The Last Concubine

  The women stood for a moment catching their breath, overwhelmed with the horror of it all, wondering what to do, where to start. Mosquitoes besieged them, nipping their arms and legs, but they were too numb even to notice.

  Ravens with big black beaks and yellow beady eyes cawed incessantly in the pine and cherry trees. It was a dreadful, ominous sound. Some birds had settled on the corpses and were pecking at the eyes. Dogs prowled, ripping at bodies and gnawing at the faces. Sachi grabbed a stone and threw it at one and the dogs backed off, snarling, and hung skulking in the trees at the edge of the hillside. A skeletal dog scurried by, belly low to the ground, a glint in its eye. In its mouth was something white. Sachi realized with a shock of horror that it was a human hand.

  A broad-shouldered man lay across their path, face down in a pool of bloody water. One arm was bent back, the other flung above his head. There was a jagged tear in his haori jacket. A stain spread across his back. It had seeped into the pale blue fabric, turning it puce.

  Sachi shuddered, her hand at her throat. Her gorge rising, she reminded herself why she was there. The man was big-built, like Shinzaemon. It would be typical of him to be right in the front line when the southerners attacked. She wrapped her handkerchief around her face, tucked up her kimono skirts and tied back her sleeves.

  The hands were not Shinzaemon’s, but she needed to be sure. Clamping her lips together she reached down and touched a shoulder with her fingers. It was rubbery and cold, not like human flesh at all. She cupped her hand firmly under it and heaved. She had never thought a human being could be so heavy. She managed to pull the body round just enough to see the blackened, swollen face. It was not him; she could see that straight away. She felt a frisson of relief so powerful it made her head spin, as very gently she laid the body down again.

  She stumbled on. She was picking her way between the bodies when something like a raw oyster squashed under her foot. It was a human eye. She couldn’t even feel horror any more. She felt as if she had become a corpse herself.

  Around her, the southern soldiers were tugging out their dead and wounded and carrying them away. One of the pale blue jackets, half hidden beneath a pile of bodies, gave a sudden spasm. There was a flash of steel as a southerner raised his sword and then the movement stopped.

  Sachi became aware of eyes turned on her. In a daze she pulled her scarf round her face. A pair of filthy boots in some foreign style, coated with mud and blood, planted themselves in front of her. The foreign leggings above them steamed in the heat, giving off a rancid smell of dirty damp fabric.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, lady,’ growled a voice in a sneering southern accent. It was the final insult – these savages gloating at the carnage they had caused. ‘Nothing alive here. Not a cockroach. Nothing.’

  A hand grabbed her sleeve and she shrank back. It was more than she could bear. In this holy place, surrounded by bloated corpses, the bodies of the dead. Surely even the most brutal southerner would not defile such a place?

  ‘Hey, here’s a pretty face. What do you say, Wakamoto? Fair prey, isn’t it? Spoils of war?’

  Sachi tugged her arm away. She knew it was madness to fight back. The best she could manage would be to strike down one soldier before she was felled herself – or, worse still, dragged off as a hostage. But she couldn’t think clearly any more. She reached for her dagger.

  Then footsteps came squelching through the mud.

  ‘Leave them be,’ barked another voice. ‘We’ve done our work. Let them look for their menfolk. But keep an eye out. No removing of bodies.’

  Sachi glanced at Taki and Haru and their eyes met. Their hands too were on their daggers. She was so numbed with horror, she’d forgotten what danger they were in. If these southerners arrested them, they would discover they were fugitives, high-ranking ladies on the northern side who had escaped their sentence of seclusion. They risked being not just returned to the mansion but imprisoned or even executed.

  Keeping their heads bent and watching out for southern soldiers, they turned back to their task. Silently they picked their way across the battlefield, bending over any corpse that looked remotely familiar, checking the head and hands, examining clogs and sandals, searching for any clue. Some of the bodies were already beginning to swell and their faces were puffy and unrecognizable. Others were faceless or horribly disfigured. When they lifted one, the guts came spilling out.

  The narrow pass around the Black Gate was piled high with bodies. Slowly, painfully, the women worked their way up the incline towards the temple on the top of the hill. There were bodies every step of the way, lying slumped on the steep slopes that lined the path and sprawled across the ground.

  Dazed by the heat, numbed by the horror, Sachi was staring at a pile of bodies when she caught a glimpse of a face she thought she recognized. A shock of dismay jolted through her. She jerked her head away and staggered back, her hand to her throat. She stood, panting, her fists clenched so hard she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. Gasping for breath she forced herself to take another look. The hollow-cheeked face, the bristly hair sticking out in unruly tufts around the white headband, the gangly limbs . . . There was no mistaking him.

  Sachi fell to her knees, retching. Great sobs convulsed her. There was a skinny arm around her shoulders, holding her tight.

  ‘Gen,’ whispered Taki. Sachi nodded, speechless. Genzaburo, her childhood friend, who had survived so many scrapes and embarked on so many crazy adventures. She had never before seen that face without a mischievous smile playing across it. Now it was blank and waxen, the eyes opaque, the lips drained of colour. He looked terribly young. He was sprawled on his back, his chest soaked in blood. Flies buzzed around the black stains and swarmed across his eyes and mouth.

  ‘There are southern soldiers coming,’ whispered Taki, tugging at her arm, trying to pull her up.

  ‘We can’t just leave him here,’ groaned Sachi.

  ‘Pray if you like but no moving the bodies,’ barked a rough southern voice.

  Sachi took a deep breath. She reached out a hand to brush Genzaburo’s cheek. It was cold and rubbery. Quivering with horror, she waved away the flies and closed his eyes. Weeping, she knelt and said a prayer.

  Taki took her arm and squeezed it.

  ‘He was a peasant but he died a samurai’s death,’ she said, leading her away. ‘A good death.’

  When they emerged at the top of the slope there was nothing but a sea of mud, pitted with craters where shells had fallen, overflowing with water and blood. The magnificent red halls with their gleaming tiled roofs had entirely disappeared. There was no sign there had ever been a temple there. A single building stood forlornly in the middle. The great copper bell with its stone base, its housing of wooden scaffolding and tiled roof had somehow survived. Priests walked around striking bells, sending prayers circling towards heaven – prayers for the souls of the dead.

  As the midday sun beat down Sachi and Taki stumbled about, sweat pouring from their bodies, trying to examine every corpse. All around were women engaged in the same grim work. No one spoke. Every now and then one stopped in her tracks, bent down to peer at a face, then bowed her head. Here and there were women kneeling in silence, keeping watch beside a body. Soldiers strode around, making sure no one tried to take one away.

  Sachi stood up painfully. Taki looked like a ghost, exhausted and filthy. There was a blankness in her eyes as if she had seen so much she couldn’t feel anything any more, as if she had died inside. Wearily Sachi guessed that she must look the same. She suddenly became aware of how her back ached, of the mosquito bites on her arms. Her hands were raw, her feet bleeding from the grit and stones and broken metal that littered the ground.

  ‘I can’t search any more,’ she muttered. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

  ‘I wasn’t helping you,’ said Taki. ‘I wanted to look too. I care, too, about those men. You know that. Shinzaemon, Tatsuemon and . . . and . . .’

  Her voice was dull
, her eyes bright with tears. Sachi knew what it was she couldn’t bear to say: ‘. . . and Toranosuké.’ She put her arm round her thin shoulders and held her tight.

  The sound of a bell echoed across the hilltop, ringing monotonously. A priest was stumbling towards them, his black robes smeared with ashes and mud. His face was grey, his chin covered in stubble. One arm was in a sling. In the other he held a handbell. As he reached them he rang the bell once more, then stopped.

  ‘Looking for your dead?’

  Sachi and Taki nodded. It was good to see a living human being who was not an enemy, who looked as if he had seen the fight and lived through it.

  ‘A lot went north. The southerners think they beat us here but we’ll get our own back. His Reverence the abbot escaped too.’

  The priest gestured around at the sea of mud. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘Savages.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Until yesterday this was Kanei-ji Temple. Now the treasures have gone – the halls, the books, the libraries, the statues, all gone. At least His Reverence escaped, the gods and the Buddhas protect him.’

  ‘You were here?’

  ‘I was,’ the priest told them. ‘We put up a fight but they trapped us, killed half our men with their shelling. Call themselves samurai! They hide behind foreign weapons. Can’t even see them, let alone get close enough to put a sword into them. Then they send a rain of bullets down on us. We held them back at the Black Gate till mid-afternoon. A lot of men died. If your men were here, I tell you, they fought like heroes. You can be proud of them.’

  He wandered off, moving from corpse to corpse. They could hear the lonely sound of the bell across the hilltop.

  Haru was kneeling some distance away at the edge of the plateau, where the woods began. She had found an injured man. He was small and slight and looked no more than fifteen. His pleated trousers and haori jacket were covered in mud and one arm was twisted at a strange angle. Blood seeped from a wound on his head.

  But he was moving and moaning faintly. His lips were cracked, his face burned and blackened and covered in dust. Haru had torn off some of the fabric she had brought and wrapped it round his head. She was cradling him in her arms, flapping her hand, trying to drive away the flies that swarmed around his bloody wounds.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she whispered again and again.

  She turned to Sachi and Taki. ‘He needs water and help, quickly. Those southerners are butchers. They’re beheading the wounded men.’ Her tears dropped on the soldier’s bloody face. ‘Lying here alone among all these corpses, waiting to die. Look at him. He’s only a boy.’

  ‘If we’re caught we’ll be in trouble,’ said Taki. ‘Crying over them is one thing, helping them’s another. We’re fugitives, don’t forget. They’ll be out looking for us.’

  ‘But if we leave him here he’ll die,’ said Sachi. This boy-man seemed to represent the whole of the militia. If they could only save him it would be worth dying for.

  ‘If only your father was here,’ said Haru, glancing up at Sachi. ‘Now’s the time we need him.’

  Sachi was staring at the youth. His hands were thin and boyish – a lot like the hands that had held out her halberd to her, it seemed a lifetime ago. His face was grey, caked in blood and dirt – that round face with the forelock still untrimmed . . . Her heart stopped. She was back on the road walking towards Kano, saying farewell at the village when he had ridden off so bravely with Toranosuké. And now here he was, dying before her eyes.

  ‘Tatsu!’ she gasped. ‘Tatsuemon, it’s us! Sachi and Taki!’

  She took his hand and squeezed it, rubbing his palm, trying to rub a little life into it, and the boy groaned faintly. The women stared wildly at each other. If Tatsuemon was here, Shinzaemon and Toranosuké couldn’t be far away. They would surely have fought shoulder to shoulder. Frantically they began heaving at nearby bodies, trying to turn them over, to glimpse the faces. But there was nobody that looked like either of them.

  From across the plateau came the sound of southern accents. They could hear men talking and laughing, the tramp of feet squelching across the muddy ground. Then another voice floated across. The speaker barked angrily, in a strange accent.

  A foreigner.

  Sachi looked up. Southern soldiers were approaching with a group of foreigners. One was a fearsome-looking creature, a giant of a man. He towered above the southerners and even dwarfed the other foreigner. Thick black hair curled on his cheeks.

  Then she noticed the second man. Could it be . . . ? Surely this was the foreigner who had rescued them when they had been attacked by marauding southern soldiers. She remembered his golden face and shining hair and how he’d suddenly appeared, firing his gun, scattering the soldiers. She recalled how she and Taki and Shinzaemon had travelled with him and his friend in their ungainly palanquins, specially shaped to hold their long legs, and how they had escorted her and Taki right to the gates of the palace.

  Sachi felt a surge of joy and relief. He would help them. He would rescue them again.

  But she was covered in mud and blood. How would he even recognize her?

  Desperately she tried to remember his strange barbarian name as the group bore down on them. Her mouth was parched, her mind a blank. She had to think, to concentrate. She made a supreme effort. His name – it was like the city of Edo, wasn’t it?

  Then it came to her. She croaked out four syllables: ‘Edo . . . Edowadzu.’

  Edwards.

  What would he do? He knew she belonged to the palace. He had only to say the word and she would be handed over to the southerners, held as a hostage, maybe executed. Foreigners were so guileless, they could never dissemble.

  For a long moment there was silence. Sachi could hear her heart beating, feel the rivulets of sweat running into her eyes. The southern soldiers were staring suspiciously at the little group of women, fingering their guns. Then Edwards looked at her and Taki, his round eyes widening in surprise. Sachi saw a gleam of recognition, then his brows came together in a furious scowl.

  ‘So that’s where you got to,’ he exploded. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

  His bark was so fearsome the birds settled on the corpses flew off with a great rustling of their big black wings. He said a few words in an angry tone to the other foreigner, then he turned back to the women.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he shouted. ‘I pay you people, you live in my house, and look how you repay me. This Jiro, this half-wit boy. Getting himself into trouble like this. And you women – you’re supposed to be cleaning my house, cooking my food.’

  Sachi was gawping at him in such amazement that she really did look like a servant, she thought to herself.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?’ he barked. ‘You’re coming straight back with me, all of you.’

  Coming to her senses, Sachi fell on her knees and pressed her forehead in the mud.

  ‘Sorry, master,’ she bleated. ‘Straight away, master. Our boy, our Jiro . . .’

  Taki knelt too, her thin shoulders hunched. She didn’t need to play-act exhaustion and fear.

  The southerners were gaping, uttering throaty inarticulate grunts of amazement. Sachi could hear them muttering to each other. ‘His household? Likely story. Then again, he seems to know them. They knew his name . . .’

  ‘So-called housekeeper,’ snorted Edwards.

  ‘His housekeeper?’ mumbled one.

  ‘Hold on,’ muttered another. ‘So how’d he get that uniform, that boy?’

  ‘Well, if the foreigner-sama says so . . .’ grunted another. They all turned towards Edwards and bowed, twisting their mouths into ingratiating smiles.

  Sachi was overcome by a weariness so deathly she wondered if she would ever be able to stand up again. She wanted to weep for sheer relief, but she knew it would never do to show weakness in front of the hateful southerners.

  The huge black-haired foreigner had stooped down and put a flask to Tatsuemon’s lips. Gently he lifted his damaged arm and tie
d a cloth around it to make a sling. Then he scooped him up as easily as if he was a child. The injured boy’s limbs dangled like a doll’s.

  The women followed the foreigners back down the hill, picking their way carefully between the corpses. They stumbled past wives – widows – keeping watch, kneeling on the muddy ground beside one fallen man or another. Some knelt in silence, heads bowed. Every now and then a sound mingled with the cawing of the crows, the buzzing of flies and mosquitoes and the monotonous shrilling of the cicadas: a thin keening like an animal trapped in the woods, a hopeless, anguished wailing.

  Once they had passed through the Black Gate and across the bridge the southern soldiers disappeared. Dazed and filthy, the women looked up at Edwards.

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Sachi.

  ‘This is Dr Willis,’ said Edwards. ‘He will take care of your friend. He’s lucky. If he’d shown the slightest sign of life the southerners would have had his head off long ago.’

  ‘My hospital is full of southerners,’ said Willis. ‘I can’t take him there. They’re beheading all the prisoners. What about—’

  ‘My house?’ said Edwards. ‘I have room. After all, he’s one of my staff.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’ asked Sachi.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the doctor. ‘You will have to pray to your gods.’

  11

  Before the Dawn

  I

  Sachi was back in the Shimizu mansion. She had been so determined to leave for ever but in the end there had been nowhere else to go. Now she lay tossing on her futon. The heat was unbearable. Again and again her head slipped from the wooden pillow. She pushed it away and lay flat on her bedding.

  In her mind she was stumbling through the Black Gate. Her feet brushed against the rubbery flesh of corpses and the foul taste of death was on her lips. Images of broken bodies and the dog with a human hand hanging from its mouth swam before her eyes.