after I’d left for Yongjusa temple in Suwon. You knew nothing of this?”
“I did not, sir, I swear it.”
A moment of quiet observation passed, and finally Inspector Han asked, “That letter you received from the stranger. Did you read it before or after delivering it to your mistress?”
Soyi sat there as still as death. Then she whispered, “Before.”
“A letter from a stranger that summoned your mistress to come out at night. Were you not worried for her safety? Did you not think she would be in harm’s way?”
“I … I did…”
“Repeat what was written in the letter you received.”
“He said his loyalty to her was as solid as stone … to meet him at their usual place … at the Hour of the Rat. He wished to tell her something.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine as I stared at Soyi, the maid whose wounds I had cleansed, whom I had looked at with a heart brimming with pity. But had she deserved this pity? Soyi might not have killed her mistress, yet she had made the murder possible.
“I am done with her.” Inspector Han summoned a legal clerk and said, “She ought to be punished for causing such chaos.”
“No, no!” Soyi frantically shook her head, as though her hair were on fire and she were trying to douse it with the wind. “No, no, no—I want to be free!”
“You delivered a letter that ought never to have been delivered. You kept silent when you should have spoken. You knew beforehand that Lady O’s life was in danger, yet permitted the stranger to lure her out, and all this resulted in her death. That is how this crime took place. Lock her up.”
The damos unbound Soyi from the chair, dragged her to her feet. The noise that escaped from her was neither a scream nor a cry, but something in between man and beast that tore out from her chest and exploded in the air.
And not once did Inspector Han flinch.
ELEVEN
THE HORRIBLE NOISE Soyi had made continued to ring in my ears.
A month ago, I had felt a morbid interest in murder cases, enjoying the thrill of chasing the truth. But the thrill had vanished, replaced by a heaviness in my chest that made breathing difficult.
The truth seemed as tangled as a lie, and the darkness seemed to grow darker, with no promise of a bright morning.
Officer Ky?n, for one, seemed pleased by the turn of events, sowing anxiety among the other officers, whispering, “This bamboo hat man, he has outsmarted Inspector Han.”
For the next three days, I tried to visit Soyi to ask her questions about the man in the bamboo hat. I wanted to know whether he had told her anything else while persuading her to deliver his letter. I wanted to know even more, considering the same man had also delivered a letter to Scholar Ahn, who had disappeared soon after.
But I could not bring myself to enter the prison block. I feared her, and more than that, I didn’t want to see the accusation in her eyes. In confiding in me, in trusting me, she had lost her last chance to escape the bureau.
Then, on the fourth day, I mustered up enough determination to face her. I got so far as the prison block only for my courage to vanish at the sight of a man in a worn-out tunic and trousers crouched down next to Senior Officer Shim. Plunging his hands into a bucket of water, the man washed his blood-speckled face, a dazed look in his eyes. I did not know his name, and no one really did, for we all called him simply the executioner.
“There was an execution today?” I asked.
Shim kept his eyes downcast, so the executioner spoke into the silence. “By the southern gate. Traitors.”
Dread whooshed out of me, and I leaned against the prison-block wall, much relieved. A traitor had died, not Soyi. The fresh splattering of blood belonged to someone else … some other poor soul.
“So … what kind of treason did the rogue commit?” I asked.
“Gossiped about the queen regent. About the assassination by poison.” His dialect was from the eastern coast. I could tell because of its tonal nature, rolling up and down like the mountain peaks and low valleys, so different from the mild and flat capital speech. “She ordered that they be punished as traitors.”
“You will kill many more in the new year,” Shim said to the crouching man. “Catholics.”