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 passed, 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.
Now it is not meet that a princess espouse a sea-cuny, or even a claimant of the ancient blood of Koryu, who is without power, or place, or visible symbols of rank.
So it was promulgated by imperial decree that I was a prince of Koryu.
Next, after breaking the bones and decapitating the then governor of the five provinces, himself an adherent of Chong Mong-ju, I was made governor of the seven home provinces of ancient Koryu.
In Cho-Sen seven is the magic number.
To complete this number two of the provinces were taken over from the hands of two more of Chong Mong-ju’s adherents.
Lord, Lord, a sea-cuny . . . and dispatched north over the Mandarin Road with five hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back!
I was a governor of seven provinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me.
Life, death, and torture, I carried at my disposal.
I had a treasury and a treasurer, to say nothing of a regiment of scribes.
Awaiting me also was a full thousand of tax-farmers; who squeezed the last coppers from the toiling people.
The seven provinces constituted the northern march.