The Last Concubine (31 page)

Sachi’s heart was pounding so loudly she was afraid the soldiers would hear it. She peeped up, hardly daring to breathe, terrified that she might see blood glistening on the blade of a spear. Desperately she prayed to all the gods that Shinzaemon had stayed where she had left him, at the far end of the house, and
had had the presence of mind to lie on one of the thick heavy beams.

The woven bamboo of the ceiling was dangling in shreds. Sachi pulled her scarf around her face, grateful that the room was too dark for them to see her clearly. She took a deep breath, rose to her feet and faced the crowd. Her mouth was dry. She told herself she was back in the training hall at the women’s palace, facing her opponent. She tried to keep her voice steady.

‘What do you think you’re doing, barging into our house like this?’ she demanded. The voice that came out was as clear and unwavering as if she was back in the women’s palace, issuing orders to servants. She had been afraid she had forgotten her Kiso dialect but the words were perfectly accented. ‘There’s no one here,’ she went on in a tone of quiet authority, gaining confidence as she spoke. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is the house of Jiroemon, headman of this village. We are not peasants to be pushed around. How dare you destroy our house like this?’

The room fell silent. The soldiers gaped at her.

‘There’s no one here, only us women,’ she said firmly. She was totally calm now and in control. ‘We have nothing to hide. You don’t believe me? I’ll show you. Come.’

She led them from room to room, sliding open one set of doors, then the next, and opening the closets where the bedding was kept. She took care to steer them well away from the dark corner where the stairs that led to the attic were.

‘You see?’ she said, flinging open a final set of doors. ‘There’s no one here. Just us.’

‘Woman’s got guts,’ muttered one soldier grudgingly.

‘Certainly has,’ nodded the others. ‘May be a country wench but she’s got the heart of a samurai. We should leave these women be.’

One by one the soldiers slid their swords into their scabbards. Some of them looked a little shame-faced. They were crowding towards the door when the bearded man swung round.

‘Just one last look,’ he growled, screwing up his eyes suspiciously and staring hard at Sachi. She was glad she had wrapped her face in her scarf. He stomped off with a couple of others, shining their lanterns into every dark corner. Sachi listened
to their straw-sandalled feet crunching away across the tatami, fearing that at any moment they would find the stairs or look up and see the trapdoor in the ceiling. She thought she heard a faint creak from above and hoped that none of them had noticed.

Something had to be done. She let the scarf fall from her face, pretending to fumble clumsily before pulling it back into place again.

‘Hey, look at this!’ shouted a soldier, grabbing hold of the scarf and ripping it away from her face. ‘What a beauty!’

The next moment he had grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against a wall. Sachi caught her breath. She had not thought even southerners could be as brutish as this. The man’s face was pockmarked, his chin bristly, his eyes small like a pig’s. She reeled from the foulness of his breath.

The others gathered round, leering. After all, she realized, as far as they were concerned she was just a peasant girl. They could do anything they liked with impunity.

‘This one’s mine,’ chortled the pockmarked one, spraying her with spittle. ‘Spoils of war. Come along with us, girl. We’re the conquerors!’

Fiercely Sachi tried to push the soldier off, groping for her hairpin. For a moment she forgot everything except his vile sweaty body pinning her to the wall. She would have his eyes out, even if the soldiers killed them all.

Then she stopped. With a shock of horror she remembered there was a whole army out there. She couldn’t defend herself or she would bring down destruction on the village. Looking at these men with their brutish smell and sun-blackened skin, she had no doubt they would massacre them all.

The man was tearing at her clothes when Taki drew herself up and glared at the soldiers. Her big eyes were blazing and she didn’t even try to conceal her posh Kyoto accent. In her squeaky voice she shrilled in tones of withering contempt, ‘What are you – animals or men?’ Her voice rang out across the hubbub. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. We are loyal subjects of the emperor here, but we’re not prepared to be ruled by wild beasts. So this is what southerners are! You burst in, frightening the children. I don’t know who or what you’re looking for but
they’re not here. Can’t you see that? You’ve done enough damage. You southerners – you’re no better than animals!’

The men fell silent. Some were shuffling their feet and staring at the ground. The bearded soldier had returned to see what the commotion was. He pushed through the mob of soldiers, grabbed the pockmarked man by the shoulders and shoved him away. The man stumbled and fell.

‘You want your head chopped off?’ barked the bearded man. ‘You heard what the commander said. Leave these women alone. We’re supposed to be winning the locals over, not terrorizing them. There’s no one here. Let’s go.’

‘I’ll be back,’ said the pockmarked soldier, leering at Sachi. Still peering round suspiciously and grumbling under their breath, they all trooped out.

The door closed and the room was quiet again. Sachi and Taki looked at each other, both trembling with shock. Sachi had only just come back and already she had brought danger and destruction on her family, she thought.

‘We’d better make sure Shin stays up there,’ said Taki. ‘They’re bound to return. I thought you told me this place would be safe? It’s not safe at all.’

Much later Otama came in. ‘Those officers,’ she sighed. ‘They call for sake, then more sake, then for food, then more food. And will they pay for it? No. But what can we do? Anyway, they’re snoring now.’

She looked around enquiringly. Sachi and Taki had done their best to tidy up but there were gaping holes in the cupboard doors and the ceiling was shredded. Otama shook her head wearily and pursed her lips.

‘And your friend?’

Sachi glanced upwards.

Otama went to the kitchen, lifted the trapdoor in the floor and brought out a bowl of buckwheat groats. ‘This is all I have left,’ she said.

She threw some wood under the great cooking pot, boiled up the buckwheat and made a brown porridge. She ladled some into a couple of bowls, chopped a pickled radish, put a few slices on
to two dishes and laid it on a tray with a couple of pairs of chopsticks. Slowly she straightened up, one hand on her back.

Sachi was looking at her questioningly. She could understand two bowls – Shinzaemon could well be hungry. But two pairs of chopsticks . . . ? Otama gave her a gentle smile but said nothing.

‘Give it to me,’ said Sachi.

She took the tray, picked up a lamp and padded through the dark house. She rolled the staircase into place, then knocked softly on the trapdoor in the ceiling and cautiously pushed it up a little.

‘Shin!’ she called.

She shoved the trapdoor back. Holding the lamp over her head she climbed a few more steps and peeked into the attic.

In the huge cluttered space with its sloping walls, she could see the underside of the roof slates neatly overlapping each other. She used to play hide and seek up there. Broken farm implements, piles of rope and ancient boxes loomed in the lamplight, casting huge shadows. It was icy cold. She held the lantern higher.

Shinzaemon was cross-legged in the middle of the dusty floor, wrapped up in a quilt. There was an unsheathed sword beside him. She blinked back tears as she saw him looking at her. His face was black with dust and grime.

‘You’re safe,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I was so frightened.’

‘I heard those southerners barging around downstairs,’ he said. ‘You did well. If you’d yelled I would have smashed my way out of here and had their heads, the lot of them.’

‘It’s a good thing you didn’t. If they’d known you were here they would have killed us all. I didn’t know you were so famous, you and that tattoo of yours.’

There was a noise – a sound of shuffling. Another set of teeth gleamed in the darkness. There was someone else there too. Squatting next to Shinzaemon was a long-limbed gangly youth. Sachi looked at him and gasped. He was taller and more muscular than when she had seen him last, and coarse black hair sprouted on his upper lip. But there was no mistaking the impish grin and bristly hair that stuck out in unruly tufts. She could almost see him scrambling fearlessly along the shakiest of branches or darting about in the river like a fish.

‘Genzaburo!’ she cried. ‘Gen! What are you doing here?’

‘I’d know that white skin anywhere,’ said Genzaburo. His voice was still slightly high-pitched, like a boy’s. He grinned at her like a mischievous water sprite.

‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ she said, shaking her head in bemused delight. ‘Not a bit. What on earth have you been up to?’

‘Staying alive,’ said Genzaburo. ‘We had to do some creeping about up here. There were spears poking up all over the place. It was like being at the wrong end of a bayonet charge. Danced about until we found a couple of beams and squatted on them. Shin wanted to get down there and take them all on. I had to restrain him.’

Shinzaemon was looking at Sachi.

‘You expect me to stay up here and leave you to deal with those brutes alone?’ he grunted. In the lamplight the pair of them could almost have been brothers. They looked far too young to have required a squadron of southern soldiers to flush them out.

Later, when they had patched up the damage as best they could and spread out their futons, Otama whispered to Sachi, ‘I heard those southerners talking about some gangster or other. Is that your friend?’

‘It’s all exaggeration. He came with us to protect us.’

‘No need to explain. You’re our Sa. That’s all we need to know. And that Genzaburo,’ she added, smiling quietly. ‘Rampaging up and down the valley, having a one-man war with the southerners. I don’t know how many he’s cut down. Anyway, we have to protect our own.’

Sachi looked at her. Otama’s hair was growing thin and sparse, her knuckles were swollen, her face was wrinkled, but she radiated calm and kindness and strength. It made Sachi angry that, after all her years of hard work, she now had to suffer these uncouth southerners strutting around destroying everything that she had built with such pain.

‘So those southern officers are using our inn?’

‘We’ve got no choice. Your father was notified they’d be on their way. We were ordered to arrange bedding and food. The place was falling down. We’d given up using it as an inn ever since
the processions stopped coming through. When was it? Four years ago? Five? No one came to stay any more. Ordinary travellers couldn’t afford it. No guests and twenty rooms to keep up. I’ve been sweeping and polishing, trying to tidy it up, but it’s very shabby.

‘You remember how we used to scrub the tatami together and arrange the flowers in the alcove when the lords were due to stay? You were so good at doing the flowers, Sa. You used to enjoy that. And Father sitting down there, chatting to their lordships? They were so noble, so dignified, those lords. They always came through on the same day, every year without fail. We knew exactly how many men they’d have with them, how much food to provide, how much bedding. Everything was set. Everything was organized and planned. And we got paid for it, enough to get by . . .’

There was a long silence. Finally she said, ‘There’s been famine, Sa. The crops have been bad every year since you left.’

There was another silence. Sachi had the feeling there was something Otama wasn’t telling her.

Late that night the door slid open and a large figure appeared. He threw himself down on the tatami along with everyone else. Sachi knew it was her father but it was too late to talk. When she woke up in the morning he had gone, along with Shinzaemon and Genzaburo.

By daylight Sachi could see that the southerners had left the place a shambles. Burnt-out torches littered the road. The banks of the drainage channels had crumbled under the passage of so many men and horses. The ground was a morass of trodden-down snow, churned and rutted from the wheels of the cannon carriages. Children rushed around sweeping up horse manure, straw sandals and straw horseshoes.

Sachi went out to help her mother tidy up. She kept a wary eye out for the pockmarked soldier. Standing in the morning sun, she couldn’t help noticing how run-down and dingy the village had become. It was poorer and smaller than she remembered. The whole of it would have fitted into the compound of the Satos’ house in Kano, and the whole city of Kano would fit easily inside the ramparts of Edo Castle.

Edo Castle. Sachi felt a pang of longing. She suddenly realized
she no longer belonged in the village. She was no longer the innocent girl who had played so merrily, for whom the village was the whole world. With a sigh she forced herself back into the present and joined the villagers fixing up the road.

Everyone was chattering as they worked. It seemed the daughter of a local watchman had been raped while doing some washing in the stream. One of the southern soldiers had been unable to resist her pretty face. He had been apprehended and killed. Local men were bringing the head in a bucket. It was to be stuck on a bamboo stake and displayed at the edge of the village for three days, along with a notice describing the offence and the punishment. It was an extraordinarily severe punishment for something not usually even considered a crime. After all, the victim was only a woman, and a peasant at that. No doubt the idea was to show the villagers that they would be protected under the new regime.

Sachi felt a certain grim satisfaction. Perhaps it was the pockmarked man.

Word had already spread of her return. Villagers came over to greet her and to have a good look at this child who had disappeared for more than six years and returned a great lady.

‘Sa, how are you? Remember me?’ It was a woman with a mouth that looked too big for her face, crowded with crooked teeth. She had a baby tied to her back and a couple of toddlers clinging to her shabby, patched work clothes. ‘It’s me, Shigé!’