The Last Concubine

  Wafting in from the road outside came a familiar refrain. ‘Ee ja nai ka? Ee ja nai ka? Who gives a damn? Who gives a damn?’

  V

  Sachi’s hair was already short and could easily be twisted into the kind of knot that townswomen wore. But Taki’s swept the ground. With great ingenuity, exclaiming at the beauty of it, the lady of the inn combed and coiled and oiled and twisted it until her hairstyle at least was just like that of an ordinary townswoman. Taki carefully rolled up their priceless silk kimonos and wrapped them in bundles to be loaded on to the packhorses. A peasant turned concubine pretending to be a princess disguised as a townswoman, Sachi thought. She could be anything. All it took was a change of clothes.

  On the battlefield surrounded by heaps of corpses, addressing wild men who threatened to take them captive, Taki had been fearless. Yet now she seemed discomfited – horrified, indeed – by her abrupt decline in status. Here she was, of gentle birth, a different species from these rough soldiers and common townsfolk. Admittedly she was a lady’s maid, but that was in the greatest palace in the land. She had never in her life worn anything except the finest silks. She was used to having a fresh kimono and new white tabi socks every day. She fingered her coarse cotton garments with dismay.

  ‘The southerners will never find us dressed like this,’ said Sachi. ‘They’ll never even notice us. Think of your favourite, Zeami,’ she added, trying to console her. Taki loved to chant the great playwright’s verses. ‘ “If kept hidden, it is a flower. If not hidden, it is no flower.” You’re like a flower, a single flower. Or a Korean tea bowl. Or a tea room. Yes, you’re like a tea room – very plain and simple, no splendour or luxury, and all the more beautiful for it.’

  ‘Yes, but the tea room is in a nobleman’s garden and very expensive, not out on the road brushing up against the common people,’ sighed Taki. ‘The smell is so dreadful! And this gown scratches my skin.’

  Sachi glanced at her friend and smiled. They certainly made extraordinary townswomen, the pair of them. Taki’s pale face with her pointed chin, large eyes and supercilious eyebrows looked quite incongruous framed by a townswoman’s hairstyle decorated with combs and hairpins. Her thin body, which was usually concealed within the bell-like skirts of her court robes, looked rather gawky and awkward in the skimpier townswoman’s kimonos.

  Sachi twirled around, enjoying the feel of the heavy quilted hem of her outer kimono swirling at her feet. The black of her teeth was beginning to fade and there was a faint smudge of darkness above her eyes where her eyebrows were growing back. Her melon seed-shaped face, small arched nose and rosy lips looked even prettier now that she was no longer wearing thick make-up. Without the layers of heavy silks she was no longer like a great flower, sweeping slowly along. She could pull up her kimono skirts and skip and jump and run. And her delicate neck, of which she was rather proud, was set off far more fetchingly by the collars that swept low at the back.

  Nevertheless it was lucky it was winter. They would both have to keep their heads and faces well wrapped up, otherwise it would be obvious they weren’t really townswomen at all.

  When the little party set out again, Toranosuké – the handsome, well-spoken one of the two ronin – was riding in front with smooth-cheeked young Tatsuemon leading his horse. The two women walked some distance behind with the men’s retainers on each side, armed with swords and staves, guarding them. Then came porters and grooms leading the packhorses, as many as they had been able to hire. The second man brought up the rear, his swords clanking as he rode.

  The road snaked across the plain between lonely paddy fields. They seemed to be avoiding the main highway and travelling by small back roads. Dotted along the way were hillocks crowned with scrawny fir trees marking the distance from Edo. Every time they passed one they knew they had travelled another few ri. What was happening back home in the castle? The whole country was falling into chaos and here they were, in the middle of nowhere, heading for a place they knew nothing about, with no way of escaping and nowhere to go if they did. No one knew where they were. No one would rescue them. The only consolation was that their guards were their protectors, not their enemies – or so it seemed.

  For the moment the roads were flat and well paved though there were hills rising in the distance. But the women were already getting tired. Taki had never in her life walked anywhere before and Sachi had forgotten how it felt to be on the road from morning to night. They longed to stop and rest but they kept silent.

  Bitter winds blew across the flat plains. They pressed doggedly on, heads bent against the gale. Flocks of geese flew overhead. From time to time they came to small open stalls, offering tea and snacks. The stallholders would rush out, begging them to stop and buy.

  The convoy kept up a brisk pace. Occasionally a village poked up like an island in a dreary brown sea, breaking the monotony. Smoke swirled around the thatched roofs hidden behind clumps of trees and groves of withered bamboo. The wind soughed through the dry rice stalks. They passed groups of farmers tugging carts and bow-legged old women so bent their noses seemed to brush the ground. Even though Edo was in upheaval, in the country life seemed to go on as usual. Among the travellers were parties of refugees from Edo, plodding along, dragging carts heaped with belongings. From time to time the distant refrain, ‘Who gives a damn?’ wafted across the fields.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ groaned Taki. ‘Out here in public where anyone can see us, without a single attendant, dressed in townswomen’s clothes . . . If my mother saw me now she would weep.’

  ‘No one’s even looking at us,’ said Sachi wonderingly. ‘We’ve disappeared.’ She rather liked being invisible.

  After a while Taki brightened up.

  ‘For lordless samurai these fellows are quite civilized,’ she said carelessly. ‘The one at the front seems rather cultured. And that innkeeper, that peasant. She was almost human!’

  ‘Hush,’ said Sachi.

  She felt a strange fascination for these unfamiliar creatures with their odd, slightly repellent odour. Men though they were, they were of much lower status, so much so that the fact she was a woman and they men was barely relevant. To Taki, a high-ranking samurai and a court lady, she knew they must seem far beneath her, beings of no account. In her life Taki had hardly ever met men, other than family members and the odd merchant with silks to sell. And these were not just men but ronin, utterly outside the bounds of civilized society. As far as she was concerned, they probably barely existed. The two of them – she and Sachi – were walking along in a kind of dream, a nightmare from which hopefully they would soon awake and find themselves comfortably back in the women’s palace.

  But Sachi could not see things the same way. She was not a samurai. Dressed in these homespun clothes, she felt her old life sweep over her more vividly than ever. The chafe of the rough cotton felt familiar. It took her back to those long-gone days when she had roamed in the woods with Genzaburo. Everything she knew was coming to an end, just as it had when she was snatched up and whisked away from the village. Perhaps that was just the way life was. Like the delicate pink cherry blossoms that flowered and fell on the same spring day, it could end at any moment. That was what gave it its poignancy and beauty.

  It was becoming harder and harder to carry on the deception that she was the princess. Rocking along in the palanquin, she had not been called upon to play-act. But here on the road, in full view of everyone, it seemed an impossible task. Nevertheless she had to try.

  At least they were all travellers together. Travel seemed to level the barriers, even if only temporarily. ‘Travel is human life,’ she murmured, remembering Basho’s words. The old poet had spent his life roaming from place to place, exchanging poems with local poets as he went. She thought of the shogun and the letters he had sent her describing the places he had seen on his way to Osaka. Her whole life had been spent in the village or confined in the palace. True, the palace was a world in itself, but she was beginning to enjoy being away from i
t. She was not like Taki. She belonged here, among these fields, not in a luxurious dolls’ house full of whispering women.

  After a while the rosy-cheeked young Tatsuemon drew back.

  ‘Master says please take his horse, eminent personage,’ he said in a whisper, lowering his head and looking up at Sachi with big timid eyes.

  ‘That’s unthinkable. Ladies don’t ride.’

  ‘He said you’d say that but to ask you again. Nobody seems to care any more. Are you sure you won’t ride?’

  She smiled at him. He really was a pretty boy. He might have stepped straight out of one of those novels by Saikaku, about the beautiful page boys who inspired adoration in their fellow pages or their samurai masters.

  ‘You serve Master Toranosuké?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, eminent personage,’ he said, flushing to the roots of his forelock.

  ‘How long have you been in his service?’

  ‘We’ve all three been on the road since the troubles began,’ he said. His voice died away. He fixed his eyes on the ground and did not look up again but hung anxiously behind, careful not to walk alongside them. Sachi had never imagined that, as a woman, she would ever walk anything other than three steps behind a man.

  ‘Tell your master we’d like to speak to him,’ she said. Taki frowned at her. Sachi paid no attention.

  Toranosuké joined the women, careful to keep a step or two behind.

  ‘Master Toranosuké,’ Sachi said after a while. ‘That song – weren’t they singing something about butterflies from the west?’ As she said the syllables she suddenly understood. ‘Butterfly’ – ‘cho cho’. Of course. They were singing about the southern domain of Choshu.

  ‘Cho is Choshu, eminent personage,’ he explained obligingly. ‘Choshu is in the south-west. They mean the Choshu clansmen are on their way.’

  ‘Is that true? Are they?’

  ‘Have no fear, eminent personage. We will defeat them, of course. But they are fine warriors and they have foreign weapons. We encountered them many times in the streets of Kyoto. And now they are allied with the Satsuma clan . . .’

  ‘In Kyoto? You were there?’

  It was Taki, her voice brittle. Of course, Taki was from Kyoto. Her family was there. It was her home, and the princess’s too. It was the imperial city, the emperor’s city.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘We were told there was a fire,’ Taki gabbled breathlessly. ‘I heard the city burned down. I heard the Choshu attacked the imperial palace.’

  There was a grunt. It was the second man, the man at the back. Glancing around, Sachi caught his eye. He looked away, almost reluctantly. So he was watching her. Of course, he was guarding her. But . . . Was she imagining it or was there something strange in his look? Maybe he disapproved of having to take weak women like them along, slowing down their journey. Maybe it was the way she wore these unfamiliar clothes or the way she walked, mincing along like a court lady instead of waddling on bowed legs like a peasant. Surely a true princess would die rather than tread the same soil as a troop of samurai – and ronin at that.

  As Sachi walked on, she could feel the prickle of his eyes on her back.

  VI

  That evening they stopped at an inn. Sachi and Taki were exhausted, their legs aching and their feet sore. After they had bathed and eaten, they tumbled into their downy futons. They could hear voices in the next room. The men were swapping poems: first one recited a few lines, then the other. Then came the notes of a flute, infinitely sad, and men’s voices, singing softly. It was one of those melancholy ditties travellers sing, full of yearning for home.

  The further they got from Edo, the more ragged and scruffy the paddy fields became. Hills pushed up like the humps of a long-buried dragon bursting out of the soil, smothered in a tangle of trees. The little group grew more relaxed, although they could never forget that the southerners might be on their tail.

  In one village they managed to hire a sedan chair and bearers to take Sachi and Taki as far as the next. They took turns swinging along, wrapped up in as many layers as they could find. They no longer cared what they looked like. It was cramped – more cramped than a palanquin – and bitterly cold but it was better than walking. Their delicate feet were blistered and raw. Even Taki had abandoned her worries about propriety and rode on one of the horses from time to time. By now the black on Sachi’s teeth had faded. Like Taki, she had the white teeth of a child again. Her eyebrows too were growing back and she had long since stopped wearing her cowl.

  But as they travelled, Taki became quieter and quieter. Sachi guessed she was desperate to find out what had happened in the capital where her family lived and where she had grown up, but was reluctant to speak to men such as these. Finally her curiosity got the better of her.

  ‘My good man,’ she said. It was hard to be dignified when you were bobbing along in a sedan chair, dressed like a commoner, but Taki managed.

  Toranosuké had been waiting for her summons. Taki chatted half-heartedly about the weather and the famous temples they had passed along the way. Then she came to the point.

  ‘What do they say in Kyoto about His Grace’s . . . ?’

  At the beginning of that year, just five months after the death of the shogun, strange and terrible rumours had reached the women about the emperor, Princess Kazu’s brother. It seemed a page boy had had smallpox. In the whole vast imperial palace, only the emperor had caught it, no one else. He was thirty-five and a robust, healthy man. The best doctors had treated him and he had seemed to be making a good recovery. Then he had taken an abrupt turn for the worse. The next day news came that he was dead. His son, the princess’s nephew, Prince Mutsuhito, had been proclaimed the Son of Heaven. In public the princess had maintained a façade of stoical calm. But Sachi could not forget hearing her convulsive sobs as she wept behind her screens.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘My lady,’ said Toranosuké, ‘it is common knowledge that His Grace was murdered . . .’

  The women shuddered. It was as they had thought.

  ‘. . . by courtiers in league with the southern clans. His Grace was a man of stern principles and opinions. Now they can do as they please. The young Son of Heaven is only fifteen, easy to control.’

  ‘I remember His Grace,’ Taki whispered to Sachi, wiping her eyes. ‘I was presented at court before we left Kyoto.’

  A voice burst out from the back of the convoy.

  ‘We are loyal servants of the Tokugawas. We’ve been fighting for years. We defended the imperial palace when the southerners attacked, trying to capture the Son of Heaven. We left our homes when we were children to fight. We gave our blood. Most of our comrades have died. And for what? Now the shogun has abdicated. Why? Just tell us. Why?’

  Sachi and Taki spun round in amazement. It was the second man, Shinzaemon.

  Everyone fell silent. They all felt they had said too much. When the men spoke again, it was to tell the women the names of the temples they were passing and the mountains that rimmed the horizon. Sometimes they sang or recited poems. But no one said another word about the emperor or the shogun or the war.

  As the road climbed into the mountains, the landscape grew more and more rugged. They toiled up hill after hill. Each time they arrived, panting, at the top of one they saw another, even higher, rising in front of them, buried in impenetrable forest. Sachi was exhausted but exhilarated too as she tramped along, breathing the country air. The wind whistled through the long grasses. They walked faster and faster, blowing on their fingers, crossing their arms and pressing their hands into their armpits to keep them warm.

  The road climbed ever more steeply but they dared not slow down or rest. They needed to get to Kano. But what would they find when they got there? Sachi dared not even think about it.

  Ten days of hard walking had passed when they emerged from a forest at the top of a hill. Before them, spread across a lea of land in the distance, were the layered grey roofs and meandering walls
of Kano. As they plodded wearily towards it they could see the castle looming above the town with its battlements and tiled roofs with golden dolphins at the beam ends, glittering in the sun like a miniature Edo Castle, magnificent and awe-inspiring. The men walked faster. They started to talk excitedly, telling the women about the city’s famous river, the Nagara, and the delicious trout that was caught there.

  But as they passed the great gates and entered the narrow streets they found tumbledown samurai mansions with their doors closed and sealed, so dark and gloomy they might have been haunted. It was like a ghost city. The men grew silent. Something very strange and bad had happened while they were away.

  Finally they arrived at a big decaying mansion. A woman bustled out, drying her hands on her apron. She had a broad, warm, open face with fleshy cheekbones and a generous smiling mouth. She was bowing again and again in welcome, beaming like a mother greeting travellers returned.

  ‘You must be so tired. Please. My abode is very humble but please come inside and rest yourselves.’

  Sachi and Taki had slipped off their straw sandals and tabi socks and were wiping their feet on the threshold when a courier came panting up, the gleaming black box on his shoulder swinging. Toranosuké took the box and opened it, read the message, then passed it to Shinzaemon.

  ‘It’s from our comrades in Edo,’ said Toranosuké.

  The women were silent. They were desperate to know more but dared not ask.

  ‘They say there was a fire at the women’s palace,’ he said, ‘and it was totally destroyed. The main mansion of the Satsuma clan was burned down the following day in retribution. The southerners who set the palace alight have been apprehended. They confessed their intention was to capture Princess Kazu, but they failed. Her Highness and the Retired One both escaped harm.’