The Old Tiger and the Wolf (2)
It was the morning of the fourteenth day of the sixth month — the third day since the old-style soldiers had risen in revolt.
Leave not a single one standing!
Heungseon-gun Yi Ha-eung, the Daewonwi, had spectacularly announced his return to court that morning. He had presented to the throne the cabinet reorganization he had poured his heart's blood into carving — a plan that expelled every last relative of the Queen his son had appointed — and around the end of the Hour of the Rabbit, as he left the palace, he could not help but click his tongue at the beggars packing the ground before Gwanghwamun.
"Tsk."
Beggars. Yes — beggars.
Most of them in rags, filthy paupers who had not gone home since the last upheaval, who had not washed, whose stench seemed almost visible to the naked eye. Yi Ha-eung frowned and spoke to his confidants.
"The smell seems to be reaching even here."
"It is a most grievous matter, Your Highness."
The trouble was that these people, having picked up some scheme from who knew where, were aping the Confucian scholars and literati — hiding behind the armed mutineers, staging a sit-in, kicking up a racket even before the palace gates, declaring they would submit a memorial to His Majesty informing him of their plight.
Waaaaah!!!
And the greater problem was that their numbers kept swelling.
Yi Ha-eung, privately uneasy, let his tongue loose.
"...They've doubled since last night. Tell me — is the force currently guarding the palace insufficient?"
The officials attending him answered.
"Do not trouble yourself, Your Highness. Commander Heo Jeong has only just returned from the Gyeonggi Provincial Garrison, so there should be no shortage of troops for maintaining order and palace security within the capital."
"The Chungyongcheong at Bukhansanseong Fortress and the troops of the Tongni Gimuaemun have also begun making contact with us, wishing to follow the prevailing tide. Given time, this will soon quiet down."
"Hmph."
Then Yi Ha-eung's eye caught a man of diminutive stature boldly climbing onto a cart he had dragged over as a makeshift platform, shouting — and the beggars roaring back in answer.
What struck him was the man's dress: a jacket soaked a blood-red, white trousers, and a black paeraengi on his head — a shabby outfit like that of a traveling peddler.
He shouted.
As if he had never had enough to eat since childhood, the scrawny, small fellow with a thin beard looked over the crowd, cleared his throat a few times, then bellowed until his voice nearly tore.
And the fellow could talk — that much was certain.
"That's right! That's right!"
"The old saying goes: to love the people is the greatest love under heaven! But look around you, everyone!"
At the red-clad man's words, the beggars sitting in before Gwanghwamun looked at one another.
Watching this, Yi Ha-eung naturally frowned.
"Who among us is loved now? Who?"
Silence settled over them.
Some wept. Others flushed red and raked pointless scratches into the dirt.
As the mood of the gathering sank, the man on the platform, who had been gauging the atmosphere, went on.
"But!"
Having recaptured their attention, he spread both arms wide and roared.
A rumble went through the crowd.
With his gesture, thousands of pairs of eyes followed the tip of his outstretched finger.
At the end of that finger stood Yi Ha-eung himself.
The voice that followed struck Yi Ha-eung's ears like a blow.
"Wh...?"
At being singled out, Yi Ha-eung let out an embarrassing sound, like air escaping his lungs — but before he could even register it, the man pointed at him and declared to a crowd now filled with some nameless excitement and expectation:
"So let us all lend our strength to His Lordship the Daewonwi, the great elder of the royal house!"
"Daewonwi! Daewonwi!"
"Waaah!"
And so the crowd cheered, chanting his name over and over.
Feeling as if he had been had, a strange embarrassment trembling in his cheeks, Yi Ha-eung turned his gaze from them and muttered.
"...It's well enough that they seek me out, but."
Among the banners, slogans written in fierce red letters on white cloth caught his eye: Eliminate Tyranny, Save the People. Aid the Nation, Pacify the People.
And the human swarm shouting these and running wild was not to his liking either.
But—
"Hmph."
Wiping under his nose, Yi Ha-eung decided in the end to show magnanimity and turn a blind eye to those who sought him out. Then he opened his mouth.
"Baekwon — Shin Jae-hyo. Are you still inquiring after the person pulling their strings from behind?"
"...I am most sorry to report, Your Highness, that I am."
"You're late. Delay too long and it will not look well."
Waving a hand at Shin Jae-hyo, who showed him a head gone completely white, Yi Ha-eung sank into thought.
He's hidden himself well.
That this man — whose footsteps reached beyond Joseon into Japan and Qing — was giving even Cheonhajangan such trouble was not welcome news.
Traitorous profiteers and corrupt officials like Minister Min Gyeom-ho!
Abolish tyranny and save the people!
Waaaaah!!!
The red-clad man had vanished, and Gwanghwamun was a madhouse once more.
Those who clambered onto the platform at random had neither the eloquence nor the voice of the previous speaker, and perhaps that was why the beggar-like audience's response and interest ran so low.
"...Yes. It does not look well."
At Yi Ha-eung's words, the officials lined up on either side bowed deeply.
It does not look well. Truly, a most timely observation.
The noisier the center became, the more likely even accomplished work would be overturned.
After much deliberation, his thoughts gradually took shape.
I must capture their leader.
His eyebrows arched fiercely upward as Yi Ha-eung began to deduce, in his mind, who might use such extraordinary tactics to attack him politically.
Whoever it was, they were as cunning as a fox.
Not the military officers from the old garrisons. Those men aren't capable of acting so calculatingly.
Then the Queen's bloodline? I did verbally order the execution of their ringleader Min Gyeom-ho, so they would have a grudge... but they're too cowardly to dare try anything against me.
Then perhaps the Andong Kim clan, the former power-holders I brought down? That can't be it either. In the new cabinet I formed, there is Gyeonggyo — Kim Byeong-hak — and Gyeongyong — Kim Byeong-guk — as well. The Pungyang Jo clan... they're too busy just trying to breathe right now.
Then who?
Even Heungseon-gun Yi Ha-eung, praised among his supporters as the very incarnation of politics, could only click his tongue at an opponent whose identity offered not even a clue to guess at.
The ones he had first thought of all lacked the capacity by a wide margin.
Then a damp, shadowy thought brushed through his mind, answering his curiosity.
His Majesty...?
"That can't be."
Glancing back at the main hall he had just left, just in case, he quickly shook his head.
His own son had ambition and cunning enough, but he was no master of manipulating people's hearts — of steering them by their most primal desires.
"If he were, this country wouldn't have come to this. Anyway."
Anyway, he needed to know the opponent's identity — whether to persuade him, or bring him into his own fold.
Or else—
"...I'll have to drive him from the board."
Drive him out. If the man intended to oppose him, he would have to be thoroughly erased.
To let him live would only be to repeat the danger of seeing the great wall he had rebuilt come crashing down.
One fallen wall was enough.
"Hmph."
Moreover, that crowd rioting and sitting in so noisily before Gwanghwamun — their very existence was a great burden to Heungseon-gun Yi Ha-eung.
If things went wrong—
I need to clean this up before His Majesty gets other ideas.
Those whose positions had been endangered by his own rise might well strike back.
And his son, His Majesty, was like a wolf, a jackal. No — he was a wolf itself.
If His Majesty so much as senses that I am going soft, or that I cannot settle this situation... he will use any pretext whatsoever to instantly reverse my return. His resentment over this affair will run deep as well.
An ordinary man could hardly imagine retracting a cabinet appointment — a matter of such gravity — in a single day. But his son was fully capable of it.
If Yi Ha-eung himself was a tiger, this comparison might be vulgar, but his son the king was a man with the wretched heart of a jackal.
That vicious habit of never missing an opponent's weakness.
"I should have had Myeon instead."
Having roughly organized his thoughts, Yi Ha-eung set aside speculation about the unidentified person controlling the crowd from the shadows — and the mutineers who were beginning to look at him with growing suspicion — and decided first to restore order to the capital that had become a madhouse.
"Listen here."
Clearing the surroundings and forming a human curtain of his confidants, he confirmed their discipline through silence, then began to speak.
"Starting today, I intend to suppress their movement and their sit-in as much as possible."
His confidants showed reluctance at his words.
"B-but how—"
"Your Highness, they may look like nothing more than fallen scholars and paupers gathered together, their actions of little consequence. But their numbers are not something we can ignore."
"Moreover, various Confucian scholars and even some court officials sympathize with their cause. If Your Highness were to discuss their treatment immediately, we would find ourselves in no small difficulty."
"I know that."
As his confidants, increasingly aware that they themselves were struggling to control the situation and public sentiment within Hanseong, expressed concern at the Daewongun's orders, Yi Ha-eung wore an expression of full understanding and explained with paternal kindness.
"So of course, we must avoid physical confrontation with them as much as possible. Yes — we should push forward under the pretext that they must not obstruct the street vendors, given the return of the marketplace merchants. Stabilizing the capital's food supply and grain prices is what they want most, after all. Control them under the banner of restoring public order and commercial activity within the city."
"Ah!"
"That head of Minister Min stuck on a pole and being paraded around is a fine example. Display the heads of the corrupt officials the mutineers captured and killed, and their underlings as well."
"Y-yes...?"
"Throw them something to tear into. Something fresh."
"Ah, but even so, corpses..."
When he ordered that corpses be reduced to a spectacle in a nation that held Neo-Confucianism as its state ideology, one of his confidants looked horrified.
Narrowing his eyes, Yi Ha-eung spoke slowly, as if impressing it upon them.
"It's enough if the crowd doesn't gather in front of Gwanghwamun spouting nonsense. You understand me?"
"Yes. Do not worry."
"We shall carry out your command, Your Highness."
Having received the reports of Cheonhajangan, of Heo Jeong who had seized the Gyeonggi Provincial Garrison, and of the military officers who formed the backbone of the coup beneath him, the Daewonwi nodded.
Can't sprinkle ashes on a meal that's already cooked.
From the standpoint of a statesman who, like himself, governed not just Hanyang but all of Joseon, the very existence of those rioters running wild so fearlessly, so insolently, before the palace was a great threat.
Their presence could become sufficient grounds for his opponents — and even his own son — to doubt his political capability.
"Move quickly. Nothing is more terrifying than a crowd that cannot be controlled."
Watching the backs of his confidants as they swiftly vanished to carry out his orders, Yi Ha-eung quietly observed a short man disappearing among the distant cheering crowd, and murmured.
"I'll know who you are when the time comes."
They would surely have much to discuss.
Yes — today was the Daewonwi's time, with the king at his waist. He could approach this calmly, at his leisure.
But that evening, the great Heungseon-gun Yi Ha-eung could not conceal his bewilderment.
"You're the leader...?"
"Yes, that is so, Your Highness the Daewonwi."
The man in red. He had come.
Honestly, he was quite pleased. That an enemy would come of his own accord meant a man possessed of both submission and wisdom.
Except that he was very young.
"Good heavens."
When Yi Ha-eung was genuinely astonished, the man — no, the boy — grinned with a mischievous smile befitting his age.
"The fake beard I went to such trouble to make has served its purpose. Then, allow me to introduce myself."
The boy's forehead touched the floor.
The first meeting of two bewildered men.