by June Hur
“Sir,” I whispered. “I cannot imagine what she looked like before she was … killed.”
Before he could ask any more questions, Senior Officer Shim stalked over, and I had to withhold a breath of relief.
“Finally!” The young noble’s voice pierced the air. “I did want to speak with you, Officer Shim!”
The much older Officer Shim looked like a stray dog that had to fight daily for food. Tall, seemingly scrawny, his face emaciated. Yet he possessed surprising strength and was far more streetwise than even Inspector Han himself. I took a step back and hid behind him.
“Young Master Ch’oi Jinyeop.” An uneasy edge slid into Officer Shim’s voice. “Why are you still here?”
“You look as though you have not slept in days.” The young master snapped his fan shut, then held his hands behind his back. “I hear that once a murder occurs, police officers do not return home for weeks, too absorbed in the investigation to rest.”
Officer Shim kept quiet, still waiting for an answer.
The young master let out a breathy laugh. “You dislike small talk as usual. Very well. I came to inquire if it was true, the rumors of her affair.”
“I am not permitted to share information freely.”
“Inspector Han’s order, I suppose? You obey everything he says. If the rumor is true, perhaps Lady O deserved to die. A woman who cannot be honorable … it is better that she die than live and bring dishonor to her family.”
“Your father must be ashamed to have a son like you.”
Officer Shim’s remark startled me, but what surprised me more was the young master’s calmness. Amusement glinted in his eyes. “What irony, hearing such an insult from a seoja, a bastard abandoned by his own father.”
A muscle worked in Shim’s jaw. “Whether the victim was deserving of death is not up to anyone to decide. No man or woman, noble or slave, ought to be killed without the sanction of the ruler.”
The young master’s gaze shifted to the space behind Shim, and I followed his gaze and saw Inspector Han passing by, too occupied to notice us.
“There goes your master, Officer Shim.” With one smooth motion, he flicked open his fan, airing his manicured face again, and under his breath he said with a smile, “Only dogs and horses long for a master.”
The young master strode away with long and measured steps, his manservant scrambling behind him. Once he was far enough away, I said quietly to Officer Shim, “He asked me about Lady O’s beauty, but I told him nothing, sir.”
“Good.”
I waited, and when he said no more, my curiosity got the better of me. “Who is he?”
“The son of Third State Councillor Ch’oi. A philandering drunkard, I hear.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but why does he care so much about Lady O?”
Officer Shim looked at me. At once, my eyes dropped below his chin to avoid his gaze, and I ended up staring at the braided scar across his neck. Some whispered he’d tried to hang himself, though most claimed that a criminal had tried to strangle him.
“Inspector Han told me you had the curiosity of a magpie. I see that now,” he said, warmth in his voice. “The young master was betrothed to Lady O when they were children. They never saw each other’s faces. Perhaps that is why.”
“He must have been infuriated when he learned of the affair.”
“Indeed. His side ended the engagement two months ago after hearing the rumor.”
I knew people like the young master, namely Kyŏn. Men who thought so highly of themselves, men who rarely experienced humiliation, and when they did, drew out their swords with vengeance in their hearts, unable to let the slightest slander pass them by.
“Inspector Han interviewed him earlier today,” Officer Shim continued. “Apparently, he was at the House of Bright Flowers when the murder occurred, and he named five people who could vouch that he never left the house that night. Sons of government officials.”
The impossibility of the investigation sank into me. “Wealth and power must make a man untouchable, sir.”
“You were raised by servants, so of course, you must see aristocrats as gods,” Officer Shim said, as kindly as an older brother. “But wealth and power also make a man err in his arrogance. That is what Inspector Han said. If he was indeed involved, we will find a careless trail of evidence, Seol.”
* * *
The small entrance of the prison block, monitored by two guards, waited ahead as I approached with a tray at noon, bearing a bowl of water and a cloth. It was my duty to keep beaten prisoners alive, though sometimes Commander Yi instructed that witnesses be left unattended to, that the fear of death might wring the truth out of them.
“Who are you here for?” one of the guards asked.
“Maid Soyi.”
“Follow,” he said, opening the gate, then disappearing inside.
I tried to balance the tray with both hands as I stumbled through the drafty darkness. Water sloshed out from the bowl. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the narrow passage, the ground layered with dried mud crumbled into dust. On either side of me was a line of cells built of logs, with planks nailed vertically to keep prisoners from escaping, and tiny barred windows that offered a glimpse of skylight.
At last, the guard stopped. Keys jangled, then the cell gate creaked open. “Call for me when you’re done.” And he locked me in.
Soyi was too weak to acknowledge my presence, resting her back against the wall, her legs stretched out before her. Her bloody hands lay almost lifelessly by her sides, palms out. Like me, she had been punished for trying to escape, except with a less permanent wound than my own. Not a branding of the cheek, but the common beating of the legs, with a stick that a flogger had swung with the force of an ax.
“I’m here to clean your wounds.” I crouched before her and lifted her skirt slowly. The blood must have crusted onto the fabric, for her lips fell open in pain, as though I were peeling off her skin. I managed to hike her skirt up around her waist. The torn undergarment revealed ripped skin, a sight that left me nauseated.
“This might hurt just a bit.” I soaked the cloth and wiped her wounds, and immediately she turned as pale as death. Beads of sweat formed along her temple, and biting her pale lips, she swallowed her scream.
“Endure it,” I urged, holding her trembling leg down to clean around the torn skin rolled up along the gashes. If I didn’t clean her well in this damp weather, I knew her wound would rot, and its smell would fill the whole prison. “Endure, and stay alive.”
“Stay alive,” she whispered. Faint. As though the pain had reached an unbearable level. “I’m going to die here, I know it.”
“You don’t know the future.”
“The future. One needn’t be a shaman to know it.”
I continued to press the cloth against her, my fingers gleaming red.
“Mother told me this, that even dogs become troubled before a storm arrives. They sense the rumbling of a faraway thunder, and I can feel it too.” Her eyes turned glassy as her brows puckered together. “The trembling of the earth.”
I wanted to ease her despair somehow. But I also knew that if she had committed murder—no matter how much I might sympathize with her—she was deserving of punishment.
“You never know,” I said. “Perhaps the storm will come, then pass by.”
Soyi shook her head, and while she had hesitated before Inspector Han, she opened to me, as easily as a clam in hot water. “Why do I have to be me? Why couldn’t I have been born a lady?” she said, emotions infusing her voice with color. “I am one mere servant among ten thousand of them. The worst part is … the police can kill me and it will make no difference.”
Not knowing how to ease her fear, I quietly dipped the cloth into the bowl and squeezed out the blood, a smoke of red unfurling in the water.
“But perhaps I am a killer.”
My hand stilled in midair, the cloth dripping red water onto my skirt.
“My mistress told me that hate is like murder.
And I despised her.”
I squeezed the cloth one last time, then set it aside on the tray.
“She called me her sister, her equal. So I thought she would understand my longing to be free.” A tremor shook her solemn voice. “She said she wanted to keep me by her side because she cherished me. I, her equal? I wept every night after dressing her and brushing her hair—sad each time she refused my request, terrified when she criticized me for this longing to be mistress over my own life.”
“Is this why your mistress wrote about you?” I said, playing along with the inspector’s bluff about finding Lady O’s journal. “Is this why you fought with her?”
“I asked for my nobi deed,” Soyi said, her confession slipping so easily out of her lips, unaware that I was recording every word in my memory. “I had asked her before, but this time I was determined. I wanted my nobi deed, to end our mistress-and-servant contract. But she wouldn’t give it to me.”
“But why would she give it to you?”
“She promised to return it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”
A question that had burned at the corner of my mind now resurfaced. “You said Lady O doesn’t believe in indentured servitude. Is that a common idea here in the capital?”
“Common? No.”
“What kind of people believe it?”
Her dark gaze steadied on me, as though suspicious.
“You are a lowborn, but a noblewoman called your status man-made,” I explained. “I don’t understand why she would say so.” I bound her wounds with a fresh strip of cloth. “Please, tell me.”
“Lady O was a Catholic rogue. Converted two years ago. She told her mother that she valued this teaching over blood relation.”
“Catholic?” The teaching that was prohibited and punishable by death, knowledge smuggled in from the West. “And you didn’t think to tell the police?”
“It had nothing to do with her murder. You must swear not to tell this to anyone, or Matron Kim will sell me off like a dog as soon as the inquisition is over. I’m sure that Lady O’s lover killed her. It is him you need to find.” Dragging her skirt down, she whispered, “So many questions from you.”
“I am just curious.”
“No, it is more than curiosity.”
Her words crept into me like a deep chill, and it took a moment for me to realize that she was right.
“Mere curiosity, truly,” I repeated, rising to my feet and slowly dusting off the strands of straw, my thoughts drifting away until I found myself staring at the deep pool of my past. A pool I was frightened to reach into and touch—afraid of smoothing my fingers around the edges of something awful.
FOUR
“SST!”
I stepped out of the police bureau after taking my midday meal, ordered by the chief maid to shop for her. It was then that I saw a bright-eyed girl with a tiny face and an even tinier pair of lips. Her dress was elegant, yet the colors were subdued, not brilliant like a noblewoman’s. Likely a servant of a wealthy household. Seeing no one else around, I pointed at my chest. Me?
“Yes, you. My mistress has summoned you.”
I held the market basket between us. “How do you know who I am?”
She pointed at her cheek, where my own face was marked. “It’s impossible not to know who you are.”
“And who is your mistress?”
The tiny lips emitted a high, cheerful voice. “My mistress said you journeyed with her from Mount Inwang to the fortress gate.”
I nearly dropped the basket. The mysterious noblewoman. Why did she wish to see me? I remembered the books that had spilled out, the men on edge. It would be wise to turn away, yet even as I thought this, my feet followed the maid.
“I am called Woorim.” She faltered in her steps, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you permitted to leave freely? I can wait for you outside if you wish to tell your superior.”
“I’m not imprisoned in the police bureau,” I said. “So long as I finish my duties.”
“I suppose so. I see damos wandering in and out of the bureau as they please. I, too, am free to wander and explore the capital. My mistress permits me.”
I remembered the lady disguised as a man, her cart full of secret books. “What kind of person is your mistress?” I asked.
“A benevolent one,” she said. “The anchor cable can measure the depth of the four seas, but nothing can measure the depth of my lady’s kindness!”
She had a flair for language, words from a scholar’s brush, not usual for such a servant. My own mouth was filled with eloquent words, but only because I’d stolen them from Older Sister. Whom had Woorim stolen her words from?
“Do you know how to read?” I asked.
“Omo, how did you know?”
“Your mistress taught you, I suppose.”
Woorim’s eyes turned even rounder. The dainty lips smiled. “Not just me.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear this anymore, but the philosophy felt dangerous now. What better way to defy the role of servants than to teach them how to read and write? To equip them with the same knowledge and power as their own masters and mistresses?
My stream of thoughts was interrupted by a servant calling out, “Make way, make way for Councillor Ch’oi!”
Woorim and I dropped to our knees at once and pressed our foreheads to the dirt, listening as the servant continued to call out, “Make way for the Third State Councillor!”
I shifted my head just enough to catch a glance. Four bearers carried a sedan chair, in it a middle-aged man with a short black beard and a forehead wrinkled from years of strife. Despite his beaten appearance, he was handsome, with his high nose, squared jaw, and intelligent eyes. He was all shoulders and straight back, holding himself regally, not a limb in his body slouching.
Councillor Ch’oi, father of Young Master Ch’oi Jinyeop. They could not have seemed more alike and yet different.
As the sedan was lowered before the police bureau, someone tugged at my collar. I looked and saw Woorim already on her feet. As was everyone else. I jumped up and dusted off my skirt and palms. The sight of Councillor Ch’oi sharpened my attention on the questions floating around my mind as loose as cobwebs—about his son’s broken engagement to Lady O, her Catholic past, the last letter she’d received before her death. Were there any connections?
“How well do you know the nobles in Hanyang?” I asked.
Woorim’s eyes surveyed our surroundings, then stopped before a massive merchant shop, famous for its Chinese silk. Rolls of fabric glowed like seashells in the skylight. “Look there,” she said, pointing at a noblewoman whose face was veiled by sheer gauze hanging from her headdress, hidden from foreign men. The lady was examining the fabric and asking the shop assistant for a price.
“That is Lady Rhee,” Woorim said as she beckoned me to walk closer. “A shallow woman who only talks of fashion and men.” She cast a bragging smile my way. “I know almost all the noblewomen in the capital.”
“Then you knew Lady O.”
“Of course. She took tea with my mistress a few times. She seemed very sweet and cheerful.”
“But you must have heard the rumor that she had a lover,” I said. “Did you see Lady O in the company of a man?”
“Besides her father and younger brother, no. An unmarried lady like her isn’t permitted outside. You should know that. When she did go out, it was always hidden deep inside a palanquin.”
“Lady O could have snuck out alone.” As she had on the night of her murder.
Woorim shook her head. “I cannot imagine her dishonoring her family.”
I was talking in circles, getting nowhere. What would Inspector Han say to uncover what he wished?
“Councillor Ch’oi and his son have ties to Lady O’s household, do they not?”
“Oh yes,” Woorim replied. “The young master was betrothed to Lady O. That’s hardly a secret.”
“And if it were a secret,” I said slowly, “I suppose you would know it.”
> A small, quick smile. “Perhaps.”
“And if you did not?”
She paused to think, then pointed down the road in the direction of Mount Inwang. “Keep walking that way until you see an inn with a red lantern. The innkeeper was once a gisaeng, a female entertainer favored by Councillor Ch’oi. Their love was the talk of Hanyang many years ago. Her name is Madam Song, and everyone calls her the storehouse of information.”
I’d seen that inn before, on the day I had run from the bureau. I’d learned from an acquaintance visiting Hanyang that Older Sister had fallen deathly ill, that her last words before passing out had been, I cannot die in peace without seeing my brother Inho. So, desperate to comfort her, I’d run and had spent an entire day traveling from shop to shop, showing people the sketch of my brother. It was by the day’s end that I’d finally reasoned that an innkeeper would know roads and towns … and where the dead were buried on the road from Inchon.
And now, in the street, the weight of my brother’s unfound grave hung around my neck. Older Sister, fortunately, had recovered and my promise to her remained. In my robe, even the folded paper bearing his sketched face felt heavy, unbearably so. I carefully withdrew it and held it out for her to see.
“You said you know many people,” I said. “Have you ever seen this person?”
Woorim puckered her lips. “The sketch is so faded I can hardly see how he looks. Don’t you have another picture of him?”
“No, this is all I have.” I looked down at the drawing of him, and I wondered if he still looked as he had more than a decade ago, when he had been only a boy with the pudginess of childhood still clinging to his face. A face as round as the glowing moon, framed by long hair tied loosely at the back, and his puffy eyes filled with a youthful innocence. “He doesn’t seem familiar at all?”
Woorim shook her head. “There are some even I do not know.”
I fell quiet. The sketch of my brother always opened me up to a world filled with echoes, like a faraway stranger calling to me from a mountaintop. I missed his stories about home, a home I had been too young to remember, a home filled with the intensity of affectionate words and the texture of comforting arms around me. Those tales had vanished and had left me feeling hollow, as though I were a wandering spirit.
