Let the Heavens Rage
At the thought of that uncle, Hong-wi, too, could not hide the emotion that welled up in his expression.
"Is my uncle safe and well? In such treacherous times, I pray nothing has gone wrong for him..."
Overcome by feeling, Hong-wi could not finish his sentence.
"I am most honored to see you, Your Highness. In truth, I once served as the water-bearer at the residence of the Grand Prince. To speak plainly, it was also thanks to Grand Prince Geumseong's kind word to the magistrate that I was given my post as a county clerk."
"Is that so! What a bond of fate this is. Yes—so my uncle is safe and well. That puts my heart at ease."
And indeed, Hong-wi's face brightened considerably.
"Grand Prince Geumseong sent us here, Your Highness, commanding us to look upon your royal countenance and convey his regards."
"I see. Then tell him that I am well. But tell me—how does he fare these days? Speak more fully."
The three men sat down together and talked at length.
For the most part, Hong-wi listened in silence as Jeon Jung-jae and his son did the speaking.
When the conversation lapsed for a moment, Jeon Jung-jae cast a meaningful glance at Hoin.
Hoin rose from his seat and went to scan the surroundings, and only then did Jeon Jung-jae speak in a low voice.
"The truth is... Grand Prince Geumseong commanded that a secret letter be sent to Your Highness."
"A secret letter?"
Jeon Jung-jae answered by looking around them once more.
The sun stood high in the sky, the day was blazing hot, and not a single soul passed anywhere near. He had already confirmed this several times over. Yet still, as though wary of some unseen listener, his voice sank lower and lower.
"The Grand Prince bids Your Highness endure and hold fast just a little longer... for a good day is certain to come. Those were his words."
A good day!
Hong-wi's eyelids trembled faintly.
For a long while no one spoke; only the cry of some distant bird pressed down heavily upon the silence.
Only after much time had passed did Hong-wi close his eyes and speak, his words heavy as lead.
"A good day, you say. And what would this good day be? Surely my uncle is not contemplating some reckless undertaking..."
"The Grand Prince is plotting a covert enterprise in secret with the Magistrate of Sunheung, Your Highness."
At Jeon Jung-jae's words, Hong-wi was speechless for a long moment.
In his mind, he was recalling the restoration plots of Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, and the others.
"You know full well what became of men like Seong Geum-bo and Park In-su. How could I allow my uncle to attempt the madness of shouldering firewood and leaping into the fire for this unworthy nephew of his? And so..."
Hong-wi drew a long, slow breath.
"Tell my uncle, I beg him, to preserve himself. In this harsh world, how could so good a man as my uncle possibly endure it all..."
The rims of Hong-wi's eyes reddened.
Seeing this, Jeon Jung-jae bowed his head low.
Only after a long while did he speak again.
"The Grand Prince commanded that, should anything happen, we are to remain here in Yeongwol and watch over Your Highness. We shall come to pay our respects from time to time."
"I am grateful. Take good care of yourselves, all of you."
It was the very moment Hong-wi was giving this answer that the scream rang out.
"Aiiiigo!"
Hong-wi's head and the old man Jeon Jung-jae's snapped around at once.
"What is the matter?"
"There was a suspicious fellow lurking about," Jeon Hoin replied.
He was gripping the back of someone's neck, pinning him down.
Hong-wi recognized the man at once.
"Gongsaeng! It's you, is it?"
"Aiiiigo, my lord! Spare me, I beg you! I only—my lord did not return for so very long, and I grew worried, that is all—"
"Do you know this man?"
"Know him? Of course. He is the one the Yeongwol office sent to attend to me."
"A man of the county office, is he."
Jeon Jung-jae looked down at him with stern eyes.
"How much did you hear?"
"N-nothing, my lord. I heard nothing at all."
Gongsaeng trembled like an aspen leaf.
Jeon Jung-jae thrust his face close to the man's.
"Do not lie to me."
Gongsaeng squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head.
"I only heard talk of Sunheung. I swear upon my life that was all I heard—nothing more."
Jeon Jung-jae's expression hardened. He turned to look at Hong-wi.
"This man cannot be allowed to live."
"Aiiiigo!"
Gongsaeng collapsed where he stood, sobbing and convulsing.
Hong-wi looked down at him without a word.
At the old man's nod, Hoin drew his sword.
Gongsaeng clung to his trouser leg and would not let go.
"M-mercy! Please, spare my life!"
"Wait. Let him be," said Hong-wi.
"This man is a servant of the government, whatever else he may be. Kill him carelessly and how will you answer for what follows? Do not forget that you carry a secret charge. In times like these, one must never act rashly! Now—who will go and tell my uncle?"
Then he turned back to Gongsaeng and spoke in a stern voice.
"Since coming to Yeongwol, I have received this favor and that from you."
"Y-yes, my lord! No—Your Highness!" Gongsaeng cried out.
"I shall do you no harm—will you in turn swear to do me none? You must swear it to Heaven itself."
"I-I will swear it! If I break this word, may lightning strike me down from the sky itself!"
Hong-wi gave a slight nod.
The old man Jeon Jung-jae spoke up.
"You must not trust this fellow so easily, Your Highness."
"Perhaps not. But he lives alongside me, so I will keep watch over him myself."
The old man nodded. He looked down at Gongsaeng with a piercing gaze.
"We too will be staying in Yeongwol, and I will be watching you. Remember well that any foolish act will cost you your life on the spot—and see that you serve Your Highness faithfully."
"Of course, of course!"
"There are men of our mind even within the Yeongwol county office, so harbor no crooked thoughts."
At the old man's threats, Hong-wi found himself smiling. Thinking of Gongsaeng's simple nature, he knew the man would take every word of it exactly as it was meant.
After exacting promise upon promise from Gongsaeng, the visitors took their leave. Jeon Jung-jae quietly clenched his fist.
Having met him at last, they could not help but be moved by the young king's benevolence. To seize the throne from a nephew like this—what manner of creature, they wondered, was Suyang?
Left alone, Hong-wi looked up at the sky. It had turned a sullen, overcast gray, and some corner of his heart felt uneasy and unquiet.
By the time the sun was sinking behind the western hills, Hong-wi had returned to the thatched cottage with Gongsaeng, and the eunuch came to report to him.
"The day after tomorrow is Baekjung, my lord—the day when the common folk summon monks and hold rites for their ancestors."
"Has that time come already?"
"Among the palace women there are many who follow the Buddha's teaching. If it please you, might we be permitted to observe the Baekjung rite?"
The eunuch stole a careful glance at Hong-wi's face.
Joseon was a nation that exalted Confucian learning and suppressed Buddhism, and Hong-wi too had received that very instruction in his education as a prince. And yet the Buddhist faith, rooted deep among the common people through hundreds of years of the Goryeo dynasty, could not be uprooted in a single morning—and even among the royal family, many believed.
"Proceed as you wish."
Hong-wi gave his permission readily.
Having already lived through ministers driving out their sovereign and an uncle baring a blade against his own nephew, he had grown disillusioned enough with Confucian teachings. And in any case, his mind was filled to the brim with nothing but the tale the Jeon father and son had carried to him.
The next day, Hong-wi's household bustled with preparations for Baekjung.
Gongsaeng threw himself into the work first of all, scurrying about to gather everything needed for the rite. While the preparations went on, even Hong-wi was able to forget his troubles to some degree.
When Baekjung day arrived, Hong-wi laid a board across two pillars, pasted paper over it to serve as a screen, and seated himself before it. Taking up brush, ink, and paper that the attendants had procured, he began to write the memorial tablet inscriptions.
In his graceful hand, he first set down the invocation for the spirit tablets of his forebears across three generations.
The instant the sixth character was finished, the tip of his brush trembled faintly—and stopped.
Grandmother... Grandfather... and Mother...
Hong-wi thought of King Sejong the Great, of King Munjong, and of his mother, Queen Hyeondeok, whom he had never once been able to see while she lived. And when he remembered that before he was sent to Yeongwol, his uncle had struck his mother's memorial tablet from the royal ancestral shrine, the grief cut deeper still.
Steadying himself, Hong-wi went on to write the names of those he honored as he did his own mother—Royal Consort Hye and her sons, his uncle Grand Prince Anpyeong, and Prince Hwai Yi Yeong, eldest of his father's generation.
Drawing a slow breath, he then wrote, calmly and one by one, the names of the ministers slaughtered in the Gyeyu Coup, and of Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, Ha Wi-ji, and the others who had died after joining the restoration plot.
Carving each and every one of their names into his heart, he gritted his teeth.
Beside the brush that traced out each name stroke by stroke, one and then another teardrop fell.
When the names were done, Hong-wi paused with his brush in the air—and at the very last, he added a single final inscription.
For the loyal souls and the wronged souls.
His writing finished, Hong-wi straightened his robes and withdrew into his room. As he did not follow the Buddha's way, he took no part in the Baekjung rite itself.
From outside, the sutras chanted by the palace women in unison echoed through the sky over Cheongnyeongpo.
As the rite drew to its close, thick raindrops began to fall, one and then another.
The drops grew steadily heavier, and in no time at all a torrential downpour turned the entire courtyard to mud.
The eunuch and the palace women gazed up anxiously at the sky, black with heavy clouds.
"It seems a great rain is coming."
And the eunuch proved right. When evening fell the rain began to hammer down in sheets, until at last thunder and lightning split the sky white again and again. It was as if heaven and earth had turned upside down, and the palace women were all half-fainting with terror.
Hong-wi alone, amid the uproar, sat upright with his eyes closed.
"My lord! The stream has risen—a great flood is coming! The Seogang bridge has already been swept away!"
Gongsaeng came splashing into the house, dripping wet, shouting wildly. The Seogang bridge was the one and only crossing that connected Cheongnyeongpo to the town of Yeongwu.
"You must flee at once, my lord!"
To Gongsaeng's desperate plea Hong-wi gave no answer at all. Then, all at once, he sprang to his feet and—without even stopping to put on his straw sandals—ran straight out into the courtyard.
Beneath the lashing downpour, his body was drenched through in an instant.
Hong-wi clenched his fists, glared up at the sky, and roared.
"Wind—come and rage! Lightning—fall where you will! Now that the bonds between lord and minister, father and son have been shattered, now that loyalty and filial duty lie broken—how am I to live another day? Yes! Sweep everything away, and be done with it!"
The sheets of rain streamed down Hong-wi's face.
"My lord! My lord! Preserve your sacred body!"
The eunuch hurriedly scrambled down the stone steps to support him.
Hong-wi looked at the eunuch with eyes glistening with rain.
"How could I bear to drag out this wretched life any longer... If I die, even my uncle Suyang will rejoice!"
"Your Highness—!"
Before the eunuch could answer, a sudden sound of something collapsing rang out.
The mountain directly behind the thatched cottage had given way under the flood, and it had brought the entire rear wall of the shabby kitchen crashing down with it.
Gongsaeng shrieked at the sight, and the eunuch, aghast, cried out as well.
"Your Highness, you must get to safety!"
Gongsaeng hurried to seize Hong-wi and drag him away. But in rain so thick a man could not see a hand's breadth before his face, where was there to go? The soldiers and servants, it seemed, had already fled to save their own skins.
Then someone came running through the curtain of rain.
"Go up the mountain. The stream has overflowed—this place will be flooded before long."
At Han Ga-ryeong's voice, they all snapped back to their senses. Leaving the house to crumble behind them, they scrambled up the mountainside in haste. Han Ga-ryeong led the way.
Apart from the occasional flash of lightning, the darkness was black as ink—yet somehow Han Ga-ryeong found the path. The mountain trail had collapsed everywhere under the rain, so Hong-wi's party had to climb amid stumbles and falls.
"Oof—!"
Hong-wi went down hard.
The eunuch was aghast. "Are you hurt, my lord!"
"I'm fine. Only twisted something a little."
"My lord, climb on my back."
Gongsaeng stepped forward at once.
Hong-wi looked up at him for a moment, and smiled. Gongsaeng smiled back.
"Let me carry you, my lord."
"Thank you."
Half-crawling, half-climbing, they at last struggled their way up the mountain path. When they had reached about midway up the slope, Han Ga-ryeong spoke.
"This should be high enough to be safe."
Gongsaeng collapsed, panting for breath, and Hong-wi sank down where he stood as well.
"What sin did I ever commit, that Heaven should be so cruel to me..."
Hong-wi, who until now had not betrayed a single word of complaint, and at his words the others could not hide their own bitter turmoil either.
Han Ga-ryeong stood looking down at Hong-wi in silence.
When the rain stopped, the devastation that had swept across Cheongnyeongpo lay starkly revealed. The wretched thatched cottage had been carried off whole, leaving nothing behind. Now they would have to worry not merely about where to sleep for the night, but about where their next meal was coming from.
Jeon Jung-jae and Hoin came running and joined in the lamentation.
"This is dreadful... What are we to do now?"
"We must report the truth to the county governor. What other choice do I have?" Hong-wi replied calmly.
Jeon Jung-jae frowned bitterly.
"Will that man treat Your Highness well? Giving you a house like this in the first place..."
"Then I will report it to the governor myself," Gongsaeng spoke up.
Jeon Jung-jae turned to him with a doubtful look.
"You will?"
Still, the old man's tone was noticeably softer than it had been when they first met. He too had heard how Gongsaeng had carried Hong-wi up the mountain through the flood.
"How could the governor possibly leave my lord to sleep in the open road?"
"That is true enough."
Whatever charge of treason had been hung about his neck, a member of the royal house was still a member of the royal house—a mere county governor could not afford to mistreat him.
Gongsaeng sped off to the government office at once and reported everything to the governor.
"Damnation, why in the world did a flood have to come now of all times. What a nuisance..."
Such were the very first words the Governor of Yeongwol spat out the moment he heard Gongsaeng's report.
Gongsaeng's eyes went round as saucers. "I beg your pardon?"
The governor waved his hand as though he had said nothing at all.
"So. You say the whole house is gone, swept clean away?"
"That is so, my lord."
"Cheonchong, go and see for yourself."
At the governor's order, the Cheonchong led a squad of soldiers and followed Gongsaeng back. Far from repairing the house, they would have to build an entirely new one from the ground up.
"The house really has been swept away completely."
"It cannot be repaired?"
At the governor's question, Cheonchong shook his head. "Ruined utterly, my lord. It will have to be built anew."
The governor clicked his tongue. "What am I to do?"
"What indeed... Ah, hang it! There's nothing else for it. Take him to the Gwanpungheon."
The Gwanpungheon stood within the grounds of the Yeongwol government compound.
In his heart, the governor wished to keep Hong-wi at arm's length. That Suyang, who had stolen the throne, could not help but bristle at Hong-wi's very existence was plain even to a child of three. If he were to treat the man like a former king, he might at any moment be branded one of the rebel faction—and suffer not merely removal from office but the extermination of his entire family to boot. Yet the man's royal blood was not going anywhere either, so he could not treat him with open contempt, or the thunderbolt of the crime of insulting the royal house would fall upon him in turn.
With the house in ruins, he could hardly leave the party at Cheongnyeongpo, and so, having no other choice, the governor had Hong-wi and his household moved to the government compound.
"Living at the office, your circumstances will be rather better, my lord! Truly, fortune has smiled on you!"
"Has it, now."
Gongsaeng, being somewhat deficient in the art of reading a room, was simply delighted. Watching him, Hong-wi could only manage a faint smile.