The Tilting Rudder (1)
Taesu came back with a straight face and, for the next few days, kept himself remarkably well-behaved.
At least, that was how Won-beom saw it. So when Taesu suddenly announced he was leaving, Won-beom was flabbergasted.
“What? Hyung-nim, you’re leaving?”
Yi Uk tried to talk him out of it too.
“It feels awkward for me to say this myself, but there’s a banquet coming up this autumn too... Why not stay a few more months before you go?”
Taesu shook his head.
“If I keep freeloading here, that bastard Oh Bong-gil and the backers he drags in with him will never let things stay peaceful. I’m leaving, so just say you kicked me out.”
“A market scoundrel barks at whoever’s nearest. No need to lose sleep over such petty trouble.”
At Yi Uk’s words, Won-beom suddenly rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward.
“He’s right, hyung-nim. Back then, I was pathetic. If that bastard causes trouble again, I’ll be the one holding the axe.”
But Taesu only smiled faintly and never took back his decision.
What these brothers didn’t know was that Taesu had done something far worse than a burst of impulsive violence.
No matter how carefully you hid a corpse, you could never hide the fact that certain high-and-mighty ginseng middlemen had simply disappeared.
The government had no interest in justice, but it would certainly take an interest in a tribute payment that had abruptly vanished. An investigation was only a matter of time.
And the longer that time stretched, the worse it became for Taesu.
The shelf life of a crime was inversely proportional to status. If some exalted gentleman could mock corruption and get away with it while an ordinary man was dragged into prison for defamation, then it was obvious something even uglier was about to happen here.
If Taesu stayed around until that point, Yi Won-beom’s whole family would be in danger too. Plenty of people would happily use this excuse to erase the brothers and remove the variable of royal succession altogether.
So Taesu spent those few days hurrying through his departure preparations.
“I was only passing through to begin with. I won’t forget the kindness of those who helped a man of unknown roots so readily.”
“Where will you go? Did you have relatives or friends in the secular world?”
“Nothing like that. But I plan to make my living in trade, so I’m heading for Songdo. When I come back, I’ll have made a fortune, and I’ll be sure to repay the favor properly.”
“What favor is there left to repay? We should be the ones repaying you...” Yi Uk said. “With your looks and your unusual clothes, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. Still, since the times are unsettled, I won’t dare advise you to take up scholarship instead.”
Whatever their differences, Yi Uk and Yi Won-beom were in the same boat as Taesu: their books had no practical use against the weight of power.
Yi Uk, who vented the frustration of the oppressed in that quiet, restrained way, no longer tried to keep Taesu any longer.
Taesu stood, picked up the pack beside him, and slung it over his shoulder.
It was about the size of the bundles carried by traveling peddlers, but far heavier, a reassuring load whose value would make even one or two cargo convoys look laughably inadequate.
As soon as Taesu stepped out through the gate, Won-beom came hurrying after him.
“Hyung-nim, hyung-nim! Take this with you.”
“What is it?”
“Last time, when you ate the meat, you kept complaining there wasn’t enough spice and grease. I went and got you some dried pollack, along with scallions, garlic, soy sauce, and gochujang—whatever I could find. I tried to get some oil too, but all they had was this tiny little bowl.”
Taesu grinned. “Smells like sesame oil.”
“What else would it be? The amount’s small, but it’s first-press oil, so it should be fine.”
“You swapped it for dried meat then. Hey. If you had that much spare time, why didn’t you just buy yourself another axe?”
Won-beom fell silent for a moment. Then he spoke slowly.
“It’s all right. I’m thinking I won’t go up into the mountains so often anymore. I’ll work the kitchen garden and maybe read some books again at home.”
“Books?”
“Like Brother Yi Uk said, I may not be able to change the past, but I ought not to be ashamed in front of my ancestors.”
In the original history, when Won-beom ascended the throne, he was asked what he had studied over the years and answered, “I read a little Small Learning and Comprehensive Mirror, though lately I haven’t read much of anything at all.”
It was a bit like a conglomerate chairman suddenly dying without an heir, then having a bastard found and installed, only to be asked afterward and reply, “I can read Hangul.”
But this time, it looked like he might avoid that humiliation. Won-beom’s eyes were too serious to dismiss it as a three-day resolution.
Even Taesu was shocked. He didn’t know history, but he knew Yi Won-beom as a man.
Looking at him, Taesu reached into the pack.
Out came half of the silver candlestick Kim Dae-geon had given him. Won-beom, who had been awkwardly handed the silver candlestick Taesu tossed his way, nearly jumped out of his skin.
“W-what on earth is this?”
“I’m trying to make a living as a merchant. I can’t be the one who doesn’t pay first.”
Won-beom’s face twisted into a strange, bewildered expression. Taesu snorted.
“It’s a scholarship. Study hard.”
Before Won-beom could even ask what on earth a scholarship was, Taesu had already turned and strode off.
* * *
[It seems that child harbors grand ambitions.]
“Why?”
[If the current king were to die young without an heir, that child could become king. Until now he’d been pretending not to know out of fear, but it seems he’s made some sort of resolve.]
“The younger brother, not Won-beom?”
[Probably. To place him on the throne, he’d still need to be adopted into the royal line, and Yi Uk isn’t the eldest son. It would be hard to sever that house’s ancestral line and bring him in.]
I don’t really get all that. Won-beom could just handle the ancestral rites, couldn’t he?
Anyway, I didn’t feel like opposing it. If Won-beom had decided not to live as a cringing nobody after what happened in the market, then I should root for him.
He might not be someone who could just study and sit an exam to become king, but who’s to say he couldn’t pull it off?
Maybe it would even be fun to see him become king instead of Cheoljong. Maybe he’d even pay back the scholarship with interest.
I cut off my wandering thoughts there and glanced to the side.
“Are we there yet?”
“We are.”
The man walking with me was Kim Sun-won, the salted-fish peddler I’d gotten to know a few days earlier.
He had readily agreed when I asked to join the Bobusang. He hadn’t asked for details, and I hadn’t volunteered any, but he seemed to have noticed that Oh Jo-gyeon’s gang had suddenly vanished into thin air.
Kim Sun-won stopped in front of a shop that looked like it might be a pharmacy.
“This is the Ganghwa branch. If you receive your Chukmun and Chaejang here and write down your name and address in the registry, then from that point on you’re comrades who help one another whenever needed.”
I’d been suspicious for a while now, but this is basically just a merchant business registration, right? It’s not some revolutionary party or anything, is it?
* * *
Taesu’s suspicion wasn’t entirely off base.
The Bobusang system had a lot in common with what capitalists had always hated: a sort of “citizens’ cooperative.”
First, Chukmun was a kind of dues receipt you got in spring and autumn after paying the Chunsu-jeon—funds for members’ medical expenses—and the Chubo-jeon—funeral expenses.
This Chukmun worked much like a health insurance card, proving a peddler’s status.
And Chaejang was a ledger recording personal details and debts borrowed.
That too served as proof of identity, in the same way a credit card can verify a person’s credentials.
If you satisfied this “proof,” then Bobusang members would help even a stranger they’d never met as if he were their brother or sister—or more than that.
If someone collapsed, they’d rescue him. If someone went hungry, they’d feed him. If someone was beaten, they wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate as a group, even to the point of murder. On the other hand, without those papers, you’d often be turned away even by a lodging house that catered to traveling merchants.
If you cared about history, you’d find it fascinating: in Joseon, a wasteland when it came to social welfare and public safety, itinerant merchants had created their own means of self-protection.
Taesu, who cared nothing for history, merely thought they were making a ridiculous fuss over bundle peddling. He had no way of knowing that in twenty-first-century Korea, even hunters who ran riot with guns and blades inside gates still had to file themselves with the district office by rank.
But in Joseon, where the very concept of free movement was shaky at best, it was true that for Taesu—a man with no family and no servants—joining the Bobusang was the best way to travel safely to Kaesong and to build experience as a merchant from there on.
* * *
A public officer from the Ganghwa branch came out with a swaggering gait.
“What brings you here?”
“I’ve brought a solid comrade to join the association. His Chunsu-jeon is paid without fail too.”
The officer gave Taesu a doubtful once-over.
“I’ve never seen this fellow before... Lately there are a lot of people who come to the market and cause trouble in the branch’s name, so we can’t take in strangers so easily. He certainly looks like the type who’d run wild relying on brute strength...”
[That official’s appraisal of character is truly comparable to old Han China’s Xu Shao.]
Shut up, will you?
Taesu rested a hand on the axe at his waist.
The movement drew the officer’s attention. When he saw the axe, the man’s eyes widened.
“Wait a moment. Aren’t you that strongman who beat down Oga the other day?”
Kim Sun-won chimed in as though he’d been waiting for the opening.
“Exactly. The very man I told you about before. How could we traveling merchants, who roam the whole country on nothing but loyalty, turn a blind eye to a spirited young man like him?”
The officer grabbed Taesu by the arm and pulled him closer.
“That Oga bastard caused trouble on our side too. We’d been planning to knife him somewhere out of the way sooner or later. Seems you gave him quite a beating, because we haven’t seen him at all since then.”
Taesu kept his mouth shut and let the man think what he wanted. The mood remained cheerful.
“You’re not married, are you? I’ll put your name down in the Dongmongcheong—the Bobusang youth division. With your sturdy build and that mountain of energy, you’ll probably have those young brats under control before long.”
Soon after, the officer issued the Chaejang and Chukmun.
So it’s real. No funny business.
Are you serious? You just skimmed it, didn’t you? I’ve been burned before because of a contract. Read it properly.
If you’re suspicious, why don’t you study yourself? A person who doesn’t learn is like walking through a pitch-black night [If a man does not learn, it is as though he walks at night in darkness, from the Precious Mirror for Enlightening the Mind]. You’re basically a blind man with his eyes open.
To be fair, handwritten civil documents like this are harder to read than printed classics or scripture, and the terminology and grammar are different too. Even in modern Korean academia, not many people can do this sort of thing, so there’s no shame in struggling with it.
But the mountain spirit sneered as if this were a thoroughly shameful failure. Taesu clenched his teeth, hardening his resolve in a way that almost matched Won-beom’s.
Feeling paranoid, Taesu started suspecting the mountain spirit had even read Kim Dae-geon’s draft properly, and checked it again.
When Taesu took out the draft and showed it to the officer for cross-checking, the man couldn’t hide his admiration.
“Oh? That’s a promissory note from Cha Un-hong, the owner of the three-paper mulberry operation.”
“He must be a big rich man, then?”
“Big? You could say that. Among those who’ve invested in his mulberry fields, some have received dividends of as much as two thousand nyang at a time. Ginseng isn’t something the Bobusang or the official association handles, but it’s still worth knowing about. I’ve just never seen the man himself.”
So Joseon has promissory notes too, and a ginseng farm run like a joint-stock company?
While Taesu struggled to adjust, the officer casually went on.
“Where in the world did you get this? From what you’re saying, it doesn’t sound like you received it from Cha Un-hong... If you’d rather not say, I could take this note and pay around four hundred nyang in your stead.”
This note had value not only as money itself, but because it could open the door to Cha Un-hong. From the Ganghwa branch’s perspective, it was a tempting prize.
If Taesu had no merchant’s ambition, it would have been a good deal. After all, the cost of getting to Kaesong wasn’t exactly negligible.
But now Taesu was a proper bundle-peddler businessman. He couldn’t yield here.
When Taesu politely refused, the officer didn’t press further. Instead, as if he’d glimpsed some potential in him, he showed a bit of investor’s generosity.
“The Chunsu-jeon is covered by the three nyang you’ve paid already, and I’ll count your Chubo-jeon as paid too, based on your credit. Seeing that promissory note, I suppose that’s fair enough.”
“Thank you.”
Kim Sun-won tried to tempt him into becoming a salted-fish peddler under his wing.
But since I’d already heard from the mountain spirit, Taesu chose the compensation side over the special-supplies side.
The exclusive goods for the supply merchants were bulky, heavy, and cheap. Things like fish, salted fish, cast iron, wood, and pottery. If anything was a little better, it was tobacco and salt.
The compensation share, on the other hand, consisted of light items that were expensive relative to their weight: gold, silver, brassware, hats, combs, oil, cotton cloth, silk, and the like.
That was why they carried them in bundles and sold them on the road. He wasn’t short of starting capital, so there was no reason to force himself into a pack-bearer’s life.
And so Merchant Park Taesu soon set out for Gapgot Ferry in the company of former boatman Kim Sun-won.
“The boat’s small, so if we circle Seungcheonpo like this and head into Yeoseong River, we could get straight to Songdo... but...”
The Bobusang were merchants of the land. After watching the little boat’s condition, Taesu decided the land route was safer after all.
“Let’s walk a bit, to widen my horizons too. Just get me across that river... or sea, whichever it is.”
“As you wish.”
For the first time in a while, Kim Sun-won returned to his old trade. He spat into his palm and gripped the oar shaft.
Behind Taesu’s back, as he looked east, a rich boatman’s song soon rose up.
It was an old ferryboat, old enough that no one could tell whether it was sinking or drifting, yet aboard it sat a man who had unknowingly already turned the wheel of history.
The pitch and roll that the great ship called history suddenly kicked up took place somewhere entirely different from Gapgot Ferry.
It happened at Eungsanjin in Hwanghae Province, where Kim Dae-geon was headed—or more precisely, at Sunwido, the island he had marked as his smuggling midway base.
* * *
Priest Kim Dae-geon took a deep breath when he saw soldiers surging toward him.
“...And the king of Aram sent horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city...”
Many scriptures from established religions were used as spells by the general public, who did not understand their meaning. Anyone who had heard scripture recited aloud or heard a ritual prayer could feel that East Asia was no different.
So the soldiers involuntarily flinched. Superstitious fear had caught hold of their ankles.
Kim Dae-geon, chanting from 1 Kings for precisely that effect, clutched the metal cylinder Taesu had given him.
“...I pray, darken the eyes of that host, and as Elijah spoke, He darkened their eyes...”
He pulled the ring.
What had briefly been “relocated” because of some officer’s gambling debts in the Republic of Korea military, then rolled all the way into Joseon by some unbelievable twist of fate, was a red K18 smoke grenade, spewing madness in a choking cloud.