The meeting with the peasant had been so sudden. He gawked up at her as though she were a kami and she at him because he was the image of the Taikō, small and monkeylike, but he had youth.
Her mind had shouted that here was the gift from the gods she had prayed for, and she had dismounted and taken his hand and together they went a few paces into the wood and she became like a bitch in heat.
Everything had had a dreamlike quality to it, the frenzy and lust and coarseness, lying on the earth, and even today she could still feel his gushing liquid fire, his sweet breath, his hands clutching her marvelously. Then she had felt his full dead weight and abruptly his breath became putrid and everything about him vile except the wetness, so she had pushed him off. He had wanted more but she had hit him and cursed him and told him to thank the gods she did not turn him into a tree for his insolence, and the poor superstitious fool had cowered on his knees begging her forgiveness—of course she was a kami, why else would such beauty squirm in the dirt for such as him?
Weakly she had climbed into the saddle and walked the horse away, dazed, the man and the clearing soon lost, half wondering if all had been a dream and the peasant a real kami, praying that he was a kami, his essence god-given, that it would make another son for the glory of her Lord and give him the peace that he deserved. Then, just the other side of the wood, Toranaga had been waiting for her. Had he seen her? she wondered in panic.
“I was worried about you, Lady,” he had said.
“I’m—I’m perfectly all right, thank you.”
“But your kimono’s all torn—there’s bracken down your back and in your hair. . . .”
“My horse threw me—it’s nothing.” Then she had challenged him to a race home to prove that nothing was wrong, and had set off like the wild wind, her back still smarting from the brambles that sweet oils soon soothed and, the same night, she had pillowed with her Lord and Master and, nine months later, she had birthed Yaemon to his eternal joy. And hers.
“Of course our husband is Yaemon’s father,” Ochiba said with complete certainty to the husk of Yodoko. “He fathered both my children—the other was a dream.”
Why delude yourself? It was not a dream, she thought. It happened. That man was not a kami. You rutted with a peasant in the dirt to sire a son you needed as desperately as the Taikō to bind him to you. He would have taken another consort, neh?
What about your first-born?
“Karma,” Ochiba said, dismissing that latent agony as well.
“Drink this, child,” Yodoko had said to her when she was sixteen, a year after she had become the Taikō’s formal consort. And she had drunk the strange, warming herb cha and felt so sleepy and the next evening when she awoke again she remembered only strange erotic dreams and bizarre colors and an eerie timelessness. Yodoko had been there when she awakened, as when she had gone to sleep, so considerate, and as worried over the harmony of their lord as she had been. Nine months later she had birthed, the first of all the Taikō’s women to do so. But the child was sickly and that child died in infancy.
Karma, she thought.
Nothing had ever been said between herself and Yodoko. About what had happened, or what might have happened, during that vast deep sleep. Nothing, except “Forgive me . . .” a few moments ago, and, “There is nothing to forgive.”
You’re blameless, Yodoko-sama, and nothing occurred, no secret act or anything. And if there did, rest in peace, Old One, now that secret lies buried with you. Her eyes were on the empty face, so frail and pathetic now, just as the Taikō had been so frail and pathetic at his ending, his question also never asked. Karma that he died, she thought dispassionately. If he’d lived another ten years I’d be Empress of China, but now . . . now I’m alone.
“Strange that you died before I could promise, Lady,” she said, the smell of incense and the musk of death surrounding her. “I would have promised but you died before I promised. Is that my karma too? Do I obey a request and an unspoken promise? What should I do?”
My son, my son, I feel so helpless.
Then she remembered something the Wise One had said: “Think like the Taikō would—or Toranaga would.”
Ochiba felt new strength pour through her. She sat back in the stillness and, coldly, began to obey.
In a sudden hush, Chimmoko came out of the small gates to the garden and walked over to Blackthorne and bowed. “Anjin-san, please excuse me, my Mistress wishes to see you. If you will wait a moment I will escort you.”
“All right. Thank you.” Blackthorne got up, still deep in his reverie and his overpowering sense of doom. The shadows were long now. Already part of the forecourt was sunless. The Grays prepared to move with him.
Chimmoko went over to Sumiyori. “Please excuse me, Captain, but my Lady asks you to please prepare everything.”
“Where does she want it done?”
The maid pointed at the space in front of the arch. “There, Sire.”
Sumiyori was startled. “It’s to be public? Not in private with just a few witnesses? She’s doing it for all to see?”
“Yes.”
“But, well . . . if it’s to be here . . . Her—her . . . what about her second?”
“She believes the Lord Kiyama will honor her.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, Captain. She—she hasn’t told me.” Chimmoko bowed and walked across to the veranda to bow again. “Kiritsubo-san, my Mistress says, so sorry, she’ll return shortly.”
“Is she all right?”
“Oh yes,” Chimmoko said proudly.
Kiri and the others were composed now. When they had heard what had been said to the captain they had been equally perturbed. “Does she know other ladies are waiting to greet her?”
“Oh yes, Kiritsubo-san. I—I was watching, and I told her. She said that she’s so honored by their presence and she will thank them in person soon. Please excuse me.”
They all watched her go back to the gates and beckon Blackthorne. The Grays began to follow but Chimmoko shook her head and said her mistress had not bidden them. The captain allowed Blackthorne to leave.
It was like a different world beyond the garden gates, verdant and serene, the sun on the treetops, birds chattering and insects foraging, the brook falling sweetly into the lily pond. But he could not shake off his gloom.
Chimmoko stopped and pointed at the little cha-no-yu house. He went forward alone. He slipped his feet out of his thongs and walked up the three steps. He had to stoop, almost to his knees, to go through the tiny screened doorway. Then he was inside.
“Thou,” she said.
“Thou,” he said.
She was kneeling, facing the doorway, freshly made up, lips crimson, immaculately coiffured, wearing a fresh kimono of somber blue edged with green, with a lighter green obi and a thin green ribbon for her hair.
“Thou art beautiful.”
“And thou.” A tentative smile. “So sorry it was necessary for thee to watch.”
“It was my duty.”
“Not duty,” she said. “I did not expect—or plan for—so much killing.”
“Karma.” Blackthorne pulled himself out of his trance and stopped talking Latin. “You’ve been planning all this for a long time—your suicide. Neh?”