The Last Concubine (15 page)

He bowed again.

At first Sachi too kept her eyes cast modestly downwards. But then, remembering that the men could not see her face, she peeked at them curiously.

The one who was speaking had skin the colour of vellum and the pursed lips and refined expression of a courtier. The hands pressed to the tatami matting were as small and soft as a woman’s, the nails carefully manicured. He reminded her of the village priest, a pale, scholarly man who spent his days in the shadowy depths of the temple, bent over sutras, reading, writing and chanting.

The other man had broad muscular shoulders and powerful wrists. The top of his head was tanned and leathery. When he looked up she caught a glimpse of a swarthy, heavy-jowled face scarred with the marks of smallpox and a mouth which creased naturally into a scowl. While the first man was like a fox, this one was a hawk.

‘Tadanaka Mizuno, governor of Tosa, master of Tankaku Castle in the domain of Shingu and son of Tadahira Mizuno, chamberlain to the House of Kii. I am honoured to serve you, Your Highness,’ he growled. ‘As Your Highness knows, my family has had the privilege of serving His Majesty and his ancestors for many generations.’

He pressed his face to the ground.

The first man spoke again. Sachi tried to concentrate but soon gave up. When she first came to the palace she had learned the lisping Kyoto dialect of the princess and her ladies and the more earthy Edo speech that the Retired One and the other ladies used. But that was women’s language. She had never met samurai, let alone heard them speak. The man’s talk was full of rough, guttural sounds and impossibly convoluted, garnished with honorifics and complicated words and phrases.

The other man was looking at the floor, his topknot bobbing as he grunted agreement. He seemed to have a nervous tic. Every
now and then his right arm would jerk back as if to draw an imaginary sword. He would place it firmly back on the floor.

Then the princess whispered urgently to Lady Tsuguko. Lady Tsuguko moved to the edge of the screen and addressed the two men.

‘How long has he been ill?’ she asked, her voice harsh with fear. Sachi started. Suddenly she was paying full attention.

Lord Oguri slid closer to the screen and leaned forward. ‘Madam,’ he said in confidential tones, ‘we are very concerned.’

‘Is he being properly cared for?’

It was the princess’s own voice, a gentle high-pitched warble like the song of a bird. At the sound of the imperial tones, a tremor of shock rippled through the room. Everyone hastily prostrated.

‘Highness, I am here because I wanted to make sure you heard the truth before any rumours reach you. Pay no attention to what others say. Eminent doctors, the best there are, specialists both in western medicine and in Chinese medicine, are in attendance day and night. We are praying for his survival. But his illness is severe. He suffers cramps in his stomach and severe swelling of the legs and groin. He vomits frequently. He has great difficulty passing urine. He has been given boiled sarsaparilla and steam vapour treatments. He—’

Sachi put her hands over her ears. She could not bear to hear any more. It could not be true.

‘Oguri, I want to know.’ The princess was speaking again, her voice shaking. ‘His illness. Is it natural?’

Lord Oguri sucked his breath through his teeth. The hiss was loud in the silent room. Lord Mizuno’s sword arm twitched.

‘Well . . .’ said Lord Oguri slowly.

‘I see. There’s no hope then. We must all . . . We must all . . .’ Behind the screens the princess had slumped forward with her hands on her face. Tears were trickling through her fingers, spreading in a damp stain across the tatami.

Lord Tsuguko finished her sentence. ‘We must all pray and make offerings.’

By the next day the news had spread through the palace, and soon everyone was engaged in prayers for the shogun’s rapid recovery.
Candles burned before every shrine and clouds of incense spiralled to the heavens. Priests chanted sutras and rang bells before altars heaped with offerings. Messengers galloped to the Edo branches of the Kurume Suitengu Shrine and the Kompira Daigongen Shrine, the shrines of the two great gods of healing, to order prayers and purchase charms which were sent post haste to Osaka. Women whispered prayers as they went about their work. The faces that passed in the corridors were puffy with weeping and smudged with tears.

Sachi sat in her room, holding her sewing, trying to concentrate. Every other hour she sent Taki out to see if there was any news. Surely by now the shogun must be recovering. She thought of the handsome, healthy young man with whom she had lain. She pictured his pearly skin, his mischievous smile, his bright eyes. It was inconceivable that he would not soon shake off whatever ailment afflicted him.

She tried her hardest not to think about what she had heard in the princess’s chamber but it was impossible to forget. His illness not natural? She had heard so many hints of what had happened to previous shoguns that this was too fearful to contemplate. She dared not even let the thought cross her mind that something bad might happen to His Majesty. She was afraid that if she did it might bring it about. She told herself again and again that he would soon recover.

When the days passed and the news was no better, she prayed to Amida Buddha, begging him not to take His Majesty to the Western Paradise but to leave him here with her. She offered three years of her own life if only he might have three extra years added to his. She prayed to the gods of the trees and mountains who had watched over her in the village. She wrapped up the amulet the shogun had given her in paper blessed by a priest and threw it away, hoping that the shogun’s bad luck might go with it.

The princess often called for her. She had never seen her so distraught.

‘If only I had wished him farewell,’ she whispered again and again, wringing her hands.

Then one day a letter came. It was brushed in an unfamiliar hand. The signature was so shaky it was almost impossible to
decipher. It looked as if it had been written by an old, old man. With a shudder that was like an icy finger running down her back, Sachi recognized it as His Majesty’s.

‘It seems Lord Amida summons me,’ he wrote. ‘I will not see you again. I think of you with great fondness. You are young and innocent. Your life is before you. Do not weep for me. Life is harsh. Learn to be strong and resilient like bamboo that bends but never breaks, no matter how fierce the wind. Pray that we may meet again in the Western Paradise.’

Sachi struggled to grasp the meaning of his words. She thought of the delicate, courtly young man she had known, relived every moment of their time together. She wanted to cry out that she wouldn’t accept it, that it couldn’t be true, that it was too much to bear. Then little by little the full impact of the letter swept over her. She rushed away into the gardens where no one would see or hear her and wept at the unfairness of it. They were both so young. What would become of her without him? What would become of everyone? Without him they were all doomed. She was on the edge of an abyss, hanging on for all she was worth. She dared not look down or she would fall for ever.

Later that day Haru arrived as usual with a poem for Sachi to copy.

‘I have a poem already,’ said Sachi. She read it aloud:

‘Do you remember?’ she asked. ‘You told me that “one who lives beyond my world” means “one who is impossibly high in rank”. But maybe it means “one who does not live in this world at all”.’

Kneeling at her small table, she wrote it out, taking care to make her brushstrokes so eloquent that when she next wrote to His Majesty, he would be seduced by the passion and maturity of her writing.

Then light footsteps came dashing along the corridor. It was Taki. Two women’s palanquins had arrived at the gate, she announced breathlessly. Lord Oguri and Lord Mizuno had alighted, entering by stealth on a secret mission. Sachi was to go to the princess at once.

Sachi closed her eyes and sat very still. She could sense a tidal wave rushing towards her.

Carefully she cleaned her ink stone and washed her brushes. She put the ink stick back in its box and set paperweights on the paper so the ink could dry. A single thought was battering on the edge of her mind.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll come immediately. Thank you for telling me.’

She did not need to ask. She already knew. The shogun was dead.

4

Escape, 1867

I

Sachi scuffed her feet along the earthen path, staring listlessly at her small wooden clogs peeking out, one then the other, from the skirts of her bulky winter kimonos. Leafless trees sighed in the chilly wind and gnarled branches swayed like skeletal arms against the cold blue of the sky.

Taki scurried behind her, the quilted hem of her thick outer robe sending the dry leaves swirling as she walked. They reached Half-Moon Bridge and clambered to the top. The water of Lotus Pond was murky. The lustrous red lacquer of the pleasure barges had grown faded and dull.

‘Look at those turtles,’ said Taki brightly, pointing to a rock where three or four stone-coloured shapes huddled motionless. ‘Poor things! The lake will be completely frozen over soon.’

Sachi raised her head and tried to smile. She wished she could stop the thoughts and memories endlessly revolving in her mind. Tears came to her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Ever since the shogun had died nothing good had happened, nothing at all. It was as if a spell had fallen over the palace. The gardeners still tended the grounds, the lower-ranking maids cooked and swept and dusted, the ladies-in-waiting combed their hair and did their make-up and sewed and practised the halberd. But the life had gone out of it. The shogun had been the heart and soul of the
palace. Without him it was like a dried-out husk, a chrysalis left behind after the butterfly has flown away. There was no gaiety any more. No one felt like staging plays or dances or masques without him to see them.

Women had begun making excuses, saying there was illness in the family. They left the palace and did not return.

More than a year had gone by since the shogun’s death. Sachi was in her seventeenth year now, taller and willowy, though when she looked in the mirror she still saw the softly rounded face of a child. Her skin was as white as ever – as white as a mountain cherry blossom, as white as the moon, even whiter than that of the proud noblewomen who surrounded her. Her small nose arched delicately, her lips were full and rosy. Her eyes were dark green still, like the pine forests of Kiso. But there was sadness in them. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror she thought she saw the princess there, as she had been when she first caught a glimpse of her at the inn.

Like the princess’s, Sachi’s glossy black hair no longer cascaded to the floor but swung at her shoulders. They had both taken the veil, as widows of great lords did. Sachi now had a Buddhist name: she was the Retired Lady Shoko-in. But how could she be a ‘Retired Lady’ already when she had barely tasted life?

Every moment of every day Sachi thought of the shogun. Sometimes she saw his face so clearly it was as if he were there. She pictured his smile, the soft skin of his hands, his smooth pale chest, and felt the warmth of his body. Then she remembered he was dead and a great shuddering sob would pass through her. When she left her rooms she covered her head with a cowl. She dressed in plain robes and, in theory at least, spent her time in prayers and devotions. Her world had shrunk so much there was almost nothing left.

When she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, she saw his embalmed face as he lay in state, painted chalky white with his eyebrows brushed in and his cheeks and lips rouged. He had looked so small and shrivelled, nothing like the noble youth she remembered. Again and again in her memory she was back in the great hall, kneeling at his bier surrounded by hundreds of ladies-in-waiting, all in white. She heard the drone of priests mumbling
prayers and smelt the incense and the dusty scent of thousands of white chrysanthemums. He had been so young. And to have died in such a way!

‘Why, Taki, why?’ she groaned.

‘If you’d been brought up as a samurai you’d know it’s not our place to ask questions,’ said Taki, taking her arm and squeezing it. ‘You just have to endure.’

There were footsteps in the distance, the clatter of wooden clogs coming along the path. They caught a whiff of a musky scent and swung round. Lady Tsuguko was hurrying towards them. Her hair, tinged with grey, was tied back in a long tail which swung behind her. They ran down the bridge to meet her.