The Dragon Queen

by William Andrews

  I took off my clothes and slipped under the sheets with him. The smell of burnt perfume hung strong on his breath. I put my fingers on his chest. His skin was cold and clammy. He did not respond to my touch. I tried to arouse him with my hand, but again, he didn’t respond. He sighed, and then chuckled lazily. “Well,” he said, “perhaps not tonight.”

  I took my hand from him, but I didn’t leave his side. “Let me stay,” I whispered, “just for a while.”

  “If you want,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and rolled his head from side to side. He groaned. “I’m thirsty,” he said to the ceiling. “I want some wine.”

  He picked up a small bell from a side table and rang it. Immediately, a servant in a white robe was at the door. “Yes, Your Majesty?” the servant said.

  “A jug of soju,” the king said.

  “Yes, Majesty,” the servant replied and disappeared out the door.

  Gojong rolled to face me. “How come you never drink with me? You never have, not even once.”

  It was true; I never drank with him. I had only tried the rice wine once, and I didn’t like its sharp taste. I always refused when it was offered, taking tea instead. But now I said, “I would like to drink soju with you my husband.”

  The king grinned. His eyes were dilated and unfocused. His grin was loose and as thin as his mustache.

  He pushed himself off the bed and put on a robe. He stumbled to a table and lit more candles, making the room brighter. I stood from the bed and put on my robe, too. I sat on cushions next to him. The servant came in with a celadon carafe and blue porcelain mugs on a tray. He placed them on the table and expertly poured the clear white wine into the mugs. He stood with his head bowed and his hands in front of him at the waist. “Is there anything else you wish, Majesty?” he asked.

  The king waved his servant away with the back of his hand. “Not now,” Gojong replied. When the servant was gone, Gojong lifted his mug to me. “Drink,” he said. I lifted my mug and took a sip of the strong wine. As Gojong watched me drink, his face slid into another sloppy grin. He took a big drink from his mug. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It is good, huh?” he said.

  The strong drink bit my tongue and burned my throat. I didn’t like it any more than the first time I had tried it. Even so, I said, “Yes, it is good.”

  “Drink more!” the king said. I took another drink, and the liquid started to warm me.

  Gojong took a long drink from his mug and filled it again. “Ha, ha!” he said. “I like wine. It makes me feel strong.”

  “Strong? Why do you need to be strong?”

  “It is not easy being king!” he huffed. “I know they talk about me behind my back. They think I am stupid and lazy, but I’m not. I only let my father run the country so they can’t criticize me. If he made a poor decision, I would step in. I am not afraid of him.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You would have to.” I took another sip of wine.

  Gojong took another drink and turned serious. “I will have to take over soon. Things are not going well. Everyone complains about everything. When I take over, you will help me.”

  “I will,” I said. “We will make a good team.”

  “A team. Ha!” the king exclaimed. “You are not a very good teammate. You haven’t given me a son.”

  I lowered my head. “I am sorry that I have not given you a son, my husband. I will try harder. I believe the day will come soon.”

  “It better,” Gojong said.

  We both took another drink. The wine made my head spin. I had to force myself to concentrate. “I can do something in the meantime,” I said. “To help when you must take over.”

  “What is it, wife?”

  “I would like to use your library. Perhaps I can learn something that will be useful to us.”

  The king gave me a sly look. “You are ambitious, aren’t you? My father says you are. He tells me you study the classics. My mother thinks I should study them, too, but they bore me. Poems about the ghosts in mountains, devils who talk to people through stones, teachings from men who died centuries ago. It is all very conceited, and I do not have a use for it.”

  I nodded. “Yes, it is silly, isn’t it? But they think it is important. They think a king who will run the country should know these things. They will not listen to you unless you do.” I took another sip of wine.

  “I will not do it,” Gojong said.

  “Then let me,” I said. I set my mug down and moved close to him. “Let me use your library. You are the king. They won’t go against you.”

  Gojong eyed me and chuckled. “You are ambitious.” His eyes were now very red and he looked tired.

  I touched his arm. “I live only to serve you, my king. Let me serve you now. Let me do this for you.”

  My husband sighed deeply. He closed his eyes and curled up on the floor. “As you wish,” he said. “But make me a son, too.”

  In a few seconds, my husband was asleep on the floor. The making of a son wasn’t going to happen that night. I dressed and pulled on my outer robe for the walk back to my quarters. When I got to the door, I looked back at Gojong who now snored softly on the floor of his bedchamber. I could still smell the odor of burnt perfume. Although I’d never smelled it before, I knew what it was.

  The king was using opium.

  FIFTEEN

  As it turned out, the king didn’t need to talk to the Taewŏn-gun about letting me use his library. Over time, the laws and policies the Taewŏn-gun had passed started to cause trouble for him. That summer, the Americans sent the US General Sherman, a heavily armed merchant schooner, up the Taedong River loaded with cotton, tin, and glass, hoping to force trade with what they called the “Hermit Kingdom.” The ship made it all the way to Pyongyang, but the Taewŏn-gun stuck to his “no trade” policy and threatened to sink the ship if they didn’t leave immediately. In response, the Americans captured two officials from the Yi clan and held them hostage. When an angry crowd at Pyongyang harbor demanded their release, the General Sherman fired its cannons into the crowd, killing several civilians. Eventually our navy rammed the American ship with a boat filled with explosives, setting the schooner ablaze. When the American crew swam ashore, the civilians killed them all. This infuriated the Americans, and there were reports that they were sending warships to the peninsula. The Taewŏn-gun spent long hours with his ministers trying to prevent war.

  Then there was the argument about relations with China and Japan. The Taewŏn-gun argued that closer relations with Japan was a way to break China’s hundreds-of-years-old domination over Korea.

  “As a child must leave his mother,” the Taewŏn-gun said in an afternoon meeting one day, “so should Korea wean itself from the protection of China.”

  A traditionalist minister leaned forward. “A man must respect his mother and never turn his back on her,” he countered.

  The ongoing dispute split the nation between isolationists and progressives, so no clear policy emerged.

  There were issues inside Korea as well. The yangban and chungin began to protest the Taewŏn-gun’s high taxes and were refusing to pay them. When the palace sent soldiers along with the tax collectors to force payment, the rebellion stiffened. The soldiers killed several rebels, including prominent members of clans that were rivals of the Yis. There were rumors that the people were planning to storm the palace and end the reign of King Gojong and the House of Yi.

  And there was age-old fighting between the clans, too. The Kims were angry with the Paks about land they believed the Paks had stolen from them. The Chungs were fighting with the Ch’oes about a large unpaid loan. And all clans hated the Yis, blaming them for the high taxes and government corruption.

  Threats from foreigners, arguments about ideology, anger with taxes, quarreling between clans. The debates inside the palace and out grew loud and emotional and sometimes broke into fights. In all, the country was in turmoil, and the Taewŏn-gun had his hands full.

  Du
ring this time, I kept quiet. I did not challenge my father-in-law or express an opinion or even ask questions in our meetings. My silence and the country’s turmoil turned the Taewŏn-gun’s attention away from me so that I could further my education without him knowing. In a matter of a few months, I was spending most of the day in the king’s new library. It was an extraordinary place. There were rows of shelves stacked with books in Chinese, Hangul, and a few in Japanese, all there for me to read. I spent months with them. Eventually I worked my way through the entire library. But the library only had the classics, and most of them were in Chinese. I wanted more. I wanted to read the modern books on topics my uncle had told me I needed to learn. But I knew that if I requested them directly, the king’s staff would alert the Taewŏn-gun.

  So I turned to my uncle. When I had visited him at the House of Gamgodang and told him about my situation, he had agreed to help. When I told the palace I wanted him to be my adviser, they did not object. I supposed the Taewŏn-gun thought it was natural for me to have a member of my family on my staff. The palace even paid my uncle a handsome stipend. So he visited me every week, sometimes twice a week, and when he did, he brought books. They were on a wide variety of topics—economics and history and science and even novels that my uncle got from the bookseller who lived near the Han River. The books were from all over the world—Japan, America, and Europe—translated into Chinese or Hangul. My favorite was Shakespeare. I devoured his stories, especially the ones about kings and queens. I kept these books in my sleeping quarters, hidden from my staff, and read them deep into the night. When I was done with them, I demanded more. I was obsessed with learning.

  I also had my uncle get tutors for me. He brought tutors for each subject I studied, and I spent hours listening carefully to their lessons and asking questions. Their lessons were easy for me and I learned quickly. “Majesty,” they would say with genuine surprise, “you are indeed a gifted student.”

  I supposed what they said was true. I was smart like my mother and uncle said I was—certainly much smarter than anyone at the palace knew. What they didn’t see was how hard I worked at my lessons. When I was alone in my study or on a stroll around the palace grounds, I would practice my lessons until I could do them with ease. And when I mastered one lesson, I would demand more. But it was strange for me, being an intelligent woman in a world dominated by men. I often wondered why it had to be that way.

  One day I told my uncle I wanted to learn Japanese. The next week, he brought a Japanese teacher, and I started to learn the language. I memorized words and phrases as I lay in bed at night. I listened closely to how the teacher pronounced the words and copied him so I wouldn’t have an accent. After I learned Japanese, I moved on to Russian. And though that language was strange and the words came together in an odd way, I learned rudimentary Russian. I wanted to learn English and French, too, but my uncle could not find instructors in those languages so easily. Still, I learned some words of both languages when I heard or read them, and eventually I had a small working vocabulary. Learning a new language was like a game to me. I was good at it. Still, I had to be very careful that I didn’t show how much I knew.

  Neither the Taewŏn-gun nor the palace ever questioned why my uncle visited me so often and brought tutors with him. And Lady Min no longer watched over me. I only saw her to plan palace events, or when we went on one of our picnics. I sensed that the Taewŏn-gun had quashed Lady Min’s ambitions for the Mins.

  My husband never questioned what I was doing, either. Since the king rarely read or used his own tutors, he didn’t know how much there was to learn about the world outside the palace. Of course, when I was with him, I made light of my obsession with books, pretending it was a silly thing like taking up painting or growing orchids. But he wouldn’t have cared if he did know. While I spent months and years learning, he sank deeper and deeper into his hedonism until he couldn’t see anything beyond it. And I must confess, as I went about my business, I did nothing to help him.

  But there was a problem with my education. The more I learned, the more restless I became. When I was alone, I would close my eyes and imagine myself traveling to the places I had read about—Europe, America, Africa, and India. I daydreamed about debating the world’s great thinkers and impressing them with my knowledge. I tried to imagine how it felt to ride the new invention called a bicycle or to fly high into the sky in a hot-air balloon.

  And I wanted to use my education to show everyone that I was not a stone queen. But like the sex I had with my husband, my hard work yielded no fruit. I tried to take comfort in the fact that I was still young, not yet twenty years old, that there would come a day when I could use what I had learned. But I felt like a caged bird yearning to be free.

  One day after the Taewŏn-gun had made a decision in the afternoon meeting, I said from my position facing away, “Excellency, the king is fortunate to have you run the government on his behalf. But if you please, explain to the king why you feel this is the correct decision.” It was the first time I had asked such a question, and I could hear the ministers murmuring to each other. My father-in-law proceeded to explain his position, and I asked nothing more.

  As the weeks and months went on, I asked more questions but never challenged my father-in-law. That is, until one day after the regent made a decision, I said, “Excellency, you are wise and make excellent decisions for our king and country. But what would happen if we took another approach?”

  This time, the ministers went quiet. My father-in-law cleared his throat and gave a good answer to my question, and I said nothing more.

  And then one day many months later, the regent made a decision that I thought was wrong. I turned to face the group and said, “Excellency, the king and I are most thankful for your governance of our country. However, on this matter, I do not agree with this decision.” This time, the ministers stared at their hands and the king raised his head and looked at me. The Taewŏn-gun glared at me from under his high eyebrows, and I knew I had gone too far. So after the regent explained his decision in detail, I did not disagree with him and his decision stood.

  After I started to challenge the regent’s decisions, I noticed that he did not include the king and me in some important discussions. When a particularly prickly situation came up, the regent would set the discussion aside “to talk about later,” as he said. Then, afterward, the issue would be resolved without ever having been brought up again in the afternoon meetings. I wanted to challenge my father-in-law about it, but I decided to keep quiet. Still, with all that I was learning, it was increasingly difficult to hold my tongue.

  It did not help my standing with the palace that I had still not gotten pregnant. The king needed a son to assure the Yi dynastic line. I had tried everything—the herbs the medicine woman had prescribed and the exercises my maids had suggested I perform after I had visited Gojong in his bedchamber. I consulted fortune-tellers. One read my palm and said my time for childbearing was near. Another examined the bones in my face and predicted I would “have a son by the time the snow flies.” Both were wrong. I began to believe someone had put a curse on me. When the king planted his seed in me, it landed on infertile soil. Every month my bleeding announced that I had once again failed in my most important responsibility to my king and country. Every month the menstrual cramps in my stomach were like my people punching me for not giving them a prince. I knew everyone was staring at me, watching, wondering what was wrong with me, as if I was broken somehow. I wanted to hide in my quarters away from their stares. I was afraid that they were right and that I was broken somehow. I was relieved when the king didn’t call me to his bedchamber.

  I couldn’t use my education and I couldn’t bear a child. I was as useless as wings on a cow. I had come to regret agreeing to be queen.

  During this time, I kept an eye on Minister Kim’s nephew, Kyung-jik. I asked the sergeant about the handsome guard, and he said that he was a capable and earnest man. He was skilled at empty-handed fighting meth
ods, and he was learning sword fighting. “He will be a great swordsman someday,” the sergeant said. I told the sergeant to promote Kyung-jik to the head of my night guard, which, of course, he did.

  And I set out to see if I could trust Han-sook. I needed someone close to me who I could depend on, and now that the Taewŏn-gun was keeping Lady Min and me apart, my lady’s maid was the logical choice. When I first became queen, I thought the demure, middle-aged woman was a spy for Lady Min or perhaps even the Taewŏn-gun. But as I thought back, it was possible that I had misinterpreted her actions then and she was just trying to help me. She had always been proper, humble, and willing to do anything for me. So I started to ask her advice on important matters, and she seemed genuinely pleased that I did. And when she gave her opinion, I discovered that she was smarter than I had thought. She was honest and wise, and had a sharp sense for diplomacy. Gradually, but cautiously, I brought her into my confidence.

  My uncle met with me every week. He walked the mile from the House of Gamgodang to the palace through pouring rain, summer heat, and on the cruelest days of winter. He never missed a meeting. Until one summer day, he did. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I thought perhaps he had forgotten to tell me he would be away, searching for a rare book for me, or hunting for an English tutor, although it was not at all like him to forget. But then he missed another week, and then another and another.

  Sitting in my study, I clapped my hands and Han-sook came in. Her hair was pinned back, framing her pleasant, round face. She bowed to me from the door and said, “Yes, Majesty?”

  “Come closer,” I said. “Here by my desk.” Han-sook kept her eyes low as she padded to my desk with her small steps. “Han-sook,” I said, “you have been an able lady’s maid for me. But now I need you to be something more. I need someone who I can trust. Can I depend on you?”

  Han-sook swallowed hard. “Majesty,” she whispered, “I will give my life for you.”

  “Good,” I said with a nod. “I fear that something has happened to my uncle. He has not come for several weeks now. I want you to find out why.”