by June Hur
I clasped my hands together and quickly followed, walking a step behind Inspector Han in silence.
“I’ve been meaning to speak with you,” he said after a moment. “Last night, when I left to meet briefly with Officer Shim, someone entered my office and took something. I’m sure of it, for all the contents had been there earlier.”
I pressed my lips tight together. Officer Kyŏn had warned me that there would be consequences if I told, that it would expose whatever “evidence” he and Scholar Ahn had against Inspector Han. I didn’t know whether to believe him.
“A servant said he saw you lurking around the pavilion at night.”
“Me?” My pulse quickened, as did my words. “I can explain everything, sir. I didn’t go inside. It’s not what you think.”
“Do not look so alarmed. I trust you. That is why I wish to know your side of the story.”
Whatever reserve I’d felt moments ago flew away. I rushed forward to walk alongside the inspector and told him everything, from Aejung’s suspicion that Kyŏn was up to something, to catching Kyŏn in the act myself, and finally to our argument under the willow tree with Scholar Ahn, as well as their accusation against him.
I waited for the fury, the outburst, but instead a muscle worked in his jaw as he muttered, “Why am I not surprised?” Then he looked at me. “You are a very unlucky girl, to be thrown into such dangerous circumstances.”
My brows lifted. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I was not thrown into anything. I chose.”
“You chose,” he said quietly. His steps slowed as he paused to consider me for a moment. A second look, the way a general might pause to reconsider a candidate for the army. “For me?”
“Remember, sir, loyalty is my greatest virtue.”
“Are you pledging your loyalty to me?” There was a hint of warmth to his voice.
“I am, sir.”
He smiled, but it was a sad smile. It was as though, all along, he’d considered me too young to understand the weight of loyalty. Too young to understand the terrible weight of my promise. But I understood, and I would prove it to him.
I had to ask, though, “What was stolen, sir?”
A dark shade deepened the panes of his cheek. The inspector’s face remained stoic, yet the burning told me, warned me, never to ask about this box again.
“Do not concern yourself. It was a letter, and I’ll make sure to retrieve it.” Quietly, and filling his words with misty vagueness, he said, “Ahn is bent on proving his theory correct—that Lady O’s death is somehow connected to me, because of her Catholic beliefs. And because of my past. He knew before all of us that she was a heretic.”
Willing myself to stop wondering about the black-lacquered box, I asked, “How, sir?”
“He confessed to Commander Yi recently that he’d overheard Lady O’s parents discussing her heretical beliefs. So in the end, he reported it anonymously to the police bureau, delivered the note through a street urchin. It was sent on the seventeenth day of the sixth lunar month.”
I swallowed a gasp. That was a full four days before Lady O’s death …
“Commander Yi never received that note. And so Scholar Ahn’s theory is that I intercepted it. He thinks, knowing of Lady O’s Catholic beliefs, I somehow became involved in ending her life.”
“But you were at the House of Bright Flowers. You have an alibi.”
Inspector Han grunted. “Ahn’s imagination is creative and preposterous.”
“Everyone seems suspicious, sir.” I let out a little sigh and peeked up at him, at his furrowed brows. “How do you untangle this confusing web?”
“You collect more stories until a pattern solidifies,” he said, and suddenly he walked in longer strides again, as though remembering something. “Come with me. I spoke with Matron Kim earlier. She would not tell me the full truth, but I know someone who might. So I’ve been meaning to request your assistance.”
My heartbeat quickened as I followed him into the bureau, across the connecting courtyards.
“Fear persuades most people to speak,” he said quietly, “but Maid Soyi withdraws deeper into silence with every interrogation. My patience is running thin.”
“What would you like me to find out, sir?”
“What she used to blackmail Matron Kim.”
Blackmail? It caught me off guard, as if a rough hand had shoved me. I could not imagine Maid Soyi to be capable of such a thing. “I don’t understand. Are you certain, sir?”
“If I were absolutely certain,” he said, “I wouldn’t have asked you to come. Thus, your task is to learn what all of us cannot. Can you do it?”
I couldn’t help but feel a spark of pride at the question, glowing brighter and brighter with each step. His favor was almost too much for me. But I wanted it—the feeling that I was part of something so much greater than myself.
“I can, sir. I will.”
* * *
Inspector Han waited outside the prison block as I followed a guard deep into the darkness, thick with the rancid smell of blood and rotting wounds. The surprise I’d felt at the inspector’s accusation vanished when we arrived before her cell. How could I feel anything but pity? Soyi cowered against the wall, terrified of the guard. The jangling of keys had become the sound of another round of interrogation.
“It’s only me,” I said.
Her shoulders slumped from relief. “Only you.”
I sat next to her, against the wooden wall. The straw pallet rustled beneath my skirt. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the bedding was bloodstained. Soyi sat, unable to keep her head raised. Fear twisted in my stomach. It was entirely possible that she might die in this cell.
“Why have you come?” she whispered.
“To give you advice.” I took hold of her limp hand. “I don’t think you killed your mistress, but your silence hurts you. The officers have no choice but to break you. All they know is that you tried to run.”
Soyi stared in blank exhaustion.
“There is much you could say,” I suggested calmly. “You know things others would not wish to have discovered. For instance … Matron Kim.”
Again, only silence. But I was not a police officer to her; I was not someone who would hurt her. A life among servants had taught me that no human being wished to remain silent and misunderstood.
“You must have overheard Inspector Han,” Soyi finally said.
“Yes, I overheard,” I lied, surprised by how honest I sounded. “You know how curious I am.”
“His commander is determined to beat me to death for the details.”
I sought something, anything to bring out her words. Then Inspector Han’s voice whispered to me, There is always a weakness.
“It is too late. Matron Kim spoke long of your blackmail,” I said. “She is trying to push all suspicion onto you.”
Shadows of anger clouded Soyi’s eyes.
“Matron Kim wishes you to seem darker than herself. She said that blackmail is vile, enough that you might be capable of much worse—such as murder.”
Soyi turned to me, her breath sickly hot. “She told Inspector Han everything?”
“He seemed shocked. When I heard this, I was just as disappointed…” I rubbed my eyebrows. The weight of my lies was making me falter. I didn’t know how Inspector Han did it with such ease. “But I realized you must have your own reason. Won’t you tell me your truth?”
Silence stretched, a moment of tangled thoughts, thick with hesitation. At last she licked her crusted lips. “Never liked me, Matron Kim. She wanted to dismiss me. But three years ago my young mistress ran away at night, returning the next day. No one knew but Matron and me.”
“That is what she confessed,” I said, withdrawing my hand so she wouldn’t feel the heat of my guilt. “You told Matron Kim you would gossip if she dismissed you, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was to survive.”
“I see…” There was little left to ask, but I knew I could not be done ye
t. The inspector wouldn’t have been. I rummaged through my thoughts. “Did she leave to meet a man?”
Soyi nodded, so slightly I barely noticed.
“The same man she went to on the night of her murder?”
“I do not know, but both times, she was going to meet a lover, that is for certain.” I let her pause to collect her memories. “A few months after her escape, I discovered her pregnant. Her mother sent us away to a temple, to hide her from family, acquaintances, everyone.”
Soyi turned her stare onto me. “I know Matron Kim wouldn’t have confessed it. You will tell the inspector, won’t you?”
“Do you wish me to?”
“You must tell him all that I said.” Eagerness gleamed in her eyes, as though she’d caught sight of a crack through which escape might be possible. In her excitement, her voice strained into a rasp. “Don’t let him believe that Matron Kim is an honest woman. She could be the killer, for all I know. She gave Lady O a paedo, a suicide knife.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was silver and encrusted with turquoise stones.”
“The murder weapon,” I whispered, remembering the sharp blade found beneath Lady O’s bloody corpse. Still, this meant nothing. It was common to gift young ladies with suicide knives, morbid ornaments dangling from their norigae pendant.
Shaking my head, I continued with my line of questioning. “And how long were you in the temple?”
“Months. It was at Yongjusa Temple in Suwon. My mistress wouldn’t tell me who the father was, but she did confess … Do you have water?”
“I’ll bring some soon. Go on.”
She licked her lips again. “She’d met the gentleman innocently. She’d wanted to see the Harvest Festival, and he had offered to accompany her. But it rained and they took shelter at an inn…” Soyi’s voice drifted off as a faraway look glazed her eyes, as though she were peering into her mistress’s intimate encounter. Then something like a laugh escaped her. “Everyone thinks Lady O was gentle and obedient, but those like her are the most rebellious. Whatever the case, she gave birth to a healthy and strong boy, whom we left in the care of the monks, yet after we returned to the capital, a few days later, Matron Kim told us the boy had died. Smallpox. My mistress mourned for a long time, until she met Lady Kang and was converted.”
I frowned. Lady Kang had told me she hadn’t known Lady O well.
“Examine her diary,” Soyi said. “It will be there. And other things too.”
I shifted uneasily. Inspector Han had obviously bluffed about having Lady O’s diary, to make Soyi confess. Hesitantly I replied, “We don’t have it.”
It was Soyi’s turn to frown. “Your inspector never read her diary? She wrote her every thought in it.”
“The police aren’t allowed to search her chamber.”
Soyi tilted her head to stare past the window’s wooden bars, out into the bright sky. The hope I’d seen there was gone now, replaced by empty submission. “I should have kept quiet.”
“Soyi, I shouldn’t have told you—”
“So you’ve got what you came for,” she said. “Since I’ve talked now, I suppose one secret is no different from another, and I still have one. Matron Kim would never reveal it even if you tortured her a hundred times.”
Soyi’s voice, now eerily devoid of emotion, filled me with a slow, quiet dread. Taking in a breath, I whispered, “I would hear it, if you would tell me.”
Soyi nodded. “Matron Kim never knew I returned to the temple a year ago, sent there by her daughter to perform gravesite rituals, but I found no burial site. The monks were surprised that I’d come looking for one, because the son of Lady O had not died. And on my return, when I told my mistress, she looked furious enough to kill someone.”
* * *
“So she does have a diary,” Inspector Han said after I finished speaking.
I had reported everything in a matter of minutes, and for a long moment afterward, he’d remained silent. I stared at the lone bird twirling above the tiled police bureau walls, deep in thought as I tried to guess the identity of the child’s father. Young Master Ch’oi Jinyeop, perhaps …
“What is your next move, sir?” I said.
“For now, let us go to the temple. If the father of the boy ever visited, we’ll learn it there.”
Us. Thrill and anticipation tingled down my spine, which only doubled when he added, “You are proving to be quite useful, Damo Seol.”
He walked away, his hands clasped behind his back, and then cast a look over his shoulder. “Keep this between us. No one but Commander Yi is to know where we are going, especially not Kyŏn.”
Even the mere sound of Kyŏn’s name made my stomach twist. “What will you do with him, sir?”
“Transfer him out of the bureau, but not yet. For now we must focus on Yongjusa Temple.”
“And Officer Shim?” I asked. “Will you tell him what we learned?”
“Of course.” A faint smile passed over his lips. “I trust that man with my life.”
I bowed my head, holding back the words, And you can trust me with your life too.
NINE
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I bound my breasts with practiced quickness, tighter than was necessary to hide the slight fullness. The sign of womanhood, of vulnerability. I had seen the way some officers and visiting gentlemen stared at the maids, some even groping and stealing kisses.
I wanted to be noticed, but not in that way.
Once I finished dressing, I picked up an iron club, which had a rope hanging from its gilt-brass handle. I tied this onto my sash belt, then looked around the room, hoping to find a reason to linger a moment longer. My eyes strayed to the door, and reluctance gnawed at me. At the far corner of my mind, a thought had burned for days, and now it surfaced, looming dark beyond the door. The answers waiting for us might turn out to be ones we wished we’d never discovered …
The deep, rumbling boom of the great bell fractured the early morning stillness. Snatching my satgat off the hook and donning it, I stepped out and hurried through the courtyards. Inspector Han had instructed me to wait by the main gate when the curfew was lifted.
“Seol!”
A male voice startled me as I stepped out onto the street. I turned and saw a stable boy pulling a shaggy white pony my way. It was Terror, the beast that had tried to save us from the tiger on Mount Inwang.
“I was told to bring this troublemaker out.” He transferred the reins into my hand. “I hear you’re leaving the capital. Going with the inspector?”
“We’re heading to Suwon.”
“That is not far. The Fox Mountain Pass is halfway there—I think that’s him.”
He looked to a gentleman on horseback, his face shadowed by the wide brim of his hat. His military robe was of forest-green silk, and a pleated skirt swathed his trousers. Silver tigers embroidered his sleeves. I could tell it was Inspector Han only by the sword he wore, its black scabbard encrusted with seven gold dots for the Seven Stars Spirit, an ancient deity of fortune. Not that the inspector was a man of superstition; a true Confucian did not believe in ghosts and spirits, only the here and now.
As he drew up to me, I noticed the manservant riding behind—a tanned young man in a sleeveless gray robe over a white tunic. I had seen him at the bureau a few times before in passing. He couldn’t have been much older than me. Inspector Han told him to fetch a scroll on the writing table of his office. With the speed of a quick-footed deer, the servant leapt off his horse and sped into the bureau, and within a few blinks of my eyes, he returned, proffering the scroll to his master with two hands.
Inspector Han tucked the scroll into his robe, then steered his sleek horse around. “Are you ready, Damo Seol?”
“Yes, sir.” I climbed onto Terror, my stomach clenching. I feared she would toss me off her saddle again, but to my relief, she was unusually calm as we rode down the streets of Hanyang, past the stalls and shops.
By now, I knew my way around the ca
pital well enough that I could easily point people in the direction they wanted to go. Looking for brassware? At the intersection of Jongno Street turn north, past the silk shop to your right. Looking for honey, rice, and fruits? You will find it at the far west end. Or perhaps you are looking for an expensive gift? Visit the jewelers at the southeast corner of the intersection, or travel farther east to the silver and jade merchant shops.
I had come to know the capital so well, yet it grew more frightening to me day by day.
“What’s your name?”
I glanced at the young servant, now riding alongside me. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but I also wasn’t good at ignoring people. “Seol.”
“As in snowflake?”
“As in storyteller.”
“My name’s Ryun, and it means ‘one who is kindhearted.’”
We crossed over the Cheonggye Stream, where women gathered, ladling water into pails and rolling laundry into hard bundles, which they pounded with heavy sticks on stones. As we passed, I returned my attention to “kindhearted” Ryun.
“Have you worked for your master long?”
He looked over, holding the reins with one hand. “Nine years, since I was a child.”
Inspector Han was near—but not close enough to hear if I asked quietly. “Do you know Officer Kyŏn?”
The corner of his lips twitched. “I do.”
“Officer Kyŏn is trying to make others suspicious of your master. It is worrisome.”
“And he received a good beating for it last night.” Ryun clucked his tongue. “Who does he think he is, daring to go up against a military official? All because of a horse.”
“A horse?”
“My master’s horse was found roaming alone near the Northern District, days ago. Had deep cuts on his shoulder and stomach, the legs too. An unbalanced rider might make an unbalanced horse, and my master was deep in his cups that night. Officer Kyŏn discovered the bloody horse and brought him to my master’s stable boy, who told Kyŏn the inspector never made it home. After that, Kyŏn went harassing people for answers. He seemed convinced that the blood did not belong entirely to the animal.”
