Toshiko saw her brother’s face fall, but she hardened her heart to his disappointment.  It bore no comparison to her despair.

Ghosts

When Secretary Tameyazu reported the visit of the Obas, the Emperor was at his desk.

The doors were open to the veranda and the private courtyard beyond. It had been an unusually dry and hot summer, and everyone hoped for rain.  In the courtyard grew a cherry tree that servants watered regularly.  Even with such care the tree’s leaves were already turning yellow and falling to the gravel below.  The Emperor’s eyes frequently looked past it to the blue mountains in the distance, and at a bank of dark clouds building another, more threatening, mountain range in the sky.

He made a face at Tameyazu’s words and told him he could not see them.  The matter was trivial, especially at the moment.  More evil omens had been reported by the Bureau of Divination.  There was the fear of drought and a poor harvest.  Bad harvests brought starvation and disease to the people.  He had been thinking about making another pilgrimage to the gods of Kumano to ask for rain.

The problem with Tameyazu’s news was that it reminded him of an embarrassing private matter.  He had sent for the girl on a whim.  It had been a momentary weakness, like the one that had caused him to bed the shirabyoshi Kane years ago.  This case was worse, because a more unsuitable background for an imperial concubine could hardly be imagined.  His passion for gathering every last one of the songs of his people for his collection had piqued his curiosity, and her appearance on horseback had blinded him to her father’s greed.  It had all been lies, of course, and certain to be found out, but her mercenary family hoped that by then his lust for her young body would outweigh any disappointment in her lack of talent.  He should have sent her home months ago.

Women had always caused him regrets.

His own mother had only summoned him to make certain that his education progressed adequately. Whenever he faltered in his answers, she would leave with a worried frown on her face.  Like any child, he had wished to please her because he thought it would gain him affection.  To no avail.  His mother had remained distant.

He had become very fond of his father’s other, much younger, consort.  She, in turn, had made much of him in the way young girls do with children, being carelessly affectionate while enjoying his childish games as she made her own painful adjustment to her new position.

He had known nothing of the imperial bedchamber in those days and barely discerned that men and women lived in worlds as different as day and night.  Men forged their destinies by the light of day.  Women pursued theirs under cover of darkness.  He had spent much of his childhood in the feminine darkness of the women’s quarters and emerged only slowly and partially into the light.  During his days in the inner apartments of various palaces, he had seen the sun only rarely.  He and his female guardians were protected from the eyes of the world by innumerable barriers of shutters, doors, curtains, shades, screens, and human attendants.  Their inner world was dimly lit by candles, oil lamps, and torches.  In the winter time, the wooden doors were closed against the icy wind, and in the summer only thin golden bars of sunlight pierced the horizontal shutters and squeezed past curtain stands.

He mused on that past, recalling the intense sensation of lying curled up in the arms of one of the women, nearly dizzy with her warmth and softness and the scent of her hair and clothing, watching the dust motes dancing on rays of light, tiny creatures transformed into specks of golden radiance as they ascended toward a distant sun.  He had learned to desire women then in this darkness dense with perfume and the smell of female flesh and cosmetics.  Even when there was silence, the palace hissed and whispered with silks and silk-shod feet gliding across polished wooden floors, but the women were rarely silent.  They talked in high, gentle voices; they sang, they played their instruments, they laughed and wept, and sometimes they quarreled.  It had seemed to him as if the very air of the inner apartments throbbed with the pent-up emotions of the women.

It was much later that he learned he did not belong there.

*

Tameyazu returned, breaking into his master’s reminiscences.  The emperor frowned at him.  “What?”

“I told them you were busy and referred them to Lady Sanjo.  I hope I did right?”

The Emperor remembered the Obas.  “Yes.  Quite right.”  He did not want to discuss this private matter with Tameyazu.

Tameyazu bowed and retreated to his own, smaller desk, and the Emperor returned to his brooding.

*

The image of that young girl flying along the valley on the back of her coal-black horse moved his heart even now.

He had envied men like Oba because they were free to make choices an emperor could not make, and Oba’s children had seemed free as birds.  In that mood, passion had struck him like a blow.  The sight of her, astride her horse like a young male, her long hair flying behind her, had stirred something in him that he still did not fully understand.  It was not mere lust.  He had wanted her, but had wanted to possess her only so that she could stir his heart again and again.

Alas, if he had fallen in love it was with an illusion.  The real girl was no different from all the others -- perhaps more timid and, being a child, less designing, but for all that she was like one of the hollow dolls he had played with as a child.

*

Outside the room, a gust of wind drove small bits of gravel and leaves across the boards of the veranda.  The storm was coming.  The soft pattering sounds reminded him a little of rats scampering across a zither.  He smiled at the image of tiny pink feet plucking taut strings.

Tameyazu rose from behind his desk and went on soft feet to close the shutters.  The Emperor regretted the silencing of the sound but welcomed the absence of light for his private thoughts.

Not for long.  Tameyazu officiously lit candles and lamps before sitting down again.

The Emperor made another effort to read the documents in front of him.

Rats.

There had been that amusing incident of Lady Dainagon’s cat.  The Oba girl surprised him that time.

She had stood there with the battered cat in her arms, her eyes shining with mischief.  At that moment, she was not like the dolls around her.  She had made him laugh out loud, and he rarely laughed these days.

He became aware that Tameyazu was watching him and moved irritably.  What was the man staring at?  He frowned, and his secretary quickly lowered his head.

Things had been different when Shinzei had been his secretary.  There had been no secrets from him.  But they had killed Shinzei after the Heiji plot.  The Emperor raised his shoulders in the stiff brocade and shivered in spite of the brooding heat.  These days most things reminded him of death.

The Taira and Minamoto were always poised to spring at each other’s throats like mad dogs.  He thought he could hear them growling again.  It was a miracle that they had not slaughtered him and his children yet.

In all the bloody affairs of the recent past, he had learned that his imperial blood would not save his life.  Too many of his family had died too young and too conveniently.  His half-brother, the Emperor Konoe, had been only thirteen when he became blind and died.  His brother Sutoku died in exile after being manipulated into a foolish rebellion.  And who was to say that Sutoku had not been helped into the other world?  Now his own son was dead at twenty-three, leaving behind a puny babe to rule the nation, and already Chancellor Kiyomori was pressuring him to appoint his cousin Shigeko’s son crown prince.