Three Reasons to Join Hands with Hwang Ga
As if he had absorbed the spirits of the seasoned hunters who had roamed these lands for centuries, Hong-wi threw himself into hunting day after day.
Unlike in Joseon, there was no one here to stop him.
Cha Gyeong-yeon, in fact, encouraged it wholeheartedly.
Considering what lay ahead, he would need the bearing of a bold and capable man of arms.
That was not to say Hong-wi spent his days merely playing.
He also devoted himself to studying the Jurchen tongue under Cha Gyeong-yeon.
And he put it to practical use, striking up conversations with the Jurchens he occasionally crossed paths with on his hunting trips.
Those who spoke with Hong-wi would clutch their bellies laughing at first, saying his pronunciation was odd.
"Well I never, in all my days I've never heard an accent like yours. Where in the world do you hail from?"
Of course, he could hardly answer honestly, so he fudged it as best he could.
The Jurchens were a sharp-eyed lot by nature, and they seemed to gather that Hong-wi was, roughly speaking, from Joseon.
But that did nothing to stir ill will against him.
"Still, you've got a fair hand at our tongue already."
So they said, and smiled.
The Jurchens loved their families and friends, and beyond that, anyone who made the effort to speak their language earned an instant warmth in their eyes.
In truth, among Joseon people or Ming Chinese, those who bothered to learn the Jurchen tongue were exceedingly rare.
To them, the sight of a foreigner like Hong-wi endeavoring to master it was something novel indeed.
As time passed, his command of the language improved by leaps and bounds.
By now, few of the Jurchens who conversed with him found his pronunciation or intonation all that strange.
Jianzhou was vast, and even among the Jurchens the dialects of the northern Haeshi Guard or the eastern Moryeonwi were different again — so people simply let it slide, reasoning it must be that.
"No matter how I try, I can never hope to match you, my lord."
Ho-in said, scratching his head.
In front of others he called Hong-wi "master," but when no one was listening, he called him "Your Majesty."
As he himself admitted, Ho-in was somewhat slow at picking up languages.
He could manage, clumsily enough, but he was far from fluent.
Hong-wi laughed.
"Learning another people's tongue is no easy thing, so don't give up — keep using it. These people weren't born knowing how to speak either, were they?"
"I think of nothing but how I might serve you back on Joseon soil, and soon, Your Majesty."
"I see."
For a moment, Hong-wi wondered how many years he would have to live in the Jurchen lands.
A year or two? Five or six? Ten? Perhaps longer?
In that instant, a thought crossed his mind: settling down and living on this land might not be such a bad thing after all.
Compared to that bedlam of kings seized through the slaughter of one's own kin and offices won by harming friends — wasn't it better, rather, to live in this rugged, wild land with nature for a companion?
A sigh escaped him unbidden.
"Whether such a day will ever come, I can hardly say. For now, let us enjoy this moment, here and now."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Let's head back."
They returned in high spirits.
Cha Gyeong-yeon was there to greet them.
While Hong-wi's party had been out, he had scouted the surrounding hundred li on the watch for anyone suspicious, and had occasionally made trips to Hwangseongpyeong as well.
While Ho-in went off to dress the beasts they had hunted and prepare the meal, Hong-wi asked Cha Gyeong-yeon,
"Any news from Hwangseongpyeong?"
"None worth worrying over, my lord."
"And the rumors about me...?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon smiled thinly.
"None. Word that Your Majesty escaped Yeongwol does reach these parts now and then, but no one pays it much mind, and not a soul suspects you have come this far."
"Is that so? A relief."
Save for Song Yu-bin and Jang Hui-sun, who knew the truth of the matter, that was surely how everyone would see it.
"Now that spring has arrived, and judging by the look of you, Your Majesty, I'd say you're more than ready to go about among the Jurchens."
Cha Gyeong-yeon said with a warm smile.
It was no empty flattery.
Hong-wi's Jurchen had become thoroughly fluent by now.
At this level, given how many fractious clans the Jurchens had and how wildly their dialects varied, there was hardly anyone who would find his speech the least bit odd.
If he could travel the various regions from here on and separately pick up the dialects of the Haeshi Guard and the Moryeonwi in addition to Jianzhou itself, so much the better.
And it wasn't just the language.
His Jurchen dress and manner of carrying himself were beyond reproach as well.
In truth the Jurchens were an unrestrained people, but anywhere in the world, families with standing and lineage were bound to exist.
To prepare for that, Cha Gyeong-yeon had taught Hong-wi, as far as he knew it, the etiquette observed by the 'distinguished' among the Jurchens.
Then again, this was Hong-wi, a man who had absorbed court protocol far more intricate than that.
More than anything, in half a year he had become a strikingly handsome man grown into his full strength.
Since the days of King Taejo, the kings of Joseon had carried a strong image of stalwart martial vigor, and Hong-wi's father Munjong had been as imposing as the legendary general Guan Yu.
Hong-wi had inherited their blood and carried himself with a dignified frame, yet he seemed to have taken after his mother's side and was more slender.
Not that he was a beanpole.
Besides, the rigors of the harsh Jurchen frontier over the past months had forged him into a solid, rugged man.
His features, too, leaned less toward the martial cast and more toward the refined and noble.
This, too, must have come from his mother, for his features were sharp and clear, drawing praise for their comeliness without any effort on his part.
And because he had been buffeted this way and that since childhood, there lingered about him an almost unconscious air of quiet melancholy.
But if one took that for a gloomy countenance, one would be wrong — over the past months he had recovered much of the natural buoyancy of youth.
"As Master Jeong said before, for a stranger among the Jurchens — a foreigner with no kin or connections — the one sure way to make a living is trade. Going from place to place selling goods."
Cha Gyeong-yeon smiled easily.
"Moving between village and village makes it easy to meet all sorts of people, and word of how the world turns travels to you as well. There's no better occupation for it."
"True, I feel the same. Then there's nothing left to hesitate over, is there?"
As the two were deep in this conversation, Ho-in's voice came from outside.
"I've brought the meal."
"Ah, come in."
At Hong-wi's answer the door opened, and Ho-in entered bearing the table.
A hearty aroma filled the room at once.
The rice was barley and millet, without a single grain of white rice, yet Hong-wi ate it with relish.
And the pheasant, pounded bone and all into the grain, then stewed with dried radish greens, cabbage, and radish in soybean paste, was a delicacy in its own right.
"Mm, delicious! Ho-in's cooking is fine every time I taste it."
"You flatter me. If I could get better ingredients it would be finer still, but I do what I can with what we have."
Hong-wi marveled.
Cha Gyeong-yeon agreed.
"With a hand for flavor like that, you'd be welcomed wherever you went."
Truly, no one had known Ho-in possessed such a gift.
Among the common prejudices about Joseon men in later ages was that they wouldn't set so much as a foot in the kitchen — but it wasn't necessarily so.
The royal cooks, the suksu, who were charged with the palace cuisine were men as well, and even among the highborn yangban, many took an interest in the culinary arts.
Indeed, a man on the road would often cook his own meals as he traveled.
Ho-in's skill in the kitchen was more than passable; by all accounts his father, the old man Jeon Jung-jae, had his own expertise in cooking, and having attended his father on their journeys, the duty of preparing the rice had always fallen to Ho-in.
In any case, through the winter the party had wanted for nothing at table, at least, thanks to Ho-in.
"By the way, what were you two discussing?"
"How to go about the trading, that sort of thing."
"Trading, you say."
Ho-in looked somewhat displeased.
In truth, he was not at all keen on the idea of Hong-wi taking up the lowly merchant's trade.
Ho-in was no scholar-official himself, but he came of a clerical family that could read and write, and within the old order of scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant, he had been raised to regard traders as the lowest of them all.
"Do you truly mean to become a merchant?"
"Of course. I cannot lean on Master Yeol Se-ho's generosity forever. What I eat, I ought to earn with my own hands, no?"
Even at Hong-wi's words, Ho-in could not hide his lingering discontent.
Cha Gyeong-yeon said with a grin,
"Well then, you could always serve as the cook yourself. I'm sure it'd suit the Jurchen palate well enough."
"Really, Brother Cha, let's keep this serious, shall we?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon reserved his teasing ways for Ho-in above all others.
Hoin was young, to be sure, but there was also something quietly satisfying about ruffling him.
"It isn't for the likes of me to decide Your Majesty's future."
"Well, that much is true."
Cha Gyeong-yeon's mirth drained away, and his face turned grave.
"If we truly mean to trade, practical matters must be weighed. For now there are only the three of us, and we have no capital either. That is the problem we must solve first."
"Well, could we not ask Master Yeol Se-ho for... for a little help?"
Ho-in offered his opinion.
He watched Hong-wi's face as he went on.
"Of course, Your Majesty has said you do not wish to depend on Master Yeol Se-ho... but we wouldn't be begging for the money for free. We'd only be promising to repay it later, wouldn't we?"
"There's truth in that, but Master Yeol Se-ho says he lacks the means to fund us that far."
"What...? But he seemed a man of no small standing to me."
"Leave it be, Ho-in."
When Ho-in faltered, Hong-wi stepped in.
"For my part, I am only grateful that he allowed me to pass the winter in peace. Even if he truly lacked the means to lend me capital, how could I possibly find fault with him?"
"Forgive me, Your Majesty."
Hoin apologized at once.
"If it truly won't be done, then we hunt, or fell trees, or dig herbs. Whatever it takes, we must make something to sell."
Hong-wi said with an optimist's easy tone.
At those words Cha Gyeong-yeon smiled faintly, and even Ho-in's face softened into a small smile.
The oppressive gloom that had weighed on Hong-wi back in Yeongwol had largely melted away.
Cha Gyeong-yeon spoke.
"That is all well and good, of course, but it would take a very long time indeed. Your Majesty, let us find ourselves a good backer."
"Is there such a man to be found?"
"There is."
At Cha Gyeong-yeon's answer, both men's eyes turned to him.
"Who?"
"Do you remember Hwang Ga?"
"Remember him? How could I forget?"
"And he, I'd wager, has not forgotten you either."
"Hmm, you think so?"
Hong-wi fell silent for a moment, thinking.
It was possible.
The ivory tally he had received from Han Ga-ryeong...
What use had Hwang Ga made of it?
"I hear that from this spring, the man has extended his business all the way into Jianzhou. Until now he only ferried goods back and forth across the Amnok River, but now his reach stretches within Jianzhou itself. Let us ask him to be our backer. We go under his wing."
"What? Your Majesty, beneath Hwang Ga's—"
Ignoring Ho-in's protest, Cha Gyeong-yeon pressed on.
"If we do so, there are three advantages that accrue to us."
"Oh? And what might those be?"
Counting off on his fingers, Cha Gyeong-yeon began to lay out the advantages of joining Hwang Ga.
"First — if we enter under Hwang Ga, we can readily lay hands on the goods he smuggles across the Amnok. Every last item among them is something the Jurchens desperately need and cannot buy anywhere else, so the trade would sell itself — a matter of merely pointing at the ground and swimming. That is the first reason."
"True enough. And the second?"
"Second, Hwang Ga holds the ever-flowing vein of gold that is the Manpo smuggling trade. With such a man as our backer, we would have a patron of true substance behind us."
"And the last reason?"
"Because Hwang Ga has only just set foot in Jianzhou himself. If we join him now, then in a manner of speaking, we may expect to be treated as founding elders of merit. That is the third reason."
"Well reasoned. I think beginning under Hwang Ga is the better course myself."
Hong-wi nodded and agreed before long.
Ho-in looked a little wistful.
"Your Majesty should not be going under Hwang Ga — Your Majesty ought to be matching your strength against his."
Ho-in murmured.
Cha Gyeong-yeon laughed heartily.
"Come now, man — no one fills his belly with the first spoonful. In the beginning, one must always start beneath another."
"But I must say, Hwang Ga is no easy man either. Would he really take me in, me with no experience in trade at all, without a fuss?"
Hong-wi's worry was not groundless.
Hwang Ga had weathered every storm the smuggling world could raise, and it seemed unlikely he would accept a greenhorn like Hong-wi so readily.
But Cha Gyeong-yeon was confident.
"Worry not on that score. I know of someone who will make it so Hwang Ga cannot refuse."
"Oh? And who in the world might that be?"