The Last Concubine (63 page)

Shinzaemon and Daisuké looked at him. Sachi hoped no one but she understood what he was talking about.

‘We don’t even know there is any gold,’ said Taki hastily, breaking the silence.

‘Then why are all these men hanging around the village?’ Shinzaemon asked. ‘They’re after something – I can feel it.’

‘But we still have no idea where Lord Mizuno is or even whether he’s alive,’ Sachi objected. ‘Supposing he did the same as Lord Oguri? Supposing he fled to his home village? It’s at the other end of the country – isn’t that what you told me, Haru?’

‘It’s in Shingu, in the country of Kii.’

‘If he’s there, we’ve come in entirely the wrong direction,’ said Taki with a sigh. ‘We’ll have to go back to Edo and start all over again. Or just give up.’

‘I’d like to find out what’s happening in this village,’ said Shinzaemon. ‘I’m sure there’s a link somewhere to Lord Mizuno. After all, we know he came this way. Where was he when Lord Oguri was killed? What did he do then?’

They were all silent as the old woman came in to clear away their dishes. She crept over on her knees to pick up Shinzaemon’s tray then stopped and twisted her neck until she was looking up at him.

‘Wakamatsu, huh?’ she muttered in her creaky old voice. ‘Let me look at you. You did good, you boys. First time I’ve had the chance to see one of you boys.’

She put a withered claw on his knee and pushed her wizened face close to his. Shinzaemon cocked his head and looked at her with his slanted eyes.

‘Tell me, Granny,’ he said. ‘All these men out on the street here, hanging round the village. You tell us there’s no hotspring or famous temple, but there must be something to draw these fellows.’

‘Ne’er-do-wells, the lot of them,’ the old woman croaked. ‘Turn up every evening, drink the place dry. Plenty of business for the geishas and prostitutes, that’s for sure. But I don’t like it. This used to be a quiet place, no one ever came here. Just pilgrims on their way to the mountain. First those ruffians, now you – even an honourable barbarian,’ she added, squinting up at Edwards. She shook her head. ‘Never happened before, that’s for sure.’

She knelt quietly for a while, her head bobbing. Her chin sank lower and lower till Sachi was afraid she’d fallen asleep. Then she straightened up slowly.

‘It began not long after his lordship passed away,’ she said. ‘Around rice-planting time. They started to turn up – first one, then another, then more and more. Rowdy types – gamblers, yakuza, even outcastes, some of them. They don’t come in the daytimes, just the evenings. You get fights on the street sometimes. Never used to be like that.’

‘So no one knows why they’re here or what they’re up to?’ Shinzaemon persisted.

‘I don’t worry about that sort of thing. Not my business. Got too much to worry about already. You should ask my old man. He’s been up on the mountain a few times to take a look around. Tells me there’s something going on up there. He’ll take you if you want.’

IV

The old woman’s husband appeared early the next morning. He looked even older than his wife, as if he had weathered several lifetimes of rain, wind and snow. He was dressed for the mountains in straw boots and a straw raincoat, with a sedge hat hanging on his back and a staff in his gnarled hand. He tramped off, chattering excitedly in his barely comprehensible dialect, while Sachi and her companions hurried to keep up with him.

He led them up the hillside into the woods, along a rough path that looked as if it had been hacked out very recently. Soon they were picking their way between densely packed trees wound about with vines and swathed in foliage. They passed a cluster of fallen branches put together to make a shelter, then another and another, propped between the trees.

‘Some of these fellows live out ’ere,’ said the old man in a low voice.

Then they heard the sound of shovelling. The path opened into a clearing riddled with holes and heaped with piles of earth, like the casts of a gigantic worm. Scrawny men were bent over, digging feverishly. Some were in ragged indigo work trousers like peasants, while others wore nothing but loincloths despite the icy wind that shook the branches and sent leaves spinning. They looked up as the old man approached followed by Sachi and her companions. Sachi noticed Shinzaemon and Edwards putting their hands on the hilts of their pistols.

The men’s eyes swivelled as they saw Edwards.

‘What’s that?’ muttered one. ‘A
tengu
?’ They shrank back, their mouths open and their gums bared.

‘Nah, that’s no
tengu
,’ said another. ‘It’s one of them barbarians.’ The men circled around them, staring at them with glittering eyes, like wolves.

‘Oi, Granddad. What you doing bringing strangers round here?’ growled a skinny man with a thin twisted face and squinting eyes. He bent down and picked up a stone. ‘Keep away,’ he snarled, spewing a gobbet of yellow spit on to the ground. ‘Bloody samurai.’

‘Find your own patch,’ snarled another. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Clear off!’

Once they were well past, Shinzaemon muttered to the old man, ‘Gold they’re looking for, is it?’

The man narrowed his eyes to slits and clamped his lips together.

‘So there are no fellows with gold to spend hanging around the village, then?’ Shinzaemon persisted.

The old man grinned. ‘Not so far,’ he said, relenting. ‘They’ve not had much luck so far – you can see that. There’s more men digging further up the mountain. You might see something interesting up there.’

As they climbed on, the path disappeared altogether and the woods closed in around them. They clambered over rocks and fallen treetrunks, scrambling through bushes and piles of leaves and around great gnarled roots. They climbed in a sort of twilight, under a thick canopy of branches and leaves.

Above them the woods came to an end and light glimmered through the trees. They came out on to moorland – an endless field of pale dry miscanthus grass that swayed high above their heads, rustling in the wind. Withered fields. It made Sachi think of the haiku poet Basho’s death poem:

The old man was out in front, tramping along with Daisuké, Shinzaemon and Edwards right behind him. Daisuké and Shinzaemon strode along together, their broad shoulders side by side, their cropped heads – one greying, one glossy and black – close. Taki and Haru followed, their white headbands bobbing through the grass.

Sachi could hear the old man’s voice: ‘A lot of strange things happen on this moor. There was a story my granddad told me, about a traveller. Got lost up here one night. Was wandering around and met a woman. A real beauty.’

Sachi could guess how the story went; it was always the same. The woman lures the traveller back to her mansion, somewhere deep in the moors. The next day, enthralled by her beauty, he goes
back to look for her. He searches and searches but all he can find where the mansion had been is a gravestone many hundreds of years old, covered in moss. He looks at it closely and sees her name carved on it. Sachi shivered. Ghosts – she didn’t want to hear about ghosts. It was tempting fate, especially now, when they were searching for her mother, desperately hoping they would find her. She fell back a little, let the others get ahead.

She ran her fingers through the tall grass, watching the down spin off and float in the breeze. The sky was dark and gloomy and clouds scudded overhead. There was snow in the air. She tugged her robes closer around her. She could hear the grass swishing as she brushed through it and the rustle of her straw sandals on the ground.

Then she heard another sound – a rhythmic thunk and a sort of tapping, like a ghost knocking from under the earth. She started, overcome with superstitious dread, then held her breath and listened. It was not a ghost at all, she realized. It was digging, the crunch of a shovel biting into hard ground followed by the rattle of earth being thrown. It was a little way away, somewhere out in the long grass. The others were not far ahead, cutting a furrow across the moor. It would just take a moment to have a look and then she could catch up with them.

She was pushing through the tall stalks, following the sound, when she suddenly found herself on the edge of a huge hole. She stopped abruptly. It was big and wide and deep, big enough for the burial of a shogun.

There was a man inside, digging feverishly, so engrossed he hadn’t noticed her approach. He was panting hard, slamming a shovel into the earthen wall of the pit, hurling shovelfuls of dirt to one side. He was thin and ragged, his hair unkempt and matted. His back was burned black from the sun, and despite the chill in the air it glistened with sweat. His skinny shoulder bones jutted like wings, moving under his dirt-encrusted skin as he worked. He had a ragged towel knotted around his head and scrawny ankles protruding from grimy work trousers. There was an overpowering stench of sweat and urine and human excrement.

But what was he doing looking for gold so far from everyone else? And in this great plain of grass, why had he chosen to dig here, of all places?

He gave a groan that was more animal than human and put a blackened hand on his back. His nails were thick and long like claws. Slowly he straightened up and turned around.

It was him. There was no mistaking the hooked nose, the fierce features, the gaunt face pitted with marks of the pox. There was the same wild gleam in his eye that Sachi had seen half a year ago at the ferry.

As he saw her he gasped and staggered backwards. His eyes bulged and his jaw dropped until his mouth was a circle of horror.

‘Leave me alone,’ he whimpered. His voice was the faintest croak, the words whipped away on the wind.

They stood frozen, staring at each other.

Sachi had imagined what she might say to him, how she would reveal who she was, perhaps even greet him as her uncle. After all, he was her blood relation. But she couldn’t move or utter a word. She was mesmerized, as helpless as a deer in a hunter’s sights.

Then, as his expression changed from terror to hatred and fury, she realized she was in danger. Terrible danger. He lunged towards her, and as he flung himself half out of the pit his arms closed around her legs. She struggled wildly, then lost her balance and fell. He slithered back down, dragging her with him.

Winded and stunned, Sachi crashed into the pit. The earthen walls towered around her like the walls of a grave and for a moment the sky was full of whirling stars. Her kimono skirts had fallen open and her hair had come loose. She gasped painfully, trying to catch her breath, to move her limbs. Stiffly she pulled her kimono skirts together and groped for her dagger. She was in the clutches of a madman.

Before she could reach her dagger he shoved her face into the ground and slammed his foot on her back, pinning her down. She tasted earth and salty blood. Then he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her to her knees, then to her feet and wrenched her head back. His arm was across her face. There was something sharp at her throat.

She tried to shout but all she could manage was a dry croak. Her head was spinning. A vile stench emanated from his pores and his scaly skin scratched her face. She realized that she might
die – not gloriously like a samurai but right here in this foul pit, before anyone found her.

Lord Mizuno was panting. ‘
Mayotta na!
’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘
Mayotta na!
Got lost, huh!’

She suddenly understood. Got lost on your way to the next world, he meant. It was not her he saw, it was her mother, the ghost of her mother, come back to haunt him.

‘
Mayotta na! Mayotta na!
You lost your way. You lost your way,’ he muttered. It was like an exorcism, as if she would disappear if he said it enough times. ‘But you’re warm,’ he said. For a moment he seemed to regain his senses. He sounded puzzled. ‘How did you get so warm? You were cold when I buried you. Cold as the earth. I didn’t want to do it – I told you so. But I had to. It was my duty. And now you won’t let me rest. Got lost, huh? Can’t find y’way? Come to take me with you, have you?’

His arm was pressing on her mouth and nose. Sachi gasped, smelling the dirt and sweat, feeling the sharp hairs prickle her face. She wanted to scream to Shinzaemon and Daisuké to come and rescue her, but she had let them get so far ahead that they might not hear her even if she shouted. Perhaps no one would find her and she would rot here for ever in this hole in the long grass.

Somewhere in the distance voices were calling, ‘My lady! My lady!’ For a moment she felt a surge of hope. But the voices were growing fainter, moving further and further away.

She wriggled fiercely, trying to free herself, careless of what he might do.

‘Gotta finish the job,’ he growled. ‘Once and for all. I’m going to cut you up in such small pieces you’ll never come back again.’

He loosened his grasp and she took a gulp of air, choking and coughing. As she felt breath flow into her lungs her panic subsided. She had to think, concentrate. He had killed her mother – she knew that now for sure. The certainty of it made her giddy. It was the end of all their hopes, their yearning, their prayers. She never would meet her mother after all. Daisuké would never see her again, nor Haru either.

That made it all the more important for her to live, not for her own sake but for Daisuké’s.

‘You defy me,’ shouted Lord Mizuno. ‘You’ve defiled our
family’s name. You’ve brought shame and ruin on our family. I’ll obliterate you. I’ll obliterate you so completely no one will ever know you existed.’

It was the same conversation he had had all those years ago with her mother. He must have repeated it again and again to himself ever since.

‘Hiro,’ he barked.

She started. Ohiro. Her mother’s name when she was a girl, before she entered the palace. She felt herself dissolving. It was she, Sachi, who had committed that terrible crime, she who had disgraced the family. Her mother lived again in her. Was it all predestined? Sachi asked herself. She too had become the shogun’s concubine, she too had betrayed him, and she too had allowed herself to be swept away by passion. She had forgotten that women were property, and that their only duty was to obey. She had thought she could grab life for herself, take what she wanted with impunity. Was this to be her punishment?