The Last Concubine

  There was no time to lose. They turned and hurried the last few steps, slipping and slithering on the icy road. They came to a wooden signboard listing the name of every family who lived in the village, each on its own wooden tablet. It marked the entrance to the village. Beside it was the water barrel with buckets piled on top, always kept full in case of fire. Snow mantled everything, making it look fresh and white.

  All those years Sachi had clung to the memory of the cosy wooden houses with their roofs of grey shingles weighted down with rocks – so clean, so neat, with little stone walls outside. When life had seemed unbearable she had imagined herself back there. And now she really was.

  But there was something wrong. The village had always been crowded with travellers, packed with women sweeping the road and children collecting horse droppings and discarded straw sandals. There had always been the tramp of feet, the chatter of voices, the clatter of looms and spinning wheels. The last time she had been there the street had been bustling with people, full of excitement because the princess was to pass through.

  Now it was silent and empty. There were still the familiar smells of woodsmoke and miso soup, but even the cocks had stopped crowing. Every house was shuttered.

  Sachi, Taki and Yuki tucked up their kimono skirts and ran, their porters scurrying after them. Sachi glanced around. Shinzaemon was strolling nonchalantly, his two swords firmly tucked in his sash, with that arrogant rolling gait the samurai affected, as if to say, ‘Run? Me?’ He was falling further and further behind. They passed the inn belonging to little Mitsu and her family and came to Genzaburo’s inn. Across the road was the long wall that marked the splendid inn where the daimyos stayed. Her inn, where she and her family lived.

  Panting, the women ducked through the gate, under the branches of the gnarled cherry tree that Sachi used to climb and around the sturdy whitewashed wall that hid the inn and the lords who stayed there from the eyes of the common folk outside. In front of them was the shadowy entrance hall and the wooden porch where Sachi had knelt when she first saw the princess. The inn was a little run-down and sad, but everything was there, just as she remembered it – the rambling grounds, the well, the palanquin shed, the stables. But what had happened to the ramp that the bearers used to carry the palanquins up and down? It had been her job to keep it raked, trimmed and perfectly smooth. Now grass, weeds and stones poked through the snow.

  Sachi led the way around the back of the building to the family quarters and shoved open the heavy wooden door. The creak it made as it slid in its grooves was heart-rendingly familiar. She hesitated, afraid of what she would find. Then she took a deep breath and stepped into the earthen-floored hall. Taki and Yuki lingered timidly outside. Shinzaemon had just appeared.

  ‘Hurry, hurry,’ Sachi said.

  ‘But it’s . . . a peasants’ house,’ said Taki. ‘I can’t go into a peasants’ house. It would . . . It would pollute me.’

  Taki’s eyes were wide with horror. Surrounded by ronin wielding naked swords she was fearless, but Sachi knew very well that, for Taki, mingling with peasants was like being surrounded by wild animals. Sachi smiled reassuringly.

  ‘It’s my house,’ she said gently. ‘Not peasants, country samurai. We’re country samurai.’

  Inside, smoke hung in the air. Pine needles crackled and hissed as they burned in the hearth, giving off a fragrant woody smell. The battered lid of the sooty iron kettle hanging over the fire jiggled and clattered.

  ‘Anybody home?’ Sachi piped. Her voice sounded thin and reedy in the high-raftered hall. She called again.

  An old woman hobbled out, her face a blur in the darkness.

  ‘Who is it?’ she quavered.

  She stood with her knees bent and one hand pressed to her hip. Her back was so curved her head was almost on a level with her knees. Her hair was speckled with grey and her face was lined and crumpled. But it was the same dear face that Sachi had kept in her mind for so long.

  ‘Mother,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Sa. I’m home.’

  Otama stood with a hand on her back, rocking back and forth, peering at her through watery eyes.

  ‘Sa,’ she said, in tones of wonder. Painfully she got down on her knees and put her head on the faded straw matting.

  ‘Don’t bow to me, Mother,’ said Sachi. Tears were running down her face.

  ‘Look at you, how you’ve grown,’ said Otama. ‘My, how you talk! You’ve become a great lady. Come in quickly. The soldiers will be here any moment.’

  Her Kiso lilt was so homely and familiar, like water tinkling over pebbles, that Sachi found herself smiling despite her tears. The four travellers untied their straw sandals, brushed the dust of the road off their clothes, wiped their feet and stepped up on to the mats. The porters hefted in their luggage and left it piled on the wooden floor of the corridor that ran alongside the rooms. On their journey it had always seemed a few pathetic bundles, but here in this house it was a massive amount. The place was overflowing with it.

  Otama seemed entirely unsurprised that she had arrived with friends. Sachi had forgotten how simple life in the countryside was. It was not wound about with rules as life in the court or even among the samurai had been. Among samurai it was unthinkable for a woman to be with a man but here nobody cared – life was much more free and easy. Men and women mixed together and there was nothing unusual about travelling in mixed company. Her parents had always been so good at taking life in their stride. Otama was not even surprised by Sachi’s companions: the stickthin, pale court lady, the samurai child, the bushy-haired ronin. All sorts of people travelled the road.

  Two children pattered in and stood, heads bowed. The older looked up and stared at Sachi with big grave eyes. Sachi recognized the spiky hair and round inquisitive face.

  ‘Chobei, you remember Big Sister?’

  He had been a little boy when she saw him last. Now he was exactly the age Sachi had been when she had gone to the palace. She had often pictured him in his scratchy brown kimono, playing with a lizard on the road that last day when they had gone out to watch for the princess’s procession. And the baby she used to carry on her back – little Omasa. She had died. This must be Ofuki, born after she had left.

  Sachi knelt down and took the children in her arms, rubbing her nose on their rough brown skin, smelling the familiar country smells of woodsmoke and earth in their hair.

  ‘Where did you go?’ asked Chobei.

  ‘A long way away.’

  ‘Will you stay here now?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Sachi, smiling at her mother.

  ‘Please stay,’ said the little girl.

  Yuki was staring at Chobei. They were almost the same age. At last here was a playmate for her.

  ‘I’m staying,’ Yuki said firmly. Her hair, tied into two butterfly loops, flopped emphatically as she nodded her head. For the first time since they left Kano she was smiling.

  Otama filled a teapot from the kettle and set cups of tea around the hearth. She gazed at Sachi longingly as if she wanted to keep her there for ever. She opened her mouth to say something. Then she sighed, shook her head and looked away.

  Somewhere in the distance there were shouts and the tramping of feet. Otama started and went pale. She drew in her breath with a hiss and looked from one to the other, her eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Off you go, children,’ she said abruptly. She turned to Shinzaemon. He was sitting quietly, staring into the embers, cradling a tiny long-stemmed pipe in his great hand. ‘You can’t stay here,’ she hissed. ‘There’ll be soldiers here any moment. They’ll be on the lookout for people like you. It’s very dirty but . . . you’d better get upstairs into the attic.’

  ‘I won’t be much use to you up in the attic,’ said Shinzaemon.

  The shouts were growing closer.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Sachi. ‘They’ll be after you. You can’t take on a whole army. They’ll leave us women alone.’

  ‘They’ll have passed straight through the p
lace where we met those southern ronin,’ said Taki, nodding. ‘They’ll have found their comrades. If they find you here they’ll take it out on us.’

  ‘They’ll massacre the whole village,’ said Sachi pleadingly.

  ‘I’m not leaving you on your own.’

  ‘You can’t protect us if you’re dead,’ said Sachi.

  ‘The soldiers have been interrogating all the young men,’ said Otama anxiously. ‘They’re looking for anyone they think is on the northern side.’

  Shinzaemon sighed. ‘Well, if you insist,’ he said, scowling.

  ‘Keep inside while the soldiers are here,’ Otama said urgently, frowning at the women. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go out.’

  Sachi took a candle and padded through the dark house to the staircase at the back. She gave Shinzaemon a lantern and a tinderbox and pushed up the trapdoor. His eyes, glinting like a cat’s in the darkness, roamed across her face. Then he bent down and climbed through. She shut the trapdoor and rolled the stairs away. She could hear the floorboards creaking above her.

  II

  While Otama hurried off to prepare dinner for the soldiers, Sachi, Taki and Yuki stayed in the family quarters with the children.

  In her mind Sachi was running over the events of the day. Shinzaemon’s change of heart, the fact he was here in the village – she could never have dared imagine he would do such a rash and wonderful thing. Again and again she remembered his words: ‘You are a being from another realm.’ She glanced at herself in her mother’s tarnished metal mirror. A pale face, oval with a pointed chin and a small full mouth; large wide-spaced eyes, dark green, slanted upwards at the corners. In the past she had always looked at her face to check her make-up, but now she looked at it as if she had never seen it before. She ran her finger down her smooth white cheek and across her small straight nose. So this was the face he saw – and liked.

  Then she frowned and shook her head. She needed Taki to remind her that she was playing with fire, that any kind of alliance had to be sanctioned by one’s family or, in her case, by the shogunal court. If she let herself get carried away, they would both end up without their heads. While they were on the road they had been able to flout society’s laws; but here in the village they would have to be much more careful. In any case, all he had done was carve out a few extra days for them to be together. Once they left the village they would be on their way to Edo and there they would say goodbye, probably for ever. There was no point worrying about the future; they had no future. There was only the present.

  ‘Well,’ said Taki, ‘on our own again.’

  Now that there was no one but Sachi to see her, her thin face drooped. Her big eyes stared sadly into the distance. Sachi knelt behind her and kneaded her bony shoulders. Taki gave a grunt of appreciation as Sachi worked on a particularly stiff knot.

  ‘We’ll see them again in Edo,’ Sachi said quietly, mindful that Taki hadn’t confided in her. ‘Shinzaemon’s such an impulsive character,’ she added. ‘Toranosuké’s much more steady. I expect he would have stayed too but he felt he had to get to Edo.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over me,’ said Taki ruefully. ‘I’m not myself at all.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll just have to wait for these foolish feelings to go away. After all, he’s way below me in rank. What could I possibly hope for – to be his mistress? I’m a court lady, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in the women’s palace, and that’s an end of it.

  ‘It’s so smoky in here,’ she muttered, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.

  Sachi knew it wasn’t the smoke that was making her eyes water. She put her arms round Taki and they snuggled up together.

  Sachi was half asleep when the door crashed open. A soldier burst in, then another, then another, till there were twenty or thirty of them crowding into the room. Some had red, swollen faces and their breath reeked of sake. They were brandishing naked swords. They didn’t even bother to remove their straw sandals but stomped around the tatami fully shod. The stench of food and tobacco and stale sweat filled the room. Sachi and Taki sat up quickly. They pushed the children into a corner and crouched protectively in front of them, pulling their robes around their faces.

  ‘Those outlaws. You got them in here somewhere. Just hand them over and you won’t get hurt.’

  The ugly southern syllables grated like the yapping of dogs. They looked like dogs too, these men from the deep south. They were short and brawny, their skin leathery and black from the sun, their eyes like slits. Instead of the dignified armour of warriors they wore outlandish black garments with tight-fitting sleeves and skinny trousers that made their legs look like sticks. Some had bands around their bristly heads with a square of iron to protect their foreheads as if they were engaged in a vendetta. They had the unshaved pates and long hair of ronin, tied back in horse’s tails. Some had dog skins slung around their shoulders. They loomed over the women, staring down at them accusingly.

  Sachi looked at them wide-eyed, composing her features into an expression of stunned innocence. She dared not even exchange glances with Taki. She knew all too well they couldn’t defend themselves. The halberds were out of reach behind their luggage and there were too many soldiers to fight with hairpins and daggers. Besides, there were the children. Everyone knew the southerners were violent ruffians without conscience or human feeling. Rough of temper, rude of tongue, that was what people said; but also courageous to the point of recklessness. Only the gods knew what they would do if they were provoked.

  ‘That troublemaker’s been seen around this way,’ barked one, a burly character with a swarthy bearded face and a squasheddown nose. ‘Had enough of his sort in Kyoto. Fellow with a tattoo on his shoulder. Ugly brute.’ He peered at them through narrow suspicious eyes. ‘Some of our men were butchered by a mob of northerners – twenty at least, the survivors said. Their leader answered that description.’

  Sachi couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of satisfaction. Twenty at least? She was glad they had had such an impact.

  ‘If you got any fugitives here, hand them over and we won’t hurt you.’

  Sachi was about to answer when one of the soldiers raised his rifle and rammed the butt into a cupboard door. The others joined in, ripping great holes in the paper doors. Then there was a splintering sound as one thrust his spear into the ceiling. The soldiers started jabbing the ceiling with bayonets and spears, roaring, ‘We’ll get the bastard. He’s up there somewhere, for sure.’ Dust fell in showers, making everyone choke. The women cowered, dazed by the noise and turmoil.

  Sachi’s heart was pounding so loudly she was afraid the soldiers would hear it. She peeped up, hardly daring to breathe, terrified that she might see blood glistening on the blade of a spear. Desperately she prayed to all the gods that Shinzaemon had stayed where she had left him, at the far end of the house, and had had the presence of mind to lie on one of the thick heavy beams.

  The woven bamboo of the ceiling was dangling in shreds. Sachi pulled her scarf around her face, grateful that the room was too dark for them to see her clearly. She took a deep breath, rose to her feet and faced the crowd. Her mouth was dry. She told herself she was back in the training hall at the women’s palace, facing her opponent. She tried to keep her voice steady.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, barging into our house like this?’ she demanded. The voice that came out was as clear and unwavering as if she was back in the women’s palace, issuing orders to servants. She had been afraid she had forgotten her Kiso dialect but the words were perfectly accented. ‘There’s no one here,’ she went on in a tone of quiet authority, gaining confidence as she spoke. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is the house of Jiroemon, headman of this village. We are not peasants to be pushed around. How dare you destroy our house like this?’

  The room fell silent. The soldiers gaped at her.

  ‘There’s no one here, only us women,’ she said firmly. She was totally calm now and in control. ‘We have nothing to hide. You don’t
believe me? I’ll show you. Come.’

  She led them from room to room, sliding open one set of doors, then the next, and opening the closets where the bedding was kept. She took care to steer them well away from the dark corner where the stairs that led to the attic were.

  ‘You see?’ she said, flinging open a final set of doors. ‘There’s no one here. Just us.’

  ‘Woman’s got guts,’ muttered one soldier grudgingly.

  ‘Certainly has,’ nodded the others. ‘May be a country wench but she’s got the heart of a samurai. We should leave these women be.’

  One by one the soldiers slid their swords into their scabbards. Some of them looked a little shame-faced. They were crowding towards the door when the bearded man swung round.

  ‘Just one last look,’ he growled, screwing up his eyes suspiciously and staring hard at Sachi. She was glad she had wrapped her face in her scarf. He stomped off with a couple of others, shining their lanterns into every dark corner. Sachi listened to their straw-sandalled feet crunching away across the tatami, fearing that at any moment they would find the stairs or look up and see the trapdoor in the ceiling. She thought she heard a faint creak from above and hoped that none of them had noticed.

  Something had to be done. She let the scarf fall from her face, pretending to fumble clumsily before pulling it back into place again.

  ‘Hey, look at this!’ shouted a soldier, grabbing hold of the scarf and ripping it away from her face. ‘What a beauty!’

  The next moment he had grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against a wall. Sachi caught her breath. She had not thought even southerners could be as brutish as this. The man’s face was pockmarked, his chin bristly, his eyes small like a pig’s. She reeled from the foulness of his breath.