Chapter

           Sixteen

A wind in the trees

Scatters flames from the branches

Embers float to earth

Goro was beside me in seconds.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Raising a trembling hand, I pointed to my futon.

Holding up the lantern, he observed, ‘That’s been run through with a sword, that has.’ He sounded almost wondering. ‘Who would do such a thing? And to you?’ Then: ‘It couldn’t have been directed at you,’ he answered his own question. ‘You’re nobody.’

He didn’t mean it as an insult and I didn’t take it as one. He was right. I was nobody: certainly not worth killing.

‘Maybe a thief,’ he speculated. ‘He was surprised when I called out, and thought that whoever was in the bed would be woken so he struck first.’

‘What is it? Who screamed?’ Ishi looked dishevelled, and in the lamplight her plump face was creased with sleep.

Goro indicated my ruined bed. ‘A thief. A rōnin probably. Luckily Kasumi was in the garden.’

I shivered as I recalled the shadow fleeing the house. That shadow had just tried to kill me!

Ishi put a warm arm around my waist. ‘You can’t stay here alone. Come sleep with us in the servants’ quarters.’

‘There’s nothing to fear,’ Goro assured me as he escorted us to the small house near the gate. ‘The thief won’t be back.’

Despite his attempts to reassure me, my heart was still pounding as I crawled into Ishi’s bed. When I closed my eyes I saw the flash of the blade piercing my futon and had to smother my gasp of terror. It was an act so violent, so deadly — surely more calculated than the panicked act of a thief surprised. A rōnin, the night guard had speculated: like the rōnin who had attacked Shimizu’s meetings . . . Perhaps the attack was targeted, but had hit the wrong target. Someone had been trying to get to Shimizu. And they were prepared to go into his house.

Despite the comforting warmth of Ishi beside me, I couldn’t stop shaking.

The next morning I sat in the reception room, trying to capture the cool beauty of a moon-washed hydrangea bush, but for once the act of painting failed to transport me. The familiar noises of Ishi in the kitchen, of Otami sweeping the tatami, should have been soothing, but every unexpected sound made me jump and I kept seeing shadows out of the corner of my eye. The light of day had done nothing to dispel the terrors of the night.

Around midday Lord Shimizu arrived home. I could tell by the serious look on his face as he entered that he’d already had a report from Goro.

‘Kasumi, are you all right?’ he demanded as I touched my forehead to the tatami.

‘I wasn’t in bed; I was moon-viewing,’ I explained, aware of how ridiculous that sounded. Despite my attempt to sound matter-of-fact, my voice came out high and frightened. ‘Goro said it was probably a random attack, a thief, but I wondered if . . .’

Shimizu nodded his understanding of my unspoken question. ‘I’m afraid that sword was most likely meant for me.’

I felt a shaft of cold run through my body. ‘So you think it’s connected to the other attacks?’

He rubbed his chin with a thumb and forefinger. ‘I can’t be sure, but I have to assume it is. I’m going to double the guard at the gate and have some men from the domain patrol the perimeter. But it’s not my own safety I’m concerned about.’ He was looking directly at me. ‘Kasumi, I’m sorry you’ve been placed in such danger. I never would have invited you here if I’d known something like this would happen. If you’d like to return home, I’ll make arrangements at once — but you mean so much to Misaki, she would be devastated to see you go. Is there any way I can convince you to stay?’

Only hours before I had been thinking that Misaki didn’t need me, but I saw now that this wasn’t true. Her husband was in danger. If something should happen to him, I was her only confidante in Edo; her only friend. She didn’t even have a mother to comfort her should the worst happen. I couldn’t leave her alone.

I looked up to see Shimizu still watching me intently.

‘I’ll stay,’ I said.

‘I’d rather you didn’t tell Misaki what happened. She’s anxious enough about my safety already.’

‘She won’t find out from me,’ I promised. Another secret to keep . . .

Misaki returned from Hakone that afternoon in high spirits.

‘The other ladies were so kind,’ she said as we took tea in the garden. ‘I always thought they’d be standoffish because I wasn’t from their domain, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Rin really went out of her way to make me feel welcome. She’s the daimyo’s sister-in-law, you know.’ Misaki sounded awed by the circle she now found herself in, and no wonder. ‘She showed such an interest in me.’

I’ll bet she did, I thought. Aloud I said, ‘And you don’t think that anyone suspected that you . . . you know . . . weren’t really one of them?’

‘Of course not.’ The look she gave me was wounded, as if she had forgotten herself that she wasn’t a samurai and it was unkind of me to remind her of it. And perhaps it was — but she hadn’t heard what I had. Rin’s kindness shouldn’t be taken at face value.

‘Tell me about Hakone,’ I urged.

Her expression became rapturous. ‘It was so beautiful, Kasumi — I wish you could have seen it.’ She described the blazing autumn colours of the forested hills, the view across the lake to the sacred peak of Mount Fuji. ‘Oh, and I brought you a present. Where’s my basket?’ She left the room and returned a minute later with something wrapped in a knotted cloth.

I untied the cloth and stared.

‘It’s an egg,’ Misaki prompted.

‘But it’s black!’

She giggled. ‘I know. They boil it in the hot springs and it turns the shell black. But eating it will bring you seven years of good luck.’

‘Thank you.’ I cradled the egg in my palm, touched that Misaki had thought of me on her travels. What would seven years of good luck mean for me? Marriage into the family of the waki-honjin, my father would say. Seven years painting, I thought. I gazed at the egg again, at the mottled shell. Perhaps I would paint it before I ate it.

‘It’s not only eggs that get to enjoy the hot springs,’ Misaki was saying. ‘We bathed in a pool overlooking the —’

Her words were interrupted by a crash as the gardener dropped a pot nearby, the sound making me shriek.

Misaki looked at me curiously. ‘What is it, Kasumi? You’re not usually so jumpy.’

‘Nothing.’ I forced myself to smile. ‘I was just so focused on your description of the springs that the noise startled me.’

‘You were nervous alone here last night, weren’t you? Next time I’m invited somewhere I’ll insist on bringing you with me.’

As I went to bed that night, I had to admit that it was reassuring to know that Misaki and her husband were across the corridor. Someone — Shimizu, or perhaps Ishi — must have arranged to have my slashed quilt removed and replaced, for there was no sign of it. Shimizu had assured me that the attack had been meant for him, but it occurred to me that whether the blade had been intended for me or not, if it had sliced through me as I lay beneath my quilt the result would have been the same.