The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble

  First Brother and I speculated in vain about this phobia. I think I voiced my view that Sado was reacting against the over-regulation of court life, and against his father’s strictures, but First Brother thought this was an overly psychological interpretation (though that is not the word he would or could have used, of course).

  We were past fearing for Prince Sado’s reason: we knew he had already lost it. He was not only murderous: he was also suicidal. We felt helpless. Our only relief lay in the imminent return of Father from the provinces, though there was not much he could do either.

  The emotional state of the court at this time was extraordinarily tense. Our house had become a house of horror, a charnel house, where everyone feared for his life. And it was not only Sado’s madness that disturbed the dignity and tranquillity of the court. His father King Yŏngjo also was in a highly unnatural state, which came to a head several months later, at the winter solstice. King Yŏngjo had at last discovered, as we knew in the end that he must, that Sado had taken Pingae from the royal sewing room to be his concubine. He was outraged, and summoned Sado into his presence at Kongmuk House, where he was staying for the duration of the period of mourning for the Dowager Queen Inwŏn. He berated his son, and, more dangerously, he demanded that Pingae be brought to him at once. Sado refused, with violent oaths and violent abuse, and I hit upon the device of deceiving the king with a substitute. I sent in her stead another lady-in-waiting from my own sewing department, a young woman of much the same age as Pingae, and sent Pingae away to Sado’s sister’s residence outside the palace, where I advised her to stay hidden for a while. The king vented his wrath on the false Pingae, and arranged for her to be sent into exile.

  At least he did not chop off her head. Well, perhaps he did, but not to my knowledge, and not in my sight. I absolve myself. As far as I know, he did not order her execution. She disappeared. So many disappeared.

  I had saved Pingae, my rival and my friend. For a while, at least.

  Then, for the first time in my life, the king turned on me, and shouted at me in a most undignified and uncontrolled manner, banging at the ground in his fury, and demanding to know why I had not let him know of what he described as a shameful and prohibited liaison. I defended myself as best I could, saying that it was not my wifely duty to inform on my husband. He went on shouting about Pingae, and about Sado’s earlier concubine (that court lady of the Lower Second rank), and about Sado’s insubordinate attitude, and about my deceit. Then he insisted that Sado return to see him and that I depart from his presence.

  What happened next I did not witness, though my father did, and so did the whole bureaucracy, including the wretched president at that time, the devious and two-faced Kim Sangno, who was always critical of my husband. There ensued, it seems, another violent and blustering shouting match between father and son, which ended in Sado’s rushing from the building and throwing himself down the low stone-bordered well in front of Yangjŏng House. He might have been killed, but for the fact that there was very little water in the well, and what there was, was largely frozen. Sado was rescued by the palace guard Pak Se-gun, who managed to climb in and carry him out on his back. Sado was dreadfully bruised and soaked when he was heaved out, but the public humiliation was worse than any injury. The king became angrier than ever, and, when my father tried to intervene on Sado’s behalf, Yŏngjo turned on him, too, stripped him of his ministerial office and sent him to await his punishment at a place outside the city. What a night! I prudently removed myself to the servants’ quarters, where I hid myself away for some days, waiting for the storm to blow over.

  Eventually King Yŏngjo forgave me, and summoned me back to my apartment. I expressed excruciating gratitude and prostrated myself before him, but alas, Prince Sado did not follow my diplomatic example. He refused to see his father and left me to do all the work of a go-between. They did not meet for many weeks, and in the end it was left to the father to descend to seek the son in his apartment. He cannot have been pleased by the grim and squalid conditions in which he now found Sado to be living, but some paternal feeling was left in him, and he shortly summoned him to a meeting in Sungmun Hall, at which the strangest of exchanges took place. Both father and son gave me their own accounts of this bizarre encounter, which took place in the spring of 1758, and to some extent they tallied. I believe this to be more or less the truth of what happened.

  According to Prince Sado, his father now asked him directly about the killings, and, being unable to lie to his father. Sado confessed to them. According to King Yŏngjo, however, Sado began to speak of them of his own accord, believing his father knew all about them anyway. I do not know which of these versions is more accurate. Whoever spoke first, the outcome was the same.

  Prince Sado explained himself to his father in these words:

  ‘It relieves my suppressed anger, sir, to kill people or animals.’

  ‘Why is your anger aroused?’

  ‘Because I am so hurt.’

  ‘Why are you so hurt?’

  ‘Because you do not love me, and also I am terrified of you because you constantly reproach and censure me. These are the causes of my illness.’

  Then, by both their accounts, Sado began to outline the killings – of eunuchs, attendants, prostitutes, ladies-in-waiting – and his father listened to this catalogue of crimes in horrified silence. I do not think Sado spoke of the clothing disorder. How could he have found the words to describe it?

  It seems that Yŏngjo was moved as well as horrified by this catalogue because he promised to be more lenient and considerate towards his son in the future. Yŏngjo even came to me, in some emotion, and made the same professions of concern. I confirmed the view (which I also believed) that it was the king’s lack of loving care that had so disturbed his son. The king then asked me to report on Sado’s health, and to take good care of him. I did believe for a while that his heart had been touched and that he intended to try to show more affection to his son. I encouraged him with smiles and tears to be good to Sado. All our lives, literally, depended on some kind of rapprochement between king and heir. But it was too late, it was far too late.

  There was such an accumulation of sorrow in our court at this time, such rivalry of grief. It was during the period between the surrendering of the supposed Pingae and Sado’s confession that yet another of the princesses died, and by her own choice. Lord Wŏlsŏng, Princess Hwasun’s husband, died of a fever, and Princess Hwasun starved herself to death in order to follow him. She died thirteen days after her husband, like a dutiful model Confucian wife. But instead of admiring the exemplary devotion of his second daughter, a devotion which the history books have praised so highly, King Yŏngjo did his best to dissuade her from fasting, and when she died he refused her the proper honours, on the grounds that she had been unfilial – in short, he accused her of preferring her husband to her father. No vermilion gate was erected in her memory. She was expelled from her father’s affections. I wonder if her death played any part in Yŏngjo’s attempted reconciliation with Prince Sado?

  It was clear by now that the succession to the throne was in serious doubt. Nobody thought Prince Sado fit to rule, although there were some who supported him for their own ends. I was almost the only person, apart from Pingae, who witnessed his moments of sanity and remorse. To others, he appeared by now to be wholly demented. The idiot President of the Council flattered Sado to his face, but schemed against him behind his back. He plotted and whispered and scribbled secret messages in the dust. Lady SŏnhŬi stuck by the king night and day, trying to keep guard and to prevent the president from poisoning Yŏngjo’s mind about her son, Sado. The mood in the palace was one of dire uncertainty: nobody knew what would happen from day to day. I lived in terror that some harm would be plotted not only against Sado, but also against our son, now proclaimed the Grand Heir. This proclamation was made in the third month of 1759, amidst much rejoicing, but I feared for the future. Prince Chŏngjo was only a child of seven. And three mo
nths after this proclamation, King Yŏngjo remarried.

  The king embarked on this new marriage correctly, according to protocol, through the three-stage selection process, and with the apparent approval of Lady SŏnhŬi, but this time he married a woman very much younger than himself and from a family that had always been enemies of my family. This did not bode well for us. The bride was only fifteen. I knew that no good could come of this marriage, though, of course, like Lady SŏnhŬi, I was obliged to express delight. And I have to say that Prince Sado in public managed to behave in a proper manner towards his new young stepmother during the three-day wedding ceremony, which was soon followed by the Grand Heir’s formal investiture.

  In theory, all should now have been well with us. In the public domain, Prince Sado was recognized as crown prince and regent, and our son Chŏngjo was firmly established in the direct line of succession, as the Grand Heir and Royal Grandson. But in private, things went from bad to worse. The clothing mania, if anything, intensified, and I had to provide chests full of silk for his military uniforms. I was sick with anxiety most of the time, and my digestion, which hitherto had been good, now began to trouble me a great deal. I could not keep my food down – I now think I may have developed an ulcer. King Yŏngjo did not keep his promise to be more tolerant towards his son, but continued to find fault with him, and even encouraged others to criticize him.

  I remember in particular the terrible scenes on Prince Sado’s twenty-fifth birthday in 1760. Birthdays had always been a torment to Sado, for his father had for years used them as an excuse to haul him before an interrogatory court of tutors, and this year was no exception. Sado lost his temper most violently, and I cannot say I blame him. He hurled abuse at both his parents, and threatened yet again to kill himself. He yelled even at his own children, who had dressed themselves up for the occasion in dragon-embroidered robes and formal blouses. When they came into the room to make their congratulatory bows, he shouted at them to get out, crying out that he knew neither father nor mother, nor son, nor daughters. They were frightened by this and turned white as ash. His mother, Lady SŏnhŬi, was appalled: I think she had been reluctant to recognize how bad things were, but now there was no hiding from the evidence. I felt completely impotent, shrunk to nothingness. I wished to turn to stone, to vanish from this world. Poor children, poor little dolls in their best clothes. What harm had they done to him? They tried so hard to please.

  Our lives, I repeat, were claustrophobic. The palace compound was large and had many pavilions, halls and apartments, but it was full of gossip and of echoes. The walls were paper-thin. We felt enclosed, but we were spied upon. Sado felt impotent, despite, because of his violence. He felt his life was useless – as indeed I fear it was. Playing heir to a throne that you know in your heart you will never inherit is not an easy role. His frantic military games in the back garden of our compound were no substitute for action. He said he could not endure living so close to his father, spied on by day and by night. Although by nature a strong young man, he was developing physical disorders as well as mental, which I put down to our unnatural lives – it was at this period that his skin began to flake and erupt, particularly on his legs and ankles. I think his skin condition was what is now called psoriasis, or possibly some form of eczema, but I am certain that, like his father’s asthma, it was largely caused by his living in a perpetual state of nervous irritation. I sympathized with Sado when he said he wanted to get out of the city of Seoul altogether, to escape and to see a little of the outside world. I was resigned to my cloistered fate, but Sado was a man, with a man’s needs. A change of scene would, I felt, do him good.

  But how could we achieve this? His father had always wanted to keep him on a short leash, under close supervision. I could see no way of persuading King Yŏngjo to agree to his release, even on a short journey, and frankly I feared to arouse his wrath by even making a request. One of us had to keep on the right side of him. I suppose I was a coward. Sado accused me of being a coward and a double dealer, and at one point during one of these domestic rows he threw a chessboard at me, which hit my left eye and caused a hideous swelling. This was the first time he had struck me, and I do not think he really meant the board to find its mark, but I was lucky not to lose the sight of the eye. The skin turned purple, then a deep orange-yellow. The bruise bloomed like a peony through my delicate olive skin.

  Despairing of my intercession, Sado turned to his sister Madame Chŏng, who was bolder than me, and better able to manipulate her father, King Yŏngjo. (I was not bad at manipulating the old man, or I would not have outlived him as I did, but I had my son as my priority: she, as I have said, was by now widowed and childless, and had fewer hostages to fortune.) Sado appealed to his sister in desperation and with threats of violence. He went to her with his sword in his hand, telling her that if she did not effect some release for him he would kill her. Such a threat from him, already a seasoned killer, was not to be ignored. He also threatened to kill her adopted son, a wild and rebellious boy called Chŏng Hugyŏm, who was at this time aged about twelve. Sado got hold of him and locked him in a cellar and threatened to murder him if Madame Chŏng did not fix this excursion, on which he had set his heart. The boy himself had seemed wholly undisturbed by these threats, although he must have known of Sado’s dangerous reputation, and hurled back abuse at the Crown Prince. I suppose I have to admit this child was spirited, but he grew up to be a little monster, and a bad influence on my son.

  Madame Chŏng, afraid for her protégé, alarmed by her brother’s mad violence, agreed to plead with their father, and she did so with some success. She laid much emphasis on Sado’s ill health and the possible benefits of the medicinal waters for the skin disease on Sado’s legs. Under pressure from his daughter, Yŏngjo reluctantly gave permission for his son to travel south to Onyang, to the healing wells and hot springs.

  At the same time, she achieved a double coup. As well as persuading King Yŏngjo to authorize Sado’s journey to Onyang, she, even more surprisingly, managed to persuade Yŏngjo and Lady SŏnhŬi to move for a while out of the large palace compound where we all lived, and to spend some time in another of the five royal palaces of Seoul. She hoped, I suppose, that this might reduce the growing tension between king and regent. This ‘Mulberry Palace’ stood about three miles to the east of our Ch’angdŏk-Ch’anggyŏng Palace Compound, and it was far enough away to lift some of the sense of daily oppression and surveillance that caused Sado such irritation.

  (This palace was later destroyed, and I believe that no traces of it survive in modern Seoul: the other four ancient palaces, although many times partially destroyed by fire, sacking and invasion, have been as many times rebuilt, and some of their original fabric remains. You may visit them, if you are so minded. My envoy has wandered round them in search of me, and so may you.)

  Prince Sado was delighted by the respite of the royal removal. He had suggested it himself, on several occasions, but we never thought King Yŏngjo would agree to so unorthodox a proposal: the suggestion came better from Madame Chŏng, who was a devious woman, expert in flattery. I do not know what arguments she used to persuade King Yŏngjo to move, but we were grateful to her for this temporary remission. I know that many of the court officials were gravely surprised by this change of residence, and shook their heads over it: it foreshadowed, some muttered, the fall of the Chosŏn dynasty and the house of Yi. For myself, I was also delighted. I did not see it as a permanent solution to all our troubles, for I rightly suspected that eventually the king would return to the upper palace, but at least it gave us a little more privacy at a time when we needed it. Those with dark family secrets need privacy more than most.

  My bruised eye looked so shocking that I was unable either to pay my respects to King Yŏngjo in his new residence at the Mulberry Palace or to see Sado’s entourage off on its way. I pretended, of course, that the contusion was a self-inflicted wound – the old story about tripping on a reed mat and falling against a sharp-edged cabin
et – and people pretended to believe me, but I do not suppose they did. Anyone can recognize a battered wife. And the relief that swept over me when Sado was safely out of the way and on the road to Onyang was overwhelming. I was pleased for him, but I was even more pleased for myself. I felt I could breathe freely again, and I gathered the children to me for their evening hour with a sense of reprieve. Our little family circle seemed almost normal once Sado had gone. The strain of living in perpetual fear while appearing outwardly calm is almost intolerable.

  In some ways, I had seen far more of my husband than many wives of my class because I had been obliged to set myself up as his warden and his protector, as well as his wife. In some yangban families at this period, there was a very considerable separation of roles and of domestic life, and wives and husbands rarely met, but Sado and I, for better and worse, were closely bound to one another. One of the curious features of Yŏngjo’s court, I now realize, was its inbred, overheated emotional intensity. King Yŏngjo himself was an unstable, passionate man, perpetually demanding a strong emotional response from others, and despite myself I had been sucked into this whirlpool of demonstrative and competitive display. My response to this feverishness, in contrast to Madame Chŏng’s, had been to appear cool and excessively submissive: she was by temperament far more confrontational than I. But, cool though I hope I managed to appear, I had been obliged to remain close to the emotional turmoil, in order to monitor its dangers. It was very exhausting.

  So those were happy and precious evenings with my son and daughters, when Sado was on the royal road to the hot springs with his modest entourage of a thousand attendants. We sat at home, playing a new board game for which there was a craze at that time throughout the palace – you know how such crazes come and go. I forget the rules now, but it was a peaceful, gentle game, with pretty counters and tiles of ivory and bamboo, representing chariots and horses and elephants and knights and soldiers. I suppose it was a version of changgi, adapted for multiple players. A spirit of peace descended on our little gatherings. You could hear the difference in the children’s voices. We felt safe together when he was not there. I knew that my sense of relief was a perversion, a distortion of my primary duty of marital loyalty, but even at the time I thought that nobody could blame me. I was merely seeking a little comfort with my own. Those closest to me knew exactly how I felt. A visible sigh of relief, a susurration of relaxation rose from our quarters. The evening air thickened with goodness like soup. The very flowers exhaled relief. The ladies – those that lived – began to smile again, as they went about their daily tasks. They had had a reprieve, a stay of execution. I began to taste my food again and to sleep less restlessly, less fearfully.