The Plum Blooms in Winter

by Linda Thompson

  “I do remember, sensei. I remember Mama-san tending to that thigh in the castle courtyard.” She could never rub out those memories. How they carried Captain Fujita in from the field of battle, blood from an angry gash in his leg dripping through the cotton stretcher.

  “Sono,” Mama-san had barked. “Fresh water.”

  They had a cauldron going over an open fire near the kitchen. Sono ran for it. When she got back with a bucket, Captain Fujita lay with the other wounded in one of the long rows that stretched across the courtyard. Mama-san had his armor unlaced, cleaning his wound.

  Sono wandered among the wounded until hours after dark, kneeling to lower a cup to one blood-stained face after another.

  “Water!” The memories still haunted her nights. The sound of their groans. The smell of their blood. And the fear that ran through it all. If the enemies who’d done that to Captain Fujita got past the castle walls, what would they do to her? To her mother?

  The captain shifted his weight, bringing her back to the present—and the question of guns. “Alliances can be fluid. Your father knows this as well as anyone. His stance as a Kirishitan hasn’t won him many friends. And bigger and bigger koi seem to find their way into our pond. So you never know...” His eyes rested on Sono for an instant. The furrows around his mouth softened. “You never know when one heart full of courage can make all the difference.”

  Nagayoshi’s smirk faded. “Of course, sensei.” He directed a bow at her. “Forgive me, honored sister.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, finding it as easy to forgive him as she always did.

  Fujita inclined his head toward Sono. “Nice work this morning, lady. Why don’t you let me know what your father has to say? Then, ah...then we’ll see.”

  “Hai, sensei.” There was something odd in the way he let his gaze slide off into the fields. Almost evasive. Had he heard something?

  She didn’t envy her father and older brother this game of Go they were playing with everyone’s lives. As a marriageable daughter, she was a critical stone to place.

  But unlike Go stones, daughters aged. Lost their marriageable luster. Had her father decided it was time to put her on the board? While her value was at its peak?

  If so, she’d have no more say as to where he placed her than a stone had. Her gut folded with ire at the knowledge that the voice of her older brother’s wife would carry more weight than her own.

  “I’d best go back to the mansion,” she said. “Papa-san might need me.”

  Nagayoshi’s irritating smirk reappeared. “Hai, look to our lordly father. But please be careful not to frighten him with your warlike ways.”

  “Funny, Naga-chan.” She pushed her stockinged feet into the wooden sandals she’d left neatly lined up on the gravel beside the platform. “Are you going back?”

  Before he answered, one of their father’s servants hurried from the trees, not stopping to bow but calling out as he came. “Please excuse me, Omura-san. Please excuse me.”

  She took in the boy’s short breath and wide eyes, and everything around her froze. A sound like ocean breakers swelled in her ears.

  “Papa-san?” Nagayoshi’s voice, barely audible through the roaring.

  “Hai.” The boy looked at Nagayoshi, then at her. “Lady Omura summons you both to the mansion. Right away.”