The Samurai's Daughter (46 page)

The soldiers swung their rifle butts into the hedge, sending leaves and dust showering down. A moment more and the fugitives would be discovered. There was nothing for it but to shoot. Nobu’s hands were clammy. He’d only ever used his rifle for target practice before, never in earnest, let alone against his own classmates. Feverishly he fumbled under his gown for his ammunition pouch, felt for a bullet, cocked the hammer of the rifle and slipped the bullet into the breech. Frowning, trying to remember everything he’d learned, he took aim. There was a flash and a deafening bang close to his ear as he sent the bullet screeching over Sakurai’s head. Panting, he reloaded.

Now Sakurai knew where he was. A bullet smashed through the hedge and slammed into the ground right by Taka’s foot, so
close
it sprayed her with earth and twigs and dust. She jumped back. Nobu shuddered in horror. A fraction closer and it would have crippled her. A pall of smoke filled the air with the acrid smell of gunpowder. His first experience of battle, and it was his own comrades; but he couldn’t see any way out.

There was no time to think. He scowled and readied his rifle. The last thing he wanted was to shoot Sakurai but he might have to put him out of action if he was to protect Taka. At least none of their assailants were members of the Aizu clan.

Taka had sprung to her feet and darted away from the gate. There was a clunk on the other side of the road that sounded like someone kicking a stone. Nobu looked up, wondering if they’d got an ally. Then he realized it was Taka. She’d picked up a stone and lobbed it high into the air. She must have practised at the annual New Year’s shuttlecock game, Nobu thought, or learned to throw at that modern school of hers. She tossed another and it rattled against the wall of the house opposite.

The men started and their heads jerked towards the sounds. Nobu grinned to himself. Trust Sakurai to fall for that old trick.

Taka was smiling triumphantly. He’d never seen her so beautiful. It occurred to him how extraordinary it was to be together not in Tokyo but Satsuma, of all places, and in wartime. The gentle young woman he’d thought he knew so well turned out to have a core of iron.

‘We need reinforcements,’ Sato shouted. His voice was shaking. ‘It’s a whole nest of them.’

‘Nah, it’s only one, plus a woman,’ Sakurai yelled back, but he sounded uncertain.

‘We’re sticking our heads in a hornets’ nest. They’ll be all over us.’

Suddenly a stone flew out of nowhere and hit Sakurai on the shoulder, then bounced off and rattled across the ground. The big man yelped and jumped back. Nobu stared around in bewilderment. Another stone hit Sato’s shoulder and a third smashed into Sakurai’s leg. He hopped about, cursing. The soldiers raised their
rifles
and shot wildly, peppering hedges and trees, sending flocks of birds darkening the sky, pocking the walls of the houses and bringing down clumps of thatch, but they hadn’t made the smallest headway against their invisible assailants. There were stones flying from every direction.

Nobu was loading and firing as fast as he could, sending bullets screaming past the men’s faces. Taka had her hands over her ears. The noise was deafening.

Then there was a bang from the house opposite Nobu’s hiding place and a bullet tore past the soldiers and lodged in a tree trunk. They leapt back and stared around, gawping in confusion. One of the conscripts pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it. ‘We give up,’ he bawled. The three turned and fled, churning up clouds of dust behind them.

Nobu grinned from ear to ear. It was locals who’d been in hiding. They’d come out of their lairs to defend their fellow Satsuma – him and Taka. Unless Sakurai and Sato were lucky they’d be wounded, maybe killed. It flashed through his mind that he ought to help them; but they’d never been friends to him and in any case, if he did help them, he’d be dead himself. The main thing was, he wasn’t going to desert Taka, no matter what.

Another stone hit Sato on the leg. He was limping now. He stared around, as pale and hollow-eyed as a ghost, then he and Sakurai turned and stumbled off.

Nobu’s heart was pounding hard still and his ears were ringing. Everything had happened so fast, there’d been no time to think. He’d protected Taka, he hadn’t done anything he need be ashamed of; nobody had even been hurt. But he knew this was just a first taste of war. Soon he’d be swept up in the real thing and there’d be no quarter for him or anyone.

‘If they’d come any closer I would have hacked them down with my halberd,’ Taka said quietly, brushing twigs from his hair. He nodded. Women had no need to know about war. It made his heart ache to see her, her face flushed with excitement, her eyes shining. Her hair had come loose and was hanging round her face
in
glossy strands. All too soon their time together would be over and he’d be back in the harsh world of the army.

People crowded out, filling the narrow lane, lobbing rocks after the fleeing figures. ‘Call yourselves soldiers? Go tell your generals to leave the Satsuma alone.’ An old man holding a rifle took a pot shot, making the retreating soldiers skip and jump.

Nobu unhitched his robe and pulled it down to hide his spats and he and Taka shook the dirt and leaves from their clothes and pushed open the gate.

The people outside were small and thin with nut-brown faces, dressed in traditional style, as if modern Tokyo didn’t exist. There were thin-cheeked women in baggy trousers and indigo work jackets, snotty-nosed barefoot children, gnarled war veterans with missing arms or legs and an old man with a couple of holes in his face instead of a nose. They had all been unable to go with the army or even flee. But although they were farmers and country dwellers, they were not afraid. They were a clan of warriors, ready to take on the enemy if need be.

They were all brothers-in-arms now, no one was suspicious of him and Taka. Nevertheless Nobu kept his mouth shut. It was best to play dumb. He didn’t want anyone to pick up on his Aizu accent. Taka was obviously well spoken and well bred and Nobu, as he knew, was dirty and dishevelled with his sleeves stinking of river water and his uniform bulging through Eijiro’s crumpled cotton gown. These people would probably think that she was the samurai mistress and he her servant.

Taka stepped forward, bowing and smiling. She stood a head above most of these country dwellers. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said. ‘You saved us.’

A child with the front of his hair tied in an old-fashioned forelock twisted his mouth into a ferocious scowl. ‘We showed them what the Satsuma are made of,’ he piped in the local brogue.

‘Too bad we didn’t hit one, we could have kept him as a hostage,’ said the old man, leaning on his rifle.

‘That’ll show them,’ mumbled the man with no nose. ‘Think
they
can march into our city and just take over, go anywhere they like.’

‘That’s right, Granddad,’ answered a chorus of voices.

Men, women and children gathered eagerly around Taka, bombarding her with questions. ‘Have you come from the city? What’s the news? So it wasn’t just a rumour, the army really has come. Headed for the mountains, are you?’

‘We’re on our way to the Kitaoka house.’ The people looked at each other and beamed, bowing low at the name.

A woman hobbled forward, her back so bent her face was nearly on the ground. She reached out an arthritic hand and stroked Taka’s sleeve, rubbing the fabric between twisted old fingers, and gave an appreciative rumble from deep in her throat. ‘Family, are you?’ she croaked.

Taka nodded shyly.

‘There was a lady passed this way just yesterday, isn’t that right?’ Other women with crumpled, faded faces pushed forward, nodding solemnly. The birds had settled back in the trees and were twittering again, more loudly than ever.

‘A lady?’ Nobu heard the hesitation in Taka’s voice. ‘Just one?’

‘No, three. Grand ladies, Tokyo types. Geishas, if you ask me. Don’t see ladies like that down this way very often, not ever, in fact.’

Taka looked for Nobu and their eyes met. Her mother. So they were on the right path. He could feel her reluctance now they were so close. She hadn’t wanted to go to Madame Kitaoka’s in the first place, she didn’t know what she would find there or even whether she would be welcome, and she didn’t want to say goodbye to him.

But he had a war to fight. There could never be any other woman, that went without saying. She was everything he’d ever wanted. But there was also work to be done. He needed to deliver her to safety and be on his way.

‘We’ll take you, if you like,’ the women volunteered.

‘We can’t ask you to do that. Just tell us where to go.’

‘Masa of Bamboo Village, we call him. He’s a farmer, our Masa, he likes ploughing, digging, carrying nightsoil. Go back to the main road and look for the second lane on your right. Masa’s house is towards the hills. There’s no one there now, mind. Well, there might be a watchman still, you can ask him where they’ve gone.’

35

‘KITAOKA. BAMBOO HOUSE’
. The nameplate was so small they almost walked straight past it.

Taka had stopped to admire a black pine that stretched gnarled branches above the road, so perfectly shaped it could have been in an ink painting. Pale knobbly pine blossoms were scattered across the ground. She stood on tiptoe, pulled down a branch and rubbed the spiky needles between her fingers. Whenever she smelt that sharp fresh scent she would remember this day, she thought.

They were nearly in the hills. Houses hidden behind hedgerows looked out over a patchwork of rice, vegetable and millet plantations, smelling of rising sap and fresh leaves and newly turned earth, with the volcano misty in the distance. Rice shoots poked like brilliant green spears from the dazzling water that flooded the fields, but there were no people working there. Bullfrogs croaked and a heron flapped its white wings and settled on a bank between the fields.

They walked hand in hand, stopping at each gate to check the nameplate.

Taka’s heart was still pounding. She’d never imagined that if she was attacked she’d fight, not flee. She’d never felt so alive. But now it was all over she was shaking. She heard explosions in her ears, felt bullets screaming past her face, saw smoke, smelt gunpowder. Now it was over, now she felt afraid – not for herself but for Nobu and her father, who must somehow survive day after day of dreadful battles far worse than this.

She clenched her fists, her hands clammy with fear. She wished there was more she could do than just hope and pray they would come back alive.

‘This is it,’ said Nobu. She read the tiny characters on the nameplate and her eyes filled with tears.

She’d almost forgotten where they were going. Now she was horribly aware of how uncertain it all was. She had no idea whether Madame Kitaoka or her mother would be there, or how Madame Kitaoka would receive her. Once inside this gate, she’d be in another world, which Nobu was not – could not be – a part of. It was more than she could bear.

‘Maybe there’s no one here …’ Maybe they’d run away together after all. They could disappear into the hills and no one would ever find them. The thought was like a ray of sunshine. Their eyes met and she wondered if Nobu was thinking the same. But it could never be. Like birds that flocked, like bees that swarmed, they were part of their clans. They couldn’t exist without them.

Nobu drew himself up. ‘I’m a soldier of the Imperial Army and this is General Kitaoka’s house. I’ll wait at the gate till you’re settled.’ She could see him stiffening, growing more reserved, now that the time to part was near.

‘Please come with me. If there’s a watchman, he’ll just think you’re my servant.’

He’d pulled his obi tighter but the uniform underneath still made Eijiro’s once-smart kimono look crumpled and baggy; and he’d taken off his straw hat, revealing his military crop.

The gate of her father’s house was faded and rickety with a sun-bleached straw roof. It creaked in its grooves but slid straight open. Inside was a hedge-lined path with bamboo groves and vegetable gardens behind. But there was no one ploughing or digging the vegetables. A hoe and some bamboo baskets lay discarded to one side, along with a hod still reeking of nightsoil – human excrement used as fertilizer.

They made their way along the path past thickets of swaying
bamboo
to a cluster of steep-roofed houses with earthen walls and irises growing from the thatch. So this was where her father lived. Like him, the buildings were solid, unpretentious, down-to-earth. There were strings of bright orange persimmons and fat white radishes hanging from the eaves and trays of mulberry leaves drying on the ground.

There was no grand front entrance, just verandas running around the buildings. It was a modest place, a retreat, very different from the Tokyo mansion where Taka had lived.

They passed a well with a tiled roof, a whitewashed rice storehouse and a building that looked like a kitchen. There was a man squatting on his haunches there, skinny brown arms resting on his knees.

Taka approached him timidly. ‘Excuse me …’

He took a long draw of his pipe, puffed out a cloud of smoke and looked up.

‘First people I’ve seen all day.’ He had a broad leathery face and more gaps than teeth in his mouth. ‘Heard a lot of noise a while ago. Can’t be fireworks, thinks I, not at this time of year. Must be the army in town. Madame’s gone, they’ve all gone. Left as soon as we heard the soldiers were coming. Not that anyone would do Madame any harm but it’s better to be safe. What have you got there?’

Taka took off her hat, laid her bundle on the veranda and untied it. The pile of oranges and sweet potatoes glowed like gold in the afternoon sun. The watchman helped himself to an orange.

‘You must be the master’s daughter,’ he said, peeling it neatly so the skin opened out into petals. ‘You’ve got something of him in your face. Lucky you didn’t inherit his girth, or your mother’s either.’

Taka laughed. ‘So my mother came?’

The watchman eased the segments apart, lifted one out and put it in his mouth. ‘She went with Madame. She said you’d turn up in the end. Told me to take you up there. It’s not that far, one
ri
or so, through the valley beside the river, then up a mountain
track
. There’s a bit of a climb. We can take horses most of the way.’ He narrowed his eyes and glanced at Nobu, squatting silently beside the veranda.