The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  ‘Fuyu’s a procuress,’ she shouted. ‘How dare you believe her and not me? She sold me.’

  The Commander ran his hands through his hair, making it stand out like flames around his face. ‘You answer me back?’ he roared. ‘How dare you! You think it makes a difference whether it was your choice or not? No one wants a Yoshiwara woman as his wife.’

  He cracked his knuckles and she quivered, remembering how he used to crack his knuckles before he hit her, then he stood up. She flinched and curled into a ball and put her arms around her head as she felt his foot thudding into her ribs and back and thighs. He waited till she sat up then hit her around the ear so hard she fell to the ground, stunned. Slowly she picked herself up and he hit her again.

  The room was spinning, her ears were ringing and her head was aching so badly it was hard to think. She felt bruised all over; but he had done worse in the past, far worse. She straightened her back and stared at him defiantly. She would die proudly, not cowering and begging for mercy.

  ‘You don’t even weep,’ he said, more softly this time. ‘You’ve lost all shame. Get the mat. You know the procedure.’

  She stood up and brushed herself off and limped to the kitchen. She heard the screech of metal on stone and knew he was sharpening his sword. Oharu was standing at the stove, stirring a pot as if she would never stop, with Gensuké crouching in a corner. They shrank back and looked away, mute with fear, as she came in.

  Rolled in the corner was the straw mat that Oharu used to lay out radishes and persimmons to dry. It was dusty and mouldering and when Hana picked it up it left a mound of tiny dead insects on the floor.

  She took it outside, her husband striding behind her. He had tied back his sleeves and tucked his swords into his sash.

  ‘Over there,’ he barked.

  Hana felt the sunshine warm on her head. The day had never seemed so beautiful. The sky was dazzlingly blue and branches canopied the house, dappling the roof with gold, orange and brown leaves. She walked around the stone lantern and the pond, through the pine trees to the clearing behind the storehouse, where no one could see them.

  ‘Here.’

  She unrolled the mat and knelt with her back to him, holding her head high. But despite her resolve not to let him see her fear, she felt herself shaking and her teeth chattering. Her breath came short and shallow and she knew with each one that it might be her last.

  ‘Say your prayers.’

  The ground was cold and the stones cut through the thin straw into her shins. A breeze spun through the fallen leaves and made her shiver. A crow settled nearby and stared at her with a beady eye, then opened its big black beak and gave a harsh caw, startlingly loud in the stillness. It was a lonely sound, an omen of death.

  In the Yoshiwara she had tasted life and love. If she had never left this house she might have lived to be old but she would never have known life. She had no regrets, she thought. She remembered Yozo and their night together. She’d never before known such intense happiness or felt so complete. She wished only that she could have seen him one more time. She smiled, holding the picture of him clear in her mind. She would die thinking of him.

  There was a scrape of metal and she knew it was the last sound she would ever hear. She closed her eyes.

  41

  The idea had been to follow the procession to the point where the road narrowed, kill the guards and break Enomoto and Otori free. The southerners would think they’d wiped out the resistance and wouldn’t have employed enough guards, the cage bearers would run away, and the bystanders, who hated the southern upstarts, would join in the fight alongside Yozo and his friends. That was the plan, at least, though whether it would work out quite so easily in practice was another matter.

  But Yozo had survived plenty of hare-brained schemes in the past and he would survive this one, he told himself. He had to. He had a woman now that he cared for; he couldn’t continue to risk his life any longer. His mind was still on Hana and the conversation they’d had. He’d needed to make peace with himself, knowing that he might not survive to see Hana again, but he’d feared her reaction when he told her that he had killed her husband. She had been so calm, so forgiving, and he admired her all the more for it. Now he could focus on what he had to do – to free Enomoto.

  As he pushed through the mulberry bushes, making for the willow trees and shacks along the riverbank, he noted every detail of the way back to the great house where Hana would be. He wished he had his trusty Snider-Enfield, lost in the last battle. As it was, he would have to make do with the Colt and the sword which Marlin had thrust into his hands as he was running out of the Yoshiwara; unless, that is, Ichimura had found some usable weapons in the militia’s arsenal.

  At the jetty Heizo and Hiko were leaping out of a boat while the ferry man counted his coins. Yozo grinned as they saluted. Ichimura appeared, stumbling along the embankment, dragging a kitbag clattering and bouncing behind him. He was wearing dark blue leggings and a coarse jacket like a workman and had plastered his hair down so he wouldn’t stand out in the crowd. He was grinning exultantly. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted something but the wind took away his words. Then as he got closer he shouted again. Yozo froze as he heard what he was saying. ‘The Commander’s back! He’s not dead!’

  ‘The Commander?’ Yozo repeated, trying to swallow. The day suddenly felt darker and colder. ‘You don’t mean … You can’t … Commander Yamaguchi?’ There was a prickling at the back of his neck and a terrible constriction in his throat. ‘He’s still alive? But he can’t be.’

  Ichimura came up to Yozo, panting.

  ‘I saw him with my own eyes, sir,’ he said blithely. ‘Yesterday. He lives near here. I told him our plans and he told me not to be a fool. The war’s over, he’s trying to avoid arrest. He’s not planning to do anything to draw attention to himself.’

  But Yozo no longer heard. He had turned cold as he realized what deadly peril Hana was in. But he had shot at him, he thought, had seen him fall, had looked back and seen him lying in a pool of blood. There had been blood on his jacket, blood on the ground. How could he still be alive?

  Then Yozo himself had been captured. He’d heard nothing of the Commander after that, nothing all the time they’d been in the Yoshiwara until Ichimura had appeared with his damned box, which had only confirmed in his mind that he was dead. He groaned. How could he have been so wrong? And now he’d sent Hana home – to her death.

  He stared around in horror, hitting his head with the flat of his hand as he realized the enormity of the choice he had to make. There was Enomoto, his friend of many years, brilliant, gallant Enomoto, whom he admired and loved like a brother. His whole life and training – the samurai code that had been instilled in him since birth – had taught him that the most important quality for a man was loyalty to the cause and to his comrades. They would give their lives for you; you would give your life for them. He knew there would be no second chance to rescue Enomoto and Otori and that if the plan failed they would go to their deaths. How could he even think of betraying them?

  But then Hana had come along and changed everything. He realized now that she mattered to him more than anything in the whole world. He would give up anything for her, even his honour and the respect of his comrades. All those years in the West had changed him more than he’d imagined possible – and once he’d made this choice he knew he could never look back.

  He grabbed Ichimura’s bag and ripped it open. It was bulging with rifles, but they were old and rusty and a bulky weapon would just slow him down. He kicked the bag aside.

  ‘Wait here,’ he barked.

  ‘There’s no time, sir. We have to go.’

  Heizo, Hiko and Ichimura were staring at him as if he’d gone mad. They all probably knew about his meetings with Hana. He had done his best to keep them secret but the Yoshiwara was a small place and rife with gossip and Hanaogi, after all, had been the most famous courtesan of them all. All the men must have been jealous of him.<
br />
  And if they’d guessed what was on his mind he knew what they would think – that women were fine for recreation, but to put personal feelings before duty, to put a mere woman before the need to rescue his brothers-in-arms, was totally crazy.

  He shook his head. It was a terrible choice to have to make but he’d made his decision. There was no question about it. He had to save Hana.

  ‘I’ll join you later,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘But, sir …’

  But even as Yozo started running he knew that he was almost certainly too late.

  Marlin had drilled them to move at the double and now his training came into its own. He sprinted back towards the streets of dank samurai houses on the other side of the mulberry field, retracing his path as carefully as he could, but with each step the grey-tiled roofs and stone walls seemed further away. As if in a nightmare, he ran and ran yet seemed to make no progress at all. He cursed as he realized with a surge of blind fury that he was heading in the wrong direction.

  Finally he found the high wall and the gate and pushed it open, grimacing as it screeched noisily in its grooves. There was the big house with its gloomy entrance porch and smoke drifting from the eaves, just as Hana had described, across a gravelled courtyard with paving stones, a well and a huge cherry tree.

  Crows cawed, insects twittered and Yozo heard voices from the street outside, but inside the grounds all was silent. He glanced around, then squatted behind the tree and loaded his gun, wishing he’d had a chance to try it out.

  If the Commander discovered Hana had been in the Yoshiwara, he would kill her. Samurai had to execute their wives if they found them committing adultery, let alone engaging in prostitution, and the Commander’s fierce nature made it certain he would cut her down immediately, especially once he realized she’d been with southerners. If Yozo tried to stop him it would be he who was committing an offence, not the Commander.

  His only hope was that she might have delayed him. She wouldn’t have pleaded for mercy, she was too proud for that, though she might have tried to persuade him that she had been visiting her family. But the Commander would see through that quickly enough. He had only to look at her and he would know. Everything about her – even the way she carried herself – made it obvious that she was a woman used to stirring men’s desire.

  He had to think fast. If the Commander was going to kill her, he would do it outdoors, out of sight. But where could that be?

  Yozo ran across the courtyard, looking for patches of moss to deaden his footsteps, scowling as his foot slipped and gravel crunched under his straw sandals, then reached the house and caught his breath in the shadow of the wall. The place was silent. He skirted a landscaped garden with a pond and a stone lantern, then peered around and saw a squat white-painted building – the storehouse. As he edged along the side of it he heard the scrape of metal and his blood began to pound.

  Hardly daring to breathe, he looked around the corner and drew back sharply. Hana was kneeling like a statue, facing the wall, her hands small and white in her lap. She was wearing the plain blue kimono she’d put on that morning. Her hair had come loose and hung in strands around her face, though Yozo could glimpse the soft white skin at the nape of her neck. She was deathly pale but her face was composed and she sat very straight. As Yozo saw the graceful line of her back he felt a surge of pride that she held herself with such dignity. Then he saw that her cheek was bruised and swollen and had to clench his fists to stop himself shouting in fury.

  The Commander loomed over her, legs spread apart, hand on his sword hilt, ready to strike. He was thinner and greyer than when Yozo had last seen him, but he was no ghost. He had tucked up his skirts, tied back his sleeves and put on a steel-fronted headband as if he was going into battle. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth set in a look of implacable determination.

  Yozo knew that if the Commander so much as moved his hand, his sword would be out of its scabbard and Hana would be dead in a single sweep of the blade. He cocked his pistol. The click was startlingly loud in the silence but the Commander didn’t seem to hear it. He looked deep in thought.

  Raising his gun, Yozo crouched and took aim. The gun was old and he didn’t know how accurate it was and the Commander was so close to Hana he was fearful he might hit her; but there was no time to do anything else. Grunting with determination, he pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang and a plume of flame. Through the smoke he saw the Commander leap back, stumble and put out his big swordsman’s hand to stop himself falling. The bullet rammed into a wall, sending out an eruption of earth and stones and dust.

  Yozo cursed. He had startled the Commander and thrown him off his stride but he hadn’t put him out of action.

  The Commander jerked round and saw Yozo and a look of astonished recognition flashed across his face. His eyes bulged in their sockets, he roared like a lion at bay and his whole body seemed to convulse with rage. His face blackened as if he was about to explode and he swept his sword out of its scabbard and swung it in an arc that glittered in the sun. If Hana had been in front of him it would have sliced her open from waist to shoulder.

  But she was no longer there. At the sound of the shot she had started violently, and as the bullet whistled past the Commander’s face, sending him staggering, she twisted round and saw Yozo. She scrambled to her feet, pulled up her skirts and ran to the corner where Yozo was poised, his gun raised. For a moment their eyes met. Hers were huge and white, like a frightened deer’s.

  ‘Get behind me,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Quickly.’

  He pulled the trigger again but this time the Commander was ready. With a curl of his lip he stepped aside and swung his sword. Yozo stared in disbelief as the Commander split the bullet clean in half. The shards veered off to each side of the gleaming blade and slammed into the wall, kicking up more earth and dust. The sword glinted in the sun, unmarked.

  Cursing, Yozo threw down his gun, but the Commander was already on top of him, yelling a war cry, sword raised in both hands over his head. Yozo wrenched his own sword out just in time to parry as the Commander’s blade came slashing down. Steel clanged deafeningly on steel as the blades scraped together, sending out a shower of sparks. The impact drove Yozo to his knees.

  He sprang up and they glared at each other, swords at the ready, as they edged back and forth, each daring the other to be the first to strike.

  After the months in the Yoshiwara Yozo was out of practice and his sword was not the best. He knew the Commander’s weapon. It was legendary, the work of a famous swordsmith. The Commander must have given it to Ichimura when he realized the war was lost and Ichimura had brought it to the house. For a moment Yozo was struck by the dreadful sadness of it all. He and the Commander had been on the same side, fighting for what they believed in, and now, as once before, they were reduced to fighting each other. For a moment he wanted to throw his weapon down. The Commander was a relic of a lost age and fighting with swords was a dying art. Yozo had had his revenge once and had been haunted by it ever since. It seemed wrong to have it again. But then he remembered Kitaro lying dead on the lonely Ezo plain and thought of the bruises on Hana’s face and his resolve hardened.

  ‘So it’s you,’ the Commander said. ‘Yozo Tajima. I can’t escape you. Wherever I go, you’re there.’ He had a spark in his eye, a dancing madness that Yozo recognized.

  ‘Let her go, just let her go,’ said Yozo. ‘We’ll leave Edo, we’ll go to Ezo, you’ll never see us again.’

  ‘You tricked me once, Tajima, you caught me off guard with your treachery. But now we’ll finish off what we began in Ezo, only this time you’ll be the one that dies – you and your whore.’

  Yozo was a fine swordsman but he knew the Commander was entirely ruthless and without pity, which made him almost invincible. He remembered how he’d boasted that the blade of one of his swords had rotted away from all the human blood that had soaked it.

  He knew he had to be the first to strike. The razor-sharp b
lades could slice through flesh like a knife through silk. A single blow was all it would take to cut a man’s arm or leg off or split him in half as easily as the Commander had sliced through the bullet.

  Yelling at the top of his voice, Yozo leaped forward, swinging his sword. There was a clang as the Commander parried. Yozo spun on his toes, turned his sword and slashed again, then gripped the hilt with both hands, raised it over his head and brought it whistling down. The clang and clatter of steel were deafening. But the Commander anticipated his every move and easily parried each blow. As they drew apart, Yozo lunged again, taking the Commander off guard, and drove his blade deep into the soft flesh of his shoulder before he had a chance to leap back. Blood spread in a huge stain across the Commander’s torn jacket but he didn’t wince, just glared at Yozo as if he hadn’t even noticed.

  Then he grinned. His eyes sparkled and he laughed that arrogant laugh of his. He yelled as he charged forward, swinging his sword savagely. He danced to and fro, skirts flying, nimble as a deer, striking from every possible direction. His blade was like a razor, flashing in the sunlight as it swished through the air. Yozo was driven against the wall as he desperately tried to block his strokes, knowing that all it needed was a single stroke and he would be dead.

  The Commander closed in, bringing his blade down fast and light, again and again. Reaching out to parry a blow that seemed to come from nowhere, Yozo stumbled. He leaped out of the way but not far enough and the blade sliced his cheek. The sudden pain made his eyes water and he felt his face wet with blood. He gritted his teeth and swung his sword again and again, trying to fend off the barrage of blows, but then the Commander’s blade sliced down and he felt a stinging pain, nauseatingly sharp, in his left arm. He reeled, exhausted. He was panting, covered in sweat, his chest heaving and his breath puffs of steam in the autumn air.