Notes.

Warnings ! Mentions of physical and psychological torture.

I just realized I had indicated the Gyeongbokgung as the royal palace in a previous chapter, but it was completely abandoned during that part of the Joseon era. My bad, I corrected the mistake.

I also forgot to add that Dong Soo's style of clothing since the beginning of this story is openly inspired by his character in the movie "The Grand Heist".


CHAPTER XLIV


" I'm coming home
I'm coming home
Tell the world I'm coming home
Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday
I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes
I'm coming home, I'm coming home
Tell the world that I'm coming "

(Dirty Money feat Skylar Grey, american artists, "Coming Home")


a. The other Hippocratic Oath

Late at night, while the city slept the sleep of the just, with the exception of those whose jobs were done primarily after the daylight had faded and whose silhouettes slid into the darkness with agility and humility, being careful not to awaken the inhabitants of Hanyang, reputed to be relatively grumpy when they were taken out of bed before the designated time, Gan Do-Yun followed the two soldiers who had come to find him earlier to his home to take him to the royal palace. In the sky, the moon was invisible, masked by thick clouds that censored its silvery glow, and without the lanterns and torches scattered throughout the streets of the city, everything would probably have been as deep and unfathomable black as a bottomless abyss.

Do-Yun knew such darkness, and frequented it regularly. His consultations brought him several times a month outside the limits of the capital of the kingdom, on country roads and in villages whose outline and shapes could be seen by any resident of Hanyang as soon as they ventured along the ramparts of the surrounding walls. When the night was so advanced, and he was called for pains, vomiting, seizures, injuries, he would lead his horse at full gallop, and ride through the night fog with the help of a lantern, which to this day was one of his best investments, but also sometimes the moon, if it was full enough to cast a weak, crystalline light on the world, but more than welcome when everything else was dark.

The two soldiers who made up his escort carried torches, and Do-Yun could see by their contracted features, their impatient pace, and the glances they threw all around them, that they were as anxious as he was at the prospect of being spotted by one of those night people who were now wandering around in the silence of Hanyang's alleyways, doing some task that the commotion and the light of day otherwise made impossible.

At that hour, the large red main Donwhamun door was closed, and one of the smaller passages cut into the more massive openings was opened for them. The soldiers who came with Do-Yun exchanged a few words in a low voice with their comrades of the Royal Guard, whose spearheads shimmered in the flames of the torches. It was hardly the first time a doctor had been brought to the palace in the middle of the night, and Do-Yun had been a regular visitor for a little over two years.

One of the guards, having checked his identity simply as a matter of protocol but without paying much attention to his examination, pulled the heavy iron ring of the handle of the small wooden door of his larger sister towards him, and allowed them to enter the inner perimeter of the royal Changdeok palace. Not a sound betrayed the activity of any individual inside, not a movement indicated that the corridors of the building were filled with life as if in broad daylight. Yet, as Do-Yun knew as well as the rest of the population of Joseon, the palace was one of those buildings that never really stopped people from being busy in one of its corners, regardless of the time of day or events.

There were silent, dead places, where all signs of existence had died out and where only stillness and darkness reigned. But in Changdeokgung, the heart of the country's political power since King Taejong had painted the ancestral walls of the now abandoned Gyeongbok Palace (haunted castle) with the blood of his half-brothers, there was an uninterrupted whispering of secrets, betrayals, and information, and people never stopped fidgeting, wriggling, working, and longing for power even in the bedrooms.

Do-Yun had not known the former stronghold of the kings, but he felt towards their present residence a tenderness both aesthetic and visceral that he was almost certain not to find again if the next monarchs wished to re-establish their government in the Gyeongbokgung. Although not so far apart geographically, the two palaces offered such a contrast in architecture and atmosphere that it was extremely difficult to consider them equally, and not to favor one at the expense of the other.

From what Do-Yun had always been able to see of the ruins of the former, on the rare occasions when he had been required to take care of people in the area, the latter had been a monumental construction, conceived above all as a fortress rather than a ceremonial residence, and its layout was characterized by immense spaces of emptiness that imposed themselves almost threateningly on the passer-by, as if anything could have come out of that nothingness to throw itself upon you when you least expected it. The decorative desert was partly due to the Japanese invasions of which the country had been a victim two centuries earlier, and whose most obvious traces were still visible in the ravaged, burnt, and appallingly sterile architecture of the Gyeongbok Palace.

Moreover, having been neglected by royalty, it was hardly maintained, and the buildings seemed to be holding up under the impulse of a miracle, for their foundations had already been weakened during the war against the shogunate, and time had amply contributed to making them prone to destruction in case they were hit by a gust of wind a little too violent. Those who lived around them never failed to marvel at the tenacity of the structures. Everything should have been destroyed years ago, a patient, a former royal guard, had said when Do-Yun had come by to treat his persistent pain in the knuckles of his hands.

The palace of the East, which people preferred to call the palace of prosperity, something that had probably never been so ironic and erroneous as in these troubled times of resurrection of the dead and of monarchical, social and financial crisis, was of a different kind, but above all of a different era. It was more recent than its predecessor, and therefore bore all the attributes of the architectural progress and aesthetic changes that nearly thirty years had brought about between the construction of the Gyeongbokgung and its own.

The monarch who had decided to build the Gyeongbokgung was also not the same, and his taste was quite different from that of his father, King Taejo, who had been the driving force behind the construction of the Gyeongbok Palace. Taejo had wanted something massive, something impressive, something that would tell anyone who set foot in it that they had stepped through the gates of a royal estate, designed for and by rulers. Taejong, who had murdered the other pretenders to his throne in his father's own creation, wanted to distance himself from the style he had developed and the bloody memories it brought back to his mind.

While retaining some symbols considered essential to a royal palace, such as the main doors in red and green with their gracefully curved gray tile roofs, Taejong had nevertheless built a more intimate and delicate place than his father had done. Although larger in terms of available hectares, the Changdeok palace complex had buildings located closer to each other, and much more abundant and untamed vegetation, which made it look more like a private residence at first glance rather than the official seat of government. The soft greenery helped to make it more enjoyable and cozy.

The buildings were smaller, more comfortable, and the gardens more extensive, partly due to King Sejo's expansion work and the construction of the rear garden, known as Huwon, with its charming pavilions, pond and lotuses, streams, and colorful trees and flowers. Do-Yun often regretted coming only at night to the palace, as he would have liked to be able to stroll there under the sun's rays, see how the water in the pond shimmered under them and how the natural hues of the ornamental plantations were a spectacle in daylight.

He and his escort crossed the small Geumcheongyo bridge, all carved in stone and surrounded by winding trees that seemed to dance around it like gisaengs. The air smelled cold, but also of fire and pine trees. They then headed not toward the Huijeongdang Hall, where the monarch's bedroom was located, but to the military quarters, and more precisely to the royal prison, which was built a little set back from the other buildings to protect them against the moral stain of the prisoners. The prison was annexed to a room that was kept more secret, but which Do-Yun, through his functions, and like other doctors whose services were primarily intended for the court, knew well.

That evening, he was the only one truly available. The royal physician was held back by his treatment of Lady Ui, the first concubine, who was said to be seriously ill following a miscarriage which had occurred the previous month, and whose affliction was probably of a more nervous than physical nature. The king tenderly loved his mistress, and had dispatched his personal physician to her, hoping that an improvement in her condition would enable her to return quickly to her duty as royal lover, and to the birth of an offspring.

A son had been expected since the beginning of Jeongjo's reign, but the queen had until then always been flat-bellied, and neither of the two favorites had yet produced a child. Many blamed the waves of resurrections, saying that no royal baby could decently come into the world under such circumstances. As a kind of hypocritical precaution, they made no mention of the fragility of the newborns, the complications of pregnancy, and even less of the doctors' inability to overcome certain illnesses, even though their will had ardently desired it.

They didn't enter the prison, but Do-Yun knew what it contained, or rather who it contained, because several of them had been his "patients" at some point during these nocturnal visits. That evening he had only one, but two or three had occasionally been presented to him, in ever more pitiful and frightening states. In the early days, it had been difficult for Do-Yun to carry out the orders he had received directly from the Ministry of Defense, which was managing these matters in association with the Ministry of Justice, a first since the founding of the government and its institutions.

Usually, only Justice dealt with torture and punishment, but the appearance of the Gwishins had changed the situation to some extent, particularly because of the necessary involvement of the military in the fight against them. Usually, palace doctors like Gan Do-Yun, following the specific treatment of a government associate through whom it was easy to gain favor, would come to the torture chamber to treat the damage inflicted on the tortured before further sessions, or to perform certain operations that could not otherwise be carried out on consenting individuals, in order to make some interesting discovery (and most of the time, the only contribution of these methods was to find new ways of killing more quickly and efficiently).

It was preferred to have trusted people who were known to members of the ministries or offices, and who could be trusted to keep their mouths sealed. In the two years Do-Yun had been in the palace, he had never confided what he had seen to his wife or any other member of his entourage. When he fell asleep, the secrets and horrors he had witnessed would devour his mind and feast on his nerves, as they did with many of his colleagues.

The room had been built underground, so that the screams of pain could not be heard. It was always bathed in an unhealthy golden light, coming from the torches hanging on the walls, which made the blood glisten. The door opened on a tall man, wearing a peacock feathered hat and a dark blue uniform, whom Do-Yun recognized for having met him before.

- Deputy Governor Baek, he greeted him respectfully, bowing to him as did the two soldiers following him.

The man, in his thirties, had a grim face with the corners of his mouth pulled down, making him look stern and uninviting. Yet he was one of the least vicious men Do-Yun had ever known, and the latter could have said without hesitation that he disliked the task, despite the responsibility his rank imposed on him.

In informal discussions between the two of them while the doctor was taking care of his patients, seeking any possible distractions to focus his mind on, he had learned that Baek had recently been appointed to his present position, after having prevented a coup against the monarch in 1776, and that he had previously served as an instructor with the anti-Gwishin brigades.

- I wasn't good, he had confessed firmly, without looking for the slightest excuse. I'm more comfortable on the field, and for strategic advice. I resigned at the end of 1777.

He had told him that he was also, at the same time, performing duties as chief of a small night brigade of ten men, whose command he had taken over in July 1778 after the death in the field of the former captain, with whom he had presumably maintained cordial relations. Some of his former students were members of the patrol, and according to his own account, they preferred him as a leader rather than as a teacher.

- I lack pedagogy, he had said one evening as Do-Yun tried to soothe the groans of pain of a patient (gwishin) who had been hurt by an executioner far more than he should have. And I was drinking too much.

- And now ? The doctor had asked him, gently applying to the wounds the pig's blood-based ointments which his colleagues had developed in 1779, and which had been found to speed up considerably the healing of the fire lesions caused on the bodies of the dead.

Baek had had a cold, mocking, politician's smile. He stood against the wall of the torture chamber with his arms folded, and was watching the doctor's treatment attentively.

- Now I drink a little less, he had answered, shrugging his shoulders. And I've found other things to do.

The others Do-Yun had met during his visits were less talkative, less pessimistic, but also less kind, paradoxically speaking. Most exuded hatred of the Gwishin, while Baek seemed more measured, more indifferent than resentful, and strangely more sensitive. He always allowed the doctor to follow a treatment as long as he needed it, never cut short the consultations, let him talk to the wounded gwishin, listened to his requests, and brought in the ingredients he required to heal and soothe. He said he attended the torture sessions, but without inflicting torture himself. If I want torture, the brigade is enough for me, he had pointed out.

That evening, in the room, on the chair where Do-Yun always found the tortured, there was a young boy who couldn't have been more than twenty years old. He had his head tilted back, his limbs tensed, and was panting weakly like a dying animal. He had been subjected to the test of fire, like all the others, but torture took it to an extremity that outside interrogation did not reach. In the city, a white-hot iron was applied to a small portion of the hands of the interrogated individuals, and the color of the skin was observed. The process was not painful for the Gwishin.

Fire torture, on the other hand, was quite different. It had indeed been observed, after a few attempts over the last few years, that the dead who were confronted with intense, and above all regular, daily burns, invariably ended up feeling the pain again, and to increasingly greater degrees as the flames spread over their bodies. Gwishin torture always followed the same steps : the first sessions were often calm and quiet, as Gwishins, even if burned from neck to foot, did not feel pain, or only light to moderate amounts.

Invariably, at the end of the next session, the pain would rise steadily, and at the end of the fourth session, the first cries and screams would resound in the room, tears would appear, and with them, a considerable weakening of their willpower. Usually half of the body was burned. The room reeked of roasted flesh and rotting corpse, and Do-Yun frowned as he entered. Baek didn't flinch. He had seen worse.

The entire left side of the body of the victim was black and blistered, as were always the burned body parts of the Gwishin. It was the most effective way the government had found to identify them, for while the skin of the living was red when burned and only turned black when completely consumed, the skin of the dead was immediately darkened, with cries of horror and pain that no other attempt at torture could reach. Soon, the usual methods that worked for the living were stopped and fire became the only option.

This Gwishin was no exception to the rule. Do-Yun leaned over and examined the damage. There was nothing there that could not be made up for.

- I suppose he gave in ? he asked Baek.

The Gwishins weren't tortured just for information these days, or to make them confess where others of their kind could be found. They were also tortured to better condition them, to better buy their submission, and thus to make them join the ranks of the army of the dead that King Jeongjo wanted to form.

Once they had sworn obedience, once they had been broken, doctors were called in to repair them as quickly as possible : it was feared that letting them recover too slowly from the torture could lead to a renewal of independence, and so the natural and prodigious healing of their dead bodies was abandoned in favor of quicker methods.

- What do you think ? Baek asked, standing at his usual observatory against the wall. I had blood brought in for the ointments. He must be operational tomorrow at the earliest. Will that be possible ?

Do-Yun put down his satchel, took out the strips of cloth and the needles that were used to make the ointment compresses. He turned to the deputy governor, the brigade chief, and met his eyes without expression, without compassion, but also without malice.

- It will be done, he assured him.

He set to work.


b. The apothecary of the port

Most of the ships that stopped at Haeju port came from Weihai and sometimes from the small town of Yantai, located a little further east in the lands of the Qing Empire. However, they never stayed there for very long. The buildings that docked at the tip of the small bay, sometimes called "the Haeju Dancer" because of its voluptuous curves, and formed by an undulation of the Yellow Sea towards the interior of the continent, were primarily merchant ships whose role was to cross the waters on either side to deliver their cargoes between countries.

The task, however, wasn't guaranteed to be a pleasure cruise : at this point where the ocean was embraced by the land, pirates had been raging for many decades, and attacks were much more frequent and organized than in other regions, such as the Eastern Sea, on the other side of the kingdom, or between Japan and the coastal cities of the south.

Although there were some notable exceptions, including a known band of bandits who were both subjects of Joseon and the shogunate, who had been attacking commercial ships throughout the last century before sinking to the bottom of the sea after making the disastrous choice to target a warship passing quietly through the Tsushima Strait, then disguised in a completely hazardous way as a freighter, it appeared however that the Western Sea was a victim of its land connections, and it was the privileged target of marine thieves because of the almost permanent exchanges between the coasts.

Nan Byung-Ho had thus been many times subject to loss of profits following attacks from ships carrying products for his pharmacy. In the summer, stock depletions were a little less overwhelming, as people were generally less prone to colds and all those seemingly minor illnesses but with symptoms that were always invasive, but as soon as the first hours of autumn came and the cold began to spread, people would rush to the medicinal stalls with a festive spirit to buy and vials, and potions, and poultices, and herbs, including some with miraculous properties, which had been widely exposed by all doctors and even more abundantly by apothecaries, and which, when examined properly and consumed regularly, had in reality only mixed effects for most, if not almost non-existent for others. In business, the pattern was always the same.

As soon as living conditions deteriorated, people returned to old beliefs and hopes, and a good merchant knew when and how to handle and adapt them to ensure a comfortable income. Having been in the profession for nearly twenty years, Byung-Ho believed he was one of those whose experience had shaped his commercial skill, and his store was among the most highly regarded in the city.

Well located in the street of the port, but not too close to be eclipsed by the fish market and all the stalls that based their business on everything that came from the waters, as was the fashion for coastal cities, it had a most superb front, finely carved and detailed, and which was admired by customers but also more generally by passers-by, who regularly stopped to take a look at it and sometimes entered it, wanting to know what treasures could be hold by such a shop window. It was of an honorable size, which prevented it from being crushed by other stores. Finally, it had been around for much longer than Byong-Ho, and that was definitely its major advantage.

He had begun his apprenticeship there at the age of fifteen, after spending his entire childhood ogling the gilded paint, the decorations, the symbols carved into the wood, which always seemed to be brand-new. He had been one of those boys whose professional project had been decided very early on, not as a result of particular experiences, but above all by taste and by an intimate knowledge of his own preferences. Botany fascinated him, but not medicine, which he found far too complex for his individual interests.

On the other hand, he had an attraction for herbal medicine, and a tendency towards independence that had forever distanced him from the military or bureaucratic careers that his parents believed he was destined for. His father had written two modestly known works on the subject, but whose scientific rigor and somewhat bombastic literary descriptions, full of academic terms strictly incomprehensible to the neophyte, had earned him great respect in the community of physicists, who considered the books at the same level as the classics studied during their training.

As for his mother, she came from a long line of yangbans whose fortunes had been drained by members who were either too greedy, who had demanded to be buried with their gold rather than distribute it to their heirs, or too spendthrifty, whose excesses had more quickly swallowed up pharaonic sums than brought them in. As a result of these financial difficulties, the girl's parents had agreed to give her in marriage to a jungin whose reputation and savings were on the rise.

Byung-Ho was expected to make great studies, to take the gwageo civil examination, and to go to occupy a prestigious position either at or near the court. He had been thoroughly educated by three tutors, each specialized in particular fields, and had thereby acquired a body of theoretical and practical knowledge that few merchants could claim to possess. Nevertheless, neither the military nor politics had seemed attractive to him, unlike business, which he saw as an opportunity to increase his resources and guarantee himself a luxurious existence. His mother had cried, his father had stamped. Nothing had changed his mind.

At fifteen, he had joined the owner of the pretty store on the street of the port as an apprentice, which he had always heard about in a good way and which seemed to attract to it clouds of visitors like the flame of a lantern attracts moths. The man who ran the store had no sons, only daughters, and when he had died, he had entrusted the responsibility of the establishment to the one he thought most appropriate, namely Byung-Ho.

Since then, he had never experienced a period of recession or financial disaster, and his parents' disdain for his career choice had dissipated as soon as the first income from the store's operations had shown its prestige. His mother would sometimes ask him for herbs for her infusions, and his father, although still suspicious, came to visit him and showed interest in his products.

The resurrections, while they had hit specific businesses hard, had not had any real effect on the apothecaries. The return of the dead didn't change the fact that people continued to get sick, to want to heal themselves, to get injured, and to look for remedies. Byung-Ho had even seen an increase in sales throughout the decade of successive waves of rebirths, particularly of medicinal herbs and items designed to soothe nervous diseases and anxieties.

His sleeping potions, carefully prepared by manufacturers with whom the former owner of the store had already established solid business relationships, were being sold so quickly that he was forced to increase the stock, and his muscle relaxants, his narcotics, were being pillaged with a regularity that would undoubtedly have worried an outside observer taking a look at the mental state of the society.

At the time of the publication of the Royal Decree of 1777 and with the announcement of the systematization of interrogations to track down Gwishins implanted among the living, he had beaten his record of best sales, which dated back to a virulent epidemic wave that had taken place in 1764. He had celebrated the event with a large banquet, together with his wife and their four children, in the family home he occupied a little north of the town.

Since then, things had quietened down a bit, and customer traffic in the store had returned to normal. On his way back from his stock check, after being delivered by the last ship that had arrived at the port, bringing him the Chinese plant extracts used in herbal teas and by several of his potion suppliers, he found five people in the boutique. There were three customers who were regulars, but he had never seen the other two.

They were standing in front of the self-service herbal medicine cabinet. The man, thin, a little taller than him, wore a black satgat, which partly hid his face, but under which long dark hair flowed. He was dressed in well-preserved, but somewhat dusty, clothing and, like many travelers, carried a linen bag on his back.

He was accompanied by a young girl, not more than thirteen, whose hair was carefully pulled into a ponytail, and whose face was unusually youthful and mischievous. When they came to the counter, they placed wormwood, but also flowers from a shrub that produced blindingly yellow flowers, and jasmine extracts.

- For infusions ? Byung-Ho asked, as he did with new customers, while weighing the order to determine the price.

- That's it, the girl replied in an authoritative voice, a little surprising for her age.

She had big eyes surrounded by long eyelashes, and also carried a bag on her back.

- You've just arrived in Haeju ? Byung-Ho said. You look like you've been traveling.

The man nodded briefly. He had beautiful, very dark eyes, which worried Byung-Ho (the black eyes of the gwishins) for a moment.

- We're going to Hanyang, he added cautiously. For the new year.

- I understand you, Byung-Ho replied, wrapping the plants in small individual skin pouches. It's very beautiful at this time of year, but lately I've been told it's quite a story to get in. If I were you, I would be preparing for an interrogation right now.

A silence ensued. From the corner of his eye, while finishing his packages, he saw the girl and her companion exchanging a perplexed glance.

- Didn't you know ? he asked them.

- We were in China these last few years, the girl told him, before adding quickly : for my training. What kind of interrogations ?

Byung-Ho put the small packages in front of them.

- That will be three nyang, he informed them, and as the man searched for the amount in a small purse, he explained. The entrances to the city have been heavily guarded since the king's last decree in 1777. Since it is known that the Gwishins are among the living, measures have been reinforced, especially in the capital. Some of my clients who sometimes go there have told me that the guards at the city gates take your name, look in a register, and if you haven't passed the fire test yet, they put you through it right away.

He retrieved the coins handed to him by the man, without a word. The girl questioned him, as her companion put their purchases in his bag.

- What fire test ?

- The one to spot the Gwishins. They burn a small part of your hand with a white-hot iron. If it turns red, good for you. Everybody knows that the gwishin's skin turns black.

Once again, he witnessed a glance from the girl to her companion, and the shadow that appeared in the latter's eyes. Byung-Ho thought that they were pale, but he suspected that winter has this tendency to make faces look whiter, and that this feature alone could not decently be a proof, although it caused him a sudden shiver.

The man greeted him politely, bowing his head with respect, and thanked him for his information. They left the store together, disappearing into the stream of passers-by, becoming invisible and anonymous.

Byung-Ho often remembered their black eyes, and the fear that had been inscribed in them when he had told them about the interrogations at the entrance to Hanyang.