Blood and Chrysanthemums

by Nancy Baker

  We gathered in the main room for the feasting. As we were mostly relatives, formalities had been relaxed somewhat and only a thin silk kicho screened the ladies from the gentlemen. Much laughter and conversation flowed through the screen but I spoke mostly to the women, relating the latest court stories.

  Darkness had fallen when I heard my father’s voice raised in greeting. “Welcome. You are late, my brother. Your night must have run into day if you slept until now.” I looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse, however veiled, of my unknown uncle, but he must have already settled into a place with the men, for I could see no one I did not recognize.

  “Indeed. I was awake much of last night. My sleep has been troubled since the unfortunate death of my father.”

  I froze, my teacup in my hand. Cold fear was washed away by hot shame. It was his voice—the voice of the moonlit demon.

  Beside me, my maid touched my arm in concern and then I could breathe again. My thoughts were wild and confused. In the palace, I had only been concerned with protecting myself. But here . . . here the safety of my family was at stake. Did I dare to tell my father the truth? Would he believe me?

  A burst of laughter from the men drew my attention. As much as it frightened me, I knew that I had best listen to their conversation, to hear what words the demon told my father. Perhaps that would help me determine what to do. It was hard to listen while my aunts and cousins chatted around me. Much of the conversation was the same gossip I heard at court: who was in favour, who was losing it, what to do about the increasing lawlessness of the country. Again my demon-uncle presented the view that great change was coming and that it would not be the Fujiwara family who controlled it but the provincial lords with their armies.

  My other relatives, all Fujiwaras themselves and some closer to the line that currently held the regency than we were, protested and argued and swore in their wine cups that the city of the emperor would go on forever. Was the emperor not the descendant of the sun-goddess? Were not his courtiers of descent almost as long, if not as divine? Was not Heian-kyo the most beautiful and civilized place in the land?

  My father interrupted the discussion before it turned unpleasant, announcing that my uncle had chosen to return to the north. My father had generously deeded to him an estate in the mountains, part of the holdings which provided our family fortunes. There was much toasting and salutation, but I did not believe my father was sorry to see his half-brother go.

  My heart rose. There would be no danger now. I was certainly safe, especially as the demon who had my uncle’s name did not know mine. After the announcement, I was able to relax and laugh with my relatives again, setting aside the fear which had seized me.

  As it came time for the women to depart, my father rose from his mat and waved his arm with drunken expansiveness. “Before you go, my brother, you must meet my daughter, who is home from the court this night.”

  Before I could stir, my father had brought the creature claiming to be my uncle to kneel by the kicho. I bowed, keeping my eyes lowered, fearful that he could see me clearly through the silk. “My daughter, Tamakatsura. Daughter, this is your uncle, Sadamori.”

  “We are honoured by your return,” I said, as softly as I could.

  “You serve the Princess Masahime, I understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is strange. Your voice is somehow familiar. Is it true you have not been here since my arrival?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I must be mistaken then. Good fortune to you.”

  “And you, Uncle.”

  Then he was gone and I could escape the room, sheltered in the press of my aunts.

  Back in my chamber, I sent my maid to sleep outside and knelt, still dressed in my finest kimono, praying to Kannon, the goddess of mercy, to protect me. I collected all the talismans and good-luck wards I had acquired over the years and set them about the room. Then I settled in the centre of my bed, drew the veils, and vowed to stay awake the whole of the night until it was time to return to the palace in the morning.

  When I woke, two of the lamps I had left burning had gone out. The third cast a flickering light from the corner, touching the white face bent over mine. I opened my mouth to scream and a cool hand covered it. “Tamakatsura,” he said softly. “You were less than honest with me, my lady.” My eyes flickered towards the doorway, wondering how he had passed by my maid. “She sleeps . . . and will not waken until I will it.” His hand left my mouth to stroke my hair. “I should have guessed that it was you.”

  His fingers moved down to my sash and unbound it slowly. I watched as if charmed as he lifted away the first of my robes. “What are you?” I whispered, watching the second layer of silk drawn away.

  “I do not know. I am a thing that died and changed. Or perhaps simply changed and now does not die.” Plum-coloured silk slid away beneath his hand, then apricot, then gold the colour of autumn leaves.

  “Are you my uncle?”

  “No.” He shook his head as the last barrier parted. “I am Fujiwara no Sadamori. I am your grandfather.” And he laid his hand over my breast, over my pounding heart. I knew he told the truth. I had no uncle, except as my grandfather chose to claim that title to hide his true nature, true age. Yet the face that hovered over mine was not that of an old man. I closed my eyes, unable to bear the sight of those white features, the black-burning eyes. This was not some unknown, uncalled demon. It occupied, in some terrible fashion, the body of my ancestor. Perhaps it truly was my ancestor. I could not betray him nor could my father, for a second curse upon our family could doom it. And I could not confess the truth: that demon or not, ancestor or not, his touch stirred my body to painful hunger.

  I felt the heat of tears seep out onto my skin, then the chill of his lips as he kissed them away. “Hush . . . do not cry. My blood is in your veins. Is it so wrong that yours should be in mine?” His mouth touched mine. “But I will not force you. Say the word and I will go.”

  It was my duty to surrender to him. I knew that, even if he feigned to forget it and sought to persuade me with the eloquence of his fingers, the poetry of his mouth. It was my duty to surrender, but it was not out of duty that I did so. When he lay atop my naked body and put his mouth against my throat, I gave myself up to him out of my own blind, selfish longing.

  After he had taken what he wanted, he kissed my mouth again and sat up. “I am leaving tomorrow night. We will not meet again.”

  “No,” I agreed in a whisper.

  “I will think of you, here in this dying garden.”

  “Are you a soothsayer after all?”

  “No.” He shook his head sadly. “I am not even so very old yet. But I have seen the world outside these walls and now I have seen again the world within them. I have tried to warn your father . . . my son. I have even told him he should marry you to one of the warrior clans but I do not suppose he listened to me.”

  “You would see me married?” I asked, with pain that surprised me.

  “I would see you safe.” He leaned over to kiss me twice, once on the mouth, once on the forehead. “Farewell, granddaughter.”

  When he was gone, I wrapped myself in one of my robes and opened the outer door to see the moon. It was there, still almost full, shining down over the city. In the distance, I saw the orange glow of flames. I sat there for a long time, watching as another part of the city of the emperor burned.

  Chapter 23

  October, 1902

  You are quite right, of course. I am not Tamakatsura. I confess to fictionalizing this event somewhat as well, though during our one night together she did tell me how she felt and I believe my depiction of her is, at its heart, truthful.

  I left Heian-kyo for the second time and went to the Fujiwara estates. My son did not marry Tamakatsura to a Minamoto. Soon after I left, I received word that she had become a Buddhist nun.

  The world did not end quite the way I thought
it would, but over the next century the Fujiwaras lost their hold on the true power in the empire. When they failed to sire enough daughters to provide wives and consorts for the royal family, the emperors began to take control again. And all the while, the provincial jackals circled the capital, eager for their own chance at wealth, power and prestige.

  Meanwhile, I lived on in my northern estate, passing my hundredth birthday looking no older than I had at my thirtieth. My son died, as did Tamakatsura.

  From out of the west, the Mongols came and went. Twice, their soldiers were driven back by our warriors and their fleets were sunk to the bottom of the sea by the divine wind of well-timed typhoons. In their wake, the internecine warfare that was to ravage my land for most of the next four centuries began.

  Heian-kyo, my beautiful, dying city, came to be known as Kyoto. That did not save it; it burned and was rebuilt and burned again as the shoguns and the emperors fought over it. In the end, the Ashikaga shoguns won.

  There was beauty amid all this death, of course. Out of warfare came swords of exquisite balance and artistry. Out of Zen came philosophy and art of simplicity and restraint.

  There was even beauty in the hard codes that came to rule the land: loyalty, obedience, courage. Rigidly observed or not, these were the values of the samurai. Even I, who manipulated them without remorse to ensure my safety, felt their power.

  Through it all, I lived out my lifetimes, carefully arranging to ensure the estates would once again be returned to me after my “death” and reappearance. I staged my demises at sea, in fires, in mountain wastes. I lived as a hermit or a traveller, searching out new places in our islands where I had no history and could wait out the years until I could return home.

  Despite the danger, I always returned to the estate. Often it took considerable intriguing and wealth to maintain it. More than once I killed for it. Yet I could not give it up. It was, in practical terms, the source of my wealth, its rice fields and peasants providing me with security. Beyond that, it was as if I were rooted there in some fashion. I had not been born there, yet it drew me as the native earth draws my kind in the myths of the West. Perhaps it has been, like this diary, a way to preserve my past and to define myself

  I did not ponder all these things at the time, of course. I preferred not to wonder about what I had become or why. I simply accepted the strange fate I had been given and lived on.

  Chapter 24

  Lisa Takara gave up trying to sleep.

  At first, it had been wonderful to feel safe in her own apartment. To sleep in her own bed instead of curled on the couch in Derek and Angie’s basement. To reacquaint herself with her own four walls again.

  Perhaps it was foolish, or simply wishful thinking, but she trusted Fujiwara’s word when he said that she would not be troubled again. She had happily worked late at the university for the first time in weeks and never once looked over her shoulder or started at the sound of footsteps in the corridors.

  Even the phone call from Ardeth Alexander had not bothered her, once it was clear that Ardeth understood her desire to be left alone.

  I guess Ardeth was in Toronto, after all. Sara must have known how to find her. I wonder if Rozokov is there too.

  Now that, she thought as she padded out the living room, is why you cannot sleep. You keep wondering these things that you have no reason to be interested in.

  It’s over. The yakuza will leave you alone. You know that there are indeed vampires in the world. What more do you want? she asked herself defiantly, refusing to look at her wrist. Over the last few days, she had caught herself examining it at odd moments, her fingers brushing the vein as if she could find traces of his teeth there.

  Pushing aside the memory, she went to the kitchen and made her hands move, going through the familiar rituals of making tea.

  I wonder how they metabolize it? The question drifted into her mind unbidden, just like a thousand others had over the last days. All the questions she was supposed to have answered in the Dale laboratory, back when she hadn’t believed in vampires at all.

  She had thought her curiosity had died, burned out in the terror of her captivity in Toronto. She had been sure that the last of her uncertainty had been laid to rest by Fujiwara. She had believed that all he wanted was to be left alone, yet now that it was over, she found she could not stop herself from wondering. Wild fancies flitted through her mind, seeking to pass themselves off as reasonable plans. Private study of the vampires would be useless, even if they would cooperate. She could never publish anything that she discovered. It could never become part of the general store of knowledge about the world.

  Even it if could, the consequences of her discoveries could be dangerous. She did not have the detachment required to avoid considering the possible results of her curiosity. She imagined a world in which no one died—or death came only to those without the money to buy eternity. If immortality turned out to be inseparable from the need for blood, she could see a world ruled by vampires. There was no way to divorce knowledge from those nightmare visions of blood and power, conspiracy and corruption. The price the world would have to pay for immortality might be far more than the gift was worth.

  If you’d wanted the answers to your questions, without ever worrying about the consequences, all you had to do was let Havendale win, Lisa told herself. You could have spent the rest of your life, however long they’d let you live, finding out everything you could pry and scrape and dissect out of Ardeth and Rozokov.

  It’s over. Stop thinking about it, she instructed herself firmly, turning her attention to the whistling kettle. There are lots of other scientific questions to be answered. There are a thousand secrets it would be safer to explore.

  Tea in hand, she wandered back to the living room in search of something to read. No science texts, not tonight, she told herself, scanning the shelves. No mysteries, her secret, guilty pleasures.

  A thin red volume caught her eye and she drew it out. It was a gift from her father for her graduation from high school. He had known she was going into medicine and had been proud of her for it, but his gift had been a volume of poems. “So you don’t forget beauty,” he had said gruffly. “So you don’t forget who you are.”

  Lisa closed her eyes for a moment, letting the grief slide through her. Then her father’s voice was replaced by another, quoting verse in the ancient language she could not understand. She almost thrust the book back into the case but forced herself to keep it. This was part of her father’s legacy. She would not let everything he had given her be touched by the yakuza and the vampires.

  She had carted the book from home to university residences to her succession of apartments but she had never read it. I owe him that, she thought. I owe it to him to look at the beauty he believed in.

  Lisa took the book back to the couch and settled against the cushions to read. She felt a momentary twinge of guilt that her eye was inevitably drawn to the English translations, but it was too late now to regret that she had never learned more than a few words in her father’s language.

  For a while, she lost herself in love and longing, in blossoms and moonlight and rain. Some of the poems were more than a thousand years old but the emotions still burned in the words, luminous with sweetness and sorrow. She paged through the book, savouring the design as much as the text. There was something soothing and serene about the short poems resting in the white emptiness of the page.

  From the mountain spring

  The water bubbles clear and cold

  Pure as the moonlight;

  I thirst but cannot drink

  I must travel on.

  Her eye caught the name beneath the poem. The cup froze her hand, halfway to her mouth. She put it down very carefully, her fingers feeling as fragile as the porcelain.

  Fujiwara no Sadamori, thirteenth century.

  It’s probably a common name, she told herself. There must have been hundreds of Sadamori
Fujiwaras over the centuries.

  But it was him. She knew it with a certainty that was almost frightening. Who else could have written a poem of longing for something as simple as water, for sustenance that was forever denied him?

  She read the poem out loud, softly. There was more than longing there, she realized. There was resolution.

  “I thirst but cannot drink,” she whispered. It was true for her, as well. She still thirsted for answers she could not have. If she pursued them, she’d only cause pain for herself, for the vampires who had never done her any harm and perhaps even for the whole world. The only answers she could ever have were the ones she found when she let Fujiwara drink her blood. That vampires did indeed exist. That she could never betray them.

  “I must travel on.” He had done that, for more than seven more centuries. Now she had to let the last six months pass away. She had to believe that it was over, whether she wanted it to be or not, whether it truly was or not.

  She opened the front of the book and looked at the inscription. He would have said it was fate, she thought with a smile. Fate knew what I would need and saw to it that he gave it to me. “Thank you for knowing,” she said softly, tracing the lines and curves of the characters. She looked up and out at the city glittering beyond the doors to her balcony.

  Thank you, Sadamori no Fujiwara, she thought to the darkness. I will travel on, even though our paths will never cross again.

  Though I reserve the right to hope that they might.

  Chapter 25

  THE MASK OF THE DEMON

  The troupe was travelling northward, towards the lands of Lord Konishi. Or so said the message received by Tadeo, who was steward of the household of Fujiwara no Sadamori. Tadeo knelt before the seat of his master and read the scroll.