The Peony Lantern

by Frances Watts

  Hana kept throwing suspicious glances at me, and when Mother finally started to wonder aloud where Father could have been all this time, my sister burst out: ‘Ask Kasumi. It has something to do with her, I know it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Hana,’ Mother said. But she must have seen something in my face because she asked, ‘Kasumi? Is Hana right? Did something happen when you took the rice to Lord Shimizu?’

  My throat was too tight to speak, so I nodded.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Hana triumphantly.

  ‘Hana, please,’ Mother rebuked her. ‘Tell us, Kasumi.’

  In a low voice, I recounted my exchange with the samurai. There was a silence, then Hana said in a voice so full of dread that I almost longed for the usual malice, ‘You insulted one samurai to another? Have you taken leave of your senses?’ Her voice rose. ‘Do you know what he could do to you? Or, worse, to Father?’

  Yes, I knew. The deference due a samurai was so great that if a member of a lower class — a farmer or a merchant, say — refused to bow when he passed, the samurai was entitled to cut off his head right then and there.

  ‘Mother, I —’

  But my mother was looking past me to the kitchen door. A figure stood in the doorway, the light behind him throwing his face into shadow.

  ‘Hiroshi?’

  The figure stepped forwards and I saw it was indeed my father. He had a stunned expression on his face.

  ‘Hiroshi?’ my mother prompted. ‘What is it?’

  My heart beat harder as I waited for his answer.

  My father raised his head and looked directly at me. ‘Kasumi,’ he whispered, so that my name sounded like a sigh. ‘It’s Kasumi.’

  Chapter

  Two

  The wind in the leaves

  Passes through the divine gate

  To touch the bowed head

  Hana smothered a gasp as Mother said swiftly, ‘What about Kasumi?’

  I stood frozen, unable to move or speak, clutching the daikon I had been grating. So the punishment would fall on me . . .

  For a moment the only sound was the sizzling of frying tofu, then the scrape of metal as Mami moved the pan from the flame.

  ‘Hiroshi? Tell me . . . what about Kasumi?’

  Father shook his head as if to clear it. Bending to remove his sandals, he stepped onto the tatami and approached the hearth, holding his hands out to warm them. ‘I had to go with Lord Shimizu to see Yamada-san.’ My heart almost stopped. Yamada was the village headman as well as the owner of the honjin. ‘About Kasumi.’

  ‘Father —’ I began, but he held up a hand.

  ‘We still have an inn to run. Wait till the last guests have gone, then I’ll explain.’ He left the room. I couldn’t gauge his mood. At least he hadn’t shouted. Was that a good sign or not?

  For the next little while I could hear Father in the front room laughing and joking with the pilgrims, who seemed in no hurry to take to the road and ordered round after round of sake. Whenever Father entered our quarters his face wore the remote expression he’d had since the visit of the samurai. I knew he was troubled, and I knew by the quick glances he cast my way that the trouble had something to do with me.

  Finally Father bade the pilgrims a good journey and returned to sit in the head position on the tatami by the hearth. Mother took her place to his right, from where she could serve him his lunch, while Hana and I sat quietly on bare wood at the bottom place.

  ‘Please, Hiroshi,’ my mother begged as he slurped the last of his noodles from the bowl. ‘Kasumi told us what she said to Lord Shimizu. Was he very angry?’

  ‘Yes . . . no. No, it’s not that. It’s not something bad.’

  Relief flooded through me.

  My father’s lips tightened. ‘Though she could have caused a serious problem with her unguarded tongue.’

  ‘But if it’s not something bad, what is it?’ Mother asked. ‘Why did you have to see Yamada-san?’ She lifted the pot from the hearth and poured Father a cup of tea.

  ‘Lord Shimizu has recently married. His wife is in need of a churo.’ When none of us spoke he added, ‘You know — a personal attendant, like a lady-in-waiting.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mother, in a voice that meant she didn’t.

  ‘He has offered the position to Kasumi.’

  ‘Kasumi?’ Hana almost shrieked my name as my mother repeated incredulously, ‘Kasumi?’ I just stared, too numb with shock to speak.

  My father took a sip of tea, then made a face. ‘This is very bitter. Do you have a sweet to go with it?’ (Father always blamed his sweet tooth on the tea.)

  Mother waved a hand at Hana, who reluctantly left her place.

  ‘Yes,’ my father continued. ‘Kasumi.’

  ‘Is this a joke, Hiroshi?’ Mother ventured.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A samurai from the Matsuyama domain wants our daughter as a companion for his wife?’

  ‘A very high-ranking samurai,’ my father corrected. ‘He comes from one of the oldest families in Matsuyama and is a leading official in the domain. Apparently he has the ear of the daimyo himself. He explained it all to Yamada-san and me.’

  ‘He went with you to see Yamada-san?’

  ‘Of course — we needed to arrange travel papers for Kasumi,’ Father said as Hana set a plate of sweet jellies in front of him.

  ‘So Kasumi is to go with him to Matsuyama?’ Mother’s voice was faint.

  I felt oddly detached as the conversation carried on its strange course. I had the sensation that I was rising above the trees and looking down on our village from far away. My parents were speaking as if I wasn’t in the room, and perhaps I wasn’t. The only thing that held me in place was Hana’s hiss of surprise in my ear as she resumed her seat next to me.

  ‘No, not Matsuyama,’ Father said, his voice thick with jelly. ‘Lord Shimizu lives permanently in Edo. He holds a very important position as a liaison, maintaining contact with the other domains on behalf of the daimyo. He is particularly busy at the moment as the daimyo is in Matsuyama this year.’

  ‘Kasumi as a lady-in-waiting,’ my mother repeated. ‘But . . . but why? She’s not educated, she has none of the skills — not to mention the rank. And what about her manners? It makes no sense at all.’

  ‘I know, I know, I told him all that when he proposed the idea — respectfully, of course.’ Respectful of Shimizu, I gathered; not me. ‘He agreed that it was an unusual proposition, but he has assured me that her lack of accomplishments won’t be a hindrance.’

  ‘But why Kasumi?’ my mother asked again.

  My father shifted as if growing irritated by the questions. ‘What does it matter why? He says he thinks Kasumi’s temperament will suit his wife.’

  There was a silence in which I was sure my parents’ thoughts — my father’s especially — were echoing my own: what was so remarkable about my temperament?

  ‘When a man of Lord Shimizu’s rank offers a girl like Kasumi a position in his household it is not an invitation; it’s an order,’ Father went on. ‘And one that I am more than happy to comply with, frankly. It’s a great honour for Kasumi. She’s a very fortunate girl.’ He glared at me from under his eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure that she deserves her good fortune.’

  I had been kneeling, but now I sat back on my bottom to clutch my knees. Father couldn’t be serious. I was to go to Edo? The capital of the Shogun was two hundred miles away.

  ‘Edo,’ said my mother, her thoughts following the same path as mine. ‘It’s so far away. Is it safe there?’ At first I didn’t grasp her meaning, but then she added, ‘Since the Black Ships, I mean . . .’

  Even in the mountains we had heard of the foreign ships that had appeared in Edo Bay four years before, the first time foreigners had been seen in nearly two hundred and fifty years. People said the appearance of the foreigners was to blame for the catastrophes that followed, like the great earthquake in Edo; that the catastrophes were a sign that the kami, the spirits, were displea
sed.

  ‘I can’t see how any of that will affect Kasumi,’ Father said. ‘The wives of samurai don’t just wander the streets like commoners, you know; she’s probably less likely to get in trouble there than she is here. I’ve been too easy on her, I can see that now.’

  He looked at me as if challenging me to argue with him, to defend myself, and perhaps on another day I might have, but for once I knew better than to speak, even though I had a thousand questions. When was I to leave? How would I get to Edo? What did a lady-in-waiting actually do? I could feel Hana wriggling impatiently beside me, as if she too wanted more detail, but it was not our place to ask questions, not even when the matter under discussion involved me.

  Father continued to tell the story at his own pace. ‘After we spoke to Yamada-san, I walked with Lord Shimizu to the waki-honjin; he is to stay there overnight with his nephew. He has adopted the boy and is returning with him from Matsuyama. I stayed to talk with Kimura-san.’ The owner of the waki-honjin was a good friend of Father.

  ‘What did he say about Kasumi?’

  ‘He was surprised. After all, it’s unusual for a lady-in-waiting to be chosen from outside one’s own domain. Then he congratulated me. There are wealthy families who would pay a fortune to have their daughters taken into the household of such a high-ranking samurai. He even hinted that, if she returns improved, he might consider Kasumi for his youngest son.’

  I couldn’t repress a snort. Of Kimura’s three yambrained sons, the youngest was the yammiest.

  ‘Did you say something, Kasumi?’ my father asked sharply.

  ‘No, Father,’ I murmured, my eyes fixed on the hearth in front of me.

  ‘But Kasumi belongs here,’ my mother said. She was a good wife who would never usually contradict her husband’s decisions, and I appreciated her speaking out for me and risking my father’s displeasure. ‘You know how she loves the forest. Besides, it will mean extra work for me and Hana.’

  ‘Not that much more,’ my father said. ‘Kasumi spends half the day mooning among the trees as far as I can tell. Anyway, Lord Shimizu has thought of that: he has offered to pay me a stipend. We can use it to hire another maid. We have agreed on a trial period of a year. There is no point in arguing; it is decided. Kasumi will just have to obey whether she likes it or not. She doesn’t get special treatment just because she loves the forest.’ His voice was scornful.

  ‘My father said Kasumi is special,’ my mother offered timidly.

  ‘Your father,’ my own father scoffed. ‘You know I had the highest respect for your father’ (this was how he always prefaced his criticisms) ‘but he had a blind spot when it came to Kasumi. What good does it do for a girl to be special? I have no use for a daughter who’s special. Look at Hana — she’s not special.’

  Hana blushed as if he’d just paid her a compliment. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  ‘Kasumi and Hana are like the turtle and the moon,’ my father observed. We all knew what he meant. On the surface my sister and I were alike — long-limbed with faces the shape of full-moon dumplings and hair as thick and straight as straw — just as the turtle and the moon are alike, the turtle with its round shell and the moon a disc of mother-of-pearl. But while the moon glows high and clean in the sky, the turtle scratches around in the mud. Obviously I was the turtle.

  ‘Kasumi would do well to be more like her sister,’ Father said with a sniff. ‘Maybe her new position will teach her a lesson about hard work and humility she so sorely needs. She has always been too bold for a girl, speaking up when she should mind her tongue. But the stake that sticks up gets hammered down. It’s lucky that her impertinence today met with good fortune instead of bringing down ill on us all.’

  That was true; my father had good reason to be angry with me. But what was Shimizu thinking? After everything Father had told him about me — that I was stupid and fanciful — how could he possibly think I would find favour with his wife? Despite his high rank and his access to the daimyo, the samurai must be a very peculiar man indeed.

  ‘When will she leave?’ My mother sounded resigned now. She had accepted the inevitable.

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m to take Kasumi to the waki-honjin at sunrise.’ He clapped his hands once then rose. ‘Now enough sitting around. We all have plenty to do before the next lot of guests arrive for the evening. All six sleeping rooms are full tonight, you know. And I have to go back to Yamada-san’s; he said he would have Kasumi’s travel papers ready later this afternoon. See the extra work this causes me? I hope she’s grateful.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ I muttered.

  But Father wasn’t listening; he was by the back door again, tying on his sandals. ‘I have to go see Yori about another sake delivery; those pilgrims have just about drunk us dry.’

  ‘Hana and I can handle the dinner preparations,’ Mother told me when Father had left, ignoring Hana’s protests. ‘You should go say goodbye to your friends.’

  In something of a daze I left the inn and walked along the main street, stopping at a house with a big ball made of cedar twigs outside to denote that this was a sake brewery, one of several in the village. Around the back I found my friend Chiyo. She was minding her three little brothers and some of the neighbours’ children. They were playing Kagome Kagome, dancing in a ring around a girl in the centre who, when the singing stopped, would have to guess who was behind her.

  ‘This can’t be real,’ said Chiyo, when I told her I was leaving the village and why. ‘It’s the beginning of a ghost story, right? The samurai will turn out to be a tanuki in disguise and you caught him in the act of changing into his human form. He’s going to murder you in the forest so you can never reveal his secret.’

  ‘Chiyo!’ My friend had a passion for ghost stories, the more gruesome the better.

  ‘Have you told Ayame yet?’

  ‘I’m going there next. I’ll bet she doesn’t immediately imagine me murdered.’

  ‘Hardly,’ snorted Chiyo. ‘She’ll imagine you married to a handsome samurai — watch you don’t break any of his plates.’ This was a reference to one of Chiyo’s favourite stories, about a servant and a samurai who fell in love, but then the servant broke a priceless plate and came to a grisly end.

  ‘You’re terrible,’ I told her, thinking how much I’d miss Chiyo’s dark sense of humour.

  ‘Come on, children, I’ve got a new story to tell you,’ I heard her say as I left. ‘It’s called “Kasumi and the Tanuki”.’

  I found Ayame scrubbing the stove in her family’s small row house at the bottom of the village. Her father had died when she was very young and Ayame’s mother had a stall selling gohei-mochi, the rice dumpling smothered in sesame sauce which was a specialty of the region, to passing travellers.

  She looked at me in wonder when I told her my news. ‘A lady-in-waiting? Really?’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ridiculous? No! I’m so happy for you, Kasumi!’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Lord Shimizu’s wife is bound to have dozens of attendants, and there’ll be very little work for you to do. I’ve heard ladies-in-waiting do nothing but gossip and intrigue and spend all day arranging each other’s hair,’ said Ayame, pushing a strand of her own hair from her face with the back of her wrist. She sighed. ‘Maybe a handsome samurai will fall in love with you and you’ll marry him and become a fine lady.’

  ‘It would be against the law for a samurai to marry me,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Maybe if he was a very low-ranking samurai . . .’

  ‘I’m not going to marry a samurai, Ayame,’ I said patiently.

  ‘Well, at least you’ll be able to wear beautiful silk kimonos.’

  I shook my head, laughing. ‘You know only samurai are allowed to wear silk.’

  Ayame looked stricken. ‘But won’t all the other ladies be wearing silk? You don’t think they’ll look down on you, do you?’

  I hadn’t considered the other ladies; it was tr
ue that they would probably all be the wives and daughters of samurai. Oh good, now I had something new to worry about.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

  Ayame wiped her wet hands on her kimono, then squeezed my hands in hers. ‘I’ll miss you, Kasumi,’ she said. ‘And you never know about the handsome samurai. It can happen. Remember that story Chiyo likes so much? The one about the samurai who marries the servant girl?’

  ‘The girl who broke the plate?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She sighed happily. ‘I love that story — it’s so romantic. So you never know, do you?’

  I decided not to remind her how the story ended. ‘I guess not.’

  I said goodbye and walked back up to the main street, already missing my friends. And Father thought I had an overactive imagination!

  My last call mattered more than all the others. I climbed the hill to the temple, stopping to pick wildflowers that grew among the grass, and entered the cemetery. I would miss my grandparents more than any of my living relatives. I felt ashamed by the thought, but it was true. They had understood me better than anyone ever had — and more than anyone ever would. With a broom of bamboo twigs, I swept the area around the big stone block engraved with my mother’s family name and put the flowers I had picked in the vase by its side. As I did, I murmured one of my grandmother’s poems about the forest, reminding myself that although seasons pass they also return. A trial of one year, Father had said. Would I really be allowed to come back to the valley after that? Who would decide?

  When I had said my farewells to my grandparents, I continued uphill to the stone torii, the gate at the foot of the shrine. At the bottom of the steps was a basin of water. Using the cup that stood on the rim, I scooped up water to wash my hands and rinse my mouth. Then I climbed the sixty-five steps and entered the shrine compound high above the village. The trees towered above and for a moment I just stood, awed by the silence and gravity of the forest, feeling the presence of the kami, the spirits. Then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and realised I was not alone; someone else was already standing before the shrine, praying. It was a stranger, not someone from the village: a young man, a samurai with two swords in his belt.