The Last Concubine (57 page)

As she returned her hand to her obi, she felt Shinzaemon’s toggle there and realized with a shock that she had betrayed him. He needed her. It was her duty to wait for him, to be there if ever he got back.

She stared at the ground. Her bare feet were poised neatly side by side on a stepping stone with the toes touching, crossed with the silken thongs of the clogs. They were the delicate feet of a court lady. But they were no longer as pure and white as porcelain, but brown, stained and splashed with mud. It was like an omen. Branches swept low overhead, clouds scudded across the sky and a shower of icy drops fell like needles on her hair and shoulders.

‘You are so beautiful,’ said Edwards. He spoke hurriedly, under his breath, looking over his shoulder for Taki and Haru to appear. ‘If you would let me . . . If you would accept me . . . I could take care of you. I know I’m a foreigner, but you could get used to me. I’ll cherish you. You’ll be my queen. I’ll take you to my country. We’ll see the world together.

‘I . . . I like you. I wish I knew how to say it in your language, but there isn’t any word for it. It’s not affection, like a man feels for his parents, or respect, like a man of your country feels for his wife, or lust, like a man feels for a courtesan. It’s more than those, much more. It’s the feeling that binds a man to a woman for ever. In my language we call it
rabu
– “love”. That’s what I feel for you.’

Sachi laughed uneasily. Men might talk like this to a courtesan, but it was not an appropriate way to speak to a decent woman, let alone one of high class. For a moment she had let down her defences, she had allowed him to touch her hand – and now he was talking as if they were to be together for the rest of their lives. Surely he’d been in her country long enough to know that matters like that were nothing to do with human feelings?

Nevertheless it made her wonder – who was she to spend her life with? She was a widow and widows usually lived with their parents. No one could marry outside their caste, but she had been a peasant and then the shogun’s concubine; she didn’t know what caste she belonged to any more. But a foreigner was outside all the rules and conventions that governed normal life. And she had to admit, she had become used to Edwards. She looked forward to his visits.

She peeped shyly up at him and their eyes met and lingered. She tried to frown, to show her displeasure – but she couldn’t help smiling instead.

He opened his mouth to say more, but she raised her hand. There were voices behind them. Taki and Haru were pattering along the path.

The following day there were footsteps in the courtyard, the scuffle of straw sandals. Taki ran to the entrance hall. When she returned she was smiling so brightly it looked as if the sun had burst out in the gloomy chamber, lighting up the darkest corners. She paused in the doorway. She was holding a scroll aloft in both hands.

Sachi unrolled it. There in his manly scrawl were the last two lines of the poem she had sent:

And a single word: ‘
Dounika
. . . Somehow . . .’

‘Forgetful of the coming dawn . . .’ Dawn was when lovers were forced to part, that was what the poet had meant. But ‘forgetful’ – it sounded so like Shinzaemon. He didn’t care what anyone thought or expected. He ignored them, went his own way. Sachi was filled with joy. Dawn really was coming, the dawn of a new age. Perhaps, as Daisuké kept promising, it would be an age when people like them could be together. Maybe there would be a future for them after all. Somehow.

Sachi read his words over and over again. Shinzaemon was alive and thinking of her. Her patience had been rewarded.

But even as she thought of Shinzaemon she felt a pang of sadness, and of shame as she recalled her encounter with Edwards the previous day. For all his openness she could never know what he really thought or felt or see inside his foreign soul. He was probably just playing, she told herself. She had heard that foreigners liked to play with women. Yet he had been so gentle, so considerate. No one had ever treated her in such a way before. She had been wondering whether to tell Taki what had happened, but now she realized she couldn’t.

A little later she heard the crunch of animal-skin boots in the courtyard. She steeled her heart. ‘Tell him I am unwell,’ she said to Taki.

Dounika
. Somehow. But ‘somehow’ could be a very long time. At first Sachi started every time she heard the tiniest noise in the courtyard and sent Taki running to see who it was. But the days went by and there was no further message, no sign of any wildhaired warrior with cat-like eyes. She realized she had forgotten what he looked like. The wild hair, the eyes – she remembered those, she had pictured them over and over again to herself – but apart from that she was not sure she would even recognize him any more. Perhaps Shinzaemon would have that blank-eyed look young Tatsuemon had had, as if he was seeing horrors, staring into the void. He had spent months fighting for what he must
have known was a losing cause. He would be dog-tired, scrawny, ravenous, beaten down, miserable, maybe disillusioned and embittered.

So much time had passed. Edwards had told her about other ways of seeing the world, other ways of life . . .

Edwards. That was where all these misgivings were coming from. Like the southerners taking over Edo, he had changed her, filled her with uncertainty and doubt.

She had assumed that Edwards would be so abashed at the forwardness of his behaviour that she would hear no more from him. A couple of rebuffs and that would be the end of it. The first day he visited she had sent a message that she was unwell. The second day she sent the same message. But no matter how sternly she refused to see him, she couldn’t help rerunning their encounter in her head, feeling the same delicious shiver that had tingled along her spine when he put his lips to her hand. Then Taki returned, carrying a huge bunch of autumn flowers and leaves – camellias, wild chrysanthemums, branches ablaze with sparkling red, orange and yellow maple leaves. Sachi exclaimed in delight. Taki ran to get a vase and they knelt down to arrange them.

On the third day he sent her a mysterious object. It was small and round and made of metal. She turned it this way and that, then tried slipping it on her finger. It fitted perfectly. She took it off again quickly. It didn’t feel right to wear it.

She had never come across such behaviour before. She told herself she should be angry but it was rather flattering. Shinzaemon had been gone for so long. When – if – he returned it would be like a stranger stepping back into her life. And Edwards was right there. It couldn’t do any harm to let him visit again, if only for Taki’s and Haru’s sake. They enjoyed his company too.

So Edwards resumed his visits.

Meanwhile the emperor’s entry into the city was approaching.

‘We must have new clothes when we go to greet him,’ said Taki. She was in a great state of excitement.

It was hard to know what to wear. They couldn’t dress in the robes of ladies of the shogun’s court, that was obvious. The
shogun and his household were enemies of the state and Sachi was afraid that if the three of them were recognized, they might end up in prisoners’ cages and be bundled off down to Suruga. In the end they decided to dress like well-off townsfolk. When the merchants came, Haru ordered rolls of silk in colours and designs appropriate for townswomen and she and Taki set to work with their needles.

It was equally obvious to Sachi that they couldn’t go with Edwards. To parade in public with a towering huge-nosed foreigner and his troop of bodyguards would be madness. They would go on their own.

The day before the procession was due to arrive, a message came from Daisuké: he was coming back to Edo and would escort them.

II

Early the following morning Taki helped Sachi prepare. She blackened her teeth, shaved her eyebrows and dressed her hair in an ornate townswoman’s style, coiling it into a lustrous knot and studding it with hairpins and combs. Then she helped her into kimonos. The new silk felt cool and crisp against her body. The top one, warmly lined, was in a fashionable shade of red with a design of maple leaves across the hem. Taki had laid it over an incense burner overnight and it gave off an elegant musky scent. Taki and Haru also had gorgeous new clothes for the occasion.

Daisuké was waiting in the courtyard. In the pale morning sunlight he exuded dignity and power. He was in formal dress, in black pleated
hakama
trousers and an over-jacket with starched shoulders jutting out like wings. He had grown heavier, Sachi noticed, and his belly swelled impressively above his obi. He had two swords tucked into his belt. He was a man of rank and influence.

He had said he had wanted to be a father she could be proud of, and he had succeeded in that. Sachi greeted him with quiet joy. She felt, as she always did whenever he looked at her, that he saw someone else as well.

‘Daughter,’ he said, smiling.

‘Father,’ she said, with a bow.

As they left the mansion, Sachi could see that everything had
been tidied up. The walls of the moat had been shored up, the parts of the bridge that had tumbled down had been rebuilt. The roads had been weeded too, and swept and sprinkled with water to lay the dust. There was a smell of damp earth like the clean fresh smell after rain.

The great boulevards that ran between the daimyos’ palaces were silent and empty no longer. They were full of people hurrying in a never-ending stream towards the castle. The plaza in front of the castle was already packed with men and women in their holiday best, in silk kimonos in brilliant reds and golds.

Daisuké led the way through the crush towards Wadakura Gate, the gate the emperor would pass through. Sachi followed close on his heels, edging between hard and soft bodies, tall and short bodies, rich and poor bodies, bodies that resisted and bodies that moved aside. There were men, women, old, young, children and people with babies on their backs. Her eyes flickered across the sea of faces. She half wondered if she would see a familiar face framed with wild hair, with slanting cat’s eyes. Every now and then she saw someone that for a moment she thought was him, then she would look again and realize with a pang that it was not.

They had reached a line of soldiers when Sachi noticed a woman in the crowd. Her gaudy kimonos hung low at the back of her neck, revealing a suggestive expanse of unpainted skin, like a geisha or a prostitute. Everyone was peering intently in the direction the emperor was due to approach from, but she was looking the other way, chewing her underlip. She stared distractedly at the castle, gazing with a look of stony disbelief at the ramparts and turrets and towering white walls. A tear trickled down her painted face.

‘Fuyu,’ Sachi cried. Fuyu’s face expressed everything she herself felt. She reached between the massed bodies jammed together, and grabbed her sleeve. She caught a whiff of cheap perfume as she tugged her gently out of the crowd.

‘Those times were not so wonderful,’ Sachi said softly. But even as she said it she knew it was a lie. Those gates were closed to her too. That fragile, beautiful world was gone for ever, like a priceless porcelain vase which has been smashed to the ground.

Daisuké had arranged a place for them near the gate, in an inner area reserved for government officials, where they would be protected from the crush. Sachi looked out at the mob before her. She had never imagined there could be so many people in the world.

‘Look at them,’ said Fuyu, swabbing her eyes and nose with her sleeve. ‘First they’re ready to die for the shogun. The next thing you know, they’re bowing to the emperor. Then they’ll be cheering for the shogun again when the lads come back from Wakamatsu.’

Sachi felt a lurch in her heart and her mouth was suddenly dry. The lads. Shinzaemon would surely be among them.

‘They’re coming back?’ she whispered.

‘Those that made it. Marching down. Be ‘ere in a few days. We know who the real ’eroes are. We’ll show ’em a good welcome.’

It was approaching the hour of the horse, when thousands of fires would usually have been burning for the midday meal. But today all fires had been banned. Far in the distance wisps and shreds of sound could be heard. Everyone fell silent, trying to catch the floating harmonies. It was music, ancient otherworldly music. Sachi shivered. It was as if the gods were coming down to earth.

Above the sea of heads, small in the distance, banners appeared, winding their way slowly through the crowd. They swayed from side to side, fluttering in the breeze. They were deep scarlet, marked with a golden roundel – the chrysanthemum crest of the emperor. Sunlight flashed from the tips of pikes and spears and halberds, shooting out dazzling shards of light. Screwing up her eyes, Sachi made out a mass of tall black shapes moving in stately procession – the towering black-lacquered hats of rank upon rank of courtiers. Flat helmets, peaked helmets, horned helmets, helmets of all different shapes and colours moved along in great blocks. In the distance the lacquered roofs of palanquins shone in the sun.

Sachi thought of the daimyo processions she used to see passing through the village and of the princess’s magnificent procession that had swept her up and taken her to the castle. This was more splendid still. But there was also something different. In
every procession she had ever seen there had always been guards singing out, ‘
Shita ni iyo! Shita ni iyo!
On your knees! On your knees!’ These troops marched in silence.

The procession began to emerge from the crowd. From where Sachi stood she could see musicians banging drums and tootling flutes as they played their Shinto melodies. Behind them came pike and standard bearers, great banners flapping above their heads. Soldiers followed, regiment after regiment, dressed in foreign uniforms, as if to remind the conquered populace that the old era – of the shogun and the samurai – was over, and a new one beginning. Some had rifles slung over their shoulders; others swaggered along with swords at their hips. Porters humped lacquered trunks with attendants walking alongside.