So many men, hundreds upon hundreds, left to rot. She had been so busy searching for Shinzaemon she had hardly thought about all those others – all those shattered bodies and faces she had looked at that had not been his. They must all have had wives, lovers, children, parents. They must all have said goodbye with bravado as they went riding off with their comrades, eager for glory.
Those wives and lovers must have hoped and prayed that they would see their men again, despite the odds. Many were hoping and praying still. She had seen a few out on the hill, searching. But most would never know what had happened and their men would lie rotting until they were ripped apart by crows or wild dogs.
And for what? To fulfil their duty to their lord the shogun, to hold back the barbarous southern clans who were overrunning the country. The war was not finished yet. There would be other battles, Sachi told herself, other battlefields just as grim or worse. And yet . . . To have fought so bravely and now to lie unburied. Having seen such a sight it was hard to think any longer of death in battle as honourable and glorious. It was nothing more than carnage and butchery and terrible waste.
And Genzaburo . . . He had been so young and, for all his love of mischief, so innocent. He hadn’t been fiercely committed to the shogun, yet he had been on the hill all the same. Wherever danger or adventure was to be found, he had always been there. Sachi remembered their childhood together: the time he had wrestled a wild boar and how proud he had been of the scar where it had gored him; the way he used to dart about in the river like a fish and pluck hairs from horses’ tails to make fishing lines; the time they had gone off together to watch for the princess’s procession. He had whispered to her that they should hide in the eaves; but instead she had been snatched up, taken to Edo, and by the time she saw him again she had become a different person.
She remembered the wistful way he had looked at her when they met in the village a few months earlier. He had been so alive; now it felt as if her childhood had died with him. After all their years together she had not been able to do anything for him, had not been able even to bury him. In her mind she said goodbye to him. It was like the end of a chapter in her life.
When she finally drifted off to sleep, she saw not Genzaburo but Shinzaemon sprawled among the dead. His eyes were wide open, staring at her. He stretched out his hand but she drifted past like a ghost. She heard the roar of a great wind, saw the spirits of the dead warriors rising like columns of smoke, hovering whitely over the hill. She heard their wails, felt their chill breath. She jerked awake with a start, shuddering with horror, drenched in sweat.
From the next room came the sound of a bell. Light glimmered through the gap between the doors. Haru had been up all night. She was chanting sutras, praying to the Buddhas for the souls of the dead. Then she called on Lord Amida to save Tatsuemon.
Sachi scrambled to her knees, lit a candle and prayed too. She prayed first for Genzaburo, for his spirit to find peace, then for Shinzaemon and Toranosuké too, to keep them safe, wherever they might be. Then she rubbed her beads hard and whispered, ‘Dear gods, dear ancestors, Lord Amida Buddha: keep Tatsuemon here, don’t send him to join those dead warriors. He is so young. His life is just beginning.’ She was ashamed for thinking it but she couldn’t help herself: if he lived, he might be able to tell her where Shinzaemon was, whether he was alive or dead.
‘They’ve gone north,’ the priest had said. ‘A lot have gone north.’ Shinzaemon had surely been among them. He’d be back one day, standing in the great entrance hall of the mansion, looking at her with his slanted eyes, his hair bushing out around his head. If only she could hold on to that belief, it might happen. She prayed to Amida Buddha to keep him safe.
Morning came at last, even hotter and closer than the previous day. Sachi’s clothes clung to her. Her face was sticky with sweat, she couldn’t eat, she hardly dared breathe. She could think of nothing but the men dead on the hill and those who perhaps were not dead: Shinzaemon, Toranosuké – and Tatsuemon. Young Tatsu.
Taki and Haru had pulled back the paper doors that divided the silent rooms. They were lifting them out of their frames, turning the rooms into a big open pavilion so that any passing breeze would waft in. The shrill of cicadas shattered the still air.
Far in the distance there was a faint noise: the clatter of hooves pounding up the hill.
Supposing the news was bad? Supposing Tatsu had died in the night? For a moment Sachi was frozen with fear. Then she leaped to her feet, hitched up her kimono skirts and darted through the sombre rooms. Taki and Haru pattered across the tatami behind her.
Barely stopping to slip on sandals, she stumbled out of the shade of the entrance hall and into a wall of heat. In the courtyard the light was so intense that for a moment she was blinded. Each stone in the gravel, each leaf, each tiny piece of moss stood out in dazzling relief. Then she was in shadow again. Taki had rushed out and was holding a parasol over her head.
Sachi stopped short, staring into the brightness. A man was striding through the dark shadows under the heavy overhanging eaves of the gate. The previous day she had seen only that he was familiar, that she knew him. But now she couldn’t help being struck by what an extraordinary creature he was. He was a giant! As he stepped into the sunlight his feet and legs and arms were huge. Even his nose, jutting out like a tengu’s, cast a long shadow. Hair, yellow like sunshine, sprouted from his cheeks and chin. He was wearing a hat, the strangest hat she had ever seen, black and cylindrical like a hand drum.
Yet for all his foreignness, there was nothing frightening about him. He had saved her life not once but twice. He was like a bodhisattva, a guardian being from another realm.
She fixed her eyes on his face, trying to read it, and walked slowly towards him. The shadow over her head quivered. Taki’s hand holding the parasol was shaking.
‘How is he?’ she asked breathlessly.
Edwards shook his head. He bunched his forehead so that his eyebrows came together. His skin was ruddy, darkened by the sun. She could see the pores in it and the glow of his pale eyes.
‘We can’t tell yet,’ he said. ‘He’s sleeping. He has fever.’
At least he was alive. Sachi felt weak with relief. The women clamoured around Edwards, bombarding him with questions. ‘When did he wake up? Did he say anything? What did Dr Willis say?’
‘Dr Willis took out a bullet from his arm but the bone is badly broken,’ said Edwards. ‘The wound may be infected. He’s not sure if he can save the arm. He may have to amputate.’
Sachi gasped and put her hands to her mouth.
‘It is wartime,’ said Edwards gently. ‘Many men lose arms and legs. Perhaps your doctors do not do such things but ours do. Often it’s the only way to save the patient.’
Sachi knew this perfectly well. But she also knew that people sometimes died after having a limb cut off.
‘Our medicine works as well as yours – in some cases better,’ said Edwards. ‘Your friend is very ill and is burning with fever. Dr Willis is a famous surgeon. He’s saved many men.’
‘We must go to Tatsu now,’ said Sachi. ‘Please take us.’
‘Out of the question,’ said Edwards. ‘Dr Willis said he must rest.’
‘But supposing he . . . gets worse? He knows us. It will be a comfort to him if we’re there.’
‘There are women there. I’ll come with a wheeled carriage for you when Dr Willis says he can have visitors.’
‘A wheeled carriage?’ gasped Taki. ‘Like in the woodblock prints?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Sachi, smiling despite herself. ‘We’ll walk. Nowhere in Edo is that far.’
Under the brim of his hat Edwards’s forehead bunched again.
‘I live out near Shinagawa, near one of the execution grounds. I shouldn’t think you’ve ever been there. It’s very dangerous round there. Your militia were the only police in Edo. Now there is no one; the southern army cannot keep order. There are looters wrecking storehouses and stealing rice a
nd thieves and robbers and murderers roaming about everywhere. The city is in chaos.’
‘We’re samurai,’ said Sachi quietly. ‘We are trained to fight. We walked to Ueno yesterday. We can walk anywhere.’
Edwards glanced at her. His eye seemed to linger a fraction longer than was necessary.
‘And how are things . . . otherwise?’ Her words hung in the silence.
‘Everyone is waiting to see what happens next.’
It was all too clear that the city belonged to the southerners. But the citizens of Edo were with the north. They belonged to the shogun, every last one of them. The southerners would have to fight long and hard to win them over.
II
A few days after they returned from the hill there was a rumbling and clattering in the distance, the clopping of hooves and yells of male voices. It was as noisy as if a battalion of soldiers was marching up to the gates.
Edwards was waiting in the courtyard. He took off his hat and bowed.
‘Time to go,’ he said, grinning. ‘Bring your travelling hats and tie them on tight.’
They had to push their way through tangles of long grass and weeds and knots of morning glory to get to the gatehouse at the edge of the estate. Cuckoos piped above the incessant shrilling of cicadas. The kind old man who had let the women through when they had gone to the hill was on guard, holding a hefty stave. His face crinkled into a smile as he bowed.
Standing at the gates was the most extraordinary contraption. Sachi stopped, gaping in amazement. She had seen such things in woodblock prints of foreigners in Yokohama, but she had never expected to see one in real life.
She felt a pang of superstitious dread. Nothing but palanquins and horses had ever passed through these ancient gates before, and now here was this foreign contraption. It marked the end of something, something that was important to her.
It was a bit like a giant palanquin on wheels or an oxcart such as farmers used. There was a trunk inside, with some coarse foreign fabric thrown over. It was huge. Even the horses that stood pawing the ground and snorting, beautiful beasts with long manes and glossy coats, were larger than life. Sitting up in front, holding the reins, was another hairy-faced foreigner. He too took off his hat and bowed.
There was also a troop of guards armed with swords and staves, the same men who had accompanied them when they had travelled with Edwards along the Inner Mountain Road. They shuffled their straw-sandalled feet and glanced at her then at each other, exchanging knowing looks. She looked back at them, wishing she could work out who they belonged to, who they reported to. But they turned their eyes away immediately and their crests revealed nothing. She would have to be very careful about what she said in their hearing.
Taki and Haru were standing a safe distance away, squeaking excitedly.
‘Dozo,’ said Edwards. ‘Ladies, please, take a seat.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ said Taki, shrinking back – Taki, who was always so brave.
Sachi put her foot on the step. She was about to climb in when Edwards took her hand. She started, feeling the touch of his rough skin on hers. Before she had a chance to pull her hand away he had lifted her up into the carriage. She stared at him in bemusement. Fancy a man behaving like a servant!
It felt very odd indeed to sit with her legs dangling instead of tucked up beneath her. Edwards helped Taki and Haru too into the carriage and they squeezed in beside her. The carriage rocked a bit. It was not as stable as a palanquin.
The other foreigner – whom Sachi took to be a kind of groom – gave a yell and shook the reins. They lurched into motion, Edwards cantering alongside and the guards running a little way behind. With a great shaking and rattling they rumbled off across the bridge and careered around the corner on to the roadway beside the moat, clattering and bumping along. The earthen road was meant for feet, not wheels.
The city flew by dizzyingly fast. Taki and Haru clung to each other, squealing. Sachi did her best to remain calm and dignified as befitted a lady of the shogun’s court, though she had never in her life travelled faster than walking pace before. Messengers, that sort of person, might go fast, soldiers maybe, but not ladies, especially not the shogun’s ladies and least of all the shogun’s concubine.
But as they bounced along she couldn’t help laughing with excitement. Every time they rounded the smallest curve she was thrown to one side or the other. In the end she grabbed on to Taki and Haru and held on for dear life. She looked out at the world from her high perch, the wind rippling through her hair. Birds must feel like this, she thought, when they fly. Beyond the broad back of the foreigner sitting at the front she caught glimpses of the horses’ heads and flying manes and heard the pounding of their hooves. She had put on a large flat straw hat to protect her face from the sun, wrapping the strings round and round her coiled hair. It flapped alarmingly, threatening to fly off. She clutched at it with one hand to make sure it stayed securely in place.
Then she became aware of what she was seeing and gasped in horror. Across the water the great wall of the moat spun by. Parts had collapsed completely, chunks of granite poked from the water and ragged figures who looked like nothing so much as outcastes lurked in the shadows. There was even a tumbledown shack in one of the gates. The roadway that had always been perfectly raked and swept was rutted and overgrown with grass and weeds.
They whirled past a bridge. ‘Taki,’ she shouted over the clattering and rumbling, as the wind soughed past their ears. ‘Look. Look – back there.’
They had just passed the Bridge of the Shoguns’ Ladies, where she had stood with Shinzaemon as darkness fell and the moon rose and they had said their farewells.
It had been sixty-six days since then, sixty-six long dreary days. It was so hard waiting without any message, any sign that he was thinking of her or even that he was alive. She tried to picture his face as it had been that night but she couldn’t see it any more. There was nothing but a shadow.
She thought back to the moments of closeness – when they were together on the mountain, when they had said goodbye on the bridge. Even if he returned, the best they could hope for would be to continue meeting in secret, pursuing a forbidden passion. She knew very well that a future together was out of the question. They couldn’t marry. People didn’t choose their own marriage partners – it wasn’t the way the world worked.
Day after day she clung to Shinzaemon’s memory. Now she wondered whether he felt the same way about her. If she was honest with herself, what had really gone on between them? Nothing but a few glances, a moment when they had been carried away by foolish passion. The more she thought about it, the more hopeless her feelings seemed. But still she couldn’t help yearning for him.
With an effort she brought herself back to the present.
They were whirling along the very road she used to take when she went to pray at His Majesty’s tomb. In those days she had travelled in a long procession of palanquins of which hers was the most magnificent, accompanied by guards, attendants, porters and ladies-in-waiting. She remembered pushing up the bamboo blinds every now and then to peek at the castle walls across the moat. After they left the castle area they had turned away from the moat into one of the daimyo districts, lined with vast walled estates.
Now they rattled past broken walls and gates. Every flake of gold leaf, every copper crest, every bronze ornament that had marked the greatness and wealth of the lords had been stripped away. Nothing but the skeletons of palaces were left. Through the gaping holes in the walls she glimpsed tumbledown buildings blanketed in weeds with charred timbers poking through, more like the haunts of foxes and badgers than places where human beings lived.
From time to time they passed groups of villainous-looking men loitering by the road or squatting in the shadow of a tree. Once Edwards brandished his pistol. But they trotted on without incident.
Finally they saw a bustling highway ahead of them. It was a relief to be surrounded by people after the ominously empty streets of the d
aimyo districts.
‘The Eastern Sea Road,’ Edwards shouted above the clattering of hooves and the noise of people. It was the highway that led to Kano and Kyoto, many days’ journey away. The road was crammed with people struggling along, pushing carts piled high with bedding, food, kimono chests, trunks, dishes, pots and pans.
They slowed to a walk, skirting a cart that had toppled over sending luggage rolling across the street and tumbling into the drainage channel. A woman, pitifully young, stared up at Sachi with a dazed blank look. She had a child tied to her back and another clinging to her sleeve and was scrabbling about, grabbing at kimonos which had fallen out of their wrappings and lay crumpled in the dust. Her clothes were stained and ragged and her mouth twisted into an expression of fear and horror. But beneath it all her face was pale and aristocratic. She might have been a maid in a daimyo mansion or even somewhere in the women’s palace. Perhaps she was a samurai woman whose husband had been there on the hill – and who had never come home.
Sachi noticed that there were hardly any young men among the crowds. Families of women, children and old people drifted along, their faces pale and empty. The whole population seemed to be fleeing the blighted city.
The road was tightly packed with inns and shops, some boarded up, some open, offering tea or lodging or supplies. Then they passed an open space between the shops. Behind the buildings water sparkled, dazzlingly blue, as far as Sachi could see. She had never seen anything wider than the River Kiso before. She peered into the distance, trying to see the far bank, but there were no hazy mountains covered in pine trees. There was no other side at all. The water shimmered on for ever until it disappeared into the sky.
It was crammed with craft of all sizes and shapes – big boats, small boats, ferry boats and boats with masts and tall sails hanging limply in the heat. Overshadowing them all was a huge black craft that loomed like a mountain. It puffed smoke from tall chimneys and had masts that poked the sky like burned and blackened tree trunks after a forest fire. There were people running around on it and guns bristling from the sides. There was a second riding a little way from shore.
The Last Concubine Page 38
