The Last Concubine

  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.

  She drew back and looked at him, frowning. She knew as certainly as she’d ever known anything that she wanted to spend her life with this man. Dounika. Somehow. She’d never wanted anything so badly in her life.

  Smiling, he smoothed her forehead with his fingers. ‘Your eyes,’ he said. ‘I could never forget those eyes. That mouth. The curve of that cheek. That smile.’

  He drew a line across her cheek, around her chin, along her neck. She tingled at his touch. It was as if she’d never known before what it was to be alive.

  ‘You,’ he whispered. That word again.

  They climbed down from the parapet and he pulled her into the grass. The many layers of her kimono ballooned out, making a soft cushion under her. They were enclosed in a bower of tall grasses that rustled and swayed. Down prickled her nostrils; the scents of dried stalks and wild flowers swirled around her. She let herself sink into the softness, dissolve into the fragrance. In this secre
t place she knew they were invisible.

  His face was dark against the sky. The last rays of the dying sun touched his hair, lighting it up like a halo.

  She closed her eyes as his lips moved to her throat.

  II

  ‘Look at you, Shin,’ said Taki. ‘You haven’t been eating. We’ll have to fatten you up.’

  A shaft of sunlight pierced the wooden rain doors, cutting through the morning air, sparkling with motes of dust and lighting up the steam that wreathed the rice and miso soup.

  Shinzaemon sat, composed and impassive, while Haru and Taki fussed around him, filling his teacup, piling rice into his rice bowl, bringing out dish after dish of grilled fish and simmered vegetables. The room was full of mouth-watering aromas.

  Sachi sat quietly, playing the gracious hostess, making sure all was to his liking. Every now and then their eyes met. The sweetness of the evening before still tingled. Beneath her demure façade she burned with fierce joy, as if a fire had been lit within her that could not be put out. She felt her mother’s blood surging in her veins. Like her mother she would grab life. She would have what she wanted, no matter what the consequences.

  But in the cold light of day she was more aware than ever of how daunting it was. She had a father now, a powerful official on the southern side. Admittedly he was not a father like Jiroemon had been. He could not expect her to obey him unquestioningly as fathers usually did. But a father was a father and she didn’t want to break with him. Not now, when she’d only just found him.

  Sachi knew all too well that she was not free and never could be. Women were property and belonged to their families. In finding her father she had found another set of chains to bind her. In the intoxication of seeing Shinzaemon again she had imagined things might be different. Now she remembered that they couldn’t be.

  She looked at Shinzaemon, wiping around his bowl with a piece of pickled radish then washing it out with tea. He was such a soldier, such a ronin. She tried to imagine him as a respectable member of society, performing the duties of an adopted son of a government official. The thought made her smile. It was even harder to imagine Daisuké sanctioning a union with a ragged rebel who had fought on the losing side – an enemy, a member of the despised northern army.

  But Daisuké had been young himself once. He too had been angry, idealistic, impetuous, driven by passion. Maybe when he saw Shinzaemon he would see himself.

  He’d be arriving soon, and Edwards too. She shivered. It was best not to try to imagine what would happen then.

  Taki was clearing away Shinzaemon’s breakfast tray when there were footsteps outside. Sachi held her breath. Perhaps it was Daisuké . . . Then came the crunch of animal-skin boots approaching across the courtyard.

  Edwards. A spasm of fear cut through her. She had been alone with him and had let him take her hand. Only he knew what had happened between them. Foreigners were so open, so easy to read. If he said a word or gave a hint of it, Shinzaemon . . .

  Doors opened and closed, footsteps padded towards them. Sachi could hear Taki’s squeaky voice, telling Edwards that Shinzaemon was back.

  The two young men hadn’t seen each other since they had travelled together along the Inner Mountain Road. Shinzaemon had been prickly and suspicious. Sachi had felt his eyes boring into her whenever she spoke to Edwards. As for Edwards, he must have worked out that Shinzaemon was far from a bodyguard, although he too had kept his distance.

  She remembered turning to look back at Shinzaemon and Edwards before she and Taki had pushed open the Gate of the Shogun’s Ladies to go into the palace grounds. She could picture them still, on the far side of the bridge – the two giant foreigners and the brawny ronin with his bush of hair. But things had changed since then. Edwards had rescued them all on the hill and been kind to Tatsuemon. Shinzaemon was in his debt.

  Now, when she looked at Edwards, she saw a human being, and not just a human being but a man. But to Shinzaemon he probably looked like a creature from another planet. As for Edwards, he might not even recognize Shinzaemon with his short hair.

  The great hall seemed to shrink as Edwards came stomping in. As he strode through the shaft of sunlight that cut across the room, his straw-coloured hair shone like spun gold and Sachi caught a whiff of his exotic odour – meaty, pungent, smelling of foreign spices, animal hide and other unidentifiable smells. It gave her a feeling of doors opening, of wide open spaces, of fresh winds blowing and possibilities. When Edwards was around Sachi knew that there were other worlds, other ways of doing things.

  She felt a pang of sadness to think that this link with the great wide world was now severed for her. And – though she hardly dared confess it to herself – she was sorry that she would no longer be able to see him. She could see now that when she had enjoyed his company, it had been to console herself. She had been flattered by his attentions and touched by his romantic talk. She had thought Shinzaemon dead, but now he was back she knew her heart belonged to him.

  Edwards looked startled to see Shinzaemon, but he quickly pulled himself together and bowed politely. Sachi looked at the two bowing heads. The youths were sun and moon, two sides of the same coin. One with yellow hair, one with black. The smooth diplomat and the rugged soldier. They were both part of worlds that women knew nothing of and were no doubt eager to talk men’s talk, to discuss politics and the war. But there was also an unspoken suspicion. Each would be wondering exactly what the relationship of the other was with these women. With Sachi.

  ‘So Tatsu . . .’ asked Edwards.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Shinzaemon. He was at his gruffest and most formal. ‘He is well. We were together. At Wakamatsu.’

  He barked out the name with a spark in his eye, as if to make it clear that he knew very well which side the English supported.

  Sachi was listening hard. She was dying to know what Shinzaemon had done, where he had been, everything that had happened since she had last seen him. She imagined tales of heroic exploits, of brave men fighting to the last, holding out against impossible odds. But his lips were pressed firmly together and she dared not ask.

  ‘Did you come back together?’ asked Edwards.

  ‘Tatsuemon rode north,’ said Shinzaemon. ‘To join the Tokugawa Navy. Maybe you heard – Admiral Enomoto commandeered the best Tokugawa warships and sailed for Ezo. He’s leading the resistance from there. After the castle fell a lot of men were heading over there to join up.’

  Edwards nodded. ‘The war hasn’t been kind to the northerners,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t over yet,’ Shinzaemon grunted.

  ‘But you came back,’ said Edwards pointedly. His tone was polite but there was a note of triumph in his voice, as if he’d spotted a crack in Shinzaemon’s armour. As if he couldn’t resist the chance to snipe.

  Shinzaemon was no coward, Sachi knew that perfectly well. There must have been a good reason why he had not ridden north with his comrades but had headed back to Edo instead. She knew that it wasn’t just to see her. Something had happened, something terrible.

  Shinzaemon’s shoulder moved a fraction, although she doubted that Edwards even noticed. At another time, in another place, Shinzaemon would have been reaching for whatever weapon was to hand. Instead he made a mighty effort and sat immobile as a rock.

  There was a voice in the entrance hall. Daisuké came breezing into the great hall as casually as if it was his own home, without bothering to wait to be announced. He looked big, happy, confident, handsome, a man who had achieved everything he could possibly dream of. There was only one thing missing to make his happiness complete: Sachi’s mother.

  He stopped short when he saw Shinzaemon and Edwards and looked from one to the other, his heavy eyebrows rising. A frown of surprise flitted across his broad, smooth, slightly jowly face.

  Sachi ran forward to greet him.

  ‘Father,’ she said, bowing.

  Shinzaemon and Edwards were on their knees. Edwards introduced himself.

  ‘So you a
re with the British Legation,’ said Daisuké. ‘I know Satow-dono. He has been very generous to us. The English have been very generous in supporting our cause. I am indebted to you for your kindness to my family.’

  He bowed deeply. He was all politeness. Edwards was a foreigner and a guest in their country. Nevertheless Daisuké looked at him sharply as if he was wondering what on earth he was doing there.

  ‘Shinzaemon of the Nakamura, domain of Kano,’ Shinzaemon said in his most formal voice. His big swordsman’s hands were pressed to the tatami, the tips of the forefingers touching, and his head with its thatch of bristly black hair was bowed. Sachi had never seen him so punctilious. She glanced at Daisuké. A foreigner was one thing – one had to treat foreigners with politeness and respect – but Shinzaemon was a ronin. It was written all over him. He was an outsider with no loyalties, no group, no one to whom he was beholden. Daisuké would see that straight away.

  ‘The Nakamura of Kano . . .’ said Daisuké slowly. ‘The lord of Kano came over to the emperor’s side rather recently, if I remember rightly. There was some dissent within Kano, was there not, as to which way to go?’

  ‘I don’t know much about Kano politics,’ Shinzaemon said hastily. He obviously wanted to avoid being caught up in an awkward political discussion. ‘My father is a samurai of middle rank and a town magistrate. I was sent to Edo when I was young. I’ve spent most of my life here, in the various mansions of the Kano domain.’

  Sachi looked at one, then the other. Both Daisuké and Shinzaemon had tossed aside their station in society. Daisuké had started life as a low-ranking artisan but was now a leading figure in the new government. Shinzaemon had rejected the privileges of his samurai status and abandoned his clan to follow his ideals. They had both shaken off the old hierarchical restrictions to make their own way through life. If only Daisuké could see how similar they were.