His word! Was keeping one’s word more important than a child’s misery? Was it more important than seeing the adult struggle with self-recrimination? As recently as yesterday Akitada had still agonized over the relationship between himself and his supposed mother.
Seimei said softly, “I promised your father, because we feared for your life.”
“What are you talking about?”
Seimei flinched at the harshness of Akitada’s voice. “Lady Sugawara believed she would have a son of her own. There came a time when she was certain she was with child and she made arrangements for an accident to happen to you. Your father discovered it in time and sent you away.”
All these years Akitada had believed that his father had driven him out of the house because he disliked him so intensely that he could not bear his sight any longer. He was moved profoundly by the thought that his father had cared for him after all. He stared at Seimei, but the tears welling up in his eyes blurred the old man’s image until he could barely see him, and he turned away to regain his. composure. The news raised more questions. After a moment he asked, “If he discovered his wife in such a plot, why did he not divorce her?”
“He, too, believed her with child. By the time it became apparent that she was not, you were quite happy in the Hirata family and refused to come home.”
Yes, that was true. His professor at the university had taken him in. Hirata and his daughter Tamako, now Akitada’s wife, had both welcomed the deeply distressed Akitada with such unaccustomed kindness and warmth that he had rejected out of hand his father’s rapprochement.
“But why did you not speak after my father’s death?” Akitada asked. “And why did my father not leave a letter for me?”
“Your father asked for my silence again on his deathbed. I do not know if he feared for your safety or wished to protect Lady Sugawara and your sisters. I could only give my word that I would do as he asked.” Seimei quoted softly, “ ‘First and foremost be faithful to your lord and keep your promise to him.’ “
Akitada closed his eyes. Confound Confucius! He had much to answer for in this case, he thought bitterly.
“You would not wish me to break my word to you, sir, would you?”
Akitada looked at the old man and saw tears sliding down the wrinkled cheeks into his straggly beard. He sighed. “No, I suppose not. Tell me about my mother!”
“Her name was Sadako. She was the only child of Tamba Tosuke, one of your father’s clerks. Her family was provincial, very poor but respectable. When his wife died, Tamba Tosuke suddenly took Buddhist vows without a thought to his daughter’s welfare. People took it for a sign of his extreme devotion, but your father was angry and he paid for the young lady’s support. In time he fell in love with her and married her, though arrangements had been made for another marriage to the late Lady Sugawara. Your mother died when you were born, sir, and then your father brought you to this house to be raised by Lady Sugawara, hoping she would be a mother to you.” Seimei paused, then added diffidently, “Her ladyship came from very different circumstances than your poor mother.”
Akitada knew it well enough. Of course she despised the child of a woman of the lower classes, one who had been her predecessor and her rival. She had never allowed anyone to forget her own pedigree.
A sudden thought struck him. What if she had passed some of her qualities on to Akiko? Had not Akiko also wished to be rid of the sons of her husband’s earlier marriage? He was immediately appalled at his lack of faith in his sister. Akiko was merely spoiled, not evil. She could be selfish and thoughtless, but she was not cruel. Still, she might already have caused trouble in Toshikage’s house. He had to make an effort to undo it! That, too, was one of the legacies his stepmother had burdened him with. He considered bitterly that he was about to become the late Lady Sugawara’s chief mourner in an elaborate funeral ceremony. It was ironic. In a way he was bound as irrevocably as Seimei to carrying out the wishes of the dead.
The funeral took place after dark. They set out for the cremation site in procession. Torchbearers and monks chanting Buddhist mantras walked ahead. Lady Sugawara’s corpse, washed again and wrapped in white cotton sheets perfumed with incense, lay in an ox-drawn carriage behind drawn curtains made of her embroidered court robes. Ahead walked Seimei, carrying the sacred lamp, and Saburo followed behind with a censer from which clouds of incense perfumed the night air. The mourners walked behind, Akitada first, followed by Yori in the arms of Tora, and Toshikage. The three women followed in hired litters. After them walked the Sugawara servants and friends. The long line moved slowly, silent except for the chanting of the monks, through the deserted streets of the capital.
The cremation ground was outside the city. A site had been prepared for them, with white sand strewn about the funeral pyre, and temporary shelters had been erected for the mourners.
Akitada took his seat among the men and prepared for the long night’s watch. There was a clear sky with many stars, and it was bitterly cold. He had made arrangements for open braziers to be placed in all the shelters, but they made only a slight difference. He glanced worriedly at his son, who sat next to him. Yori was bundled into so many quilted robes that his round, rosy face looked absurdly small among all the silken coverings. Akitada had insisted that hemp was to be worn over ordinary clothing and only by his sisters and the servants. He, Tamako, and Yori wore dark silk robes instead. He had chosen that single subtle gesture because he was no blood relation to the dead woman. Since both dark silks and hemp were customary in mourning, outsiders would hardly realize the significance. If anything, they would ascribe the silk to his position as head of the family.
It was a very small act of defiance, for otherwise Akitada mourned Lady Sugawara publicly with all the expense and proper behavior of an only son.
Akitada saw that Yori’s eyes were large with excitement as he watched the flames of the funerary pyre being lit by one of the monks. When the moment came, Akitada rose and ceremoniously placed Lady Sugawara’s favorite possessions, her elegant toiletry boxes, carved rosary, zither, and writing utensils, along with the token coins to pay her way in the other world, into the flames.
The monks began their chanting again, and the flames rose higher, crackling softly, sending a long column of darker black smoke into the night sky, slowly obscuring the stars. The fire consumed symbols of emptiness, for life was no more than a wisp of dark smoke fading into night.
Yori fell asleep after a while, and his father pulled him close into his protective arm. Across the way, in the women’s shelter, someone sobbed loudly. Akiko, no doubt, Akitada thought wryly. She always knew what was expected of her in public. Toshikage half turned to cast anxious looks that way, and Akitada thought, not for the first time, that Akiko had been very lucky to have found such a husband.
Of course, Toshikage’s problem also affected her, and if Akitada was right in his suspicions, Akiko was the cause of it. Either way, he had a duty to help Toshikage. But this death had made things very awkward. None of them could go about naturally for the next seven days. They were, for all intents and purposes, housebound. And even after that Akitada and his sisters would have to observe restrictions of normal activities for another six weeks, until the ceremonies of the forty-ninth day had been completed and the soul of the deceased had departed the world.
On the positive side he need not worry about being called to court for the coming weeks. But meanwhile Toshikage’s situation was pressing. For all they knew, the director of the Bureau of Palace Storehouses was already planning an investigation into Toshikage’s stewardship. It was dangerous to let another day pass without taking action, and Akitada pondered this problem as the hours passed slowly.