Chapter 25
Lady Gwideok laughed again, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Truly?”
“Oh, I saw it with my own eyes,” Haewon said, trying to hold back a smile.
“So you mean to say, a man attacked a storyteller because he couldn’t endure the suspense?
” Laughing again, Gwideok shook her head as she picked up her needle.
“I oughtn’t to be so surprised. Jeongisu storytellers always stop at the height of a plot, then demand the crowd pay up before continuing on.
At least the storyteller wasn’t injured! ”
Haewon smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt, her heart pounding hard against her rib cage.
She was sitting before Black Lotus. “There was a case,” she added, her voice sounding unusually small, “where a storyteller was attacked outside a tobacco shop. An outraged audience member grabbed a nearby tobacco-cutting knife and lunged at him.”
A gasp escaped Gwideok. “A knife?”
“The man was so enraged by something that occurred in The Tale of General Im and flung his anger onto the storyteller.”
“Good heavens, it must have been the scene when Kim Jajeom falsely accused General Im. I nearly threw that book across my room myself!” Gwideok sighed.
“What strange power stories hold over us. Truly, I am a changed woman ever since I became a novel reader. Mistress Wol was the first to introduce them to me, and we became good friends. She is like a sister to me.” Straightening her sleeves, Gwideok returned to her embroidery stand, fabric held taut within its wooden frame.
Brightly colored threads wove together intricate patterns of flowers and butterflies.
“You must tell me, Mistress Haewon, how did you come to love novels so much?”
The smile slowly faded from Haewon’s lips.
Lady Gwideok spoke as though they were distant acquaintances, asking a question that Black Lotus and she had discussed in essay-length letters.
Had the servant not relayed to Her Ladyship that Magpie had requested her audience?
Did the lady not know? It could only explain why they hadn’t reunited like two long-lost friends in the throes of rapturous joy. It was all, instead, very cordial.
Haewon picked up a sweet from the dessert tray she’d been offered.
“My sister first introduced me to novels, tales that allowed me to explore even from within the confines of my room. And then Mistress Wol introduced me to the works of the female Confucian scholar Yunjidang. Have you read her writing?”
Gwideok glanced up. “No, but I have heard of her. Is her work any good?”
Haewon bit into the yakgwa, a golden cookie dipped in honey and ginger.
Each bite ought to have been chewy and sweet, but she tasted nothing, her thoughts clinging to the yellow ribbons outside the window, waving to her from the pine branches.
She had shared her love of Yunjidang with Black Lotus, too, but Lady Gwideok gazed at her as though she truly knew nothing.
The day I first read Yunjidang’s work, Haewon had written, was the day I learned that my mind could take wings and transcend everything I thought I knew to be true.
As Haewon’s thoughts tangled, a more dreadful possibility began prickling up her spine: What if Lady Gwideok did indeed know her to be Magpie but had simply forgotten the content of their letters?
Just because Haewon had memorized the letters as one might verses from poems did not mean Lady Gwideok had cherished them with equal fervor.
A sting of embarrassment burned her cheeks.
Perhaps she had cared too much, while Black Lotus had several such acquaintances, and Magpie had never been anyone of particular significance to her.
“You ought to read one of her works,” Haewon said weakly. She placed the cookie down and dusted her fingers onto the low table set next to her. “There’s one line from her work that I will carry with me into death.”
Gwideok’s brows furrowed. “Oh? Well, then I must hear it.”
“Though I am a woman,” Haewon quoted as pain and confusion expanded in her chest, “the nature I originally received was no different from that of a man. Yunjidang’s writing is like an act of contemplation.
” She watched the lady still stitching away, and hoping to rouse in Black Lotus the memory of all their written conversations, Haewon went on.
“Contemplating on the moral and spiritual equality between men and women. I never really imagined, until I read Yunjidang, that such thoughts could even be possible. For I was always taught, growing up, that women were inferior in all ways to men.”
“Yes, have we not all grown up reading countless ladies’ etiquette books?” Gwideok replied, oblivious to Haewon’s turmoil. “We women are not like men, those books ever remind us. We cannot distinguish between right and wrong, or the urgency of virtuous action.”
“And you, Lady Gwideok?” The barest tremble slipped into Haewon’s voice, and she tried not to sound overeager as she asked, “Why do you read?”
Haewon waited—she yearned—for the familiar answer. There is an old saying, Black Lotus had written, about how scholars go to appreciate the mountains and rivers and sense at their core that they had fulfilled their purpose in admiring creation. A truly good book grants me the same feeling.
Lady Gwideok instead gave a mischievous glance. “Because I am utterly bored.”
Haewon smiled, but her heart constricted with a burning ache. There was none of Black Lotus’s intensity of thought and feeling. It was as though the lady was withholding her true self from her. But why?
“I read voraciously, Mistress Haewon, so much so that I don’t recall half the titles of books I have read. My brother supplies me—or rather, smuggles the books in to me. My father disapproves of novels. Considers them dangerous.”
“Your brother is good to you.”
“Oh yes, he is the best brother. My brother is like the moon—quiet, but always present. He would do anything for my happiness, and my father’s, too.”
“You should come to Five Willows again,” Haewon said, attempting to recompose herself. “Then I can personally recommend books to you.”
“Unfortunately, my reality is such that it is better if the world forgets me, and I dare not remind them of my existence,” Gwideok said with unnatural cheerfulness, then hesitated.
“I haven’t ventured out of my home for some time, so you must forgive me if I say anything untoward.
I’m unaccustomed to having company. Besides my family and attendants, I haven’t had any in two years. ”
Haewon could barely hide her surprise. “Two years?”
“Two years, made bearable by novels.” Gwideok ran her finger over a scar on her wrist, then nervously asked, “Have you heard anything scandalous about myself? Yu Gwideok.”
“Your … your surname is Yu?”
“Yes, of the Munhwa Yu clan.”
Yu. It was a common enough surname. And yet, there was a pinpricking sensation at the back of her mind. “I haven’t heard anything, my lady.”
“Good!” Gwideok tried to smile again, but it fell almost at once. She fidgeted with her sleeve, and Haewon’s gaze fell upon her wrist again. She hadn’t realized she was staring until Gwideok covered her wrist with her other hand.
Haewon jerked her stare away. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean—I apologize.”
“Oh, do not concern yourself.” The lady patted her wrist. “It’s from a few years ago. I nearly drowned. It was quite the experience. Nothing more than a … sort of sinking into blackness.”
Haewon said quietly, gently, as one might approach a wounded bird, “How terrified you must have been.”
“I felt so entirely alone, surrounded by cold and darkness. Almost sad. Then my brother leapt in after me. I thought he was a ghost at first, until he grabbed me and pulled me out.”
The lady’s words weighed heavy, and Haewon felt an urge to hold her hands, but remained still and listened.
“There was a rocky embankment on the shore,” Lady Gwideok went on.
“So my brother had to climb up. There were many barnacles all over it, which cut his arms and legs, and he was bleeding when I saw him rise up from the edge. I only have a few cuts here compared to him. He’s—he was completely torn up—” Gwideok shook her head. “I am rambling.”
“Not at all,” Haewon pressed.
“You must forgive me for disclosing so much to you. I am not very good at exchanging pleasantries. I have the tendency of overwhelming my audience, and I haven’t spoken of my past in so long I hardly know how to do so properly—”
“You can tell me anything, my lady,” Haewon whispered. “It is as I always said in our letters—you and your words are safe with me.”
Gwideok tilted her head. “Our letters?”
“Yes…” Haewon said, then anxiety prickled her skin. The lady appeared so oblivious Haewon was no longer certain of anything.
“My memory is so hazy of late; you must excuse me.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady, but I must ask … when your servant announced my arrival, did they tell you who I was?”
“Only that a young lady was here from Five Willows. Why do you ask?”
Haewon felt her shoulders sag with relief.
Lady Gwideok didn’t know she was Magpie.
Everything was so much clearer now! After taking in a few deep breaths to calm her excitement, she said, “Well, my lady, I have something to share. Would it surprise you that I know the title of your favorite book? That I know precisely which passage in Yeolhailgi is your most favored—?”
Lady Gwideok laughed. “Yeolhailgi? I fell asleep while reading that book. I’m not sure that I even finished it!”
Haewon froze. “Then … what is your favorite book?” she barely managed to ask.
“It will always be The Tale of Pyeongsan Naengyeon.”
Cold panic surged through her blood, sending icy fingers creeping across her chest. Something was amiss. Black Lotus did not like this love story; it was, in fact, one of her least favorite novels.