“What about the Japanese?” Gojong asked. “They will not stand by and let us take over.”
I nodded. “I will deal with the Japanese,” I said.
We had circled Taejo’s tomb and now stood where we had started. I turned to the king. “Do not tell anyone about this, not even Lady Min. Your mother would support us in this to regain her stature in the palace. But I do not trust her adviser, Mister Euno. He doesn’t work for her. He spies for your father, but he doesn’t work for him, either. He is a Kokugaku scholar and believes that Japan should rule all of Asia. I suspect that he is an agent for the emperor of Japan.”
“I never did like him,” the king said.
“So will you join me?” I asked. “Will you help me take control of the government so you can be a proper king?”
“I do want to be a proper king,” Gojong said simply.
“Then you must also give up your pipe and wine and lazy ways. You cannot be a proper king if you are ruled by them.”
Gojong let out a snort. “I know what I have to do,” he said. “Just be sure that you don’t get us both killed.”
I nodded and looked out over the forest surrounding Donggureung. “Yes, my king,” I said. “I will be careful.”
We walked back down the hill and through the gate where, under a white tent, our servants had spread a table of food and drink. When we got there, one of Gojong’s servants bowed to the king and motioned that something was ready for him inside his palanquin. Gojong raised a hand and shook his head, and the servant bowed away.
And under the warm sun, we sat together and ate our lunch as husband and wife.
The Taewŏn-gun’s impeachment depended on the clans’ support. Although the yangban didn’t trust me, they absolutely despised the regent because of his policies and taxes. The clans had had enough and wanted the Taewŏn-gun out. I prayed that they would support my plan to remove him from power. If I was wrong and they supported the regent, the palace would probably execute me for treason.
I met with them in secret, in a farmer’s home late at night. Minister Kim had arranged the meeting. Kyung-jik helped me escape Deoksu Palace unseen through a back gate. I was dressed in a court lady’s robe and Kyung-jik wore peasant’s clothes as we navigated the narrow streets. The house was a short distance outside the city, not far from Mount Bukhansan. When I went inside the low, dark room, the clan leaders stood and bowed. There were five in all—heads of the Min, Ch’oe, Pak, Kim, and Chung clans. I had met each of them before in official meetings or at palace dinners and celebrations. However, this was the first time I had met them all together, and it was the first time I had met them without the Taewŏn-gun present.
We sat on cushions, the five in a row in front of me. As lamps cast our shadows against the farmhouse walls, they listened as I presented my plan. I had to choose my words carefully because I did not want to appear ambitious or disrespectful of my father-in-law. I said only that the king was going to assume control of the government and that we wanted the clans’ support. I told them that the king, inexperienced as he was, would still have the Taewŏn-gun’s advice, and that I would advise him, too.
Jae-kwon Pak nodded at me. He was tall and thin and had a long neck. He sat with his back to the fire and his face in darkness. “We cannot bear the taxes the government has imposed on us,” he said in a reedy voice. “Will you advise the king to reduce them?”
“Yes, Jae-kwon, the taxes you pay are high,” I said. “They have hurt members of my own clan as well. I will advise the king to lower them for all of us.”
The head of the Kim clan, Yun-sik Kim, leaned forward, making his shadow grow large on the wall. He was elderly and had a long white goatee. His eyes were watery and gray from decades of reading Confucius. “What about your reforms, Majesty?” he asked. “You have a great interest in the outside world. We fear that you will bring strange ways to Korea.”
I shook my head. “I understand your concern, Yun-sik. I believe we must keep pace with the rest of the world. But you are right. We cannot lose what we have, and I will be careful what I push for so that we stay true to who we are.”
Chul-son Chung spoke up. He was a large man, and his robe stretched tight across his stomach. The fire was full on him, making his face look orange. “Will you appoint only members of the Min clan in official positions?” he asked in a gravelly voice. “Or will other clans share control of the government?”
“That is an excellent question, Chul-son,” I said with a nod. “I believe that the rivalry between our clans must end. We must be one nation, not divided and at war, clan against clan. Therefore, I will appoint the most able men no matter what clan they are from. They must, however, be men we can trust.”
Then Ik-hyun Ch’oe cleared his throat. One of Korea’s most esteemed Confucian scholars and an important adviser to the palace, Master Ch’oe was the most powerful man in the room. He opposed the Taewŏn-gun’s rule, often disagreeing openly with the regent on domestic policy. Ik-hyun was younger than the others, and his beard was not gray. He wore the blue robe of a wealthy man. He sat aside the fire, putting him half in shadows. “Will you push for independence or will you keep us a Chinese protectorate?” he asked with penetrating eyes. “I do not trust Empress Cixi, but I trust Emperor Meiji even less.”
“You are wise, Master Ch’oe,” I said. “I believe we should strive for independence, but we must be clever about it. We should not trust, either. Both must be contained by the other. Now, Japan is the aggressor. We have reports that they are modernizing their military. I will only align with China to keep Japan at bay.”
Ik-hyun said, “What you are asking will put us all in danger. The Taewŏn-gun and his supporters will try to kill us. However, if you agree to stay neutral and keep the foreigners out, if you agree to lower our taxes, if you agree that all clans should share power, I will support your move to impeach the Taewŏn-gun.” With this, all the leaders nodded and agreed to my plan. They said they would request a meeting with the Taewŏn-gun as soon as possible to ask him to step aside. When I stood to leave, they bowed. Pleased with myself, I joined Kyung-jik and we made our way through the night and snuck back inside Deoksu Palace.
While the clans arranged their meeting with the Taewŏn-gun, I continued to stay quiet in Deoksu Palace. I didn’t attend important state meetings or set foot in Gyeongbok, even for the formal affairs that I typically hosted. When Kyung-jik reported that the palace passed a new law or issued a decree, I made no comment even if I disagreed with it. When Gwi-in gave birth to the wonja, the Taewŏn-gun named him Crown Prince Wan-hwa. He even threw a party for the new prince and elevated Gwi-in to princess consort. This was an awful slight to me, and it hurt my stomach. I vowed that someday, I would put Gwi-in—the full-figured beauty whom my husband had an eye for—in her place. But for the time, I stayed quiet. I didn’t send messages to anyone in Gyeongbok, not even my husband. I read poetry and studied the old classics. I spent hours in my courtyard tending to my orchids. I wanted the Taewŏn-gun to think I had placed myself in exile at Deoksu for my failure to provide the country with a prince.
Finally, as fall yielded to winter, Kyung-jik reported that at a grand meeting at Gyeongbok Palace, Ik-hyun Ch’oe, along with the heads of the other clans, had demanded that the Taewŏn-gun step down. Since all the clans stood against him and the king declared he was ready to take his place at the head of the government, the regent could not object. He agreed that Gojong had come of age and was now the head of state and that he, the regent would be an adviser to his son. Of course, the Taewŏn-gun assumed that his son could not handle the difficult task of running the government. He knew that the king didn’t know anything about politics, economics, or foreign affairs. The Taewŏn-gun had only agreed to step aside because the king would need his father to run the country exactly as he had before.
And so he did—until one month later, when I returned to Gyeongbok Palace and took my place on the throne next to my husband.
TWENTY
The first thing I did when Gojong and I took control of the government was to find my uncle. My aunt, Eun-ji, and Mr. Yang, had come to live with me in Deoksu Palace, and I brought them with me to Gyeongbok. It had been over a year since the Taewŏn-gun’s guards arrested my uncle, and my aunt was sick with worry for him. With the king and me now in charge of the palace guard, I promoted Kyung-jik to the rank of captain and tasked him with finding out where they had sent Chul-jo. A few days later, Kyung-jik reported to me that my uncle was alive, held prisoner on Tsushima Island in the strait between Korea and Japan. I ordered his release and directed that a ship go to Tsushima to bring him back to Seoul at once. The minister of foreign affairs reminded me that Tsushima was part of Japan and that “the dwarf barbarians to the east might refuse to allow our ship to land there.” I sent the ship anyway with Kyung-jik and twenty soldiers on board and a letter from me saying that if any Japanese official blocked my efforts to free a member of the Korean royal family, I would personally take up the matter with Emperor Meiji. The ship sailed and two weeks later, my uncle walked through Gwanghwamun Gate and into the waiting arms of his most grateful wife.
Days later, after my uncle had settled into his new quarters at Gyeongbok, I sent for him. It was midafternoon when a guard showed him into my study. I’d had my staff return my quarters to exactly the way it was before I left for Deoksu Palace. My desk was in its place, and the tapestry with the two-headed dragon hung on the wall behind it. When Chul-jo came in bowing low, I sat high on a cushion at my desk. He was thinner than the last time I had seen him, and gray streaked his close-cropped hair and goatee. I directed him to sit in front of me.
“Are you well?” I asked.
He didn’t raise his eyes to me as he had done before when he had helped me with my education. “I am, Majesty,” he said.
“How did they treat you in Tsushima?”
My uncle smiled a little. “They are Japanese, Majesty. They think Koreans are dogs.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Well, now you are here.”
“Thank you, Majesty, for freeing me. I am glad to be back.”
“You have heard that King Gojong and I have taken over the government?”
“Yes, Majesty, I have.”
“Gojong still seeks advice from his father and doesn’t always listen to me. But I will prevail.”
“It is important that you do,” my uncle said. “I fear that the Japanese are far ahead of us in modernizing and will use it to their advantage.”
I nodded. “You have said that before and you might be right. I agree with the Taewŏn-gun that we must stand alone from China, but my father-in-law gives too much to Japan. The yangban want things to stay the way they are so that they can keep their position at the top of society. The military is arrogant and believes they can defend our land from invaders with modern weapons. The scholars refuse to lift their eyes from their books. Most here in the palace want to pursue a policy of isolationism.”
“What about the merchants and peasants?” my uncle asked. “The throne represents all Koreans, not just the yangban. What is their opinion?”
I paused at his question. “I don’t know,” I said finally. I shook my head, stood, and faced the tapestry. “Uncle, I asked you here because I have a mission for you. I want you to go to Tokyo to see firsthand what is happening there. Then I want you to sail to America—San Francisco and New York. See if the reports we have of their fantastic inventions and powerful armies are true. Then come back here and tell me what you learned. Your trip will take months, maybe as long as a year. But we must know what we are up against.”
My uncle nodded. “That is a good idea, Majesty. I am honored to do this for you.”
“I will have the palace arrange for your travel. You must go in secret so as not to alarm the Chinese and Japanese. You will carry my royal seal. You must leave as soon as everything is ready.”
“Yes, Majesty,” he said.
“While you do that, I will make a secret trip to China to meet with Empress Cixi. I want to talk to the empress about Japan.”
“That is wise, Majesty. The Chinese must be handled carefully.”
I sat at my desk again and looked at my uncle, who still hadn’t lifted his eyes to me. I was glad to have him back. He was one of the few people in my life I could confide in. “Uncle,” I said, “tell me about my mother. The spirits that haunted her when she . . . died.”
My uncle didn’t answer right away. He looked at his hands as if they held the words to explain my mother’s condition. Finally he said, “As I told you before you became queen, your mother was a spiritual woman. When she was young, the spirits filled her with light and let her see things others could not. But later, they haunted her and turned her dark.”
“What happened? What made her change?”
My uncle continued to look at his hands. “Your father and your mother tried for years to have children. She was pregnant many times but wasn’t always able to carry the baby all the way to the end. She gave birth to a few but they did not live long. Each time, your mother turned darker. You were the first—and only—to survive, but by then the spirits of all the children she had lost had started to silence the spirits she’d heard before.”
What I suspected was true. Like me, my mother had known the loss of a child. Knowing this put my childhood into perspective—why my parents were older, why they cherished me as they did, how the spirits of her dead children had driven my mother mad. I prayed that the same would not happen to me.
My uncle finally looked at me. “Why do you ask these questions about your mother?”
I sighed. “While you were away, I lost a child. It was a very dark time for me. Its spirit haunts me. Others do, too. They are trying to speak to me, but I do not understand them. I pray they do not drive me mad like they did to my mother.”
He gave me a gentle smile and said, “Perhaps the spirits will make you strong.”
I smiled back at him. “Have safe travels, Chul-jo,” I said.
Since the clan leaders had made good on their promise to impeach the Taewŏn-gun, I stayed true to my promise to replace government officials with members of their clans. Lady Min, seeing my new status as a way for her to get back into the government, tried to influence my decisions. She still wanted the Mins to overthrow the House of Yi, and promoted Mins who were loyal to her clan. I, however, was growing tired of the infighting between the clans. They had been fighting for hundreds of years, and I believed the clan system was something that kept us from becoming a unified nation. So, in spite of her petitions, I appointed people who I thought were most suited for the position no matter their clan affiliation.
I also didn’t trust Lady Min because she relied on the advice of Mister Euno. The Japanese man with his Western-style suit and top hat didn’t show himself much around Gyeongbok. He stayed behind the scenes, whispering advice in Lady Min’s ear and, I suspected, in the Taewŏn-gun’s ear, too. I still saw him practicing his martial arts movements early in the morning behind his quarters. Though he was now middle-aged, his military arts moves were those of a much younger man. Occasionally I sought Mister Euno’s advice on protocol when a dignitary visited, but mostly, I kept him at a distance.
I also kept my promise to lower taxes on the yangban. It was not that I believed the taxes on the wealthy were too high. I did so because I needed their support and I knew that lowering their taxes would place them in my favor. The Taewŏn-gun fought me on this, and admittedly, I objected only half-heartedly and readily accepted compromises. And I was careful not to press for changes that would be too contentious. I wanted Gojong to feel comfortable in his new role as the head of government, and I didn’t want to give my father-in-law a reason to fight with me. Someday I would have to make bold moves, but for the time being, I wanted peace.
Even so, I knew that the Taewŏn-gun worked behind the scenes to steer the country in the direction he thought it should go. He often left Gyeongbok for days, saying he was resting at the East Palace
or visiting relatives somewhere outside of Seoul. Once, one of my palace watchers reported that he saw Mister Euno go with the Taewŏn-gun when he left early in the morning. Then I knew that my father-in-law was secretly meeting with the Japanese.
During this time, my relationship with Gojong started to grow into something more than a man and a woman trying to give the country a prince. I could tell the king was making an effort to stop drinking and using opium. It was a struggle for him, and there were times I saw that he had fallen back into his habits. Still, he was trying, and for the first time since I’d become his lawful wife, I began to respect him. When he tried, he paid attention in our afternoon meetings, although his attention often faded well before we were done. And when it was the right time of month, he and I tried to make a son. After each time, I prayed that we had made a baby again, a son, a prince for our people. But month after month, my bleeding returned and when I told him about it, Gojong would turn me away.
Several months after the king and I had settled into our roles as heads of government, I set out for Peking with a dozen guards led by Kyung-jik, eunuch porters, and a secretary. Only a few trusted advisers knew about my voyage to meet with China’s dowager empress so as not to alarm the Japanese. We boarded a boat that would take us down the Han River, across the Yellow Sea to the Chinese seaport of Tianjin. The boat was a three-masted junk with red winglike sails and a menacing-looking dragon for a masthead. The junk wasn’t the largest ship in our navy, but it was one of the fastest, and captained by Korea’s most skilled naval officer. They set up quarters for me in the forecastle. Inside there was a desk, a large bed, and a chair that faced a porthole. At first it amused me that they bolted everything down, but this was my first long voyage at sea, so I wondered and worried why they felt the bolts were necessary. They lashed my palanquin to the main deck. My porters and guards took up quarters on the second deck, and the secretary shared the mate’s quarters.
The Dragon Queen Page 18