The Last Concubine (56 page)

Wakamatsu was the last line of defence. If it was taken there might be a few stubborn bands of samurai who would flee to the far north and hold out there, but basically it would all be over.

The furrow on Edwards’s forehead deepened. The bristly hairs of his straw-coloured eyebrows knitted together above his prominent nose. Large though it was, it was actually rather a fine nose, Sachi thought, and delicately shaped.

Taki lit a pipe and handed it to him. He took a few puffs.

‘Aizu Wakamatsu has fallen,’ he said. His voice was gruff. ‘I’m sorry.’ Silence filled the hall.

Aizu Wakamatsu.

Sachi closed her eyes. She had steeled herself for the worst, but nevertheless the news came as a shock. She had hoped that Wakamatsu might win through, that at least the north might remain in northern hands. For Edwards it was only news and at least it would mean an end to the fighting. But for her it was personal.

Shinzaemon had surely been there, and Toranosuké, and Tatsuemon. She knew a samurai woman should feel pride that the warriors of her clan fought so bravely, dying in battle rather than coming home in defeat. She suspected Taki might be proud if they died to the last man. But ever since she had gone to the hill it had all seemed different. She pictured them huddling together around a camp fire, shivering under thin blankets as the days grew colder. Perhaps they didn’t have a fire or blankets or even food. All this time she had hoped and believed the northerners would win and Shinzaemon would return. But now those prospects seemed like hollow dreams.

‘I heard from Dr Willis.’ Sachi knew that Dr Willis had gone north at the request of the southern high command, to tend to their wounded. ‘He said the battle was very fierce. Both sides fought bravely but the imperial army had more men and better arms.’

‘The imperial army!’ snorted Taki, jabbing her needle into her sewing as if she was delivering a death blow. The ‘imperial army’ was nothing but a grand name for the southerners.

‘The northerners don’t have much of a chance. All they have is French weapons.’ Edwards’s lip curled sardonically as he mentioned the French. ‘The imperial army have . . . ’

He didn’t need to say it. The southerners were armed by the English – by his people.

‘So Dr Willis didn’t see any of our men,’ said Sachi.

It was a statement, not a question. He grimaced and shook his head. Sachi knew very well that there were never any northern wounded, that the southerners always beheaded them. It was very hard to keep hope alive, knowing such things.

‘Your northern troops suffered terrible losses,’ Edwards continued. ‘And the dead will suffer the same punishment as . . . the
men on Ueno Hill. The imperial command ordered that they were not to be buried.’

Sachi thought of those men left to die so far from home, and their widows and mothers who would never know what had become of them. Some would wait months, some years before they accepted that their husband or lover or son was never going to return. She realized with a jolt that she might be one of them.

Supposing Shinzaemon never came back? It was half a year now since Sachi had seen him last and there had been not a word since then. Was she to spend the rest of her life in mourning, eternally waiting? She tried to picture life without him. It would be duller and greyer but it would go on all the same. It had to. Yet it was hard to imagine what the future could hold. All the bonds that anchored people in society – the bonds of family, clan, domain – seemed not to be there for her. Her father, Daisuké, was not really part of her life at all; he was in Osaka. She had even tried going back to the village and knew she didn’t belong there either. She had expected to spend her life in the palace but now was reduced to a refugee, camping out in someone else’s home. She would have to start all over again.

‘And for those men who do come back,’ said Edwards brusquely, ‘there’ll be no jobs, no work, no money. They’ll be exiled to Suruga with the shogun, Lord Yoshinobu.’

Sachi felt weighed down by sadness, as if nothing could ever make her smile again. The war was over; they were beaten. There was nothing left but to endure. To accept, to endure, to survive. Nothing to hope for any more.

With an effort she raised her head. ‘And Tatsu?’ she asked.

‘I’ve heard nothing,’ he said. ‘How can he send news?’

‘Even you seem sad,’ she said, ‘and yet your people support the southerners.’

‘I care about this country,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see it torn apart.’

She was surprised at the fervour in his voice.

‘And you. I care about you,’ he said. His loud tone had suddenly become soft. His eyes, big and round, flickered across her face. ‘All of you,’ he added hastily. But it was too late. She had seen the way he looked at her, caught the note of yearning in his
voice. He was no longer a foreigner with different-coloured skin and hair and different-shaped eyes. He was a man. The awareness sent a shock quivering along her spine and tingling in her stomach. She lowered her eyes.

‘At least there will be peace,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘People will have a chance to rebuild their lives.’

The women nodded numbly.

‘I’ve got other news for you. Good news.’

Good news. It was impossible to imagine that news could be good.

‘The new government is going to make Edo its capital. It’ll be renamed. It’ll be To-kyo – the Eastern Capital.’

But Edo was Edo. It was the shogun’s city. To give it a new name and make it the southerners’ capital was like . . . not just occupying it but destroying it, turning it into something it was not, forcibly subduing the city and its people, beating them into submission. A new name would take away the city’s soul and life and character.

‘How can the country have a new capital?’ demanded Sachi. ‘Kyoto is the capital.’

‘There’ll be two capitals,’ Edwards explained. ‘Kyoto will be the western capital, the emperor’s capital. Edo will be the eastern capital. Government and business will be in Edo, just as they used to be. Everyone will come back, more people than ever before. The city will come alive again. It’ll be rebuilt. You’ll have to get used to calling it Tokyo. It’s great news for Edo. Everything is going to turn out all right.’

So Daisuké too would come back, Sachi thought. He sent letters from Osaka every now and then, telling her about his life there, about the weather, that he was healthy and busy, but he never wrote about the war or the huge changes that were transforming their country. She wouldn’t have expected him to.

‘The war isn’t over yet,’ snorted Taki. ‘Everyone here hates the southerners. They’ll never control this city.’

‘No, the war isn’t over. But it soon will be,’ said Edwards bluntly.

He shuffled awkwardly, stretching out one huge leg, then the other. His narrow-legged foreign trousers brushed the tatami, rustling loudly in the silence.

‘There’s no turning back the clock. But things will get better, that’s for sure. The emperor is above northern or southern. He will unite the country. It won’t be different provinces any more, but one country.’

‘You’re a foreigner,’ muttered Taki. ‘What do you know about our country?’

They had had this argument many times. Everyone knew the emperor was not much more than a boy, and that the men who stood behind him and manipulated him were southerners. It was they who would rule, not the emperor. Taki scowled and went back to her stitching. She was finishing the sleeve opening of a winter kimono in a fabric and colour suitable for a townswoman.

Edwards leaned forward. His blue eyes gleamed. ‘I have some news that will interest you too, Lady Takiko. Shall I tell you? The emperor . . .’

‘What about His Grace?’ snapped Taki.

‘. . . is coming to Edo.’ ‘His Grace? Here?’ squeaked Taki. Edwards had finally succeeded in winning her attention. Her eyes were bright, her thin cheeks flushed with excitement.

‘He’s already left Kyoto,’ said Edwards. ‘He’ll be here soon, very soon. In a few days. I’ll take you to see his grand entry if you like. It’ll be a splendid procession, the most splendid you ever saw. He’s to live . . .’

The women whispered the words in tones of stunned disbelief: ‘In Edo Castle?’

A shadow fell over the hall. The shogun had been expelled along with the princess, Sachi, and all his thousands of ladies and courtiers. Now it was to be the emperor and his court – his wife, concubines, ladies, courtiers, staff, guards, cooks, servants, maids, maids of maids, maids of maids of maids – who would occupy the sumptuous chambers walled with gold leaf with their carved transepts and coffered lacquered ceilings. It was they who would enjoy plays and music and poetry competitions in the opulent halls; they who would stroll in the pleasure gardens and go boating on the lakes, admire the cherry blossom in spring and the maple leaves in autumn. They would live the life that the princess and Sachi and Haru and Taki – and even poor Fuyu –
had thought would be theirs for ever. It was the bitterest blow of all.

Edwards seemed to think it was a glorious new world that was coming. But it would not be glorious for everyone.

Nevertheless, no matter how much Sachi and the other women had to suffer, they could not do other than revere the emperor. It was hard to imagine His Grace as a human being at all, let alone one who could live in a palace or walk in a garden. He was the princess’s nephew, Sachi knew this, so he was clearly human, in one sense at least. But he also communed with the gods. It was because of him that the country existed, the seasons revolved and the rice crop came to harvest year after year. The priests took care of people, kept them healthy, protected them from accidents and provided blessings. His Grace took care of the entire world.

‘It’ll be called Tokyo Castle,’ Edwards said. His voice faltered as he realized the impact of what he was saying on the women. ‘They’ve been repairing and rebuilding it.’

Taki put another plug of tobacco in Edwards’s pipe, lit it and passed it to him, then lit pipes for the women.

It was hard for Sachi to accept the end of everything she had ever known and cared about. She had let herself forget that all things were transient in this floating world. Wealth, happiness, health, beauty – one day a person might have them all, the next they would be gone. Life was but the flutter of a sparrow’s wings, a momentary flicker. Everything changed; all things passed away. It was a lesson she must try always to bear in mind.

Slowly a fug of smoke filled the great hall, laced with the sweet fragrance of tobacco. Edwards looked at the stony faces around him.

‘I’ve heard these palaces and mansions used to have very beautiful gardens,’ he said gently. ‘Yours must be still unspoilt.’

‘The gardeners left long ago,’ whispered Sachi. ‘It’s terribly overgrown.’

‘Will you show me?’ said Edwards. ‘It would be good to walk.’

The three women tucked up their kimono skirts and slipped into clogs.

The leaves were changing colour and the gardens blazed in hues of copper, gold, orange and red. Edwards went first, pushing
aside the dripping grass and ferns and holding them back for the women to pass through. Sachi followed, treading carefully in her high clogs from stone to stone, trying not to step in the mud or the piles of mouldering leaves. When her foot slipped on a patch of sodden moss he was ready with a hand to steady her. It was bewildering to have a man solicitous of her well-being. After all, men were masters, women servants. That was the way of the world. Men strode in front while women kept three paces behind. They certainly did not worry about whether a woman’s clothes got wet or dirty. At first it made her feel awkward and embarrassed to have a man behaving in such an unmanly way, but then she began to find something comforting about Edwards’s attentiveness.

After a while they came to the lake. In the middle was an island with a stone lantern, half hidden beneath trees. A heron, a splash of white, stood on a rock; a couple of turtles crouched like stones on another; ducks scooted about; there was even a jetty with some boats drawn up. For a moment Sachi was back in the women’s palace, gliding across the lake in one of the redlacquered pleasure barges, dabbling her fingers in the water while musicians sang and played. But the boats were swimming in fetid green water and the paintwork was faded and peeling.

She looked around. Taki and Haru had fallen behind. She was alone with a man, a foreign man – with Edwards. She stopped hastily, realizing the impropriety of the situation. She was about to call to the women to hurry when a mad recklessness seized her. Everything was over: the war was over, the country was ruined. Everything they had ever taken for granted had proved as insubstantial as the plume-grass down that floated in the wind. Nothing mattered any more, only the present. She was not the late shogun’s concubine now. She was just herself. And Shinzaemon . . . Perhaps it was time to accept the brutal truth. He was almost certainly dead.

Edwards had stopped. Slowly he took off his tall, black and slightly crumpled hat. There was something endearing about its shabbiness. People of her country with their narrow, half-closed eyes kept their souls hidden inside themselves. But he with his big round eyes – you could see his soul right there. As their eyes met
she couldn’t help noticing the colour of his – dazzlingly blue, as blue as the sky in summer. His hair was not straw-coloured at all but gold, like fine spun gold. In the sunlight it was like a halo around his head. His big nose and chin, his eyes set in caverns in his head, his bushy eyebrows . . . She gazed at him, transfixed by this being from another world.

He stretched out his hand and she started as his fingers touched her palm. It made her shiver. He closed his thumb over her fingers and held them. She stared down at her small white hand resting in his big pale one. There were golden hairs on his fingers and the back of his thumb.

Before she could pull her hand back he raised it to his mouth. She stiffened, fearing he was going to bite it. Then she felt the moisture and the softness of his lips on her fingers. His moustache pricked her skin.

For a moment they stood frozen, his lips pressed to her hand. Then she tugged it away. Somewhere in the depths of her being she knew she should be shocked and horrified. But she wasn’t. It was so intimate, yet so gentle. She had never before imagined that a man could behave in such a way. It was like a fresh breeze, blowing away the cobwebs, bringing her back to life.