The Martyrs Shall Return (3)

Among the statutes of the Rites of Zhou — that ceremonial code of the Zhou dynasty believed to date from some time before 1000 BCE — there stood a single, unadorned provision:

The rule rested on a doctrine that had lived in East Asian civilization for as long as anyone could remember: the idea of the state as parent and guardian, a philosophy that placed the moral cultivation of every member of society above the raw machinery of punishment.

The old laws of China and the special exemptions of successive penal codes make the point even plainer. In the Quli chapter of the Book of Rites — the very text that became the frame of criminal law — the matter is set down without ambiguity:

That was no mere scriptural theory. Children of seven and under were not to be punished, and the principle was practiced, not merely preached. The Han Chinese dynasties that held the Central Plains inherited it, and so did the nomad dynasties that succeeded them, generation after generation, refining it as they went.

The reason I have troubled you with this tangled and difficult history is simple enough.

"To ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠think His Majesty would deal so harshly even with a child like you."

That was how I came, all at once, to be the cellmate of Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok, who lay in the Uigeumbu prison under brutal interrogation.

I told him, as kindly as I could, what was happening outside.

"Countless people petitioned, but no one could stop the Tribunal Inspectors once they came brandishing a royal command. The Confucian students of the Seonggyungwan, and the men of conscience from the Hwaseo Academy and the three southern provinces, all gathered in one place and rose to save you. I was at the center of it, and His Majesty seems to have decided I was a subversive."

"How many more must His Sage Majesty put to suffering... A common man like me finds the tears coming now before the worry, and they veil my sight."

"Do not trouble yourself overmuch. The people of all eight provinces have truly understood our plight, and they send us comfort and support. The truth will shine on us soon enough."

"That... would be good..."

Whether it was disappointment or despair at a king cruel enough to lock even a seven-year-old in a cell, his strength gave out and he fainted where he sat.

Someone watching that collapse spoke toward me.

"Eat some porridge first. I heard from the jailer you held a hunger strike outside to save us."

"I did."

"Haha! A useless gesture, that. Still — don't call yourself a humble nobody. You're a righteous man who ran every road there was to save us, even with His Majesty's blue-steel blade of politics passing over your head."

Shin Heon shoved a bowl of porridge, long since gone cold, through the bars toward me. Then he dragged his ruined legs, leaned against the wall, and let out a hollow laugh. It sounded like the cackle of a madman.

"Haha! What a goddamn world this is!"

"...They can hear you outside, Your Excellency."

"Let them."

Yang Heon-su, his face drained to the last drop of strength, tried to stop him, rubbing desperately at palms already a wreck of wounds. Shin Heon only laughed on, with the look of a man who had nothing left to lose.

"Foreign troops swaggering through the capital as if they owned it — I have never heard of such a thing, never read it in any book. A humiliation that did not even happen in the year of Byeongja, and we took it without firing a single proper shot! How furious the ancestors would be if they knew!"

Shin Heon hammered at his own bruised chest, hating what his country had become. Yang Heon-su and the officers of the military revolt bowed their heads as they listened. Locked in their fetters, topknots undone, hair wild as scarecrows, they looked to my eyes like so many ghosts.

In that bleak scene I took a slow, careful look around the inside of the Uigeumbu prison.

A banquet of stars.

Whether King Gojong had done me some twisted kindness, or whether he had simply swept up every opposing faction in one net and stuffed the prison full, the cell I sat in held enough former high officials of the Daewongun's party to staff an entire government. Recite their names and you could have formed a cabinet on the spot.

Kim Byeong-guk I can understand. But Cho Yeong-ha... I cannot for the life of me see why he is here.

I learned later that Cho Yeong-ha had originally approached the king with every intention of bringing the Heungseon Daewongun down. Then, once His Majesty had already summoned the Qing army of his own accord, the man was written off as a fence-sitting bat, sniffing both ways at once — and so he had been dragged in as a side catch, with nothing but the king's dislike to show for it.

The prison held a few of the Yeoheung Min royal in-laws who had been cooperative with the Daewongun, and a fair number of men from great houses like the Andong Kim and the Pungyang Cho. Their lot, of course, was a little better than that of the officers who had taken an active part in the revolt.

Better, in this place, meant only that they had not yet been put to the leg-screws. Setting aside the elderly Shin Heon and Hong Sun-mok, the younger officers who had arrived before me already had thighs and calves running with blood. A physician was kept on duty at all hours, all the same. Our deaths, it seemed, would have been inconvenient.

"This way."

One of the orderlies who managed the prison came in with a deferential air and quietly led two people to the front of my cell. He whispered to them.

"You have only a little time. I will go outside and keep watch. The moment I make a sound like a bird, you must come out at once."

"Thank you. Thank you."

"Go carefully."

"And you — be careful as well."

The door groaned shut. Jailer and orderly went out, and the rich smell of rice cakes drifted toward us.

"Father! Father!"

"Seung-man. I've come."

I lifted my head. In the moonlight I saw two faces: one I knew well, and another so wet with tears it was a ruin.

One was Hong Yeong-sik, second son of Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok, and in years to come a principal actor in the Gapsin Coup. The other was Woo Beom-seon, who had, on my account, suddenly found himself without a post in the world.

"Father! Please — come to your senses, won't you?"

Hong Yeong-sik was half out of his mind. His father, a man nearly seventy, lay face-down without the slightest movement, and he seemed certain the old man had died in his cell under the interrogation. I forced my mouth open to undo the mistake.

"He is still alive. For now."

"Aigoo, Father!"

I pressed my sleeve to Hong Sun-mok's nostrils and let Hong Yeong-sik see the breath still moving there. He seized the bars, sank down, and wept.

"Aigoo. What a wretched, worthless world."

My cellmates and I watched the reunion of father and son with heavy eyes. Woo Beom-seon drew from his sleeve the rice cakes he had smuggled in, and a warmed bottle of liquor.

"Eat this first. You haven't had a bite in three days, have you? Keep this up and you'll starve to death. You will."

I declined the cakes and the bottle he held out, and answered in a voice meant to carry to the officers locked in the other cells.

"The seniors who arrived before me already shared their porridge. They are older than I, and this hard prison will have worn their strength down. Please take the liquor to them first."

"...All right."

I pushed the food away with stubborn courtesy. Woo Beom-seon, seeing he would get nowhere, went from cell to cell and portioned out the cakes and the liquor a little at a time, then came back. Behind him, voices rose in thanks.

"Thank you."

"I'll take a little as well..."

"Thank you. Thank you."

"It is nothing. You have all suffered more than I."

"Now you eat too."

"Yes."

I bit into a rice cake, and Woo Beom-seon began to pour out the news from outside.

"After the Tribunal Inspectors dragged you off in that uproar, the mood in Hanyang hit the ground and kept sinking. A great many of the Confucian students who spoke with you knew your righteousness and went around telling everyone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they met — that's why. The trouble is, the Qing soldiers have used the affair as an excuse to patrol at all hours and take it out on perfectly innocent people. It's a disaster."

"I pray no harm comes to the ordinary people."

He had more. Choe Ik-hyeon, who had come forward as the court's intermediary, had withdrawn into seclusion without a word of response. In Yeongnam the abduction of the Daewongun had the whole region in an uproar; they were drafting a ten-thousand-man memorial and swearing they would march ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on Hanyang. Woo Beom-seon recited it all, then sat down hard on the floor, as if his legs had given out.

"The Japanese legation was in a frenzy looking for you as well. Who, they wanted to know, is supposed to pay the steamship charter fees?"

"Heh. Our gold-like sovereign, who loves his people so well, will surely pay them. Or the Qing army will."

"As it happens, the Qing army has more and more mouths of its own to feed. They looked quite ready to pull their troops out."

"I see. And the others? Is there no news of them?"

"You mean the men who stirred up the soldiers at the Seonhyecheong."

At my question he glanced, with some difficulty, toward the prisoners in the cells, then answered as if the words themselves were heavy.

"The musketeer Yu Bok-man, Kim Chun-yeong, the officer Kang Myeong-jun, and the rest — seven in all — were executed the same day. Tribunal Inspectors have already set out to arrest those who cooperated with the Daewongun at the Gyeonggi Provincial Garrison, in Gwangju Prefecture, and in Pyongyang."

"Good God."

"What — executed already, without even a proper trial?!"

The prisoners who had been listening to us cried out in shock. To put men to death after nothing but savage torture and interrogation, without a single formal trial, was a thing that had never existed in the history of Joseon — a country that did, after all, possess a body of national law.

Gojong is in a hurry!

Woo Beom-seon raised a hand as if to tell us not to startle further, and quieted the murmuring cells.

"Whether to apply attainder of kin is still being fought over, back and forth, inside the court. The execution of the officers without any proper procedure has the whole city in an uproar as well. His Majesty has announced that every bit of it was a tragedy forced on us by the Qing army, but..."

"Who on earth would believe that?"

Hong Yeong-sik took up the thread, both hands covering his face.

"My close friend the Right Vice Royal Secretary — Kim Ok-gyun — and Seongheum, that is Yun Chi-ho, did everything in their power to save my father and all of you. But every effort was blocked from above, in ways no one can explain."

"Even with the Magistrate of Namyang — Yun Ung-ryeol — backing them?"

Someone put the question. I answered in his place.

"Someone still higher, I would guess, is standing in the way."

"Ah..."

Despair broke out among the men at Hong Yeong-sik's news.

Yun Ung-ryeol, the Magistrate of Namyang, commissioned a Jeolchung General, was in this hour the only figure of any warmth toward the Daewongun's faction who had survived the purge. He was also the officer who had raised the drilled battalions of the Tongni Gimmu Amun. In the wake of the military revolt the government had no proper army left; those trained troops, the only force that still kept its firepower, were the court's one remaining blade. If Gojong meant to dismiss even Yun Ung-ryeol and seize the army for himself, nothing would be left in those ranks but amateurs who did not know the first letter of strategy.

And that hope had come to nothing. I watched them flounder in their despair, then spoke to Woo Beom-seon in a voice large enough for every cell to hear.

The first to answer was Hong Yeong-sik, who still clung to the bars and had been calling for his father as if his throat would break.

"...The highest elder? What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. The greatest elder of the royal house. Let all the people gather and petition that person for our deliverance."

He stared at me with round, utterly uncomprehending eyes, and asked how his father might live through this.

"If you can only get my father out of this prison, I will repay the debt across a hundred years — a thousand years!"

"That promise. You must keep it later. Without fail."

I took Hong Yeong-sik's hand in mine and swore it with a confidence that had neither bottom nor end. A strange heat filled the Uigeumbu prison.

It was a night in July.

"These damned, thunderstruck bastards!"

Only weeks before, the Qing army that had landed at Jemulpo had at last let him seize the initiative in a chaotic court, and King Yi Hyeong had been savoring the sensation of strolling above the clouds. Now he shot a look back at the Grand Queen Dowager's hall he had just left, and muttered a curse under his breath.

"What filthy wretch dared take a memorial like that to the Inner Court...!"

Yes. That memorial.

While he had been occupied with the care of the state, some crooked faction had presented the Grand Queen Dowager with an anonymous memorial stuffed to the margins with the most preposterous charges.

His eyes, touched for an instant with something like madness, swept the room around him. The only result was that a pair of blameless young eunuchs and attendants at his side began to tremble in fine, helpless shivers.

Who? Who dares!

He forced himself to master the feeling of having been flung into a ditch, and the conversation he had just held with the Grand Queen Dowager rose again in his mind.

She had said:

"I did not call His Majesty aside today for any other matter."

"What is this about?"

"Read this first."

She had never been particularly warm toward him, but the two of them had always observed at least the minimum of courtesy. Today she was cold in a way that stood apart from every other day. She watched him, with something like pity, as his bewildered hands moved down the memorial.

"This— this is—!"

As Yi Hyeong read on, horror overtook him. His hands and feet began to shake. The memorial was nothing other than the righteous rising of the military men — the Jungjong Restoration. And he did not need to ask who the tyrant in its pages was meant to be. It was himself.

The Grand Queen Dowager, who had watched him in silence, spoke.

"You understand now, I trust, why I called His Majesty here."

"This is slander! Who dares utter such—"

"Your Majesty."

The voice was cold in a register wholly unlike his father's. Yi Hyeong's mind snapped back into place and his mouth shut. The Grand Queen Dowager went on.

"I do not, even now, regret bringing His Majesty into this house."

"Your Grace..."

"But the matter of arranging the Daewongun's abduction with the Qing. The matter of locking a boy not even seven years old in the Uigeumbu prison. The matter of persecuting and interrogating ministers of state who had nothing to do with the military revolt. The matter of executing the men held responsible for that revolt without any proper procedure. Haa."

The questions, once started, followed one another in a chain. She herself seemed oppressed by them, and let out a long breath before she continued.

"I have tried to understand it with my reason, and my heart will not accept it. How can His Majesty — who ought to be a father to every subject of Joseon — treat them so harshly?"

"..."

"There are not a few who feel the Qing occupation of Hanyang as a humiliation. It is right that a suzerain should ease the sufferings of a tributary. But they may yet harbor other designs, and I believe it should also be His Majesty's decision to send them away at once."

The scolding did not stop. All of it, of course, King Yi Hyeong had brought upon himself.

"...I understand."

She saw that he was holding his feelings down by force, and added a word more.

"I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠know perfectly well that a mere woman laying down instructions on affairs of state is itself a thing the world would condemn. So I thank His Majesty for listening to me today."

"Not at all, Your Grace. It is only the duty of a son."

Then she offered him a point of compromise.

"As for the matter of the Daewongun — I am sorry for it, but I regard it as His Majesty's decision. I will not press you on that. But I hope you will let the king's warm mercy shine on the young subject and the old ministers."

"Yes, Your Grace. State affairs are pressing. I will withdraw."

The recollection ended. Yi Hyeong clenched his teeth until they ached.

"Just you wait."

The raw, iron taste of blood from bitten lip and gum flooded his nose.

The sovereign had sent men.

Not to the Uigeumbu prison, where the wronged loyalists were held — but to the Gyeonggi Provincial Garrison, where Qing generals stood in ranks.