Chapter : 14
Sitting on the Madder Flower (4)
After finishing her bath, Jo-young was summoned to the pavilion where she had previously shared a meal with Yeon-ho.
Since the marriage had been postponed, it seemed he was avoiding meeting her in her quarters out of consideration for the princess.
It was midday, and having washed cleanly, his face appeared even clearer to her eyes.
He looked as though he had grown a little thinner in the meantime.
Unlike that night when he had been fully formal, his attire now looked lighter.
Perhaps, having taken off his heavy armor, he wished to rest unburdened.
He must be utterly exhausted.
Maybe because she had heard his story from Bu-gyeong, the man who had always seemed cold and ruthless now felt a little more human.
“Please, have a seat.”
“Yes.”
“Eat.”
“Ah, yes.”
A ruler would not summon her to dine simply to fill her stomach.
Yet he offered the meal without any other greeting, which caught her off guard.
Feigning composure, she picked up her chopsticks. As if he had been waiting, he too began to eat.
He ate diligently without a word, like someone who was truly starving.
Jo-young, on the other hand, though hungry herself, merely picked at the neatly prepared, appetizing spread.
It wasn’t only the awkwardness of the meal or the uncomfortable silence.
The fact that he said nothing to her meant, rather, that he was holding back despite having much to say.
She had lived her whole life reading the room—there was no way she wouldn’t recognize that.
Moreover, she herself had something to say to him, yet the atmosphere had turned such that she didn’t know how to begin.
“Does the food not suit your taste?”
“No, not at all.”
“It must be far inferior to what you ate at the palace. Don’t force yourself. If there’s anything you wish to eat, please feel free to tell us at any time.”
“It’s truly fine. I’ve already been eating well, and—ah, I also heard you took care with the tonics. Thank you.”
“Please don’t thank me. I am not bestowing favors upon the princess. Strictly speaking, at present Your Highness stands above me. So even if I ask to see you, there’s no need for you to come against your will. You should eat at your ease.”
If the princess had no appetite, then unless it was the food’s fault, it must be his.
That seemed to be what he thought.
Since it wasn’t entirely wrong, Jo-young set down her chopsticks and spoke.
“I will do so in the future. But since I have come today, I must hear the purpose for which you summoned me, General. Isn’t there something you wish to say to me?”
“There is nothing. I merely wished to see the princess often and build affection.”
“You frightened me the moment I arrived, and you say you meant to build affection in such an awkward atmosphere?”
“I apologize for earlier. I was angry out of shame that the maids failed to attend properly to Your Highness. I beg your pardon.”
“Then please blame me for roaming about on my own. I didn’t know it was a place I shouldn’t enter.”
“Ordinarily, one does not go into such a ruined place. All the more so someone as precious as Your Highness.”
“I’m quite curious by nature. And it didn’t seem like ruins at all. It was warm and cozy, so I wanted to go inside.”
At that, Yeon-ho let out a snort of derision.
“If you knew what kind of place that is, you would never think that way.”
“Was it not where your mother resided?”
“!”
The mockery vanished from Yeon-ho’s face, which hardened into something frightening.
“Do not reproach Bu-gyeong. I asked, and he merely answered. I am a princess—how could he dare disobey my command?”
“You truly are curious. You pried into matters you need not know. Seeing that you take an interest in me, may I take it that you’ve decided to open your heart?”
“Yes. You may think so. I wished to know why you left your mother’s residence abandoned like that. Since I must live here from now on, isn’t it only natural that I want to know about the man I am to marry?”
Jo-young answered with the confidence of a true princess.
“It seems you now know everything and your curiosity has been satisfied. If you continue this conversation, is there something more you wish to say to me?”
“I wish to use your mother’s residence.”
“……”
Yeon-ho nearly blurted out the word mad, as he often did with Yul-bok, but managed to swallow it down.
“That is a place where someone died.”
“People die in every household.”
“It depends on how they died.”
There was a reason Yeon-ho felt anger rather than sorrow over his mother’s death.
It had been when he was still a boy, just before his first deployment.
His usually frail mother had been deeply anxious about her young son going to war and resented her husband.
To her, Yeon-ho was still a child who needed protection. Sending such a son to the battlefield—for the sake of the nation, for the fame of a general, as an example to other soldiers—felt to her like nothing but cruelty.
Thus, after quarreling with her husband, she shut herself away alone in the Byeolwon Pavilion.
The Byeolwon Pavilion was where she often stayed when she wished to tend the garden to soothe her heart or to rest alone.
She remained shut in there for some time, and then one day, she hanged herself and took her own life.
Of all days, it was the morning before Yeon-ho’s deployment.
In her short suicide note, she left only words of resentment toward her husband and son.
[A deficient mother, a troublesome wife—an existence unnecessary to the Kang father and son—would do well to disappear.]
There was no need to say how great a shock it was to young Yeon-ho. And the then-lord of Bisan Fortress, Kang Hyeon-seok, consumed by rage, did not even conduct a proper funeral. He merely buried the body, and the two went off to the battlefield.
His father, fearing that young Yeon-ho might carry guilt toward his mother, painted her in an even worse light.
Yet in truth, it was Kang Hyeon-seok himself who was tormented by guilt toward his wife.
He often visited the Byeolwon Pavilion where she must have suffered alone, and he could not bring himself to clear away the traces she had left behind.
And so the pavilion remained in a vague, suspended state—visited by no one, yet not demolished either.
After his father passed away as well and Yeon-ho was left alone, he did consider tearing the pavilion down.
But each time, he only thought of it briefly and then forgot. He had no room to be consumed by private emotions.
Today, thanks to Jo-young, Yeon-ho was able to think at length about his mother for the first time in a long while.
“I heard that your mother opposed your deployment. But I wonder if perhaps that wasn’t the only reason.”
“Your Highness, no matter that you are a princess, this is not a matter you can know. Please do not involve yourself too deeply.”
“I know it is presumptuous. But I happened to pick this up in the Byeolwon Pavilion. How could I possibly pretend not to know?”
Jo-young finally brought out what she had long wanted to say, placing it on the table together with a blue silk pouch.
“What is this?”
Yeon-ho asked indifferently, though he seemed slightly more interested than before.
“It was lying beneath the bed. That’s probably why no one found it. Please open it. I opened it myself and didn’t know what it was, but after hearing Bu-gyeong’s story, I understood.”
He had never thought there might be something beneath his mother’s bed. Why had she looked under someone else’s bed?
Though that question intrigued him more, Yeon-ho did as the princess asked and opened the pouch.
Inside was a knotted tassel ornament with a round mother-of-pearl decoration.
Yeon-ho paused as he held it.
He quickly recognized what it was for. It was a decorative tassel tied to the end of a sword hilt. But the fact that it had been found among his mother’s belongings was difficult to understand.
“The threads of the knot were dyed one by one. It’s not something made without great care. She must have had a reason to devote such effort, dyeing each strand in red to ward off misfortune.”
Surely she had poured her prayers into it for her son who was to go to war.
“The Byeolwon Pavilion is full of madder vines. The red isn’t very vivid because it was dyed with madder.”
Madder was a plant that grew everywhere; even commoners used its roots for dyeing.
“A mother who prepared something like this could hardly resent her son.”
“……”
For a long while, Yeon-ho could not speak.
He could vividly picture his mother dyeing this for him.
It had been a long time since he last recalled her in such a way.
She had been a gentle and beautiful woman.
