37. Iseul
The day had arrived.
The eighteenth of the ninth lunar month.
At the break of dawn, attendants poured into the temple, overwhelming in number. They hurried to prepare us for the king’s grand procession. Our faces were washed with rice bran water, our hair brushed until it flowed as silk, and our skin glowed with light doses of oil. Soon the scent of sandalwood perfumed the temple.
“How grand will the king’s procession be? I can hardly imagine it…,” I asked under my breath, powdering my painted face with a silkworm cocoon. “Will His Majesty travel with many soldiers?”
“Oh, many, many soldiers,” the attendant replied. “He will be traveling with three defense layers of guards, and the whole procession will be composed of over ten thousand soldiers and over two thousand horses!”
I gripped the cocoon tighter, staring at my reflection in the bronze mirror; a stranger stared back at me. Ten thousand fewer men to fight. Ten thousand steps closer to victory.
The mantra continued, whispers in my head, as we were lined up and led out onto the streets. I held Suyeon’s arm to help her walk, and as we proceeded down the crowded road, my gaze drifted eastward. I could imagine the fortress gate, with its grand pagoda eaves, the soldiers making their rounds on the parapet, assuming today was an ordinary day. Perhaps they were complaining about their tired legs, about the heat of the beating sun, about their next meal. But tonight, when darkness descended, the soldiers would peer out over the parapet, blinking in confusion at the approaching sea of torches. Thousands upon thousands of rebels come to reclaim the kingdom.
Please let us win, I begged the heavens. Please—
The procession turned from its path. We were no longer walking down Jongno Road, and the sight of the fortress wall steered out of view. The procession of women then disappeared, row by row, into Changgyeon Palace. Confusion spun through me as I found myself caught in this flow, drawn through a pair of red gates and into an immense field surrounded by ornate trees and royal pavilions.
“Perhaps the king is still asleep,” Suyeon whispered, as though sensing my unease. “Sometimes His Majesty drinks too much to rise the next morn.”
I desperately wanted to believe this. “Perhaps what you say is true,” I whispered, linking my arm tighter around my sister’s. “Perhaps we will depart again soon—”
“We shall not,” came another voice. A captive glanced over her shoulder at us. “Apparently the king has changed his mind. The girls at the front of the line, they overheard eunuchs conversing with the court ladies.”
“What was said?” I demanded.
She looked at me strangely. “Simply that the trip to Kaesong City has been abandoned. And thank the heavens for that. I would rather not walk to such a faraway city. And your friend here would likely collapse before we reached the city walls.”
Shock set in, and I struggled to steady my breath. This could not be. The procession needed to leave by nightfall. The capital needed to be empty. The entire coup had been planned meticulously around this one opportunity.
As I tried to make sense of the situation, another captive leaned in to whisper, “It is because of Nameless Flower, I hear. He left a new blood message on his latest victim, the most taunting one of all. The girl who spent the night with His Majesty overheard the king’s entire discussion with an investigator.”
My head throbbed, unable to think through the blare of panic.
“The king is determined to find Nameless Flower by tonight,” the girl continued. “Remember the policy, where the literate had to submit four pieces of their writing to the government? So that the king could compare documents whenever slander was sent his way? Well, since weeks ago, officials have been comparing them with the killer’s writing. They are now down to a thousand or so documents—”
“Well,” I finally managed to ask, “what did the killer write this time?”
She glanced around, bit her lower lip, then whispered, “You shall see me soon, your most loathsome subject, Nameless Flower. And history shall forever remember me as the man who killed the king.”
Her voice faded as blood roared in my ears. Nameless Flower knew about the coup, there was no doubt. I needed to warn the prince, but everywhere I looked, there were armed guards and I could not leave my sister’s side. Cold sweat drenched my back, and I watched helplessly as the sun moved across the heavens, marking the passage of time into an unknown future.
The sky darkened around us, and the air grew colder as the evening settled in. The curfew bell began to toll, each one lasting for what felt like an eternity, and by the twenty-eighth ring, gates groaned shut, locking for the night.
The guards overseeing us glanced around, confused and distressed. We all were. Everything was going wrong, and at the same time, no one—including myself—knew what was happening.
Complete silence blanketed the capital, except for the occasional footsteps of officers on patrol. The dark trees around us rustled in the mountain wind. A squeaking rodent scurried by.
I closed my eyes. I feared that if I kept them open, staring at the peaceful nothingness beyond the palace walls, I would lose my sanity. Slowly, I counted under my breath. “One, two, three…” My heart thundered in my chest as I tried to ward away shadowy thoughts—that there would be no coup, that Nameless Flower would somehow expose us, that we would all end up dead. Fearful imaginings wrapped around my heart like a noose, and I could hardly breathe. “… four hundred, four hundred and one, four hundred and two…” With every moment that passed, the cold sunk deeper into my bones. Suyeon needed to leave, and if the coup failed, I was certain she would desperately claw her way over the palace wall, and I would follow…
Perhaps we would escape the capital and live in hiding for the remainder of our lives. But, most likely, Suyeon and I would die just beyond the palace walls, faces pressed into the soil, arrows lodged in our backs. Would death hurt very much? I hoped, if it came to pass, that our deaths would be swift—a burst of agony, followed immediately by a peaceful silence. “… nine hundred ninety-nine, a thousand, a thousand and one—”
A gasp pierced the silence.
My eyes shot open, and I saw hands pointing to the distant sky. A single arrow blazed bright, then vanished.
“Wh-what was that?” a girl next to me stuttered.
We all remained still, then flinched at a great crashing noise.
“Did you hear that?” a guard whispered, abandoning us to huddle among themselves. “Where did it come from?”
“From Changui Gate.”
As far as an hour’s walk away.
Another crash fractured the night, rumbling from the northwestern end. Everyone whirled around, confused as more noise clashed from all corners of the capital.
“Damn it!” A guard with a square jaw threw off his military hat. “We’ve been here all day. Someone go find out what is happening—!” The words vanished from his mouth, and his eyes widened. “What in heavens…”
Hundreds upon thousands of torches blazed from over the palace walls. Yells and screams battered against the stone like stormy waves. It felt as though we were trapped in a sinking ship, forgotten in the dank and dreary hold, with no notion of what was occurring above deck.
“M-maybe those are Japanese warlords,” a woman whispered. “They have finally invaded Joseon.”
“I hear they are rebels,” another cried, joy brimming in her voice. “It is our fathers and our husbands. They have come to rescue us!”
A dozen or so women pushed against one another, shoving through the crowd to make their way toward the nearest gate. “We are going home!” they sobbed. Desperation rippled through the mass, and the crowd began surging toward the narrow gate like a tidal wave. Women pushed aside the guards and beat at the locked double doors, screaming, “We are inside! Do not leave without us!”
More shoves and pushes, and soon I could not move, caught in the middle of the sea with my sister, surging toward the red gate.
“Stop! The rebels are not here to save us!” I cried at the top of my lungs, trying to keep the courtesans from pouring out into the main road in their sheer jackets and pink dresses, right into the heart of the violence. “We must stay calm and move as one! If you wish to return home, we must head for the mountains. Tell your companions! Head for the mountains! We must avoid the coup leaders at all cost—!”
A shoulder slammed into my back, knocking me to the ground. I lay stunned, staring at the scrambling feet. Suyeon’s scream rung somewhere high above. Sandals trampled my hand. Whimpering, I struggled onto my elbows.
A pair of boots charged toward me—I could not move soon enough. A crushing weight stomped across my back.
Pain exploded across my ribs, and darkness crashed down around me.
“Here, let me assist,” came a male voice.
Dirt scratched against my cheek. Someone gave a gentle shake of my shoulder, and I emerged momentarily. A woman was leaning over me, the moonlight blotting out her face.
“We are not losing each other,” her voice blared through my aching head, “not for a second time.”
The moonlight pulsed. The brightness hurt my eyes, and I was suddenly back at home. Suyeon and I huddled close, watching the blazing glow of a hundred torches invade our mansion, searching for us. Mother gathered us in her arms, her cheeks wet.
May you never be alone in this kingdom, she sobbed out a prayer, while a fist banged on our door, and may you find good friends who will hold you close—even when the kingdom is falling into the sea. Then this mother can die without any regrets.
On and on, I tumbled into dream after dream, or I lay in an icy pool where memories seemed to blur into nightmares. I surfaced again into the crisp night to the sound of fearful voices.
Women whispered among themselves. “The coup leaders have entered the palace. All the women are running to them.”
“We mustn’t. If what she said is true, we must run away.”
“Which way?”
“To the mountains.”
When I awoke, I found myself leaning against my sister. Her face was covered in bruises, and we were not alone. We stood huddled in the yard behind a pavilion among a hundred or so other women. Their powdered and rouged faces had melted under their sweat and tears. Terrified eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
Suyeon looked at me. “You’re awake. Do you think you can run?”
I pressed my aching ribs. “Of course.”
“We have escaped into Changdeokgung; the two palaces are interconnected. The route we are to take will draw us closest to the mountain. All the gates have been locked since curfew, so we will need time to escape.”
“And have they entered yet? The rebels?” I whispered, my heartbeat throbbing at my temple.
She nodded. “No royal guard dared to stop them—nearly all of them abandoned their post, I heard. Even the king’s personal guard ran away to join the coup. Now the rebels have swarmed the southern half of the palace, so we must be quick before our paths cross.”
The girl standing before us glanced back. Cheonbi. “We have all imagined escaping from the king and his men,” she whispered. “Every night our dreams are of this—of running through this labyrinth and never escaping. But perhaps tonight we shall.” She stepped back and waved her hand. “We will move now!”
As the women rushed forward, she remained, waving at the crowd to move faster as she hissed out, “Remember! Maintain this line! The moment we lose our formation, we lose the opportunity to return home!”
Shallow breaths filled the night as a hundred or so women followed Suyeon and me, treading lightly from courtyard to courtyard, passing quickly in pairs through narrow gates. The journey felt endless, as though we had spiraled into a nightmare of never-ending courtyards. My breathing sharpened into pants. I pressed a hand against my side, pain exploding each time my ribs expanded for air. But the pain was minute compared with the terror of being caught.
“We are almost there!” Cheonbi hurried up to join us at the front. “I heard you earlier. Many of us did. Did you mean it? The rebels are not here to save us?”
I nodded. “The coup leaders intend to distribute the courtesans among themselves as victory spoils.”
She nodded, growing pale.
Suyeon looked unfazed. “Then I am glad we managed to persuade as many women as possible to stay away from them.”
“Who was the man who assisted you?” I asked after a pause. “I heard a man’s voice.”
“It was a royal guard,” she replied absentmindedly. “Come, let us go now.”
We ducked our heads low as we crept by residential complexes where royals quaked within. A lone mutt tailed behind us for a few moments, then scampered off into the moon-speckled shadows. Then the courtyards and pavilions grew into a thicket of trees, a walled-in and hilly forest within the palace itself. Women were heaving for air as we hurried down a winding path, past streams and lotus ponds and pagodas, then off the path we went, up a steep slope that left us staggering and clawing at the soil.
“How are you able to keep going?” I barely managed to ask my sister.
She was drenched in sweat, shaking and pale, but her eyes gleamed bright. “The thought of home gives me strength—Look. We have arrived.”
The women dropped to the ground or collapsed against the trees, heaving for air while staring at a little red gate that appeared and disappeared as the clouds shifted across the moon.
“The palace sprawls around the left foot of Mount Bugak, along Eung-bong Peak,” Suyeon said between gasps, “and this is the gate closest to the mountain. It is isolated enough that we will hopefully have time to break it down.”
I hobbled over, still clutching my side. Every breath sent a thousand pinpricks through me. Together with another woman, we pulled off the moss-covered wooden bars. I tried pulling at the brass handle, but the door barely budged, locked together by thick chains.
“Here, let me try.” Cheonbi, holding a large rock, raised her arms back, then jammed the rock into the chain. Nothing happened. A few other women offered to try, confident at first, that either the chain would break or the wood would splinter, but their confidence wore off after several failed attempts.
“We could climb over,” one suggested half-heartedly.
We all peered up at the stone wall.
“We saw several soldiers scaling over them.”
“But they were taller than us… Perhaps we should have followed the eunuchs, who escaped through the lavatory.”
“Escape through a tunnel full of the king’s feces?” Cheonbi grimaced. “I would rather die here.”
I winced, reaching for the top of the palace wall, and my fingertips skimmed the tiles that capped it. “It is not too high,” I said. “It will take time to get all of us over, but we need to try. Perhaps if we can find a rock along this wall, large enough to step on—”
“They’re up there,” came a female voice from below.
My blood instantly turned to ice, and the women around me clamped hands over their mouths.
“I followed her,” the voice continued, “as you ordered.”
My mouth filled with curses. We were too close to freedom to lose it now. “Have all the women huddle close to the wall, right by the gate and nowhere else,” I whispered to Cheonbi. “They must climb over now. Use one another’s backs.”
“And you?”
“I will distract the rebels, lead them astray if I can. And you must promise to get my sister out first. Drag her if you must.”
She nodded, and with that, I grabbed the rock abandoned by the gate. Cautiously, I slid down the slope, the moonlight blocked by clouds and the world nearly pitch dark. I tucked myself behind a trunk once the women were out of sight, waiting to bludgeon Maggot in the face, or at least one of Maggot’s men. I would strike, then run away, and perhaps his men would follow…
Heavy footsteps crunched up the slope.
Wiping my clammy hand on my skirt, I tightened my grip on the rock, winding my strength up. Praying that it would be Maggot at the front.
Twigs snapped just beyond the tree.
Now, Iseul!
I whirled out, heaving the rock forward. But a hand caught my wrist. No matter how hard I wrenched my arm, his steel grip remained on me. With my free hand, I groped about and grabbed his collar, dragging the man forward—to bite him, to bash my head into his, anything—when the clouds drifted apart once more. The shadows crept aside, and I gaped, unable to believe my eyes, convinced I had fallen into a dream. My entire body shook as he gently lowered my arm. The rock dropped from my grip.
“Iseul and her weapon of choice,” Daehyun whispered, almost endearingly. “Why did we trouble ourselves with this coup nonsense when we could have sent you in with your deadly rock?”
I had never been happier to see him, and I would have flung my arms around his neck if not for the dire circumstances. And he was also not alone. Behind him stood three strapping men garbed in white prisoner robes.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Men I released from the Milwicheong Prison. The rest have rounded up an entire crowd outside the palace.”
I frowned. “How did you find us?”
A girl peeked out from behind the prince and waved sheepishly. She was a lowly musuri palace servant. “I followed you all the way into the garden and left markers for the prince to find.”
Another woman joined us. It was Yul, and my heart soared with delight.
“Where are the rest?” Yul asked.
“The king is missing,” Daehyun added, “and the coup leaders are headed this way. The women must escape at once.”
“Follow me.” I quickly led them up, and as we approached the top, I called out, “They are friends!”
The silhouettes of the women remained tense, stiff with panic, until the prince spoke.
“The three of you kneel,” he directed, pointing to the prisoners, and despite their grumbling, they acquiesced. “Women will step onto you to reach the wall. And Yul, you will hoist the women up and help them over.” He turned to me. “And where is your sister—?”
“Jonggeum? I forced her over,” Cheonbi declared. “She was as light as a feather.” Then, stepping atop the prisoner’s back, she climbed over the wall and called out to someone on the other side. “All is well! Iseul is here with her sweetheart!”
Sweetheart?
No. No, I dared not think of us beyond this night.
I could never return to the capital, not for as long as Maggot lived. His lust would forever be a threat to my sister’s happiness. I could never return to the warm embrace of the Red Lantern Inn, to the days when only a wall had separated me from Daehyun…
As though sensing my anguish, Daehyun caught my gaze and took my wrist. Slowly, he drew me into his embrace, the warmth of him surrounding me, and every fiber of my soul ached under his touch. With his lips grazing the tendrils of my hair, he whispered, “You must take caution, once on the other side. Nameless Flower is still out there.”
I remained still against him, unable to form a single word.
Nothing seemed more terrifying at the moment than leaving his side.
“Yul will guide you and the others to safety.” He moved aside strands of my hair, then pressed a kiss onto my brow. “You need to go now.” He held my waist, and in one movement, I was up in the air, perched atop the stone wall.
“Hwang Iseul,” his voice rasped, his hands gripping tight onto my skirt, “if by any chance we do not meet again in this lifetime, then I will find you in the next—or as many lifetimes as it takes to see you again.”
Off in the distance, the footsteps of dozens upon dozens of men marched closer.
“Iseul-ah!” came Yul’s harsh whisper. “Come down, now! We must leave at once!”
Hotness blurred my eyes. I clutched the tiles, and as I slid to the other side of the wall, a sob gathered in my chest. I had bid Mother farewell in such a way—over the walls—and had never seen her again.
“Don’t die,” I whispered to the prince. He looked up at me, holding me with his grief-stricken gaze. What could I say in this moment? What could I possibly say? My voice shook as I spoke. “So long as you live, we’ll have the rest of our lives to find each other again. And I will find you again. I promise.”