The Samurai's Daughter (15 page)

Eijiro sat up, swung on to his knees and brought his fist down on the table. The teacups clattered on their saucers. ‘You were nothing but a geisha yourself, Mother, remember? Father bought your freedom. And you refuse me the same privilege?’

‘I was a Gion geisha of the very highest class,’ snapped Fujino. ‘We geishas have style and accomplishments. We’re totally different from those so-called courtesans.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘The glory days of the flower and willow world are long past. These days the Yoshiwara is nothing but a common stew and its courtesans are trumped-up prostitutes. Your Tsukasa has you by the testicles. It’s what’s between her legs that’s snagged you. She’s not worthy to be the concubine of the son of General Kitaoka. I wish your brother Ryutaro was still with us. He would never have dreamed of such a thing.’

Eijiro’s face blackened and he clenched his big fists till the knuckles were white. He took a breath. ‘Your words are harsh, Mother, but I grant you one thing. It’s true. The Yoshiwara has declined, ever since the Cattle Release Act. There’s a lower class of woman now, much lower. That is why I need to buy her freedom. A woman like her deserves a better life.’ He leaned forward and looked at Fujino from under his heavy brows, his eyes narrowing. ‘Let me tell you something. We were attacked by a street gang, that’s why my sleeve is torn.’

‘You were attacked?’ Fujino turned pale. ‘My cherished son, I told you you shouldn’t go to those dangerous places. What happened? Are you hurt?’

‘There were ten or twelve of them – gamblers, they looked like, or pedlars. They came out of the crowd and blocked our path. Big, tattooed men with knives and clubs. They were after Tsukasa. Everyone envies me, everyone resents the fact she’s mine. I didn’t even have a sword, but I knew I could take them on with my bare hands. And Tsukasa – you should have seen her, Mother, with her little hand on her dagger. She was magnificent – so cool, so courageous. You would have been proud. She’s a woman after your own heart.’

‘You mean you fought them off, just you and this whore of yours?’ Fujino’s lips twitched in disbelief. ‘Ten of them, you said, or twelve, with knives and clubs? A fat fellow like you, without even a sword? You’re not your father, I know that much.’ She burst out laughing as she always did when her wayward son was telling one of his stories, not a tinkly geisha laugh but a loud raucous chuckle.

Taka was staring at Eijiro too. He was frowning, fiddling with the hem of his robe, keeping his eyes averted. She recognized that sheepish look of his. There was something he wasn’t telling them.

‘Look, Mother, he’s not even dirty. He hasn’t been in a fight at all. He’s making it all up. Or someone helped him.’

Eijiro turned on her. ‘Keep out of this, little sister.’ He scowled. ‘It’s true. I was in a fight but we had a bit of help.’

‘You had help?’

‘If you ask me, he was probably one of them himself. He set it all up beforehand, set the gang on me, everything. He wanted to get me murdered and then at the last moment had second thoughts. It was all a ploy to wriggle his way back into our family’s esteem. I’m telling you now, he won’t succeed in that.’

‘In the name of all the gods, what are you talking about? Who?’

‘That boy, that dreadful Aizu fellow who used to work here. Of all people, he was there, in the Yoshiwara. He came bursting out of nowhere. He pushed through the thugs and came and stood beside us. That fellow, you know. That fellow I had to throw out. Nobu.’

Taka raised her head, trying not to smile. She felt herself coming back to life. It was as if a door had opened and a breeze had blown in, carrying scents of somewhere distant and foreign, somewhere she knew nothing about. It was the feeling she had had that first time when Nobu had poked his sun-darkened face around the door at the Black Peony.

She’d done her best to put him out of her mind yet here he was again, emerging from the shadows – from the Yoshiwara, a place of darkness, populated by bad men and courtesans. For a moment a curtain lifted and she caught a glimpse of another world, a forbidden place, irresistibly alluring. It made her want to slip on her sandals and disappear right now.

She took a breath. There were ten thousand questions she wanted to ask – what he’d said, how he was, what he’d been doing there. ‘So Nobu came to your rescue.’ She didn’t bother to conceal the laughter in her voice.

‘Little Taka,’ Eijiro snapped. ‘You think you’re so grown up. You should learn not to speak out of turn. A woman should know her place.’

Taka stared at him. ‘So tell me.’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘This precious Nobu of yours – he just stood there. He didn’t do anything. We took care of ourselves. He improved the odds, that’s all.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘You know what a weakling he was. You haven’t forgotten how I took care of him that time we caught the two of you together.’

Taka chose to ignore that remark. ‘And you think he was trying to work himself back into our favour? That can’t be true. He was good and honest.’

‘Though I’m surprised to hear he was in the Yoshiwara – him, of all people,’ Fujino added.

Eijiro gave an arch smile, as if he knew he held the winning hand. ‘He’s working for Mori-
sama
, that’s why,’ he said.

Fujino raised her caterpillar eyebrows. ‘Mori Ichinosuke, the Tosa fellow, that miserable jumped-up clerk you’re so fond of? Poor Nobu. He was such a serious boy. He must be having a hard time of it. He’s the last person I’d expect to hear of in the Yoshiwara.’

Fujino and Eijiro started arguing about Tsukasa again. Taka stared at the tatami, their words washing over her.

Her thoughts drifted back to a sunny day a couple of summers ago. She’d been sitting with Nobu, helping him with his reading, as she always did. He was stumbling his way through a passage about Kusunoki Masashige and his son Masatsura, the loyal warriors who had sacrificed their lives for the emperor in ancient times, when he suddenly stopped and looked up, his eyes shining. ‘I know this passage,’ he had said.

He had gazed into the distance and recited it perfectly, his voice rising and falling so beautifully that it brought tears to her eyes. All along she’d thought she was teaching him but now she saw that he was teaching her, too. She had asked him where he’d learned that passage and he’d said, so quietly she could hardly catch the words, ‘At my mother’s knee.’ Her own mother had never recited the classics to her; she doubted if she even knew them. Geisha songs were her great love. Taka had suddenly realized then that she knew nothing about Nobu – who he was, where he came from. He had never said a single word about himself or his past.

After that Taka often begged him to recite for her. But when she asked him about his mother he always said quietly, ‘She’s far away.’ And that was all he would say.

He deserved better than to be a servant, she thought, better than to run around doing someone else’s bidding. And now she knew where he was. She smiled. Maybe she’d send him a letter. Nothing unsuitable, nothing embarrassing or personal, something simple, just a note.

‘Nobu-
sama
,’ she began, imagining what she might write. It seemed strange to use a respectful term like -
sama
to address a servant but in her mind he wasn’t a servant. He was a lot more than that. ‘Nobu-
sama
. I was glad to have news of you from my older brother. Two years have passed since you left our house. I trust you are keeping well. Taka.’ Something like that.

The servants would know where Mori-
sama
lived; they took messages there. Okatsu only had to enquire and Taka could trust her to be discreet. Then Okatsu could deliver it. Between them they would think up a good reason why Okatsu needed to go past Mori-
sama
’s house – on the way to the house of one of her relatives, perhaps, or somewhere she had to go on an errand.

Taka sighed. Okatsu was the maid, she the mistress, yet Okatsu was far freer than she was. Okatsu was always out and about, going here and there, doing errands, but Taka could only go out with a chaperone. And soon she would be married and the prison doors would close for ever. It was totally clear now. She had to find a way to escape – and the key was Nobu.

10

‘AND THERE ’E
stands, arms akimbo, like the giant Benkei ’imself facin’ up to the twenty thousand!’ crowed Bunkichi for the third time that day, smirking obsequiously as Mori-
sama
guffawed. ‘And these gangsters – if you could a’ seen ’em, sir. Big burly fellas with arms the size a’ tree trunks, jus’ covered in tattoos from head to foot. Takes one look at our Nobu and turns tail, the lot a’ them, and flees!’

‘Quite the hero, what?’ said Mori-
sama
, leering at Nobu out of half-closed eyes. He had a pouchy face and his kimono smelt of tobacco. He was a Tosa, from one of the four outlying clans which had bonded together and marched on Edo less than ten years earlier and taken over the city, the country and the government. He didn’t talk like a potato samurai but to Nobu’s ears his dialect was just as ugly, full of outlandish words and with the harsh twang of some distant mountain province.

As a southerner and one of the victors, he took particular delight in bullying Nobu and the fact Nobu was at the Military Academy gave him even more ammunition. ‘So what does our General Yoshida have to say?’ he’d jeer. ‘Surely the great general can come up with a solution!’ Bunkichi and Zenkichi had quickly caught on that Nobu was fair game and joined in with enthusiasm.

Nobu bowed, trying to shape his mouth into a patient smile. No matter what he thought of Mori-
sama
and everything he stood for, he needed this job; and he knew all too well, as Eijiro
had
reminded him time and time again, that you hardly had to take a step to tread on a servant.

‘You took such excellent care of my good friend Kitaoka yesterday,’ said Mori, his voice heavy with irony. ‘Perhaps you can do the same for me. Come with me to the bath today.’ He took out his timepiece, a big gold mechanism on a chain, and studied it, frowning. These days anyone of any consequence seemed to have one. Nobu had no idea what the marks on the glass face meant. The temple bells still rang out to mark the beginning and end of each working day and that was enough for him and the rest of the servants. He’d worked out that the best strategy was to be ready at all times. ‘We’ll leave in half an hour,’ Mori-
sama
added, tucking the timepiece carefully back in his breast pocket.

In all his previous postings, Nobu had never had to accompany anyone to the bath. Still dressed in his formal hakama skirts and crisp black jacket with the Mori crest on it, he took a basket and a pile of thin cotton towels and waited in the front entrance, smarting from the teasing he had to endure. ‘
A coeur vaillant rien d’impossible
,’ he repeated to himself; but the magic syllables had lost their soothing power. He squatted on his heels, took some tobacco from his pouch and kneaded it into a shiny brown ball, then packed his pipe, struck a flint and heaved a sigh as he drew in a lungful of fragrant smoke.

Mori-
sama
was not particularly rich, certainly not rich enough to have his own bath, though that didn’t mean he couldn’t afford several servants. Now the fighting was over he’d received a posting as a clerical officer for the Tosa domain and lived in one of the small houses beside what had been the daimyo’s mansion, in the shadow of Edo Castle, near Kaji Bridge, which crossed one of the outer moats.

These days the Tosa domain no longer officially existed. The domains had all been replaced by prefectures named after the capital city of each, and the daimyo were no longer warrior princes ruling their own domain, with their own army, but ‘governors’ doing the bidding of the new regime. The Tosa
domain
was now Kochi Prefecture and the mansion was being torn down and replaced by cumbersome stone buildings in the modern ‘western’ style, where government officials were to work. There was hammering and banging morning to night and dust swirling about, prickling everyone’s nostrils. The gate and fortifications at Kaji Bridge had already been demolished. Nevertheless, Mori still lived and worked here.

There were footsteps in the hallway and Mori appeared and strutted off down the road. Nobu was sliding the door closed when he glimpsed a woman under the trees at the end of the long street, dressed in an indigo kimono, like a maid. There was something familiar about her. The sight of her sent a prickle down the back of his neck and he wondered if she was a ghost, if his past was coming back to haunt him. It was just his imagination, he told himself impatiently; his eyes were playing tricks on him. When he turned to take another look she had disappeared into the shadows and he had to hurry after Mori-
sama
.

He followed Mori along streets festooned with brilliantly coloured banners and streamers, crowded with promenading holidaymakers. People were singing and dancing, and octopus and squid sizzled on roadside stalls, giving off mouth-watering smells. Nobu felt as if he was the only person in the whole world who had to work.

The bathhouse was a large building beside Kaji Bridge. As they pushed through the curtains into the men’s side, steam swirled from the open doors. Men slapped the sides of the tub and voices echoed around the wooden walls. Nobu sniffed the pungent smell of soap powder and heard splashing and singing and raucous laughter, shouts of ‘Bucket boy, over ’ere! Cold enough to freeze your balls off. Hot water, quick!’ Other voices yelled, ‘No, cold water, bring cold water. It’s too ’ot!’

Mori’s bony backside was disappearing up the steep staircase towards the changing room for the wealthier customers. Nobu hurried after him. There was a large tatami-matted room there, full of men removing their clothes or tying them in place,
gossiping
and laughing over the latest political developments. A few old fellows sprawled on the tatami, snoring gently, and a couple of youths were engrossed in a game of
go
. Pretty young women with smooth cheeks and glossy black hair scurried around with trays of tea and cakes, ignoring the ogling eyes and fending off hands that grabbed at them as they passed.