The Last Concubine

by Lesley Downer

  The women tucked up their kimono skirts and pattered along as quickly as they could on their wooden sandals, every sense on the alert. The last thing they needed was to be robbed.

  They were pit-patting along in the silence when they saw a crowd of ragged men ahead of them, lurking in the shadows. As soon as the men saw them they rushed out and spread across the road, entirely filling it. There were ten or twenty of them, desperate, ravenous-looking characters. They were brandishing staves and sticks and chunks of wood that looked as if they had been ripped from the ruined palace of a daimyo.

  Haru folded her arms tightly across her obi. This time the women were on their own. There was no Shinzaemon to defend them and no Edwards around and no likelihood of either suddenly turning up in such a desolate place.

  One of the men stepped forward until his nose was pressed against Sachi’s. His smell was so foul it made her retch; he clearly hadn’t washed for many days. He had a thin twisted face, hair tied in a greasy knot on top of his head and a crazed look in his eyes. He grinned. Half his teeth were missing and the rest were blackened stumps.

  ‘All by yourselves, fine ladies?’ he mumbled. It seemed their townswomen’s robes were not much of a disguise, but at least the men were too ignorant to realize what a prize Sachi herself was. ‘Just gi’s your money and we’ll let you go.’

  Sachi glanced around. Another fellow had grabbed Haru’s arms and was trying to drag them away from her chest. Haru was standing like the well-bred gentlewoman she was, head slightly bowed, toes turned inward. Her face was impassive. The man was shaking her. He lunged forward and swung a blow at her. Her expression didn’t change. She twisted out of the way, keeping her arms folded, then waited till he was off balance and made a movement so small even Sachi barely saw it. Sachi smiled in satisfaction. She had forgotten what a fine fighter Haru was. The fellow staggered past her, staring stupidly, tripped and smashed chin first on the ground. His scrawny legs quivered then he went limp.

  The other men’s jaws dropped. They gawped at their fallen comrade then turned fiercely on the three women.

  ‘One time lucky,’ snarled one. ‘One time only.’

  They closed in tighter. The stench was overpowering. ‘We have nothing of value,’ Sachi said quietly. ‘Please let us pass. We don’t want trouble.’ She put her hand on the hilt of her dagger. The three women were standing back to back. Haru had both arms tightly folded across her obi.

  ‘Think you’re such fine ladies, with your airs and graces,’ sneered the first man. Gobs of yellow spittle flew from his gaptoothed mouth. Sachi twisted her face away. ‘All your finery won’t do you any good. We’ll ’ave your money and we’ll ’ave you. Right, lads?’

  Sachi looked at them levelly, weighing up the odds. The men had brute strength on their side, but they had no idea how to fight. If they had been less ignorant they would have known better than to attack palace women. Admittedly she and Taki and Haru did not have their halberds and the men had staves, but she could see that the men had no idea even how to stand. It would be easy to use the force of their own movements to tip them off balance. Still, there were a lot of them and they were desperate, like ravenous dogs.

  The man blocked her path. She tried to step to one side of him then the other, but he stood stubbornly in her way.

  Baying like a pack of wolves, the men swung their staves and began to lash out. Out of the corner of her eye Sachi saw a couple of staffs flashing through the air towards her head. She stepped out of the way of one, grabbed it and twisted it with a sharp flick of her wrist. There was a crunch as a man hit the ground. She was just in time to step out of the way of the other as the second man lost his balance. He stumbled clumsily towards her then tripped and crashed heavily to the ground.

  As a third stave descended, she snatched it out of the fighter’s grasp, twisting it so that he staggered into a wall and lay where he fell. It was not a halberd but it was as good as a practice stick. She swung around and around, lashing out at heads, chests and knees. Then a blow seemed to come out of nowhere. She was struck on the chest and fell, winded. She was trying to get her breath when a couple of men threw themselves on her and held her down with her arms pinioned so tight she feared her ribs would crack.

  ‘Got this one,’ yelled a voice. ‘The other one’s got the money! Grab her too!’

  Sachi twisted and turned, trying to free herself. She managed to wriggle one arm round till her hand was on her dagger. With a single movement she wrenched her arm free, dagger in hand, and swung round. She heard Haru screech, ‘Never! Get off me!’ Sachi’s arm moved with a momentum of its own. Before she knew what had happened the man fell back, yowling, clutching his face.

  She sprang up. Haru’s clothes were ripped and her face bruised. Her obi was flying loose but she still had both arms round her stomach and was lashing out with her feet and shoulders. As Sachi turned a man walloped Haru on the back. She staggered forward and for a moment lost her grasp. The man snatched the wallet and started to run. Without thinking, Sachi hurled her dagger. It curved through the air and sank up to its hilt in his back. He fell and was silent. She leaped across the fallen bodies, picked up the wallet and wrenched out her dagger. Several men were lying on the ground with their hands over their eyes and blood pouring through their fingers. Taki was wiping her hairpin on her skirts.

  Towards the back of the group, some of the men were still standing, blinking like terrified rabbits. Sachi turned towards them and they scuttled away like cockroaches. Panting, she gave the wallet to Haru, who tucked it back into her kimono and carefully retied her obi. In silence the three women smoothed their hair and slapped at their kimono skirts, trying to brush off the stench of the men. Sachi wiped her dagger on her handkerchief and slipped it back into her obi.

  In the distance Ueno Hill looked like a peaceful tree-covered knoll. Birds circled above it, their harsh cries echoing around the pale dome of the sky. Keeping well away from it, the women headed east towards the townsfolk’s districts.

  II

  As they neared the east end of the city, Sachi began to hear the hum of voices and catch the whiff of food cooking, wood fires burning and the pungent smell of human waste. Soon they came to a huge open space where jugglers, mountebanks, acrobats and storytellers showed off their skills. A woman was putting a monkey through its tricks. Another was selling flowers. Small stalls offered grilled octopus and omelettes cooked on the spot. People milled around, gawping and cheering. Hard-eyed women with haggard faces trawled the crowd, offering themselves for sale. Even in a city on the edge of extinction life went on. Everyone had to survive.

  Scrawny men with the faces and hungry eyes of rats circled outside the crowd, homing in on the women. Haru kept her arms folded at her waist. Sachi pulled her scarf tighter around her face so that her pale skin and aristocratic features didn’t draw unwanted attention. It was reassuring to see other women around. Some were geishas or prostitutes but there were ordinary women too, going about their business. It made it far easier to disappear into the crowd. Despite the urgency of their mission, Sachi was enjoying being outside, away from the stuffy rooms of the mansion, back in a part of the world where men and women rubbed shoulders.

  The street was lined with shops, but many were boarded up and those that were open seemed to have few goods or customers. There was a rice merchant’s sign outside one. They peeked through the slit and tried to shove open the door but it was firmly locked. The rice merchants – like everyone else who could afford to do so – all seemed to have left town.

  They wandered down a lane lined with tenements, then another. The houses were jammed in right next to each other, so close together that not a shaft of sunlight pierced the shadows of the alleyways. Sachi, Haru and Taki walked in single file, backing up against the wall to let people pass in the other direction. The drainage channels ran with foul water, the place was rank with the stench of rotting food and human excrement, rats scurried about, caged birds warbled and insects shrilled. Her
e and there people thin as sticks sat propped against walls, holding out bowls, crying plaintively for alms.

  By now they were completely lost. Sachi said nothing, although she was becoming apprehensive. Then a young woman sashayed towards them, tripping along on high wooden clogs. They stepped back to let her pass. She looked at them, her jaw dropped and her eyes opened so wide it looked as if they would burst out of her head.

  ‘Hora!’ she gasped. ‘Isn’t it . . . Haru-sama? And . . . Lady Oyuri!’

  Lady Oyuri. Sachi had last heard that name more than three years earlier, when the shogun was still alive, when she was still His Majesty’s concubine, the lady of the side chamber.

  And that voice, shrill and high-pitched – she knew it immediately. Words echoed in her ears: ‘Dirty peasant. I can’t bear to be near you. Why aren’t you in the stables with the animals?’ Images swam before her of a haughty pert-nosed girl in an elaborate kimono with the whole city of Edo captured in its embroidery, flouncing along the grand corridor that led to the shogun’s entrance; of practice sticks clashing and the ferocious fight they’d had in the training hall which, against all the odds, Sachi had managed to win. Then she saw a raised hand, heard a sandal hissing through the air. She felt the pain and humiliation as it hit her around the ear, heard the sniggers, saw a pretty face contorted with hatred and jealousy . . .

  Fuyu.

  Then there had been that last meeting when Fuyu had seemed half mad. She had disappeared after that and no one had ever discovered what became of her, although some of the women had said she must have been executed by her family. All that time Sachi had wondered if it had been her fault, if she had brought that terrible fate on her enemy by wishing it on her.

  And now here she was, right in front of them. But could it really be her or was it a fox spirit?

  Beneath the thick make-up the woman had Fuyu’s pert nose and olive complexion. There was still the outline of that pretty heart-shaped face that had made her the acknowledged beauty among the junior ladies, but it had grown pinched and haggard. She looked beaten down. Her shoulders were stooped as if she often had to beg favours and her kimono hung on her like a shroud. There was a hard look in her eyes. Fuyu had had to struggle to survive.

  ‘You here too, are you?’ she grunted. Her teeth were blackened and a couple were missing. She was wearing an incongruously bright crepe kimono with long swinging sleeves like a young girl’s. In the palace her Edo accent had been overlaid with the intonation of a high-ranking samurai, but now she had reverted to pure Edo. ‘Would’ve thought with your luck you’d have made it through.’ She was looking at Sachi. As she spoke there was a flash of the old venom.

  Taki turned away abruptly. Sachi knew that she was trying her hardest to conceal her feelings, as was proper for a samurai, but her thin shoulders were quivering with distaste.

  ‘You ladies,’ said Fuyu. ‘Y’all end up down ’ere.’

  ‘You mean . . . there are other women here?’ Taki demanded. ‘Other women from the palace?’

  Sachi thought of her ladies-in-waiting, her maids and attendants, all those women who had disappeared. All this time she had assumed they were safely back with their families. Surely none of them could have ended up here?

  ‘Sure. Some are on the streets. Some are in the brothels in the Yoshiwara. They’re not so high and mighty now, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And you?’ asked Haru softly.

  ‘Don’t give me any of your pity,’ snapped Fuyu. Her voice was hard and brittle. ‘My master’s a pawnbroker. He takes care of me. I made a mistake. I was young. But then . . .’ Her voice softened. ‘Anyway, it’s all fallen apart, hasn’t it? Whether you become the shogun’s concubine or whether you don’t – makes no difference now. It’s all come to nothing.’

  A pawnbroker’s mistress! No doubt Fuyu had brought her destiny on herself, but no matter what had happened between them, it was terrible to see her fallen so low. Much though Sachi disliked and distrusted Fuyu, she couldn’t help pitying her. To have come to this – Fuyu, the star of the women’s palace, the Retired One’s preferred candidate to be the concubine of the shogun. Sachi too had fallen a long way since then, she knew that. But not as far as Fuyu.

  ‘What you doin’ here anyway?’ Fuyu demanded. ‘Somewhere to stay, is that it? Work? You want some work? Come. My master’ll help you out, whatever it is you want.’

  Sachi glanced at Taki and Haru and nodded slightly. They were totally lost and had little choice but to follow her. Fuyu led them deep into the warren of streets and they walked behind, all their senses on the alert.

  ‘Perhaps she’s planning to sell us,’ Taki muttered to Sachi, glancing around her with big eyes. ‘Anything’s possible these days. Fuyu knows better than anyone who you are and how much you’d be worth if she handed you over to the southerners.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ murmured Sachi, shaking her head.

  ‘No Edo-ite would collaborate with the occupiers,’ whispered Haru sternly. ‘Not even poor Fuyu. We’re all in this together.’

  They turned a corner on to a broader stretch of road. There was a barber’s shop, a public bath, a vegetable merchant’s and next to that a large shop with a pawnbroker’s sign displayed outside. Fuyu ducked under the curtains.

  ‘Oi, Fuyu, is that you?’ croaked a voice. ‘What you doin’ runnin’ off when there’s work to be done?’

  ‘Oi!’ snapped another voice.

  A fug of smoke swirled inside. A shrivelled old woman bundled up in a shapeless brown garment, with her hair in a knot, was sitting, skinny legs folded under her, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. She turned a withered face towards the newcomers. A man was sprawled behind a railing. Beside him a notice warned sternly that pledges would be accepted for a maximum of eight months. Eight months, thought Sachi. Who could possibly know what the world would have come to by then or where they would all be?

  A hunted look like that of a cornered animal flashed across Fuyu’s face. Then she drew back her painted lips in a coquettish smile.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said in a girlish falsetto. ‘Brought some friends. From the old days.’

  The man sat up slowly when he saw the three women and tapped out his pipe. His merchant’s gown was crumpled, the top of his head unshaved. He narrowed his eyes and peered at them suspiciously, then smiled slowly, all affability, flashing a few rotten stumps of teeth.

  ‘Palace ladies, is it? Come in. Our shop is very small. Something to pawn, have you?’

  ‘No. We’re looking for a rice merchant,’ said Haru.

  ‘Run out of food, unh?’ he scowled, fingering his abacus. ‘Yup, times are hard. It’s had it, this place. Those folk what used to make their living off the daimyos, all gone. Left town. We got our stuff packed up ready to go too. Isn’t that right, Fu-chan?’

  Fuyu put her mouth to his ear. His jaw dropped nearly to the floor. He gave an audible gasp, threw aside his abacus and scrambled to his knees, grinding his face into the straw matting.

  ‘So sorry! So sorry!’ he squawked in muffled tones, his mouth rubbing against the matting. ‘Forgive me, your honourship. Your honourable concubinage. Thank you for honouring my miserable shop. Whatever I can do to help. We’ll never forget . . . His young Majesty.’

  A big tear, then another plopped on to the grimy matting. He brushed his hand across his eyes. The old woman too had scrambled to her knees.

  ‘We’re all loyal subjects down ’ere, your eminenceship,’ she croaked. ‘We ’ate those southerners much as anyone. Whatever we can do. Whatever we can do.’

  Sachi wasn’t sure how sincere they were, but it didn’t matter as long as they could get food. Haru dipped into her obi and pulled out a single gold coin.

  ‘We’d like to arrange to have rice delivered. We have a deposit,’ she said.

  The man picked up some glasses, brought the coin close to his face and peered at it. He handed it to the old woman who bit at it thoughtfully.

  ‘Heard it was all gone,’ he said
in tones of wonder. A cunning smile crossed his face. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, your honourship. Not sure this will do down ’ere. See, it’s marked with the Tokugawa stamp.’

  Sachi took the coin and turned it over, bewildered. Sure enough, there was the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawas.

  ‘Y’see, they’ll think we nicked it. There’s been soldiers down ’ere, southern soldiers, ransackin’ people’s ’ouses. Say they’re lookin’ for the shogun’s gold. Say it’s gone missin’.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Older Brother,’ snapped Fuyu. ‘It’s big ingots they’re lookin’ for. Don’t forget I used to live in the palace too. Anyway, no one really thinks it’s down ’ere. Wherever it is it’s been smuggled out of the city long since. Do them ladies a favour. You can ’ave it remelted.’

  ‘Ain’t you ladies got any copper?’ said the man with an obsequious smile. ‘Just a few mon. That’ll do for a deposit. After all, it’s for her honourable concubinage. The lads will see you all right.’

  Haru dug around in her obi and produced a string of copper coins.

  ‘I’ll see ya fair, m’ladies,’ said the man. ‘Gotta do my bit for the memory of His young Majesty.’

  III

  The pawnbroker was as good as his word. The next day Haru reported that enough rice, salt, miso, lamp oil, vegetables and firewood had arrived to keep the women supplied for many months.

  A few days later Sachi was writing when she heard the whisper of silk. Taki appeared at the door, her fingertips pressed to the tatami, her immaculately coiffed head bowed.

  ‘A visitor,’ she announced in her most official voice.

  Something was wrong. Taki’s mouse-like squeak was a fraction shriller than usual. There was a note of hysteria in her voice.

  ‘Edwards-sama?’

  ‘No,’ said Taki sharply. ‘Your honourable father. Daisuké-sama.’ Sachi put down her brush in amazement.

  ‘My father! But . . . But why? I know he’s been taking care of us . . . but I’m not sure I want to see him.’