Came the time when our marriage was mootedoh, quietly, at first, most quietly, as mere palace gossip in dark corners between eunuchs and waitingwomen. But in a palace the gossip of the kitchen scullions will creep to the throne. Soon there was a pretty todo. The palace was the pulse of ChoSen, and when the palace rocked, ChoSen trembled. And there was reason for the rocking. Our marriage would be a blow straight between the eyes of Chong Mongju. He fought, with a show of strength for which Yunsan was ready. Chong Mongju disaffected half the provincial priesthood, until they pilgrimaged in processions a mile long to the palace gates and frightened the Emperor into a panic.
But Yunsan held like a rock. The other half of the provincial priesthood was his, with, in addition, all the priesthood of the great cities such as Keijo, Fusan, Songdo, PyenYang, Chenampo, and Chemulpo. Yunsan and the Lady Om, between them, twisted the Emperor right about. As she confessed to me afterward, she bullied him with tears and hysteria and threats of a scandal that would shake the throne. And to cap it all, at the psychological moment, Yunsan pandered the Emperor to novelties of excess that had been long preparing.
"You must grow your hair for the marriage knot," Yunsan warned me one day, with the ghost of a twinkle in his austere eyes, more nearly facetious and human than I had ever beheld him.
Now it is not meet that a princess espouse a seacuny, or even a claimant of the ancient blood of Koryu, who is without power, or place, or visible symbols of rank. So it was promulgated by imperial decree that I was a prince of Koryu. Next, after breaking the bones and decapitating the then governor of the five provinces, himself an adherent of Chong Mong ju, I was made governor of the seven home provinces of ancient Koryu. In ChoSen seven is the magic number. To complete this number two of the provinces were taken over from the hands of two more of Chong Mongju's adherents.
Lord, Lord, a seacuny and dispatched north over the Mandarin Road with five hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back! I was a governor of seven provinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me. Life, death, and torture, I carried at my disposal. I had a treasury and a treasurer, to say nothing of a regiment of scribes. Awaiting me also was a full thousand of taxfarmers; who squeezed the last coppers from the toiling people.
The seven provinces constituted the northern march. Beyond lay what is now Manchuria, but which was known by us as the country of the Hongdu, or "Red Heads." They were wild raiders, on occasion crossing the Yalu in great masses and overrunning northern ChoSen like locusts. It was said they were given to cannibal practices. I know of experience that they were terrible fighters, most difficult to convince of a beating.
A whirlwind year it was. While Yunsan and the Lady Om at Keijo completed the disgrace of Chong Mongju, I proceeded to make a reputation for myself. Of course it was really Hendrik Hamel at my back, but I was the fine figurehead that carried it off. Through me Hamel taught our soldiers drill and tactics and taught the Red Heads strategy. The fighting was grand, and though it took a year, the year's end saw peace on the northern border and no Red Heads but dead Red Heads on our side the Yalu.
I do not know if this invasion of the Red Heads is recorded in Western history, but if so it will give a clue to the date of the times of which I write. Another clue: when was Hideyoshi the Shogun of Japan? In my time I heard the echoes of the two invasions, a generation before, driven by Hideyoshi through the heart of ChoSen from Fusan in the south to as far north as PyengYang. It was this Hideyoshi who sent back to Japan a myriad tubs of pickled ears and noses of Koreans slain in battle. I talked with many old men and women who had seen the fighting and escaped the pickling.
Back to Keijo and the Lady Om. Lord, Lord, she was a woman. For forty years she was my woman. I know. No dissenting voice was raised against the marriage. Chong Mongju, clipped of power, in disgrace, had retired to sulk somewhere on the far northeast coast. Yunsan was absolute. Nightly the single beacons flared their message of peace across the land. The Emperor grew more weaklegged and bleareyed what of the ingenious deviltries devised for him by Yunsan. The Lady Om and I had won to our hearts' desires. Kim was in command of the palace guards. Kwan Yung jin, the provincial governor who had planked and beaten us when we were first cast away, I had shorn of power and banished for ever from appearing within the walls of Keijo.
Oh, and Johannes Maartens. Discipline is well hammered into a seacuny, and, despite my new greatness, I could never forget that he had been my captain in the days we sought new Indies in the Sparwehr. According to my tale first told in Court, he was the only free man in my following. The rest of the cunies, being considered my slaves, could not aspire to office of any sort under the crown. But Johannes could, and did. The sly old fox! I little guessed his intent when he asked me to make him governor of the paltry little province of Kyongju. Kyongju had no wealth of farms or fisheries. The taxes scarce paid the collecting, and the governorship was little more than an empty honour. The place was in truth a graveyarda sacred graveyard, for on Tabong Mountain were shrined and sepultured the bones of the ancient kings of Silla. Better governor of Kyongju than retainer of Adam Strang, was what I thought was in his mind; nor did I dream that it was except for fear of loneliness that caused him to take four of the cunies with him.
Gorgeous were the two years that followed. My seven provinces I governed mainly though needy yangbans selected for me by Yunsan. An occasional inspection, done in state and accompanied by the Lady Om, was all that was required of me. She possessed a summer palace on the south coast, which we frequented much. Then there were man's diversions. I became patron of the sport of wrestling, and revived archery among the yangbans. Also, there was tigerhunting in the northern mountains.
A remarkable thing was the tides of ChoSen. On our northeast coast there was scarce a rise and fall of a foot. On our west coast the neap tides ran as high as sixty feet. ChoSen had no commerce, no foreign traders. There was no voyaging beyond her coasts, and no voyaging of other peoples to her coasts. This was due to her immemorial policy of isolation. Once in a decade or a score of years Chinese ambassadors arrived, but they came overland, around the Yellow Sea, across the country of the Hongdu, and down the Mandarin Road to Keijo. The round trip was a yearlong journey. Their mission was to exact from our Emperor the empty ceremonial of acknowledgment of China's ancient suzerainty.
But Hamel, from long brooding, was ripening for action. His plans grew apace. ChoSen was Indies enough for him could he but work it right. Little he confided, but when he began to play to have me made admiral of the ChoSen navy of junks, and to inquire more than casually of the details of the storeplaces of the imperial treasury, I could put two and two together.
Now I did not care to depart from ChoSen except with the Lady Om. When I broached the possibility of it she told me, warm in my arms, that I was her king and that wherever I led she would follow. As you shall see it was truth, full truth, that she uttered.
It was Yunsan's fault for letting Chong Mongju live. And yet it was not Yunsan's fault. He had not dared otherwise. Disgraced at Court, nevertheless Chong Mongju had been too popular with the provincial priesthood. Yunsan had been compelled to hold his hand, and Chong Mong ju, apparently sulking on the northeast coast, had been anything but idle. His emissaries, chiefly Buddhist priests, were everywhere, went everywhere, gathering in even the least of the provincial magistrates to allegiance to him. It takes the cold patience of the Asiatic to conceive and execute huge and complicated conspiracies. The strength of Chong Mongju's palace clique grew beyond Yunsan's wildest dreaming. Chong Mongju corrupted the very palace guards, the Tiger Hunters of PyengYang whom Kim commanded. And while Yunsan nodded, while I devoted myself to sport and to the Lady Om, while Hendrik Hamel perfected plans for the looting of the Imperial treasury, and while Johannes Maartens schemed his own scheme among the tombs of Tabong Mountain, the volcano of Chong Mong ju's devising gave no warning beneath us.
Lord, Lord, when the storm broke! It was stand out from under, all hands, and save your necks. And there were necks that were not saved. The springing of the conspiracy was premature. Johannes Maartens really precipitated the catastrophe, and what he did was too favourable for Chong Mongju not to advantage by.
For, see. The people of ChoSen are fanatical ancestorworshippers, and that old pirate of a bootylusting Dutchman, with his four cunies, in far Kyongju, did no less a thing than raid the tombs of the goldcoffined, longburied kings of ancient Silla. The work was done in the night, and for the rest of the night they travelled for the seacoast. But the following day a dense fog lay over the land and they lost their way to the waiting junk which Johannes Maartens had privily outfitted. He and the cunies were rounded in by Yi Sunsin, the local magistrate, one of Chong Mongju's adherents. Only Herman Tromp escaped in the fog, and was able, long after, to tell me of the adventure.
That night, although news of the sacrilege was spreading through ChoSen and half the northern provinces had risen on their officials, Keijo and the Court slept in ignorance. By Chong Mongju's orders the beacons flared their nightly message of peace. And night by night the peacebeacons flared, while day and night Chong Mongju's messengers killed horses on all the roads of ChoSen. It was my luck to see his messenger arrive at Keijo. At twilight, as I rode out through the great gate of the capital, I saw the jaded horse fall and the exhausted rider stagger in on foot; and I little dreamed that that man carried my destiny with him into Keijo.
His message sprang the palace revolution. I was not due to return until midnight, and by midnight all was over. At nine in the evening the conspirators secured possession of the Emperor in his own apartments. They compelled him to order the immediate attendance of the heads of all departments, and as they presented themselves, one by one, before his eyes, they were cut down. Meantime the Tiger Hunters were up and out of hand. Yunsan and Hendrik Hamel were badly beaten with the flats of swords and made prisoners. The seven other cunies escaped from the palace along with the Lady Om. They were enabled to do this by Kim, who held the way, sword in hand, against his own Tiger Hunters. They cut him down and trod over him. Unfortunately he did not die of his wounds.