Uzaemon, irritated by her presumption, walks on.

‘Sir,’ says Yohei, ‘if you’re feeling unsteady again, I could-’

‘Don’t fuss like a woman: the foreign wine disagreed with me.’

The foreign wine, Uzaemon thinks, on top of the surgical procedure.

‘Reports of my momentary lapse,’ he tells Yohei, ‘would worry Father.’

‘He’ll not hear it from my lips, sir.’

They pass through the ward-gate: the warden’s son bows to one of the neighbourhood’s most important residents. Uzaemon returns a brisk nod, and thinks, Nearly home. The prospect does not bring much comfort.

‘Might Ogawa-sama be generous enough to spare a little time?’

Waiting for his gate to be opened, Uzaemon hears an elderly voice.

A bent-backed mountain woman climbs from the thicket by the stream.

‘By what right,’ Yohei obstructs her, ‘do you use my master’s name?’

The servant Kiyoshichi opens the Ogawa gates from inside. He sees the mountain woman and explains, ‘Sir, this feeble-minded creature knocked at the side door earlier, asking to speak with Interpreter Ogawa the Younger. I bade the crazed old crow be gone but, as Sir can see…’

Her weathered face, framed by a hat and straw coat, lacks the seasoned beggar’s cunning. ‘We have a friend in common, Ogawa-sama.’

‘Enough, Grandmother,’ Kiyoshichi takes her arm. ‘Time for you to go home.’

He checks with Uzaemon who mouths, ‘Gently.’

‘The ward-gate is this way.’

‘But Kurozane is three days away, young man, on my old legs, and-’

‘The sooner you start back home, then, the better, don’t you think?’

Uzaemon steps through the Ogawa gate and crosses the sunless stone garden where only lichen thrives on the ailing shrubs. Saiji, his father’s gaunt and bird-faced manservant, slides opens the door to the Main House from inside: a beat before Yohei can open it from the outside. ‘Welcome home, sir.’ The servants are jostling for position ahead of the day when their master is not Ogawa Mimasaku but Ogawa Uzaemon. ‘The senior master is asleep in his room, sir; and Sir’s wife is suffering from a headache. Sir’s mother is nursing her.’

So my wife wants to be alone, thinks Uzaemon, but Mother won’t let her.

The new maid appears with slippers, warm water and a towel.

‘Light a fire in the library,’ he tells the maid, intending to write up his lithotomy notes. If I am working, he hopes, Mother and my wife may keep their distance.

‘Prepare tea for the master,’ Yohei tells the maid. ‘Not too strong.’

Saiji and Yohei wait to see whom the Master-in-Waiting chooses to attend him.

‘Attend to…’ Uzaemon sighs ‘… whatever needs attending to. Both of you.’

He walks down the cold, waxed corridor, hearing Yohei and Saiji blame each other for the master’s bad mood. Their bickering has a marital familiarity, and Uzaemon suspects they share more than a room at night. Gaining the sanctuary of the library, he shuts the door on the cheerless household, the mountain madwoman, the Christmas banquet’s babble and his ignominious exit, and sits at his writing-table. His calves ache. He enjoys scraping his ink-stone, mixing a few drops of water and dipping his brush. The precious books and Chinese scrolls sit on the oaken shelves. He remembers his awe at entering the library of Ogawa Mimasaku fifteen years ago, never dreaming then that he might one day be adopted by its master; much less become its master.

Be less ambitious, he warns the younger Uzaemon, and more content.

Catching his eye on the nearest shelf is de Zoet’s Wealth of Nations.

Uzaemon marshals his memories of the lithotomy.

There is a knock: the servant Kiyoshichi slides open the door.

‘The weak-witted creature shan’t be troubling us again, sir.’

Uzaemon needs a moment to make sense of the sentence. ‘Good. Her family should be told what a nuisance she is making of herself.’

‘I asked the warden’s son to do so, sir, but he didn’t know her.’

‘Then she might be from… Kurozaka, was it?’

‘ “Kurozane”, begging sir’s pardon. I believe it’s a small town on the Ariake Sea Road, in Kyôga Domain.’

The name sounds familiar. Perhaps Abbot Enomoto mentioned it once.

‘Did she say what her business with me was about?’

‘ “A private matter” was all she said, sir, and that she was an herbalist.’

‘Any addled crone able to brew fennel calls herself an herbalist.’

‘Indeed, sir. Perhaps she heard about the house’s ailments, and wanted to peddle some miracle cure. She deserves a beating, really, but her age…’

The new maid enters with a bucket of coals. Because of the cold afternoon, perhaps, she has put on a white headscarf. A detail from Orito’s ninth or tenth letter comes back to Uzaemon. ‘The Herbalist of Kurozane,’ it read, ‘lives at the foot of Mount Shiranui, in an ancient mountain hut, with goats, chickens and a dog…’

The floor tilts. ‘Fetch her back.’ Uzaemon hardly knows his voice.

Kiyoshichi and the maid look at their master in surprise, then one another.

‘Run after the herbalist of Kurozane – that mountain woman. Fetch her back.’

The astonished servant is unsure whether to trust his ears.

First I faint on Dejima, Uzaemon realises how oddly he is behaving, and now this fickleness over a beggar. ‘When I prayed for Father at the temple, a priest suggested that the sickness may be due to a – to a want of charity in the Ogawa household, and that the gods would send a – an opportunity to make amends.’

Kiyoshichi doubts that the gods employ such malodorous messengers.

Uzaemon claps. ‘Don’t make me ask you again, Kiyoshichi!’

‘You are Otane,’ begins Uzaemon, wondering whether to give her an honorific title, ‘Otane-san, the herbalist of Kurozane. Earlier, outside, I did not understand…’

The old woman sits like a curled-up wren. Her eyes are sharp and clear.

Uzaemon dismisses the servants. ‘I apologise for not listening to you.’

Otane accepts her due deference but says nothing, yet.

‘It is two days’ journey from Kyôga Domain. Did you sleep at an inn?’

‘The journey had to be made, and now I am here.’

‘Miss Aibagawa always spoke of Otane-san with great respect.’

‘On her second visit to Kurozane,’ her Kyôga dialect carries an earthy dignity, ‘Miss Aibagawa spoke about Interpreter Ogawa in a similar fashion.’

Her feet may be sore, thinks Uzaemon, but she knows how to kick. ‘The groom who marries according to his heart is a rare man. I had to marry according to the dictates of my family. It is the way of the world.’

‘Miss Aibagawa’s visits are three treasures of my life. Despite our great difference in rank, she was, and remains, a precious daughter to me.’

‘I understand Kurozane is at the foot of the trail that leads up Mount Shiranui. Is it possible,’ Uzaemon can endure hope no longer, ‘you have met her, since she entered the Shrine?’

Otane’s face is a bitter negative. ‘All contact is forbidden. Twice yearly I take medicines to the Shrine’s doctor, Master Suzaku, at the Gatehouse. But no lay person is permitted further, unless invited by Master Genmu or Lord Abbot Enomoto. Least of all-’

The door slides open, and tea is brought in by Uzaemon’s mother’s maid.

Mother wasted no time, Uzaemon registers, in sending her spy along.

Otane bows as she receives the tea on a walnut-wood tray.

The maid departs for a thorough interrogation.

‘Least of all,’ continues Otane, ‘an old herb-gatherer.’ She wraps her bowl of tea with her medicine-stained bony fingers. ‘No, it is not a message from Miss Aibagawa I bring but… Well, I will come to this shortly. Some weeks ago, on the night of first snow, a visitor sought shelter in my cottage. He was a young acolyte from Mount Shiranui Shrine. He had run away.’

Yohei’s blurred outline crosses behind the snow-lit paper window.