Summer rain fell on Isla and Keiichirō, beading like stars in their hair. It masked their footsteps and laboured breathing as they ventured towards the place where it would all end.
In Isla’s time, the foot of the mountain was home to a road, cafés and a statue of Takamori Saigō.
Now, it was a dark and lonely hillside covered with trees and bamboo stalks, a whole world away.
Contrary to Keiichirō’s fears that they wouldn’t find their allies, it didn’t take them long at all to seek out the samurai army, hidden in the trees on the slopes of Mount Shiroyama. They slipped into its ranks and, when they rose in the morning, no one remarked on their appearance, though several samurai cast tired glances at Isla.
It had been easy to find the army. Too easy, Isla thought. She looked to the sky, and, though she had never been much of a believer, she couldn’t help thinking there was some omnipotent force guiding their steps.
She accepted that the reason for her being there – if there was any reason at all – was to meet Hisakichi and Nene and convince them to abandon the war.
But what had been the point in all that when she was destined to die here anyway?
Perhaps the gate appearing on the hillside shortly after her ancestors’ flight had been her chance to go home.
But she had chosen Keiichirō.
Not that she regretted this choice for a second.
Maybe the point hadn’t been to save herself, but Hisakichi Kuroki’s other descendants. There had been four generations between him and Isla, dozens of Kurokis who had lived their lives and perhaps made a difference in the world.
Or maybe there was no point at all.
Either way, she had met Keiichirō, had stayed with him.
They grieved their losses together, for the families they would never see again.
Even so, Isla felt her life had never been richer or more fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the army hid in the trees of Mount Shiroyama. When word came that Takamori Saigō had returned, the samurai ran to their leader and bowed low before him, expressing their delight that he was with them, was alive. He told them he had escaped his enemies’ grasp by fleeing through forests and mountains.
‘Ikeda isn’t here,’ Keiichirō said to Isla. ‘Neither is my cousin, Tatsuzō. What became of them?’
Saigō regaled them with tales of the past weeks as they sat around a fire. ‘They chased us out of Miyakonojō. They tried to trap us in a pincer attack, but we escaped.’
‘That must have angered Yamagata,’ a warrior remarked, and laughter rippled among the trees.
Yamagata was a general of the imperial army, and he had doubtless torn apart his beard in frustration when Saigō avoided him yet again.
Isla sat among the trees in silence beside Keiichirō. It was so strange to hear laughter these days.
Takamori Saigō’s warm eyes met every man in the group around him, the fire reflecting in his midnight irises. ‘We made a stand on Mount Eno Dake. I burned my uniform and papers and slipped through the fingers of the imperial army yet again, but the injured stayed to commit seppuku. These men you see before you are, as far as I know, the only ones who remain.’
He gestured around at his war-beaten men, some wearing old bandages, all with robes or lamellar armour stained bloody.
It seemed a pitiful number of men, and Isla remembered the many who had left to go to war, and the many reinforcements who had joined the fray later. She had known it would be the case, but it was sad all the same.
Keiichirō tensed beside her. Ikeda and Tatsuzō had died, then.
Isla had known it, they both had, but it was a terrible blow all the same.
Her hand found Keiichirō’s in the darkness and she gave him a comforting squeeze. His fingers felt like ice, despite the balmy weather.
Shinpachi Murata, his beard and moustache bedraggled and too long, sat tall at his leader’s side, silent and strong as they all grieved the brothers and friends who had fallen to this rebellion. There was Shinsuke Beppu, too, kneeling beside a forlorn Toshiaki Kirino.
‘I can run no more,’ said Saigō. He shifted in place, his thick eyebrows furrowing to a frown of pain as he adjusted his position. ‘My body is weak and sick. This will be our final stand.’
There was a long silence as his audience absorbed the meaning of his words, and understood they were facing certain death.
* * *
One evening several days later, long after the cicadas’ buzzing had died down, Isla approached Kirino-san. Foreboding swamped her breast as she stood in front of the man whose face she had seen in museums and textbooks.
‘Foreign girl. You’re here.’ He didn’t sound surprised or shocked, but Isla thought that probably not very much took him aback these days.
There was an old cut along his cheek, and grey bruising along his neck that suggested he had narrowly avoided being strangled to death. His robe was filthy, his hair now shoulder-length and a dirty tangle. He worked at building a fire, jaw clenched as he fought a tremor in his hands.
‘I just want you to know that your wife is safe,’ said Isla quietly. ‘Hisa-san is working with the other women in town, as always. She’s making them all work hard, and spar too, just as she did when I arrived.’
Kirino-san’s lips pursed. He didn’t respond. Isla hesitated, then rose. As she left a few sparks ignited some of his poorly piled twigs, and Isla heard him murmur, ‘Thank you, foreign girl, that’s good to hear. She liked you, thought you determined. She wasn’t often wrong.’
Isla turned and bowed, and as she went to find Keiichirō a tear slipped down her face that the old warhorse that was Kirino-san would never see Hisa-san again.
A blanket of grief lay heavy on Isla’s shoulders.
With the endgame of the war drawing ever nearer, the knowledge of what was to come left her numb. There was no respite, no ray of sunshine as to their situation.
The reality was there was no ammunition, no supplies, no reinforcements, nobody on their way to help them. Everyone had lost a brother, a father, a son or a friend. The men’s clothes were ragged, hanging on their thin bodies. Although they had all fought bravely, it had all been for nothing. In the months since the samurai had left Kagoshima, they hadn’t made it within a hundred miles of Tokyo, and the emperor had never spoken with Takamori Saigō, his old friend.
The samurai had been on a lengthy fool’s errand, and now it had destroyed the spirit of many of Saigō’s loyal supporters. Increasingly, there were divisions in opinion.
Some samurai wanted to return to their hometown and were happy to risk being caught by the imperial patrol. Others wanted instead to make one final desperate stand and die taking down as many enemy soldiers as they could. Isla thought that each of these options were as bad as the other one, and she never heard anyone suggest that, as she had seen in the museum, one day the emperor would pardon Takamori Saigō, even though that was what would go on to happen. The history she knew had never felt so far away.
Days would pass with nothing of note happening, and the long hours crawled by. Other times, endless conscripts attacked, arriving in Kagoshima via ships to the bay, the imperial supporters bolstered by fresh ammunition and arms, and an unremitting commitment to rooting out the last of the rebels.
After a while, Takamori Saigō and what remained of his army fled farther up Mount Shiroyama as more warships sailed into view on the horizon. The mountain overlooked the town and the sea beyond, where lay the almighty volcano, Mount Sakurajima.
There was no going back now.
As the samurai, many of them nursing injuries or limping, ascended the slope towards the summit, Isla took Keiichirō’s hand.
He grimaced, a flicker of pain crossing his stoic face.
‘Is it your shoulder?’ she whispered. Several times she had caught Keiichirō examining it when he thought she wasn’t looking.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he insisted. The words ‘are you sure?’ caught in her throat before she heard his response in her mind like an echo. ‘I am sure, bonnie lass. I never lie.’
But Isla chose not to challenge him, and instead looked up to where Takamori Saigō limped ahead, Shinsuke Beppu on one side and Toshiaki Kirino on the other, tenderly helping their leader when he struggled to walk.
The army had abandoned Saigō’s palanquin long ago, and now he had to be half-carried up the slope. Saigō was wearing a yukata now, his enormous shoulders slumped. He was injured, or sick, or simply too old for this sort of arduous exertion. It was clear he wouldn’t last much longer.
She had known that already, but it was still a terrible thought.
To the Isla of her Scotland days, historical figures had always felt distant and not quite real, known only for their mighty deeds. They weren’t remembered for the way they jolted awake from nightmares or their murmured inside joke to a friend that sent them into guilty chuckles. Now, she didn’t feel Takamori Saigō was distant or unreal. The charismatic man she knew was real to her with every fibre of his being; close to fifty, slowly dying, yet proud and ready to offer a smile and a word of thanks to his men as they made camp near some caves. She had seen the sadness swim in his eyes when he stared into the fire of an evening. Maybe he was thinking about his family and the son he promised would become a fine samurai one day. Or perhaps he was thinking he had led this rebellion only with a great reluctance, and now many of those he cared for would perish, if they hadn’t done so already.
Isla found she had to avert her gaze.
This hill, this place, she thought, was in the twenty-first century an observatory, a viewing spot for Mount Sakurajima.
How could it have become a place where you could spend a hundred yen to peer through the binoculars and eat ice cream cones? How could it have a tarmac road and benches? How could people visit here as a fun day out when it was the place the samurai tradition died? Did people have no sense of gravity, of veneration, of heart?
Keiichirō stood at Isla’s side, strong and increasingly silent.
The mountain was surrounded, with ships waiting on the sea, and a thousand men or more guarding all the main paths.
Saigō had escaped and outrun them so many times, they were determined to finally corner him. General Yamagata had thrown his entire force at the mountain and wouldn’t stop until the rebels were dead.
Even if Isla hadn’t known what would happen, it was still clear as a winter sky.
Rain came and the samurai huddled in the caves. The men talked quietly in groups. No one played shogi or laughed now.
Isla and Keiichirō found a quiet corner and leaned against each other for comfort as someone lit a fire at the mouth of the cave.
Isla ran her fingers over her thin, mosquito-ravaged arms. Her skin had greyed, the veins beneath her skin stark. She had stopped feeling hungry days ago. She didn’t know if she would ever desire food again. Keiichirō’s face was sunken, but what was worse to see was grief sapping the spirit from him. Isla put her head against his good shoulder, closing her eyes. The fire crackled and popped. Men talked quietly. It was almost peaceful, and for a moment Isla could convince herself it was.
Beppu-san sat nearby, his face hard. He had lost weight, too, his muscles bulging, his skin stretched over high cheekbones and his goatee matted with old dirt. He gripped the sword at his left hip as though ready to pull it out at a moment’s notice. His chest moved with every breath, his glaring look not leaving the cave wall.
‘My brother is down there,’ said Saigō eventually, but then he didn’t say anything else. He sat at the mouth of the cave, and when night fell he was a wide silhouette obscuring the stars.
No one attacked them, though the imperial army knew they were here. They could feel it, hear the occasional call between soldiers. And the imperial army didn’t need to attack, as they could simply bide their time until the samurai died of thirst or starved to death.
To Isla, the worst part about all this was that the men down there were not their enemies. Not really. This wasn’t a war of good versus evil. This was a battle of necessity, both sides feeling they had to defend themselves against the other, but without a tangible reason for doing so. One side stood for the honour of the samurai, the other for the honour of their emperor.
Saigō stayed sitting in silence, his large shoulders increasingly slumped. Thousands of men had followed him to war and their deaths weighed heavily.
* * *
Keiichirō mourned the friends he had lost. He hated that he hadn’t been able to reunite with Ikeda or Tatsuzō. He had never had the chance to tell his cousin how proud he was of him, never thanked Ikeda for his wise counsel. Why had he waited?
They had died gloriously, upright and with swords in their hands as every samurai should, but it still hurt Keiichirō that they were gone. He thought of Tatsuzō’s wife, Saki, of their new baby Haru. At least he and Jin would grow up knowing their father had died a warrior’s death.
‘Isla,’ Keiichirō whispered, late that night in the cave. ‘Who is alive? Who survives all this? Do you know?’
She looked at him, her eyes sad.
Keiichirō knew that Isla had predicted all those months ago that they would die in this battle, and it had all happened exactly as she had said it would. It had been months of fighting, of dwindling supplies, of trying in vain to save the way of the samurai.
But despair wasn’t crushing his heart; his only regret was that Isla had chosen to stay and to die alongside him. Keiichirō had thought about making her leave, but where would she go? Nene was long gone with her lover. Kana might take her back, but Isla would not want to grieve in a strange town where she didn’t belong and no one really trusted her.
‘Kirino-san’s wife, Hisa, she lives. So do a few others,’ Isla said softly.
‘And Saigō-sama?’
She met his eyes with a tortured expression. ‘Would he want to be saved?’
Keiichirō shook his head, knowing this was the truth. ‘I heard someone say before that their cousin is part of the imperial army. And Saigō-sama’s own brother fights for the emperor. It all makes no sense to me.’
‘Me neither,’ Isla said, and a tear, glistening like a star, ran down her cheek and on to the haori jacket she used as a pillow.
‘Do you hear that?’ Murata-san’s loud voice made all eyes turn to the cave’s mouth.
Keiichirō and Isla expected to hear the rustle of enemies in the grassland, or gunshots, perhaps. Keiichirō followed the others outside, Isla moving behind him with a whisper of cloth.
Moonlight bathed the mountainside, bamboo trees clacking against one another in the faint wind. There was a light sheen of sweat on Keiichirō’s skin. The moon was a full silver orb hanging above the ocean.
Music reached them on the wind.
As one, the samurai stood and listened in awe. It was exquisite, and tears freely ran down many faces.
Keiichirō couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard music, save his own strumming on the biwa lute. Isla stood beside him, sniffling, the music catching their ears with every sigh of wind. It was an accordion, playing a song Keiichirō had heard before but did not know the name of.
‘They’re playing for us,’ Isla said.
For this brief moment of respite, the war was on hold.
As the full moon shone and the animals of the forest fell silent, those below knowing that come dawn they must fight once more, someone had summoned an accordion to offer the last of the samurai some comfort before their end.
Keiichirō felt tears, something he’d always pushed down, brim in his eyes. They burned, his vision growing hazy. As their men, many limping or shuffling from old injuries, passed them to better hear the music, Isla’s hand slipped beneath his sleeve and gripped his arm.
Keiichirō had never feared death but, now the cold hand of mortality wrapped around his throat, he found himself grieving. Never had he thought when he first met the strange foreign girl that he would feel anything for her. He had felt his destiny was with Nakamura Nene, but now she was far away, safe, with her lover. He wished Isla was there with Nene. This brave redheaded woman didn’t deserve to die in a foreign land and a foreign time.
When the music died on the wind and a cloud obscured the moonlight, their moment of peace was over.
‘I suppose it is time.’ Kirino Toshiaki held up a ceramic bottle that sloshed with shōchū. Several samurai cheered and the men took turns drinking the clear spirit. There was enough for one sip each. Keiichirō savoured his, letting the liquid run over his tongue and coat every corner of his mouth. The spirit burned its way into his stomach and abated the tension. Oddly, he found himself thinking of Taguchi, insisting to his death that his brother was innocent, and how he had been proven right. Keiichirō looked towards Isla, and her solemn face suggested she was having equally sombre thoughts.
Not caring who saw them, Keiichirō pulled her into a deep hug.
‘Get some rest,’ said Saigō-sama when the shōchū bottle was empty.
* * *
Isla didn’t sleep. On the dirt of the stony ground, the air stifling, she lay as close as she could to Keiichirō. Every heartbeat was one beat nearer to the morning when everything would come to a swift, bloody end. Nothing mattered now except that she was close to her lover.
Keiichirō didn’t sleep either, although he kept his eyes closed. He wore his hair down to sleep, and Isla curled a lock around her finger, feeling the silk of it against her fingertip.
Isla was thinking that she had seen so many people die. Had experienced the horrors of battle and how quickly someone could fall and breathe their last. There was no glory, no romance, no excitement. It was over in a blur before it could sink in, messy and manic. All one could do was try to survive. Whenever Isla closed her eyes, she saw men falling with screams, holding their own entrails or clutching bloody eyes or throats. She could still smell the tang of blood, feel the rattle of gunshots through her bones.
Isla was forever changed, but at least she had saved her family’s future. Nene Nakamura and Hisakichi Kuroki would go on to have children, who would eventually go on to sire her grandfather. He would travel to the United Kingdom, marry her Scottish grandmother.
Isla would be born again in the future. The thought brought her some small measure of calm. She had lived a decent enough life in her time. She’d worked hard, made it to Japan, made her parents proud, enjoyed her life. Maybe that was enough. She hoped they would be able to find some peace even after her disappearance. She wondered what it was like to die. She hoped she would face it bravely.
Her fingers moved from Keiichirō’s hair to his chest, tracing over his robe stained with dirt. His strong hand reached up to grip hers as his lips found her mouth. Emotion welled inside her at the silent plea, the desperation his embrace held.
In the darkness, surrounded by their fellow doomed samurai, Keiichirō cast caution aside and moved to lie on top of her. His breaths turned frantic and heavy. Her heart filled with equal measures of love and agony as she pushed aside his robe, Keiichirō’s scars gleaming white against the darkness.
He entered her with urgency that made her gasp. Grief and ecstasy mingled as one as he moved inside her, filling her world. A groan, perhaps a sob, tore from him as he buried his face in her neck, clutching tight. She held onto him as her heart wept.
‘When does it happen?’ he whispered later as the sky outside hinted at the coming daybreak.
She didn’t need to speak the answer, and he nodded gravely.
Outside, an explosion rumbled, shaking the mountainside.