The Samurai's Daughter (50 page)

A dark crag rose alongside it – Castle Hill. There were fiery dots there too, blazing bravely halfway up the slope. A little while earlier the watchman from the Bamboo House had come hobbling up the trail to their farmhouse at West Beppu to break the news that at dawn next day the army would attack her father and his rebel band and wipe them out. Maybe they’d fail, perhaps he’d drive them off, but none of them really believed that. At most there were only a couple of hundred rebels left and thousands upon thousands of soldiers, all armed to the teeth with the latest weapons.

Taka had rushed out straight away and climbed up to the clearing to gaze across at the hill where his camp was. It was strange and terrible to know her father was so close, yet so far away. She narrowed her eyes, imagining she might be able to see him if she peered hard enough. Gunfire rumbled like thunder through the valley, sending a jolt of fear through her with every explosion, and flashes lit the distant slopes. Then for a while it
stopped
. Bats squeaked and foxes rustled through the undergrowth and leaves shivered in the breeze.

She stared dry-eyed into the night and tried to picture her father, large and imposing, the twinkle in his eye, the ponderous way he used to speak, weighing every word. She remembered him in Tokyo, pacing the grounds with his beloved dogs, talking to the great men who gathered to pay their respects and ask his opinion, on his knees in his study in his kimono, working. Even when he’d gone to see the emperor he’d dressed like a farmer in kimono and leggings and straw sandals that he wove himself. Then she thought back to that last night, when he’d come to their house in the geisha district.

Everyone loved and respected him. He was the greatest, most principled, most honest and true man in the entire country. The emperor too had loved him. How could they send troops to kill such a man?

Every day all of them – she and her mother and everyone in the farmhouse at West Beppu – struggled to be cheerful, to keep each other’s spirits up. But there was another grief eating away inside her that she couldn’t share with anyone.

She gazed up at the sky, arching vast and mysterious above her. It was nearly dark now and the stars were beginning to twinkle. The River of Heaven swirled from one side to the other, a myriad pinpricks of light. She picked out a bright star on one side of it, then a second on the other. Every night she looked for those stars and tonight they were particularly clear – the tragic lovers, the weaver princess and the cowherd, doomed to be apart for ever except on that one day of the year, Tanabata, the seventh day of the seventh month, when the magpies built their bridge.

Nobu. She thought of him every moment of every day and every night, when she saw those stars, she prayed to the gods to keep him safe and bring him back to her. Perhaps she hadn’t prayed hard enough. Perhaps if she prayed more fervently they would listen.

She pictured his aristocratic nose, his sudden sweet smile, the intense way he looked at her. Tears sprang to her eyes and she fell
to
her knees and buried her face in her hands. Ever since he had left her standing alone at the gate of the Bamboo House, there had been silence. She’d waited and waited and heard nothing. He hadn’t written, he hadn’t sent a message. Every time the watchman came she thought he might have a letter for her, but he never did.

And the worst of it was she couldn’t even talk about it. She couldn’t confide her doubts and sadness and fear and anger to anyone. It was only alone on this hilltop that she could let her feelings out. Her shoulders heaved and she sobbed bitterly.

Why did he not write? Hideous suspicions ran through her mind. Maybe it was not that he didn’t want to be in touch; maybe that was not why she hadn’t heard. Maybe it was because he couldn’t, because something dreadful had happened. Maybe he was wounded or maybe he’d found someone else or maybe, maybe …

She dared not put her worst fear into words even in her mind, terrified that if she even thought it, it would make it happen. She groaned and pressed her forehead to the cool earth, then slowly sat up and heaved a shuddering sigh. Her whole life stretched ahead of her, bleak and empty. She dried her cheeks with her sleeves and tried to compose her face. She would have to run down the hill back to Madame Kitaoka and her mother and Aunt Kiharu. She had to smile and look cheerful, even though she’d lost everything.

But now the war was ending. Nobu had said he’d come and find her when it was over and soon – tomorrow – it would be. Then she’d know for sure. Either he would come or he wouldn’t and if he didn’t, she would know he was dead and she’d be able to mourn. Because if he was alive, even if he was dreadfully wounded, he would come, she was sure of that.

And if he did come back, she thought, he wouldn’t even recognize her. She was no longer the white-skinned young woman he remembered. Instead of full-skirted western gowns or embroidered silk kimonos, she now wore baggy hempen trousers
and
a wide-sleeved indigo-dyed jacket of coarse cotton, like a peasant. She dug and planted and harvested, she chopped wood and built fires, she could trap rabbits and pigeons and find mushrooms and wild berries and even spread nightsoil. Her soft pretty hands were calloused now and engrained with dirt. But no matter how hard they worked, none of them had enough to eat. When she looked in her mother’s tarnished mirror, she saw a hungry ghost, brown and wiry, all skin and bones and wide staring eyes. She’d become a daughter her father could be proud of, she thought ruefully. Farming was the life he loved.

The moon was rising huge and round behind Sakurajima, a haze of black ash veiling its white face. Taka tried to make out the rabbit pounding rice cakes on its surface. Two days to go, she thought, before it would be a perfect circle, like the mirror in a Shinto shrine. She remembered how they used to celebrate the harvest moon in Tokyo, admiring its reflection in the pond, writing poems and feasting on fat white yam cakes while musicians played elegant music on flutes and kotos.

This year there’d be no celebration. Here in their mountain hideout, the only lights were the menacing red dots of the army fires and the only noise was gunfire.

Booms shook the air and flashes lit up the dark hillside where her father’s camp was. The shooting had started again.

Then the guns fell silent and in the lull she thought she heard a distant unexpected sound. She held her breath and listened. Nothing. Then she caught it again.

It couldn’t be – but it was. Far away someone was playing the
biwa
.

There was no mistaking now – music, drifting across the valley through the still night, faint but clear. She heard men’s voices singing and picked out the tune – ‘The Autumn Moon’, full of sweet regret for the passing of summer. They used to sing it when her father was in Tokyo. Then she heard the thin pipe of a flute and the rhythm changed to a sword dance, wild and defiant. She leapt to her feet and laughed aloud as she realized.

It was not the soldiers in the army camp preparing for the final assault, or the people who’d started to move back to their devastated homes, anticipating the end of the war. It was not from the city at all. It was coming from Castle Hill.

Tripping over stones and roots in her haste, Taka raced back to the small thatch-roofed farmhouse halfway down the hillside. Usually there were voices talking and silhouettes of people moving about inside, but tonight it was strangely silent. Candles flickered behind the paper screens.

‘They’re playing music on Castle Hill,’ she called. ‘And dancing!’

An owl hooted and bats flitted out of the trees. It had been spring when she’d arrived and now the leaves were beginning to turn and flocks of geese had appeared, flying south.

After so many months the wooden walls and cramped rooms, the rickety sliding door and earthen-floored kitchen area had come to feel like home. She no longer noticed the woodsmoke that permeated their hair and bodies and clothes, or the hardness of the floor where they laid reed mats to sleep. She’d almost forgotten she’d ever lived anywhere else. Apart from the old watchman, they never saw a soul, as if everyone in the whole wide world had perished and they were the only ones left. They squabbled, they bickered, but they knew they needed each other to survive.

She burst through the trees and ran around to the front of the house. They were all standing outside, eight adults and seven children, their faces rapt. Taka’s half-brothers and sister – Madame Kitaoka’s three youngsters – and the children of Taka’s two aunts frowned solemnly, their small heads tilted, cupping their ears.

‘I hear music, I hear it!’ shouted Kentaro, Aunt Kiyo’s son, a four-year-old with huge eyes and a thatch of thick black hair, jumping up and down in excitement.

In the moonlight they looked like a gathering of ghosts.
Madame
Kitaoka’s skin was stretched tight over her gaunt cheeks and Aunt Fuchi and Aunt Kiyo, the wives of Taka’s father’s brothers, were bony skeletons while Uncle Seppo, the elderly calligrapher who had lived at the Bamboo House and came with them to the farm, was as bent as a dried-up old stick. Okatsu had lost her pretty plumpness and Aunt Kiharu had shrunk so much that Taka could hardly see her. Taka’s mother’s full white flesh hung loosely on her arms and belly. No one would ever guess she’d once been the famous Princess Pig, celebrated across Kyoto for her glorious round body.

Fujino had told Taka what happened when she, Aunt Kiharu and Okatsu first arrived at the Bamboo House. They’d sold the few kimonos they’d managed to bring with them from Tokyo to send the money to the Satsuma army and were all three modestly dressed, but it was perfectly obvious none the less exactly what they were – two ladies from the Kyoto pleasure quarters and their maid.

Nervous about how she’d be received, Fujino had knelt when Madame Kitaoka came out. ‘So sorry to intrude,’ she’d begun, putting her hands on the ground and bowing as low as she could. ‘I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard mention of this humble person, my worthless self. Your honourable husband once graciously …’

Madame Kitaoka seemed entirely unsurprised to see her. She bowed briskly and held up her hand. ‘Of course. You’re welcome, Sister. We are alone here, my husband has gone, all the men have gone. I’m glad to see you. You bring brightness into my life.’

That same day she’d dismissed the servants. They’d wept and begged to go along with her to the farm but she’d told them they should return home, that they’d be in danger if they stayed. Then they’d all – Madame Kitaoka, the two aunts, Uncle Seppo, Fujino, Aunt Kiharu, Okatsu and the seven children – set off for West Beppu.

Taka had arrived later that evening. The watchman had pushed open the gate and taken her to the door and she’d stood on the threshold feeling angry and resentful and utterly defeated. She’d
sworn
she would never come here, never meet Madame Kitaoka and now she had, only because she had nowhere else to go.

But Madame Kitaoka had received her graciously and she’d felt unexpectedly at peace, no longer trapped in the tiny geisha house but part of this big family with children running around. They all had the same fears, waited anxiously for the watchman to come and tell them what was happening, realized they had to work really hard just to survive. They’d buckled down at once.

Grudgingly Taka had to admit that her mother had coped better than anyone. In Kyoto and Tokyo Fujino had always behaved as if she was entirely spoilt and helpless, but the moment she’d arrived at the farm she’d taken a quick look around, seen what needed doing, tied her sleeves back and got down to work. Madame Kitaoka was the head of the house and everyone deferred to her, but Fujino made sure everything ran smoothly – precisely the division of roles one would expect of a man’s wife and his geisha.

And every day Taka climbed to the clearing at the top of the hill. She saw the smoke of battle and heard the gunfire as the rebels took the city and then as the army drove them out again. After that there had been silence, with just the wreckage of the city shimmering beneath them all through the long hot summer.

A burst of gunfire drowned the distant music. In the silence that followed they heard the defiant piping of the flute again, floating across the hills. Madame Kitaoka drew herself up. She was probably the same age as Taka’s mother but her greying hair pulled back in a severe knot made her look older. Over the months Taka had come to admire her, even to like her. She was not easy to get close to, but she had a pride, an iron in her, a refusal to be beaten down that Taka envied.

‘They’re saying goodbye,’ Madame Kitaoka said quietly. ‘They’re celebrating their last night on earth.’ A smile flitted across her pinched cheeks, the first Taka had seen in all these months. She was usually silent and self-contained but the music
had
brought her to life. ‘We’ll have a glorious last night too. We’ll build a fire on the hilltop, a huge bonfire, so they can see it across the valley. Masa knows where the farmhouse is. He’ll know it’s us.’

Taka stared at her in shock. Madame Kitaoka was supposed to be the sober, thoughtful leader of the group, yet here she was coming out with the most outrageous, ill-considered idea she’d ever heard. They were in hiding. If they lit a beacon on top of the hill, it would be a signal to the army – to everyone – that they were there. She wasn’t even sure her father would see it. How would he know they were all at West Beppu? And if he did, would he think it was a good idea to light a beacon and summon the army? She felt a great spasm of loneliness. She missed him so much. She wished he were there to tell them what to do and, looking around at the hollow faces, she could see that everyone else did too. His absence was palpable.

Besides, they didn’t have any firewood to spare. They needed it all for cooking.

She twisted her fingers in frustration and turned to her mother, silently begging her to intervene. She was young still. It was not her place to speak. But Fujino was beaming with excitement.

‘We’ll sing so loudly they’ll hear it right across the valley,’ she cried, clapping her hands. They were no longer smooth and plump but brown and bony, with broken nails, like Taka’s.