She went to the stone bridge at least once a week to take offerings to her father and to listen to his voice in the icy water as the tide pulled it through the arches. One bleak afternoon, when the light was fading fast, she stepped from her palanquin and walked to the center of the bridge, her maid following her with a red umbrella, for a few flakes of snow were falling.
The tide prevented ice from forming on the surface of the river, but the ground on the banks was frozen hard and the rushes were stiff with frost and frozen snow. Someone had placed winter oranges in front of the stone, and they were also frozen solid, embedded in the crusted snow, tiny ice particles glinting against their bright color in the last of the light.
She took a flask of wine from the maid and poured it into a cup, tipped a few drops out onto the ground and drank the rest herself. The wind off the water brought tears to her eyes, and she allowed herself to weep for a few moments, for her father, for herself, in their imprisonment.
She could not help being aware of the picture it must make-the red umbrella, the woman bent over in grief-and wished somehow Shigeru might be watching her while she was unaware of his gaze.
As she clapped her hands and bowed to her father’s spirit, she realized that someone was watching her from the other side of the bridge. There were a few people in the streets, hurrying home before nightfall, heads bent against the snow, which was falling more heavily now. One or two of them glanced at Akane and called out a respectful greeting, but none of them lingered, except this one man.
As she returned to the palanquin, he crossed the street and walked beside her for the last few paces. She stopped and looked directly at him; she did not know his name but recognized him as one of Masahiro’s retainers. She felt the sudden thud in the pulse of throat and temple as her heart seemed to plummet.
“Lady Akane,” the man said. “Lord Masahiro sends you his greetings.”
“I have nothing to say to him,” she replied hastily.
“He has a request to make of you. He instructed me to give you this.” He drew a small package from his sleeve, wrapped in an ivory-and-purple-colored cloth.
She hesitated for a moment, then took it abruptly and handed it to the maid. The man bowed to her and walked away.
“Let us hurry home,” Akane said. “It is so cold.” She was indeed chilled to the bone.
By the time they arrived at the house, night had already fallen. The wind soughed in the pine trees, and a dull moaning came from the waves on the beach. Suddenly Akane was sick of winter, sick of the endless snow and the cold. She gazed briefly around the colorless garden. Surely the plum, at least, would be in blossom? But the branches were still dark-the only whiteness snow and frost. She hurried into the house, calling for the maids to bring braziers and more lamps. She craved light and warmth, sunshine, color, and flowers.
When she was a little warmer, she told the girl to bring Masahiro’s package. She untied the knot and slipped the silk wrapping away. Inside was a fan: she had seen similar ones at Haruna’s establishment. It was exquisitely painted: on one side, a woman in a spring robe gazed at wisteria flowers; on the other side, the robe had fallen open-the scene was less delicate.
She was not shocked by the fan. The painting was beautifully executed and pleasingly erotic in mood. At any other time she would have been thrilled with this gift. The artist was well known and widely admired; the fans were collected avidly: they were extremely expensive. It was not something she wanted to receive from a man like Masahiro, but she could not bring herself to send it back or to throw it away. She wrapped it up again and told the maid to put it in the storeroom. She could not help thinking that she might have need of such treasures one day, when Shigeru tired of her or if he died…
Then she took up the letter that came with the present.
Masahiro wrote in couched sentences: an inquiry after her health, a desire to hear her news, comments about the harsh weather and how he worried for his children when there was so much sickness around, a warmly expressed hope that they might have the pleasure of meeting soon, and his most humble and heartfelt regards to his nephew. She told the maid to bring the charcoal brazier outside into the garden, and wrapping herself in a silky fur robe, she tore the letter up and fed it piece by piece into the flames. The garden seemed full of sadness and ghosts; a sleety snow was falling against the smoke. Akane felt haunted by her dead lover and by her own sorcery. The charms by which she had closed Moe’s womb lay a few paces from her, buried in the frozen ground. Hayato, too, lay in the cold earth, along with the children they might have had together.
Even when the letter had been reduced to ash, indistinguishable from the sleet, she felt its veiled hypocritical phrases coil around her heart.
What did Lord Masahiro really want? Were he and his brother seriously seeking to usurp Shigeru? Or were his actions merely those of a malicious and inquisitive man who, deprived of real power, liked to play these spiteful games? She read his message without difficulty: the references to “news” and “children” were all too clear. She wished she had not met the boys: their faces with their smooth childish skin and clear eyes rose before her, as demanding as their father’s ghost. They had found their way into her heart; she could not sacrifice them now.
She wondered if she should tell Shigeru of his uncle’s demands but feared too much losing his good opinion of her or, worse, losing him altogether. If he suspected her of spying on him or of compromising him in any way, she knew he would stop seeing her; and now his love and need for her were diminishing. She would be shamed in front of the whole city; she would never recover. I must continue to play them both, she thought. It should not be too hard: they are only men, after all.
When she returned inside, she was shivering, and it took a long time to get warm.
THROUGHOUT THE WINTER she delivered snippets to Masahiro that she thought might keep him interested. Some she made up; some were loosely based on what she gleaned from Shigeru. None, she thought, was of any great importance.
28
Muto Shizuka spent the winter in the southern town of Kumamoto with Arai Daiichi, the eldest son of the clan lord. She could have seen herself openly acknowledged as Arai’s mistress, for it was said he was so infatuated with her that he would deny her nothing, but beneath her lively, charming exterior, she was secretive by nature as well as by upbringing and training, and she preferred to keep the relationship hidden.
Her father had died when she was twelve years old, and her mother lived with relatives in Kumamoto, a merchant family by the name of Kikuta whom the Arai knew mostly as moneylenders. Her father had been the eldest son of a Yamagata family called Muto, and Shizuka was very close to his relatives, writing to them almost every week and often sending gifts. She told Arai stories about this family, embroidering them with warmth and humor, entertaining him with their petty feuds and follies, until he felt he almost lived among them. What he did not know was that the Kikuta and the Muto were the two most important families of the Tribe.
Like most of the warrior class, Arai knew very little about the other castes that made up the society of the Three Countries. Farmers and peasants worked the land and provided warrior families with rice and other basic supplies; they were usually easy enough to handle, having no fighting skills and very little courage. Occasionally starvation made them desperate enough to riot, but it also weakened them, and unrest was usually quelled without difficulty. Merchants were even more despicable than peasants, since they lived and grew fat on other people’s labor, but they seemed to become more essential every season, producing foodstuffs, wine, oil, and soybean paste as well as many luxuries that added to the delights of life-fine clothing, lacquered boxes and dishes, fans and bowls-and importing expensive and exotic items from the mainland or from distant islands to the south: spices for cooking, herbs for medicine, gold leaf and golden thread, dyes, perfumes, and incense.