The Peony Lantern (16 page)

A withering wind

Sees the witch's dry fingers

Scratching the shutters

The following week we had another visit from Isamu, perhaps prompted by the fact that his uncle had once again left Edo on a mission for the daimyo.

‘Tea, Kasumi — and some sweets,' Misaki ordered. ‘And see if you can find the cups with the maple leaves on them.'

It took me some time to find the cups in the storehouse and arrange the chestnut sweets on a plate.

I came back into the room, carrying the tray, in time to hear Misaki ask plaintively, ‘Do you have no reply at all to my letters?'

‘Kasumi!' Isamu said, a little too loudly.

I froze in the doorway as Misaki gave a little gasp. Recovering quickly, she said, ‘I was just asking Isamu if
he had received a letter from his uncle. We hear so little news when Minoru is away, it makes me anxious.'

I busied my hands with moving the items from the tray to the
kotatsu
, a low table with a quilt on top and a charcoal burner beneath, which had been placed in the room since the weather turned cool. My mind was busy turning over the implication of Misaki's words. I had thought her letter to Isamu had been a one-off, urging him to cease his attentions, but now it appeared that she had written more than once — and it was Isamu who wasn't replying. Did I have it all wrong? Was it Misaki who loved Isamu? But then there was the comb — I was sure I had caught Isamu in the act of returning it. Perhaps I had misunderstood. Maybe she had sent it to him and he was returning it. I thought of him saying,
Kasumi, it's not what you think . . .

Isamu, in an attempt to change the subject no doubt, began to describe a Noh performance he had seen recently at the daimyo's mansion.

‘It was so moving,' he said. ‘Far superior to anything I've seen in Matsuyama.'

‘When we went I found it so boring I nearly fell asleep,' I confessed.

‘Perhaps you're unable to appreciate it because you're not a samurai,' Misaki mused; I couldn't read her mood, couldn't tell if she was serious or joking. ‘Townsfolk prefer kabuki. It's much less refined.'

Had she forgotten that she was no more a samurai lady than I was? If she were a true lady, she would not have been writing letters to her husband's nephew.

‘Apparently the new kabuki season starts today,' Isamu remarked.

‘Oh yes, the Kaomise,' Misaki said. ‘I've heard of it.'

‘What's the Kaomise?' I wanted to know.

‘It happens every year on the first day of the tenth month,' Misaki explained. ‘It's the showing of the faces, when the new troupe is introduced at a theatre and the season's program is announced. It's a big event on the Edo calendar. People will have been queuing up since last night to get in.'

‘Have you been to the kabuki, Isamu?' I asked.

‘No. I'd love to see
The Treasury of Loyal Retainers
, but the daimyo doesn't approve of kabuki.'

Misaki gave a brittle laugh. ‘When has that ever stopped anyone?' She turned to me. ‘What's your favourite kabuki play, Kasumi?'

‘I've never been. Tsumago was too small to have a theatre.'

‘Oh, I wish we could take you. It's completely different to Noh. You'd love it.'

I gave her a warning look; Isamu might wonder how a samurai lady came to be so familiar with townsfolk theatre.

She widened her eyes as if in understanding, then drew our attention to the chestnut sweets.

Isamu didn't stay long, excusing himself as he was on night duty at the mansion and dusk was already falling. I wondered if he was troubled by the scene I had almost witnessed, by Misaki's strange mood. I began to gather the cups and teapot, putting them onto the tray. Misaki took the last sweet from the plate and said, ‘We should go.'

‘Go where?' I asked.

‘What have we been talking about? To the kabuki.'

I looked at her doubtfully. ‘I don't think Lord Shimizu would approve.'

Her face fell. ‘I suppose not. I miss it, though. I miss so many things from my old life. It would be so much fun just to forget about being a samurai for a day and go to the kabuki.' She looked both defiant and wistful. Was this an effect of Isamu's rejection?

‘But wouldn't you stand out?' I asked. ‘I don't imagine there'd be many ladies at the kabuki dressed like you.'

‘You could lend me one of your kimonos. It would be like being ordinary again.' She sounded so happy at the prospect that I wondered if she sometimes regretted her marriage. And yet she loved her husband . . . didn't she? ‘Please, Kasumi.' She looked almost desperate. Surely this wasn't just about a passion for kabuki. Perhaps her excursion with the ladies of the domain had made her restless, had reminded her of a life with fewer restrictions. Looking around at the beautiful house, I remembered my early weeks here, when I had felt like a prisoner.

‘I don't know,' I said. Did she really mean to go through with this? ‘It doesn't seem right that we should go without Lord Shimizu's permission.'

‘I'll tell my husband when he returns. I just . . . I feel like a caged cricket.' Her hands gripped the edge of the
kotatsu
, knuckles white with tension.

‘How would we get there?'

‘We can walk. It's not very far.'

‘But what about the servants? Would we tell them where we were going?' I wasn't sure how much they knew about Misaki's background, whether they knew she wasn't really a samurai. I had a sudden memory of
Ishi saying,
Like the moon and the turtle
. She would have known Lord Shimizu's first wife, the daimyo's daughter. Had she been comparing Misaki to Lady Aimi?

Misaki hesitated, then said, ‘I'll say we're going to visit the shrine at Asakusa.'

It was a turnaround that she should be so eager to go out while I was reluctant. Not so long ago I had been longing to leave the confines of our house but now I felt cautious. I must have still been shaken by the incident that had occurred while she was away. But that had happened here at home, I reminded myself.

‘I suppose we could,' I said at last.

Misaki clapped her hands in delight. ‘You know the story, don't you, Kasumi?
The Treasury of Loyal Retainers?
It's based on the tale of the forty-seven
rōnin
.'

‘I've heard of it,' I said. ‘But I can't remember the details.' I felt a trickle of unease at the mention of
rōnin
. I gave myself a mental shake. This was nothing to do with the present; the story of the forty-seven
rōnin
was an old one.

I picked up the tray and carried it to the kitchen. Ishi had prepared a mushroom soup for our dinner, and I swapped the cups on the tray for steaming bowls.

When I returned Misaki said, ‘Come sit down and I'll tell you the story.' She rearranged the quilt over her legs and settled herself more comfortably. I slipped my legs under the
kotatsu;
the warmth and the earthy scent of mushrooms were soothing.

Misaki began. ‘There once was a daimyo who, having been insulted, drew a sword against a powerful Shogunate official while in Edo castle. Of course, this was forbidden,
and the daimyo was ordered to perform
seppuku
, ritual suicide.'

Her eyes bright but her tone hushed, Misaki went on to describe how the forty-seven samurai retainers who had been left masterless on their daimyo's death swore a secret oath to revenge their lord, and came up with a devious plan. Now
rōnin
, they dispersed and took on different jobs — as builders, tradesmen, merchants and monks; their leader, Oishi, even appeared to surrender himself to drunkenness.

Misaki sipped from her bowl then continued, ‘But all the time they were waiting, plotting. They secretly smuggled weapons into Edo, and familiarised themselves with the layout of the official's house. One man even married the daughter of a builder who had worked on the house so that he could get his hands on the plans. Meanwhile the official, fearing revenge, sent out spies to watch them, but they discovered nothing. Finally, after two years, the official began to relax his guard.'

Lowering her voice dramatically, Misaki told of a dark winter morning, the heavy snow, the freezing wind. Despite the warmth of the
kotatsu
, of the bowl between my hands, I felt a cold chill between my shoulder blades as the band of
rōnin
split into two groups, one to attack the house from the rear, the other from the front. Misaki started to beat her hand on the table in imitation of Oishi pounding a drum to signal the start of the attack, and my own heart thumped in time. As she described the scene — the battle between the
rōnin
and the official's retainers, the search for the official, who had fled from his bed, and the scene in which he was finally killed — I
held my breath, releasing it in a rush as the
rōnin
, though criminals, were allowed to commit
seppuku
and die with honour in recognition of the loyalty they had shown their master.

‘You told that so well I half expected
rōnin
to overrun the house at any moment!' I said.

‘I love scary stories. Have you ever played A Gathering of One Hundred
Kaidan
?'

I shook my head.
Kaidan
were ghost stories, I knew, but I'd never heard of the game.

‘We used to play it with our neighbours when my mother was still alive. You need three rooms. You light one hundred lanterns in a room with a mirror, then everyone takes it in turn to tell a story. When you've finished your story, you have to walk from the first room and through the second, which is kept in complete darkness, into the room with the lanterns. You have to extinguish one of them and then look in the mirror.' She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘The darker the room gets the safer it is for spirits.'

I stared back, my heart still racing from the story she had just told.

‘Should we play?' Her eyes were gleaming now.

‘We can't tell a hundred stories,' I protested. ‘I don't know that many. Besides, it would take too long. And do we even have that many lanterns?' I both did and didn't want to play. I was still haunted by the shadow in the yard, my slashed bed, the night I had been alone in the house. Sometimes it seemed to me that I must have seen a spirit that night; none of us who were there had spoken of it since. Sometimes I exchanged looks with Ishi, or Goro
would give me an encouraging smile, but my brush with death was never mentioned out loud.

‘That's a lot of objections.' Misaki's lips curved into a smile. ‘But you're right: I don't know that many stories either. And I don't think we do have a hundred lanterns. But we can still play — let's do it with ten lanterns. Unless you're too scared?'

‘I'm not!' I was. And it wasn't just the thought of my slashed quilt, or of provoking spirits with our game: it was Misaki, with her too-bright eyes, her sudden taste for risk and rebellion. I wondered fleetingly if she had been possessed by a spirit herself.

She was already pressing ahead with arrangements for the game. We would tell the stories in her room, then cross the hall into the room that stood between my sleeping alcove and the reception room; this room would be dark, and in the reception room we would arrange the lanterns and the mirror.

I was relieved when Misaki suggested I unroll my futon in her room that night.

‘I'll start,' Misaki offered. We sat facing each other, quilts wrapped around our shoulders for warmth — and in my case comfort. I didn't feel entirely easy about the prospect of waking the spirits. ‘I'm going to tell the story of Okiku and the Nine Plates.'

I was caught between a groan and a smile at the mention of Chiyo's favourite tale. Misaki began to relate, in an almost conversational tone, the tale of the samurai Aoyama Harima, who fell in love with a servant girl named Okiku and promised to marry her, even after he received another more suitable proposal.

‘But Okiku doubted him,' Misaki said. ‘She decided to test his resolve. One day, she broke a plate — not just any plate, but one of ten priceless heirlooms of the Aoyama family . . . and the traditional punishment for breaking one of those special plates was
death
.' Her eyes were huge in the lamplight. ‘But Harima assumed that Okiku had broken the plate by accident, and he pardoned her. Then Okiku revealed that she had broken the plate to test him — and Harima was furious! In a rage, he killed Okiku and threw her body into the well. Every night after that, Okiku's ghost would enter the house and count the plates aloud one through nine.'

As Misaki crossed the corridor and walked through the dark room to extinguish one of the lanterns in the reception room, I thought of the body in the well . . . well-cleaning . . . Tanabata. I remembered Shimizu arriving home, his face as stricken as if he himself had seen a ghost — the revelation that he had been witness to an attack, had seen members of his circle killed. The trouble with ghost stories, I thought, was not with what was invented but the reminders of what was true.

When Misaki returned I recounted the story of Hoichi the Earless, a blind musician who is bewitched by ghosts, and Misaki responded with a story about
jikininki
, ghosts who scavenge for the corpses of the newly dead, which made us both shriek with horrified laughter.

I could still hear her giggling, somewhat nervously, as she went to extinguish the third lantern.

When she returned I told the fourth story, another of Chiyo's, about Yuki-onna, a beautiful woman in a white kimono. I described her long black hair and pale skin,
her lips blue with cold, how she appeared to travellers in snowstorms and killed them with an icy kiss.

Rising, I walked across the darkened room. The skin prickled on the back of my neck as if someone other than Misaki were watching me.