The Last Concubine (58 page)

Then came lords and nobles. Some were hidden in palanquins, others on horseback or on foot, dressed in voluminous robes and high black hats such as Sachi had only ever seen in woodblock prints before – the ancient fashion of the imperial court. Marching before and behind them were ranks of courtiers and guards in brilliantly coloured court costume. There were hundreds of grooms leading hundreds of horses, bearers of parasols, bearers of shoes, bearers of the imperial bath, endless attendants of every sort. The whole court, it seemed, enough to populate the vast castle, had turned out to accompany the emperor.

Everything was strange and alien – soldiers in foreign uniforms, courtiers in ancient costume which no one in Edo could have ever seen before. Even their faces were different from Edo faces, from the craggy southern looks of the soldiers to the pale etiolated features of the aristocrats with their long noses, small mouths and high foreheads.

An army of Shinto priests followed, shuffling through the crowds, swishing mulberry-paper wands. The emperor was on his way. The people, the buildings, the trees, the ground, the air – everything had to be purified.

Approaching very slowly was an ebony and gold palanquin larger and more splendid than any Sachi had ever seen in her life. It was hung with drapes, with red silken cords at each corner, and its roof gleamed in the sun. It was borne aloft by a great mob
of bearers, all in voluminous robes of yellow silk with black hats on their heads.

On the top was a gold phoenix of the most delicate filigree work. It shimmered and sparkled as it swayed along.

As the phoenix car approached a profound hush fell over the crowd. The murmuring and movement, the hissing and whispering, the turning of heads as people tried to get a better view all stopped. No child spoke, no baby cried. The only sounds were the rustling of the sleeves and skirts of the bearers and the clack of their black-lacquered clogs.

Sachi’s knees seemed to bend of their own accord. Hardly conscious of anything but an overwhelming awe, she knelt on the ground with her face to her hands. She was barely aware of the whisper of the bearers’ robes, the crunch of their clogs or the creaking of the silken cords that held the palanquin steady. A fragrance filled the air, an ancient hallowed scent that spoke not of the austere creed of the Buddhas but of the nature gods of Shinto, not of darkness but of light, not of death but of life.

There was no doubt in Sachi’s mind that the being within the palanquin was the child of the gods, the son of the sun goddess. With the golden phoenix glittering above him and the yellow-clad bearers like a halo of the sun’s rays around him, it was as if the sun herself had descended to earth.

It was only long after the palanquin had passed that anyone dared move their heads. Sachi glanced around. Taki and Haru still had their noses in the dust, while all around them people were beginning to clamber to their feet, looking bewildered as if they were wondering what had come over them. Down-to-earth Edoites that they were, they seemed annoyed that they could be so easily seduced. The grumbling about the southern barbarians would continue, but something had changed. As Edwards had put it, there was no turning back the clock.

The palanquins, the lords, the officials, the courtiers, the horses, the grooms, the soldiers, the porters and trunks, the servants, the women, the maids and everyone else all disappeared into Edo Castle until the last person was gone. Only it was no longer Edo Castle, the seat of His Majesty the shogun, Sachi
reminded herself. It was Tokyo Castle, the imperial palace, residence of His Grace the emperor.

Finally the towering cedarwood gates began to move. Sachi watched spellbound, desperate for one last glimpse of the castle. A terrible sense of doom and finality swept over her. Peering through the heads of the crowd and the lines of soldiers on guard, she fixed her gaze on the narrowing gap, but all she could see was the guardhouse inside the inner enclosure. The massive stones of the wall behind it fell into shadow as the gates rumbled on and on at the same measured pace until they thundered together. The great walls shuddered. The boom echoed across the plaza.

A cold wind whistled through the crowd, making kimono skirts flutter. It lifted the dead leaves and sent dust spinning in whorls. Sachi shivered and pulled her
haori
jacket closer around her.

Daisuké’s eyes were shining. The gates were not closed to him. The southern soldiers, the pale aristocrats, the courtiers in their yellow silk robes were his people; he shared their glory. The emperor’s triumph was his too.

‘They can ‘ave the castle,’ snarled Fuyu. The white make-up on her face was blotched and runny, streaked with tears. ‘The streets are ours. Call it what y’ like. It’s still Edo.’

People were shaking themselves as if they were coming out of a collective trance, glancing around, grinning at each other sheepishly. Voices began to speak, but quietly, as if no one dared talk about what they had seen. A child started to chatter as little by little people began to leave. Most pattered off in their clogs or straw sandals towards the east end of the city.

Fuyu too lifted up her skirts, nodded a brusque farewell and hastily, as if she was afraid of incurring their pity if she stayed longer, hurried eastwards, teetering along on her high clogs. Sachi watched her back in its garish heavily patterned kimono disappearing into the crowds. She looked small and forlorn but proud. Sachi could see herself there too, in the set of Fuyu’s shoulders: that anger, that refusal to give up the past, that pride – maybe they all had it, all the palace women. Maybe they would carry it with them for the rest of their lives.

Daisuké walked Sachi, Taki and Haru from the plaza in front
of the castle, around the edge of the moat, as far as the bridge that led to the mansion. He stopped there.

‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘I have business to attend to. I’m setting up house here in Tokyo. There’ll be room for all of us and maids and servants too. I’m going to make sure you all have the life you deserve.’

Sachi bowed, suddenly feeling terribly sad and alone. When ‘the lads came back from Wakamatsu’, would Shinzaemon be among them? But Daisuké didn’t even know he existed. It was hard to imagine how he would fit into this idyllic life her father was planning for them. And Edwards, she thought, would fit in no better.

There was no one on guard at the outer gates of the mansion. Sachi, Taki and Haru walked across the gardens in silence towards the massive inner gates, picking their way around the piles of dead leaves.

On the far side of the courtyard were two men, sitting crosslegged in a patch of sunlight on the veranda outside the great entrance hall. They were deep in conversation, their heads close together. A shaft of sunlight lit the smoke that coiled from their pipes and shone on the freshly shaved pate and oiled topknot of one. The other had a head covered in bristly black hair, cut short like a foreigner’s.

The shaven-pated man looked up when the women appeared. He leaped to his feet and scurried over to them, bowing apologetically. It was the old man who guarded the outer gates.

‘So sorry,’ he muttered. He gestured towards the other man. ‘A visitor. Just back from Wakamatsu.’

Sachi nodded. One of their lads back from the front, bringing news. That was good enough reason for the old man to desert his post. She turned to greet the newcomer. He was stepping off the veranda, quietly slipping his feet into straw sandals. His face was turned downwards, but even before he looked up she knew.

It was Shinzaemon.

14

Back from the Dead

I

Shinzaemon was looking at Sachi with a calm steady gaze. His eyes seemed to bore into her – narrow cat-like eyes in a shapely face. He was not beautiful like a kabuki actor as Daisuké had been; his face was too fierce, too muscular, too powerful for that. She recognized his arrogance, his easy grace, that look as if he was out to conquer the world. No matter that he had fought on the losing side, he carried himself with pride.

She could see he’d been out in the sun and wind. His face was darkly tanned, his clothes worn and crumpled. The beginnings of a moustache sprouted on his upper lip.

Her spirit rushed towards him but she didn’t move. She stood poised and demure, as a woman should. She was burning to fling herself into his arms but of course she did no such thing. She lowered her eyes and bowed.

Taki was bowing too , holding her sleeve to her eyes.

‘Shin,’ she said. ‘You must be tired. Welcome home. It’s been a long time.’

Shinzaemon bowed solemnly.

‘Inexcusable,’ he said, ‘to arrive without warning.’

His voice was a deep rumble. Sachi could smell his scent – the salty smell of sweat mingled with tobacco. She remembered all those times she had breathed that scent – walking along the Inner
Mountain Road with him, standing on top of the mountain, crushed in his arms on the bridge.

She bowed, mouthed the proper phrases, but she was hardly aware of what she did. She was waiting – waiting for the moment when they could be alone.

The bowing seemed to go on for ever. Then Taki grabbed Haru’s sleeve. Slowly, deliberately – or so it seemed to Sachi – they slipped out of one sandal then the other and stepped up into the shadowy entrance hall. They bowed again and went inside. She watched their retreating backs until they disappeared.

The sun was setting and the sky was streaked with red, silver and gold.

Sachi had been waiting for this moment for so long but now it had come she felt shy, like a little girl. She stared at the ground. Shinzaemon’s
tabi
socks were dusty, his sandals worn and broken. There were knots where he’d retied the straw thongs. The bottoms of his kimono skirts were stained.

He was gazing at her from under his thick brows.

‘You came,’ she breathed.

‘
Dounika
,’ he said. ‘Somehow.’

When they had last met they had thought they would never see each other again. She glanced up at him timidly, remembering that encounter. He was looking at her too. His eyes were fixed on her face as if he was reminding himself of every curve, every line of it. Something about him had changed. He smiled a wry smile. His shorn head made him look like a mischievous child. Even when his hair had been tugged back in a horse’s tail she’d never been able to see his face so clearly.

‘What do you think?’ Shinzaemon said with a grimace, putting his hand to his head.

There was a frown mark between his eyes that hadn’t been there before. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the faraway look she had seen in Tatsuemon’s eyes, as if he had seen things he could never tell her about. But the fighting had been half a month ago. He had survived. He had walked back since then. Perhaps it was the future he was looking at, not the past.

‘You look different,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s a good disguise. No one would ever recognize you.’

‘But you do.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. She wanted to touch him, feel his hard body, his strong hands. But she held back. The longer she waited, the stronger the yearning grew.

He reached into his sleeve and took out a comb. Tortoiseshell edged with gold, embossed with a crest. Her mother’s comb, her mother’s crest. She hadn’t known all that it meant when she gave it to him. Now she did, and the knowledge had made her different too.

‘It kept me safe. Better than armour. Better than a thousandstitch belt.’

There was so much she had to tell him, but she knew suddenly – joyfully – that they could talk later. They had the whole of their lives ahead of them.

‘Come and see the gardens,’ she said.

They pushed their way along the overgrown paths. Clumps of plume grass swayed in the breeze, sending showers of down whirling through the air like snow. Insects chirruped, the last of the season. The maples blazed with colour. She led him to the parapet.

They stood side by side, looking down at the Goji-in Field and the land that had once been daimyos’ estates. There were people everywhere, working industriously. In the distance the townsmen’s area bristled with bamboo scaffolding and people swarmed around like ants, busily putting up walls and roofs. The tap-taptap of thousands of hammers travelled clear and sharp across the empty spaces.

The hill rose, silent and dead, in the middle of all the activity. Birds circled, black dots in the darkening sky, cawing ominously.

They were so close she could feel the heat of his body.

‘I used to come here,’ she said, ‘every day. And look at the hill and wonder if you were there. I thought I’d never see you again.’

‘Tatsuemon told me what you did . . .’

For a moment the memory of that terrible day came rushing back. The ghastly faces, the gaping wounds and staring eyes, the flies, the stench. She had been so terrified she would find him there. And now he was beside her, so warm, so alive. Tears welled up and she put her sleeve to her eyes.

He took her hand and held it tight. She could feel the calluses
that rimmed his palm, rough where he had grasped his sword.

She held her breath and he pulled her to him. She could feel the hard muscles in his arms and chest. She felt his heart beating, the rise and fall of his abdomen as he breathed. His lips brushed her hair. His touch was not fierce, as it had been before, but gentle. He nibbled her ears, the back of her neck, her cheek, her eyes. Then his mouth found hers.