The Last Concubine Read Online Free PDF Page B

in their gestures and the way they held their bodies, instinctively dipping and bowing so that their heads were always lower than hers.
    Sachi was mesmerized. There was something familiar about the girl. Somewhere – surely in a dream – she had seen this face before. The girl in her turn had seen Sachi. Something sparked in her eyes as if she too felt a sense of recognition. As the other women arranged the veil over her face, she whispered to one of them. Suddenly everyone turned to look at the child kneeling in the entranceway, daring to stare at them. The women began to move towards her and the guards stationed around the porch put their hands on their sword hilts. Hearing the commotion, Jiroemon looked up, horrified.
    Instinctively Sachi felt for her comb, tucked safely in her sleeve. The fate of Sohei the drunkard and the porters left dead along the roadside flashed through her mind. For a moment her young life passed before her eyes and she thought of Genzaburo, hidden in the eaves just across the road, not far away. But one thought overwhelmed all the others: I have seen the princess.
    It had begun to dawn on her why the girl’s face looked familiar. It could almost have been the face she saw glimmering in her mother’s tarnished mirror – a slightly more grown-up version of her own.

Part II
    The Women’s Palace

2
    Shells of Forgetfulness, 1865

    I
    Sachi was playing the shell-matching game with Princess Kazu. Kneeling opposite her with her hands folded in her lap, eyes modestly lowered, she heard the whisper of silk as the princess languidly drew back the long sleeve of her robe and dipped her hand into the lacquered gold-embossed shell box. There was a faint clatter as she ran her fingers across the small dry shells. She took one out and laid it face up on the tatami matting. Sachi leaned forward. Inside was a painted world of miniature noblemen and ladies on a background of gold leaf.
    More shells lay in neat rows face down between the two women. The princess took one and glanced inside it.
    ‘Why is my luck always so bad?’ she sighed, tossing it down pettishly. ‘If only these were forgetting shells. Then maybe I could forget.’ She murmured a poem:
     
     
‘Wasuregai
I shall not gather
Hiroi shi mo seji
Shells of forgetfulness,
Shiratama o
But pearls,
Kouru o dani mo
Mementoes of
Katami to omowan
The jewel-like one I loved.’
    Sachi peeked up at her. She thought of the stories she had heard of how the princess had been forced to come to Edo and marry the shogun against her will, and how she had once been betrothed to an imperial prince. But that was all long ago. If only Her Highness could stop dwelling on the past, if only Her Highness was not always so sad . . .
    The princess was looking at her expectantly. Sachi let her hand hover above the shells which lay face down. She picked one up, glanced inside and gave a little shriek, then snatched up the shell which the princess had taken from the box. They were a perfect match. She shouted with joyous laughter, then, remembering where she was, flushed bright red and clapped both hands over her mouth.
    ‘Such a child,’ said Lady Tsuguko, the princess’s chief lady-in-waiting, smiling indulgently. Lady Tsuguko was the most powerful person in the princess’s entourage and the authority on the all-important matter of protocol. She was a tall, aristocratic woman whose floor-length hair was streaked with grey. Most of the junior ladies were terrified of her, but to those whom the princess favoured she was kindness itself.
    The princess too gave a wan smile. ‘She could charm anyone with those green eyes of hers,’ she murmured. ‘She takes such delight in life. I wish all days were as peaceful as this . . .’ She glanced at Lady Tsuguko. ‘There is so little time left to us,’ she added, her voice dying away.
    ‘Human life is always uncertain, ma’am. But perhaps the gods will favour us just this once.’
    ‘Not if the Retired One has her way.