The Sooyang River Maiden (2)
Cha Un-hong was in a foul mood.
It wasn’t because the dakgalbi had slipped from her hands.
She’s actually pretty cute?
Of course, the girl wasn’t dressed as a man. She might not have fit Taesu’s taste at all.
But taste only matters when you can choose one person and one person only.
What man in the world refused ten women out of ten? As for bobusang, they had already achieved complete French-style Westernization in sexual ethics.
Cha Un-hong was deeply bothered by the girl’s deliberately suggestive promise to do “anything.”
Taesu asked, “What’s the matter?”
“My mother is suffering from a grave illness, but no medicine has worked. They say only ginseng dug from deep in the mountains can cure her. I heard that the Dobansu helps those cast into despair with righteous compassion, so I came to beg you….”
Cha Un-hong was about to tell him to leave.
There were plenty like her. Since Park Axe’s reputation had spread, there were even more.
Her story, to be blunt, sounded like the kind of thing a beggar might make up because it seemed easy to squeeze money from a soft-hearted fool. She should have been more creative.
She’s trying to enchant him and shake him down.
That was what Cha Un-hong believed. Otherwise, why would a young woman like that show her face openly before men? In any case, it was suspicious.
Taesu also seemed taken aback.
“It’s true I’ve helped a few people, but they were mostly my own comrades. Is your mother, or are you, a peddler?”
“N-no, not exactly. I’m Lee Late-Deok from the bank of the Sooyang River, and….”
Cha Un-hong said, “With a name like that, you sound like you came from a house that used to be owned by someone.”
Taesu gave her the sort of look that said she should keep thoughts like that to herself, and Cha Un-hong lifted her chin with a huff.
Late-Deok readily admitted it. “That’s right. The owner lives in Seoul. Sooyanggangchang is a very large place, so there are enough people like that to form an entire village.”
Strictly speaking, Sooyanggangchang—one of Joseon’s ten major government granaries—did not really exist now. It remained only as a customary place name.
The reason it had disappeared was not so different from Jeminchang on the Yeongsan River in Honam. If there was no army, how else were you supposed to run a PMC business?
But unlike Honam, there was no sea here, so even the privatized transport of tax grain had to go by river.
Since it was privatized, they hauled other goods along with the tax grain too. Naturally, the Han River merchants were always rational managers, so if a cargo load got in the way, tax grain was only a secondary concern.
The Gyeonggang merchants, or the Seoul lodges that cooperated with them, kept outside-living slaves at Sooyang River.
Outside-living slaves were usually put to work farming or auto-farming the state grain loans, but they were often stationed along transport routes like rivers or seas and used as clerks in distribution businesses.
“My father worked here along the river, overseeing the transport of things like tobacco to the Seoul South Tobacco Lodge. He passed away from illness not long ago.”
The South Tobacco Lodge was one of Seoul’s tobacco powerhouses, the sort of outfit Lee Jinhong had been worried about too.
Unlike Cha Un-hong’s hopes, Taesu became interested.
“Tell me more.”
* * *
The three of them found a place nearby and settled in.
Cha Un-hong, to show her displeasure, snatched Taesu’s dakgalbi and stuffed it into her mouth with loud, spiteful bites. Unfortunately for her, Taesu merely assumed she was acting like his usual hamster.
And then Late-Deok’s story continued before him.
“When my father fell ill, the master’s house first gave us medicine to use, but it had no effect at all. In the end, they charged us outrageously for the medicine as well.”
Come to think of it, that had been suspicious from the start. A master’s house that sent medicine to a sick outside-living slave? No company in the twenty-first century would do that either.
“After my father died, they foisted on us all sorts of useless coffin boards and burial cloth—just broken scraps of wood and torn hemp—and said if my mother couldn’t repay the medicine and funeral costs, they’d sell me. My mother came to work with me, but she fell ill too.”
The passivity of modern managers who sigh about social insurance and moan that they’ve got it rough deserved to be condemned. Turning hardship into opportunity was what capability meant.
“As I said before, there are many people here who load tobacco and timber and such from all over Gangwon onto rafts and boats and send them down to Seoul. I helped those outside-living slaves and earned wages, but even paying off the daily interest was hard.”
Late-Deok’s mother, who had gone down while working part-time at the Sooyang River hub logistics center and got injured, had told her daughter this:
I’m just going to die here. Don’t burden yourself with debt trying to save me. Leave me be and run somewhere far away.
Runaway slaves were common enough that the fact itself wasn’t frightening.
What kept Late-Deok from leaving her behind was love for her mother, who was herself a slave.
Even so, Chuncheon had long been home to many legends of dutiful sons and daughters.
“Even if I run, I’ll save my mother first and run with her. If you can give me the ginseng, I’ll sell my own life, just like the dutiful daughter Urye from this county long ago.”
The Chuncheon tale of the dutiful daughter Urye said she sold herself to obtain the ginseng needed to save her mother.
Joseon, as a state that properly encouraged filial piety as its national ideal, ought to have freed Urye and raised a memorial gate for her at once.
The mother would recover, and only the house that had lent the money would have to swallow blood and tears. A happy ending, in other words.
That is, if this were a civilized Joseon.
Urye, however, was an ancient Silla woman.
So the story did not unfold like a folktale. It became a horror legend.
Urye had not become a slave or a concubine.
The Silla noble who bought her buried her alive in the ground.
The reason was very Silla indeed: they needed a servant for the noble who would rest in a stone-and-timber tomb.
What mattered was this—Urye was from Chuncheon.
Silla had only taken control of the Chuncheon region in the mid-sixth century, under King Jinheung.
The excuse that “people in ancient times all practiced human sacrifice and the like” was just the sort of thing that Hyeokgeose, the “Geoseogan,” might babble on about. Even though a king of a far more powerful sort—King Jijeung, whose sexual prowess was on a different level from any monarch a half century earlier—had already forbidden burial sacrifices.
After the ginseng her mother ate was sent to her, the mother’s body did recover for now.
But once she heard that her daughter had been buried alive, her mind died. She went mad, set fire to the house, and killed herself.
That was the story of Urye, the dutiful daughter of Juklim-dong in Chuncheon, passed down in one form or another all the way to the twenty-first century.
Taesu had no idea what kind of lesson or model for conduct was supposed to be found in that cosmic-horror tale.
What, is it telling me to forget filial duty and all that crap?
Cha Un-hong, too, brought up that hopeless ending to the Urye legend.
“If the only daughter recklessly throws her life away, how is the mother supposed to live on, even if she does recover? Besides, when was burial sacrifice ever anything but a barbaric custom? They don’t even do it in China anymore. If you so much as mention it, you’d be dragged off to the authorities and beaten within an inch of your life.”
“N-no, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean I wanted to be buried alive.”
Late-Deok, the Urye of the nineteenth century, glanced nervously between the two socially higher men.
In the end, Cha Un-hong’s suspicion had been right.
As Yi Won-beom showed, even in the Joseon era the common folk were generally pretty loose about chastity. If the scholars had a problem with that, they should stop making others do the work and open free village schools instead.
Putting aside Late-Deok’s devotion to her mother, she was still the daughter of a slave household. She had neither the education nor, frankly, any other means to feel much resistance.
Compared to burial sacrifice, this was a hundred times better, wasn’t it? Her mother probably wouldn’t go setting the house on fire over this.
Park Axe was a fine young man, broad-shouldered and impressive. If she was going to end up a plaything no matter what, she figured she might as well have some fun as a plaything.
Park Axe was a merchant too. A lowborn of the lowborn, naturally.
So she had thought that if she just dangled the possibility, he’d offer her ginseng and tell her to come along with him. But the situation was turning out a little differently than expected.
Is he a eunuch?
There was a eunuch, yes, but that man was currently in Chuncheon Market hauling luggage for Imbang.
And Cha Un-hong was trying to turn Taesu into a eunuch in public.
“I understand your circumstances, but we can’t just go throwing money around everywhere.”
“B-but I heard Dobansu Park Axe is also a Song merchant’s broker, so surely he can manage some ginseng….”
“That Song merchant’s owner is m-my house’s master. And is ginseng the same as money? Do you even know how expensive red ginseng is?”
But then Taesu asked suddenly, “Where exactly does your mother hurt?”
Late-Deok finally realized Cha Un-hong’s true nature at that point. Ignoring Cha Un-hong’s psychic pressure, she answered quickly.
“Her leg was broken. It’s swollen terribly and she has a fever, but she just keeps saying it feels like she’ll die any moment now.”
Taesu thought of the Japanese man in the waegwan who had smeared ginseng on the place where a dog had bitten him.
“…Why are they using ginseng for that?”
“Pardon? Well, because the mountain shaman on Bongui Mountain told us to do that…. He said if we go into the deep valley of Bongui Mountain, dig up ginseng, and stew it together with the mountain bone there—what they call sangol, native sulfur—that should cure her.”
Of course, Joseon people who knew ginseng well would never think to boil it up for a broken bone. Copper, maybe. But not ginseng.
It sounded as if they were trying to dress up some ordinary folk remedy by sneaking wild ginseng into it.
“They told you to go into the mountain?”
“Yes. But how was I supposed to go wandering the mountains looking for ginseng? That’s why I thought I might at least get some regular ginseng.”
Taesu felt the presence of someone who wasn’t there.
It was exactly like when the Mountain Spirit cheated shamans.
After sending Late-Deok away kindly, Taesu returned to Chuncheon Market with Cha Un-hong.
And not long after, the sort of situation no couple could ever avoid arose.
A fight.
* * *
“No.”
Cha Un-hong crossed her arms.
For the third time, Taesu explained. “It’d be better to step on Sooyang River, no, I mean take a look around, before heading north. We’re going up the river toward Geumgangsan anyway, aren’t we? If things go well, we can catch those South Tobacco Lodge bastards with some dirt on them and shake things up here.”
For the third time, Cha Un-hong objected. “If that’s the plan, then we should just give them ginseng and win over the people of the neighborhood. Why are you insisting on going into the mountains with that girl?”
“I told you. Like you said, we can’t just throw our money around like that, and if we do, we can’t catch those bastards either. Based on what that Late-Deok girl said, you can tell exactly what those people are thinking.”
It was a trap designed to lure Late-Deok into the mountain.
In a folktale, the Mountain Spirit would appear and point out the ginseng for you, but as far as Taesu knew, in reality the thing needed to get the Mountain Spirit’s ginseng wasn’t filial piety—it was an axe.
From the start, the South Tobacco Lodge’s target was Late-Deok.
The lodge owner surely hadn’t just fallen hopelessly in love with a girl from Sooyang River out of nowhere.
This was how they gathered women from all over the country and sold them off.
If you asked why they didn’t just summon slaves and sell them off directly without all this debt nonsense, well, about a hundred years ago they could have done that.
In this era, even foster slaves couldn’t be pushed around quite that openly.
Because the moment they thought, I’m going to upgrade myself into a second-generation AI servant now, they’d terminate the service.
Prince Sunjo’s liberation of public slaves wasn’t some grand reform that caused catastrophic bleeding; it was merely a confirmation of a system of government slaves that had already been breaking apart. Still, the signal it sent—that “the state has given up on slavery”—was powerful.
If they ran away, that was the best outcome. More than a few masters had had their throats cut by slaves who had personally experienced the rebellion of SF-style machines.
To be honest, quite a few former slaves among the bobusang had gone through that sort of transition too. There was a reason they kept their real names hidden.
That was why houses with many slaves were always scrambling to be generous, holding Homi-swishi festivals, handing out childbirth gifts, and paying errand fees, all in the name of kindness. Even when slaves stole deliveries or household items, they turned a blind eye and pretended not to know.
So for outside-living slaves, that went without saying. If they paid their tribute on time, they were loyal slaves for all eternity.
There was no way a master would simply send his own daughter off like that.
Therefore, they had to set up a frame that even a free commoner couldn’t escape from.
What Late-Deok would find in the mountains, then, was not ginseng but a runaway-catcher.
Anyone could guess that she’d try to run, so they had struck first with a trap using the local shaman.
Of course, it would never happen in Joseon, but if some officer with opium in his veins tried to stop them in the name of justice, they had debt papers ready for that too.
Taesu would pretend to walk right into the trap on purpose and follow along.
Then he’d beat the runaway-catchers and shift the balance of power around Sooyang River. A very Park Axe kind of plan.
* * *
But that plan had one serious problem.
“Going into the mountains alone, the two of you, and who knows what might happen!”
“What do you mean, what might happen? We’re supposed to be on guard for a fight!”
“Then why can’t you bring Master Il-hyu too? If there’s going to be fighting, you need at least one more set of hands!”
“Itkyu has to protect you. What if you’re left alone and something happens then? Think about it. Who the hell does that sort of thing in a mountain with no roof?”
“You did it on a boat!”
“Hey, that was….”
“No! You know that girl was planning something from the start, don’t you? She’ll say her leg got bitten by an autumn snake halfway there and casually lift her skirt, and the rest is obvious! Aaaaaah!”
Rolling around while presenting such suspiciously specific scenarios was truly a headache.
Taesu found himself wondering whether he really ought to say something as cheesy as “I only have you.”
Then Cha Un-hong, still rolling on the floor, hugged a pillow and sniffled.
“My fate is miserable, and we don’t even have kids yet. What am I supposed to do if you get lured away by the promise that some girl will bear your son?”
If she really did end up pregnant during this hard march, that would be adding a layer of misery fate had never even assigned in the first place.
Taesu soothed her. “We’ve done so much together. What we’ve already accomplished is our child. It’s practically been born already.”
“You….”
Cha Un-hong buried her mouth and nose in the pillow and shot Taesu a glare with only her eyes.
Taesu let out a sigh.
Then he brought out the second option she herself had proposed, the one he had rejected before.
“Fine. Then let’s all go together, including Itkyu. I hope those bastards don’t run the moment they see this whole crowd.”
Still clutching the pillow, Cha Un-hong scooted up to him in a rustle.
Then she asked a question that clearly had an agenda behind it.
“Are you angry?”
“I am.”
Cha Un-hong was shocked.
Taesu tousled her hair.
“I said it in Hongju back then. The only people who can really make us angry and drag us down are each other. Get up. Let’s go.”
Cha Un-hong buried her face in the pillow again.
Taesu didn’t think she was crying.
Author’s Note
1. The character 㗡 is a native Chinese character created to transcribe Korean. By itself it is read “eot,” but there is a household registry record from nineteenth-century Chuncheon that renders Late-Deok’s name this way. It is true that she came from a slave household, but slaves could not always be distinguished by name alone.
2. Silla’s practice of human sacrifice is confirmed by archaeological remains at least up through the fourth and fifth centuries. (The Wolseong site in Gyeongju is recorded as second century, but scientific surveys date its construction to the fourth and fifth centuries.)
King Jijeung was the first ruler of Silla to use the era name and the title of king, and in 502 he prohibited burial sacrifice. King Jinheung appears to have taken Chuncheon and the Han River region some half century later, in the mid- to late sixth century.
3. By the sixth century, stone-and-timber tombs had actually ended and stone chamber tombs were in vogue.
4. The practice of drinking water boiled with native sulfur for fractures is a traditional remedy called sangol or sangol. Despite the name, it is not copper; its main component is pyrite, or iron sulfide.