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 peacock 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.
“Passing well, ay, and more than passing 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 God 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 minuti? of court etiquette and manners, the history of Korea and of gods old and new, and the forms of polite speech, noble 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.