The Samurai's Daughter (3 page)

He reached his sword under Fujino’s skirts and jerked the blade upwards. She stepped back out of the way but Taka heard the fabric rip.

‘That’s what I think of your western finery.’

There was a swish as the man swung his sword. Taka gasped in horror. Fujino raised her dagger to parry the blow, but instead of the clang of steel on steel, there was a dull thud. Peeking from behind Haru’s skirts, Taka saw that the man had misjudged the height of the room. The sword had lodged in the low crossbeam of the ceiling and stuck there, quivering.

Then she noticed a movement in the hallway outside and caught a glimpse of dark skin and the flash of eyes, slanted like a cat’s. There was someone else there – not the rickshaw boy, not the grooms, but another attacker, even more fearsome than the first. The restaurant was totally silent. Everyone had fled. There was no one to protect them from these villains.

Sawdust showered from the ceiling and there was a splintering sound as the samurai wrenched his sword free. He raised it again, holding it in both hands, preparing to bring it down in a death blow.

Suddenly a thin arm snaked out of the shadows behind him and
wound
around the man’s neck. Taken by surprise, the samurai stumbled backwards. His head jerked back and he grabbed at the fingers as they tightened around his neck. His face turned purple and his sword fell from his grasp. Fujino lunged forward and snatched it up. Bellowing with rage, the samurai thrashed with his elbows, prised the fingers off, spun round and started pummelling his assailant.

Taka caught a glimpse of the new arrival’s face and her jaw dropped as she realized he was just a boy, a scrawny boy. His eyes were wide with fear in his sunburnt face, but he was scowling with determination. He’d had the advantage of surprise but now it was obvious he didn’t have a chance against the brawny samurai.

Fujino was chewing her lower lip and frowning in concentration. She handed the sword to Kiharu, raised her dagger and paused, her arm above her head. Fearless though her mother was, Taka had never known her draw blood. Fujino took a breath and brought the dagger down, straight into the samurai’s exposed shoulder. As she wrenched it out, blood spurted, staining her lavish skirts. She was quivering with horror.

The man yelped and grabbed at his shoulder; the blow had slowed him down but hadn’t disabled him. Fujino jerked her head imperiously and the boy leapt out of the way, then she threw herself on top of the samurai, shoved him to the ground and plumped down on his back in all her enormous bulk. Tiny Aunt Kiharu sat on his legs. The two women were panting and their cheeks were flushed but their eyes were afire. The samurai writhed and pounded the floor and emitted muffled yells, but to no avail.

Anxious faces appeared at the door – a tubby officious-looking middle-aged man rubbing his hands nervously, and two burly policemen with stern faces and smart buttoned uniforms. In the hubbub no one had noticed them approaching. The policemen pinioned the samurai’s arms and Taka heard him gasp for breath as Fujino heaved herself to her feet. She smoothed her skirts, examining them ruefully.

‘So sorry, your ladyship, so sorry,’ said the tubby man, whom Taka took to be the restaurant owner, wringing his plump hands. He fell to his knees, bowing again and again. Other faces appeared, peeking round the door, eyes huge like frightened rabbits – the rickshaw boy and the grooms. They threw themselves to their knees in front of Fujino and blurted excuses, beating their heads on the ground.

Their rescuer was standing uncertainly in the hallway. He was a thin-faced urchin, not much older than Taka, tall and gangly, with a long neck and prominent nose. His face was blackened as if he’d been working in the rice fields and there was fuzz on his upper lip. He was wearing a most peculiar assortment of clothes. Taka had to stop herself smiling as she realized he was wearing a girl’s kimono jacket with the sleeves shortened. His narrow black eyes darted curiously. Taka looked around, following his gaze, and saw the overturned chairs and mounds of meat scattered on the floor. The tables with their buckets of glowing charcoal were miraculously still upright.

Fujino turned to him.

‘You came just in time, young man,’ she said gravely, settling herself on her knees. ‘We are in your debt.’ The boy dropped to his knees too and bowed, shuffling uncomfortably.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, staring at the ground. ‘I didn’t do much of a job.’ There was a rustic twang, a hint of a dialect of some sort underlying his Edo speech. He glanced around as if he was eager to escape.

‘Nonsense,’ said Fujino briskly. ‘You saved us.’

‘He was just passing by, your ladyship,’ said one of the rickshaw boys, bowing frantically and baring his teeth in an embarrassed grin. He grabbed the boy’s arm and gripped it firmly. ‘It was us, we stopped him. Our ladies are in trouble, we said, and told him to go for help. A robber’s burst in, we said, one of those ronin, a Satsuma man by the looks of it. We hadn’t dared ask any of the diners, they all looked too important. But he just pushed us aside and rushed straight in.’

‘I didn’t do anything, your honour,’ the boy mumbled. ‘There was only one of him and I couldn’t even hold him back on my own. I’m sorry I failed you. Anyway, I’ll be on my way.’ He bowed again and backed on his knees towards the door.

Fujino put her hand to her waist where her obi should have been, as if she’d forgotten she was wearing a western dress. She reached for her purse then looked at the boy and put it aside. It was obvious that he was far too proud to accept money.

‘Your name, young man?’ she asked gently.

‘Yoshida, Nobuyuki Yoshida. Glad I could be of service.’

His skinny arms were like sticks poking out of his tattered sleeves. Taka could see her mother’s brows knit as she tried to sum him up. He was far too shabby to be of samurai or merchant class, but he didn’t carry himself like a servant either. He was impossible to place.

‘Wait,’ Fujino said, putting a serviette over the bloodstains on her skirts. ‘Master, take this boy to the kitchens and give him some food. And provide him with a decent set of clothes, too.’

The restaurant owner’s round face was shiny with sweat. He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the boy then gave a sigh, put his hands on the ground and bowed deferentially. ‘Whatever you say, your ladyship. The young man certainly deserves a reward. We’ll make sure we send him off with a full belly and a good cotton robe.’

‘I’ll be on my way,’ the boy muttered again.

‘What house do you belong to?’ Fujino persisted.

The boy stared at the ground. ‘I’ve only recently arrived in Tokyo, madam. I have relatives here but … er … I’ve been staying with a man called Shigehiro Iinuma, a middle-ranking official from the Omura domain in Hizen. I was in service there.’

He hadn’t mentioned his family.

‘You were, you say. And now?’

The boy’s tawny cheeks flushed. ‘I’m looking for work.’

‘What about your family?’

Taka cringed. Her mother was a geisha. Where others would have hesitated, she was always shockingly direct.

The boy hesitated. ‘I have a father and brothers, your honour. They’re far away.’

‘So you have no work?’ Fujino had the ability to prise information out of anybody, no matter how reluctant they were.

‘To be honest, madam, I’ve just been to see a man. I was hoping to get a job as an errand boy. Hiromichi Nagakura gave me a letter for him. But his house is full already and he says he can’t afford any more servants.’

The words came out in a rush. Taka shivered, trying to imagine a world so harsh that people couldn’t even afford an extra errand boy. They had so much and he had so little and he’d saved their lives. Their house was full of people already. Surely one more wouldn’t make any difference? She spoke up. ‘Can’t we give him a job, Mother? I need a footman to carry my books when I’m going to school.’

The room fell silent. As she squeaked out the words, everyone turned to look. Haru nudged her to tell her to be quiet but it was too late. The boy had been staring about him like a cornered bear but he too swung round.

Taka felt heat rise to the tips of her ears and lowered her eyes. Fujino frowned, then her face softened and she smiled indulgently. When she turned back to the boy she was looking thoughtful.

‘Hiromichi Nagakura, you said, the ex-vice governor of Aomori? You carry a letter from him? Show me.’

The boy scowled, as if to communicate that he had no need of anyone’s pity. Fujino held out her hand coaxingly. When she wanted something no one could deny her, Taka thought admiringly. The boy pulled a scroll out of his sleeve. Fujino unrolled and read it, frowning.

As her mother scrutinized the scroll, Taka saw the boy staring at the ground, shoulders hunched, struggling to maintain his look of fierce indifference. His eyes widened and he squeezed
his
thin hands tightly together as if forbidding himself to hope.

‘Well, Nobu,’ Fujino said slowly, turning to him. ‘You’re obviously an honest, strong boy. We need someone like you. You’ll be better than these good-for-nothing grooms who abandon us to be attacked by madmen. We need an extra hand. Let me know who to speak to and we’ll give you a job.’

Nobu looked at her and, for the first time, he smiled.

2

IN THE ANTECHAMBER
of the Black Peony darkness was closing in. Lanterns sputtered into life as lamplighters touched tapers to wicks and an acrid fug of burning tallow mingled with tobacco smoke and the powerful odour of roasting flesh.

Nobu had followed the rickshaw pullers and the grooms out and was squatting on his heels, chewing the stem of his pipe. Where he came from, good plain food – rice, tofu, vegetables, fish – was what people ate, he thought, not slaughtered animals.

Shouts and laughter boomed from the inner room. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the disturbance already. Nobu wrinkled his nose and stared under his eyebrows at the dandies in their outlandish tight-sleeved outfits sauntering in and out, waving their hands and flashing their teeth, talking at the tops of their voices. They were like creatures from another world.

Ever since he’d woken that morning he’d had the feeling that something was in the air. It might have been the icy wind blasting through the crack in the door or the squawks of the crows or the creaks of carts as vendors passed by, singing out, ‘Roasted chestnuts!’ ‘Sweet potatoes!’ ‘Tofu!’

He’d been gulping down a bowl of miso soup in the Iinuma family’s cramped tenement at the end of a narrow alley in the ‘low city’, Tokyo’s run-down East End, when the master of the house, a stooped beaten-down man with a freckled pate, had told him, shaking his head miserably, that they simply couldn’t keep him any longer. They could barely afford the food to put in their own
mouths
. Nobu knew that was true. The house was overrun with children and they made a miserable living cutting dried tobacco leaves. He’d been moving from house to house for years now. That was what happened when you had to depend on charity.

Iinuma-
sama
’s faded wife had wiped her hands on her apron, pressed a few coins into Nobu’s hand and stood waving from the doorway as he set off into the labyrinth of alleys. He’d turned a few corners then, at a loss for what to do, had gone in search of Hiromichi Nagakura, the ex-vice governor of the northern province of Aomori and an old friend of his father’s. Nagakura, a thin man with a gentle face and permanently bemused expression, still dressed like a samurai and did his best to live as though nothing had changed. He had fallen on hard times too but he’d helped Nobu out in the past. He’d given him a letter for a man called Tsukamoto who he said might have an opening for an errand boy.

Nobu had walked halfway across the city, tramping through piles of fallen leaves, but when he finally found the house, Tsukamoto, a heavy-browed man with a sour expression, had taken one look at him and said, ‘Be on your way. There’s nothing for a scarecrow like you here.’

‘A scarecrow like you …’ Nobu felt the blood rush to his face and clenched his fists at the affront. The words thundered in his ears as he stumbled off, barely aware of where his feet were taking him. He was pushing his way through a crowd of people, hearing voices and laughter roaring around him, when a wild-eyed man with his face half hidden in a scarf and a couple of sword hilts poking from his sash barged past, shoving him roughly aside. Nobu recognized him straight away – a southerner, a member of the Satsuma clan, the source of all Nobu’s woes.

Nobu was sure of one thing: his enemy’s enemy was his friend. Whoever this fellow was out to attack, he would defend them and land a few punches on an enemy jaw at the very least. He’d dashed after him blindly, barely aware of the antechamber full of
panicking
servants and the diners pushing back their tables and fighting to get out of the intruder’s way.

And now it seemed he’d won himself a job.

‘Quite the hero,’ said a nasal voice. A scrawny fellow with watchful, close-set eyes and the sun-baked pate and sinewy calves of a rickshaw puller prodded him in the ribs. He’d thrown his indigo-blue happi coat wide open to show off the splendid tattoo adorning his bony chest.

‘Just charged in without thinking,’ Nobu muttered, staring at the scuffed wooden floor. It wouldn’t do to incur this fellow’s enmity, which he might if the man thought he was trying to show him up.

‘You’re the lucky one, aren’t you?’ said the rickshaw puller, tapping out his pipe in the ash box. He narrowed his eyes and peered at him, then gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Gonsuké’s the name. No belongings to fetch, I can see that.’

If he had he wouldn’t have been wearing a girl’s kimono jacket, Nobu thought ruefully. Gonsuké’s splendid livery made him feel self-conscious. The plump lady in the grey dress had told the restaurant owner to give him clothes and a meal, then offered him a job instead. At that moment he wished he could have had the clothes and food. The apprentices and grooms lounging around the antechamber were all staring at his outlandish costume and he could feel hunger gnawing at his stomach.