If I say I see nothing, he thought, everyone will know I am a fool. And a fool cannot rule. He lifted his chin. “It is beautiful,” he said. “I have never seen such work.”

“You will wear it in the parade,” said the shorter one. “The people will see it, and they will know at once who is wise and who is not.”

“Yes,” said the emperor. “Dress me.”

The strangers moved around him, lifting air over his shoulders, tying nothing at his waist, spreading a train behind him that was not there. The court watched and nodded. The old minister nodded hardest of all.

“How light it is,” said the emperor, turning this way and that. “Like wearing a summer morning.”

“Exactly so, sire,” said the taller one, and winked at the shorter one, who did not wink back because he was busy bowing.

The emperor walked to the door with his arms held out from his sides. “Prepare the parade,” he said. “I want every street. I want every window full.” The court hurried off to do it, and nobody looked at the loom again.

The parade began at noon. Drums went first, then horns, then the emperor himself, walking with his arms held out from his sides because there was nothing to hold them back. His chin was high. His steps were slow and even, the way a man walks when he is being watched. Both strangers walked behind him, lifting a train that only they could see, and every few steps the shorter one whispered, “Careful of the hem, sire,” and the emperor lifted his foot over nothing.

Windows were full. People leaned out and clapped. A woman near the front said loudly, “Look at that cloth,” and her neighbor said, “I have never seen anything like it,” and neither of them looked at each other. A boy on his father’s shoulders said, “But he isn’t—“ and his father said, “Hush,” and put a hand over the boy’s mouth, gently, the way you cover a candle.

The crowd cheered louder. It was easier to cheer than to look. In the third street an old woman selling pears said, “That is the finest suit I have ever seen,” and then she squinted, and then she went back to her pears.

A small girl stood at the edge of the road, holding her mother’s hand. She had been told to wave. She did not wave. She watched the emperor’s bare knees go past, and his bare arms, and his bare feet, and she said, quite clearly, in the voice children use when they have just worked something out:

“He has no clothes on.”

Her mother said, “What?”

The girl said it again, louder. “He has no clothes on at all.”

The crowd went quiet, and then someone laughed. Then someone else laughed. Then the whole street was laughing, and the laughter ran ahead of the emperor like water down a hill.

***

The emperor heard it. He heard the first laugh, and he heard the girl, and he kept walking. His arms stayed out. His chin stayed up. But his ears went red, and he walked a little faster, and then a little straighter, as if straightness itself could be a coat.

“They are laughing at the cloth,” said the taller stranger, hurrying beside him. “They do not understand it. That is all.”

“Yes,” said the emperor. “That is all.”

But he looked down, just once, and saw his own feet on the stones, and his own toes, and the small shadow his body made. He had never seen his own shadow so clearly. It looked like a person.

The parade turned the last corner. The strangers were gone by then, both of them, slipped away between two houses with the purse and the praise. Nobody saw them go. The court walked behind the emperor with their eyes on the ground, and the old minister walked last, and the old minister was crying a little, out of shame and out of something like relief.

At the palace gate the emperor stopped. The crowd had followed, still laughing, still warm, not cruel. A man called out, “Long live the emperor!” and then another did, and the girl from the roadside was there too, riding on her father’s shoulders now, watching him.

The emperor turned to his court. “Bring me my ordinary coat,” he said. “The grey one.”

A servant ran. The emperor stood in the cold and waited, and he did not cover himself, and he did not look away from the crowd. When the coat came he put it on himself, button by button, which he had not done in years.

Then he walked inside, and the doors closed, and he sat down at his desk, where the papers about roads and taxes had been waiting all this time. He pulled one toward him and began to read.