Across the Nightingale Floor

by Lian Hearn

Junko opened the box and took out a round mirror. Its back was beautifully carved with flowers and birds. She held it so Kaede could see her reflection. It was the first time she had looked in a mirror. Her own face silenced her.

  The women’s attentions and admiration restored her confidence a little, but it began to seep away again as she followed Junko into the main part of the residence. She had only seen Lord Noguchi from a distance since her father’s last visit. She had never liked him, and now she realized she was afraid of the meeting.

  JUNKO FELL TO HER KNEES, slid open the door to the audience room, and prostrated herself. Kaede stepped into the room and did the same. The matting was cool beneath her forehead and smelled of summer grass.

  Lord Noguchi was speaking to someone in the room and took no notice of her whatsoever. He seemed to be discussing his rice allowances: how late the farmers were in handing them over. It was nearly the next harvest, and he was still owed part of the last crop. Every now and then the person he was addressing would humbly put in a placatory comment—the adverse weather, last year’s earthquake, the imminent typhoon season, the devotion of the farmers, the loyalty of the retainers—at which the lord would grunt, fall silent for a full minute or more, and then start complaining all over again.

  Finally he fell silent for one last time. The secretary coughed once or twice. Lord Noguchi barked a command, and the secretary backed on his knees towards the door.

  He passed close to Kaede, but she did not dare raise her head.

  “And call Arai,” Lord Noguchi said, as if it were an afterthought.

  Now he will speak to me, Kaede thought, but he said nothing, and she remained where she was, motionless.

  The minutes passed. She heard a man enter the room and saw Arai prostrate himself next to her. Lord Noguchi did not acknowledge him either. He clapped his hands, and several men came quickly into the room. Kaede felt them step by her, one after another. Glancing at them sideways, she could see they were senior retainers. Some wore the Noguchi crest on their robes, and some the triple oak leaf of the Tohan. She felt they would have happily stepped on her, as if she were a cockroach, and she vowed to herself that she would never let the Tohan or the Noguchi crush her.

  The warriors settled themselves heavily on the matting.

  “Lady Shirakawa,” Lord Noguchi said at last. “Please sit up.”

  As she did so, she felt the eyes of every man in the room on her. An intensity that she did not understand came into the atmosphere.

  “Cousin,” the lord said, a note of surprise in his voice, “I hope you are well.”

  “Thanks to your care, I am,” she replied using the polite phrase, although the words burned her tongue like poison. She felt her terrible vulnerability here, the only woman, hardly more than a child, among men of power and brutality. She snatched a quick glance at the lord from below her lashes. His face looked petulant to her, lacking either strength or intelligence, showing the spitefulness she already knew he possessed.

  “There was an unfortunate incident this morning,” Lord Noguchi said. The hush in the room deepened. “Arai has told me what happened. I want to hear your version.”

  Kaede touched her head to the ground, her movements slow, her thoughts racing. She had Arai in her power at that moment. And Lord Noguchi had not called him captain, as he should have done. He had given him no title, shown him no courtesy. Did he already have suspicions about his loyalty? Did he already know the true version of events? Had one of the guards already betrayed Arai? If she defended him, was she just falling into a trap set for them both?

  Arai was the only person in the castle who had treated her well. She was not going to betray him now. She sat up and spoke with downcast eyes but in a steady voice. “I went to the upper guard room to give a message to Lord Arai. I followed him down the stairs: He was wanted in the stables. The guard on the gate detained me with some pretext. When I went to him he seized me.” She let the sleeves fall back from her arm. The bruises had already begun to show, the purple-red imprint of a man’s fingers on her pale skin. “I cried out. Lord Arai heard me, came back, and rescued me.” She bowed again, conscious of her own grace. “I owe him and my lord a debt for my protection.” She stayed, her head on the floor.

  “Unnh,” Lord Noguchi grunted. There was another long silence. Insects droned in the afternoon heat. Sweat glistened on the brows of the men sitting motionless. Kaede could smell their rank animal odor, and she felt sweat trickle between her breasts. She was intensely aware of her real danger. If one of the guards had spoken of the knife left behind, the girl who took it and walked down the stairs with it in her hand . . . she willed the thoughts away, afraid the men who studied her so closely would be able to read them clearly.

  Eventually Lord Noguchi spoke, casually, even amiably. “How was the horse, Captain Arai?”

  Arai raised his head to speak. His voice was perfectly calm. “Very young, but fine looking. Of excellent stock and easy to tame.”

  There was a ripple of amusement. Kaede felt they were laughing at her, and the blood rose in her cheeks.

  “You have many talents, Captain,” Noguchi said. “I am sorry to deprive myself of them, but I think your country estate, your wife and son, may need your attention for a while, a year or two. . . .”

  “Lord Noguchi.” Arai bowed, his face showing nothing.

  What a fool Noguchi is, Kaede thought. I’d make sure Arai stayed right here where I could keep an eye on him. Send him away and he’ll be in open revolt before a year has passed.

  Arai backed out, not looking even once towards Kaede. Noguchi’s probably planning to have him murdered on the road, she thought gloomily. I’ll never see him again.

  With Arai’s departure the atmosphere lightened a little. Lord Noguchi coughed and cleared his throat. The warriors shifted position, easing their legs and backs. Kaede could feel their eyes still on her. The bruises on her arms, the man’s death had aroused them. They were no different from him.

  The door behind her slid open, and the servant who had brought her from the castle came in with bowls of tea. She served each of the men and seemed to be about to leave when Lord Noguchi barked at her. She bowed, flustered, and set a cup in front of Kaede.

  Kaede sat up and drank, eyes lowered, her mouth so dry she could barely swallow. Arai’s punishment was exile; what would hers be?

  “Lady Shirakawa, you have been with us for many years. You have been part of our household.”

  “You have honored me, lord,” she replied.

  “But I think that pleasure is to be ours no longer. I have lost two men on your account. I’m not sure I can afford to keep you with me!” He chuckled, and the men in the room laughed in echo.

  He’s sending me home! The false hope fluttered in her heart.

  “You obviously are old enough to be married. I think the sooner the better. We will arrange a suitable marriage for you. I am writing to inform your parents who I have in mind. You will live with my wife until the day of your marriage.”

  She bowed again, but before she did so, she caught the glance that flickered between Noguchi and one of the older men in the room. It will be to him, she thought, or a man like him, old, depraved, brutal. The idea of marriage to anyone appalled her. Even the thought that she would be better treated living in the Noguchi household could not raise her spirits.

  Junko escorted her back to the room and then led her to the bathhouse. It was early evening and Kaede was numb with exhaustion. Junko washed her and scrubbed her back and limbs with rice bran.

  “Tomorrow I will wash your hair,” she promised. “It’s too long and thick to wash tonight. It will never dry in time, and then you will take a chill.”

  “Maybe I will die from it,” Kaede said. “It would be the best thing.”

  “Never say that,” Junko scolded her, helping her into the tub to soak in the hot water. “You have a great life ahead of you. You are so beautiful! You will be married, have children.”

  She bro
ught her mouth close to Kaede’s ear and whispered, “The captain thanks you for keeping faith with him. I am to look after you on his behalf.”

  What can women do in this world of men? Kaede thought. What protection do we have? Can anyone look after me?

  She remembered her own face in the mirror, and longed to look at it again.

  · 3 ·

  he heron came to the garden every afternoon, floating like a gray ghost over the wall, folding itself improbably, and standing thigh deep in the pool, as still as a statue of Jizo. The red and gold carp that Lord Otori took pleasure in feeding were too large for it, but it held its position motionless for long minutes at a time, until some hapless creature forgot it was there and dared to move in the water. Then the heron struck, faster than eye could follow, and, with the little wriggling thing in its beak, reassembled itself for flight. The first few wing beats were as loud as the sudden clacking of a fan, but after that it departed as silently as it had come.

  The days were still very hot, with the languorous heat of autumn, which you long to be over and cling on to at the same time, knowing this fiercest heat, hardest to bear, will also be the year’s last.

  I had been in Lord Otori’s house for a month. In Hagi the rice harvest was over, the straw drying in the fields and on frames around the farmhouses. The red autumn lilies were fading. Persimmons turned gold on the trees, while the leaves became brittle, and spiny chestnut shells lay in the lanes and alleys, spilling out their glossy fruit. The autumn full moon came and went. Chiyo put chestnuts, tangerines, and rice cakes in the garden shrine, and I wondered if anyone was doing the same in my village.

  The servant girls gathered the last of the wildflowers, bush clover, wild pinks, and autumn wort, standing them in buckets outside the kitchen and the privy, their fragrance masking the smells of food and waste, the cycles of human life.

  My state of half-being, my speechlessness, persisted. I suppose I was in mourning. The Otori household was, too, not only for Lord Otori’s brother but also for his mother, who had died in the summer from the plague. Chiyo related the story of the family to me. Shigeru, the oldest son, had been with his father at the battle of Yaegahara and had strongly opposed the surrender to the Tohan. The terms of the surrender had forbidden him inheriting from his father the leadership of the clan. Instead his uncles, Shoichi and Masahiro, were appointed by Iida.

  “Iida Sadamu hates Shigeru more than any man alive,” Chiyo said. “He is jealous of him and fears him.”

  Shigeru was a thorn in the side of his uncles as well, as the legal heir to the clan. He had ostensibly withdrawn from the political stage and had devoted himself to his land, trying out new methods, experimenting with different crops. He had married young, but his wife had died two years later in childbirth, the baby dying with her.

  His life seemed to me to be filled with suffering, yet he gave no sign of it, and if I had not learned all this from Chiyo I would not have known of it. I spent most of the day with him, following him around like a dog, always at his side, except when I was studying with Ichiro.

  They were days of waiting. Ichiro tried to teach me to read and write, my general lack of skill and retentiveness enraging him, while he reluctantly pursued the idea of adoption. The clan were opposed: Lord Shigeru should marry again, he was still young, it was too soon after his mother’s death. The objections seemed to be endless. I could not help feeling that Ichiro agreed with most of them, and they seemed perfectly valid to me too. I tried my hardest to learn, because I did not want to disappoint the lord, but I had no real belief or trust in my situation.

  Usually in the late afternoon Lord Shigeru would send for me, and we would sit by the window and look at the garden. He did not say much, but he would study me when he thought I was not looking. I felt he was waiting for something: for me to speak, for me to give some sign—but of what I did not know. It made me anxious, and the anxiety made me more sure that I was disappointing him and even less able to learn. One afternoon Ichiro came to the upper room to complain again about me. He had been exasperated to the point of beating me earlier that day. I was sulking in the corner, nursing my bruises, tracing with my finger on the matting the shapes of the characters I’d learned that day, in a desperate attempt to try to retain them.

  “You made a mistake,” Ichiro said. “No one will think the worse of you if you admit it. The circumstances of your brother’s death explain it. Send the boy back to where he came from, and get on with your life.”

  And let me get on with mine, I felt he was saying. He never let me forget the sacrifices he was making in trying to educate me.

  “You can’t re-create Lord Takeshi,” he added, softening his tone a little. “He was the result of years of education and training—and the best blood to begin with.”

  I was afraid Ichiro would get his way. Lord Shigeru was as bound to him and Chiyo by the ties and obligations of duty as they were to him. I’d thought he had all the power in the household, but in fact Ichiro had his own power, and knew how to wield it. And in the opposite direction, his uncles had power over Lord Shigeru. He had to obey the dictates of the clan. There was no reason for him to keep me, and he would never be allowed to adopt me.

  “Watch the heron, Ichiro,” Lord Shigeru said. “You see his patience, you see how long he stands without moving to get what he needs. I have the same patience, and it’s far from exhausted.”

  Ichiro’s lips were pressed tight together in his favorite sour-plum expression. At that moment the heron stabbed and left, clacking its wings.

  I could hear the squeaking that heralded the evening arrival of the bats. I lifted my head to see two of them swoop into the garden. While Ichiro continued to grumble, and the lord to answer him briefly, never losing his temper, I listened to the noises of the approaching night. Every day my hearing grew sharper. I was becoming used to it, learning to filter out whatever I did not need to listen to, giving no sign that I could hear everything that went on in the house. No one knew that I could hear all their secrets.

  Now I heard the hiss of hot water as the bath was prepared, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the sliding sigh of the cook’s knife, the tread of a girl in soft socks on the boards outside, the stamp and whinny of a horse in the stables, the cry of the female cat, feeding four kittens and always famished, a dog barking two streets away, the clack of clogs over the wooden bridges of the canals, children singing, the temple bells from Tokoji and Daishoin. I knew the song of the house, day and night, in sunshine and under the rain. This evening I realized I was always listening for something more. I was waiting too. For what? Every night before I fell asleep my mind replayed the scene on the mountain, the severed head, the wolf man clutching the stump of his arm. I saw again Iida Sadamu on the ground, and the bodies of my stepfather and Isao. Was I waiting for Iida and the wolf man to catch up with me? Or for my chance of revenge?

  From time to time I still tried to pray in the manner of the Hidden, and that night I prayed to be shown the path I should take. I could not sleep. The air was heavy and still, the moon, a week past full, hidden behind thick banks of cloud. The insects of the night were noisy and restless. I could hear the suck of the gecko’s feet as it crossed the ceiling hunting them. Ichiro and Lord Shigeru were both sound asleep, Ichiro snoring. I did not want to leave the house I’d come to love so much, but I seemed to be bringing nothing but trouble to it. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if I just vanished in the night.

  Without any real plan to go—What would I do? How would I live?—I began to wonder if I could get out of the house without setting the dogs barking and arousing the guards. That was when I started consciously listening for the dogs. Usually I heard them bark on and off throughout the night, but I’d learned to distinguish their barks and to ignore them mostly. I set my ears for them but heard nothing. Then I started listening for the guards: the sound of a foot on stone, the clink of steel, a whispered conversation. Nothing. Sounds that should have been there were missing f
rom the night’s familiar web.

  Now I was wide-awake, straining my ears to hear above the water from the garden. The stream and river were low: There had been no rain since the turn of the moon.

  There came the slightest of sounds, hardly more than a tremor, between the window and the ground.

  For a moment I thought it was the earth shaking, as it so often did in the Middle Country. Another tiny tremble followed, then another.

  Someone was climbing up the side of the house.

  My first instinct was to yell out, but cunning took over. To shout would raise the household, but it would also alert the intruder. I rose from the mattress and crept silently to Lord Shigeru’s side. My feet knew the floor, knew every creak the old house would make. I knelt beside him and, as though I had never lost the power of speech, whispered in his ear, “Lord Otori, someone is outside.”

  He woke instantly, stared at me for a moment, then reached for the sword and knife that lay beside him. I gestured to the window. The faint tremor came again, just the slightest shifting of weight against the side of the house.

  Lord Shigeru passed the knife to me and stepped to the wall. He smiled at me and pointed, and I moved to the other side of the window. We waited for the assassin to climb in.

  Step by step he came up the wall, stealthy and unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world, confident that there was nothing to betray him. We waited for him with the same patience, almost as if we were boys playing a game in a barn.

  Except the end was no game. He paused on the sill to take out the garrote he planned to use on us, and then stepped inside. Lord Shigeru took him in a stranglehold. Slippery as an eel, the intruder wriggled backwards. I leaped at him, but before I could say knife, let alone use it, the three of us fell into the garden like a flurry of fighting cats.

  The man fell first, across the stream, striking his head on a boulder. Lord Shigeru landed on his feet. My fall was broken by one of the shrubs. Winded, I dropped the knife. I scrabbled to pick it up, but it was not needed. The intruder groaned, tried to rise, but slipped back into the water. His body dammed the stream; it deepened around him, then with a sudden babble flowed over him. Lord Shigeru pulled him from the water, striking him in the face and shouting at him, “Who? Who paid you? Where are you from?”