‘Lady Tsuguko . . .’ repeated the princess. A shadow crossed her face.
Footsteps whispered across the tatami outside the princess’s chamber. The door slid open. A tall figure was on her knees outside.
‘Your Imperial Highness. Excuse my rudeness. I heard she had returned. My Lady Shoko-in! Daughter-in-law!’
Sachi knew that commanding presence and deep resonant voice. Hastily she bowed to the ground and pressed her face to her hands.
The Retired One was wearing an elegant kimono in a modest shade of grey. Her hair, which hung to her shoulders, was glossy and black. Her eyes were jewel-bright, her beauty undimmed. Sachi remembered the ice queen in the folk tale who lured men into the snowy wastes with her beauty and then left them to freeze to death. She was just as perfect and as blood-chilling. She was looking at Sachi with a honeyed smile. Sachi’s heart sank. Had she come all this way only to be the butt of her sarcasm again? She braced herself.
‘Welcome,’ the Retired One said smoothly. ‘You’ve come a long way. How very brave to return. You show great loyalty to the Tokugawa clan. We gather you back into our embrace.’
The princess returned her bow, taking care not to incline her head even a fraction lower than the Retired One’s. So they were still battling over who took precedence, even now when there were only the two of them left.
‘Of course I am very happy to see you,’ said the Retired One, addressing Sachi. Sachi bowed. It was far more disconcerting when the Retired One was polite than when she showed open hostility.
‘We thought you’d gone back to your own kind,’ the Retired One continued, enunciating each syllable with icy clarity. ‘We didn’t expect to see you again. Why did you return?’
Sachi shivered. The words were like a shower of sleet, chilling her to the bone. But the Retired One’s harshness no longer hurt her as it had.
‘You must realize it’s all over,’ hissed the Retired One. ‘There is nothing here now. No more luxury. Nothing left except death. There’s no need for you to stay. Everyone has gone. Everyone but us.’
Everyone gone . . . So if her mother had been here then she too . . . Sachi tried to swallow but couldn’t.
‘You don’t belong here,’ said the Retired One in tones of sneering condescension. ‘We release you. I suggest you leave while you have the chance.’
‘It’s very good that you returned, dear child,’ said the princess hastily. ‘We are happy to see you. Happy that you feel such loyalty to us and to the Tokugawa clan. Happy to have the chance to say goodbye. But you must leave, and quickly. We belong to the Tokugawa clan, the Retired One and I. We are wives, we married into the family. But you are young. Life is before you. It was me who brought you here – you did not choose to come. Now it is my responsibility to release you. You must go.’
But the princess had not chosen either. Sachi knew that very well. This was not a world in which anyone could choose any part of their life, the princess least of all.
‘And . . . and what will you do?’ she whispered.
‘We are expecting an attack at any moment,’ said the princess. She spoke lightly, almost carelessly, and Sachi could see that her face was serene, her eyes bright. It was as if she were discussing her wedding, not a terrible battle. ‘The city is under siege. We hear there are fifty thousand southern troops at Shinagawa and Itabashi, waiting for the order to attack. When the time comes our men will fight to the death. The city will go up in flames. We will stay here, her ladyship and I. It is our place. If they take the castle, it will be with us in it. We will burn it and kill ourselves. Leave, child. Leave now.’
So that was why the princess looked so different, so alive. Here was the destiny she yearned for. To be present at the end, to go up in flames along with the greatest castle in the land – it was a fate to be grasped with joy.
For a moment Sachi too felt intoxicated, swept up in the princess’s excitement. But then she thought of Shinzaemon. She no longer wanted to embrace death like a lover, as a samurai would. The princess and the Retired One had no reason to live, to grow old. She did. In her imagination she was stealing out of the doomed castle. Taki would come too. They would wait at the Tsubone Gate for Shinzaemon to appear. She would beg him to flee with her. Of course he would refuse, he would speak of honour and duty, but she would think up argument after argument: he had to protect her, that was his duty too. Finally she would succeed. She pictured the three of them on their way out of the city, somehow evading the troops, setting off along the Inner Mountain Road again, disappearing into the hills.
But then Sachi remembered her quest for her mother. She needed to find out what had happened to her. How could she leave now if there was even the slightest possibility that her mother was still alive, waiting for her? In any case, she had no choice. She knew what her duty was and what she had to say. She was a warrior woman, a samurai, and she must be ready to die as a samurai would, proudly and bravely. No matter what she might feel in her heart, no matter what she herself might want to do, it was her duty as the late shogun’s concubine to join the princess and the Retired One in death. She could not do less.
‘Never!’ She spoke quietly and firmly. ‘I too am a Tokugawa, unworthy though I am. His Majesty graciously deigned to take me as his concubine – his only concubine. I will share the Tokugawas’ destiny, no matter what it is.’
The Retired One fixed her fierce black eyes on Sachi. ‘Call yourself a Tokugawa?’ she snapped, her lip curling into a sneer. ‘You forget! You are not even a samurai. You’re a peasant. Don’t presume to think you can follow our code. Leave now while you can.’
But Sachi was no longer afraid of the Retired One.
‘Madam,’ she said calmly, ‘I am as much a Tokugawa as you are. I did not choose my birthplace but I can choose my place of death. No matter what I am, I know my duty.’
‘Child, I order you to leave,’ said the princess. ‘Time is running out. You are under no obligation to stay. You must obey.’
‘Never. If you die here then I will too.’
The Retired One sighed. Her face softened. Was it Sachi’s imagination or was there even a tear in those fierce black eyes?
‘You have great strength of spirit,’ she said finally.
‘Her ladyship ordered our ladies-in-waiting to leave,’ said the princess. ‘She shouted at them, told them that it was an order. But she didn’t think they would.’
‘They call themselves samurai,’ said the Retired One, ‘and they’re afraid to die! I thought they would be proud to stay and die here together. But they’ve all fled.’ Her lip curled again. ‘Crawled back to their families. In the old days everyone would have stayed.’
The princess and the Retired One glanced at each other and smiled – triumphant smiles. Sachi had never seen them look so happy and proud, as if their moment had come, as if they were about to fulfil the destiny they had been awaiting for so long. They were no longer victims who had been married against their will. Their eyes were shining like young girls tremblingly awaiting their first lover, as if all of life was before them. But it was not life but death that they yearned for with such impatience.
‘Times have changed,’ said the princess. ‘We are no longer in the Warring Period, when people would elect to die together.’
‘It saddens me that standards have fallen so far,’ said the Retired One. She looked straight at Sachi, smiling. ‘You began life as a peasant, but truly you have the heart of a samurai.’
II
‘After the fire the princess told everyone to leave,’ said Haru. ‘It was too dangerous to stay. The Retired One said it was an order. We are in great peril here in the castle. The southerners have the city in a stranglehold. If they can take the castle, they’ll have the country.’
Haru had cleared away the dinner trays and now knelt, turning her fan over and over in her plump hands. Candles in tall golden candlesticks stood around the chamber, crackling and sputtering. The flames threw a yellow glow across her face, flickeri
ng across her round cheeks, the fine wrinkles of her forehead, her small nose, the gleaming coils of her coiffure. The kimono stands cast long shadows. Sachi imagined being outside in the castle grounds, seeing the huge silhouette of the castle looming above her with only a few needle-thin slivers of light to break the darkness.
‘But you didn’t go, Big Sister,’ said Sachi. ‘The princess said you could leave but you refused.’
‘Why would I go?’ said Haru abruptly. ‘Go where? To what?’ Sachi glanced at her, surprised. Her plump face had changed. Her small eyes had widened and her eyebrows were pressed together, as if some painful memory had leaped unbidden to her mind. She was staring into the distance as if gazing into some long-forgotten past. ‘To a family and country I don’t know at all?’ she demanded. ‘That remote place I came from – it’s nothing to me. I’ve been here my whole life. This is my family and my home.’
‘But . . .’ Sachi was remembering the stories Haru had told her about the body in the palanquin and the many other strange and terrible things that had happened in the castle. Haru had always complained about what an unhappy place it was, how she missed the company of men. Yet when she had had the chance to leave, she had chosen to stay.
Haru was looking at Sachi intensely. Sachi shifted and looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.
‘And Lady Tsuguko?’ she asked hastily.
Haru shook herself back into the present.
‘No one knows. You were the last to see her. Did she not take you to the imperial palanquin?’
Of course. That tall figure striding through the smoke-filled rooms while the flames crackled louder and louder. She couldn’t possibly have survived the journey back through that inferno. She must have perished there. It was a good death, an admirable death: she had died while carrying out her duty. Still, Sachi’s eyes filled with tears. Lady Tsuguko had taught her so much and always taken her side. Why did life have to be so full of sadness?
Haru was usually so sunny and cheerful, but tonight she seemed restless. She was looking at Sachi as if she couldn’t take her eyes off her. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, then took up some sewing and put it down again. With a start Sachi realized Haru’s eyes too were brimming with tears.
In the corner was the bulky, shapeless bundle Sachi had brought all the way back to the palace. The brocade inside seemed to glow, to draw her eyes towards it. Sachi remembered that Haru had seemed to recognize the crest on the comb. The same crest was embroidered on the brocade. She put the bundle on the floor in front of her and started fiddling with the knot. Haru reached out and took it.
Sachi watched curiously.
As Haru finished unpicking the knot, the thin silk wrapper fell open. There was the folded brocade, brilliant as the sky. It lit up the dark corners of the room.
Haru gasped and turned as white as if she had seen a ghost. She stared at the fabric, stretched out a trembling finger and touched it as if she could hardly believe it was real, as if she was afraid it would crumble away into dust. Then she picked it up and shook it out. A faint musty fragrance, as ancient as time – of musk and aloe, wormwood and frankincense – swirled into the air. She held it to her face, took a deep, convulsive breath and started to cry. She cried until Sachi thought she would never stop.
Sachi stared at her, aghast. Haru hadn’t even looked at the crest; it was the brocade itself that had had such a dramatic effect. Fear clutched at Sachi’s stomach, held it in an iron fist. Finally she forced herself to speak.
‘You . . . you know it, Big Sister.’
‘It’s been so long. So many years.’ Haru mopped her face with her sleeves and laid the brocade carefully on her lap. ‘You look just like her, Little Sister,’ she breathed. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘I thought as much but I couldn’t let myself believe it. I told myself it was a coincidence, that my memory was failing me. How could such a thing be possible?’
Sachi put her hands on the tatami to steady herself. The truth about her mother – about who she was – was so close, yet suddenly she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear it. She was afraid.
‘Who do I look like?’ she whispered. ‘Big Sister, who do I look like?’
‘It’s so long since I saw her. And then you came. At first you were just a little thing. And then as you got older you looked more and more . . . And now, now you’ve been away and I see you afresh . . . It’s as if she’s come back. As if she’s here again.’
‘My mother . . .’ Sachi had to say it.
Haru was weeping. For a while she couldn’t speak. The scent of the brocade filled the room. A candle guttered and went out. Moonlight poured in through the fine white paper of the windows. Where once the castle would have been full of voices, footsteps and laughter there was utter silence, broken only by the sighing of the wind in the trees outside, the shriek of a night owl and the sound of Haru’s sobs.
‘She was so beautiful. So beautiful,’ said Haru brokenly. ‘No one could lay eyes on her and not love her. And you . . . You are the same.’
‘Is she here, Big Sister?’ Sachi’s voice was shrill in the silence. ‘If I could only see her, just once.’
Haru turned her face towards her. She was no longer the plump cheerful Haru that Sachi knew. In the sickly light of the flames she had shrivelled into an old woman. She shook her head.
‘I . . . don’t know where she is,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t seen her since . . . that day. Since the day you were born.’
III
Sachi woke well before dawn and lay waiting impatiently for the first threads of light to come slanting between the wooden shutters. Taki had spent the night there in attendance. Sachi called to her to slide them back.
In the distance cocks were crowing. Another answered from the palace grounds. Birds sang, insects twittered, the sweet smells of spring came pouring in. Dogs barked madly as the city came to life. Temple bells tolled and drums sounded the hour but the sounds were thin and sparse, as if half the populace had disappeared.
As the late shogun’s concubine, Sachi had been given one of the finest rooms in the palace. She set a mirror on a mirror stand and, as pale light filtered into the room, gazed at the face that glimmered back from the polished metal surface. She studied the smooth pale oval, the straight, almost aquiline nose, the narrow slanted eyes, the small pursed mouth. There was something she was missing, something else there to be seen if only she could see it. For it was not only herself she saw there but a stranger: her mother, gazing back at her from some deep distant place.
Taki knelt behind her and started combing her hair.
‘Haru seems to know your mother,’ she said, ‘yet she never said anything all these years. Something must have happened, something terrible, to make her cry like that. It’s not like her at all.’
There was so little time, so little time, and so much Sachi needed to know.
Haru was waiting in the outer chamber. In the daylight the brocade had lost its glow. Sachi ran her fingers across it, as if afraid that if she put it away she would never see it again – that the spell it cast would be broken, that the woman who had come back would disappear. She looked up at Haru.
‘Tell me her name, Big Sister,’ she said. ‘What is her name?’
‘I shall, my lady.’ Sachi frowned. Haru had never called her ‘my lady’ before; she always called her ‘Little Sister’. ‘But first, I beg you, please tell me about this brocade. Where did you get it?’
Sachi smiled. ‘I had it all along but I didn’t know it,’ she said. ‘We went back to the village where I used to live. They told me there – my . . . parents. They told me my father brought me to them, wrapped in the brocade.’
‘Your father . . . !’ Haru went pale. Her eyes opened wide and her plump hands fluttered up to cover her mouth. ‘He went all that way . . . to the village?’
‘He’s a distant cousin of my parents. He visited again recently,’ said Sachi, trying to hide her amazement. Could it be possible that Ha
ru knew her father too?
Haru gasped. ‘You mean . . . he’s alive?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Did you see him?’ She was staring at Sachi, half smiling, as if memories were reawakening.
‘No,’ said Sachi. ‘But my parents did.’
Haru drew back as if she had suddenly remembered who and where she was. ‘And he was . . . well?’ she asked rather formally.
‘He’s well. He was . . .’ How could she tell her that he was with the enemy?
But Haru had clasped her arms across her obi and was rocking backwards and forwards. ‘Daisuké-sama, Daisuké-sama,’ she murmured, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It would have been better if we’d never seen him, your mother and I. But then . . . you wouldn’t be here either.’
A maid was bringing in tray after tray of dishes the likes of which Sachi hadn’t seen since she left the palace.
‘Tell me . . . tell me about my mother, Big Sister. How did you know her?’
‘We grew up together, my lady,’ she said. ‘My father was a retainer of her father’s. I came with her to the palace. I was her maid. We were always together – like you two. I miss her still, I can’t tell you how much.’
Her maid . . . ! Taki gave a slow rumble of amazement, rising from somewhere deep in her throat. There was a long silence.
‘What was her name?’ whispered Sachi.
‘Okoto,’ Haru whispered, savouring each syllable. ‘Okoto-nokata. Lady Okoto.’
Lady Okoto. In the shadows a kimono hanging over a stand stirred as a draught eddied through the room.
‘She was of the House of Mizuno. Her father was Lord Tadahira, chamberlain to the lords of Kisshu.’
Lord Mizuno . . . Was that not the man who had come to the palace to announce that His Majesty was ill, that dreadful man she and Taki had seen getting off the ferry only a few days earlier? Sachi could see his swarthy hawk-like features as he shuffled past her behind Lord Oguri, disguised as a merchant with a travelling hat pulled well down over his face. The way he had stared at her and cried out, as if she was a ghost . . . It must have been because she looked like her mother!
The Last Concubine Page 31
