The Last Concubine (5 page)

2

Shells of Forgetfulness, 1865

I

Sachi was playing the shell-matching game with Princess Kazu. Kneeling opposite her with her hands folded in her lap, eyes modestly lowered, she heard the whisper of silk as the princess languidly drew back the long sleeve of her robe and dipped her hand into the lacquered gold-embossed shell box. There was a faint clatter as she ran her fingers across the small dry shells. She took one out and laid it face up on the tatami matting. Sachi leaned forward. Inside was a painted world of miniature noblemen and ladies on a background of gold leaf.

More shells lay in neat rows face down between the two women. The princess took one and glanced inside it.

‘Why is my luck always so bad?’ she sighed, tossing it down pettishly. ‘If only these were forgetting shells. Then maybe I could forget.’ She murmured a poem:

Sachi peeked up at her. She thought of the stories she had heard of how the princess had been forced to come to Edo and marry the shogun against her will, and how she had once been betrothed to an imperial prince. But that was all long ago. If only Her Highness could stop dwelling on the past, if only Her Highness was not always so sad . . .

The princess was looking at her expectantly. Sachi let her hand hover above the shells which lay face down. She picked one up, glanced inside and gave a little shriek, then snatched up the shell which the princess had taken from the box. They were a perfect match. She shouted with joyous laughter, then, remembering where she was, flushed bright red and clapped both hands over her mouth.

‘Such a child,’ said Lady Tsuguko, the princess’s chief lady-in-waiting, smiling indulgently. Lady Tsuguko was the most powerful person in the princess’s entourage and the authority on the all-important matter of protocol. She was a tall, aristocratic woman whose floor-length hair was streaked with grey. Most of the junior ladies were terrified of her, but to those whom the princess favoured she was kindness itself.

The princess too gave a wan smile. ‘She could charm anyone with those green eyes of hers,’ she murmured. ‘She takes such delight in life. I wish all days were as peaceful as this . . .’ She glanced at Lady Tsuguko. ‘There is so little time left to us,’ she added, her voice dying away.

‘Human life is always uncertain, ma’am. But perhaps the gods will favour us just this once.’

‘Not if the Retired One has her way. I know she has His Majesty’s ear . . .’

It was the fifteenth day of the fifth month of the first year of Keio, and the rains were late in starting. Every day was hotter, stickier and more oppressive than the last. Dark clouds hid the sky. The paper doors that divided the rooms and the wooden doors that formed the outer walls of the buildings had been taken out, turning the whole vast palace into a labyrinth of interconnected pavilions. But there was not even the tiniest breeze to rattle the bamboo blinds.

That morning Sachi had been given a few minutes off from her
duties. She dashed to the veranda and gazed out at the palace gardens. The lawns, neatly clipped bushes and spiky-needled pine trees spread before her in a dazzling patchwork of greens. The elegant lake with its half-moon bridges was as still as a picture. Bamboo shoots thrust out of the soil and gnarled branches groaned under fat new buds and leaves. She breathed the moist air, drinking in the warm scent of earth, leaves and grass.

A cicada shrilled, shattering the silence. The sudden noise took her away, and for a moment she was on a hillside among thick trees. A cluster of slate roofs weighted with stones huddled in the valley below her. She could almost smell the woodsmoke and the aroma of miso soup. The village. The memory was so clear and sharp it brought tears to her eyes.

As she did every day, she thought back to that fateful autumn morning when the princess had passed through. Sachi was back in the entrance hall of the great inn, feeling the wooden floor cold and hard against her knees. Women crowded around her and voices twittered. Her parents were bowing, her mother brushing away tears. Then her father had said, ‘You are to go with them. You’re a lucky girl. Never forget that. Whatever you do, don’t cry. Be sure and make us proud of you.’

The next thing she knew, she had been walking along the road with a lady-in-waiting firmly holding her by the hand. She remembered fighting back tears, twisting around again and again, trying to keep her eyes on the village until it disappeared from sight. Many days later they had reached the great city of Edo and finally she saw the white ramparts of Edo Castle filling the sky in front of her. They had gone inside and the gates had swung shut behind them.

How lonely she had been to begin with! She had never imagined it was possible to be so sad. She hadn’t even been able to understand what anyone said. There had been so much to learn – how to walk and talk like a lady, how to read and write. Since then four winters and three summers had passed. But every day she thought of her mother and father still and wondered how they were and what they were doing.

Now she took her usual place beside the princess and began to fan her, trying to keep the air around her as cool and fresh as possible.
A thread of fragrant smoke coiled from the incense burner in the corner. On the other side of the ornate gold screens that enclosed the princess’s private section of the room, groups of ladies-inwaiting reclined, chattering and laughing, their robes billowing around them like leaves on a lily pond. Only a chosen few were allowed behind the screens. If Sachi had not been so young she might have felt it strange that she of all people should have been there. But for some reason the princess cared about her. She found her company soothing, she said.

Sachi glanced at the princess. She knew she was supposed to keep her eyes modestly lowered at all times, and especially in the princess’s presence. But there were so many rules, so much to remember. And besides, sometimes she felt that she was the only person who really cared about Princess Kazu. To Sachi she was perfection. Her handwriting was more elegant than that of any of her ladies, her poems more poignant, and when she played the koto, listeners were moved to tears. When she performed the tea ceremony, her movements were pure poetry. Yet there was something about her that was like a wild creature, trapped within the net of ceremony and deference that surrounded her. Sometimes Sachi thought she saw a flash of panic in her black eyes, like that of a frightened deer. Young and powerless though she was, she yearned to protect her.

From far off came the pad of footsteps, hurrying along the corridor towards them. Sachi heard the door to the outer chamber sliding in its grooves and the boards creaking as the visitor knelt. There was a flurry of voices, the rustle of silk, then a lady-in-waiting appeared, bowing at the edge of the screen. Lady Tsuguko leaned towards her in her lofty way, then turned to the princess and whispered in her ear.

Sachi caught the words: ‘The time of the morning visit approaches.’

The princess froze. Then, for some strange reason, she looked straight at Sachi. Sachi quickly looked down.

The princess took a breath, as if remembering what and who she was. Then she turned to Lady Tsuguko and said with studied calm, ‘Tell my ladies to make preparations.’

Quickly Sachi gathered up the shells and put them back in their
boxes, carefully tying the tasselled cords that bound them. When she had first arrived at the palace, everything had been so new that she had barely noticed where she was or been aware of the immense luxury that surrounded her. Now, almost four years later, she handled the tiny painted shells and the lacquered eight-sided boxes with reverence.

Only ladies of the highest rank ever entered the presence of the shogun. The life of the palace revolved around him. When he was absent it was as if darkness had fallen. All the women who pattered about the women’s palace from the highest in the hierarchy to the lowest – grand ladies, lesser ladies, old, young, maids, maids’ maids, halberd-wielding guards, bath girls, cleaning girls, carriers of charcoal and water, even the lowest-ranking errand girls whom everyone called the ‘honourable whelps’ – were silent and afraid. When he returned it was as if the sun had come out. But most of the women who devoted their lives to serving this godlike being never expected to see him.

Indeed, it was extraordinary, as Sachi heard the older women saying to each other, for the shogun ever to have been away. The third shogun, Lord Iemitsu, had visited Kyoto in the Kan’ei era, more than 200 years ago, but since then no shogun had ever left Edo and few left the castle. The previous shogun, poor Lord Iesada, like all his predecessors, had been born, lived and died there.

For why would anyone ever want to leave? The castle was a world in itself. Besides the inner palace, with its offices, guard rooms, great kitchens, dining rooms and baths, its sub-palaces for the great ladies and labyrinths of rooms where the women lived, all set in exquisite gardens with lakes and streams and waterfalls and stages for plays and dances, there was also the middle palace, the shogun’s residence when he was not in the inner palace, and the outer palace, where official business took place and the government had its offices.

The women, of course, never went there and in theory did not know what went on; though in practice news and gossip seemed to flow like air into the inner palace so that even though the women never left, they knew exactly what was happening in the world outside. All this – the inner, middle and outer palaces – made up the main citadel. But there was also the second citadel,
where the heir – when there was one – and his mother had their court, and the west citadel, where the widows – the wives, consorts and concubines – of the late shoguns were supposed to live, having taken holy vows. Each was a smaller version of the main citadel, complete with its own outer, middle and inner palaces. Within the great moat and the soaring walls, there was also the wooded expanse of the Fukiage pleasure gardens and Momiji Hill, where the women could stroll to enjoy the changing seasons, and the palaces of the Tayasu and Shimizu families, blood relations of the Tokugawa family.

Everything, in fact, that anyone could ever want was there. Once the women entered the castle they knew that, unless they were unhappy or behaved badly, they would be there for the rest of their lives. Of course they were permitted to visit their families from time to time. Sachi knew that soon she too would be allowed a few days to visit her family, though her old life seemed so far away she could barely remember the little girl she had been when she lived in the village.

In the past when the princess made the daily journey to greet the shogun, Sachi had stayed behind in the royal apartments. But today something had changed. Perhaps, Sachi thought, it was to do with her age. Now in her fifteenth year, she had come of age and her monthly defilement had begun. Her hair was knotted in a more adult hairstyle and she wore a style of kimono that marked her as a junior handmaiden. She even had a new name.

Instead of Sachi, ‘Happiness’, she was now officially Yuri, ‘Lily’. She liked the new name. It made her feel delicate and feminine and rather grand, part of a more splendid world than before. Her body too was changing, sprouting nearly as fast as a bamboo shoot in the rainy season. Her arms and legs had grown long and slender and her small round breasts had to be squashed into place inside her kimono. Even her face seemed different almost every time she looked at herself in the mirror.

Perhaps that was the reason why, that morning, Lady Tsuguko had told her to prepare to attend the welcoming for the shogun. But it was not her place to ask questions. As the older women reminded her again and again, she herself and her feelings
counted for nothing. No matter what happened, no matter what she felt, she must strive to maintain a placid, unruffled surface, like a pond becoming still again after a stone has been thrown in. The key was to remember her place, to be obedient and never to bring shame on herself or others.

At mid-morning, as the hour of the horse approached, the women prepared to leave. The princess rose to her feet and, holding her ceremonial cypresswood fan at her waist, glided out of her apartments. She moved so softly that the smoke coiling from the censer barely quivered. Her wide red trousers rippled and the quilted hem of her brocade coat spread like a fan behind her. A subtle perfume enveloped her, wafting from her scented robes. Her ladies followed, like an endless procession of huge flowers in their thin white summer kimonos and bulky vermilion skirts. Usually Lady Tsuguko would have been at the head of the line, as befitted her rank of chief lady-in-waiting. But today she stayed at the back, shepherding Sachi at her side.