The Samurai's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

kicked up by the rickshaws rattling along ahead of them. When he looked around he saw that they were on a broad road lined with shadowy temples separated by dried-out rice fields and dusty mulberry plantations. Trees rustled and swayed and the last of the leaves floated down, russet, orange, dark red and gold, as they had on the meadows and mountains of his childhood home. The sudden memory brought tears to his eyes and he slowed his pace, kicking the leaves aside, as he thought of Aizu’s gracious streets and thick-walled black-painted houses and the jagged peaks glistening on the horizon. He wished life didn’t have to be so harsh, that his home still existed and he could go back there, instead of wandering this hostile city, watching out for any chance to survive.
    He had had to grow up so quickly. One moment he had been a child, running to school with his satchel full of books, the next the city had been in flames and he’d been tramping along in a line of refugees, barefoot in the snow. Sometimes he felt so tired he wished he could curl up somewhere and never wake again.
    He thought of his brothers – the oldest, Yasutaro, badly wounded in battle; Kenjiro, the second son, the brilliant one of the four, but always sickly; and Gosaburo, the third son, who had given up his own future prospects to take care of their father – their brave, proud father, exiled from their domain, forced to live a life of poverty on the salt flats of the far north. He shook his head, filled with shame at his own self-pity.
    Concerned for his schooling, Yasutaro and Kenjiro had brought him with them when they came south to Tokyo to look for work. But they had quickly discovered that northerners of an age to have fought in the war were treated with suspicion. It was easier for a child like Nobu to make a living than for them. Kenjiro, who’d mastered English, found the odd job interpreting for westerners in obscure parts of the country, but Yasutaro had ended up drifting north again.
    Nobu was the lucky one. He hadn’t acquired an education but he had at least succeeded in surviving here in Tokyo, where there was a chance of work; he had food in his stomach or he would have soon; and now he had a job, though he could never confess to his family who his employers were. He might even manage to earn a little money to send to them.
    It was dark by the time the line of rickshaws and grooms rounded a corner. A stiff breeze brushed Nobu’s cheeks and he smelt salty air and saw the glitter of water, bobbing with sails and ships. Squares of yellow light fell from a row of open-fronted stalls. The moon was rising pale over the sea. Seagulls flapped their wings and shrieked. Nobu stopped, panting, and wiped his brow. ‘Tokyo Bay,’ said one of the grooms. ‘We’re nearly there.’
    Nobu’s heart sank as he wondered what sort of place this would be.
    They followed alongside a high wall that seemed to go on for ever, with a ditch at the foot overflowing with leaves, then came to a gateway as big as an East End tenement with carved lintels and a heavy tiled roof. Nobu followed the grooms through the gate and across an expanse of raked gravel, along pathways between moss-covered gardens with pine trees swaddled in straw for the winter. He turned a corner and saw in front of him a cluster of buildings looming in the darkness, with sweeping roofs, verandas and porches, linked with bridges. Threads of light glimmered through the cracks in the rain doors. At the front was a huge main entrance where palanquins and rickshaws could pull up, with gold screens faintly visible inside. Uniformed guards paced to and fro, rifles resting on their shoulders.
    Nobu stared in consternation. It was too grand, too huge. He didn’t belong here. He should leave while he still had the chance. But the gates had closed and the rickshaws were trundling around to the side of the house. The servants were lined up already, bowing, to greet the ladies and help them