The Last Concubine (28 page)

‘What have you done to me?’ he growled. ‘You make life too precious. I have to be ready to die. How can I fight if I feel like this?’

Through the door of the teahouse Sachi could see their friends trudging up the snow-covered path towards them, followed by a line of porters with great bundles tied to their backs. Shinzaemon glared at her.

‘I’m supposed to be a man and a soldier. Perhaps what Toranosuké says is true. Mixing with women too much turns you into a woman. This has to stop now, this mad behaviour. If my father caught me he’d kill himself for shame.’

Sachi swallowed hard. Her throat burned and hot tears started in her eyes. She did not deserve such cruel words. She took some breaths and tried to calm the beating of her heart. She needed to steady herself, to be ready to face Taki and Yuki.

Shinzaemon was right, of course, to thrust her away. It was foolish to think for a moment that their lives could be any different. And his harsh words would make their parting easier to bear. It was better this way, better to forget anything had ever happened.

The trek down from the pass was precipitous. Sachi walked with Taki and Yuki, taking their hands and helping them down the steepest parts of the track. She was ashamed to have left them, to have let her feelings run away with her. After all, she was not a child any more. She knew very well she was not free.

She was expecting Taki to scold her for allowing herself to be
alone with a man. But Taki said nothing. She hardly seemed even to have noticed that Sachi had been away.

Sachi looked at her hard. She had been so caught up in her own thoughts and feelings she hadn’t been paying attention to her. Taki seemed to be in a dream herself. Her face was bright, her big eyes glowing. Sachi had never seen her look so pretty and alive. The contours of her face seemed softer and more womanly.

Then she caught her peeking shyly at Toranosuké, flushing whenever he came near.

For the rest of the day they walked in silence, keeping off the main road as much as possible. Sachi took care never to catch up with Shinzaemon. Sometimes she stole a glance at his broad back disappearing along the trail and wondered if he would look back at her. But he never did.

She was watching Taki now, noticing the way she glanced at Toranosuké and lowered her big eyes shyly when he was around. He was certainly very handsome, with his refined features and hair pulled back into a glossy horse’s tail. For a man who had spent so much of his life at war his skin was rather delicate, not sunburned like Shinzaemon’s. He was a samurai through and through – muscular, well-bred and very polite. But he always kept an indefinable distance. There was something else too that made him the embodiment of the samurai ethos. Tatsuemon was constantly at his side. At night they always went off together.

Sachi had never paid much attention to them before. It was not her place to do so. But now she couldn’t help noticing how Tatsuemon gazed adoringly at his master.

It was hardly surprising. Toranosuké’s relationship with Tatsuemon was there for anyone who cared to look. It was so obvious it was not even worthy of note. As a samurai in the classic mould, Toranosuké lived his life among men, believing that contact with women would make him as soft as a woman himself. But surely Taki knew that? Perhaps her feelings had made her blind to what was clear to everyone else, Sachi thought. Toranosuké and Tatsuemon’s was the sort of bond one would expect men to have with each other. It was sanctioned by society and did not threaten its norms. No matter how close they were,
it would not interfere with their families’ marriage plans for them.

It was Sachi and Shinzaemon who had to keep their meetings secret. It was their feelings that were beyond the pale, not Toranosuké’s and Tatsuemon’s.

VI

The next morning the raucous crowing of cocks at dawn broke into Sachi’s dreams. Tramping through a village high on a plateau, she smelt woodsmoke on the breeze and heard the murmur of a stream tumbling along beside the road. She felt the wind in her hair, saw the sunlight speckling the rocks and realized she was nearly home.

But why did people look so poor and ragged? In one village people ran after them holding out straw hats upside down like baskets, begging them to throw in alms. They were as thin and bony as skeletons, their eyes staring and their cheeks blackened and sunken. From time to time she heard the sound of flutes and the rattle of drums. Voices hummed that strange subversive refrain: ‘Who gives a damn? Who gives a damn?’

Wherever they went they heard rumours that the southerners were on their way. Shinzaemon, Toranosuké and Tatsuemon took the precaution of disguising themselves as servants. They stored their long swords in the trunks that the porters carried, along with the women’s halberds, so that they had only their short swords with them to defend themselves.

They were resting in an inn late in the afternoon, warming their hands at the open hearth, when they overheard two men talking.

‘Whenever I see the shogun’s crest it brings tears to my eyes,’ said one. Sachi glanced at him. He was a young man with a round ingenuous face, bulging eyes and an earnest manner. He looked a bit like a blowfish. Although he was dressed like a countryman he didn’t talk like one; no one could be sure who anyone else was these days. There were notices posted in all the inns forbidding talk of politics, be it drinkers arguing over sake or women and children chattering. But who could enforce such a rule?

‘Bit late for that kind of talk,’ snapped the other, an older man with a fleshy face and small watchful eyes. He too was dressed
like a countryman but his hands were far too plump and clean to fool anyone.

‘You really think this new government is going to work?’ demanded the first. ‘At least we knew where we stood with the shoguns. The country was peaceful. We could get on with making a living. These southerners are pushing us all to the brink. What gives them the right to order us about? Their weaponry, that’s all . . .’

He stopped and looked around quickly. The room had gone deathly silent.

‘Whose side are you on then?’ asked the older man in a tone of quiet menace, looking hard at the younger. Sachi glanced at him, wondering if he was a spy, watching out for traitors to the southern cause.

‘The emperor’s, of course,’ said the younger man hastily. ‘But I support the shogun too.’

‘They’re calling for Lord Yoshinobu’s head,’ said the older roughly. ‘You know that. The southern lords are saying he’s a traitor and should be ordered to cut his belly. You’d better be careful what you say. It’s safest to have no opinion at all.’

Sachi felt a chill as sharp as if a blade of ice had entered her heart. If they were planning to execute Lord Yoshinobu, they would be wanting to exterminate his whole family, root and branch, and everyone associated with him. What would become of the princess and the three thousand women at the castle? They were all servants, virtually family of the shogun. And what of Sachi herself? As the concubine of his predecessor, she was officially Lord Yoshinobu’s mother-in-law even though she had never met him.

Thank the gods only Taki knew who she really was. Even the men knew no more than that she was a court lady and a lookalike for the princess. It was more important than ever to keep her secret safe.

Towards evening the little party stumbled wearily to the top of yet another pass. They stopped there, panting and wiping their brows. Ahead of them were mountain ranges, receding, paler and paler, until they faded to nothing on the horizon.

Sachi had noticed something glinting far below. Peering through the trees she looked and looked again. It was a river, snaking along the valley floor between jagged grey cliffs. Could it be . . . the Kiso?

‘Taki, Yu-
chan
,’ she called. ‘Look!’

She had been away so long she had begun to wonder if it really existed or if she had just imagined it. She stood listening, trying to hear the sound of the river as it came rushing down from the mountains, swollen with melted snow. She could almost feel the water on her skin. In her mind she was swimming, darting through the cold water like a fish with young Genzaburo, the ringleader in their adventures, and ugly little Mitsu. Genzaburo had gone off to fight and Mitsu had become a mother; they would not be at the village when she got there.

There was something else. Floating up from the valley behind them, clear as a bell in the mountain air, came a noise like distant thunder. It grew louder and louder. It was like the sound the daimyos and their processions used to make on their way to the village – the tramp of marching feet. There was another sound too, a discordant roar like a forest full of baying animals – voices, men’s voices. If it was a song they were yelling out it was unlike anything she had ever heard before.

Then she saw them. From end to end and edge to edge, the valley they had just come from was filled with men. From the riverbank to the forest that bordered the road were men, marching. She had never seen so many, even when the princess’s grand procession passed through. They swarmed along, as relentless as an invasion of cockroaches or a great tidal wave sweeping through the valley.

Soldiers. Southerners. She could even make out horses hauling cannons.

‘Into the woods,’ hissed Toranosuké. ‘They’ll be up here in no time. Better let them pass. They’re animals. Women and boys don’t stand a chance.’

The other travellers were already melting into the trees. In a moment the road was empty. Sachi, Taki, Yuki and the three men scrambled into the undergrowth, stumbling over stones, rocks and tracts of unmelted snow until they were a good distance from
the road. Then they crouched down and waited. The sounds of marching and singing grew faint for a while as the soldiers entered the lea of the mountain, then louder and louder until the ground was shaking.

The tramp of feet and hooves, the wild whinnying of horses and the rumbling of cannon went on for hours. Through the trees they caught the occasional glimpse of banners and pennants fluttering in the breeze. A great drum boomed out a barbaric beat. The soldiers’ song had a ferocious ring, utterly unlike the plangent melodies that women plucked out on the shamisen and the koto or the boisterous ditties that merrymakers danced to at festivals. After a while Sachi began to pick up the words:

‘
Miya-sama, miya-sama . . .
Majesty, majesty, before your august horse
What is it that flutters so proudly?
       
Toko ton’yare, ton’yare na!

‘Don’t you know that it’s the brocade banner
Signifying punishment for the enemies of the court?
        
Toko tonyare, tonyare na!
’

‘Punishment for the enemies of the court . . .’ How dared they threaten any such thing? Here were she and Taki, members of the true court, forced to hide in the bushes while these rough southern hoodlums strode along with the joyous tramp of conquerors, proclaiming themselves the masters. The humiliation was too much to bear.

Shinzaemon was quivering with rage and hatred. ‘Enough,’ he muttered under his breath. There was such a commotion that no one could have heard him anyway. ‘We’re cowering like women. Just let me get at those southerners. I’ll rip their throats out.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Shin,’ hissed Toranosuké. ‘You want to die in the road like a dog? We’ve got bigger battles to fight. Save your dying for Edo.’

The sun was low in the sky and the clouds were tinged the colour of blood before the road finally became quiet. One by one, travellers began to emerge from the trees. Sachi was hungry and
dirty, scratched and stiff from crouching without moving for so long. Yet she knew that this could only be the vanguard. There would be more troops on their way soon.

At the checkpoint at Shinchaya they were told that the next detachment was due the following day. The little party scurried along, keeping their heads bowed and their eyes lowered. The road was trampled and rutted, the paving stones broken. The doors of some of the inns had been smashed. There was no food. The soldiers had taken everything. In the end they found one inn that still had some tea. They were grateful to drink that.

The next day they set out well before dawn. They wanted to cover as many
ri
as they could before the next division of soldiers came along. The women walked in front followed by the porters carrying the trunks. The men brought up the rear so that anyone they met would think they were servants.

They were on a deserted section of the highway, deep in the forest, when they saw a line of men straddling the road. Branches rustled and straw sandals crunched as more stepped out from the trees. There must have been twenty or thirty of them in grimy uniforms with wild bristly hair and broad, flat faces. Some had swords, some rifles. Others brandished staves and clubs.

Southerners! thought Sachi.
Ronin!

Fear knotted in her belly and tingled up and down her spine. Her heart was thumping. Her breath came in shallow gasps. She groped for the dagger tucked in her sash and pulled her scarf close around her face. She knew that Shinzaemon and Toranosuké and probably even young Tatsuemon were expert swordsmen. She had seen how easily they had rescued her in her palanquin. But this time they had only short swords and they were hugely outnumbered.

The men closed ranks till they were blocking the road completely. One stepped towards Sachi, leering. He brought his face up to hers and grinned, revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth. He had a strange leathery odour, this southerner. She recoiled, staring at him in disgust. He was so close she could see his little close-set eyes, the tufts of coarse hair sprouting from his upper lip and the black pores on his flat nose. He said something in an accent so thick that she couldn’t understand a word.

He moved closer still, breathing heavily. Five or six others gathered around her menacingly. She closed her hand on her dagger, feeling the cords that bound the hilt. She had never had to use a real blade before. She had only ever fought with women and with practice sticks. She tried to focus her mind and remember her training, but her blood was thundering in her ears so loudly she could hardly think.