Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn Page B

angrily to the doorway. Two gardeners were cleaning leaves off the moss,
one by one. “I'm tired of having it said of me.”
    “It will always be said,” Junko
remarked. “It is part of the lady's life now.”
    “I wish men would die for me,”
Shizuka laughed. “But they just seem to fall in and out of love with me as
easily as I do with them!”
    Kaede did not turn around. The girl
shuffled on her knees to the boxes and began folding the garments again,
singing softly as she did it. Her voice was clear and true. It was an old
ballad about the little village in the pine forest, the girl, the young man.
Kaede thought she recalled it from her childhood. It brought clearly into her
mind the fact that her childhood was over, that she was to marry a stranger,
that she would never know love. Maybe people in villages could fall in love,
but for someone in her position it was not even to be considered.
    She strode across the room and,
kneeling next to Shizuka, took the garment roughly from her. “If you're going
to do it, do it properly!”
    “Yes, lady.” Shizuka flattened
herself again, crushing the robes around her. “Thank you, lady, you'll never
regret it!”
    As she sat up again she murmured,
“People say Lord Arai takes a great interest in Lady Shirakawa. They talk of
his regard for her honor.”
    “Do you know Arai?” Kaede said
sharply.
    “I am from his town, lady. From
Kumamoto.”
    Junko was smiling broadly. “I can
say good-bye with a calm mind if I know you have Shizuka to look after you.”
    So Shizuka became part of Kaede's
life, irritating and amusing her in equal measures. She loved gossip, spread
rumors without the least concern, was always disappearing into the kitchens,
the stables, the castle, and coming back bursting with stories. She was popular
with everyone and had no fear of men. As far as Kaede could see, they were more
afraid of her, in awe of her teasing words and sharp tongue. On the surface she
appeared slapdash, but her care of Kaede was meticulous. She massaged away her
headaches, brought ointments made of herbs and beeswax to soften her creamy
skin, plucked her eyebrows into a more gentle shape. Kaede came to rely on her,
and eventually to trust her. Despite herself, Shizuka made her laugh, and she
brought her for the first time into contact with the outside world, from which
Kaede had been isolated.
    So Kaede learned of the uneasy
relationships between the clans, the many bitter grudges left after Yaegahara,
the alliances Iida was trying to form with the Otori and the Seishuu, the
constant to-and-fro of men vying for position and preparing once again for war.
She also learned of the Hidden, Iida's persecution of them, and his demands
that his allies should do the same.
    She had never heard of such people
and thought at first that Shizuka was making them up. Then one evening Shizuka,
uncharacteristically subdued, whispered to her that men and women had been
found in a small village and brought to Noguchi in basket cages. They were to
be hung from the castle walls until they died of hunger and thirst. The crows
pecked at them while they were still alive.
    “Why? What crime did they commit?”
she questioned.
    “They say there is a secret god,
who sees everything and who they cannot offend or deny. They would rather die.”
    Kaede shivered. “Why does Lord Iida
hate them so?”
    Shizuka glanced over her shoulder,
even though they were alone in the room. “They say the secret god will punish
Iida in the afterlife.”
    “But Iida is the most powerful lord
in the Three Countries. He can do what he wants. They have no right to judge
him.” The idea that a lord's actions should be judged by ordinary village
people was ludicrous to Kaede.
    “The Hidden believe that their god
sees everyone as equal. There are no lords in their god's eyes. Only those who
believe in him and those who do not.”
    Kaede frowned. No wonder Iida
wanted to stamp them out. She would have asked more but Shizuka