The Talisman Beneath the Lantern
Killing him was out of the question—Geumseong's brotherly devotion was admirable, and it would be a waste. If it was for loyalty's sake, hadn't he already made his name once in the plot of the Six Martyred Ministers? Couldn't he simply go on living from now on, preserving that one precious life? That was the truth of Suyang's heart.
Han Myeong-hoe, of course, was not satisfied. Why, at this late hour, was His Highness suddenly clinging to old bonds of brotherhood?
"However……"
Suyang turned to look at Han Myeong-hoe. Han Myeong-hoe shut his mouth.
"If, say, that boy does go mad as you predict and throws caution to the wind about his own life…… by then it will not be too late to act."
"Understood, Your Highness. But……"
"What is it?"
"Would it please Your Highness if I were to consider and decide the place of Grand Prince Geumseong's exile myself?"
Suyang pondered for a moment, then nodded. "Have you some place already in mind?"
"Sunheung Dohobu would seem suitable."
"Why there?"
"The magistrate there, Yi Bo-heum, was a close friend of Anpyeong. Should Grand Prince Geumseong go on harboring thoughts of rebellion, I expect he would seize upon that connection when the chance arose."
"Hmm. You mean to set out bait."
A strange smile crossed Han Myeong-hoe's face. "As for that fellow—my esteemed brother in name—I do not take him for a man who would keep defying me even after I spared a life that ought to have ended. But no, there's no harm in taking precautions."
The next day, Suyang ordered Gu Chi-gwan, the Left Royal Secretary, to extract a confession from Seong Sam-mun. The script had already been fully written, and Seong Sam-mun duly confessed that he had risen in arms after receiving the Great Sword from Hong-wi. His confession was entered into the official record of the historians.
Having received the report from Gu Chi-gwan, Suyang, with an expression as cold as ice, decided the disposition of everyone involved. The punishment for traitors had already been determined: to be torn limb from limb while still breathing. To the Confucian scholars who held that the body inherited from one's parents must be cherished and kept whole, there existed no cruelty more terrible.
When Jeong Ho-chan heard the news, he took not a morsel of food nor a single drop of drink for the entire day.
On the day Seong Sam-mun and his comrades were executed, they made their way to the execution ground with their dignity unbroken, though Uigeumbu had already wracked their bodies with unspeakable torture. Even the officials and guardsmen of the tribunal could not help but be inwardly awed by the sight.
As they reached the execution ground, a single scholar, trailed by a small page boy, stepped up to them.
"It is the last road they will walk. Allow me to see their faces one final time."
"These men are traitors! Are you so starved for death that aches chase you about? If you do not wish to be dragged down with them as a member of their cabal, stand back!"
"Now, now, don't be like that……"
At a flick of the scholar's glance, the page drew something from his bundle. In the afternoon sun it flashed and glittered. The official, catching sight of it, coughed awkwardly and glanced around—and before anyone could note it, the thing had vanished up his sleeve. The soldiers too, their palms having grown heavier, turned their eyes away.
While the Uigeumbu officials and guardsmen feigned blindness, the scholar darted swiftly to Seong Sam-mun and his companions. His body ruined by the merciless torture, Seong Sam-mun at first could not even make out the face of the man who had come to him. It was a long while before he managed to open his mouth.
"You are…… Jeong Ho-chan……"
Jeong Ho-chan leaned close to his ear and murmured a few quiet words. When he had heard them all, Seong Sam-mun nodded with effort.
"Thank you…… I entrust everything that follows to you."
In that final moment, Seong Sam-mun's face was strangely, impossibly serene—as if he were departing with his heart at ease, having left all things in trusted hands.
"Enough! Fall back!"
When the official, judging that he had been given enough time, bellowed out, Jeong Ho-chan bowed his head and withdrew.
"Go well, my friend. You will be remembered as a man of righteousness for all the world."
Jeong Ho-chan watched his old friend to the very end, as though to sear that final image into his eyes forever. Cha Gyeong-yeon too stood in silence, watching the scene unfold.
"You look sorrowful, sir."
"Friends of a lifetime are dying in agony before my eyes. How could I not be?"
Jeong Ho-chan could not tear his gaze from his friends. Cha Gyeong-yeon spoke quietly.
"If they were friends you held so dear…… would it not have been better to save them by some means or other? A man of your cunning could surely have managed it."
"……Save them? How could I have saved them?"
Jeong Ho-chan shook his head slowly, his voice heavy with grief. "Even for me, there is no overturning a tide that has already turned. I knew it would come to this from the very beginning. Where else would you find men so terrified of a righteous uprising as those who seized power through one themselves? And those were the men these friends meant to rise against."
He shook his head. "Ah—but those friends, they were never the sort to sit idle when told. No, that is exactly who they were. Men who, even knowing the tide had turned against them, would throw their own bodies upon the fire and leap into the pit of flames all the same."
Jeong Ho-chan bowed his head. Cha Gyeong-yeon silently nodded.
Jeong Ho-chan lifted his eyes to the sky. The cawing of crows drifted bleakly from the west.
"And what will you do now, sir?"
"I will go to meet the Elders. They must be informed."
"I beg your pardon?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon looked startled. "Why—the Elders should be briefed on the state of affairs, of course."
"But must you go in person, sir? A report could be sent by messenger, could it not?"
"Think of it as paying my respects to my old home after a long absence."
"Sir."
Cha Gyeong-yeon fixed Jeong Ho-chan with a steady gaze. "You know full well that the Elders will not involve themselves in the affairs of Hanyang."
"Of course I know it."
Jeong Ho-chan cut him off. "And I know full well that even they lack the power to restore that young king to his throne. They have neither the will nor the strength for it."
At those words Cha Gyeong-yeon's face clouded with faint displeasure, but he made no argument. He simply asked, "Knowing all that—then why?"
"Because I intend to ask that young king for a chance."
"A chance?"
"Yes. A chance."
Cha Gyeong-yeon raised his eyebrows. Jeong Ho-chan gazed up at the far sky.
"It was only for a brief moment that I saw him, but I believe that young king has potential. He is simply being crushed beneath his uncle's momentum, wasting away in a cage before he has ever had the chance to bloom. Give him one small opportunity—one little chance to slip free of that cage and roam at liberty—and no one can say what might come of it."
"Can so little really suffice?"
"Did I not say I cannot know? But offering a chance and withholding it are two different things. True—whether a man seizes the chance set before him or squanders it carelessly differs from person to person. And even were that young king to break free of his cage, Suyang is no easy foe; trials upon trials would await him."
Jeong Ho-chan paused, then continued quietly. "Yet this is an opportunity not only for that young king but for us as well. If he could forge in himself the kind of tenacity that, even falling into his father's pit of hell a hundred—no, a thousand, ten thousand times—refuses to surrender and climbs back out again and again until he stands, then he would become a hero such as the world has never seen. Is that not precisely the hero we need now?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon tilted his head. "And if that young king proves…… to be a man without such tenacity?"
"Then my friends died for a man who was never worthy of them—a worthless death indeed. To give their lives for someone who cannot even govern his own affairs—what a dog's death could compare with a dog's death like that?"
Jeong Ho-chan's voice was bitter. "In any case, I am resolved to persuade the Elders. Gyeong-yeon, send word to them that I will call on them soon."
Cha Gyeong-yeon held his silence. Only after a long moment did he speak. "Understood, sir. But—are you certain you can manage without me?"
"And what reason would there be for me not to manage?"
"With a case of treason this enormous, the capital will be in violent upheaval for some time. Unless I am there to guard you……"
"Hah! For all your gift for slipping through cracks, do you imagine you could hold off every soldier in Hanyang single-handedly? Station a hundred or a thousand great warriors around me at a time like this and you only invite suspicion for no purpose whatsoever. Don't fret. I can look after my own hide well enough. Be on your way, and quickly."
Even so, Cha Gyeong-yeon could not stop his worried gaze from lingering on Jeong Ho-chan. "……Understood. I will return as quickly as I can."
Having paid his parting respects, Cha Gyeong-yeon vanished in the blink of an eye. Jeong Ho-chan simply stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the distant sky.
After the uprising of Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, and their comrades had ended in failure, an icy stillness settled over Hanyang. It had been no different since the Gyeyu Coup, but now no force remained anywhere that could stand against Suyang and his faction.
Throughout the streets of the capital, soldiers— ostensibly hunting down "remnants of the traitors"—glared at every passerby, stopped them for inspection, and dragged off the suspicious ones for interrogation. It had become the ordinary rhythm of daily life.
Yet amid all this turbulence, Jeong Ho-chan lived at his leisure. Even having sent away Cha Gyeong-yeon with his swift limbs and sharper skills, he wandered the frozen wasteland of the capital on his wits and his masterful art of survival alone, as calmly as a man out for an afternoon stroll. He did not even trouble to lie low.
He paid secret visits to those already condemned—Grand Prince Geumseong, Lee Yu, whose estates had been seized and exile confirmed for his part in the Six Ministers' uprising; Prince Hwiui, Lee Yeong; Prince Hannam, Lee Yu-jin; and Prince Yeongpung, Lee Jeon—and sat in conversation with them. He even went so far as to call at the house of Song Hyeon-su, Hong-wi's father-in-law and Lord of Yoryang, already locked away in prison.
Jeong Ho-chan's movements were a tightrope walk in every sense.
It was only when the aftermath of the Six Ministers' uprising had largely settled, and those spared execution had each set out on the road to exile, that Cha Gyeong-yeon returned. Astonishingly, Jeong Ho-chan had meanwhile been lodging in a house no more than a stone's throw from Uigeumbu itself.
"Sir, I have returned."
"So you have."
Jeong Ho-chan replied with perfect calm, his hand never pausing in its work with the brush. Cha Gyeong-yeon leaned down to look at what he was writing.
Bow, bow, zigzag, zigzag……
"What is it you're doing, sir?"
"Can't you see with your own eyes? I'm drawing talismans."
"Talismans, sir?"
"Indeed. In times as treacherous as these, people lose their footing and their hearts begin to sway. And when hearts sway, is it not only natural that they turn to prophecy and omens?"
Docham—the reading of things yet to come through signs and symbols—was just such a practice.
Cha Gyeong-yeon broke into a grin. "It must be a potent art indeed, sir. Not a single hair on your head has been touched while sitting directly in the tiger's jaws. Is this not the very doorstep of Uigeumbu?"
"It's darkest, after all, right beneath the lamp, is it not?"
Jeong Ho-chan smiled faintly.
"In your eyes, sir, how do things stand here in Hanyang?"
Jeong Ho-chan shook his head slowly. "Han Myeong-hoe is evidently no ordinary man. For the time being, I see no way of slipping out from under his thumb."
"You mean there is no hope at all?"
At Cha Gyeong-yeon's words, a thin smile crossed Jeong Ho-chan's face. "For Hanyang alone, for the moment—yes. This place has become a den of poisonous mushrooms; for two years now, Suyang's cabal has crouched here with blades bared. But the seeds of loyal and righteous men, trampled and trampled again, will one day take root once more in some unseen corner—even in the stoniest of wastelands. It is only a matter of time. And besides…… beyond Hanyang, there is still hope."
"You think so……?"
As Cha Gyeong-yeon tilted his head, Jeong Ho-chan nodded with quiet force. "Without question. Of that there is no doubt…… Now, in any case—that aside."
Jeong Ho-chan swept away the talisman he had been drawing and fixed Cha Gyeong-yeon with a steady look. "So? What did they say?"
"The Elders wish to see you in person, sir."
"Nothing else was said?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon shook his head. Jeong Ho-chan laughed. "They want to look me in the eye and hear it all before deciding. So—they cannot quite make up their minds."
"It can hardly be helped. The Elders are far away, detached from the affairs of Hanyang. Even when the dynasty split and the princes warred against one another, they did not stir."
"It was less that they would not stir than that they could not."
Jeong Ho-chan gave a shrug of his shoulders, and Cha Gyeong-yeon conceded the point. "That may be so, but…… all the same, the very fact that they are calling for you now—might it not mean something has changed?"
"That is true enough."
Jeong Ho-chan fell into thought for a moment. "First, we go north, to the border. I cannot say with certainty how the Elders might aid that young king, but for now even a small help will count for a great deal—even if it cannot overturn the tide in a single stroke."
Jeong Ho-chan rose to his feet. Cha Gyeong-yeon scrambled up after him, flustered. "You're leaving now?"
"The road is long. A thousand li a day is called for, is it not?"
"It is broad daylight, sir. Move in secret once darkness falls."
Jeong Ho-chan laughed heartily. "There is a saying: a gentleman walks the straight road. And a nimble friend like you might scale the walls of Hanyang at midnight with ease, but would a scholar such as I be caught doing any such thing?"
With the half-convinced Cha Gyeong-yeon in tow, Jeong Ho-chan paid his farewell to the master of the house and made for the city gate.
The scrutiny of those passing through the gate remained as strict as ever.
"Halt!"
The moment Jeong Ho-chan and Cha Gyeong-yeon stopped before the gate, two military officers, flanked by soldiers, moved to block their path. One was young; the other appeared somewhat older. The young officer looked severe and exacting, while the elder wore a languid, put-upon air, as though the whole business were beneath him.
"Where might you two be headed?"
"To the northern border."
At Jeong Ho-chan's answer, suspicion flooded the young officer's eyes. "The northern border? What business have you there?"
The young officer's irritability had its reasons. Since the execution of Yi Jing-ok, the Provincial Commander of Hamgil, Suyang had shown a paranoid conviction that remnants of the traitor's party might yet linger along the northern frontier. Though the fervor had somewhat cooled of late, with the Six Ministers' uprising flaring up anew mere days before, it was only natural that anyone bound so deliberately for the northern border should be taken for a potential rebel.