The Last Concubine (62 page)

Shinzaemon was behind her, so close she could feel the heat of his skin and hear his breath. She glanced around: Daisuké and Edwards were a little way away. Shinzaemon pointed to a nearby peak. His kimono sleeve fell back and she could see the hard muscles of his forearm. His skin was smooth as silk, the colour of dark gold. In her imagination she reached out shyly and ran her fingers across it.

‘Mount Akagi,’ he said. ‘Lord Oguri’s village is somewhere in the foothills there. And that high mountain way over there – it’s towards Wakamatsu.’ Sachi shaded her eyes with her hand. She could just make out a sinister black peak among the crests shimmering in the distance.

They followed the road back down into the woods. Shinzaemon stayed close beside her while Daisuké walked ahead with Haru. Sachi could see their backs receding down the path: the tall broadshouldered man with a flat straw hat slung on his back and his kimono hitched up, revealing a pair of brawny calves, and the small round woman with her hair wrapped in a scarf, pattering along holding a long-stemmed pipe, taking the occasional puff. They were walking side by side, heads bent, talking intensely. Sachi looked at them in amazement: not even a peasant or a townsman would walk beside a woman. They seemed to have forgotten all the social proprieties. It was as if there was no time any longer to worry about what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

She wondered what they were talking about, whether Haru was persuading Daisuké that Shinzaemon was a suitable young man to take as an adopted son, despite the fact he’d fought at Wakamatsu. Or perhaps it was more intimate than that. After all, they were getting close to finding the woman whom both of them loved. Daisuké must feel the same uncertainty, hope and fear that Sachi herself had felt when she had waited and yearned for Shinzaemon. Or maybe over the years his feelings had dulled until there was nothing left except a grim determination to find the answer, no matter what it might be. Perhaps, she thought, the only certainty in life was the certainty of uncertainty. It was important never to forget the Buddha’s teaching: that life was suffering.

She could hear the crunch of fallen leaves behind them. Taki and Edwards were following. No doubt Taki, at least, was a few steps behind Edwards. She heard Edwards’s loud voice and Taki’s high-pitched laugh. She was relieved to hear her friend laugh again; it seemed a long time since she had been happy.

It felt thoroughly wicked – excitingly so – to be walking alongside Shinzaemon. They had been apart for so long that all she wanted was to be with him, though she knew very well that he too would have to find a way to impress Daisuké if they were to have any hope of spending their lives together.

She looked down at the earth and stones of the path, the piles of mouldering leaves and the great trees soaring alongside. Between the trees the hillside fell away, covered in ferns and grass.
Every now and then she caught a glimpse of rolling hills, faint in the distance. There were her small feet in their straw sandals, scuffing along, toes neatly turned in. And there were Shinzaemon’s next to hers, stepping out with big strides.

Shinzaemon kicked at the leaves with his sandals.

‘Wakamatsu,’ he grunted. ‘I thought I’d never fight again after that. But if I have to, I’m ready.’

She looked at him and smiled. They walked on in silence. He was frowning, thinking hard. After a while they caught up with Daisuké.

‘There’s something bothering me,’ Shinzaemon said. ‘Those strongboxes that Lord Oguri and Lord Mizuno had. It took four men to carry each one, and even then they were staggering. Do you think there might have been gold inside? And those porters – they didn’t look like porters at all to me. They looked like prisoners, samurai who’d been locked up so long their pates had grown out. Yes. I’m sure that’s what they were.’

Gold. There had been talk of gold before, Sachi remembered. She pictured herself back in Edo, in the east end, in a grubby pawnbroker’s shop. There was the pawnbroker with his pointed rat-like face and sly, ingratiating smile – Fuyu’s lord and master. He was looking at them through narrowed eyes, refusing the gold coin they had offered him, showing them the stamp on it: the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawas. ‘Seems the shogun’s gold has gone missing,’ he had said with a grin.

‘In those boxes . . .’ she said softly. ‘Could it have been . . . the Tokugawa gold?’

Daisuké stopped suddenly and thumped his huge fist into the palm of his hand.

‘Of course!’ he said, so loudly that a bird fluttered from the trees. ‘The Tokugawa millions. We thought when we took over the castle we’d find it. Fifteen generations’ worth, accumulated ever since the Tokugawas came to power. We’ve been stumbling along ever since, trying to set up a government and run the country with a bankrupt treasury. Of course! Lord Oguri was the chief commissioner of the treasury. He would have wanted to make sure we didn’t lay our hands on a single copper
mon
of it. He probably started shifting it out of Edo the moment it became clear the
shogun was in trouble. Maybe he’s planning to fund a rebellion!’

‘Gold?’ said Edwards, his blue eyes gleaming. ‘The Tokugawa treasure? We heard rumours of that at the legation. Well, if this place we’re going to really is Lord Oguri’s village, then you could be right. That would be something, to find that gold, and Lord Mizuno too.’

He was scowling thoughtfully, kicking at the ground with his shiny animal-skin boots. He looked up and caught Sachi’s eyes on him and gave a rueful half-smile. Then he looked away as if aware that a curtain had fallen between them.

‘You know it’s a criminal offence, stealing state funds,’ said Daisuké grimly. ‘If we find them and they do have the gold, I’ll make sure their heads are well and truly off their shoulders – once they’ve finished answering my questions. They’re traitors, that’s what they are.’

Sachi could feel Shinzaemon bristling.

‘Rebellion. Treachery,’ he muttered with a curl of his lip. His face was stony and Sachi could see that he was making a mighty effort to keep silent. She could guess what he was thinking. If Lord Oguri and Lord Mizuno were organizing the resistance, Shinzaemon would have to make a rapid decision about which side he was on – whether he was with Daisuké or against him. Disillusioned or not, she doubted if he was ready to betray his principles quite yet.

III

They reached the village late in the afternoon. It was huddled against the mountainside. A forest of cedars loomed behind, casting deep shadows across the wooden walls and steep thatched roofs of the inns, and strands of mountain mist trailed in the hollows.

For such a remote place it seemed strangely busy. Shifty-eyed men with stubbly faces and greasy hair pulled into knots prowled around while shrivelled maids, aprons tied over their indigo work kimonos, bustled out into the street, grabbing them and hauling them into their inns. Sachi guessed business must be bad if they had to drag in low life like that.

Out on the street some of the men had already started drinking and the air was rank with the fumes of the local brew. Sachi overheard snatches of conversation. ‘Set up as a merchant, that’s what I’ll do.’ ‘Not me. I’ll be down the Yoshiwara where you can’t tell day from night. The most beautiful women in all two hundred and sixty provinces!’ ‘I’ll buy a few for mistresses.’ ‘I’ll put it on the dice. There’ll be no stopping me.’ She wondered what they were talking about.

Daisuké sought out the best inn in town and took a room there. It was a big wooden building with hefty smoke-blackened beams in the entrance hall that reminded Sachi of the inn where she had grown up. She slid open the rain doors. Outside there was a tiny garden with a pond with carp swimming in it and a few rocks covered in bright green moss.

After they had bathed, a bent old maid hobbled in to prepare their room for dinner. She was dressed in a kimono of coarse homespun cotton, with her hair tied in place with hemp yarn, and stared at them suspiciously out of tiny eyes sunk in her crinkled face. Sachi realized how outlandish they must look: three aristocratic-looking women, two men with hair eccentrically cropped and a huge red-headed barbarian – and all of them speaking with strong city accents. The woman peered up at Edwards then made a tutting noise and turned away as if the presence of such an alien being was too much even to think about.

‘Down from Edo, are you?’ she asked. She had almost no teeth, which made it even harder to understand the ‘shu shu shu’ of her grating northern burr. ‘Used to be we didn’t see no grand folks like you one year to the next. Can’t imagine what you’re doing here. Not on the way to nowhere. No hotspring, no famous temple.’

‘I’m on my way back from Wakamatsu,’ said Shinzaemon quietly. ‘My friends here have come to meet me.’

‘Wakamatsu, huh?’ A long rumble of awe and appreciation rose in the woman’s throat and her old face softened. For a moment there was a flash of the young girl she must once have been. ‘Well done,’ she croaked. ‘Well done. Fought well, you boys. Held out. Did your best.’

She heaved herself to her feet, limped out and returned with a
tray laden with tiny dishes. She folded her legs under her and placed it in front of Daisuké.

‘We’ve had our troubles too. His lordship . . .’ She shook her head and drew her breath through her few remaining teeth with a hiss.

‘You mean . . .’ Sachi held her breath.

‘Yes, yes, Lord Oguri,’ the old woman rasped impatiently. ‘You must have heard of him. Important man, his lordship, up in the city. Never used to see his lordship from one year to the next. Mind you, he was a fair man. If any of us townsfolk had a complaint, he’d listen to it. My old grandfather used to be a retainer up at the big house, and I was a wet nurse for his lordship when he was a baby. Then they sent him down to the Edo estate to turn him into a warrior. I never saw him again. But we all heard what an important man he’d become. We were all proud of him.’

‘So his lordship . . .’

She waggled her head from side to side. ‘You won’t believe what happened.’ She sniffed. ‘When was it now? Before the riceplanting season. Well before. Would have been before the flower festival, except we didn’t celebrate the flower festival this year. How could we after what happened?’

She hobbled out and returned with another tray which she set before Edwards. There was silence in the room. Sachi glanced around; everyone was looking at the floor. Like her, no one dared break the spell by asking where Lord Oguri was.

The old woman went out a third time and returned with another tray of food. As she placed it before Shinzaemon she smiled at him.

‘Bear meat,’ she croaked. ‘Gave you a couple of extra slices. For Wakamatsu.’ Her ancient face crinkled up like a walnut. ‘We had those southern soldiers here too,’ she muttered. ‘Right here in this village. Mean-looking characters. Bow legs. Strange clothes. Can’t understand a word they’re saying. They headed straight for his lordship’s. We didn’t even know he was back. They fan out, they’re searching every house. Even here. Look. See what they did?’

The interwoven bamboo of the ceiling was in shreds. It must have been stabbed a thousand times, as if the soldiers
had been sure their prey was up in the rafters somewhere, hiding.

‘ “He’s not here,” we said. “Never comes here. He’s up in Edo.” “He’s here all right,” they said. Could understand that much. Before the rice-planting season, that’s when it was.’

She stopped and swabbed her rheumy old eyes with her sleeve. ‘Turns out they were right. Seems his lordship and his young lordship were here. They weren’t gonna run away, were they, proud men like them! They were up at the big house, waiting. Guess they knew what was coming. Soldiers arrested them, and his lordship’s personal servants too, and marched them down to the river bank. Chopped their heads off right there.’

Sachi stifled a gasp. Lord Oguri’s soft courtier’s face, the colour of vellum, flashed before her eyes. She saw his white scholarly hands – the hands of a man who had never wielded anything heavier than a writing brush.

The old woman was wiping tears from her shrivelled cheeks.

‘Nailed his lordship’s head to a board,’ she quavered. ‘Carried it through the village, as a warning, like. We belong to his lordship, they know which side we’re on. I saw it myself. First time I saw his lordship’s face since he was a baby. Such a noble face. Nailed it to the prison gate with a sign. “Traitor to the emperor”. He was no traitor. We’re his retainers. And proud of it. Proud.’

She started as if she’d suddenly realized what she’d said and glanced around nervously. Her mouth snapped shut and she hurried out of the room. She scuttled in and out with the remaining trays without another word.

Not hungry any longer, Sachi sat picking at the wild mushrooms and bean paste soup, trying to grasp what the woman had said.

It was Edwards who broke the silence.

‘So what happened to Lord Mizuno?’ he asked, stretching out one long leg, then the other, then folding them in front of him with a grimace.

‘Well,’ said Daisuké slowly, ‘we know he came over on the ferry with Lord Oguri. And, if it really was the Tokugawa gold they were carrying, he knows about it.’

‘He probably knows where it is, too,’ said Edwards. Sachi noticed the same gleam in his eye, the same sudden look of
urgency, of intense interest, that she had seen the first time gold was mentioned. ‘In fact, if Lord Oguri is dead, he’s the only one who does. If that was the Tokugawa gold, those porters you saw are dead. They would have been killed the moment they got the gold to wherever their lordships wanted it to be.’

If. So many ‘if’s, Sachi thought. Yet she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of excitement.

‘Surely Lord Oguri and Lord Mizuno would have separated as soon as they’d got rid of the gold,’ said Shinzaemon. He leaned forward, his eyes shining. ‘They would have hidden it somewhere then gone in opposite directions. Lord Oguri would have known his life was in danger. Lord Mizuno too. They would have wanted to make sure at least one of them survived, otherwise the gold would be lost for ever.’

‘What makes you think they’d want to share it?’ demanded Edwards. ‘Maybe both of them wanted it. Maybe one of them cheated the other and went off with it. Maybe Lord Mizuno betrayed Lord Oguri and told the soldiers where to find him. Gold drives men crazy.’ He was staring at the tatami. ‘
Rabu
too,’ he muttered. ‘But in the end sometimes it’s better just to admit defeat.’