The Last Concubine (44 page)

‘When we arrive we expect the castle to be empty,’ said another. ‘The ladies will be suitably accommodated outside the castle. They will remain in seclusion, under our orders.’

‘You’ll have to kill us first.’ The Retired One’s voice was as sharp and clear as a sliver of ice. ‘This is where we belong. This is our home. If you want us to leave you’ll have to remove us by force. We’ll die by our own hands.’

‘Excuse me, my lady.’ It was the princess’s voice. She chose her words with care, speaking calmly and with dignity. ‘I bow to the command of His Grace my nephew, the Son of Heaven. I will take it upon myself to ensure that your orders are carried out.’

In the gardens a heron shrieked. The scent of spring wafted through the thick gold leaf of the walls, drenching the darkest corners of the great hall with the odour of earth and wet leaves and trees and plants bursting into bud. It had been on a fragrant spring day just like this that Sachi had first seen His Majesty, the late shogun, in the gardens, so many years ago. She felt a spasm in her throat as she remembered and swallowed hard.

Harsh male voices crackled from the other side of the room.

‘Just in time to see the cherry blossom.’

‘Lucky, unh?’

The women knelt, staring defiantly at the tatami. It was a cruel reminder that everything was about to change. They would all be gone before the cherry blossom had reached full bloom.

Among the murmur of voices Sachi heard a stifled sob. Startled, she looked around. Haru, of all people. And she a samurai!

The room was packed with men, pressed around the edges of the great hall and crammed beyond the open doors. Two envoys in full court regalia faced the princess and the Retired One. Four
or five other men stood there too. They looked like officers, perhaps generals. They were wearing splendid red and gold
haori
surcoats with starched wing-like shoulders, but instead of the usual formal dress they had black southern uniforms underneath. A wild-looking bunch with swarthy faces and fierce black eyes, some had moustaches and beards and hair as long and bushy as a bear’s mane. Others wore their hair oiled and tugged back into a horse’s tail, held in place with a red and gold headband.

The rest were ordinary soldiers – burly leather-skinned veterans of battle, hard-eyed professionals. Some held red banners marked with a white cross in a circle – the crest of the Satsuma, the most intractable of the southern clans. Just as she had thought, they were all wearing their swords.

Some were yawning, looking bored. Some were gloating, stifling grins as if they couldn’t believe their luck. They seemed a little shamefaced too, like children who had been caught fighting or stealing or running away. Here they were right inside the forbidden palace, in the innermost sanctum, the most secret part, walking where no man had ever walked before, seeing women no man had ever been allowed to cast eyes on. And without even removing their swords! It was unbearable.

Haru was kneeling bolt upright, her fists clenched. Her eyes were wide and her plump cheeks were as pale as the straw of the tatami mats. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks. She was staring transfixed at someone in the crowd.

At the far end of the hall was a middle-aged man, standing a little apart from the rest. He looked like an official of some sort. He was dressed formally in stiff black
hakama
trousers and a
haori
jacket. He had two swords but he didn’t seem to be a samurai. His head was not shaved and he didn’t have a topknot. His thick hair, greying at the temples, was cut short like a foreigner’s. He was peering around with unabashed curiosity, studying the ranks of bowed heads as if he was trying to make out the faces beneath the gleaming coiffures sparkling with hairpins and combs.

Sachi couldn’t help noticing what a fine-looking man he was, despite his age. Maybe it was the way he held himself, with a kind of quiet confidence. Maybe it was his broad high-cheekboned
face, or the way he gazed so steadily from under his thick brows, or the laughter lines around his eyes, or the half-smile lurking on his full, rather sensual lips. For a southerner he looked almost human.

For a moment their eyes met, and he started. She could see his throat move as he swallowed. He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles went white and he clutched at his sword for support.

Sachi looked away quickly. In her mind something was falling into place. It was as if she had been trying to open one of the puzzle boxes some of the women in the palace had. Only the owner of the box knew the secret sequence of moves, which small slat of wood to slide first and which after. Some of those beautiful boxes took a hundred different moves to open. Sachi felt as if she had worked out which piece to move but she didn’t know yet which way it went.

As soon as the formalities had finished, the man strode across to her. He knelt, slid his fan from his obi, laid it on the tatami in front of him, and made a formal bow.

There was a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. Suddenly Sachi knew exactly what he was going to say.

He spoke the words softly but clearly: ‘I am your father.’

10

Falling Blossoms

I

The great hall seemed to have grown quiet. Somewhere in the distance men’s voices and laughter echoed dully. Not a sound came from the ranks of women, only a soft rustling from the movements of their voluminous skirts.

Sachi looked at the hands resting politely on the tatami in front of her. They were big and muscular with broad nails and black hairs sprouting between the knuckles. Carpenters’ hands, she thought with a sort of dazed wonderment. But surely a carpenter’s would be ingrained with dirt and have chipped, broken nails? These were scrubbed, trimmed and faintly perfumed. They had not seen manual labour for years.

So this was her father. She knew he had asked for her at the village when he had been on his way to Edo with the southern forces. But a father! He was an outsider, a townsman, a southerner with an outlandish haircut, utterly wrong and foreign.

She stared down at her own hands, so small and thin and pale. She was not going to look at him. But she could feel his eyes probing her downturned face, hear the rasp of his breath, smell the pungent scents of sweat and tobacco and southern spices.

Then Taki spoke up. She seemed to sense what Sachi was feeling.

‘You are mistaken, sir,’ she said in her most fiercely protective tones.

‘There’s no mistaking,’ he said. His voice was a low rumble. ‘My daughter. My child. I knew straight away. You are exactly . . .’

He spoke in rough townsman’s Edo overlaid with what sounded like broad Osaka. Sachi knew what he wanted to say: exactly like her mother.

‘I waited so long,’ he said, softly but clearly. ‘So many years. I thought I would never set eyes on you again. And now . . . To find you in this place of all places, at this time of all times . . .’

Sachi was staring at his hands. She looked back at her own. There was something about the way the fingers lay. The tip of his middle finger inclined ever so slightly towards the finger next to it. The same as hers. She looked away, focused her mind, took a deep breath. She had to remember she was a samurai.

‘Who is addressing me?’ she asked. For all her efforts her voice was shaking and her breath came in short gasps.

‘So rude of me,’ he grunted. She glimpsed the stubbly grey hair on the top of his head as he bowed. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Daisuké, humble servant to His Grace the emperor, the Son of Heaven. I am charged with ensuring the smooth transfer of Edo Castle to the imperial command. At your service, madam. I will do all I can to help you and all the ladies.’

Sachi couldn’t resist any longer. She was too curious. She raised her head a fraction and peeked at him through her lashes.

Close up his face was lined and weathered, a little jowly around the cheeks and baggy around the eyes. She could see the pores on his nose, the thick black hairs of his eyebrows. Hairs prickled above his upper lip. His eyes roamed across her nun’s garments, her cowl. He was looking at her as if nothing else existed in the world, studying her face as if he wanted to fix her image in his mind for ever. It was a rather kind face, she thought, not villainous at all. He was not scowling like an enemy or gloating with triumph but gazing at her with a look that was excited and hopeful, sad and despairing all at the same time.

For a moment their eyes met. His were narrow, slightly puffy, a little bloodshot. She started as she realized they were glittering with tears.

Behind him the pompous court envoys and generals in their gleaming red and gold surcoats had disappeared. The lower ranks were milling around in a clot of sweaty black uniforms, pomaded ponytails and oiled rifle butts. They were trying to keep their expressions cool and indifferent, like professional soldiers who strutted through conquered castles every day; but she could see the corners of their mouths twitching and the gleam of triumph in their eyes.

The women pressed their faces to the floor, refusing to let the men see them, but Sachi knew exactly what they were thinking. For ladies such as they, the greatest ladies in the land, to be evicted by this mob of ignorant bumpkins – the ignominy was more than they could endure. Some would go back to their families but many more were vowing to be dead by their own hands long before the seven days had passed.

There was a rustle. Haru slipped forward on her knees. Her plump cheeks were redder than ever and her lips were trembling.

‘My lady,’ she said. ‘I know this man. I can vouch for him.’

The man spun round. ‘Haru,’ he said. ‘Is it really you?’

She nodded.

He turned back to Sachi.

‘My child,’ he said. His voice was a groan. ‘My Sachi.’

She stared at him wildly. He knew her name, her childhood name! She had always thought it was her parents in the village who had given her that name. He could only know it if . . . She looked at his face again, at his eyes, like bitter almonds, barely slanting at all . . . It couldn’t be denied. There was a connection between them stronger even than the bond that united the northerners against the southerners. A bond of blood.

The last soldiers were straggling out of the great hall, scuffing their feet across the exquisite tatami with its woven gold edging. Their voices and raucous laughter, the noxious odours of sweat and clove oil disappeared into the distance.

‘I have to go,’ the man said, still gazing at Sachi. ‘But I beg you, let me return. I know you see me as your enemy. Give me a chance, a chance to get to know you.’

Sachi tried to speak but couldn’t. She was trembling too much.

‘Daisuké-
sama
.’ It was Haru. ‘Please visit us. Her ladyship would like it too, I promise.’

Sachi bowed stiffly. Haru understood everything, yet it was still a struggle to force out the words.

‘You are welcome . . . to come.’

His eyes lit up.

‘Nothing will stop me,’ he said. He bowed and hurried out.

The women made their way slowly through the labyrinth of rooms. For a while there was no sound except the swish of their quilted kimono hems trailing across the tatami and the trilling of birds in the gardens. Then Haru turned to Sachi. She was dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.

‘What did I tell you?’ she said, smiling ruefully through her tears. ‘Is he not the handsomest man you ever saw?’

‘Be careful, my lady,’ said Taki in thin clipped tones. ‘He’s not a good person for people like you to consort with. He’s a townsman. He has no idea of proper behaviour among our class of people. He persuaded your mother – a concubine of the shogun – to neglect her duty. Don’t forget that. Don’t be taken in by him.’

Sachi had never heard Taki speak so disapprovingly before. She was not sure about this man either but Taki’s attitude made her leap to his defence.

‘Taki!’ she said fiercely. ‘You forget. He’s my father.’

Taki bit her lip. With a jolt Sachi realized what she had said – that she had acknowledged their blood relationship, voiced her acceptance of it.

‘He isn’t a good man,’ said Taki, setting her jaw stubbornly. ‘He’s a traitor. He’s an Edo man who’s with the southerners. I don’t know what you can be thinking, Haru-
sama
. If he comes, you can see him, but
my
lady needn’t ever see him again.’

‘My lady’s destiny is intertwined with his,’ said Haru. ‘Now they’ve found each other it’s only the beginning.’

II

Seven days to pack up and leave. In seven days it would all be over.

Sachi was kneeling on a dais, plucking out a melody on a koto. The notes echoed hollowly in the empty room. She was hardly aware of the tune she was playing. Her fingers moved by themselves across the strings. In her thoughts she was far away, outside the castle, up on the hill where the militia was billeted.

Shinzaemon . . . They were nothing but autumn leaves whirling in a typhoon, the two of them, tossed by events far bigger than themselves. Without him the world was an empty place, a howling wilderness. In front of the others she hid her pain, but she had to force herself to smile and laugh.