The Age of the Sea (3)
Forward trade base Seogeomdo.
Headquarters, Gyodongdo.
Industrial complex, Goerido.
The so-called Land of Promise, the Golden Triangle, had in fact slipped beyond the Joseon government’s control.
That was because King Yi Hwan, who needed his tonic, was turning a blind eye and “entrusting its defense to loyal Bobusang.”
Kim Hongbeom, Johan—the military officer in charge of this territory—stood there with his mouth hanging open before Choe Je-u, Taesu’s proxy.
“You want us to attack the target’s fleet? No, that’s just robbery!”
“You fled without repaying your tribute grain debt, and now you’re suddenly ashamed of robbery?”
He couldn’t exactly fire back that this welfare-fraud scheme had been his own bright idea from the start.
If he wanted to rebel against injustice, he should have done it then. Saying it now would only mean that the Catholics were following Choe Je-u’s orders instead of a priest’s.
Even as Donghak’s gaslighting gnawed at him, Kim Hongbeom still managed, with difficulty, to speak the truth.
“We took up guns and swords to defend ourselves, not to plunder others.”
“This is defending yourselves. That bastard Jo Gwanseop not only dared to target the Dobansu, but from what the Dobansu suffered in Kimryangjang, it seems he’s sniffed out at least some of your Western doctrine as well.”
Indeed, one of the charges Taesu had faced in Yongin had been that of belonging to a heretical sect. Even if it had all been brushed aside, it was no small matter.
Tension sharpened in Kim Hongbeom’s eyes.
Choe Je-u spoke sternly to him.
“You may not know the Dobansu’s kindness, but at least you should know how to protect your own skin. You must bring him down, no matter what.”
“But then the innocent will die…”
“I’m not saying you must kill everyone. It would be troublesome if the word got out, but who said murder was the only way?”
That was all Choe Je-u said.
Yet a tongue of holy fire descended upon Kim Hongbeom’s mind.
There was a way to do it without breaking the Ten Commandments.
They could simply convert them.
Wash their brains clean with sacred baptism, bring them into the Land of Promise, and that would be that.
If they hear the doctrine even once, they’ll surely be fighting one another to fall into the Lord’s embrace.
Kim Hongbeom’s thoughts were not at all unnatural. In Joseon, you couldn’t play at being Catholic without that level of conviction.
As if reading his mind, Choe Je-u murmured,
“You must protect the faith from the court’s suppression. You’re the only one who can lead the La Croisade—the Crusade.”
Come to think of it, crusaders had also captured slaves and sold them off. It was a perfect justification.
In truth, Donghak denied slavery on the basis of the idea that heaven lives within man. In the original history, Choe Je-u had awakened to that truth and freed the slaves.
But Christians were different. They preached human equality, yes, but the definition of “human” was a little flexible.
It didn’t matter whether it was Catholic or Protestant. France still maintained slavery, and America was a slave country by definition anyway.
Ever since Park Doekki had opened his eyes, Choe Je-u had long since decided to accept Western learning into Donghak. That adaptable, detachable sort of human-rights concept was child’s play.
And flexible ideas like that were easier for the “Western-learning” crowd to swallow, too.
Kim Hongbeom crossed his gun and blade in the shape of a cross and swore victory.
About two hundred crusading zealots bit down on daggers, climbed ropes, and leaped barefoot onto the deck.
“W-what the hell are these bastards?”
“Amen!”
The Kaesong peddler-band from the Port of Violence, the core of the fighting force, had long since been shattered by Taesu and Kim Dae-geon. Jo Gwanseop’s merchant fleet had already had far more than thirty nyang in silver ripped away from it.
Among them all, Captain Kim Hongbeom’s bayonet held an overwhelming divine force.
The wicked vampires turned to dust. Those who surrendered quickly had to complete holy doctrine lessons before they could be restored to human form.
“The initiates and the offerings have been reborn in a most revolutionary way by Choe Je-u’s hand.”
“Western bullets—the neuhong—are hard for us to make, but guns themselves are nothing more than repaired matchlocks, so we can produce them. Send these to Goerido.”
* * *
As if it weren’t enough that a bastard son kept ruining his day, U-seungji Jo Deokrim ran once again to Kim Jwa-geun.
“Dozens of merchant ships have suddenly vanished from Ganghwa. Not only that, but those peddler thugs are using the authority of the government name to beat people as they please and extort money from them. They’re even spouting nonsense like, ‘The ships stink of excrement, so they must be French!’”
Apparently Jo Deokrim had now forgotten even to hide the fact that he was in business.
“By that logic, the men who stole the ships are obvious as well. We never should have entrusted that sea to robbers like those peddler thugs!”
Kim Jwa-geun said coldly,
“Choose your words carefully. Do you even know who it was that entrusted that sea to robbers like those peddler thugs?”
“A-a slip of the tongue, Your Excellency. But if Your Excellency would only speak a word on my behalf…”
The peddlers who had taken to warlord rule in the waters near Ganghwado were a symbol of Kim Jwa-geun’s defeat at the hands of the king during the Byeong-o expedition.
That was why Jo Deokrim had come to him in the first place, but Kim Jwa-geun remained unmoved.
“As a sinner like myself, how could I presume to submit such an impertinent plea? Go to the Minister of War.”
Jo Byeonghyeon, the Minister of War, was a Pungyang Jo. There was no way he would do anything for Jo Deokrim, who belonged to Kim Jwa-geun’s camp.
Besides, according to the court’s order of promotion, that minister’s post had originally been the seat Kim Jwa-geun should have taken first.
Only then did Jo Deokrim remember anew why Kim Jwa-geun had been pushed out of that position as a “sinner,” and he shuddered.
It had definitely been a slip of the tongue.
* * *
If a king could block the promotion of a powerful in-law clan just because he wanted to, then it would hardly be sedo politics—but this time, the king had a justification of his own.
“Hong Byeongsu, the son of Dae Saheon Hong Hak-yeon, dared to sit at home and submit his examination script for Her Majesty the Queen Mother’s Si-sun celebration. What sort of absurdity is this? Before even entering public life, do the sons of noble houses first learn how to deceive their king?”
The son of the Dae Saheon, who was meant to uphold the discipline of the court, had committed the outrage of treating the incompetent monarch’s test as if a remote open-book exam were enough.
In actual history, Yi Hwan had indeed been incompetent.
He flew into a rage, but when Yeonguibu Minister Jo Inyeong told him to shut up and not ruin the Queen Dowager Jo family’s celebration, he simply shut up. Hong Byeongsu was not even stripped of his ceremonial passing.
But the present Yi Hwan was a capable monarch.
Stricken with a risky overuse of strychnine that made everything surge upward, his confidence rose right along with it.
Despite Jo Inyeong’s all-out shield, Yi Hwan proudly annulled Hong Byeongsu’s passing.
Then he ordered a full investigation into all those who had passed the civil examinations, along with a discussion of reform measures.
The problem was that among those passed candidates was Kim Byeong-gi, Kim Jwa-geun’s adopted son.
This was the very exam for which Kim Jwa-geun had promised success when he sent Kim Byeong-gi to Jeondeungsa last year. Even after the king, now hostile to the Pungyang Jo as well, had delayed things for months, the exam had eventually been held.
Kim Byeong-gi’s performance had been unsatisfactory, but he had brought back a few useful pieces of information, and now that it was time for his son to step into officialdom, Kim Jwa-geun had arranged for him to pass.
Of course, Kim Byeong-gi had gone and taken the test.
But that was all he had done. It was still a fraudulent passing.
The most rational choice for Kim Jwa-geun was to immediately return his son’s passing and bow low.
That would turn the king’s spearhead toward the Pungjo, who were still foolishly shielding Hong Byeongsu.
But Kim Jwa-geun could not bring himself to do it, even though he understood perfectly well.
During the king’s anti-corruption reforms that had mainly targeted Kim Jwa-geun before, the people who had directly defied royal orders were the Pungyang Jo faction.
Thanks to them, Kim Jwa-geun had been able to blow his nose without lifting a finger.
But now the time had come to pay the price.
This, too, was a “class” issue just like that one.
Kim Jwa-geun could not be the only one to slip away.
It wasn’t a matter of repaying kindness. It wasn’t even because Kim Byeong-gi’s official post was precious.
If bureaucrats were truly selected strictly by exam scores, sedo politics itself would collapse.
In the end, Kim Jwa-geun also spoke up in defense of Hong Byeongsu.
Unless Chongwiyeong stormed into the Office of State Councilors and slaughtered everyone, the king could not defeat the alliance of the Andong Kims and Pungjo. In the end, the king withdrew his measure once again.
Still, the price of overstepping, the political debt incurred by it, could not be escaped even by the heads of the Pungjo and Andong Kim clans.
Jo Inyeong had to request resignation by dragging up some entirely unrelated memorial from another political dispute—though, naturally, it was rejected.
And Kim Jwa-geun’s long-planned appointment as Minister of War was postponed.
* * *
Whatever one thought of Jo Deokrim’s pitiful petition, Kim Jwa-geun also wanted to plunder Ganghwado.
He still didn’t know about the Land of Promise, but the private army the king had built there was irritating enough, and he was also troubled by reports from his son Kim Byeong-gi that Yi Won-beom seemed to have some sort of relationship with the Catholics through the merchant Park Doekki.
The fact that he wasn’t the Minister of War was no real problem.
Military authority in Joseon rested not with the Ministry of War, but with the State Council. Kim Jwa-geun could exert enough influence over the State Council regardless of what title he held.
But the situation now was far too unfavorable.
Following the anti-corruption law from last time, the king was patiently building his case step by step.
Whenever the ministers tried to block any infringement on the three great clans, he used their resistance as fuel to heap even more benefits onto Chongwiyeong, and the butcher king’s slaughtering knife only grew sharper.
If only they could find even the ships Jo Deokrim claimed had been taken, he could at least make a counterattack, but even Yang Ji-hong’s indirect investigations into the rulers of Joseon’s provinces produced no sign of those “dozens of ships.”
Nor was there any trace of the “king’s large private army” Kim Jwa-geun suspected. The people moving in and out were still peddlers.
Any further action was now being obstructed at the State Council level by Minister of War Jo Byeonghyeon. In the end, Kim Jwa-geun clicked his tongue and forgot about Jo Gwanseop’s merchant fleet.
Grinding over trivial matters like a frontier merchant or a religious sect was not Kim Jwa-geun’s style, after all. The real decision had to be made in the center.
* * *
For the moment, it was only natural that Kim Jwa-geun couldn’t find the “large private army.”
What the king had hidden wasn’t a private army, but a stimulant.
The reason he couldn’t find those “dozens of ships” was just as simple.
Those ships no longer existed in the Ganghwa area.
Kim Sunwon and Choe Je-u, who had sent the valuables and the people to Goerido and were now discussing what to do with the ships, met an unexpected figure.
It was the shaman Yi Seong-nyeo, who had just had a grand reopening.
She spoke earnestly.
“The spirit lord appeared to me in a dream and told me so. Have you perhaps gathered a great many large ships here? The Dobansu urgently needs those ships. At once, we must carry the Western-learning people and the Imbang boatmen back to Hongju!”
Kim Sunwon had only heard from Taesu that he should take care of Jo Gwanseop. If it had been the old him, he would have waved this off and sent her away.
But the Mountain Spirit’s malicious advice was influencing even here.
“The Dobansu and I have a small connection from our days at Cheonggyesan, so perhaps the spirit lord has granted this. Though I hold no office, I could not remain still as one who has received his favor, so I came.”
Kim Sunwon had heard Taesu tell him in the waters off Hongju to take good care of Yi Seong-nyeo.
So it was only natural that he would begin to suspect that this “small connection” was in fact a very large one.
In the end, Choe Je-u and Kim Sunwon asked cautiously,
“That is, did the Dobansu tell you this in secret, and only to you? Then to avoid confusion, just say that’s how it is.”
“You really are infuriating. I told you—it was the spirit lord.”
Here, only Choe Je-u possessed the intelligence not to be infuriated.
He soon led Kim Sunwon away and offered his interpretation.
“Perhaps, since you were busy with boat work in Chungcheong Province, the Dobansu only passed on some afterthought to that shaman later. Maybe he thinks things become more powerful when they’re concealed as much as possible.”
Kim Sunwon flinched. In truth, at the time he had been too busy secretly swiping wine from the cargo and drinking it all.
He couldn’t say that. So Kim Sunwon quickly reached an understanding with the absent Yi Seong-nyeo.
“They say heroes are fond of beauty. Let’s not needlessly offend the Dobansu. Besides, the hemp cloth we brought over from Chungcheong is already making people scream for more all over the place. I’ll go back to Chungcheong myself, so stop nitpicking and pretend you don’t know. Isn’t she just a shaman now, anyway? She’s someone we won’t be seeing again.”
Choe Je-u mostly agreed.
Except for that last sentence.
His thought was the union of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Western learning.
And the symbol of that union was Park Doekki.
Park Doekki would make that union visible by recruiting Yi Seong-nyeo after Choe Yang-eop and Choe Je-u, and he intended to feed her secrets so he could quickly cultivate her into one of his closest people.
So it was hard to call Yi Seong-nyeo “someone they wouldn’t be seeing again.”
Before many days had passed, with the support of the Ganghwa Imbang, a proper shrine was completed on Namsan.
At the same time, Kim Sunwon carefully dispatched several ships each from Goerido, Seogeomdo, and Gyodongdo.
So there was no chance of discovery. By the time Kim Jwa-geun received Yang Ji-hong’s report, half the ships belonging to the Incheon magnate Jo Deokrim had already reached Hongju.
* * *
In Chungcheong Province, Hobansu Im Inson firmly shook hands with Kim Sunwon.
“Good to see you again. The Dobansu has already set out for Jeolla Province. He left detailed instructions by letter, so let us do our best together.”
The Wonsando local military team was annihilated in double extinction together with all the vigor energy that could be extracted from Wonsando.
The Boryeong headquarters also lost more fighting strength than its paperwork suggested.
Since this had been the most important assignment, the problem was that the fastest ships and the Fruit of Plunder ability users had been taken out with it. Not just the ships, but the loss of the main local officers—who were ability users and thus couldn’t even swim—was enormous.
Surveillance broke into emergency mode. If things continued like this, they would be cut from the King’s Seven Warlords of the Sea and some other bastard with a higher bounty would take the spot.
Plundering itself wasn’t the issue. They just didn’t have to talk about it.
But the Joseon court’s traditional policy, which had long been hardened by such tricks, was simple: If an accident happens, you’re dismissed, no matter the reason.
As it happened, the current Chungcheong naval commander, Yi Mindeok, shared not only the same name but even the same Chinese characters as the man who would later be defeated by Japanese forces at Yeongjongdo during the U-no incident and flee alone.
Perhaps because of that, a certain onomantic coincidence flashed through Yi Mindeok’s mind.
“When Ganghwa’s naval garrison suffered losses, there was a precedent for the country to gather peddlers and have them deal with it. Since the Chungcheong peddlers have just come to Wonsando saying they want to farm and live there, let them take responsibility for Wonsando’s defense.”
In truth, Wonsando’s population kept rising despite that multi-layered exploitation. It was proof that the mainland was even more of a hellhole.
The Wonsando district commander appointed by the court didn’t bother to come to work anyway, and the local military officers, true to the “local” in their name, were Chungcheong men.
Im Inson, a native of Chungcheong who could not be argued with, took the post.
With the naval commander Yi Mindeok’s meticulous appointment, made while considering his ties to rich peddlers, the plan shone brilliantly. As was only natural, Im Inson “offered ships” the way the “people of Wonsando” always did.
It was all so natural: hide them somewhere suitable, then offer one or two at a time. The fleet that should have found the hiding place was gone now, after all.
Cooperation from Wonsando’s residents was essential in this process.
And the residents were more than willing to cooperate.
“So the warrior who saved us back then was Park Doekki! We’ll do anything. As long as the name Park Doekki is out there, the mainland fools won’t dare lay a hand on us so easily anymore!”
Im Inson carried out, as promised to Taesu, the relocation of the Chungcheong Imbang to the seaside.
Wonsando and the “new” Chungcheong Imbang formed a close bond centered on the narrow strait between them.
Some of the Catholics Kim Sunwon had brought from the Land of Promise were also assigned to contact the Catholics of Chungcheong Province.
The overland route from Songdo to Kimryangjang to Hongseong, followed by the sea route from the Yesong River to Ganghwa to Wonsando, had now been completed.
By the time the Chungcheong naval command submitted its “as always, no issues” report to the court, Taesu and Cha Un-hong had already pushed deep into Jeolla Province to carve out the next path.
Author’s Note
1. France maintained slavery until 1848, which is one year after the point in the story.
2. Jo Inyeong did not literally tell him to shut up. He simply made an excuse that remote open-book exams had precedent too, then quickly brought up some other political matter to defend Hong Byeongsu.
Still, the king had gone so far as to say he was “deceiving his king,” and the very fact that someone would shield him in front of that shows the collapse of royal authority in the late Joseon period. The conclusion that he could be forgiven because it was a celebration is, in fact, what was reached.
3. The Yi Mindeok who served as Yeongjong Cheomsa during the U-no incident was born in 1816, while the present Chungcheong naval commander Yi Mindeok had already served as Jeolla U-su-sa in 1841.
It seemed unlikely that he had been the Commander of the Navy at age twenty-five, and it would also have been unnatural for him to later become the far lower-ranking Yeongjong Cheomsa, so in this novel the two are treated as people with the same name.