The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (16 page)

“True,” the Queen said. “But do you never find yourself weary? Do you not dream sometimes of another life?”

“What other life?” the wife replied. “This is my duty, and he is my life.”

The Queen persisted. “Then what do you dream of?”

The wife considered. “I dream of having enough money to buy an ox. I could drive the ox in the field instead of pulling the plow myself. And I would get him a fine white robe such as he deserves to have as a poet, instead of the patched rag he wears now. Yes, I might even buy two white robes, and certainly he needs a new hat. I mend the one he wears with hairs I pull out of the tail of the horse our neighbor has, but it would be well for him to have a new hat. This one belonged to his father who died. He has never had a hat of his own, and his head is smaller than his father’s and the hat rests on his ears. But what can I do?”

“Ah, what indeed,” the Queen replied with sympathy.

In the long night that followed inevitably upon the day, she thought about the King for the first time as her husband. Would she be happy to tend him day and night? No, she would not. Nor would he wish her to tend him. He sent for her and she went when he commanded. That is, she went sometimes, but there were also times when she excused herself because the time was not her time. Then he could be angry, and insist that her woman bring him proof. If there were no proof she sent a cloth dipped in the blood of a fowl. Yet, though she did not love him, she did not hate him, and indifferently she went to him. She was a warm woman, and lucky that she was, for the King was ardent, and without love the two of them could mate well enough. But she was slow to be pregnant, especially since now she knew that her son, the heir, would always have the mind of a child. Had she loved the father she might have cherished the child nevertheless. As it was, she sent the boy to a distant part of the palace where servants cared for him. She saw him sometimes playing in some garden, and she spoke to him kindly enough but she left him soon and knew that in truth she was childless and alone.

She lay on her poor bed now in this poor house, and she would not weep. She admonished herself: Remember your vow; you promised your own heart that you would not weep any more, for any cause.

The long night ended and it was the last to be so long. For on the next day, rumor crept through the nation even to the village and then to the poet. The Chinese Empress had sent an army to rescue the Queen. The poet closed the wall doors and put out the lamp on the table. In the darkness he whispered the powerful news to her listening ear.

“The Imperial Chinese armies have marched into the capital! Forty-five hundred men armed not only with good swords, but with foreign weapons! They have overwhelmed the palace guards. They have seized the Regent himself and he is to be taken to China and held there in prison. Only the King is left.”

She heard this in the early morning. The poet’s wife had wakened her and led her into the other room where the poet stood waiting. She could not suppress her trembling. “How true can this be?” she inquired.

“True enough,” he said, “so that I advise your being ready to return.”

Six days the Queen waited and five restless nights. On the seventh day the poet’s wife came silently into the room where she sat embroidering.

“Majesty,” she said, “the royal palanquin is at the door.”

And so saying she knelt and put her forehead down on her folded hands.

The Queen lifted her up then and let herself be dressed and led to the door. The time was evening, at twilight, a lucky time, for the villagers were busy with their meal, and the bearers, with their guard, had come by side roads and along the paths that pass between the fields. Moreover, a light snow fell, and this served to keep people in their houses, the doors closed. Nevertheless, when the Queen appeared the chief guardsman, after obeisance, urged her.

“Majesty, I am commanded to beg you to make haste. We travel by night, and there are enemies among the mountains, in the valleys and behind rocks.”

The Queen acknowledged this by a slight nod. She turned to the poet and his wife and then she stood for a long moment, in pure pleasure. Yes, it was her own palanquin, her private conveyance, a gift from the King at her marriage. It was made of fine wood and the panels were lacquered in gold. Into each panel was a jeweled center of many colored stones and the windows were of Chinese glass, hand-painted. At her desire the King had ordered that at each corner there should be a Confucian cross of gold, “So that,” she had told him, “I shall be safe wherever I travel in the four corners of the world.”

So indeed she had been saved and now she made a sign that the front curtain of the palanquin was to be lifted so that she could enter. And she did enter, and she sat herself down on the thick cushions covered with gold brocade and she smelled the fragrance of the rose jar which was her favorite scent wherever she was. To her it was the atmosphere of home and she breathed it in deeply. Then the curtain was lowered and she felt herself lifted from the earth and carried away into the night

It was night, too, when, days later, she reached the capital. The streets were empty except for the blind. By law only the blind were allowed to walk abroad at night and now they walked in silence, tapping their sticks in front of them upon the cobblestones. Suddenly her mood changed. She felt alone again and cold. She was returning to the palace, but could it be the same? And what of her servingwoman, who had exchanged garments with her, hiding her Queen in her cotton skirt and jacket and taking on herself the royal robes which meant her death? She had been killed, without doubt, and her gentle ghost would haunt the palace forever.

“Has the Queen returned safely?”

It was Sunia’s first question in the morning.

“She has returned,” Il-han replied.

Sunia was superintending the arrival of the first plum blossoms sent in from the forcing house in the country. The blossoms were white and all but scentless, except for a delicate freshness. Before she put her question she had sent the two men servants away.

“You did not want to tell me?” she inquired, busying herself with the arrangement of a branch. Plum trees in the winter, in spring the cherry blossoms, in summer the hanging clusters of the purple wisteria, in autumn the golden poplars, these were the seasons named in flowers and trees.

“You were sleeping like a child,” he replied. “And you know how I dislike waking even a child. Who knows where the soul wanders in sleep? I once saw a man wake demented because soul had left the body and could not find its way back quickly enough to the body.”

She laughed. “And you tease me because I believe in the household spirits!”

The two children entered at this moment, running away from nurse and tutor. The nurse came panting after the younger boy. She caught hold of his jacket and held him fast while Il-han watched.

“It is time this younger one had a tutor of his own,” he observed.

“Not until after the next summer, I beg you,” Sunia said.

The elder son came to her side and leaned against her. He was taller by a head than he had been only a few months ago, but his willful face had not changed. The lively black eyes were still bold. Seeing that his elder brother was with the mother, the younger one approached his father while the nurse stood aside, in silence.

Il-han took the child in his arms. This was a slender child, gentle as a girl, obedient, smiling as he smoothed his father’s cheek with his small warm hand.

“Are you going away again?” he asked.

“Only to the palace,” Il-han replied.

“Why do you go to the palace?”

“Because the Queen has come back.”

The elder ran to him as he spoke. “Shall you wear your court dress, Father?”

“Yes. That is why I came to find your mother. I wish her to help me.”

“I will help you,” the child said. “I and my mother.”

And soon they were busy with his court dress, difficult to wear, and Sunia advised while a man servant and two women fetched the garments and put them on Il-han, standing like an image except that he groaned with impatience. Over his undergarments of white silk they put on him the long blue satin tunic which hung to his ankles and was tied on the right breast by a silk band. The neckband was oval and under it was fastened a collar of white cotton. A belt, rectangular in shape and protruding in front and back, was secured by a strong cord of silk. Below his chest was fastened a plastron finely woven, and made of satin embroidered in solid gold thread. Upon the gold were two cranes in flight, embroidered in silver thread. These two cranes were the symbol of his high rank, for lesser nobles were allowed but one crane. Upon his feet were white cotton socks and black velvet short boots. Upon his head, after his long hair had been combed and freshly coiled, he placed his high black hat shaped like a cone with visor both front and back. At the sides were two winglike ears, symbol of his readiness to hear quickly the royal commands.

When he was dressed and ready to leave for audience, his two sons were awestruck. They stood before him like two young acolytes before a Buddha.

Sunia laughed. “Is he your father or not?” she inquired of her sons.

“He is my father,” the elder one said proudly, but the younger one wept and hid his face in his nurse’s skirts. Meanwhile the tutor had entered in search of his pupil, and Il-han dismissed them all, except Sunia.

“Leave me,” he said to them. “I must clear my mind and prepare my spirit.”

When they had gone, he took Sunia by the hand and led her to the tallest plum tree, now in snowy bloom.

“Sunia,” he said. “Have I your permission to attend the Queen?”

She looked at him amazed. “Are you teasing me?”

“No, I am asking you,” he said.

“And if I refuse? You would go anyway.”

“I would not.”

She gave her sudden ripple of laughter. “There is no man in the whole of Korea like you,” she declared.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, amazed in his turn.

“Because it is true,” she replied, “and now go tell the Queen I command you to attend her. I push you out of the house, so—”

And pretending to push him, she sent him off while she laughed. She laughed, but something stung in her heart, for still she knew the Queen had a power over him that she could not comprehend.

As for Il-han, he went his way in his own palanquin, pondering upon the two women he knew best, his wife and his Queen. In his youth he had known a few women of pleasure, “the accomplished persons,” as they were called, trained to sing and dance and converse with men. They were not indeed women so much as persons, something between man and woman, and apart from both. Yet besides them he had scarcely so much as seen any other woman before he was given Sunia for his wife. Ladies of birth and wealth rode hidden in covered palanquins, and as for the bareheaded women in street and field, no man looked at them unless he wished to be attacked. These common women had a fierce pride in their womanhood and their men stood by them. Only a boy or a man insane would have dared to approach them.

He sighed at such thoughts and wished that he were to enter the palace of the King rather than the Queen. But to the Queen he was committed and these royal two were as far apart as the Empress of China from the Emperor of Japan.

… He perceived as soon as he had entered into the Queen’s presence that she was changed. She had grown thinner, and even the fullness of her brocaded skirt and the short loose jacket did not conceal the slenderness of her body. Her face was less round and girlish than it had been and he was awed anew by her beauty, by the gentle sadness in her eyes which he had always seen lively, and by the pallor of her fair skin. She was quiet when he entered, somewhat distant as she sat upon her thronelike cushion while he stood. For the first time she did not bid him kneel or seat himself. She let him stand, keeping him at a distance for her own reasons.

He made his obeisances nevertheless and gave his greetings and he waited for her to direct what he should say and thus she began:

“Everything here in the palace is the same. And everything is different.”

“May I inquire if your Majesty has conferred with the King?” he asked.

“We have not met,” she replied, “but I have been told that he will send for me today. Therefore I wished first for you to come before me so that I might learn what is the state of the nation as you see it. I know that you will speak the truth. Alas, I can say this of no other living soul. And I know, too, that I can no longer trust even myself. I am not wise enough. Who could have dreamed that I would be forced to flee from my own palace? I have been in a far country far away—very far—very far …”

She looked about the royal room as though she saw it for the first time.

“Majesty,” he said, “I cannot wholly regret that you have seen how your people live, in grass-roofed huts, with meager food.”

“And yet more happy than I am here,” she put in. “The poet’s wife—how fortunate she is to have no greater burden than the day’s work in her small house and all for one man whom she loves!”

“She is fortunate that her life is suited to her nature,” Il-han replied. “And you know very well, Majesty, that you could never live in a small house. You are truebone, and the palace is your home, your people are your responsibility. This is suited to your nature.”

She sighed and smiled and sighed again. “You will not allow me to envy anyone or even to pity myself. Proceed! Enlighten me! What must I know?”

Still she did not invite him to be seated and he stood, his head bowed so that he saw only the hem of her full skirt, beneath which peeped the upturned toes of her gold satin slippers.

“The Regent,” he said, “is now imprisoned in a house in a city not too near Peking. He is comfortable, but he is guarded and he cannot escape. I am in communication with that great Chinese statesman—”

“Li Hung-chang?” she cried with some anger. “Among all Chinese he is one I do not trust!”

Il-han replied firmly, “He is only wise enough to see that, while China will not lose her independence, we may lose ours, for she cannot protect us. For this reason, upon his advice, we must accept the newest western country as our ally. The treaty with the United States, which we have let pause, must now be ratified so that the Americans may send a representative here to the court—”