“He?” He asked, smiling more broadly at the silly girl.

To my horror, the girl raised the cat’s hind leg and said without a blush, “Oh, yes.  As you can see:  A veritable tiger of a he-cat.”

I could tell His Majesty was shocked by such country manners, because He turned to Lady Dainagon to ask, “And is he truly your lost cat?”

Lady Dainagon said softly, “Yes, sire.”

The new girl, not about to be prevented from making a complete fool of herself, said, “He purred as loud as thunder when Lady Dainagon came up to him.  But before that happened, when he first arrived, he approached Lady Sanjo and presented her with a gift.”

I gasped.  His Majesty turned to look at me.  Surely she would not go on.

She did.

“He brought Lady Sanjo the largest rat you may imagine, sire, no doubt to buy himself back into her good graces,” she announced in ringing tones, finishing up with an unmannerly peal of laughter.

For a moment we all held our breaths in horror.  Then His Majesty, always kind and gracious, deigned to join in the laughter.  He said to me, “Why, Lady Sanjo, what have you done to the poor cat to make him pay such a heavy fee to be readmitted to your presence?”

I did not know what to say.  His question came so unpleasantly close to the truth that I thought the groundskeeper must have talked and His Majesty had somehow found out that I had paid the man to drown the cat.

His Majesty left after saying a few pleasant words to the other ladies, and I slipped into my corner to calm my beating heart.  Oh, “to find shelter in some mountain village where I can sink from sight,” I thought.

The girl must go!  She is a demon, sent to torment me, yet I cannot get rid of her as long as His Majesty approves of her.  I must think what to do.  It will take time.  Patience, patience!

I spent the rest of the night “wringing my tear-drenched sleeves.”  I stared into the darkness, thinking of ways by which I might make His Majesty feel such disgust toward her that he would send her away.  Considering her crudeness of speaking openly about her visit to His Majesty’s apartment with the other ladies, she could be made to overstep the boundaries of decency quite easily and irretrievably.  But He has made me responsible for her.  If she offends, I too will be punished.

Oh, I must be cursed.

The Physician

Yamada Sadahira was raised in the South, the only son of a provincial lord who owed allegiance to the Taira clan.  During the Hogen rebellion, he became an unlikely hero at fifteen and broke with his family.

The abdicated Emperor Sutoku had taken up arms against the new emperor, and young Sadahira answered Taira Kiyomori’s call to arms because his father was too ill to come.

The war tragically pitted brother against brother and father against son, as the four most powerful families in the nation, the imperial family, the Fujiwara court nobles, and the Taira and Minamoto warrior clans chose sides.

At fifteen, Sadahira thought of battle as an adventure.  He donned his armor and rode off to the capital at the head of a contingent of Yamada soldiers.

Filled with a wild joy at the idea of winning fame, his excitement was fed by much older and more experienced warriors who treated him with respect because he commanded a hundred mounted fighters and another hundred foot soldiers.  Never mind that he was a mere boy who had never fought, never killed a man, never handled a sword with any kind of expertise.  It did not matter.  He was a Yamada and represented his house.

Sadahira’s moment of glory came unexpectedly and with unexpected results.

The abdicated emperor and his supporters were holed up in the Shirakawa palace across the Kamo River from the imperial palace.  During a night of frantic meetings, the reigning emperor and his Taira and Minamoto generals decided that they must attack quickly and force a decision.  In the pre-dawn hours, Sadahira set out with the rest of their army.  He wore his father’s fine armor, carried his best bow (he was quite a good archer), and rode his father’s big black stallion.

When they were within shouting distance of the west gate of the Shirakawa Palace, they delivered a series of challenges to the enemy.  Each of the commanders rode up, stopped a small distance from the gate, and called out his offer to fight any man who thought himself good enough.  For a while these challenges went unanswered.  The enemy refused to engage.  Eventually,  Sadahira took his turn.  He spurred the great black horse and charged toward the gate.  Reining in in a cloud of dust, his heart pounding with pride, he announced his name and descent and delivered his challenge.

At fifteen, Sadahira’s voice had not quite changed, and when he demanded that one of rebel warriors meet him in single combat, the answer from within the walls was a burst of laughter.  Shaking with humiliation at this insult, Sadahira galloped closer and called out his challenge again.  This brought more laughter, as well as shouts that Lord Kiyomori must be a coward if he sent babies to fight his battle.

Sadahira wept with fury and shame as he turned his horse to ride back.

But behind him the laughter stopped and the gates creaked open.  Through the

gate rode a single warrior.  He wore armor braided with grass green silk over a blue-patterned robe and gripped a black-lacquered bow.  Walking his bay horse forward, he watched the boy through the slits in his helmet.  Then he stopped.

Half-blinded by tears, Sadahira turned back and placed an arrow into the groove of his bow.  “Please, Lord Hachiman,” he prayed.  “Please let me be steady, so I can show them.  Please make my horse hold still and make my arrow find its target.”

The distance between them was not great.

Looking past Sadahira at the gathered troops, the warrior demanded in a deep

 voice, “What sort of men would send a child to do a man’s work?”  Then he told the boy, “Go home, Sadahira.  This is no place for you.”

Sadahira saw red.  He raised his bow, strained hard to pull it, and released

the arrow.  It whirred away.

At the last moment, the warrior raised his bow and tried to take evasive action,

but he was too late.  Sadahira’s arrow struck the front pommel of his saddle, passed through it and then through his belly and into the back of the saddle.  The horse capered as its rider slumped over with a cry, his nerveless hand dropping the bow.  Behind him, foot soldiers rushed through the gate, followed by shouting horsemen.  The wounded warrior on his horse galloped away.  He died pinned to his saddle.  His corpse was still sagging sideways on the running horse when battle was joined.  The Hogen rebellion was over.

And Sadahira was a hero.

But the man who had died that agonizing first death was Toshima no Jiro, a close

family friend who had once saved Sadahira’s life.  His second effort to save Sadahira cost him his own life.

When Sadahira realized whom he had killed, he returned home and told his father

that he would never fight again.  He would become a monk.

Because he was the only son in a military family, his father stormed, argued, begged, and finally compromised.  Sadahira would enter the university and become an official.  His reasonable hope was that in time his son would change his mind or that another war would break out and he would be forced to take up arms.

And so Sadahira had attended the university and studied medicine.

*

Now, ten years later, he was a junior doctor of medicine.  He was highly

trained and eager but sadly lacking in paying patients, when a call summoned him to the sickbed of the Retired Emperor’s favorite cook and gave him hope that this would soon change.

Being unfamiliar with the palace layout, he took a wrong turn among the warren of buildings, courtyards, and galleries.  He opened a small door in one of the walls, expecting a shortcut to the next courtyard.  Instead, he stepped into an enclosed garden adjoining the wing of a larger building.