Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“Now,” he told Sunia when the house was still. “Now take me to her.”

The Queen, dressed in a common woman’s garment, sat on her floor cushion by a small table, in her hands a piece of red satin which she was embroidering. The light of two candles shone upon her quietly moving hands and she did not look up when the door slid back, until he stepped inside.

“Majesty!”

The word rose to his lips and he spoke it softly. No word must reveal who she was. He stood looking at her in silence and she looked at him and then her hands fell upon the table, the red satin a gleaming heap between them.

“I am making your second son a pair of shoes,” she said.

He did not reply. He came close and knelt before her on the other side of the cushion, and Sunia followed and knelt beside him. He spoke so softly that his lips moved almost without voice.

“We must leave this house tonight. You are not safe and I cannot protect you. I may not be able to protect even my family. Dress yourself warmly and put out the candles as though you were going to sleep. I will come here to fetch you and we will take horse and ride to some distant place. I have a friend in Chung-jo—”

She did not reply. For minutes she sat with her great dark eyes fixed upon him. Then she folded the square of red satin and thrust the needle through.

“I shall be ready,” she said, and added not one word.

He and Sunia rose then and went away to their own rooms.

What was there to say in such a time, even between him and Sunia? She prepared a bundle of warm clothing and put in some dried foods, in case they dared not stop at inns or in case snow fell and held them back in some lonely spot.

She asked only one question while he changed his house robes to warmer ones. “Should you not take your servant with you?”

He hesitated. “He is a faithful creature but he has been away from his family all these moons. There are certain dangers, too, if we are discovered.”

She interrupted. “I cannot think of your being alone. If you were killed in ambush, who would come back to tell me?”

Her face was quivering with suppressed weeping and his heart yielded while his will rose to make her strong. He took her hands and held them in his.

“I need your courage,” he told her. “All that I have is not enough for what lies ahead. Your tears undo me. It is my duty to serve the Queen, because in her is the only hope of our country. Do you think that otherwise I could leave you — or defend her? She must be kept alive, she must return, she must wile the King away again from his father. Fortunately, I hear that he loves her and leans on her. Fortunately he does not love his father. He longs to rebel against him and hates himself because he is too weak to rebel. Or so I hear. A few months, Sunia, and if I plan well, the Queen will be back and the throne secure for a while, at least.”

“Why must it be you?” she murmured, distracted.

“Because she trusts me,” he said.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “You had better wear your fur-lined coat, and I will fetch it,” she said.

In the small cold hours of the night he went to the door of the room where the Queen waited. He had bade his servant to be ready with three horses outside the gate, for this much he had yielded to Sunia, but he commanded him to ask no questions, whatever he guessed. Now while Sunia slid back the doors, he stood outside the Queen’s room until Sunia came out, her hand clasping the Queen’s hand. None spoke. The Queen was wrapped in fur-lined robes and a silk scarf was wound around her head and fell over her face like a veil. He walked ahead and she followed with Sunia while around them the house slept. Outside the gate, in the fortunate dark of the moon, the horses waited. Even the gateman slept, for the servant had opened the gate secretly, and now he stood holding the bridles of the three horses.

Il-han helped the Queen to mount. Then he turned to Sunia. “Go into the house, core of my heart,” he said. “Go and sleep warmly and dream that I am home again, as surely I shall be. As far as man may promise, I promise you.”

They clung together for an instant in the darkness and then she turned resolutely to obey him. He waited until he heard her draw the iron bar against the gate. Then he mounted his horse and they rode through the night, the hooves of the horses soundless against the cobblestones because the man servant had wrapped the horses’ feet in rags. When they reached the city gate, the guard held his lantern high to see who wished to flee the city. The Queen put aside her scarf, he saw her face, and speechless he turned and drew back the iron bar.

That night and for the next few days Il-han did not take the usual stone-paved highway to the city of Chung-jo. Instead he guided his horse through country roads and mountain paths, stopping not at inns when darkness fell but with some peasant family in a village. Never before had the Queen met face to face with these many whom she ruled, and Il-han found that he had not one woman to protect and hide but many women in one. Thus she was amazed to discover that a farmer’s house had but one room, the other one or two being no better than closets, and suddenly she was all Queen.

“What,” she exclaimed to Il-han the first night, “am I to lie among all these stinking folk?”

“Remember you are a commoner now, on your way to visit distant relatives, and I am your brother.”

She yielded at once. “I have always wanted a brother,” she said sweetly.

Lucky that he had warned her not to speak in the presence of any strangers, for her sweet voice and pure accents would have betrayed her anywhere as no common traveler.

“Be shy,” he had told her, “remember that women should not speak unless spoken to by father, brother or husband. No one will suspect you if you do not speak.”

Now that she was somewhat safe, the old mischief and gaiety glinted irrepressible in her eyes and smiles. He looked away. Steady and cool he must be with this powerful willful woman, and yet he knew that if he had not the safety of his love for Sunia she might have put him into torment. Were she no more than Queen, she would have been temptation, but she was also the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she used her beauty as only a Queen dares to use such a weapon, knowing that if a man makes trespass she can have his head cut off, or poison put in his food. He believed that she would not stoop to such evils, but he knew, too, that a man can never trust a Queen. He held her then in unfailing respect, not drawing nearer than a subject may, and this though she tempted him on purpose, as a woman will, though it was a game he would not play.

“And remember,” he told her one night when she complained that she could not eat the coarse food of the country folk, “remember that these are your people and this food is what they eat until they die and they never see better than a bit of pork once or twice a year. And if the room they live in crowds you, and the smells are too foul for you to breathe, then remember that these are still your people and they have no palace in which to live.”

“Nor have I,” she said mournfully.

“You have,” he said firmly. “If you hold to your courage, you shall be in your palace again within the year.”

In these ways he kept her to her best, and was heartened because she grew less willful and more steadfast as the days passed. She learned to watch the people and see how they did, instead of turning away from them, and in so doing she became more the queen and less the woman.

They reached Chung-jo on a cold winter’s night. Il-han went to his friend’s house, and knocked on the gate with the handle of his whip. His friend opened the door himself, for he was poet and a poor man, and had no servant.