The villagers speculate, but they know better than to hunt for answers. They are proud of their association with the reclusive monastery, and are paid for provisioning it; to ask too many questions would be to bite the hand of a generous donor. The monks probably are monks, Otane hopes, and the Sisters live as nuns…

She hears the ancient hush of falling snow.

‘No,’ Otane tells her cat. ‘All we can do is ask Our Lady to protect her.’

The wooden box-niche set into the mud-and-bamboo wall resembles an ordinary cottage altar-alcove, housing the death-name tablets of Otane’s parents and a chipped vase holding a few green sprigs. After checking the bolt on the door twice, however, Otane removes the vase and slides up the back panel. In this small and secret space stands the true treasure of Otane’s cottage and bloodline: a white-glazed, blue-veiled, dirt-cracked statuette of Maria-sama, the Mother of Iesu-sama and Empress of Heaven, crafted long ago to resemble Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. She holds an infant in her arms. Otane’s grandfather’s grandfather, the story goes, received her from a Holy Saint named Xavier who sailed to Japan from Paradise on a magical flying boat pulled by golden swans.

Otane kneels on painful knees with an acorn rosary around her hands.

‘ “Holy Maria-sama, Mother of Adan and Ewa, who stole Deusu-dono’s sacred persimmon; Maria-sama, Mother of Pappa Maruji, with his six sons in six canoes, who survived the great flood that cleansed all lands; Maria, Mother of Iesu-sama, who was crucified for four hundred silver coins; Maria-sama, hear my-” ’

Was that a twig snapping, Otane holds her breath, under a man’s foot?

Most of Kurozane’s oldest ten or twelve families are, like Otane’s, Hidden Christians, but vigilance must be constant. Her silver hair would grant her no clemency if her beliefs were ever exposed; only apostasy and the naming of other followers might transmute death into exile, but then San Peitoro and San Pauro would turn her away from the Gates of Paradise, and when seawater turns to oil and the world burns, she would fall into that Hell called Benbô.

The herbalist is confident that nobody is outside. ‘Virgin Mother, it’s Otane of Kurozane. Once again, this old woman begs Her Ladyship to watch over Miss Aibagawa in the Shiranui Shrine; and keep her safe from illness; and ward off bad spirits and… and dangerous men. Please give back what has been taken from her.’

Not one rumour, Otane thinks, ever told of a young nun being set free.

‘But if this old woman is asking too much of Maria-sama…’

The stiffness in Otane’s knees is spreading to her hips and ankles.

‘… please tell Miss Aibagawa that her friend, Otane of Kurozane, is thinking-’

Something strikes the door. Otane gasps. The dog is on his feet, growling…

Otane slides down the wooden screen as a second blow strikes.

The dog is barking now. She hears a man’s voice. She arranges the alcove.

At the third knock, she walks to the door and calls out, ‘There is nothing to steal here.’

‘Is this,’ a frail man’s voice replies, ‘the house of Otane the herbalist?’

‘May I ask my honourable visitor to name himself, at this late hour?’

‘Jiritsu of Akatokiyamu,’ says the visitor, ‘is how I was called…’

Otane is surprised to recognise the name of Master Suzaku’s acolyte.

Might Maria-sama, she wonders, have a hand in this?

‘We meet at the shrine’s gatehouse,’ says the voice, ‘twice a year.’

She opens the door to a snow-covered figure wrapped in thick mountain clothing and a bamboo hat. He stumbles over her threshold, and snow swirls in. ‘Sit by the fire, Acolyte.’ Otane barges the door shut. ‘It’s a bad night.’ She guides him to a log-stool.

With effort, he unfastens his hat, hood and mountain boot-bindings.

He is exhausted, his face is taut, and his eyes are not of this world.

Questions can come later, Otane thinks. First, he must be warmed up.

She pours some tea and closes his frozen fingers around the bowl.

She unclasps the monk’s damp robe and wraps her woollen shawl around him.

His throat muscles make a grinding noise as he drinks.

Perhaps he was gathering plants, Otane wonders, or meditating in a cave.

She sets about heating the remains of the soup. They do not speak.

‘I fled Mount Shiranui,’ announces Jiritsu, coming abruptly to. ‘I broke my Oath.’

Otane is astonished, but a wrong word now might silence him.

‘My hand, this hand, my brush: they knew, before I did.’

She grinds some yogi root, waiting for words that make sense.

‘I accepted the – the Deathless Way, but its truer name is “evil”.’

The fire snaps, the animals breathe, the snow is falling.

Jiritsu coughs, as if winded. ‘She sees so far! So very, very far… My father was a tobacco hawker, and gambler, around Sakai. We were just a rung above the outcasts… and one night the cards went badly and he sold me to a tanner. An untouchable. I lost my name and slept over the slaughterhouse. For years, for years, I slit horses’ throats to earn my board. Slit… slit… slit. What the tanners’ sons did to me, I… I… I… longed for someone to slit my throat. Come winter, boiling bones into glue was the only warmth. Come summer, the flies got into your eyes, your mouth, and we scraped up the dried blood and oily shit to mix it with Ezo seaweed, for fertiliser. Hell shall smell of that place…’

The roof-timbers of the cottage creak. Snow is piling up.

‘One New Year’s Day I climbed over the wall closing the eta village and ran away to Osaka, but the tanner sent two men to fetch me back. They underestimated my skill with knives. No man saw, but She saw. She drew me… day by rumour by crossroads by dream by month by hook, She urged me west, west, west… across the straits to Hizen Domain, to Kyôga Domain… and up…’ Jiritsu looks at the ceiling, perhaps towards the summit of the mountain.

‘Does Acolyte-sama,’ Otane grinds her pestle, ‘refer to someone at the Shrine?’

‘They are all,’ Jiritsu stares through her, ‘as a saw is to a carpenter.’

‘Then this foolish old crone doesn’t understand who “She” may be.’

Tears sprout in Jiritsu’s eyes. ‘Are we no more than the totality of our acts?’

Otane decides to be direct. ‘Acolyte-sama: in the shrine on Mount Shiranui, did you see Miss Aibagawa?’

He blinks and sees more clearly. ‘The Newest Sister. Yes.’

‘Is she…’ now Otane wonders what to ask ‘… is she well?’

He makes a deep sad purr. ‘The horses knew I was going to kill them.’

‘How is Miss Aibagawa…’ Otane’s mortar and pestle fall still ‘… treated?’

‘If She hears,’ Jiritsu drifts away again, ‘She shall poke his finger through my heart… tomorrow, I shall… speak of… of that place – but her hearing is sharper at night. Then I am bound for Nagasaki. I… I… I… I…’

Ginger for his circulation, Otane goes to her cabinet, feverfew for delirium.

‘My hand, my brush: they knew before I did.’ Jiritsu’s wan voice follows her. ‘Three nights ago, but it may be three ages, I was in the Scriptorium, at work at a letter from a Gift. The letters are a lesser wrong, “Acts of Compassion”, Genmu says… but… but I left myself, and upon my return, my hand, my brush, had written… had written out…’ he whispers and cringes ‘… I had written out the Twelve Creeds. Black ink on white parchment! Merely to utter them is a profanity, except for Master Genmu and the Lord Abbot, but to record them, so a layman’s eyes might read… She must have been occupied elsewhere or she would have killed me on the spot. Master Yôten passed by, inches behind me… Not moving, I read the Twelve Creeds, and saw, for the first time… the slaughterhouses of Sakai are a pleasure garden in comparison.’

Otane understands little, grates ginger, and her heart feels cold.