The Samurai's Daughter (41 page)

Fujino’s eyes flashed. Taka recognized the stubborn set to her shoulders. She was scowling like a sulky child. ‘I should have gone when your father left. I failed in my duty then but I’ll make up for it now. I must introduce myself to Madame, your father’s wife. Wherever she’s going, we’ll go there too. It’s the only thing to do.’

Taka couldn’t imagine how Madame Kitaoka would feel if a large middle-aged woman arrived claiming to be her husband’s concubine. She knew she shouldn’t contradict her mother but this was no time for deference. ‘You’re wrong, Mother. Madame
Kitaoka
doesn’t know anything about you. Why should she believe you are who you say you are?’

Aunt Kiharu nodded emphatically, her head bobbing like a Daruma doll. ‘She’s right, Fujino. Listen to her.’

‘Masa told her about me. I’m sure he did.’ There was a shrill, argumentative edge to her voice. She straightened her back and took a breath. ‘I don’t care what you say, Taka, I don’t care what any of you say. My mind’s made up. It’s what your father would want.’

Taka looked away, tears filling her eyes. It wasn’t at all what he would want, she was sure of that. Her mother’s sadness wrenched her heart. She missed him so desperately, yet the only course open to her was to throw herself on the mercy of this wife of his, who knew nothing about her and cared even less. She might be a paragon of virtue, this wife, this interloper who’d come into their lives, but Taka hated her with a passion. The last thing she wanted was to see her.

She shook her head. ‘I’m not coming with you.’

Footsteps pattered by along the road outside. Fujino stared at her. ‘Of course you are. You can’t stay here. I order you to come.’

‘I don’t want to see that woman. I’m seventeen, I’m an adult. The samurai girls in the big house are staying. I’ll stay too and take care of our house. We don’t even know for sure the army’s coming, and if they do they’ll take over the samurai houses. They won’t be interested in townsfolk like us. We’re not even townsfolk, we’re geishas. They certainly won’t bother with us.’

‘Townsfolk, geishas,’ her mother snorted. ‘That’s as it may be. We’re the family of General Kitaoka too, don’t forget that. If the army knows we’re here, they’ll be looking for us everywhere.’

‘The last place they’d expect to find us is in the geisha quarter.’

‘And you expect me to go to the harbour when there are enemy ships on their way? We Kitaokas need to stick together. Madame may need our help. I’m your mother. How dare you disobey me?’

Taka groaned. Her mother knew she was wrong but she just wouldn’t listen. ‘You don’t even know where her house is.’

‘Everyone knows your father, everyone loves him. Everyone will know the house. We just have to ask. We’re family. It’s right for us to join her.’

‘And if she’s left already?’

‘All the more reason to hurry,’ her mother said. ‘There’ll be a watchman to tell us where she’s gone. This is the last time I’m saying it, Taka. You can’t stay here on your own.’

The two glared at each other. Taka’s mother lowered her eyes. There was a last clang and the bells stopped ringing as if even the bell-ringers had left their posts and fled. In the silence a bird chirruped and Taka heard the rush of the wind and the distant roar of the sea.

Her mother was flushed and there were beads of sweat on her forehead. She was breathing heavily. She put her hand on the mats and heaved herself to her feet. ‘Very well, stay if you must. Okatsu will stay with you.’

‘Take Okatsu too. My father would want you to be properly attended.’

‘I can’t argue with you any longer, my girl. You’re even more stubborn than me.’

Taka watched the three small figures set off along the road, tears filling her eyes. Everything had fallen apart and they were reduced to this, just three lone women walking away together.

When they’d disappeared from view she hurried towards the harbour. A few gatekeepers and servants peeked nervously from the gates of some of the merchant houses. Most were closed up and sealed with the rain doors pulled across, turning them into fortresses. The massive whitewashed storehouses where the merchants kept their valuables were locked and bolted. Not a shop was open and the market stalls were deserted. Pieces of paper and scraps of cloth littered the ground and blew around in the gutters. It looked as if people had taken more than they could carry and had dropped things in their haste. Oranges and sweet potatoes rolled about. It was a city of ghosts, an empty husk, a
shadow
of the bustling place it had been just an hour before.

There were people at the waterside still, anxiously waiting to see which would come first – a boat to take them away or the dreaded warships. They were poor, to judge by their clothes. Some had bundles, others carts loaded with furniture. The bay was full of boats, heading for the volcano or south towards the islands.

Taka was watching the boats shuttling south when she saw a tiny puff of smoke where the dazzling sea met the paler blue of the sky. As she gazed, mesmerized, there was another puff, then another, as a sinister grey hull slid into view around the headland. She counted five ships still far in the distance, sails hoisted, growing larger by the moment. The crowds at the dock shouted in panic and piled into the last remaining boats, throwing in bundles and furniture until the boats looked ready to sink.

As Taka fled back through the merchant district she heard shouts and crashes and pounding feet. She rounded a corner. Gangs of loinclothed youths were smashing doors and shutters, breaking into homes and storehouses, running off with sacks bulging with belongings. They were too busy looting to pay any attention to Taka. She raced home and bolted the door, trembling.

She’d made a mistake, she realized now. She should have gone with her mother. She wished they hadn’t parted on such bad terms. In fact, her life had been a catalogue of mistakes. Perhaps she should have married Masuda-
sama
before all this blew up. He hadn’t been so bad and she’d be in Tokyo still. But it was too late for regrets. She’d just have to wait for the right moment before the army arrived to go and join Yuko and the others.

It was eerie alone in the house with its faded tatami and creaking stairs. Now she’d seen the warships, the halberd leaning against the wall in the entryway looked as puny as a child’s plaything. She thought of her father and his fifteen thousand warriors. No matter how brave and well trained and determined they were, even if they were the best soldiers in the world, they couldn’t possibly stand up against such might.

As she always did, she thought of Nobu. Was he in Tokyo still, at the Military Academy? Or had he been called up to fight? Perhaps he was in the mountains, fighting her father, or on one of those ships, steaming towards Kagoshima. It would be a strange and bitter twist of fate if he were on that fleet, coming here to her city to kill her people – and her.

32

‘WE’LL TEACH THOSE
damned Satsuma a lesson they won’t forget. Right, Sato?’ Sakurai’s growl rose above the rumble of engines, the creak and flap of the sails and the roar as the great ship surged through the water. The railing rang as he smashed his fleshy fist down, his ruddy cheeks mottled and his cropped hair bristling.

‘Right.’ His loyal sidekick, Sato, grunted laconically.

Nobu groaned. It just wasn’t that simple. A lot of soldiers, including some of the men on this ship, were Satsuma, the brothers or sons or cousins of rebels who’d gone to fight in the mountains. He knew they were secretly relieved there were no samurai left in this city, so they wouldn’t have to fight their own kin. There were many of Nobu’s and Sato’s and Sakurai’s comrades among the rebels too, men who’d left the Military Academy last autumn to return to Satsuma. The three of them would be shooting down their fellow students – or being shot by them – if they ever came face to face. But Sakurai wasn’t one to worry about such details. He just wanted to make sure everyone knew he was raring for a fight.

‘Even Lieutenant Yoshida, even our Yoshida with his head stuffed full of French verbs and French history, even he might get a shot in – if he can aim his rifle straight.’ Sakurai guffawed.

Nobu ignored him. The rugged cliffs and hills of the coastline veered towards them, mantled in foliage as thick as the wax on an ancient candle. Smells of leaves and blossom and shoots wafted
on
the breeze. Even on the balmiest spring day it was never this green in Aizu or Tokyo, never this warm and sultry. Insects buzzed, seagulls screamed and dipped and a cormorant flapped by, stretching its black wings. Boats laden with people and furniture sculled low in the water, keeping well away from the massive grey warships.

Nobu tipped his head back until his starchy collar dug into the back of his neck, screwed up his eyes against the glare of the midmorning sun and stared up at the volcano filling the sky above them. A fist of ash and smoke punched out of the jagged mouth, writhing and curling like a dragon’s head. He smelt sulphur, saw steam seeping from clefts in the rocks.

The cluster of houses huddled into the hillside grew larger and he reached for a telescope.

Kagoshima, the famous Satsuma stronghold. He made out the castle, a line of fortifications along the hillside. Buildings sprawled around, larger squares surrounded with green near the castle, cramped streets of small houses further away, and along the bay a dockyard with imposing grey structures that might house the Satsuma armaments factories.

He wondered if the city really was undefended. He half expected cannon fire suddenly to blaze out. The place looked unnervingly empty. There was no smoke rising from the houses, no figures moving about on the docks or streets, no signs of life at all. He wondered what was going on behind that blank façade, what scheme the inhabitants had dreamed up to fool the approaching army.

‘Looks like it was hit by the plague,’ grunted Sato.

‘They’re there, all right. Just keeping their heads down, readying their rifles to welcome us. We’ll show them, like we showed them at Kumamoto, won’t we, Yoshida?’

Nobu barely heard him through the storm of thoughts that battered in his head. The moment was at hand – the moment of victory, of sweet revenge. He had the enemy in his sights, the bastion of the Satsuma, those killers who had burnt his city and
trampled
through his house and caused the deaths of his mother, his sisters and his grandmother, reduced his clan to penury and continued to oppress them to this day. Yet instead of hatred and joy and bloodlust, all he could think of was Taka.

The boat smacked against the sea wall and rocked violently. It was a big flat-bottomed lighter, crammed with soldiers sitting crushed together, hanging on to anything they could find. Nobu stood up, found his balance, waited for the wave to crest and jumped. Hands pulled as he scrambled up the stones. He took a few breaths, enjoying the feel of dry land under his feet, then looked around and his jaw dropped.

The great brick warehouses that lined the wharf had been smashed open, rusty iron doors hung loose on their hinges and rice, sugar and yellow safflower spilled across the paving stones. Slabs of lumber and bolts of silk lay scattered around as if the looters had dropped half their booty as they fled. The Satsuma hadn’t waited for the army to come, they’d sacked their city themselves.

Boats shuttled back and forth and soldiers climbed ashore, filling the quay with black caps and bristling rifles. The sun blazed down. Standing to attention in his greatcoat with his pack on his back and his sword at his side, Nobu heard the creak of new leather boots behind him and sent up a fervent prayer to the gods that there really would be no one here to fight. If there was, these men of his would have a real job to prove themselves. For all their splendid uniforms, half were raw recruits, conscripts sent south without even knowing how to load a rifle. The rest were former samurai – and, as everyone knew, samurai took orders from no one. As for Nobu, he was an unseasoned lieutenant with a head full of French verbs, as Sakurai had said, and a theoretical knowledge of tactics, but no practical experience at all.

As the first units marched smartly away, boots thundering on the stony ground, there was a shot, echoing from the mountains and ringing out across the water. The conscripts shouted in panic,
broke
ranks and charged into the warehouses. Nobu looked around, his heart thundering. Snipers, an ambush. He raced over to a water barrel and crouched behind it, rifle raised.

Cautiously scouring the empty quay, he noticed a lone conscript standing nervously, a hollow-cheeked youngster with the big hands of a peasant, his greatcoat hanging on him like a tent. Smoke curled from the barrel of his rifle. The other soldiers stumbled back into the sunlight, laughing sheepishly. Nobu broke into a grin.

‘I … I thought I saw a movement,’ the youth muttered, cheeks blazing. Cats peered nervously out of the shadows as the men resumed their march.

Battalions of soldiers filled the narrow streets, sweeping towards the castle which spread along the foot of the hill, bristling with battlements, turrets and watchtowers. Nobu kept a wary eye open for snipers but if there were any they were keeping well out of sight.

He’d been expecting a thriving town with shops and supplies but the place was entirely empty, except for scraps of paper and shreds of fabric and rotten fruit filling the gutters. He glanced around, convinced it must be a trap. There had to be people hidden inside the buildings, preparing to loose a hail of bullets on the intruders.

But they marched on without incident. Battalion after battalion assembled in the parade ground in front of the castle while the advance units stormed across the moat into the grounds of the castle itself. Nobu listened for the roar of cannons and rattle of gunfire, but there was only the thunder of boots on baked earth.

Then a uniformed figure appeared at the head of the bridge, waving his arms and shouting. There was no defending army, not even any occupants. The castle was deserted. There was even a barracks in the old stables which would house at least part of the occupying force. The soldiers raised a cheer.