The Last Concubine Read online

  He was gazing at her seriously. He seemed to be studying every curve of her face. He ran his fingers across her cheek and chin and around the nape of her neck.

  ‘O-yuri-no-kata . . .’ he said, as if trying out the syllables. He had a clear, slightly high-pitched voice. ‘Lady Yuri?’ He drew on his pipe. Then he tapped it out, added a plug of tobacco, took the tongs, picked up a piece of charcoal and sucked at the pipe again.

  ‘Shall we be friends?’ he asked, almost plaintively.

  Sachi gasped, shocked and frightened that this grand personage was speaking to her directly, and in such everyday language. She could feel the wakeful ears beside them straining to pick up every word. Dared she, she wondered, reply to him? She took a deep breath.

  ‘Sire?’ she whispered.

  ‘Call me Kiku,’ he said. ‘That’s what my women call me. Kikuchiyo is the name I had when I was little.’

  She knew she had to obey, even though what he was ordering her to do was against all the rules of protocol.

  ‘Sire . . . I mean, Kiku-sama,’ she whispered nervously, stumbling over the intimate syllables. There was the faintest of rustles from the shadows. ‘You must know . . . their lady-ships . . .’

  She gestured helplessly towards the bundles of bedclothes to each side of them.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘There are watchers and listeners everywhere. I won’t say anything to harm you.

  ‘The first time I saw you, you were in the gardens,’ he added mischievously. ‘You didn’t know that, did you! You were running here and there, laughing, kicking up cherry blossoms with your feet, your hair flying. You looked so sweet, like a little girl.’

  Sachi could feel her face burning. She dared not say a word. He looked at her and laughed, not a polite artificial laugh like the court ladies uttered when they were embarrassed but an open, merry laugh.

  ‘I had never seen anyone like you,’ he went on, growing serious. ‘You were like a deer, so free and so graceful. Your face is quite perfect. Your skin is so white, so smooth, so dewy. Like a lotus flower. Your lips.’ He ran his fingers across them. ‘And your eyes are green, dark green. Like a forest of pine trees in the mountains. My women are all chosen for their beauty, but none of them is like you – except, of course, Princess Kazu, your mistress. You are like matching shells. She told me about you. And once I’d seen you I noticed you again and again. I’m sure our destinies are entwined.’

  Sachi lay in silence. She tried not to look at him, but every now and then she could not resist letting her eyes flicker shyly to his face.

  He paused to refill his pipe and continued as if thinking aloud.

  ‘In this world everything is in the hands of the gods and our karma. None of us can choose our destiny. I am a prisoner, like you. I have been called upon to be shogun. My predecessors – Lord Ieyoshi, Lord Iesada – spent their lives here in the palace with their page boys and concubines. They played music and wrote poetry, they hosted the deer hunt and went falconing. I thought my life was going to be like that too.

  ‘But it has turned out quite differently. I’ve been out of the castle. I’ve travelled the Eastern Sea Road and seen the fifty-three famous sights. I’ve been to the capital and negotiated with the Son of Heaven, more than once. I have seen my people, too, thousands of them. I’d never seen people like those before. They’re not like samurai, they don’t keep their feelings hidden. You can see their lives in their faces. You’re like that. You bring sunshine to this gloomy place.’

  ‘Sire!’ said Sachi, horrified. A man should not reveal so much of himself, even to a worthless girl like her; and this was not just any man but the shogun. To have taken the remotest interest in the inferior beings who lined the road might hint at weakness to the listeners in the shadows; and to compare her to them might even be taken as criticism of their efforts to make her more polished. Unperturbed, he continued.

  ‘Now my responsibilities grow heavier still. I’m supposed to be a true Barbarian-Quelling Generalissimo, not just bear the title. Tomorrow I leave for Osaka, to lead my troops to quell the Choshu rebels.’

  He said the last words with a grunt, twisting his mouth into a samurai scowl as if trying on the face for size. Then he laughed disarmingly.

  ‘Let’s enjoy my last night here,’ he said. ‘There’s so much I want to talk to you about. When I come back, we’ll get to know each other properly. Now . . . Let me look at you.’

  He lifted her hair, running the smooth heavy strands through his fingers. Then he shoved her sleeping robe aside. She closed her eyes as she felt the touch of his hand on her belly. She could feel the heat of his skin, breathe his scent. Gently he stroked, then began to move his hand lower.

  ‘So fine, so soft . . . Like a flower,’ he murmured.

  VI

  That night the rains broke, crashing on the tiled roofs like an army of galloping hooves. In the morning every leaf, petal and blade of grass in the gardens sparkled with moisture. Deep inside the palace the shogun and his concubine could feel that the humidity had lifted and the air had cleared.

  The maids who came to wake them found the small futon beside the shogun’s larger one undisturbed. The shogun had gone, slipping away before daylight broke. Only his scent lingered.

  The four women who had watched over Sachi during the night – the venerable Lady Nakaoka, Lady Tsuguko, Lady Chiyo and the shaven-headed lady priest – were waiting for her in the antechamber. Sachi knelt before them. The morning air poured in. Feeling four sets of eyes fixed on her like hawks eyeing a field mouse, she tried to straighten her tousled hair and smooth her make-up. She knew she would have to repeat every conversation she had had with the shogun, but His Majesty’s words were so precious that she wanted to keep them to herself, not recite them like a lesson. Timidly she glanced at Lady Nakaoka. To her surprise she was smiling at her.

  ‘Well, well, my dear,’ she said, stifling a yawn. ‘You did very well. We heard all we needed to hear.’

  A bevy of maids tidied Sachi’s hair and make-up and helped her into her day kimono then swept her back along the corridors to the princess’s apartments. She walked in a daze, hardly seeing where they led her. Everything had changed. She had awoken into a new world but she did not yet understand what that meant or what she had become.

  Lady Tsuguko ushered her into the princess’s presence. Princess Kazu was at her writing desk. She put down her brush.

  ‘You must be tired,’ she said, using the formal phrases with which a mistress thanks a servant. ‘You have served me well.’

  It was the first time she had ever spoken to Sachi directly. Sachi peeped up at her. For a moment their eyes met. Princess Kazu smiled a little sadly.

  ‘You have done me great service,’ she added. ‘We must pray to the gods that you will succeed in bearing a son for me. Lady Tsuguko will see that you are properly rewarded.’

  She turned back to her writing, and Sachi bowed silently and withdrew. She realized too late that in obeying the princess’s orders she had jeopardized her affection; but she had had no choice. There was nothing else she could have done.

  She was still pondering the princess’s words when the shogun’s emissary arrived attended by a train of maids carrying gifts. The shogun had sent a kimono chest to the princess, exquisitely lacquered in black and gold with a design of irises and swirling water. There was a cosmetics box for Lady Tsuguko and combs and fans for other ladies-in-waiting. For Sachi there was an amulet in a silken bag.

  The princess accepted the gifts graciously and set them aside. Then she took up a brush and in her graceful hand wrote a note on a scroll.

  After the emissary had gone Lady Tsuguko leaned forward.

  ‘Madam, the time is approaching . . .’

  ‘Today I am a little unwell. I have sent word to His Majesty that I will be unable to see him off. There is no need to trouble my ladies.’

  Her face was a mask.

  Sachi had never before found it so diff
icult to maintain a façade of decorous calm. It was so unfair. Her feelings had just been awakened; and now the shogun was leaving. Then there was the princess – her beloved princess. Why should she spurn her own husband, refusing to make her farewells when he was departing perhaps for several months? Sachi had hoped that, as one of the princess’s ladies, she might have seen him one last time.

  Slowly she opened the amulet bag. It was beautiful, of white silk with a silken cord. She had hoped he might compose a poem for her to mark their night together. But this was something even more precious – an amulet to ensure the birth of a son. She tucked it into her waistband along with her dagger.

  She dared not shame herself by weeping in public. Careless of what anyone might think, she rushed out into the gardens and began to run blindly, splashing through the puddles in her wooden sandals. She ran and ran until the palace buildings were like dolls’ houses in the distance. Then she turned her face to the sky and let her tears mingle with the rain.

  Taki caught up with her, panting. She unfurled an umbrella and held it over her solicitously.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. There was something comforting about her familiar mouse-like squeak. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

  3

  The Lady of the Side Chamber

  I

  Deep inside the women’s palace Sachi listened as shouts and barked orders drifted across the walls, echoing from the far reaches of the castle. Ominous rumblings set the windows and doors rattling in their wooden frames. She tried to imagine what the bangs and crashes might be – the creaking of great gates opening and closing; the sound of massive cannons, perhaps, being dragged out. There was the patter of running feet, the echo of distant gunfire. She made out the booming of war drums, the melancholy wail of conch-shell trumpets, the pounding of hooves, the whinny of horses. Then she heard the thunder of thousands of feet tramping away, fading further and further into the distance until there was no more than a murmur. She listened until every last sound had ended.

  Silence fell, blanketing the castle. The shogun was gone, along with half his court and advisers and most of the regiments that were garrisoned there.

  In the princess’s apartments the women chattered quietly, trying to pretend that nothing had changed. The princess herself remained hidden behind her gold-encrusted screens. In the past Sachi had always been at her side. But today the princess did not summon her. Quietly Sachi went to help Taki and the other maids who were busy teasing out and combing the ladies’ floor-length hair. Taki smiled at her.

  ‘Lady Oyuri is the honourable lady of the side chamber,’ she whispered. ‘She is no longer a maid. Come and sit over here.’

  So Sachi knelt while the maids massaged her shoulders. They renewed the dye on her teeth and manicured her small pink nails. Then they combed and oiled her long silky hair, lifting the tresses strand by strand and waving an incense burner under them to scent them. They painted her face and helped her into a fine silkgauze kimono of plain white with red overskirts.

  The lady of the side chamber! Just the previous day, she would never have aspired even to look on such a grand personage as the shogun. Now it was over, that experience she had dreaded so much. She could hardly believe it had really happened. As the maids fussed around her, she sat in a dream. She tried to picture His Majesty’s – Kiku-sama’s – smile, his sparkling eyes, his white skin, his hands. But already the image was fading. The more she tried to hold on to it, the more it slipped away.

  All day long the ladies of the castle swept in and out. At midday the seven elders swirled in with a swish of silk and disappeared into the princess’s audience chamber. The heavy scent of their robes lingered, perfuming the air. Puffs of smoke came wafting out from their tiny long-stemmed pipes. The shadows were gathering and the sultry heat had become bearable by the time Lady Tsuguko emerged. The ladies-in-waiting clustered round. She addressed Sachi directly.

  ‘You will sleep in my chamber now,’ she announced in her grandest tones, ‘not with the maids. Of course, if you have a child you will receive your own room, with a staff of four maids and three dressers. You will be given a monthly salary in rice and gold ryo sufficient to feed and pay them. You will also receive a clothing allowance and grants of lamp oil, soy bean paste, salt and firewood for heating the bathwater. If you have a child, your family too will be given honours. Your father will be promoted and will be awarded a good stipend. I will personally make sure that all this comes to pass. His Majesty too will protect you and ensure that your family is suitably honoured.’

  After the evening meal, while the maids were clearing away the trays of small dishes, sweeping the rooms and laying out bedding for the night, Sachi sat down and began a letter to her mother and father. Ever since she had arrived at the palace, she had not had time to write to them at all, neither had they written to her. Her father, she knew, prided himself on his writing skills. After all, he was the village headman. And although her mother couldn’t write, she could always call on him or on the village priest, the local scribe, to write for her. Perhaps they thought themselves too humble now that she had become a great lady; or perhaps they were not even sure what had become of her.

  Sachi picked up a brush, chose a plain paper of mulberry bark, sat down with a candle at her elbow and began to write as simply as possible, forming the letters carefully in her childish handwriting.

  ‘Greetings,’ she wrote. ‘I trust you are taking good care of yourselves in this humid weather. Here in the palace gardens the irises are in full bloom. I am well. I have been working hard, pursuing my studies. I try my best not to bring shame on you. Don’t worry about me. They are taking good care of me here. I have recently been promoted. I am now a maid of the middle rank.’

  As she thought of the tiled roofs of the village and the sun rising over the mountain, tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her painted cheeks. She could not bring herself to say more. She ended with conventional greetings then gave the letter to Taki. She had already requested that she be her personal maid, the official maid of honour to the new concubine.

  Sachi took up her sewing but her thoughts were far away. In her mind she went over and over everything that had happened in the course of the night, trying to recall the shogun’s words, his gestures and his touch. Taki sat next to her in companionable silence, busy with her needle. After a while she turned her small pointed face towards Sachi, looked at her with her big eyes and asked in the tiniest, softest of whispers, ‘Was it terrible? Did it hurt? Was he . . . handsome?’

  Sachi glanced around. The ladies-in-waiting were chatting loudly, busy with their sewing. They were doing their best to remain distant and aloof but every now and then one or other of them shot a glance at her. She knew they too were bristling with curiosity. She thought of the shogun, of his soft white hands running across her body, and for a moment a ripple of those sensations he had awakened quivered in her stomach. She felt a surge of happiness at the memory of the night before and the knowledge that this youth – the greatest man in the realm – cared about her. Then she remembered that he was gone, she didn’t know for how long, and she was overwhelmed with sadness.

  She met Taki’s eye and gave her a shaky smile. Taki smiled back. She understood everything Sachi wanted to tell her.

  The maids had moved Sachi’s belongings into Lady Tsuguko’s chamber and laid out two sets of bedding on the dais. Compared to the cramped quarters where she had slept before, the room seemed frighteningly huge, full of lurking shadows and dark impenetrable corners. Sachi lay on her futon feeling small and lonely, listening to Lady Tsuguko’s regular breathing and the occasional rustle of Taki and the other maids turning in their sleep.

  Then she felt a tug at the corner of her quilt. It was Taki. She crept quietly under the cover and curled up next to her. The two girls fell asleep with their thin white arms wrapped around each other.

  The next day was the official naming ceremony. Afterwards Lady Tsuguko smiled at Sachi and said, ‘Come. We
must conduct the ceremonial visits.’

  Sachi bowed in silence. She had been thinking of nothing but that night with the shogun. But now she realized her new life as the lady of the side chamber was just beginning.

  ‘First we will pay our respects to the Retired One,’ Lady Tsuguko told her. ‘Remember that yesterday was yesterday and today is today. There is no need to be apprehensive.’

  This time Sachi was at the front of the group that swished with slow deliberate steps along the shadowy corridors, escorted by a bevy of maids. Rain clattered on the tiled roof of the walkway as they crossed to a section of the palace she had never seen before. The oppressive heat had lifted a little and it was possible to breathe again. More corridors led to the Retired One’s apartments, where maids scuttled before them, sliding open one set of doors after another. In each room a crowd of ladies-in-waiting knelt, bowing gracefully, manicured hands pressed to the rice-straw tatami. Sachi’s plain robes in the imperial style seemed sadly impoverished compared to their gorgeously dyed and embroidered garments.

  As for the rooms, she had never before seen such opulence. The Retired One’s chambers made Princess Kazu’s seem quite threadbare. Even the tatami mats with their gold bindings were finer and softer than those in the princess’s apartments. Cabinets and shelves laden with writing boxes, tea ceremony utensils, mirror stands and cosmetic sets of the finest lacquerware were crammed along the walls. Embroidered kimonos, among them the magnificent one Fuyu had worn the previous day, hung over kimono racks. The folding screens that partitioned the rooms were painted with landscapes and designs of birds and flowers on a background of lustrous gold leaf and the alcoves were furnished with elegant flower arrangements, paintings and calligraphy. Even the handles and sheaths of the guards’ halberds were adorned with gold or mother-of-pearl.