Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series)

by I. J. Parker

  She still saw every dreadful detail: her mother’s emaciated form, the feverish eyes, the horrifying spots on her skin – spots of decomposition as in those frightening pictures of the dead that the local temple would put up at year’s end -- spots that suppurated and grew larger until her beloved mother was no longer recognizable.

  She stopped in sudden fear and cried to Lady Sanjo’s back, “My mother? Oh, please don’t tell me my mother is dead.”

  Lady Sanjo turned her head. Some of the anger was back in her face. “Nonsense. Nobody is dead. Come along.”

  Instantly joy returned -- and with the joy, gratitude to the young man who had taken her letter and thus perhaps reminded them of her. How kind he had been with his warm voice and those beautiful gentle hands. Oh, he was even more handsome than her brother Takehira.

  And dear Takehira had come with her father. Oh, what happiness!

  Lady Sanjo pushed back the door to the visitors’ room and said, “Your daughter.”

  Toshiko brushed past her with a small cry and fell to her knees, touching her forehead to the boards. “Father, dear Father, I am so glad to see you.” As she bowed, she was astonished that they were wearing armor. To be sure, at home her father wore his armor on official occasions, but here? No one wore armor here except perhaps the guards on duty at the gates.

  She followed the deep bow to her father with a smaller one toward her brother and sat up. They looked well but neither spoke nor smiled at her. She realized that something was wrong, that her father was fiercely angry. His eyes blazed and his brows and beard seemed to bristle. Takehira’s face softened a little as his eyes rested on her beautiful gowns, her painted face, her glossy hair.

  But her father’s face was implacable, every muscle taut and his lips compressed.

  “Father?” she whispered, feeling tears rise. “Is something wrong?”

  “You have shamed me.”

  Just that. Clipped and as fierce as his eyes. She bowed again, keeping her head down so he would not see her tears. Tears were weak. As was a show of happiness. She had offended by expressing her joy at seeing them. She had lost her self-control.

  After a long time, during which she tried very hard to restrain her tears, her father said, “The female in whose charge you are says that you are unsuitable and that we must take you home.”

  Home? For a moment she allowed herself another weakness. The desire to leave this dark and stifling place and to see her mother again was so great that even her father’s disappointment seemed small when measured against it. But then she knew it could not be because that would mean failure and failure was unacceptable. Anger against Lady Sanjo stirred.

  Without raising her head, she murmured, “She does not like me, Father. Perhaps her words were not as truthful as they should have been.”

  “Silence!”

  Toshiko tensed.

  “It is of no concern,” her father growled, “what a mere female thinks. We came here to make our bows to His Majesty and were refused an audience. How is this?”

  Oh, heaven. “He sees very few people. He is the Emperor, Father.”

  “He sees my daughter. For that He owes me courtesy.”

  “Father, you do not understand—”

  “How dare you?”

  Toshiko could not control her trembling any longer. “Forgive me, Father,” she whispered. “I only meant that customs are different here than at home.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t wish to offend again.”

  “Speak.”

  “Your armor. Nobody addresses Their Majesties in armor.”

  There was brief silence, then her Father said, “The courtiers are glad enough of us in our armor when they need help. But let it go. I would have thought that by now you had found his ear. Was he not pleased with your singing?”

  Oh dear! The imayo. Toshiko had to make a clean breast of it. “I have only spoken to His Majesty once. He asked if I knew imayo, but I was afraid that he would think me very improper if I admitted it.”

  “What?” A roar, followed instantly by another: “You fool! That is why he sent for you.”

  “Yes, Father. I know that now, but I did not at first.”

  A heavy silence settled over all of them. Toshiko wondered again if her father would take her home now that all was lost. Perhaps he would forgive her in time. Surely he would. He was just.

  After a long time, Oba no Hiramoto said, “Sit up and look at me.”

  She obeyed, hoping that the traces of her tears had dried. Her father studied her appearance. The anger was gone, replaced by resignation. With a sigh, he said, “I had high hopes of you, daughter.”

  She looked at him without blinking. “I know, Father. If I have truly shamed you, I shall gladly die.”

  He compressed his lips. “The fault is perhaps not altogether with you. You are young. But you have been taught that, as long as her father lives, a daughter must study his wishes.”

  “Yes, Father. And after he dies, she must study his life so that she may be worthy of her own.”

  “You must never bring shame or dishonor on your name.”

  “I know, Father.”

  “If necessary, a son must die in battle for his family and his lord, but a daughter need only give obedient service. It is a small thing.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Another pregnant pause fell. Toshiko began to feel a great relief. She was to be forgiven and taken back into the family. Her lip trembled and tears of gratitude pricked again at her eyelids, but she held her father’s gaze.

  He was the first to look away. He glanced up at the ceiling and said almost casually, “The great sage himself affirms that the three hundred songs in the world are free from evil thought.”

  She frowned, trying to understand. “The great sage, Father?”

  He glanced at her briefly. “Kung Fu Tse. Never mind. You’re just a woman. It means that your songs are not improper and that you should not be ashamed of them.”

  “But you brought Takehira back when he followed the shirabyoshi. You said they were whores and low dirty women.”

  Her father turned red. “Hold your tongue, girl.”

  She put her head down again and whispered, “Forgive me, Father.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “You must try again,” he said.

  “What?” She was so startled that the word slipped out before she could stop herself.

  Her father snapped, “Don’t be an imbecile. You must sing to His Majesty. You must dance for Him. You must win His heart. How plain do you want me to be? I thought your mother had explained the matters of the bed chamber to you.”

  She was still for a moment, listening to her heart pound in her ears like the waves of the sea. Then she straightened her back, the blood hot as fire in her face. “Yes, Father,” she said dully. “I understand.”

  He looked away, embarrassed. “What concerns parents must be a concern to a child. I hope we can rely on your obedience in this.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Her father rose with a groan. “Come, Takehira. I am sick of this city. If we make haste, we can reach Kohata by nightfall.”

  Toshiko saw her brother’s face fall, but she hardened her heart to his disappointment. It bore no comparison to her despair.

  Ghosts

  When Secretary Tameyazu reported the visit of the Obas, the Emperor was at his desk.

  The doors were open to the veranda and the private courtyard beyond. It had been an unusually dry and hot summer, and everyone hoped for rain. In the courtyard grew a cherry tree that servants watered regularly. Even with such care the tree’s leaves were already turning yellow and falling to the gravel below. The Emperor’s eyes frequently looked past it to the blue mountains in the distance, and at a bank of dark clouds building another, more threatening, mountain range in the sky.

  He made a face at Tameyazu’s words and told him he could not see them. The matter was trivial, especially at the moment. More e
vil omens had been reported by the Bureau of Divination. There was the fear of drought and a poor harvest. Bad harvests brought starvation and disease to the people. He had been thinking about making another pilgrimage to the gods of Kumano to ask for rain.

  The problem with Tameyazu’s news was that it reminded him of an embarrassing private matter. He had sent for the girl on a whim. It had been a momentary weakness, like the one that had caused him to bed the shirabyoshi Kane years ago. This case was worse, because a more unsuitable background for an imperial concubine could hardly be imagined. His passion for gathering every last one of the songs of his people for his collection had piqued his curiosity, and her appearance on horseback had blinded him to her father’s greed. It had all been lies, of course, and certain to be found out, but her mercenary family hoped that by then his lust for her young body would outweigh any disappointment in her lack of talent. He should have sent her home months ago.

  Women had always caused him regrets.

  His own mother had only summoned him to make certain that his education progressed adequately. Whenever he faltered in his answers, she would leave with a worried frown on her face. Like any child, he had wished to please her because he thought it would gain him affection. To no avail. His mother had remained distant.

  He had become very fond of his father’s other, much younger, consort. She, in turn, had made much of him in the way young girls do with children, being carelessly affectionate while enjoying his childish games as she made her own painful adjustment to her new position.

  He had known nothing of the imperial bedchamber in those days and barely discerned that men and women lived in worlds as different as day and night. Men forged their destinies by the light of day. Women pursued theirs under cover of darkness. He had spent much of his childhood in the feminine darkness of the women’s quarters and emerged only slowly and partially into the light. During his days in the inner apartments of various palaces, he had seen the sun only rarely. He and his female guardians were protected from the eyes of the world by innumerable barriers of shutters, doors, curtains, shades, screens, and human attendants. Their inner world was dimly lit by candles, oil lamps, and torches. In the winter time, the wooden doors were closed against the icy wind, and in the summer only thin golden bars of sunlight pierced the horizontal shutters and squeezed past curtain stands.

  He mused on that past, recalling the intense sensation of lying curled up in the arms of one of the women, nearly dizzy with her warmth and softness and the scent of her hair and clothing, watching the dust motes dancing on rays of light, tiny creatures transformed into specks of golden radiance as they ascended toward a distant sun. He had learned to desire women then in this darkness dense with perfume and the smell of female flesh and cosmetics. Even when there was silence, the palace hissed and whispered with silks and silk-shod feet gliding across polished wooden floors, but the women were rarely silent. They talked in high, gentle voices; they sang, they played their instruments, they laughed and wept, and sometimes they quarreled. It had seemed to him as if the very air of the inner apartments throbbed with the pent-up emotions of the women.

  It was much later that he learned he did not belong there.

  *

  Tameyazu returned, breaking into his master’s reminiscences. The emperor frowned at him. “What?”

  “I told them you were busy and referred them to Lady Sanjo. I hope I did right?”

  The Emperor remembered the Obas. “Yes. Quite right.” He did not want to discuss this private matter with Tameyazu.

  Tameyazu bowed and retreated to his own, smaller desk, and the Emperor returned to his brooding.

  *

  The image of that young girl flying along the valley on the back of her coal-black horse moved his heart even now.

  He had envied men like Oba because they were free to make choices an emperor could not make, and Oba’s children had seemed free as birds. In that mood, passion had struck him like a blow. The sight of her, astride her horse like a young male, her long hair flying behind her, had stirred something in him that he still did not fully understand. It was not mere lust. He had wanted her, but had wanted to possess her only so that she could stir his heart again and again.

  Alas, if he had fallen in love it was with an illusion. The real girl was no different from all the others -- perhaps more timid and, being a child, less designing, but for all that she was like one of the hollow dolls he had played with as a child.

  *

  Outside the room, a gust of wind drove small bits of gravel and leaves across the boards of the veranda. The storm was coming. The soft pattering sounds reminded him a little of rats scampering across a zither. He smiled at the image of tiny pink feet plucking taut strings.

  Tameyazu rose from behind his desk and went on soft feet to close the shutters. The Emperor regretted the silencing of the sound but welcomed the absence of light for his private thoughts.

  Not for long. Tameyazu officiously lit candles and lamps before sitting down again.

  The Emperor made another effort to read the documents in front of him.

  Rats.

  There had been that amusing incident of Lady Dainagon’s cat. The Oba girl surprised him that time.

  She had stood there with the battered cat in her arms, her eyes shining with mischief. At that moment, she was not like the dolls around her. She had made him laugh out loud, and he rarely laughed these days.

  He became aware that Tameyazu was watching him and moved irritably. What was the man staring at? He frowned, and his secretary quickly lowered his head.

  Things had been different when Shinzei had been his secretary. There had been no secrets from him. But they had killed Shinzei after the Heiji plot. The Emperor raised his shoulders in the stiff brocade and shivered in spite of the brooding heat. These days most things reminded him of death.

  The Taira and Minamoto were always poised to spring at each other’s throats like mad dogs. He thought he could hear them growling again. It was a miracle that they had not slaughtered him and his children yet.

  In all the bloody affairs of the recent past, he had learned that his imperial blood would not save his life. Too many of his family had died too young and too conveniently. His half-brother, the Emperor Konoe, had been only thirteen when he became blind and died. His brother Sutoku died in exile after being manipulated into a foolish rebellion. And who was to say that Sutoku had not been helped into the other world? Now his own son was dead at twenty-three, leaving behind a puny babe to rule the nation, and already Chancellor Kiyomori was pressuring him to appoint his cousin Shigeko’s son crown prince.

  He frequently carried on silent conversations with the dead Shinzei when he felt threatened by Kiyomori. Now he stared into a dark corner where he imagined the ghost of Shinzei to hover, and asked, What should I do about the girl, old friend?

  And Shinzei answered, Why, send her home, of course, Sire.

  The Emperor frowned. Shinzei was gray-haired even before he shaved his head and became a monk. He was an old man when they killed him, a monk past the age of indiscretions with females. The pleasures of the body no longer stirred him, and he was equally immune to the pleasures of the mind. What could he know of this dilemma?

  He expressed his doubts: I don’t know. She seems . . . innocent.

  It is a little like a fever, isn’t it? Shinzei suggested.

  The Emperor sensed Shinzei’s amusement and started to shake his head.

  Oh, said Shinzei, I remember it well enough – even after I put away the things of the world. With you, Sire, it is different. You are still a young man.

  A young man? At thirty-six? With a grown son already dead and his grandson on the throne? He protested. I have never felt this fever, as you call it. My father had it, I believe. Not for my mother, but for Tokuko. He chuckled. Have I ever told you that I desired my father’s concubine when I was only seven?

  Across the room, Tameyazu raised his head to look at him. The Emperor glared and c
leared his throat, and the man quickly bent to his work again.

  I have no privacy, he grumbled to Shinzei. They watch me to see if they can read their future in my behavior. Where were we?

  Your father’s wife was very beautiful and entirely charming. Shinzei’s voice carried a smile. It is no wonder you should have felt that way. And, yes, your August Father had the fever very badly, I think. For many years. He was afraid of you.

  The Emperor said complacently, I thought so. He would not allow us to be