by June Hur
“So the horse had deep cuts … He must have fallen?” I said, “And when the horse fell, Inspector Han had no means to return home. I assume he found shelter at an inn—”
“Not an inn. My master went back to the House of Bright Flowers. In the morning he sent a maid from there to fetch me. He was still in his mourning robe and needed another uniform.”
So this was the “evidence” Kyŏn and Scholar Ahn had against Inspector Han? I pressed my lips tight, holding in a laugh.
* * *
We rode across a stone bridge that arched over the Han River, which flowed around the capital, then into the East Sea. According to my brother, it had received its name “Han” because it meant “great and sacred,” and during the ancient times, the Three Kingdoms of Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla had all fought to control it.
Once we reached the other side of the long bridge, the crowd thinned, and we rode like coursing water, rushing through a field of vivid green grass. My spirit had so lightened that I flowed along. Following a dirt road that snaked upward through a large valley, I watched the land rise higher and the wind grow fiercer, whipping my skirt and sleeves, throwing loose strands of my hair into my smiling face.
I looked behind to see how far we’d come and was greeted by a sweeping view of the capital. Its main road ran both ways, east and west, through the sea of black-tiled and thatch rooftops. There was the Defunct Palace to the south, the residence of the executed Prince Sado’s illegitimate male survivors, along with those that had married into the bloodline, like Princess Song and her daughter-in-law, Princess Sin. To the north was the true royal residence, the sprawling Changdeok Palace, with its lotus pond and pavilions, green lawns and various audience halls.
“Seol!” Ryun called out. He and Inspector Han were far ahead of me.
Bending low over Terror’s neck, I urged her forward and rode into what looked like the Fox Mountain Pass. On either side of the narrow path were mountains, shadowy giants rising alone, so far from the merry flowers carpeting the valley around us. “Gosan” meant lonely mountain, a fitting word for this scenery. It was also Inspector Han’s nickname, apparently, for he always kept his distance from everyone. He seemed to prefer silence from those around him if what they had to say was irrelevant to his investigations.
Except with me.
I dared to close the distance to Inspector Han. Sensing my intrusion, he turned his face to me, just barely. Only a crescent of his countenance was visible; his straight nose, his high cheek, the elegant curve of his firm lips. Unbidden memories flickered, glowing images from a decade ago. A boy with amber eyes and a radiant smile. I blinked, and the images vanished.
“Do you know why I’m involving you in this case, Seol?” he asked me.
It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. “No, sir.”
“Who would you say you are?”
“A servant?” I answered. He kept silent, waiting. I bit my lower lip in thought, then frowned up at the sky, a gradation of light to bright azure blue. “They say that between the servant and yangban aristocrat is the distance between heaven and earth. I am the earth, sir.”
Inspector Han chuckled, a quiet rumble from deep within his chest. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m always changing my mind.”
“They say many things here in the capital…” He paused, as though weighing whether to speak on. In a too-light voice, he said, “When I was young, they called me the sun, the great burning star, but when my father’s sin besmirched me, I became lower than dirt.”
My lips formed into a silent O as I looked at him closely. The golden light illuminated his face, allowing me to see details I hadn’t noticed before: the strain around his eyes, the oppressive stillness of his gaze, the small scars littered across his right hand. I knew little about his past, and this glimpse into it revealed a world filled with humiliation.
Silence continued to hang over us, intensified by the whistling chirrup of a lone sandgrouse, and at length Inspector Han said, “Whether you are the sun, the earth, or the moon, you are a capable girl. To me. Your mind, somehow, can grasp the chaotic threads of this case. There aren’t too many like you, Damo Seol. Man or woman.”
I sat still on my horse, fingers weakening around the reins. For the first time since my brother had disappeared, I felt seen.
* * *
It was past noon when we arrived before the fortress surrounding Suwon. The four-hour-long journey had filled my heart with one prayer—a prayer so immense, it felt as though I’d swallowed a heap of cloud. In my next life, I wanted to be Inspector Han.
Look at how tall he sits on his horse! I wanted to call out to the crowd bustling outside Hwaseong Fortress. Look at how the peasants kowtow before him, trembling. Look at how he spares them nary a glance.
This was my master, and I was his extension.
At the fortress gate, Inspector Han presented his identification tag to the guard, and at once we were permitted entrance. Never would I have imagined that by becoming a lowly damo I would be traveling around the kingdom, seeing places I’d never have visited while living with my sister back home.
The town of Suwon was a crowd of shops and people, a labyrinth of streets and alleys. Bristling along the walls were intimidating blockhouses, observation towers, bastions, and other military facilities built to fortify the defense of our capital a short distance away.
As we rode through town, Ryun reached into the sack tied onto his saddle and pulled out a ball of rice. “Here. It’ll keep you full for a while, Seol.”
I lifted it to take a bite, which was when I noticed Inspector Han’s light brown eyes again. They looked almost golden in the sunlight.
“You will stare a hole through Inspector Han,” Ryun’s voice broke into my thought, “watching him so fiercely like that.”
I took a bite into the rice ball, chewing on the sweet and slightly undercooked rice, the grain sticky on the outside but hard in the center. “I wonder, if someone dies and is reborn again, would they look alike?”
“I don’t know,” Ryun replied. “But I think you would feel a tug … a feeling of affinity. Why?”
I only offered him a smile, his question disappearing into the silence. The similar hue of my brother and the inspector’s eyes comforted me. It was as though Older Brother had sent his spirit and had lodged it in the eyes of another. But besides the color and the warmth of spirit, their similarities ended there.
I took another bite, but this time I tasted nothing, lost in memories of the past.
Older Brother had always been fragile, more of a sensitive and deeply feeling poet than a fierce military official. Most of my memories of my brother were of him sitting before a table, studying and memorizing Confucian classics. And while Inspector Han was capable of shooting two hundred arrows a day in rain, snow, or sleet, I couldn’t remember my brother hunting down any of the wild dogs roaming Heuksan island.
But similar or not, my brother was dead, and it was my sister’s fault.
I once asked her why Brother had run away, and her only response had been that they’d had a dreadful fight. One thing she didn’t know was that I had seen everything: her throwing at him an earthenware pot filled with boiling tea, her yelling, “Go to the capital then, that place of terror. We are not family. We are finished.” Older Brother had run away and had died alone because of her, and I knew that he was dead, for he had never written home.
* * *
The thought of Older Brother dampened my spirit, but life in the capital had taught me not to dwell on sad things. Do not dwell on being branded on the cheek, everyone watching and clucking their tongues at you. Do not dwell on your dead brother. For when grief swells around you like the sea, you must swim and keep your head above it. Do not drown in it.
I locked the memories of him in a box, to be opened only when I was alone. I didn’t want Inspector Han to see a sulking, homesick girl; I wanted to impress him. Straightening my shoulders again, I rea
djusted myself in the saddle.
“Curse this heat,” Ryun muttered. Dark patches of sweat blotted his attire as the sun pulsed overhead.
“You look about to faint,” I said, my voice strong again.
Ryun waved my words away weakly, wiping his brow. “Don’t talk to me. I have no energy to reply.”
We traversed through the town and rode out of it, passed by different landscapes, rice and cornfields appearing, then receding. At last, the road branched out into little paths, with one disappearing up the slope of Mount Hwa. The stifling heat eased as we traveled deeper into the woodland shade, and before long, I saw the sweeping rooftops of Yongjusa Temple.
Most temples were in ruins, Buddhism having lost favor with the imperial court long ago, but Yongjusa was a rare jewel. “King Chŏngjo agonized that his father, the murdered Prince Sado, was wandering near hell,” my brother had told me, “and so His Majesty resurrected Yongjusa and moved the tomb nearby, that the temple might protect his father and grant him eternal peace.”
After tethering our horses, we climbed up the granite steps, which led us to the main gate. Four statues with bulging eyes glowered down at me, and one held a sword as though prepared to kill anyone with a wicked spirit. Quickening my steps, I hurried past the monstrous figures. We passed by two more gates, drawing closer to the chanting and steady beating of wooden handbells. But not a single human soul appeared as we searched through the smoky mist. The sound of chanting hummed on without a tangible source. It was as though we’d stepped into a deserted village filled only with ghosts.
At last we reached what seemed to be the main temple, with a heavily tiled roof supported upon towering pillars, the eaves richly carved and painted in blue, red, and green. Inside the open hall, monks with shaved heads sat on the floor, chanting the Heart Sutra, and at the far end was a child in a gray robe, sitting cross-legged and dozing off.
“Come, let us not disturb them,” Inspector Han said.
We had not traveled far when a voice spoke out from the stillness. “Don’t get lost in the mist.” We turned, and on the veranda built around a smaller hanok building stood a monk with a string of beads around his neck. “Have you come from afar?”
Ryun hurried up to the veranda and bowed to the monk. “We traveled here from the capital,” he announced, “and my master would like to make a few inquiries.”
The monk examined Inspector Han, and after a pause, said, “Why don’t you all come in and rest?” He pulled at a brass handle, sliding the door open onto a dark and drafty room. “I will prepare a tea table for your master.”
“No need, sunim,” Inspector Han intervened. “We will not be staying long.”
The monk bowed his head. “What is it you came all this way to ask, sir?”
Inspector Han joined the monk on the veranda, while Ryun and I waited in the courtyard. “Women often come here to pray and burn incense, do they not?”
“They do.”
“And when they flee to the temple to escape trouble, is it usual to take them in?”
“It is the way of Buddha to be compassionate to all.”
“Is that so?”
“Each new encounter is the result of karma; everything has its cause and effect. It would therefore be unwise to turn the desperate away.” The monk’s billowing sleeves engulfed his arms and hands as he crossed them at his waist. “It would worsen the karmic link and create future enmity rather than affinity. So Buddha’s way is to treat each new encounter with respect and consideration.”
“Might I ask then,” Inspector Han said in a low voice, “whether a woman by the name of Lady O Eunju ever came here for shelter?”
“The name is not familiar, sir.”
“Then do you have under your care a boy around the age of three?”
The corners of his lips tightened, though the rest of his expression remained pleasant and composed. “We do.”
“Would it be considered a liberty, sunim, to ask for information about this boy?”
“Not at all. Unfortunately, I really don’t know what to say about him, except that he is an orphan.”
“Any information will do. Where he came from, or anything concerning him, which might offer us a hint as to his connections.”
“I assure you,” said the monk, “that I know no more about where he came from than I know—”
“Why his mother left him here?” suggested the inspector, and the slightest look of surprise registered on the monk’s face. “Out of shame, perhaps. The truth that an unmarried young lady bore a child would surely ruin her family’s good name.”
“You know the mother?”
“She died several days ago.”
A pause. “Died?”
“Murdered.”
The monk’s brows pressed together. “Murdered!”
“We are trying to find out possible connections to her death.”
“You are her family? Or the police?” The monk’s intelligent eyes took him in. “Ah, yes, you must be the police. You look it.”
“Did any forgotten points occur to you just now?”
The monk hesitated a moment, then confessed, “Something did occur to me, now that you mention it.”
A lump formed in my chest, a single emotion that whispered, Amazing. As I followed them down the veranda, which wrapped around the pavilion, I thought about how skillfully Inspector Han had fished the secret out of the monk’s mouth, and whether I could one day be this good.
From where we now stood, I could see across the courtyard the boy sitting in the main temple. He looked ready to tilt forward in his sleep, but then an elderly monk poked him. The boy sat straight and looked up, his face round and bright.
Pop. I startled at the sudden sound—above on the tiled roof, faint, something hard and loose, rolling and rolling. Something tiny dropped from the eaves and tapped down against the stone. Leaving Ryun’s side, I picked up what I found to be a pebble. I stepped back to stare up at the rooftop. Nothing but green foliage.
“About three years ago, to the best of my belief,” the monk said, “was when the pregnant young lady first came to the temple.”
“Do you happen to remember her maid’s name?”
“Her name … Her name was … Yeoli? Chobi? Something like that.”
“Soyi, perhaps?”
“Yes, Soyi, I believe.”
Throughout the dialogue, Inspector Han stood aloof, with his hands behind him. To all appearances, he looked removed from the things pulling at my own attention—the twitching flesh beneath the monk’s eyes; the suspicious sprinkle of dirt falling off the eaves; a young novice sweeping the courtyard, staring our way. Inspector Han’s face remained inexpressive and unaffected. Was he even thinking? He revealed nothing of what was going on in his mind.
Then he spoke at last. “And has a man asked for the child during the past three years?”
The monk looked at the young novice and gestured at him to come over. “Well, sir. One afternoon only a few days ago I left to visit Hanyang—I know it is forbidden for a monk to enter the capital,” he quickly amended, “but my mother was ill.”
Inspector Han bowed his head, brushing the issue aside.
“When I returned the next day, I learned about a strange visit,” he said as the young novice walked over, dragging his bamboo broom. “Tell them, Uchan, about the visit. About the strange man who spoke with our little Minho. Go on, tell them.”
The novice, who had a sparse mustache above his upper lip, rubbed his nose. “I was just cleaning the temple that day”—his voice crackled, as though not knowing whether to dip low or high—“when a gentleman came in and asked for Minho. The child isn’t partial to strangers, but the gentleman still held him in his arms, telling him things.”
“What was being said?”
“I forget things easily so do not remember too much, but I do recall one thing he said. ‘Remember my name, never forget it.’”
“What did he say his name was?”
The novi
ce rubbed his nose again. “Eummmm. I haven’t a good ear for names.”
I heaved out a sigh, and Inspector Han gave me a warning glance. He calmly proceeded to ask, “Do you recall anything unique about his appearance?”
“His eyes were curved at the end—like a phoenix’s eyes.”
“And his speech? What dialect did he use?”
“He was using the correct capital speech.”
“And his height?”
“Not very tall. I can’t remember too well, though.”
“What was he wearing?”
“He wore a bright yellow dopo.”
The slightest frown flitted across Inspector Han’s brows. A dopo was the overcoat robe of high scholars, or sometimes government officials on private business. No commoner could have worn such a garment. If this was Lady O’s lover, he most certainly belonged to aristocracy.
“If you saw his face,” Inspector Han continued, pulling a scroll out from his robe, “do you think you would recognize him?”
The young novice paused a moment. “Yes, sir.”
The paper unrolled, Inspector Han turned it toward him. “Do you recognize this face?”
“Him…,” the novice whispered, and his mouth fell open. “Hah! It was him!”
“You are certain?”
“I am! I swear upon my mother’s grave!”
I walked around to see for myself. The charcoal sketch was of a young man with an angular face, delicate brows, and eyes ever so slightly tilted at the corners. A chill prickled through me, raising the hair on my skin. I had served tea to this man before.
It was the tutor of Lady O’s brother. Scholar Ahn.
* * *
“How did you know, Inspector,” I asked as we stepped out of the temple, with Ryun going ahead of us to retrieve our horses, “that it was Scholar Ahn?”
“It was natural to suspect him,” he replied. “Think, Damo Seol. The life of an unmarried lady and the life of a peasant girl … what is the difference?”
