Chapter 15: The Silver Pin

The New Year came in on a morning so cold that the water in the stone basin outside the pavilion froze solid overnight, and Ok-bun had to break it with the handle of a ladle before So Hee could wash.

It was the first New Year So Hee had ever spent anywhere but Namgok. At home, on the first morning of the year, her mother used to rise before dawn and cook a pot of rice cake soup with whatever they could spare, a few slices of rice cake, a scrap of radish, an egg if the hens had been generous, and the two of them would eat it together in the little medical house with the door propped open to the cold, watching the sun come up over the barley hill. Then Ja Young would kneel in front of So Hee and straighten her collar and tell her she was a year older, and So Hee would bow to her mother in the formal New Year bow, forehead to the floor, and her mother would laugh and pull her up and hug her.

This year, So Hee knelt alone in the cold dawn light, before the small memorial tablet she had set on the shelf beside her mother’s medicine box, and made her bow to it. She stayed there a long time, her forehead against the floor.

“You’d have scolded me for this, Eomma,” she whispered. “Kneeling on a cold floor in my condition. You’d have made me get up and put on another jacket.”

She got up, and put on another jacket, and went to begin the year.

By the third day of the first month, there was no hiding it any longer.

Four months had rounded the small firm curve beneath her ribs into something no loose sash could disguise. So Hee could see it herself, when she stood sideways in the morning light, and she knew the court ladies could see it too. Heads turned when she walked the palace corridors to the Queen’s residence. Conversations stopped when she passed, and started again, low and urgent, the moment she’d gone by.

She had expected to have to decide how to tell the King. In the end, she was spared the decision.

On the fourth morning, when she arrived at the Queen’s residence with her medicine box and knelt to take Her Majesty’s pulse, the Queen gently withdrew her wrist.

“Not today, Sohun,” she said. “Today, I think, it’s my turn to examine you.”

So Hee looked up, startled.

The Queen was smiling. It was the first time So Hee had seen her smile fully since the birth, a warm, amused smile that reached all the way to her eyes, and in that moment she looked remarkably like her daughter.

“Jungjeon mama—”

“Oh, don’t look so stricken. I’ve known for weeks. I suspected since the day you walked out on the fried fish, and I’ve been certain since the end of the eleventh month.” The Queen glanced toward the far side of the room, where the baby prince was asleep in his cradle under the watchful eye of his wet nurse, and lowered her voice. “My daughter told me.”

So Hee closed her eyes. “Of course she did.”

“She lasted eleven days, which is ten and a half days longer than I’d have wagered. She came to me in the middle of the afternoon, in tears, and told me she’d sworn to keep a secret and couldn’t bear it another moment, and then she told me everything, and then she made me swear I’d never tell you she’d told me.” The Queen’s smile widened. “So you mustn’t tell her I told you.”

So Hee laughed despite herself, a little shakily.

“I’ve told His Majesty,” the Queen went on, more quietly. “Last night. He wishes to see you this afternoon, in his private study. Not in the throne hall.” She reached out and laid her hand, briefly, over So Hee’s. “He’s glad, Sohun. You should know that before you go. He’s worried, as a king must be. But he’s glad.”

The King’s private study was a small, plain room at the back of the main palace, lined with books and scrolls, with a single brush-and-ink painting of bamboo in the snow hanging on the far wall. There was no dais and no throne, only a low writing table and two cushions, and a brazier glowing in the corner.

The King was alone. He wore a simple grey robe, and when So Hee knelt and bowed, he waved her up with an impatience that reminded her sharply of his son.

“Sit, Sohun. Sit. You shouldn’t be bowing to the floor in your condition. I’m told by my wife that it’s bad for the child.” He studied her across the writing table. “Four months?”

“A little more, Jeonha.”

“And you’ve known since the autumn.” It wasn’t a question. “My son has known since the autumn. My daughter has known since the first snow, and my wife since the end of the eleventh month. It seems I’m the last person in my own palace to hear of my first grandchild.”

So Hee lowered her eyes. “The Senior Uinyeo advised that no one should be told until the third month had passed, Jeonha. Until the child was safer.”

“The Senior Uinyeo gave you wise counsel.” The King was quiet for a moment, turning a brush slowly between his fingers. “You understand what this child means, Sohun. If it’s a son.”

“Yes, Jeonha.”

“Tell me what you understand.”

So Hee drew a breath. “That he’d be the first son of the Crown Prince, born before any Crown Princess has been chosen, to a mother who was a slave eight months ago. That some at court will see him as a blessing to the royal line, and others as an insult to it. And that some will see him as an obstacle to their own families’ ambitions.” She hesitated, then made herself say it. “And that some of those may wish he were never born.”