The Peony Lantern (17 page)

I snuffed out one of the lanterns and the light in the room dimmed. I shivered. Had a cold breeze passed through the room? Or was it a spirit? Yuki-onna's cool breath . . .

I hurried back to the light and warmth of Misaki's room.

With each trip into the lantern room, it grew darker and darker.

For the ninth tale, Misaki told the story of the peony lantern. ‘It happened during Obon,' she began. ‘A samurai who had lost his wife saw a beautiful woman and her maid walk past his house, holding a lantern with peonies painted on it. He fell in love with the woman, and from then on she began to visit his house every evening at dusk, always leaving before dawn. One evening a neighbour, suspicious, peered through the samurai's window. But instead of a beautiful woman, he saw the samurai and . . .' Misaki leaned forwards so that her face was above the lantern, and I leaned in too to hear her whispered words: ‘. . . a skeleton.'

With a gasp, I reared back.

‘The next day the neighbour told the samurai what he'd seen and the samurai went to see a priest, who told him he must resist the woman. The priest gave the samurai prayer strips to protect his house so the woman couldn't enter. That evening, as usual, the
beautiful woman came to the samurai's house at dusk, accompanied by her maid with the peony lantern. She tried to enter the house but couldn't, so she called to her lover from outside. The samurai couldn't resist her pleas. He came outside, and she led him back to her house. But her house . . . it was a grave in the cemetery.' She stopped, drew an unsteady breath. ‘And that was where his dead body was found the next morning.'

Misaki had finished her story but she didn't move. Finally she said, ‘I can't go in there by myself. Come with me.'

‘Isn't that against the rules?'

‘I don't care.'

Reluctantly I rose and followed her across the corridor. We stood at the threshold for a moment, the blackness between us and the dimly illuminated reception room as heavy and impenetrable as a fog. My heart was pounding as we stepped into the dark room, our feet whispering like ghosts on the
tatami
, the shapes of the furniture in the reception room ahead looking strange and unfamiliar.

We entered the nearly dark room with its two remaining lanterns and I stood beside Misaki as she snuffed out the ninth flame. Neither of us were giggling now; our earlier bravado had been extinguished along with the light.

We looked in the mirror together and in the dim glow saw our drawn faces, made eerie with the shadows that quivered on the ceiling and walls.

Beside me Misaki swallowed. ‘It's time for the last story.' Her voice sounded hoarse.

‘I . . . I can't,' I whispered. I feared that if we extinguished the final lantern, demons would flood the room.

‘Me neither.'

‘Let's light the lanterns again,' I suggested in a shaky voice.

We laughed at ourselves, lighting lanterns in order to go to bed, but my laughter was tinged with dread. I had the uncanny sense that we had awakened the spirits anyway, that demons danced just beyond the circle of light.

We sat for a while in the reception room, drinking tea and talking about anything but the game we had just played.

‘I think I'm feeling sleepy. You?' Misaki asked.

‘I suppose.'

One by one we extinguished the lanterns until only a single lantern in the bedroom remained.

‘Are you ready?' Misaki asked, her voice breathy.

No, I thought. I closed my eyes. ‘Yes,' I said aloud. My own voice sounded thin.

Misaki snuffed out the lantern and we were plunged into darkness. It was the same darkness as every other night yet it felt different. But perhaps darkness was like a river; every moment a river is new, it is never the same water. And so this darkness was new, turning the rustle of leaves in the garden into sighs, the calls of night birds into the cries of lonely spirits.

Linking arms, we stumbled to our futons.

‘Goodnight,' Misaki said.

‘Goodnight.'

I lay awake listening to Misaki's calm breathing beside me, slowing and deepening into slumber. But sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. After everything that had happened — the attack on Shimizu at the restaurant, learning that the previous attacks were connected, knowing that even here at home we weren't safe — I felt I might never sleep again, and yet from one minute to the next I had slipped into dreams that were haunted by demons.

I saw Shimizu's first wife as a ghost, wooing him to her grave. Then I was dreaming of a
rōnin
, clad all in black. I heard him sliding open the shutter, the wood catching slightly. Saw him slipping into the house and creeping towards my futon with a sword.

He stepped into a beam of moonlight and I saw it was not a
rōnin
at all but Rin, her face distorted like a Hannya mask. There was the gentle tread of footsteps across the
tatami
. She paused by the reception room then stepped inside. From Misaki's room I heard her take another step, then another, moving through the reception room into the one beside it, closer to the alcove where I slept. I was somehow aware that I was asleep, that it wasn't real, and yet though I told myself to wake I couldn't, I was trapped in the dream. A blade flashed in the moonlight, my breath caught in my throat and with a gasp I awoke.

Relieved, I opened my eyes, released at last from the dream. I willed my breathing to slow, but then I saw a lantern glowing through the screens separating the bedroom from the reception room, illuminating a large shadow moving stealthily towards my alcove . . .

The drums are pounding

A curtain is slowly raised

To reveal a mask

I heard a faint sound beside me and realised that Misaki was awake too. I felt for her hand and clutched it as the shadow turned away from my alcove. It had to be Goro, I realised. Shimizu must have asked him to check on us while he was away. Yet still I began to tremble as the footsteps came our way, drew nearer. Surely the night guard would never dare enter Misaki's room as she slept. I closed my eyes, feeling Misaki's fingernails digging into the skin of my hand as she squeezed.

And then she was saying, in a voice high with fright, ‘Minoru! I didn't know you were home.'

I opened my eyes to see Lord Shimizu standing above us.

‘I arrived in the city this afternoon but had to go straight to the mansion and from there to a meeting.' He sagged, whether from fatigue or the weight of his cares I couldn't tell. ‘There was another attack.'

‘Was anyone —?'

‘Two from the Aizu domain.'

Beside me, Misaki tensed. ‘And you? Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine.' His voice was firm.

‘But it could have been you!' She was sitting up now. Even without makeup, her face was pale in the lamplight, distraught. ‘You've been hurt once already.'

‘And you haven't discovered the traitor,' I said. ‘Your enemies still knew where to find you.'

‘Yes. Yes, that's true.'

‘Come to bed,' Misaki suggested. ‘You look exhausted.'

I scrambled to get out of bed and move my futon back to the alcove.

Shimizu stopped me with a raised palm. ‘Please, don't disturb yourself, Kasumi. I'll sleep in the reception room; I'll be leaving again before daybreak.'

‘So soon?' said Misaki.

‘I have to go with a representative of the Aizu domain to Aizu Wakamatsu. It's where the men who were killed are from. I need to speak to their daimyo.'

He could have slept at the mansion, but had chosen to come home instead. Was he checking on us? He must be worried about our safety.

When I next opened my eyes, the outer shutters had been pulled back and muted sunlight was glowing softly through the paper screen. Misaki was already awake. ‘My husband has gone. Or was it just a dream?'

‘At first it was more like a nightmare.'

‘I'm almost relieved he's going away,' Misaki admitted. ‘It seems that he's in more danger when he's in Edo than when he's travelling.'

‘But you miss him when he's away, don't you?'

‘It's hard to be apart from those you care about,' she agreed. Her expression was troubled, and I realised that she hadn't really answered my question.
It's hard to be apart from those you care about
. Surely she wasn't thinking of Isamu? The ghost stories had distracted me so that I'd almost forgotten the scene I'd overheard the afternoon before. Maybe that had been her intention . . .

‘Don't you sometimes wish that you could be a spirit?' she went on dreamily. ‘Not one of the evil ones, but maybe a spirit who can travel with the wind to see other places.'

No, I thought, relieved; she hadn't been trying to distract me. She was just thinking of her father back in Morioka.

‘After last night, nothing could make me willingly enter the spirit world,' I said, only half joking. ‘I dreamed about
rōnin
creeping around the house with swords. I almost died of fright when Lord Shimizu came home.'

‘I suppose that means you'll be too scared to come with me to the kabuki now?'

Another thing I'd forgotten. ‘Maybe we shouldn't.'

I wished we'd had a chance to talk to Shimizu about it. I was sure he would forbid it — and for good reason.

‘It's not us who are in danger,' Misaki reasoned.

Of course, she didn't know how close I'd come to being killed in my bed. At once I saw an image of Rin as a
rōnin
, creeping towards my sleep-frozen form with her sword raised. Could she have been behind the attack? Perhaps she had known that Shimizu would be away and she had timed the invitation to Misaki to join her in Hakone so that I would be alone in the house. Maybe she had decided that I was the traitor. After all, like Misaki I came from outside the Matsuyama domain.

Almost at once I dismissed the idea as too far-fetched; the ghost stories had gone to my head. And not only that — how arrogant of me! What made me think I was so important all of a sudden that the sister-in-law of a daimyo would concern herself with me? Rin had said it herself: I was no one.

‘When do you want to go?' I asked Misaki.

Her face relaxed. ‘Let's do it soon — tomorrow.'

The next morning saw us rising before the sun and rousing a sleepy Goro to open the gate for us. If he thought it odd that we were going out alone, he didn't say anything. At least in the dark he probably couldn't see that Misaki wore one of my kimonos beneath her padded jacket.

I had wondered how we would find the kabuki theatres, but Misaki assured me she had a general idea of where they were. ‘Along the river from the bridge where we saw the fireworks,' she explained, breath steaming in the frigid air.

We retraced the path to the bridge easily enough, and from there Misaki asked for directions from a woman selling soba noodles at a stand near the river. Putting on my kimono had changed my mistress; she was a confident townswoman now, not the reserved young wife of a high-ranking samurai, though she still wore her makeup.

‘It's Saruwaka Street you're wanting, in Asakusa. That's where the theatres are.'

‘Is it far?' I asked.

‘About half an hour north of here.'

We entered the theatre district through a large wooden gate to find a street packed with people, the crowd jostling around food vendors and strolling musicians and street performers.

To my surprise I heard the cry of a mountain cuckoo rising above the buzz of voices and looked up, only to realise it was a man mimicking the bird's call.

We passed a row of stalls selling woodblock prints of actors in scenes from different plays. Looking at them, I couldn't help but recall the beauty print Isamu had shown me, which in turn reminded of the portrait I'd done of Misaki. Wincing, I tried to think of something else. Fortunately there was plenty to distract me. My eyes darted from teahouses to puppet theatres, from waiters with trays of food to the kabuki theatres themselves, hung with banners and signs advertising the shows.

We waited in line at the ticket booth, and then were swept by the tide of the throng towards our seats, Misaki propelling me in front of her.

‘I've never been in such a crowd!' I said. When she didn't respond I turned to see that she was no longer behind me. For a moment I froze, oppressed by the crush, the noise bearing down on me, alone in the sea of people. I looked around frantically, afraid to be lost there, and was relieved when I caught sight of Misaki.

She was talking to a young man holding a stack of papers, her posture eager at first, leaning towards him, then abruptly she reared back, shaking her head. Was he bothering her? I tried to push my way towards her but the current of the crowd was too strong. As I watched, she tried to re-enter the stream of people but he caught her sleeve. He seemed to be whispering to her urgently. She grew very still.

Then she spun around and I could see her scanning the faces, looking for me. I waved.

I heard a voice above the crowd — ‘Misaki!' — but she didn't turn. Moments later she materialised at my side.

‘Our seats are this way,' she said. ‘So many people! I suppose it's to be expected so close to the opening of the season.' She made no reference to her encounter with the young man.

When we were settled in a row halfway along the aisle, I turned to Misaki. ‘Who was that man you were speaking to?' I asked.

She turned to me with a face as smooth and expressionless as an actor's mask. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

I turned back to face the stage. I was certain of what I'd seen. She'd been talking to the young man. He'd even called her by name.

I ran my eyes over the crowd and caught sight of the young man. He was watching us. Misaki stared straight ahead as if unaware of his gaze and I saw the young man's brow crease slightly. Then his gaze shifted to me and the furrows in his forehead deepened. All at once I recognised him. He had been standing outside the gate the day I arrived in Edo.

I glanced sideways at Misaki and caught a flash of emotion in her eyes. Was that . . . fear? Of whom? The young man? Had he been threatening her? Then I saw her shake her head at him almost imperceptibly, as if in warning. I was sure now that she knew him. I remembered how insistent she'd been on coming to the kabuki. Had she known he would be here?

My wonderings were silenced as the curtain began to open. Inch by inch it moved as the drum beat forty-seven times. Each beat reverberated through me like a footstep getting closer and closer.

And then I was swept away. Misaki had been right; this was nothing like Noh. It was loud and noisy and completely absorbing. There were clappers to emphasise the drama, flamboyant costume changes. The theatre rang with the sound of the crowd calling out the names of their favourite actors, applauding when the actors struck a pose.

Everything was colour and sound and movement until we reached the finale. My skin prickled as, in the small hours of a snowy dawn, the forty-seven
rōnin
advanced on the official's mansion. I was leaning forwards now and so was everyone else. And then the theatre erupted into noise as the
rōnin
attacked and a number of fights broke
out on stage. The audience shouted at the actors and I was vaguely aware that I was shouting too.

As we filed out of the theatre, I felt exhausted but exhilarated. To call out and release the tension of the drama was such a change from the creeping unease of the ghost stories we'd told at home.

I paused again by the stands outside selling woodblock prints and wished I had the money to buy some for myself. I tried to get Misaki to stop so I could look at them but she seemed to be in a rush to get home.

Walking along, I recalled my favourite moments and asked Misaki to share hers, but she just shook her head.

‘Didn't you enjoy it?' She had been so excited by the prospect of a trip to the theatre, but now was strangely subdued.

‘It was okay.'

I fell silent too, the kabuki forgotten. Who was that young man, and what had he said to upset her? And why had she lied?