Evil Woman - 3
Time flows equally for everyone.
It flows the same for the barbarian fretting over his next meal, and it flows the same for the widow who lives only so that she may die.
In one more month, a full year would have passed since the tragedy at the Moyong Clan wedding.
The news Moyong Sang-ah had so desperately longed to hear finally arrived.
"You mean the matter of the people we sent to Joseon?"
Moyong Sang-ah had secretly ordered Changbong Daeju to dispatch men to Joseon.
Their purpose: word of the Kang family members entangled in the treason charge, and news of the deceased Kang Yunho.
"Yes. The report arrived just a short while ago."
Changbong Daeju regarded his lord with worried eyes.
His transformed master.
He had believed she needed to change in order to become clan leader, yet he had never wished for her to grow this cold, this merciless.
Nearly a year had passed since that day. Why had she changed so much? Now he knew the reason.
Kang Yunho.
The crushing guilt she carried toward that scoundrel had remade her. No—guilt alone was not enough. In that brief span of time the fire that had ignited between the two of them had altered her past the point of return.
"It is news I have waited a long time to hear. Report at once."
Changbong Daeju swallowed his conflicted feelings. Better to speak. Whatever shock this report delivered, it was the news his lord had wanted.
He opened his mouth to begin.
"As was already known, every man of the Kang clan was beheaded for the crime of treason."
The calamity that struck the Kang family over the charge of high treason had not ended with three generations including the clan head.
Every relative, near or distant, had been employed in the Kang family's enterprises, and the Joseon court had used that fact as proof that all of them had taken part in the plot.
Unless a man was so distantly connected that he could not even be called kin—like the one Moyong Sang-ah herself had cut down not long ago—every male of the Kang line had lost his head.
Extermination of the clan.
The place once known as the Kang family's ancestral village now stood as nothing but ruins.
"...And what of the plan to take in the women of the Kang family who were reduced to slavery?"
It was still too soon to give up.
Moyong Sang-ah forced down the urge to shut her eyes against the catastrophic results of her own actions and asked after the surviving female kin of the Kang house.
It could never amount even to the smallest atonement for what she had done to him, yet she wished to care for the family he had left behind. For that reason she had ordered the men sent to Joseon to secretly bring back those women who had been made slaves.
"They say few survived."
"What do you mean? Were the women not spared the beheading?"
"The Kang family was never a large house to begin with. After suffering every kind of torment because of the treason charge, and already shattered in body and spirit, many of the women took their own lives rather than be dragged to the provinces as slaves or endure the humiliation of becoming government courtesans."
"E-even so, some must have lived."
"A few distant relatives of Young Master Kang Yunho, who had suffered less, did survive. But the moment they heard the Moyong Clan wished to take them in, every last one of them refused the offer without a second thought."
Moyong Sang-ah's accusation of treason.
Whether the Kang family's plot had been true or false, no woman of that house would accept help from the enemy who had denounced them.
"Who were the men we sent to Joseon? To speak the Moyong name outright—did they have any sense at all?"
A quiet anger colored her voice as she pressed Changbong Daeju over the absurd report from those who had gone to Joseon.
"I apologize. The fault is mine."
Moyong Sang-ah looked at the bowed head of her subordinate and swallowed her fury.
She was in no position to rage at anyone.
Everything had happened because of her sin. Whom could she possibly blame?
Useless woman. Her lord had given her a grace she could never repay, yet she could not even properly look after the family he had left behind.
She forcibly shook off the sticky helplessness that tried to consume her and considered another method for bringing the Kang women to safety.
"...There will be people who once received great kindness from the Kang family. Use them as the core to establish a separate business concern in Joseon, and have that concern quietly extract the enslaved women of the Kang house."
If they refused the filthy hand of a sinner, then she would simply make the hand invisible.
If those who owed the Kang family a debt of gratitude were the ones to care for the women, they would surely tend them with the utmost devotion.
"I will set it in motion at once."
"I do not care if it costs a fortune beyond reckoning. Use any means necessary. Bring them here and see that they want for nothing."
It might be nothing more than paltry self-consolation.
She knew better than anyone that no amount of gold or jewels could fill the hole left in a woman's heart by the loss of the one she loved. Yet that did not mean she could turn her back on his remaining family.
Even if it was only a sinner's hypocrisy, she had to do everything within her power.
Moyong Sang-ah discussed at length with Changbong Daeju how best to care for the survivors of Young Master Kang's house.
"Yes. It will be done exactly as you command."
"There was one more matter I ordered the men in Joseon to investigate. What of that?"
If the report had arrived today, that news would have come with it as well.
The two reasons she had sent people to Joseon.
The reason she had sometimes pressed Changbong Daeju for word from those men.
Moyong Sang-ah forced her trembling heart to still and pretended calm as she waited for the other half of the report.
"You mean where Young Master Kang Yunho was buried?"
Changbong Daeju lifted his head and looked at the lord who was urging him on.
Even the news of the Kang family alone had been enough to shake her. Dare he deliver this next part as well?
"Yes. Did I not order them to discover where he was laid to rest?"
A second blow hurts less when the first has already landed.
Hoping the earlier report might have blunted the coming shock, Changbong Daeju spoke.
"Originally, Young Master Kang was buried in the family's ancestral graves."
The false corpse of Kang Yunho, who had "died" at Liaodong Fortress, had deliberately been left unembalmed according to plan. By the time it reached Joseon the stench of rot was already overpowering.
The court official dispatched to the Kang family's hometown for identification had wrinkled his face in disgust, given only the most cursory glance to confirm the features, and ordered the body interred in the clan's ancestral mountain.
"'Originally'—meaning he is no longer there?"
An ominous premonition stabbed through Moyong Sang-ah's mind.
The carefully feigned composure in her eyes had already given way to unease.
Changbong Daeju, lacking any confidence that he could withstand the emotions that would follow, averted his gaze and continued.
"It is said that recently he was subjected to bugwan chamsi—exhumation and dismemberment of the corpse."
"E-ex-exhumation and dismemberment? Why would he of all people suffer that?!"
Moyong Sang-ah recoiled in horror and demanded an answer from Changbong Daeju.
Bugwan chamsi.
The punishment of digging up a grave, dragging out the body, and hacking it to pieces.
Even in a Confucian state, laying hands upon the dead was considered so extreme that only a crime of the highest order could justify it—even against a corpse.
Even if Kang Yunho had deserved death for treason, there had been no reason for him to suffer this.
"Apparently talk circulated within the Joseon court that the punishment of the great traitor Kang Yunho had been too light. In the end, while further crimes were being investigated, one additional charge was added to the list of offenses. They dug up the already rotting corpse and carried out the dismemberment."
"What crime could my lord possibly have committed that they would lay hands on his body?!"
"The crime of conspiracy with a foreign power. He was accused of having married into a foreign clan in order to draw outside forces into a rebellion."
The crime of betraying one's country and secretly colluding with another nation to plot treason. In Joseon it stood among the Ten Abominations—one of the worst sins, ranked alongside high treason itself.
The Kang family had intended to raise a rebellion. On top of that, the man named Kang Yunho had personally sought to bring in foreign power.
Although the Moyong Clan had been rewarded for denouncing the man's treason, that did not erase Kang Yunho's guilt. He deserved punishment.
That was the conclusion reached, and the crime hung upon him.
High treason for internal rebellion, plus conspiracy with a foreign power for external betrayal.
That was why Kang Yunho had been exhumed and dismembered.
"B-because of me, you mean."
"No one dared collect the dismembered remains for fear of being tainted by the treason charge. Then one night someone gathered the pieces of the body and vanished with them."
Changbong Daeju could not bring himself to affirm the words of the reeling Moyong Sang-ah. He simply finished the report in a calm voice.
"Even in death... even in death... because of me..."
The chivalrous wanderer who had risked his life to come for her sake.
In life he had died by the hand of the evil woman he himself had tried to save.
In death even the pure intention he had once held had been defiled.
The grave that should have granted a dead man rest had been torn open, and his body hacked to pieces until no one knew where the remains had gone.
Because of her.
All of it, every last bit of it, because of her.
For a moment Moyong Sang-ah's mind went blank.
"My lady! My lady! Come to your senses! Physician!!! Where is the physician?!"