“It is not a question of forgiveness,” she said, looking into her tea bowl. “And perhaps you yourself do not know what is happening to you.”
“What is happening to me, wise woman?” he inquired.
She lifted her brooding eyes to meet his eyes. “You are being possessed,” she said. “The Queen is possessing you by her helplessness — by her high position — by her beauty and her power — and her loneliness. A lonely woman is always tempting to a man, but a queen! When she comes into any room it is the Queen who enters. You are flattered, of course. But you are overwhelmed by such honor. You, singled out, set apart, by the Queen? How can one who is only a — a—woman — compete with a queen? She possesses your mind — yes — she does — don’t speak!”
For he had leaped to his feet, but she pushed him off. “Stay away from me, Il-han! It is true. For a man like you, with your mind — oh, there are more ways of enchanting a man like you than by the body, I know it very well. And I am not clever like you, or — or witty or brilliant or even very intelligent beside you — and though you will never possess her, yet I am your possession, and you will think me a poor creature. You do so think, already! Whenever you see her, after every audience, you come home as a man returns from a glorious dream. And now, when it is you who have her in hiding, it is only you who know where she is — why, I daresay you are dreaming dreams!”
Her voice rose with anger and then broke into sadness.
He was confounded. He sank back upon the bed and clasped his hands behind his head. How could he reply to so monstrous an insult? And yet she could so penetrate by instinct that he wondered if indeed she had perceived some truth that he had not. He did think constantly of the Queen. Her person was sacredly dear to him, not as a man, he nevertheless believed, but as a symbol of the nation and the people to whom he was dedicated. Yet he was a man. And it was true that some enchantment always came into his mind when he was with the Queen. He could look at any beautiful geisha and feel no desire to look again. But when a woman, such as the Queen, spoke with grace and intelligence, when she had a mind, then her body was illumined and he looked.
He sighed and closed his eyes. He had no time for self-investigation. And did it matter? He had a duty to restore the Queen to the throne and he would do it. And when she was on the throne she was Queen, and only Queen.
“Will you listen to me?” he said to Sunia. “Will you hear me tell you what must be done and what my duty is? There must be unity among our people, else the great hungry nations who surround us can lick us up as a toad licks up a mouthful of ants by the flicker of its tongue. Will you hear me, Sunia? As my wife?”
She put down the tea bowl. “I will hear you.”
“I must keep my head clear,” he said. “I must listen to all factions, but I must choose, step by step, my own path. I believe, Sunia, that finally we must make friends with the West. We must find new allies. Yet for the moment China must come to our help against Japan so that we may restore the Queen — and the King — to the throne.”
She was shrewd enough, this wife of his! “Why do you falter when you speak of the King?” she inquired now. “Put the Queen first, and then you stammer. What of the King?”
“Come here to me,” he said.
“Lie down,” he said when she stood beside him. “Rest your head on the pillow by mine.”
She obeyed, wondering. When her head was beside his, he turned and spoke into her ear.
“I believe the King is not loyal to the Queen. It is he who helped the Regent to return to the palace.”
“The Regent is his father,” she reminded him.
“The Queen is the Queen,” he retorted, “and she is his wife.”
They lay silent then, for enough had been said so that she understood, at least in part, that it was possible for him to be possessed not by a woman, not even by a queen, but by the love of his country.
In silence they lay close, without passion, but closer than passion could bring them they lay close.
In the poet’s house the Queen lived through the long days and the longer nights. Summer changed to autumn and winter lingered. Never before had she had the chance and the time to ponder her life as a woman. Now as the hours of the day stretched endlessly long, she watched the poet and his wife as they lived through their simple round. The woman’s whole life was in the man, the wife a part of the husband, and this the Queen saw.
“Are you never weary of tending this one man?” she inquired one day when she was alone with the wife, for the poet had walked to the village to buy paper and fresh ink and a new brush.
The wife was grinding wheat meal between two stones, and she stopped and wiped the sweat from her face with the hem of her skirt.
“Who would tend him if I did not,” she asked, “and what else have I to do?”
“True,” the Queen said. “But do you never find yourself weary? Do you not dream sometimes of another life?”
“What other life?” the wife replied. “This is my duty, and he is my life.”
The Queen persisted. “Then what do you dream of?”
The wife considered. “I dream of having enough money to buy an ox. I could drive the ox in the field instead of pulling the plow myself. And I would get him a fine white robe such as he deserves to have as a poet, instead of the patched rag he wears now. Yes, I might even buy two white robes, and certainly he needs a new hat. I mend the one he wears with hairs I pull out of the tail of the horse our neighbor has, but it would be well for him to have a new hat. This one belonged to his father who died. He has never had a hat of his own, and his head is smaller than his father’s and the hat rests on his ears. But what can I do?”
“Ah, what indeed,” the Queen replied with sympathy.
In the long night that followed inevitably upon the day, she thought about the King for the first time as her husband. Would she be happy to tend him day and night? No, she would not. Nor would he wish her to tend him. He sent for her and she went when he commanded. That is, she went sometimes, but there were also times when she excused herself because the time was not her time. Then he could be angry, and insist that her woman bring him proof. If there were no proof she sent a cloth dipped in the blood of a fowl. Yet, though she did not love him, she did not hate him, and indifferently she went to him. She was a warm woman, and lucky that she was, for the King was ardent, and without love the two of them could mate well enough. But she was slow to be pregnant, especially since now she knew that her son, the heir, would always have the mind of a child. Had she loved the father she might have cherished the child nevertheless. As it was, she sent the boy to a distant part of the palace where servants cared for him. She saw him sometimes playing in some garden, and she spoke to him kindly enough but she left him soon and knew that in truth she was childless and alone.
She lay on her poor bed now in this poor house, and she would not weep. She admonished herself: Remember your vow; you promised your own heart that you would not weep any more, for any cause.
The long night ended and it was the last to be so long. For on the next day, rumor crept through the nation even to the village and then to the poet. The Chinese Empress had sent an army to rescue the Queen. The poet closed the wall doors and put out the lamp on the table. In the darkness he whispered the powerful news to her listening ear.
“The Imperial Chinese armies have marched into the capital! Forty-five hundred men armed not only with good swords, but with foreign weapons! They have overwhelmed the palace guards. They have seized the Regent himself and he is to be taken to China and held there in prison. Only the King is left.”