"I am of the blood of the house of Koryu," I told the Emperor, "that ruled at Songdo many a long year agone when my house arose on the ruins of Silla."
Ancient history, all, told me by Kim on the long ride, and he struggled with his face to hear me parrot his teaching.
"These," I said, when the Emperor had asked me about my company, "these are my slaves, all except that old churl there"--I indicated Johannes Maartens--"who is the son of a freed man." I told Hendrik Hamel to approach. "This one," I wantoned on, "was born in my father"s house of a seed slave who was born there before him. He is very close to me. We are of an age, born on the same day, and on that day my father gave him me."
Afterwards, when Hendrik Hamel was eager to know all that I had said, and when I told him, he reproached me and was in a pretty rage.
"The fat"s in the fire, Hendrik," quoth I. "What I have done has been out of witlessness and the need to be saying something. But done it is.
Nor you nor I can pluck forth the fat. We must act our parts and make the best of it."
Taiwun, the Emperor"s brother, was a sot of sots, and as the night wore on he challenged me to a drinking. The Emperor was delighted, and commanded a dozen of the n.o.blest sots to join in the bout. The women were dismissed, and we went to it, drink for drink, measure for measure.
Kim I kept by me, and midway along, despite Hendrik Hamel"s warning scowls, dismissed him and the company, first requesting, and obtaining, palace lodgment instead of the inn.
Next day the palace was a-buzz with my feast, for I had put Taiwun and all his champions snoring on the mats and walked unaided to my bed.
Never, in the days of vicissitude that came later, did Taiwun doubt my claim of Korean birth. Only a Korean, he averred, could possess so strong a head.
The palace was a city in itself, and we were lodged in a sort of summer- house that stood apart. The princely quarters were mine, of course, and Hamel and Maartens, with the rest of the grumbling cunies, had to content themselves with what remained.
I was summoned before Yunsan, the Buddhist priest I have mentioned. It was his first glimpse of me and my first of him. Even Kim he dismissed from me, and we sat alone on deep mats in a twilight room. Lord, Lord, what a man and a mind was Yunsan! He made to probe my soul. He knew things of other lands and places that no one in Cho-Sen dreamed to know.
Did he believe my fabled birth? I could not guess, for his face was less changeful than a bowl of bronze.
What Yunsan"s thoughts were only Yunsan knew. But in him, this poor-clad, lean-bellied priest, I sensed the power behind power in all the palace and in all Cho-Sen. I sensed also, through the drift of speech, that he had use of me. Now was this use suggested by the Lady Om?--a nut I gave Hendrik Hamel to crack. I little knew, and less I cared, for I lived always in the moment and let others forecast, forfend, and travail their anxiety.
I answered, too, the summons of the Lady Om, following a sleek-faced, cat- footed eunuch through quiet palace byways to her apartments. She lodged as a princess of the blood should lodge. She, too, had a palace to herself, among lotus ponds where grow forests of trees centuries old but so dwarfed that they reached no higher than my middle. Bronze bridges, so delicate and rare that they looked as if fashioned by jewel-smiths, spanned her lily ponds, and a bamboo grove screened her palace apart from all the palace.
My head was awhirl. Sea-cuny that I was, I was no dolt with women, and I sensed more than idle curiosity in her sending for me. I had heard love- tales of common men and queens, and was a-wondering if now it was my fortune to prove such tales true.
The Lady Om wasted little time. There were women about her, but she regarded their presence no more than a carter his horses. I sat beside her on deep mats that made the room half a couch, and wine was given me and sweets to nibble, served on tiny, foot-high tables inlaid with pearl.
Lord, Lord, I had but to look into her eyes--But wait. Make no mistake.
The Lady Om was no fool. I have said she was of my own age. All of thirty she was, with the poise of her years. She knew what she wanted.
She knew what she did not want. It was because of this she had never married, although all pressure that an Asiatic court could put upon a woman had been vainly put upon her to compel her to marry Chong Mong-ju.
He was a lesser cousin of the great Min family, himself no fool, and grasping so greedily for power as to perturb Yunsan, who strove to retain all power himself and keep the palace and Cho-Sen in ordered balance.
Thus Yunsan it was who in secret allied himself with the Lady Om, saved her from her cousin, used her to trim her cousin"s wings. But enough of intrigue. It was long before I guessed a t.i.the of it, and then largely through the Lady Om"s confidences and Hendrik Hamel"s conclusions.
The Lady Om was a very flower of woman. Women such as she are born rarely, scarce twice a century the whole world over. She was unhampered by rule or convention. Religion, with her, was a series of abstractions, partly learned from Yunsan, partly worked out for herself. Vulgar religion, the public religion, she held, was a device to keep the toiling millions to their toil. She had a will of her own, and she had a heart all womanly. She was a beauty--yes, a beauty by any set rule of the world. Her large black eyes were neither slitted nor slanted in the Asiatic way. They were long, true, but set squarely, and with just the slightest hint of obliqueness that was all for piquancy.
I have said she was no fool. Behold! As I palpitated to the situation, princess and sea-cuny and love not a little that threatened big, I racked my cuny"s brains for wit to carry the thing off with manhood credit. It chanced, early in this first meeting, that I mentioned what I had told all the Court, that I was in truth a Korean of the blood of the ancient house of Koryu.
"Let be," she said, tapping my lips with her peac.o.c.k fan. "No child"s tales here. Know that with me you are better and greater than of any house of Koryu. You are . . ."
She paused, and I waited, watching the daring grow in her eyes.
"You are a man," she completed. "Not even in my sleep have I ever dreamed there was such a man as you on his two legs upstanding in the world."
Lord, Lord! and what could a poor sea-cuny do? This particular sea-cuny, I admit, blushed through his sea tan till the Lady Om"s eyes were twin pools of roguishness in their teasing deliciousness and my arms were all but about her. And she laughed tantalizingly and alluringly, and clapped her hands for her women, and I knew that the audience, for this once, was over. I knew, also, there would be other audiences, there must be other audiences.
Back to Hamel, my head awhirl.
"The woman," said he, after deep cogitation. He looked at me and sighed an envy I could not mistake. "It is your brawn, Adam Strang, that bull throat of yours, your yellow hair. Well, it"s the game, man. Play her, and all will be well with us. Play her, and I shall teach you how."
I bristled. Sea-cuny I was, but I was man, and to no man would I be beholden in my way with women. Hendrik Hamel might be one time part-owner of the old _Sparwehr_, with a navigator"s knowledge of the stars and deep versed in books, but with women, no, there I would not give him better.
He smiled that thin-lipped smile of his, and queried:
"How like you the Lady Om?"
"In such matters a cuny is naught particular," I temporized.
"How like you her?" he repeated, his beady eyes boring into me.
"Pa.s.sing well, ay, and more than pa.s.sing well, if you will have it."
"Then win to her," he commanded, "and some day we will get ship and escape from this cursed land. I"d give half the silks of the Indies for a meal of Christian food again."
He regarded me intently.
"Do you think you can win to her?" he questioned.
I was half in the air at the challenge. He smiled his satisfaction.
"But not too quickly," he advised. "Quick things are cheap things. Put a prize upon yourself. Be chary of your kindnesses. Make a value of your bull throat and yellow hair, and thank G.o.d you have them, for they are of more worth in a woman"s eyes than are the brains of a dozen philosophers."
Strange whirling days were those that followed, what of my audiences with the Emperor, my drinking bouts with Taiwun, my conferences with Yunsan, and my hours with the Lady Om. Besides, I sat up half the nights, by Hamel"s command, learning from Kim all the minutiae of court etiquette and manners, the history of Korea and of G.o.ds old and new, and the forms of polite speech, n.o.ble speech, and coolie speech. Never was sea-cuny worked so hard. I was a puppet--puppet to Yunsan, who had need of me; puppet to Hamel, who schemed the wit of the affair that was so deep that alone I should have drowned. Only with the Lady Om was I man, not puppet . . . and yet, and yet, as I look back and ponder across time, I have my doubts. I think the Lady Om, too, had her will with me, wanting me for her heart"s desire. Yet in this she was well met, for it was not long ere she was my heart"s desire, and such was the immediacy of my will that not her will, nor Hendrik Hamel"s, nor Yunsan"s, could hold back my arms from about her.
In the meantime, however, I was caught up in a palace intrigue I could not fathom. I could catch the drift of it, no more, against Chong Mong- ju, the princely cousin of the Lady Om. Beyond my guessing there were cliques and cliques within cliques that made a labyrinth of the palace and extended to all the Seven Coasts. But I did not worry. I left that to Hendrik Hamel. To him I reported every detail that occurred when he was not with me; and he, with furrowed brows, sitting darkling by the hour, like a patient spider unravelled the tangle and spun the web afresh. As my body slave he insisted upon attending me everywhere; being only barred on occasion by Yunsan. Of course I barred him from my moments with the Lady Om, but told him in general what pa.s.sed, with exception of tenderer incidents that were not his business.
I think Hamel was content to sit back and play the secret part. He was too cold-blooded not to calculate that the risk was mine. If I prospered, he prospered. If I crashed to ruin, he might creep out like a ferret. I am convinced that he so reasoned, and yet it did not save him in the end, as you shall see.
"Stand by me," I told Kim, "and whatsoever you wish shall be yours. Have you a wish?"
"I would command the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-Yang, and so command the palace guards," he answered.
"Wait," said I, "and that will you do. I have said it."
The how of the matter was beyond me. But he who has naught can dispense the world in largess; and I, who had naught, gave Kim captaincy of the palace guards. The best of it is that I did fulfil my promise. Kim did come to command the Tiger Hunters, although it brought him to a sad end.
Scheming and intriguing I left to Hamel and Yunsan, who were the politicians. I was mere man and lover, and merrier than theirs was the time I had. Picture it to yourself--a hard-bitten, joy-loving sea-cuny, irresponsible, unaware ever of past or future, wining and dining with kings, the accepted lover of a princess, and with brains like Hamel"s and Yunsan"s to do all planning and executing for me.
More than once Yunsan almost divined the mind behind my mind; but when he probed Hamel, Hamel proved a stupid slave, a thousand times less interested in affairs of state and policy than was he interested in my health and comfort and garrulously anxious about my drinking contests with Taiwun. I think the Lady Om guessed the truth and kept it to herself; wit was not her desire, but, as Hamel had said, a bull throat and a man"s yellow hair.
Much that pawed between us I shall not relate, though the Lady Om is dear dust these centuries. But she was not to be denied, nor was I; and when a man and woman will their hearts together heads may fall and kingdoms crash and yet they will not forgo.
Came the time when our marriage was mooted--oh, quietly, at first, most quietly, as mere palace gossip in dark corners between eunuchs and waiting-women. But in a palace the gossip of the kitchen scullions will creep to the throne. Soon there was a pretty to-do. The palace was the pulse of Cho-Sen, and when the palace rocked, Cho-Sen trembled. And there was reason for the rocking. Our marriage would be a blow straight between the eyes of Chong Mong-ju. He fought, with a show of strength for which Yunsan was ready. Chong Mong-ju disaffected half the provincial priesthood, until they pilgrimaged in processions a mile long to the palace gates and frightened the Emperor into a panic.
But Yunsan held like a rock. The other half of the provincial priesthood was his, with, in addition, all the priesthood of the great cities such as Keijo, Fusan, Songdo, Pyen-Yang, Chenampo, and Chemulpo. Yunsan and the Lady Om, between them, twisted the Emperor right about. As she confessed to me afterward, she bullied him with tears and hysteria and threats of a scandal that would shake the throne. And to cap it all, at the psychological moment, Yunsan pandered the Emperor to novelties of excess that had been long preparing.
"You must grow your hair for the marriage knot," Yunsan warned me one day, with the ghost of a twinkle in his austere eyes, more nearly facetious and human than I had ever beheld him.