The Last Concubine Read online

  ‘Beats me, all this political stuff,’ grunted Shinzaemon in his coarsest Kano dialect. ‘Gotta escort these women. They got relatives upcountry. Just following orders.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said the officer, raising an eyebrow. ‘You’ll do well to watch out for yourselves. The imperial troops are on their way. If they catch up with you you’d better be good and ready to convince them you’re on their side.’

  ‘Those guards – they bend whichever way the wind blows,’ muttered Shinzaemon when they were safely through. ‘I bet they were the shogun’s men a few days back. And now they’re all imperial loyalists. We’ll keep going as best we can. Make sure we inflict some damage before anyone asks too many questions.’

  Just beyond the ramshackle row of inns, the mountains rose in a line of crags that beetled into the sky. Taki and Yuki stared at them open-mouthed, but to Sachi they were no more formidable than the ridges that had overshadowed the village. She had clambered around peaks like that as carelessly as a mountain monkey when she was a child.

  The road climbed through forests of leafless trees along the side of the bluff. The flat stones that lined the path were covered in ice and snow. Taki and Yuki stumbled along, slipping and sliding, stopping more and more frequently, gasping, to catch their breath. At the post town they had bought straw boots specially woven to resist the snow, with spikes to help them keep a grip on the path, but even so the way was treacherous.

  At first Sachi trudged as laboriously as they. When she stopped for breath she saw them sitting wearily on the road far below her. Toranosuké and Tatsuemon were with them, standing patiently, waiting for them to set off again.

  Back in the mountains after all these years! The air tasted fresh and clean. She began to find her mountain legs again. She stepped out rhythmically, feeling the cool air flow into her lungs.

  Up ahead of her Shinzaemon was leading the group. Loping effortlessly along the steep path he was like a fox, with his bushy hair and black dangerous eyes, or a bear. He no longer seemed caged as he had in the trim, prim samurai world of Kano. He was back on the road and heading for action.

  With a few quick steps Sachi caught up with him. He looked at her, startled, his slanted eyes glinting under his thick brows. His broad, open face with its great cheekbones had grown tawny from days outside in the wintry sun. Stubble sprouted on his chin, and his sweat was pungent and salty. He was not perfumed like a courtier.

  Sachi was panting and hot from the climb. As she looked at him she felt the blood rise to her face and her cheeks grow hotter still.

  ‘It’s a long climb,’ he said, frowning at her as if she was a naughty child. ‘Four ri, they said at the post town. And steep the whole way. Slow down. Take it easy.’

  Sachi looked away. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rising and something like panic deep in her stomach. Her heart was pounding, and not just from the thinness of the air.

  They were alone together. She was aware of how wrong that was, even for a moment, but it was too late now to worry about propriety – too late for anything. This was the chance she had been yearning for. There was so much she wanted to ask him. That flower – had he given it to her simply because she was out of reach? Or was there more?

  She peeped up at him. He was looking down at her as if he too had suddenly realized that a moment had come that might never come again. They stood as the clouds swept by them and the shadows on the mountain changed.

  He held out his hand to her. ‘Let’s walk together,’ he said at last.

  It was a hard steep climb but Sachi barely saw the road. She was conscious only of the closeness of his body, the sound of his breathing. She could almost hear the beating of his heart in the stillness.

  The higher they climbed, the deeper the snow became. A bitter wind blew. Sachi’s feet were like ice, but she hardly noticed. She stopped and looked around. The plain spread below them, bleak and brown, dotted with patches of snow. Here and there hills rose. Far in the distance, mountain peaks shimmered white above the clouds.

  ‘Mount Hakusan,’ said Shinzaemon. He stretched out his great hand and pointed. His skin was golden, his fingers firm and strong, scattered with black hairs. ‘And Mount Ibuki. And there, do you see over there? The sea. And way over there in the distance, glittering? That’s Kyoto.’ Sachi shaded her eyes with her hand and looked as hard as she could.

  Finally they reached the top of the pass. A few steps beyond the summit was a teahouse where they sheltered, warming their hands over the open hearth. The pungent smoke of burning pine filled their nostrils. The little hut was crowded with travellers. The fire spluttered and smoked, teacups clattered, voices chattered. But it all seemed far away. For a few precious moments Sachi and Shinzaemon were free – free from their families, their duty, their obligations, even their social ranks. It was just the two of them at the top of this mountain with the clouds rolling beneath them.

  ‘Where did you learn to walk like that?’ Shinzaemon asked. His frown had disappeared and a smile spread across his face. His eyes flashed with a reckless look, as if nothing mattered any more. ‘Not Edo Castle, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I had forgotten how alive I feel in the mountains,’ Sachi said softly.

  He reached out and took her small hand in his big rough one, holding it like a rare treasure. She sat in silence, feeling his skin on hers. So he too felt the same yearning for things to be different. And he too realized that they never could be.

  What did the future hold for him? Death, a glorious death in battle. And if by chance he lived, no doubt his parents had already planned a marriage for him. He was one small ant in an ants’ nest, a bee buzzing around a hive. His destiny was not for him to shape. He had taken on the mantle of a ronin, an outsider, but in the end he belonged to his family, his clan, his city.

  And as for her – where were her family and clan and city? She could picture his life and the different paths it might take, but he knew nothing of her.

  ‘Who are you, Lady Sachi?’ he asked. He was looking at her with his slanted eyes that seemed to see deep inside her. A mischievous grin flitted across his face. He seemed to have brightened since they left Kano, as if the weight of the terrible events of the last few days was gradually lifting from his shoulders.

  ‘Why should I tell you?’ she said teasingly. She felt light-headed in the thin air. What difference would it make whether he knew her secret or not? He would find out anyway, and very soon.

  ‘There’s a village in the Kiso region, not far from here,’ she went on quietly. ‘It’s where I grew up, where my parents live. It’s on the Inner Mountain Road. We’re going to pass straight through it. We want to stop and stay there, me and Taki and Yuki. It’ll be safest for us there.’

  Almost immediately she was afraid she had made a terrible mistake, but it was too late to take the words back. She looked at him, wondering how a proud samurai like him would react, knowing that she was nothing but a lowly peasant.

  His eyes opened wide. ‘A village?’ he murmured in tones of disbelief.

  ‘My parents are rural samurai – my adoptive parents, that is. But I spent years in service at Edo Castle.’ She wanted to tell him that she was the adoptive daughter of the house of Sugi, bannermen to the daimyo of Ogaki, as indeed she was. But she was more than that, far more. She was the Retired Lady Shoko-in, the beloved concubine of His late Majesty. But that was far too dangerous a secret ever to reveal.

  He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. Then his lips curved into a smile that spread until his whole face was alight with it. He turned her hand over and gently ran his hard swordsman’s fingers across her soft white palm.

  ‘I thought you were above the clouds,’ he said softly. ‘I thought you were a court lady, beyond my reach. I thought I would only ever be able to admire you from a distance. But you’re not! You’re a human being, like me.’

  He leaned forward. ‘You’re like Momotaro,’ he said.

  Sachi smiled unc
ertainly. Momotaro – Little Peach Boy. Her grandmother had often told her the story of the old woodcutter and his wife who had prayed to the gods for a child. One day the old woman was washing clothes at the river when a giant peach came bobbing towards her. When she cut it open, a beautiful baby boy jumped out.

  Maybe Shinzaemon was right, Sachi thought. Maybe she was a bit like Momotaro. She had always known she was different from everyone else. Like her, Momotaro hadn’t stayed in his village. He had grown up and gone off to conquer ogres. But at the end of the story, after he had had his last adventure and the ogres were all dead, he had gone back and found the old woodcutter and his wife waiting for him, yearning to see him – as her parents must be yearning to see her.

  For so many years she had thought of the village with longing and now she was beginning to recognize the countryside and knew she was nearly home. The evening before she had been so sure that that was what she wanted, but now she was not sure of anything. When she turned off to the village, Shinzaemon would go on his way to Edo and she would never see him again. Just as they were getting to know each other they would have to part.

  The sun had gone in. An icy draught blew through the little hut. She shivered.

  Shinzaemon brushed his finger across her cheek. ‘Like a peach,’ he murmured, as if to himself.

  He gazed at her for what seemed like an age. Then he glanced around as if he had suddenly woken from a dream. His face darkened. He thrust her hand aside.

  ‘What have you done to me?’ he growled. ‘You make life too precious. I have to be ready to die. How can I fight if I feel like this?’

  Through the door of the teahouse Sachi could see their friends trudging up the snow-covered path towards them, followed by a line of porters with great bundles tied to their backs. Shinzaemon glared at her.

  ‘I’m supposed to be a man and a soldier. Perhaps what Toranosuké says is true. Mixing with women too much turns you into a woman. This has to stop now, this mad behaviour. If my father caught me he’d kill himself for shame.’

  Sachi swallowed hard. Her throat burned and hot tears started in her eyes. She did not deserve such cruel words. She took some breaths and tried to calm the beating of her heart. She needed to steady herself, to be ready to face Taki and Yuki.

  Shinzaemon was right, of course, to thrust her away. It was foolish to think for a moment that their lives could be any different. And his harsh words would make their parting easier to bear. It was better this way, better to forget anything had ever happened.

  The trek down from the pass was precipitous. Sachi walked with Taki and Yuki, taking their hands and helping them down the steepest parts of the track. She was ashamed to have left them, to have let her feelings run away with her. After all, she was not a child any more. She knew very well she was not free.

  She was expecting Taki to scold her for allowing herself to be alone with a man. But Taki said nothing. She hardly seemed even to have noticed that Sachi had been away.

  Sachi looked at her hard. She had been so caught up in her own thoughts and feelings she hadn’t been paying attention to her. Taki seemed to be in a dream herself. Her face was bright, her big eyes glowing. Sachi had never seen her look so pretty and alive. The contours of her face seemed softer and more womanly.

  Then she caught her peeking shyly at Toranosuké, flushing whenever he came near.

  For the rest of the day they walked in silence, keeping off the main road as much as possible. Sachi took care never to catch up with Shinzaemon. Sometimes she stole a glance at his broad back disappearing along the trail and wondered if he would look back at her. But he never did.

  She was watching Taki now, noticing the way she glanced at Toranosuké and lowered her big eyes shyly when he was around. He was certainly very handsome, with his refined features and hair pulled back into a glossy horse’s tail. For a man who had spent so much of his life at war his skin was rather delicate, not sunburned like Shinzaemon’s. He was a samurai through and through – muscular, well-bred and very polite. But he always kept an indefinable distance. There was something else too that made him the embodiment of the samurai ethos. Tatsuemon was constantly at his side. At night they always went off together.

  Sachi had never paid much attention to them before. It was not her place to do so. But now she couldn’t help noticing how Tatsuemon gazed adoringly at his master.

  It was hardly surprising. Toranosuké’s relationship with Tatsuemon was there for anyone who cared to look. It was so obvious it was not even worthy of note. As a samurai in the classic mould, Toranosuké lived his life among men, believing that contact with women would make him as soft as a woman himself. But surely Taki knew that? Perhaps her feelings had made her blind to what was clear to everyone else, Sachi thought. Toranosuké and Tatsuemon’s was the sort of bond one would expect men to have with each other. It was sanctioned by society and did not threaten its norms. No matter how close they were, it would not interfere with their families’ marriage plans for them.

  It was Sachi and Shinzaemon who had to keep their meetings secret. It was their feelings that were beyond the pale, not Toranosuké’s and Tatsuemon’s.

  VI

  The next morning the raucous crowing of cocks at dawn broke into Sachi’s dreams. Tramping through a village high on a plateau, she smelt woodsmoke on the breeze and heard the murmur of a stream tumbling along beside the road. She felt the wind in her hair, saw the sunlight speckling the rocks and realized she was nearly home.

  But why did people look so poor and ragged? In one village people ran after them holding out straw hats upside down like baskets, begging them to throw in alms. They were as thin and bony as skeletons, their eyes staring and their cheeks blackened and sunken. From time to time she heard the sound of flutes and the rattle of drums. Voices hummed that strange subversive refrain: ‘Who gives a damn? Who gives a damn?’

  Wherever they went they heard rumours that the southerners were on their way. Shinzaemon, Toranosuké and Tatsuemon took the precaution of disguising themselves as servants. They stored their long swords in the trunks that the porters carried, along with the women’s halberds, so that they had only their short swords with them to defend themselves.

  They were resting in an inn late in the afternoon, warming their hands at the open hearth, when they overheard two men talking.

  ‘Whenever I see the shogun’s crest it brings tears to my eyes,’ said one. Sachi glanced at him. He was a young man with a round ingenuous face, bulging eyes and an earnest manner. He looked a bit like a blowfish. Although he was dressed like a countryman he didn’t talk like one; no one could be sure who anyone else was these days. There were notices posted in all the inns forbidding talk of politics, be it drinkers arguing over sake or women and children chattering. But who could enforce such a rule?

  ‘Bit late for that kind of talk,’ snapped the other, an older man with a fleshy face and small watchful eyes. He too was dressed like a countryman but his hands were far too plump and clean to fool anyone.

  ‘You really think this new government is going to work?’ demanded the first. ‘At least we knew where we stood with the shoguns. The country was peaceful. We could get on with making a living. These southerners are pushing us all to the brink. What gives them the right to order us about? Their weaponry, that’s all . . .’

  He stopped and looked around quickly. The room had gone deathly silent.

  ‘Whose side are you on then?’ asked the older man in a tone of quiet menace, looking hard at the younger. Sachi glanced at him, wondering if he was a spy, watching out for traitors to the southern cause.

  ‘The emperor’s, of course,’ said the younger man hastily. ‘But I support the shogun too.’

  ‘They’re calling for Lord Yoshinobu’s head,’ said the older roughly. ‘You know that. The southern lords are saying he’s a traitor and should be ordered to cut his belly. You’d better be careful what you say. It’s safest to have no opinion at all.’

  Sachi felt a ch
ill as sharp as if a blade of ice had entered her heart. If they were planning to execute Lord Yoshinobu, they would be wanting to exterminate his whole family, root and branch, and everyone associated with him. What would become of the princess and the three thousand women at the castle? They were all servants, virtually family of the shogun. And what of Sachi herself? As the concubine of his predecessor, she was officially Lord Yoshinobu’s mother-in-law even though she had never met him.

  Thank the gods only Taki knew who she really was. Even the men knew no more than that she was a court lady and a lookalike for the princess. It was more important than ever to keep her secret safe.

  Towards evening the little party stumbled wearily to the top of yet another pass. They stopped there, panting and wiping their brows. Ahead of them were mountain ranges, receding, paler and paler, until they faded to nothing on the horizon.

  Sachi had noticed something glinting far below. Peering through the trees she looked and looked again. It was a river, snaking along the valley floor between jagged grey cliffs. Could it be . . . the Kiso?

  ‘Taki, Yu-chan,’ she called. ‘Look!’

  She had been away so long she had begun to wonder if it really existed or if she had just imagined it. She stood listening, trying to hear the sound of the river as it came rushing down from the mountains, swollen with melted snow. She could almost feel the water on her skin. In her mind she was swimming, darting through the cold water like a fish with young Genzaburo, the ringleader in their adventures, and ugly little Mitsu. Genzaburo had gone off to fight and Mitsu had become a mother; they would not be at the village when she got there.

  There was something else. Floating up from the valley behind them, clear as a bell in the mountain air, came a noise like distant thunder. It grew louder and louder. It was like the sound the daimyos and their processions used to make on their way to the village – the tramp of marching feet. There was another sound too, a discordant roar like a forest full of baying animals – voices, men’s voices. If it was a song they were yelling out it was unlike anything she had ever heard before.