‘Well, I’m not in love with your kinsman, your Grace. This marriage is a business contract between friends,’ Takiko said quietly. Even as she said it, she knew she wasn’t quite telling the truth. ‘I need somewhere presentable to live to host my more elevated patrons, and he wants to share the burden of his estate, which I believe he finds too large for one person.’
‘Yes, one enters into contracts with husbands and lawyers, but other things too,’ Choshu said, just as quietly. ‘Things so old we cannot even call them good or evil, and which we do not ever expect to find introducing themselves in a good jacket at a matinee performance.’
She shook her head.
‘Keitsune made him quite deliberately, you know,’ Choshu said. He looked uncomfortably aware that the bar didn’t suit what he was saying either, or the velvet upholstry. He glanced up at the sky-light like he was wishing for a thunderstorm. ‘No one knows who the father was, but Keitsune disappeared for a week. One can only assume she was looking for the right ingredients. She killed herself on the day he was born.’ He poured himself more tea again, even though the cup was in danger of spilling now. ‘She was honourable about it; she said she was quite aware she had shamed her husband and she was paying with her life. Made us all vow to keep the child in the family.’ He half laughed. ‘I believe even that was a calculation. I think we would have found ways to chafe against that plea if she had lived.’
‘That doesn’t prove he’s anything bad—’
‘Miss Pepperharrow. Try to think past how wanted he makes you feel, and how necessary. Think instead how it is that he came to you.’ He looked at her hard. ‘You were on the point of despair. You would have crumbled, in some way or another, if he hadn’t come into your life at the precise instant that he did.’
She bent her neck slowly. That was right, at least. ‘I suppose.’
‘And now, you owe him your soul.’ The Duke sighed and drank some tea. He did it elegantly, she noticed; he wasn’t as awkward as he seemed. In ordinary life, not trying to explain Keita Mori to an actress, he was probably a graceful man. ‘Now tell me, what manner of creature is it that waits for a person’s darkest moment, and then appears from the shadows, and says, I will save you; come with me?’
She stayed quiet. None of it seemed as stupid as it had a minute ago.
‘You won’t be the only one, you know. That poor fool Kuroda follows him around like a puppy; I guarantee Keita has plans for him and his certain brand of viciousness.’ He paused, but he plainly hadn’t finished. ‘There are records, you know, of others. Like him. I looked into it, once I understood what Keitsune was doing. Folktales mainly, but the resemblance is uncanny. I was puzzled for years why there’s nothing more obviously like him in anyone’s mythology, and then of course I realised that if you are a thing that knows all the futures in the world, it’s quite within your capability to ensure there’s no record of you but murmurs.’
There was always some bored old bachelor in the audience who came up to Takiko or one of the actors after the show and talked earnestly about how the story was all real, and there really had been this or that princess, and she really had been seen floating through foxfire falling from the sky, and do you know, I’m related to her? She was pretty sure that there were stages of bored bachelorhood. First you played cards with yourself, then you cut your own ear off, and then you became a folklorist.
But the Duke didn’t sound like those people. They never looked so resigned, or so aware that what they were saying sounded silly.
‘You’ve heard the stories,’ Choshu sighed. ‘You remember the Winter King, and the two lovers?’
‘No. I don’t know many Japanese stories, my father was English.’ She had a nasty dropping feeling. She hated talking about Christopher Pepperharrow. She didn’t have many memories of him now and handing them out to strangers, like they weren’t precious, felt horrible.
‘Well, I’ll tell it to you.’
It was an ordinary sort of story. There were two lovers who weren’t meant to be in love and, one day, they ran away together through the forest. They didn’t have any money, but they were cheerful. They hadn’t gone far, though, before they saw lights behind them, and heard the voices of their fathers shouting. They were in real despair about what to do when a gentleman in white furs stepped out of the woods. He told them to turn back, but it was all right; he was the winter, and in three days, he would cast the deepest cold over the land for a generation. If they left on that night, the coldest and hardest for decades, nobody would follow them. So they agreed, and went back, apologised to their fathers, and tried again in three days. They were delighted to find that the Winter King was right; nobody followed. Once again they met him on the road, and he walked with them for a little while, and promised that he could arrange for them to be together always. They walked on, through the frost and the new snow, and at last, they came to a deep lake. Winter pointed and said, ‘There is your eternity’. They killed themselves and their souls stayed together always.
‘But that’s just a story about winter,’ Takiko protested. ‘You know. Don’t go out in winter. It’s like Red Riding Hood. Don’t trust strange men on the road, because they’re wolves.’
‘This story was real, in fact,’ the Duke sighed. ‘The couple in question died in sixteen seventy-two. Their deaths achieved a lasting peace between their houses, one of which happened to be the Shogun’s family. It probably stopped a civil war.’ He was studying her now, with no hope at all of convincing her. ‘It happened at Hagi Castle. The familial seat of House Mori. A son of theirs was known very well locally to be a wonderful hunter. He had a knack for catching silver foxes. A gentleman in white fur; makes one wonder, doesn’t it.’
Takiko shook her head. ‘People spin magic out of real stories, it’s what they do. It’s what we do here. What are you saying?’
‘That it is in Keita’s nature to take desperate people, and lead them to a useful death. A death is a powerful agent of change, and whatever he is, he is in this world to change it. Are you absolutely certain he won’t do that to you?’
She had to laugh. It was relief as much as humour. Just for a minute, she’d been standing on the edge of a chasm she had never known was there before, full of undefined things shifting in the deep – the way down into a place where there was a nasty kind of magic. ‘Look, one story about a silly couple dying in winter doesn’t persuade me that Keita is plotting my sudden demise.’
‘He had five brothers, you know. They all died in battle. Supporting the Emperor. Their deaths were a great rallying cry, I tell you.’
‘I know one of them shot him once, with an arrow.’ She wondered suddenly just how much of Mori’s never-spoken-of childhood had been coloured by people like the Duke, who thought he was something unspeakable. He had scars on his hands from sword-flats.
The Duke sighed. ‘Just tell me – have you seen owls yet? Following you perhaps?’
‘What? Owls?’
‘They’re lucky birds. He makes luck. They seem to know that.’ He looked away at the bar and the lady there turning over the roasting chestnuts. He kept his voice arid and librarial. ‘If you find that an owl takes an interest in you, then Keita will not be far behind. I suggest, madam, that at that moment, you walk firmly in the opposite direction.’
‘Owls,’ she said again, less flatly than she’d meant to. There were still talon marks on her old sewing machine.
Something came down over Choshu’s expression. Pride; he couldn’t keep going anymore in a subject that made him seem foolish. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of dealing with him. Good afternoon, Miss Pepperharrow.’
He left measuredly, and not at all with the awkward spring of the sort of person who usually said things like he had. Takiko sat back, not quite able to believe she’d just had such a mad conversation. It made her nervous; not about Mori, but the family. If they were all like that, then no wonder Mori wanted a normal person in his house.
She went round to Yoruji the next day, meaning to tell Mori all about the Duke and to have a good laugh about everything. On the way down, though, she realised that it would be downright cruel to remind him that his only living relative thought he was a witch. So she only said that the Duke seemed like a strange egg and that he’d said something funny about owls.
That did make Mori laugh. ‘I’ll show you.’
Yoruji had an aviary. She’d never seen it before, but it was big and spacious, full of interesting branches and hollows – and full of owls. There was no door; the whole front wall was open. But the owls all seemed to like it inside, and when they noticed Takiko and Mori, some of them glided across and hooted conversationally.
‘We end up with dozens of them here, they seem to like us. They’re all tame, look,’ he added as one settled straight onto Takiko’s wrist and consented to have its chest stroked. It was surprisingly heavy. It narrowed its eyes in an approving way when she rubbed her finger under its chin.
‘I didn’t know owls could be this tame,’ she said, enchanted. The owl told her something in Owl. Her whole heart squeezed. They didn’t seem like normal birds. There was something else in them.
‘I think they fly all over, but they always come back here,’ Mori said, half to her and half to an incredible eagle owl that had just soared across. It landed on the branch next to him, and then stepped onto his arm, looking carefully at its own talons as if it was trying to make sure they didn’t dig into him too much.
That first impression of him she’d had at the theatre came back in force; that sense that he didn’t belong now, but in some other place a thousand years ago. Holding the owl, he seemed medieval, and if Choshu had told her then that Mori had wandered the world since people had first been afraid of the woods, she would nearly have believed it. But it didn’t feel like an ominous impression. The owl was stealing his watch.
‘Do you tell them to visit people?’ she asked. ‘I think this one came to see me once.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But sometimes they seem to know where I’m going.’ He inclined his head and the owl blinked slowly. ‘Everyone says they know things, don’t they?’
She grinned. There was a tug somewhere under her ribs, towards him and Yoruji. It felt slight but huge, and full of promise; like an anchor dropping at a home port after years at sea.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What do you want for a wedding present? What do clairvoyants want?’
He looked around and went still. ‘I’d prefer a favour to a present.’
‘Favour?’
‘In a while, I might … need your help with something. Maybe dangerous. I don’t know exactly when yet, but if you’d consider helping me then, I’ll very happily take that for a present.’ He said it carefully, full of humility, as though the Duke was right there beside him hissing about witches and winter kings, and treating people like threads on a loom.
‘Joy,’ she said abruptly. That was what his name meant, in English. She’d started calling him that when he started calling her Pepper. ‘We’re not – talking about children, are we?’
‘No.’ He looked drawn, and his focus went far off. ‘I’m in no hurry there.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, aware that she’d ruined what should have been a nice evening. ‘It’s just – an abrupt marriage feels like being hurried into cab with no idea where you’re going. It’s not good. Even if you – you know. If you like the person who’s doing the hurrying.’
‘Well,’ he said, carefully, ‘I’m going to England in a few years. And then I won’t be back until … about eighteen ninety, I think.’ He smiled a little. ‘And then perhaps we’ll be used to each other enough to think about it. I don’t like being hurried either.’
‘How can you ever be hurried?’ Takiko said, a bit too high, because she wanted to cover over the sad flare of dismay in her stomach. Eighteen ninety; it was ten years away. ‘You always know what’s coming.’
‘Yes. It’s like standing on a conveyor-belt and watching the meat grinder get closer, and knowing already what life is like when you think it’s normal to have no arms.’
She hesitated. ‘Anything you need help with, in England? To … redirect the conveyor-belt?’
‘No.’
‘So I’m here to fight the Duke off for you and then sit on a bench until eighteen ninety or whenever you decide you’ve got a use for me?’ she said, puzzled. ‘I’m sure there’s more I can do than that.’
‘No.’ He looked worried. ‘Pepper … you needn’t do anything for me. I think I know what the Duke said to you today, and he’s right.’
‘Mori – I do have to. If you hadn’t come to sit with me in the theatre that day, Ayame would have swept me back onto the stage or boxed my ears until I did. I owe you everything. That debt is just going to sit on me forever unless I do something for you. You know that too.’ She sighed. ‘Don’t – tell me it’s frivolous or that saving me doesn’t count just because you didn’t do it on a battlefield.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ he said quietly.
‘Right then. I have a debt, a genuine debt. Can’t you let me pay it?’
He let his breath out slowly. ‘Now this instant, it isn’t possible to turn the world by much. I … spend most of my time finding new half-formed Mozarts and Newtons and pushing them along in the right direction, because given enough time, they bring about change in a way revolutions and guillotines can’t. No one can help me with that. It’s finicky. But in eleven years, there will be a window when we can do a lot of good all at once, without making reactionary factions of nationalists or tyrants. I will do it, and I’ll need your help. But in those intervening years, you will see things that will make you wonder whether you should be helping me at all. You might very well come to the conclusion that I’m wrong entirely, and that your energy would be better directed elsewhere.’
She half laughed, because there were honest-to-God goosebumps prickling down her forearms. ‘My very own prophecy.’
‘Yes, we can frame it,’ he said, with a muted sparkle that didn’t have any humour in it at all. ‘Pepper, I need you to understand. When I helped at the theatre, I knew it would change everything for you, I knew you’d feel a debt. What I want to do in eleven years will be dangerous. I can’t pay someone to help me; a stranger won’t be any good, it has to be someone who knows me and knows what to look for. But I can’t ask anyone who actually likes me, either, because they would stop me doing it. What I need is someone who feels indebted to me but doesn’t wholly like me. Which you won’t, by the time it all comes around.’ He lifted both hands a little toward her. ‘So I sat down next to you.’
She snorted. ‘I knew you’d have a reason beyond my superlative feminine charms. But that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t be unique. There must be other people you can annoy and manipulate, right?’
He nodded, unhappy and brittle at the edges. ‘Dozens. So if you don’t want—’
‘Shut up. You didn’t choose any of them; you chose me. I don’t care if you decided on me because I’ve got a funny nose or you liked the candied nuts they were selling in the foyer that day: you still changed everything for me, and I owe it to you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And a small service is still a service,’ she finished quietly. ‘So we will be getting married, I will see the Duke off for you, and I will be owing you that favour.’ She hadn’t felt awkwardness like she did around him since she’d been about sixteen. It was a sad little crush. But there was good, in doing something for someone so extraordinary. Honour. It was one of those words you heard men chuck around all the time and, until lately, she’d never thought it might be for her as well. It felt so good that all at once, even though she’d always thought they were fools before, she understood why soldiers would go into battle for a suicidal commander.
The Duke’s voice was still there in the back of her mind, whispering about the loom and its bright threads: Her great trick was that she would let you se
e just what she was, and you would want to do as she asked all the same.
‘Pepper, I don’t want a servant,’ Mori said softly. For the first time since she’d met him, he came right up to her. For a long second, he looked down at her like nobody had, like she was something precious. He touched his forehead to hers. ‘I want someone to come back to.’
EIGHTEEN
Yokohama, 19th December 1888
The streets beyond Yoruji were exactly the tangled, cluttered kind that had looked so interesting in Tokyo. It was hard to tell what was a house and what was a restaurant, because all the windows were opaque paper, but as Thaniel walked – turning left at the man who did indeed have a cat on a lead – it became a bit clearer. You had to look for the steam. Tiny noodle shops that only seated a few people had opened their sliding doors out onto the street, and people in work clothes from the harbour ate fast at counters, or perched on old cargo kegs. Ladies in bandanas and aprons stood outside the bigger places, calling in the internationally familiar nasal tone of train announcers that people were welcome to come in. Thaniel nearly got herded into one just in time to see a chef swear and a basket of noodles go flying.
‘Or maybe not,’ the lady outside said cheerfully.
‘Fucking ghosts!’ the man yelled, and slung down his apron.
‘I’m hearing about ghosts everywhere,’ Thaniel said to her.
‘I know, it’s getting to be a real drag,’ the lady said. ‘All the exorcists are booked up. Come on in, everyone welcome …’
He found the post office on the next street. A grumpy, solitary clerk absolutely insisted that Thaniel was speaking English even though he never said a word of it. Overhead, the telegraph wires hummed busily. The package went safely on its way to Aokigahara.
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Page 14
