The Night the Cuckoo Wept
The government compound of Yeongwol was, by the standards of Gangwon Province, not a small one.
It was divided into four great sections: first, the five-bay guest house at the very front, the Gwanpungheon; second, the magistrate's official residence; third, the archive office; and last, the jail and the local assembly hall.
Hong-wi's party had been lodged in the Gwanpungheon itself. Compared to Cheongnyeongpo, the facilities were tidy and respectable, and there were people to watch passing by. And yet the cold treatment persisted all the same.
Though he now lived within the compound itself, catching so much as a glimpse of the magistrate's face was harder for Hong-wi than it was for some country bumpkin to behold the king in Hanyang.
But Hong-wi paid the indignity no mind.
He prayed only for the safety of his uncle, Grand Prince Geumseong.
With the wretched ends of Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, and the others still vivid in his mind, his heart knew no ease.
Will my uncle truly remain unharmed? He is himself in exile — how is a coup to be brought to fruition from that position?
Night after night, anxiety kept him from proper sleep.
One evening, Hong-wi approached Gongsaeng, who was tending a small fire in the courtyard.
Startled, Gongsaeng turned around, and Hong-wi spoke in a low voice.
"I feel stifled. I think I shall take a stroll about the grounds."
"Yes, Your Grace."
It must be too stuffy inside the guest house, and he's stepped out for a breath of air. Muttering this to himself, Gongsaeng rose to his feet, and the two walked slowly around the Gwanpungheon.
Presently Hong-wi pointed to a two-story pavilion beneath a hip-and-gable roof and asked:
"What is this pavilion called?"
"It is called the Maejuknu, my lord — the Plum-and-Bamboo Pavilion. It's nice and cool up there. A fine place to sit."
"Plum and bamboo."
Hong-wi nodded. The plum blossom and the bamboo — the very emblems of a scholar's noble integrity.
"Would you care to go up?"
"Perhaps I shall."
At Gongsaeng's urging, Hong-wi climbed up into the pavilion.
Cool indeed it was, up there above the trees.
"What do you think? Refreshing, isn't it?"
At Gongsaeng's guileless smile, even the weary Hong-wi could not help but smile in return.
"It is. Very pleasant. I'll stay here a while before going in. You may return, Gongsaeng."
Gongsaeng went back down.
Cooling himself in the night air, Hong-wi began, little by little, to drift toward sleep.
He was hovering on the very edge of drowsing when his eyes snapped open.
A presence...?
In a flash he realized he was not alone.
A man was leaning against the railing, gazing up at the moon.
The next moment, Hong-wi recognized him.
"You too have come out for the air, Han Ga-ryeong?"
"Yes, my lord. The moon is so bright that sleep would not come, so I stepped out for a breath."
Han Ga-ryeong answered as he slowly turned around, then studied Hong-wi's face carefully before going on.
"Has sleep not found Your Grace either?"
Hong-wi answered only with a nod.
Ga-ryeong smiled quietly and drew from his robe the flute he always carried.
"Shall I play you a tune? When sorrow is heavy on the heart, there is nothing better than to float it away on music."
How does this man read what lies in another's breast? Hong-wi thought even as he nodded.
"I would be glad to hear it."
The two took their seats in the middle of the pavilion.
Han Ga-ryeong raised the flute to his lips and began to play.
The night was already deep, and the world lay as still as death — so quiet that one might almost hear the breathing of the moon and stars. And into that stillness a clear, crystalline note soared high into the heavens, so moving that no heart could fail to be stirred.
With both eyes closed, Hong-wi sat as still as a stone image until the final note had faded.
When Ga-ryeong at last lowered the flute from his lips, Hong-wi spoke.
"Will you play me one more?"
Bathed in the blue moonlight, Hong-wi's lonely profile looked as Transcendent and pure as an immortal's. Han Ga-ryeong gazed at him a long moment, then brought the flute to his mouth once more.
Again the mournful notes came spilling down beneath the eaves. From far away, the soft cry of a cuckoo drifted faintly on the air.
Suddenly, in a low voice, Hong-wi began to recite:
"On a moonlit night the cuckoo cries,
and, unable to forget my sorrow, I lean upon the pillow.
Your cry is sorrowful, and grief it is to hear it —
had there been no voice of yours, there had been no sorrow of mine.
O you who bear the world's many cares, I pray you —
climb not the Sagyu Pavilion in the third month of spring..."
The flute's song slowly died away.
Ga-ryeong lowered the instrument and fixed his gaze silently upon Hong-wi.
Hong-wi met his eyes with perfect calm.
For the space of a single moment, it seemed the hearts of the watcher and the watched forgot their stations entirely and became one.
After that night, the people of Yeongwol came often to hear the clear, plaintive sound of a flute drifting through the darkness. Of those who knew its true story, there was not one who did not sigh — and sometimes wipe away a tear.
It was long afterward that the little pavilion within the Gwanpungheon, once called the Maejuknu, came to be renamed the Sagyuju — the Pavilion of the Cuckoo — after the bird that was said to weep until it coughed blood.
Even in Yeongwol, where time itself seemed frozen, the days flowed mercilessly on.
During that time, Hong-wi's treatment improved by small degrees — for Suyang had personally instructed Kim Gwang-su, the Governor of Gangwon Province, to take special care of Prince Nosan.
Whether that sprang from a pang of conscience, or from the confidence that came as his regime grew steadily more secure, none could say.
In any case, as the surveillance on Hong-wi slackened, even the magistrate of Yeongwol began to turn a blind eye to his contact with ordinary people.
And then the villagers, who had pitied him but never dared to move, began to stir as well.
Day after day, without pause, people came to the Gwanpungheon bearing vegetables for the king's table, fresh fruit, even precious chickens caught for the occasion.
"To give food as precious as this — I am grateful, truly."
Hong-wi never failed to offer his thanks to each person who came to see him.
Now and then he would walk the village with Gongsaeng at his side, listening to the common folk speak of their small and tangled circumstances.
"We simply live as the government bids us, that is all."
So spoke Eom Heung-do, the Hojang — the head local clerk — of Yeongwol.
The Hojang was the chief of the local functionaries, a minor post granted to the more prosperous landholding families of the countryside. In short, a rank one step above the old man Jeon Jung-jae's.
He, too, was among those who grieved for Hong-wi's plight and sought however they might to help him.
Inwardly, Hong-wi was grateful for his kindness.
"Tell me, then — how do the people of your village live?"
"For men such as us to speak of our living to Your Grace — it hardly seems fitting."
Eom Heung-do smiled his guileless smile, and Hong-wi returned a gentle one.
"Once, these were people whose welfare was my charge. To see how they live now is good study in its own right."
Only after talking long with Eom Heung-do could Hong-wi finally begin to grasp something of the people's lives. It was a world apart from what he had learned from books within the palace walls.
One day he asked the old clerk:
"When do the farmers begin their rice planting?"
"Why, from around Gogu — the Grain Rains — and no later than before Ipha, the Beginning of Summer. In the fourth month they sow the seed directly into the paddies."
"The Nongsa Jikseol says there is a method of transplanting seedlings from seedbeds. Is that not practiced here?"
The Nongsa Jikseol — the Straight Talk on Farming — was an agricultural treatise compiled as a state project under King Sejong the Great. Where previous works had simply carried over Chinese methods wholesale, it codified techniques adapted specifically to the soil, climate, and crops of the Korean peninsula.
Joseon, which had made agriculture the very foundation of the state, labored to spread the book, seeing it read widely among farmers through the local officials of every province. Printing technology was too crude to produce it in vast quantities, but at least every county office came to hold a copy.
Eom Heung-do smiled faintly.
"So Your Majesty knows of it as well."
"Ah — speak no such words."
Hong-wi hastily glanced about them. For the man to call him "Your Majesty" alone could, if it spread, entangle them both in a charge of treason.
"Forgive me. Yes, I borrowed a copy from the office and read it once. But the method you speak of does not suit us here. It is not a bad method, mind you — only that it demands a great deal of water, so one dry spring can ruin an entire year's harvest. The state has even issued a ban against it save on fields of a certain size."
"Is that so?"
Hong-wi was astonished. For the first time, he understood that what one read in books or heard in lessons might not match the reality of the world.
He pressed Eom Heung-do with question after question about farming, and lent his ear to the grievances of the farmers. When he had heard it all, he sighed.
"Truly — even sitting as I did upon the throne, much of what I learned today is new to me."
"A king must not neglect the greater matters, after all. Did they not say to ask the farmer about tilling the field, and the weaving woman about spinning thread?"
Though he was of functionary stock, Eom Heung-do was a man of no small learning.
Hong-wi pondered a moment.
"Since it has come to this, I should like to take up farming myself."
"What — a person of Your Grace's standing, and yet..."
"Is farming not the very root of all under heaven? I cannot know how long I shall remain in this place. If that is so, then I might as well grow my own food with these hands."
Hong-wi had resolved to farm. Idleness would only gnaw at him anyway, so he welcomed anything to set his hand to — and besides, if men sent by his uncle Grand Prince Geumseong were ever to seek him out, a field would make it far easier to slip free of watchful eyes.
"Well then — can you help me?"
"Why, of course, my lord."
Having won Eom Heung-do's promise, Hong-wi at once sent word through Gongsaeng to ask the magistrate of Yeongwol for leave to tend a vegetable plot.
At Gongsaeng's report, the magistrate made a face of pure disbelief.
"Prince Nosan means to farm."
The retort rose to his throat — the man had surely never raised a crop in his life — but the magistrate only shrugged in the end. If he wants to, let him. As though there were any reason to forbid a man from growing his own food.
"What shall we tell him?"
"Grant it as he asks!"
And so Hong-wi took up farming from that very day.
It was not yet the season for sowing, so he resolved first to learn the use of the farm tools.
Eom Heung-do arranged a small plot of farmland by the stream at Jucheon, and undertook to teach him everything — from the handling of the tools to the whole of the farmer's craft. He even extended the rare courtesy of lending him his own ox.
"Good heavens — His Highness turns the plow with his own two hands!"
The people of Yeongwol were treated to a spectacle none had ever dreamed of seeing. Even the magistrate never muddied his own hands breaking ground, and yet a man who had once been king — cast out though he was — tilling the earth in person. The simple-hearted villagers took to Hong-wi at once.
"Hold the plow like so, Your Grace."
"Put your strength in this way. Yes — just so... there, that's how you keep your balance."
The farmers vied with one another to teach Hong-wi the tricks of the trade — the kind of lore found in no book, mastered only through each farmer's own years of experience. Hong-wi, naturally brilliant, absorbed the knack at once. Stamina alone could not be built in a day, but he had been blessed, like his father before him, with a sturdy frame.
"Thank you. Truly — see how well it goes, done this way."
Hong-wi offered his thanks to every soul who lent him a hand. The farmers were astonished, and deeply moved.
To them, even the magistrate was a figure too exalted to approach — and a king? A king was a being upon the clouds, like the sky itself. And that man was treating them as his equals.
The eunuchs and palace maids who followed Hong-wi were forced into farm labor they had never known in all their lives, yet not one of them complained. To see their prince — who at Cheongnyeongpo had seemed to have given up on the world entirely — take hold again of the will to live was joy enough.
The old eunuch quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
It is a mercy. His Majesty seems to have gathered his heart together again.
Certainly Hong-wi appeared far improved on the surface. With the coming of spring and the warming of the days, his face had brightened as well; in anyone else it might have been called a broad smile. But it had been years since Hong-wi had been able to truly smile. And whenever some unfamiliar young man or elderly visitor came to find him as he plowed the field or hoed the weeds, his color lightened, if only a little.
So spring passed, and summer came.
The land of Sunheung in Gyeongsang Province was a county of such importance that it bore a Protectorsate — a Dohobu.
There, confined under thorn-hedge house arrest, was Grand Prince Geumseong, Lee Yu.
Of all the sons of King Sejong the Great, he had been closest to his nephew Hong-wi, and after the Gyeyu Coup he had been virtually the only prince of the royal clan who stood against his second elder brother Suyang and strove to the very last to lend Hong-wi his strength.
Naturally Suyang found such a man galling. But he had already killed his own brother, Grand Prince Anpyeong, in the days of the coup — and having done that much, he had evidently had no stomach to kill another. So he had let Geumseong be.
Even when word reached him that the Grand Prince was implicated in the rising of Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, and the six loyal martyrs, Suyang flew into a fury — but still did not kill him. He merely sent him into exile at Sunheung and confined him to his house for over a year.
"If he meant to kill me, he ought to have done it long ago."
Grand Prince Geumseong smiled bitterly and bent himself over his painting.
The children of Sejong were every one of them accomplished in the arts, and Geumseong too had a talent for calligraphy and painting — though it was said he fell short of his third elder brother, Anpyeong.
"Yes — Ho-chan. You come looking for me all of a sudden. What brings this? Have you some amusing tale to tell?"
"Yes, my lord."
Jeong Ho-chan answered with perfect calm.
"A great upheaval has occurred in the Ming dynasty."
The brush in Grand Prince Geumseong's hand stopped dead.
The next instant, as though it were nothing at all, he set the brush moving again.
"Is that so? An upheaval — what manner of upheaval?"
"The former Emperor — the one taken captive during the Tumu Crisis — has deposed his half-brother, the reigning Emperor, and restored himself to the throne."
"Indeed."
The upheaval of which Jeong Ho-chan spoke was the one men had begun to call the Duomen Coup — the Seizure of the Gate.
Eight years before, when the Zhengtong Emperor of Ming had personally led an army against the Mongol Oirats and suffered catastrophic defeat at Tumu Fortress, his ministers had installed the Emperor's half-brother upon the throne as the Jingtai Emperor. Then the Zhengtong Emperor was released and sent home — and matters took an absurd turn. With an Emperor already enthroned, the original ruler became merely Grand Emperor, retired and sidelined; and the Jingtai Emperor, viewing his half-brother as a threat, placed him under confinement.
So imprisoned for nearly seven years, the Zhengtong Emperor bided his time in burning silence — until his half-brother fell ill and took to his bed, at which point he raised a coup, seized the palace, and restored himself to the throne. That was the Duomen Coup.
Grand Prince Geumseong murmured, half to himself:
"So they've had their coup over there as well. The only difference, I suppose, is that theirs succeeded in restoring the rightful Emperor."
"My lord."
Jeong Ho-chan spoke with deliberate steadiness.
"Suyang's faction in Hanyang will be watching this affair with the keenest alarm. Men who have seized power through a coup fear nothing so much as a second coup. And if there is one man they would name, at this very moment, as a threat to themselves..."
"It would be me."
The Grand Prince said it as though he were speaking of someone else's affairs altogether.
Jeong Ho-chan nodded.