He smiled that thin-lipped smile of his, and queried: 

“How like you the Lady Om?”

“In such matters a cuny is naught particular,” I temporized.

“How like you her?” he repeated, his beady eyes boring into me.

“Passing well, ay, and more than passing well, if you will have it.”

“Then win to her,” he commanded, “and some day we will get ship and escape from this cursed land.  I’d give half the silks of the Indies for a meal of Christian food again.”

He regarded me intently.

“Do you think you can win to her?” he questioned.

I was half in the air at the challenge.  He smiled his satisfaction.

“But not too quickly,” he advised.  “Quick things are cheap things.  Put a prize upon yourself.  Be chary of your kindnesses.  Make a value of your bull throat and yellow hair, and thank God you have them, for they are of more worth in a woman’s eyes than are the brains of a dozen philosophers.”

Strange whirling days were those that followed, what of my audiences with the Emperor, my drinking bouts with Taiwun, my conferences with Yunsan, and my hours with the Lady Om.  Besides, I sat up half the nights, by Hamel’s command, learning from Kim all the minutiae of court etiquette and manners, the history of Korea and of gods old and new, and the forms of polite speech, noble speech, and coolie speech.  Never was sea-cuny worked so hard.  I was a puppet—­puppet to Yunsan, who had need of me; puppet to Hamel, who schemed the wit of the affair that was so deep that alone I should have drowned.  Only with the Lady Om was I man, not puppet . . . and yet, and yet, as I look back and ponder across time, I have my doubts.  I think the Lady Om, too, had her will with me, wanting me for her heart’s desire.  Yet in this she was well met, for it was not long ere she was my heart’s desire, and such was the immediacy of my will that not her will, nor Hendrik Hamel’s, nor Yunsan’s, could hold back my arms from about her.

In the meantime, however, I was caught up in a palace intrigue I could not fathom.  I could catch the drift of it, no more, against Chong Mong-ju, the princely cousin of the Lady Om.  Beyond my guessing there were cliques and cliques within cliques that made a labyrinth of the palace and extended to all the Seven Coasts.  But I did not worry.  I left that to Hendrik Hamel.  To him I reported every detail that occurred when he was not with me; and he, with furrowed brows, sitting darkling by the hour, like a patient spider unravelled the tangle and spun the web afresh.  As my body slave he insisted upon attending me everywhere; being only barred on occasion by Yunsan.  Of course I barred him from my moments with the Lady Om, but told him in general what passed, with exception of tenderer incidents that were not his business.

I think Hamel was content to sit back and play the secret part.  He was too cold-blooded not to calculate that the risk was mine.  If I prospered, he prospered.  If I crashed to ruin, he might creep out like a ferret.  I am convinced that he so reasoned, and yet it did not save him in the end, as you shall see.