The Last Concubine by Lesley Downer Page B

to sit and listen while she practised. He may even have been fond of her, though everyone knew they would never have children.
    ‘The next wife arrived the following year. She was a daughter of the Minister of the Left at the imperial palace in Kyoto. She was a shrunken little thing. When she climbed out of the imperial palanquin, she stood no higher than it did. One of her legs was shorter than the other. She used to hobble around the corridors. Behind our hands we all said she’d hopped aboard the jewelled palanquin. Not that Iesada cared. He carried on playing his games and paid no attention to her. She lasted a year, then she died too. People started to worry that there was a curse on His Highness. “If you want to die, marry Iesada,” that was what they said. And there was still no chance of an heir.
    ‘That didn’t matter so long as his father, Lord Ieyoshi, was still shogun. But then His Majesty passed away. It was very strange and sudden – a terrible thing. He didn’t die a natural death, we all knew that.’
    She stopped for a minute, then dabbed her eyes fiercely with her sleeve and went on.
    ‘So Lord Iesada became shogun. He had no wife, no concubines and no heir. When he came to the women’s palace, it was to see his mother, Lady Honju-in. He was a sickly boy – not a boy, he was a man then, he must have been in his thirtieth year; but he still seemed like a child. He was always ill. He had this thin pale face like a hungry ghost and big unfocused eyes. What he loved most of all was roasting beans, stirring them about in the pan with bamboo chopsticks. He had a gun a Dutch merchant had given him. He used to chase after his courtiers with it. It made him laugh to see them run. Or he would just sit and stare around him blankly.
    ‘So, you see, Lady Honju-in was the most powerful person in the inner palace – you could say the most powerful person in the realm. Whenever the chamberlains had a new law that needed to be signed, it was Honju-in who told His Majesty whether to put his stamp on it or not. Everyone was wooing her. There were bolts of brocaded silk, vases, tea bowls, lacquerware, sugar cakes, all sorts of beautiful things pouring into the castle. Gifts to her, gifts to her ladies . . . What a life she had!
    ‘One day the guards were making their morning rounds. They were checking the garages when they noticed blood dripping from one of the palanquins and an arm and a leg dangling out. The door had been shoved back and a woman stuffed inside, bundled up in a hanging. When they unrolled it she was stark naked and quite dead. We all rushed to look and ran away screaming. Everyone was in the most terrible panic.
    ‘It turned out to be a Lady Hitsu, one of the higher-ranking officers in the catering department. Of course, you can’t know everyone in a place like this. She had been stabbed. We all thought it must be jealousy. She had had relationships with several of the ladies. One, a Lady Shiga, had been mad about her apparently, so suspicion fell on her.
    ‘But then it came out that Lady Hitsu had become rather close to Lord Iesada. She had had access to the kitchens and used to bring him beans and sit with him, chatting to him while he stirred. There was a particular sort of dried fish he really liked and sheused to bring that to him. Maybe she was planning to seduce him. If she had become the mother of his child, she would have ousted Lady Honju-in. She would have become the power behind the throne.
    ‘There was no investigation, of course. No one ever found out who had hated Lady Hitsu enough to kill her, whether it was jealousy or because she tried to reach above her station. No one dared suggest it was anything to do with Lady Honju-in; and even if it was, she was far too powerful for anyone to do anything about it.’
    Sachi shuddered with horror. Her hands were clasped so tight her palms were clammy with sweat. She glanced around at the ladies-in-waiting, imagining she saw them