‘I’ve come home too,’ she said.
Jiroemon looked at her gravely. ‘We don’t have much to offer you here, my girl.’ He turned and stared at the fire as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes. ‘You’re a fine lady now. You don’t belong here any more. We’re humble folk, we can’t provide the things you’re used to. Stay as long as you like, but when this war is over you must go to your father.’
The last words were like a sigh.
Sachi had been filling their teacups. She stopped and slowly lowered her arm. Surely she had misheard, she thought. She looked at him blankly.
‘My father?’ she said slowly.
‘Didn’t Mother tell you?’ Jiroemon had a cup of tea halfway to his lips. He put it down on the edge of the hearth without tasting it.
Otama had just come in. Painfully she folded her legs and knelt. It brought tears to Sachi’s eyes to see how bent her back was. She leaned forward till her head was very close to Sachi’s.
‘Your father passed through,’ she whispered. ‘Just a few days ago. I should have told you, but I couldn’t bear to, not when we’d only just got you back.’
The words jolted through Sachi like a physical blow. The room seemed to shift around her. Shinzaemon sat staring at the embers, taking everything in. Genzaburo was drawing circles on the tatami with his thin brown finger. Sachi suddenly noticed how cold it was.
Smoke lingered in the air, drifting towards the blackened rafters. Tobacco smoke mingled with the woody scent of the pine cones burning in the hearth. The old house creaked.
‘My father? But . . . But you’re my father,’ she stammered.
‘Your real father,’ said Jiroemon heavily.
Sachi stared at the coals. All those years that she had been at the palace, in the middle of chaos and despair, the threat of war, the horror of His Majesty’s death, she’d always been able to think back to the village, to conjure up memories of her happy childhood. Maybe she had remembered it as more idyllic than it really had been but she had clung to the memory like a lucky charm, something solid and real in the midst of so much change.
Taki had put down her sewing. She was staring at her, her thin face tilted to one side as if she could see something Sachi couldn’t see herself.
‘What are you talking about?’ Sachi said angrily, biting back tears. ‘You’re my father.’ She glared at Jiroemon. ‘I don’t need any father except you!’ She could hear her own voice shrill in the silence, echoing from the high rafters of the room.
It was not a big surprise to learn that she was adopted; so was half the village. Children got passed around to whoever needed a son or a daughter. But everyone else knew who their real parents were. They had filial obligations to them as well as to their adoptive parents. She was the only one who had never known her real parents. She had assumed they had died when she was a baby and had cleaved all the more closely to Jiroemon and Otama. They were all the parents she had ever had.
She put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear any more.
But at the back of her mind she couldn’t stop those niggling thoughts that had been bothering her for so long. The way she looked – that white skin people made such a fuss about. And the brocade that she had brought back all the way from the burning palace, all the way from Kano. Maybe it was connected. The bundle containing it was piled carelessly in the corridor along with the rest of the luggage. She had not dared even unpack it. She could almost see it glowing, radiating heat as if it would burn a hole through the flimsy silk square that wrapped it.
‘The brocade,’ she breathed. ‘That robe you gave me when I went off to the palace.’
‘It’s yours,’ said Otama. ‘You came wrapped up in it. Isn’t that right, Father?’
Jiroemon took a puff of his pipe and tapped it out on the edge of the hearth, sending showers of sparks flying.
‘Daisuké, he said his name was,’ he said heavily. ‘He was a distant relation. From a side branch of the family who’d moved to Edo a couple of generations back. We’d never heard a word of them since.’
‘You were the tiniest, most perfect little thing,’ said Otama, smiling wistfully. ‘Like a fairy child we’d been given to take care of. And such skin, so white and soft, like silk. He’d come walking through the mountains, carrying you wrapped in brocade. Can you imagine! A man walking through the mountains with a baby. He’d found wet nurses along the way, he said.’
She stopped and poked the glowing embers in the hearth, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
‘But . . . my mother,’ said Sachi. ‘My real mother. Where was she?’ Her voice was breathless, shrill, like a lost child.
‘He said, “This baby, I know she’s only a worthless girl and of no account. The last thing you need is an extra mouth to feed, and a girl child at that. I should have killed her, I know. But I couldn’t do it. She’s very precious to me. She’s all I have.” Those were his words, I remember them exactly. “She’s all I have. Please do me this favour. This baby. Please take care of her for me.” ’
‘He was in quite a hurry, wasn’t he, Mother?’ said Jiroemon.
‘He was a townsman, a real dandy. His clothes, so fancy. And so handsome, such a gentleman – we’d never seen anything like it in this village. And as for the brocade . . .’
‘He said he was going to Osaka to look for work. He’d come back to fetch you when he had found some. But weeks passed, then months, then years and he never came back.’
‘We thought he was dead,’ murmured Otama. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say but – we hoped he wouldn’t come back. You were our little princess. We wanted to keep you. We still do.’
Sachi pressed her sleeve to her eyes. It touched her heart to know how much her parents cared about her. But there was still a question nagging at her.
‘And my mother?’ she whispered. ‘So you don’t know . . . So no one knows . . .’
Otama and Jiroemon looked at each other. ‘That comb you have, the one you love so much,’ said Otama softly. ‘He gave us that too. It belongs to your mother. He said one day, if you wanted to find out who she was, you could show people the crest. Someone would know it.’
Sachi reached into her sleeve and found the comb, ran her fingers up and down the tines. She could feel the mysterious crest embossed there. She closed her small hand around it and held it so tightly she could feel the tines pressing into her palm. It was the only link she had to her mother.
Otama took a deep breath. ‘And then, just a few days ago, he turned up again.’
A tear ran down her faded face. She was staring into the fire as if she knew that if she told Sachi this she would lose her. ‘After all those years. Isn’t that right, Father?’
‘He stayed at our inn,’ said Jiroemon, sighing heavily, nodding his head. ‘Imagine that. Used to be lords we had staying here. Now it’s Cousin Daisuké, your father.’
‘You should have seen him,’ said Otama, shaking her head in wonder. ‘The clothes he was wearing! The sort of things you hear that foreigners wear. And his hair. Not like any hairstyle I’ve ever seen. Cropped short. Still handsome. Bit older; had filled out a bit but still quite a man.’
‘He was looking for you,’ said Jiroemon. ‘I told him the princess had taken you, that we hadn’t seen you for years. He said he was going to Edo and would look for you there.’
There was a rustle as Shinzaemon sat back on his heels. He was staring at the tatami, frowning. Sachi looked at him, puzzled. There was something he had seen that she had yet to understand.
‘I thought you said he was a townsman,’ she whispered. ‘How could he possibly have stayed at our inn?’ Only daimyos ever stayed at their inn. No one else was allowed to – at least that was how it had always been when she was a child.
‘Well, you know how things are these days,’ said Jiroemon, avoiding her eyes. ‘Everything’s upside down. He’s an important man now, your father.’
There was a long silence.
‘He was with the south
erners,’ Jiroemon muttered finally, staring at the coals. ‘With one of the generals. He’s a powerful man these days.’
So that was it, that was what Shinzaemon had guessed. A southerner . . . If he had turned out to be a criminal, this father of hers, if he had turned out to be a gangster or a gambler – she could have lived with that. But marching to Edo with the conquering southerners . . . ?
‘You must have passed each other on the road,’ whispered Otama.
‘If he’s a southerner, he’s no father of mine.’ The words burst out before she could stop them.
‘Don’t talk like that!’ said Otama. ‘He’s your real father. If he wants you back, we have to yield. He’s family. He has no other child, no heir except you. It’s your duty to go to him. It’s nothing to do with what you want or don’t want.’
‘The southerners carry the brocade banner. They’re calling themselves the imperial army now,’ said Jiroemon heavily. ‘They hold the south. Even a girl like you must know that. And they’ll probably take Edo. They say the shogun has run away. His supporters are still fighting but they can’t do much without a leader. Whether we like it or not, the war is almost over. That’s how it looks to us villagers. It could well turn out to be good for you that your father is with the southerners. You’ll see.’
‘Give us a chance,’ muttered Shinzaemon. ‘The war isn’t over yet, not if I have anything to do with it.’ Genzaburo prodded him with his elbow.
‘People of our sort can’t afford to worry about politics,’ said Otama firmly to Sachi. ‘He’ll find you a good husband. It’ll be best for you to go to him.’
Sachi nodded silently. She knew, though they did not, that she had other ties that bound her far more tightly than any obligation to this unknown father who had abandoned her so many years ago. She was joined to His Majesty, the late shogun. She belonged to his family for ever. Whatever was their fate was hers too.
IV
Sachi sat gazing into the fire long after everyone had left. Genzaburo and Shinzaemon had gone out on patrol, to see if there were any more southern troops on the way. Genzaburo wanted to show his brother-in-arms the village, he had said, and get in some sparring practice. Only Taki was still there, on her knees in a corner of the room, quietly sewing.
Sachi sat trying to absorb everything she had heard. She had thought she was coming home. Now, instead, she felt she had lost her parents – and as for the village, it seemed to have crumbled into dust, like Urashima. And what had she gained? Some swaggering southerner father and a mother who hardly existed.
The brocade, which had seemed to blaze with a supernatural light, was now just a miserable bundle, lying discarded in the corridor under a heap of belongings. She pulled it out, brought it into the room and began to fumble with the knot. Blinded with tears, she could hardly see. Perhaps it too would swirl away in a puff of smoke, taking her along with it. She almost hoped it would.
But the more she struggled with the knot, the tighter it got. Then suddenly the threads of the worn wrapper gave way and the brocade tumbled out.
It fell open, filling the room with its mysterious silky scent. It was as beautiful as ever, blue as the sky, embroidered with plum, bamboo and pine, the symbols of the New Year, and as soft and fine as a flower petal. Impatiently she shook out the fabric. She turned it this way and that, hardly seeing the landscape which swirled across the hem. In her confusion she could scarcely distinguish top from bottom. Finally she found what she was looking for – the crest embroidered at the back of the neck and on the shoulders.
She reached into her sleeve and brought out her beautiful tortoiseshell comb embossed with gold. It sparkled in her hand. She looked at the crest inlaid in gold on the edge: it was the same as the crest on the brocade. So the brocade, like the comb, had been her mother’s. She gazed and gazed at the crest as if it would yield up its secret if she stared long and hard enough. The most frustrating thing was that it seemed somehow familiar.
Taki came over, knelt beside her and gently put her thin arms round her.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I heard what your parents told you. I’m not surprised. I knew you didn’t belong here. These are good people but they’re not yours. It’s only a distant blood connection you have with them.’
‘This crest . . . It’s my mother’s. If only I can identify it, I might be able to find her family. And her too.’
Taki picked up the fabric and ran her fingers over it thoughtfully. She turned the comb over and shook her head.
‘I’ve seen it before but I can’t remember where,’ she said.
They sat in silence, studying the brocade and the comb.
‘Well,’ Taki said at last, ‘I can tell you one thing. This is a concubine’s robe. It’s a style that only concubines of the shogun’s household are allowed to wear. I’d say it’s from the court of the twelfth shogun, Lord Ieyoshi. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Wasn’t that the time when you were born?’
‘I don’t know when I was born. It was the year of the dog, that’s all I know.’
‘You’re in your eighteenth year, aren’t you, same as me? That year of the dog was an iron dog year. His Majesty would still have been on the throne.’
‘So this is a concubine’s robe from when I was born . . .’ said Sachi.
‘It must be. That’s why you were wrapped up in it.’
‘But don’t you see, Taki? Don’t you see what that means? If this was my mother’s robe, she . . . must be a concubine. Or at least she must have been when I was born. She must have been one of Lord Ieyoshi’s concubines!’
‘That’s not possible,’ said Taki sharply. ‘Didn’t your parents say your real father was a townsman?’
They looked at each other. A concubine of the shogun could never have had an affair with anyone, let alone a low-class townsman. It was inconceivable. It would have been a terrible breach of duty – a shocking crime.
‘Perhaps the man who brought you here was not your father,’ said Taki. ‘Maybe he was instructed to say he was. Maybe he was a courier, a servant . . .’
‘Or maybe my mother was not a concubine. Maybe someone gave her the brocade . . .’ whispered Sachi.
She picked up the robe and buried her face in it. It was a woman’s scent. What did it tell her? There was musk in it, aloe, wormwood, frankincense, mingled with woodsmoke from the many nights her father had spent on the road.
She spread the brocade across her knees. It was exquisitely soft and fine. The gold and silver threads of the embroidery were stiff with age and crackled as she ran her fingers over them. At the hem, a nobleman’s carriage with the harness coiled picturesquely on the ground as if the oxen that pulled it had wandered off; on the skirts, a thatch-roofed doorway with the ropes swinging as if someone had just rushed through and a rustic gate in a bamboo fence; and embroidered across the seam of the sleeve, the veranda of a secret pavilion overlooking a stream . . . Only a beautiful woman could have worn such a garment.
Supposing it were true, Sachi thought. Supposing her mother really had been a concubine and her father a townsman? That would explain why her mother had not been able to keep her, why she had been brought to the village. Perhaps she had had to be smuggled out to the countryside so that no one would know of her mother’s crime. But what kind of a woman would dare do such a thing? Only someone who had let herself be caught up in a passion so consuming that she no longer cared about her duty. And what a secret she had had to keep.
Sachi gasped and sat up sharply. She felt the blood rush to her face as she thought of Shinzaemon. She had been on the verge of committing that same crime herself. She had not given her body to another man but she had allowed him to enter her heart. Had she inherited her mother’s reckless nature? she wondered. Did the same wild blood run in her veins?
For a moment the thought filled her with horror. Perhaps the brocade had revealed its secret as a warning to her. If only she could find her lost mother, then she might understand the wild impulses that drove her t
oo.
She looked at Taki. Taki was staring at her, her big eyes wide. Sachi could see that the same thoughts were running through her mind.
‘My mother could still be in the women’s palace,’ Sachi whispered. ‘That could be why no one here knows anything about her.’
‘After His Majesty died she would have moved to the Ninomaru, the Second Citadel, where the widows live,’ said Taki thoughtfully. ‘Like old Lady Honju-in.’
Sachi remembered the old lady, as dry and withered as an autumn leaf. She was the one who had told her, ‘You are just a womb.’ Sachi and Taki would never have met the other concubines of Lord Ieyoshi. Only Lady Honju-in had had the honour of bearing a son and only she had wielded power in the palace. The rest would have been left to their prayers.
‘Taki, I have to find my mother,’ said Sachi.
‘In that case, we have to get back to Edo immediately,’ said Taki. ‘The southerners are heading for the city and they’ll be determined to take the castle. The women might have fled already and there’ll be no chance at all of finding her.’
‘But I have to try.’
But the moment Sachi got back to Edo was the moment she would have to say goodbye to Shinzaemon, she thought. The longer they stayed in the village, the more time they had together. Even though their feelings for each other had to be kept secret, she enjoyed knowing he was there, feeling his presence, being able to glance at him from time to time – his great hands, his rather delicate nose, the way his hair bushed out in that unruly way. From time to time she had the chance to pass a little closer to him than was strictly proper, to feel the heat of his body, smell his salty smell. Sometimes their hands brushed or she felt his eyes on her. But once they got to Edo it would be an end to all that. He would join the militia and would most likely be killed. That was what he expected himself.
But she knew she couldn’t hold him back for much longer. He was far too wild a character to stay in a remote village or to let his life revolve around a woman for long – though she suspected that he too, knowing he was going to his death, wanted to squeeze all the pleasure he could out of these last moments.
The Last Concubine Page 25
