Chapter 5: A Lady's Hand

Soyul folded the scrap and closed her fist on it.

"Lady Baek?" Captain Kang said.

"Not here."

He looked at her fist, then at her face.

"Then tomorrow," he said. "I'll be at the gate."

In the morning the Queen Dowager summoned the three finalists to her palace to write.

It was part of the selection, her court lady said.

A queen's handwriting would be seen by the whole kingdom.

They knelt at three low desks in a bright room that smelled of ink and chrysanthemums.

Six court ladies stood along the wall, and the Queen Dowager sat on a raised cushion at the end.

No screen today.

She was small and straight-backed, her white hair pinned with a jewelled hairpin, and her eyes missed nothing.

"A poem," she said. "Four lines. About autumn."

The youngest finalist went pale.

Yeonseo lifted her brush and began at once.

Soyul watched her from the corner of her eye.

Yeonseo held the brush high, the way scholars do, and her wrist never touched the paper.

The strokes unrolled off the brush.

Soyul didn't need to unfold the scrap in her sleeve.

She had looked at it until dawn.

"Lady Baek," the Queen Dowager said. "Your paper is empty."

"Forgive me, Your Highness."

Soyul wrote four lines about a persimmon tree.

Her handwriting was plain and square.

Her father had taught her to write on the backs of army lists.

When the court lady carried the papers up, the Queen Dowager read Yeonseo's first and was silent a long time.

"Beautiful," she said.

Yeonseo bowed.

She read the youngest one's next and her mouth twitched.

"You've written a poem about honey cakes."

"They're autumn honey cakes, Your Highness," the youngest finalist said miserably.

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Time, I Stood Up in the Selection Hall from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.