The Last Concubine (17 page)

‘The world has fallen into darkness,’ said the princess. ‘Our friends have become our enemies and our enemies our friends. Lord Yoshinobu has betrayed us, as you know, and abdicated. There is no longer a shogun. The southern lords control my poor nephew, the emperor. Our lives are of no account. We are already dead. No matter what happens, our duty is to the House of Tokugawa. As the aunt of the Son of Heaven and the widow of His late Majesty, I may be a valuable hostage. It is vital that I remain here in the palace.’

Sachi was struggling to grasp what was going on. The only thing she fully understood was the depth of the princess’s pain. Princess Kazu had been forced to give up everything she cared about for a marriage she did not want, and now the imperial family and the Tokugawas were on opposite sides. It seemed that all that was left to her was to do her duty. She was a member of the Tokugawa family now and would be till the bitter end.

‘I am ready to die whenever I am called upon to do so,’ Sachi said. ‘I am honoured to take your place in the imperial palanquin. I will not fail you.’

The princess had tears in her eyes.

‘You have been like a sister to me,’ she said softly. ‘My life will be sadder without you. May the gods protect you. I pray we may meet again in better times.’

She inclined her head.

‘Do your best,’ she said.

Lady Tsuguko waited until she and her ladies-in-waiting had gone, then turned to Sachi.

‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘There’s no time to waste.’ She slid open the door.

Sachi snatched up her bundle and halberd. Her heart was beating strangely. It did not feel like fear at all, but excitement. It was as if she had awakened from a long sleep. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be alive.

The corridor was jammed with women, clutching bundles and carrying candles and paper lanterns. In the flickering light they
were like an army of drifting ghosts, pale and gaunt, in strange outfits thrown together with no thought of what went with what. Their hair was wild, their eyes wide with fear. Some pushed and shoved, sobbing in panic. But mostly they stumbled along in eerie silence.

When Lady Tsuguko and Sachi appeared they stopped and drew back respectfully.

‘Make way!’ barked Lady Tsuguko. She began to push through the crowd, away from the gardens, towards the section of the palace where the smoke was coming from. But there were too many people, so she turned aside into one of the great audience chambers. Sachi followed, wiping her eyes. Smoke was billowing around them. When she stopped to catch her breath, she saw Taki’s small pale face, pointed chin and large eyes close behind her.

‘Go back, Taki,’ she hissed. ‘You don’t have to come.’

Lady Tsuguko swung round sharply.

‘Leave us,’ she barked. ‘Now. Only the lady of the side chamber need come. Go to the gardens with the other maids.’

Taki said nothing but stuck doggedly behind them.

‘Go back,’ shrieked Lady Tsuguko in a frenzy of rage. ‘How dare you disobey my orders!’

There was no time for talk. They ran on. When they reached the wing where the kitchens and offices were, the smoke was so thick they could barely see. They stumbled along blindly, holding their sleeves over their faces. Finally they burst into the great entrance hall. The doors stood open. They stopped, gasping, feeling the icy dawn air flood into their lungs.

III

The moon glimmered on the horizon like a huge round mirror, reflecting a watery light. Hordes of men were dashing past, their breath white in the frosty air. Most were in the uniform of guards from the middle and outer palaces. Some were firemen from the town, wiry fellows in brown leather coats and thick hoods pulled well down over their heads and shoulders. They scuttled along like an invasion of giant cockroaches. Some carried water pumps
and tubs of water on wooden poles on their shoulders, others bamboo ladders and long-poled hooks. Officials in brocade robes were waving batons, directing operations.

‘Pull your cowl close around your face,’ Lady Tsuguko muttered to Sachi. ‘And say nothing.’

Sachi tugged on a pair of straw boots and followed Lady Tsuguko along the covered walkway, pulling her robes tight around her. Taki was still there, panting along behind.

The fire seemed to be everywhere. The white-plastered walls and sweeping grey-tiled roofs glowed with an eerie light as flames exploded from the windows and leaped from roof to roof with a tremendous roar and crackle so fierce that it was impossible to hear anything else. Firemen scrambled up bamboo ladders and swarmed across the rooftops, ripping off tiles and spraying pitifully thin jets of water. Beneath them women were still running out of the burning palace.

For a moment Sachi stood in silence, gazing at this building that had been her home for so many years. If only this too might be a dream. But the freezing cold told her all too clearly that it was not. She shivered. Even the layers of padded silk were not enough to protect her.

Groups of ladies-in-waiting huddled at the doors to the palanquin sheds. They stared at Sachi with wide, envious eyes as the guards bowed and escorted her into the imperial garages.

The princess’s palanquin stood open. Sachi looked at it with a shock of recognition. It was the same one she had seen years before when Princess Kazu and her entourage had arrived in the village. Everything was just as she remembered – the lacquered red walls fretted with gold and marked with the imperial chrysanthemum, the ornate gold roof and the bamboo window blinds hung with fat red tassels. It seemed all too obvious that if the princess was really trying to escape, she would never travel in such a showy conveyance.

An image flashed into Sachi’s mind of the woman who had stepped from this splendid vehicle when she had seen it as a child, back in the village. She remembered her wide terrified eyes. Even then she had guessed that the woman was a decoy for the princess, which was why she had been so afraid. It was Sachi’s
turn now. She was a samurai, a warrior. She would not be afraid – or, if she was, no one would ever see it.

She scrambled into the palanquin, folded her legs under her and tucked her skirts under her knees. There was a commotion outside.

‘Let me through!’ It was Taki’s thin bat-squeak of a voice. ‘Let go of me!’

‘Foolish child, you’ll ruin everything!’ came Lady Tsuguko’s imperious bark.

Suddenly Taki’s small head bounced into sight. In her large, slightly protuberant eyes there was a look of fierce determination. Her bony arms grabbed at the door of the palanquin as if she was trying to scramble inside. Sachi gasped. For a moment she was so overcome with amazement and joy she couldn’t move. Then, her heart thudding, she took hold of an arm and hauled. Lady Tsuguko gave a squawk of rage. Brawny arms encircled Taki and yanked her away.

Tears of disappointment and frustration sprang to Sachi’s eyes. She swallowed hard. If only Taki had come too she could have borne anything. Now there was nothing for it but to endure alone.

The door slammed shut. The carrying pole was already in its hafts. With a grunt the bearers heaved the palanquin on to their shoulders.

In the sudden darkness, Sachi felt the little box swing into the air. Taken by surprise, she lost her balance and fell against the wall. She had never been in a palanquin before and was breathless with the suddenness and strangeness of it. It was like being in a small boat on very choppy water, like the boats she’d been in on the River Kiso and the ferries she’d taken when she travelled in the princess’s procession towards Edo. Even an hour before, who would have guessed she would end up in such an extraordinary place?

She could hear the clatter of hooves and the crunch of strawclad feet. She pushed apart the slats of the bamboo blind. Pale dawn light threaded through the darkness, burnishing the gold leaf of the inner walls and etching the contours of her small white hand. She was in a tiny mobile palace, painted with ornamental
rocks, a winding stream and blossom-covered plum trees.

Outside she could make out the enormous silhouettes of warriors on horseback and guards jogging along. They were in a convoy of palanquins, skirting the inner wall of the women’s quarters, moving at a fast clip towards the great gate. In all the years she had been immured in the palace, she had never once passed beyond it. Behind her the flames roared and there were booms and crashes like falling masonry. She could not bear to think of the princess and the other women. And Taki . . . What had become of her?

Then they were deep in the shadows of the gate. They passed between towering wooden doors bound with iron bars and huge bolts. On the other side the grounds continued. They skirted landscaped gardens, ornamental ponds, lonely pavilions and groves of cryptomeria trees. The pines were all trussed for winter, the branches tightly bound with ropes.

After a long while they came to another gate, heavily fortified, with massive sloping walls of granite blocks, each taller than a man, piled one on top of the other, and tiled roofs topped with golden dolphins. The guards posted at each side bowed as they passed through. Beyond was a long bridge. The first rays of the sun sparkled on the green waters of a wide, still moat. A couple of ducks were swimming there. Sachi twisted around, hoping for a last look, but the castle was invisible behind clouds of pine trees and the gargantuan granite blocks of the ramparts. A tongue of flame licked the sky where the women’s palace should have been.

They were in a broad avenue lined with forbidding walls with sweeping tiled roofs looming behind. The street was full of men, walking, running or passing in sedan chairs. They were curious-looking creatures, like the crowds she had seen tramping the road through the village all those years ago. Some were bent and gnarled, others burly and muscular. Some swaggered like samurai, others slunk like townsmen. Even inside the palanquin she could smell the odour of their bodies. It was strange to imagine that such creatures could be human.

But why were they not on their knees? Some seemed to be staring insolently, bending down, trying to peek inside. Sachi was acutely aware of how conspicuous the palanquin was – a moving
target, declaring to anyone who cared to notice that a rich, aristocratic lady was travelling inside. Her heart beat faster. Was it her imagination or was there hostility in their eyes? Even the palanquin bearers seemed to be tossing her from side to side, as if they knew they were not carrying anyone really important.

Bouncing along in her little box, she felt like one of the prisoners she used to see being transported in wicker cages through the village. She snapped the window blind shut. The lurching of the palanquin made her drowsy and nauseous but she dared not close her eyes. If the southerners had penetrated deep enough inside the castle grounds to set fire to the women’s palace, they could not be far away. She needed to stay alert. If something was to happen, it would be now that they were outside the castle walls. She straightened up, smoothed her kimono skirts and tried to gather her thoughts.

Could it really all be gone – the treasures, the priceless kimonos and exquisite lacquerware? What had become of the women – the Retired One, with her two hundred and eighty maids of honour, each with their retinues of servants, and old Lady Honju-in and her household of creaky ladies-in-waiting? Sachi had always thought of the village as her home. But she had been wrong. The palace was her home and all these women – some kind, some stern – had become her family.

Ever since the shogun died her days had been without meaning. Now she had a mission – to be a decoy, to lure the southerners away from the castle so that they would pursue her, not the princess. Her own life, she knew, was of no importance. Women were in this world to obey without questioning or thinking. That was what she had to do – stop thinking. She murmured the death poem which the poet Narihira had composed back in the Heian era:

She felt for the hilt of her dagger, tucked firmly into her obi, and caressed the silken threads of the binding. In her years at the palace she had been taught to be ready at any moment to use the dagger to protect her lord or, if need be, to kill herself rather than be taken by an enemy. But the privilege of suicide was not for her. If she killed herself she would have failed in her mission. The princess would have no lookalike.

Her mind was calm but her body was afraid. Her heart was beating so fiercely she could hardly breathe. A pain like a knife twisted in her guts, consuming her from the inside. She hated the shame and ignominy of the feeling. She had to stamp out her fear. No matter how high she rose in the palace hierarchy, the snobbish aristocrats always whispered that she was just a peasant. Now was her chance to prove herself: when the time came, she would show them all what Lord Iemochi’s concubine could do.

She tried to slow her breathing. She needed to think, concentrate, prepare. Would she be taken as a hostage? What must it be like to die? Hers was a story without an ending.

Her thoughts turned, as they always did, to His Majesty. She remembered the days and months of sadness – the thirty days of mourning, the months of ritual restrictions, chanting before his memorial tablet on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, thirty-fifth, forty-ninth and hundredth day after his funeral. Day and night she had prayed that he might be safely reborn in the Western Paradise. And here she was, in her seventeenth year, a widow and a nun, imprisoned in this tiny box, rushing headlong towards some unimaginable fate.

She was utterly alone, with no one to help her or tell her what to do. If there were big decisions to make, she would have to make them on her own.