The Jade Lioness

by Christina Courtenay

Temperance stared at the worn mattress, which looked lumpy and uncomfortable and sported several stains of indeterminate origin. Revulsion engulfed her and she had to suppress a shudder. It was a far cry from the soft futon she’d left behind on Dejima, conscientiously aired by Akio every morning. She supposed she ought to be grateful for something to sleep on at all in the circumstances, but she couldn’t summon up one iota of gratitude. Instead, she railed inwardly at the cruel fate which had brought her to this, although the rational part of her brain knew it was her own fault.

  The room itself had a musty, enclosed smell and its walls were of plain, unadorned wood which was scuffed and marked from years of wear and tear. The tatami mats covering the floor were decidedly shabby.

  ‘Is there nowhere else?’ she asked Nyoko, hating herself for the pathetic sound of her voice, but unable to resist uttering the question.

  Nyoko looked at her as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘No, there isn’t. Is this not good enough for you, your high-and-mighty-ness?’

  Temperance didn’t reply. What was the point? Instead she glanced around at the faces of the other girls. Most had an air of resignation about them, as if they had been beaten into submission and now accepted their lot. Only the prettiest, the ones who were obviously in demand from clients, had any kind of vivaciousness left in them. Some, like Nyoko, looked merely calculating and no doubt affected a falsely cheerful demeanour whenever clients approached. It all made Temperance feel nauseous in the extreme.

  She clenched her fists at her side. There was no way she would ever accept this as her life.

  She had to find a way to escape and fast.

  ‘Is there no one we can ask? Not one person who might have seen her?’

  Haag watched Midori, Noordholt’s concubine, wringing her hands as she argued with him yet again. She’d been in a state of anxiety ever since they returned from the bay to tell her that Temperance was gone without a trace, proving that she’d been in on the secret all along as well – a fact verified by Noordholt when he’d told her that Haag knew all about Temperance’s gender. Another excursion hadn’t yielded any further results and Midori looked as though she was reaching the end of her tether. Haag stood silently next to Noordholt as the man replied patiently.

  ‘No, I told you, not a single one and there were no dwellings anywhere near the area. Just forest. There were lots of different trails but we’d have no way of knowing which way she went. Or rather, was taken.’

  Midori paced the room in front of them. ‘This is intolerable! What was she thinking? And how do we get her back? We must make a complaint to the officials here in Nagasaki. Perhaps they can send out a search party?’

  The Chief Factor shook his head. ‘You know we can’t. We’d have to admit that Temperance is a woman, otherwise they’d be looking for a youth. I doubt her captors will stay ignorant about her true status for long.’

  ‘But we have no choice. What else can we do? We can’t just sit and do nothing!’

  ‘It could jeopardise the trading rights of the Dutch nation, Midori. You know I can’t do that.’ Noordholt looked pained, but his mouth was set in a firm line. He glared at Haag as if to emphasise his determination not to allow anyone to talk to the Japanese about the matter. The Chief Factor had stuck to his word and had had Haag under observation ever since their return from the cove, which was a damned nuisance.

  Haag deemed it time to intervene. He was happy to keep quiet for the moment as long as something was being done to find Temperance, although he had his own plans for her. He’d deal with Noordholt later. ‘Is there no one you trust on the mainland who could help? Any relatives of yours, perhaps? Or someone who can be bribed?’

  Midori turned to look at him, hope dawning in her eyes. ‘Of course! Thank you, why didn’t I think of that? The very thing. If anyone can help us it will be Ichiro.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘My, er … relative.’

  Noordholt nodded and gave Haag a tight smile. ‘Good idea. Thank you.’ He turned back to Midori. ‘You must write to him at once, my love, and I’ll go and hire the fastest messenger I can find.’

  Haag smiled back, not caring who the man was as long as he did something about finding Temperance. At last, they were making progress.

  After a week Temperance gave up looking for a means of escape. To her despair, she had discovered that the front door was the only way out, as the back of the building was enclosed by an extremely high wall. This was impossible to scale and none of the side windows were big enough to climb out of.

  ‘Once you’re here, you stay until they have no further use for you,’ one girl whose name was Cho muttered when Temperance tried to ask whether anyone else had ever escaped. ‘Even if you managed to get away, they’d hunt you down and kill you as an example. Imada-san has spies everywhere.’ This was said with such bitterness that Temperance assumed the girl had lost a friend in this way.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked Cho, who looked to be in her early teens and happened to have the futon next to Temperance’s.

  ‘Not sure. I think my parents sold me to Imada-san when I was about seven?’

  ‘Your own parents sold you?’ Temperance was horrified. How could any parent do such a thing?

  Cho shrugged. ‘They had no choice if they wanted the rest of the family to eat. I had too many sisters and I might do well here so that I can help them more. Old Mai says I show great promise.’

  Temperance envied the girl her stoicism and optimism. She’d obviously embraced her fate and didn’t suffer from any of the moral qualms that bedevilled someone brought up as a Puritan. Temperance didn’t know how she could ever reconcile her conscience to what was expected of her at the Weeping Willow. It was impossible. She decided her only hope now was to watch out for a chance of escape once she was sold. For the moment, all she could do was to learn whatever they wished to teach her as quickly as possible.

  This was easier said than done, however, as she’d soon found out.

  ‘Hold your back straight, as if you had a pole stuck up your behind. No slouching. Bend gracefully. No, no, no, gracefully I said, not like a clumsy yokel! By all the gods, how you’ve managed to survive this long I don’t know.’

  Old Mai proved to be an ancient lady with a face like a dried currant and eyes that were barely visible, so deeply embedded were they in the folds of wrinkled skin. She was as tiny as a sparrow, but her voice could have carried across mountains. Temperance’s training in how to walk and move elegantly while wearing a kimono had been entrusted to Mai, and she was a hard taskmaster. She wanted perfection, nothing less, and although Temperance tried her best, it never seemed good enough.

  ‘Your hands are like the wings of a tiny bird, not the great big flapping appendages of a goose. Move them slowly, carefully, as if they are being blown gently by the wind, not buffeted by a storm. Have you no imagination? Again, try it again, girl.’

  With a sigh Temperance did as she was told. If the truth be known, she actually liked the irascible old lady for, although she wasn’t easy to please, she never looked at Temperance as if she were a freak or an oddity. Everyone else at Imada’s establishment did. Most of the other girls, apart from Cho, avoided her or made signs as if to ward off evil whenever she looked at them, and it annoyed Temperance no end.

  ‘They should be used to me by now,’ she’d muttered at one point, and old Mai heard her.

  ‘They’re superstitious ninnies,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not a rational thought between them, but then that’s just as well, isn’t it? In their profession you don’t need to use your brain. You, on the other hand, think too much.’

  It was disconcerting to have someone read your mind to that extent and Temperance tried to protest, although she was pleased that she hadn’t been lumped together with the other girls in Mai’s mind.

  ‘But I wasn’t—’

  ‘Yes, you were. I can see it in your eyes. You’re itching to escape from here, but you won’t succe
ed, believe me, so you’d best reconcile yourself to your fate.’

  ‘I know I can’t escape.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you do, but I can see your mind hasn’t accepted it yet. Don’t try to bamboozle me. I’m three times your age, girl,’ the old lady snapped. ‘Now let’s try those moves again, shall we? You need to concentrate.’

  Temperance was afraid Mai spoke the truth, but she simply couldn’t stop searching for a way out of her predicament, even though she knew the best thing to do would be to bow to the inevitable.

  But how could she?

  It proved even harder when her lessons with Nyoko began. The girl was a whore, there was no other word for it, and she set out to teach Temperance the tricks of her trade. True to her word, she began by ordering four other girls to hold Temperance down while she examined her to determine whether she was still a maiden or not.

  ‘She is,’ was the verdict. ‘Won’t last long now though, will it?’ Nyoko smirked in her usual fashion and the others sniggered. ‘I’d better teach you what to do about it then.’

  ‘And if I don’t wish to learn?’ Temperance had never been so embarrassed in all her life and she knew that her face was virtually on fire.

  Outright laughter greeted this question and Nyoko merely shook her head. ‘Follow me. I’m going to show you some drawings first, then we’re going to watch something.’

  The upstairs rooms of this part of the building could be reached via the main staircase from the hall, but there was also a secret staircase hidden behind a screen downstairs. Nyoko took Temperance up to the second floor and into one of the rooms used by the courtesans to entertain their clients.

  ‘Sit down,’ the girl ordered.

  Temperance sank onto a cushion and waited while Nyoko pulled something out of a cupboard behind a sliding door. ‘Here we are. Have a look at these.’

  Two hand scrolls were dumped on Temperance’s lap and she began to unroll one of them. There were drawings of couples, about a dozen of them, and although in the first two the figures were clothed, the rest featured semi-naked bodies copulating in various ways. Temperance blinked and felt her stomach tie itself in knots. Although she’d been vaguely aware of what men and women did together, the men in the pictures had appendages the size of a bull – she’d seen one once when it was about to mate with some poor cow – and they were depicted in minute detail. Temperance found the sight revolting. For some strange reason the women in the drawings looked to be enjoying what the men were doing to them though, which she found hard to believe. Surely having anything that size inserted into your body must be extremely painful? She shuddered at the thought and tried to give the scrolls back to Nyoko. ‘I’d rather not look at these, thank you very much.’

  ‘The gods give me strength,’ Nyoko muttered. ‘Do as you’re told or I’ll have you beaten. If you don’t look, I can’t explain what you have to do, now can I? Not unless I bring a man in to show you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. I mean, you can’t …’ Temperance was appalled and completely at a loss as to what to do. All her life she’d been taught that fornication out of wedlock was a great sin and that one’s desires were to be controlled by willpower at all times. She knew there were women who didn’t adhere to such rules – whores of Babylon her father had called them – but never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she’d have to learn how to become one herself.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Now listen,’ Nyoko said, and proceeded to explain exactly what was happening in the drawings, picture by picture.

  Temperance listened in silence, hoping the ordeal would be over quickly, but as soon as she’d finished talking, Nyoko put the scrolls away and pulled Temperance to her feet. ‘Now come on, it’s time to watch.’

  ‘Watch what?’

  The girl didn’t reply, but led the way to a small, dark cupboard at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Shhh, now. Look through there,’ Nyoko ordered, pointing to a couple of small holes in the wall in front of them. Temperance did as she was bid, but immediately drew back with a gasp.

  ‘I can’t! I don’t want to see that.’

  There was a man and a woman in the room next door, clearly visible through the peepholes, and they were doing exactly the same thing as the couples in the scroll pictures. The only difference was that the man’s appendage appeared to be much smaller and both parties were making strange noises, like grunting pigs. Temperance swallowed hard. This was unbearable.

  And this was what Imada wanted her to do?

  In the darkest moments after her kidnapping she had thought that perhaps she would be ravished by Ryo and his men, which would have been unspeakably vile. But to think of having to actually submit to a complete stranger, and take part in the act while pretending to like it as the woman next door was doing, made her feel seriously ill. ‘Is Imada-san going to sell me to men like that every day?’ she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  ‘No, stupid. You’ll belong to only one man, but you’d better learn how to please him or he’ll give you to his servants for sport.’ Nyoko tittered, then shoved Temperance’s head back towards the spyholes. ‘Now look and learn. It’s really quite easy.’

  Revulsion and her father’s words of warning warred with sinful curiosity and the need to obey so that she could leave this place soon. The latter won. Temperance reasoned that just to watch couldn’t possibly damage her own piety in any way, and as long as she managed to escape before she actually had to do any of this herself, then her soul shouldn’t be in jeopardy.

  Later, when she had seen more of the physical act of lovemaking than she had ever thought possible, Nyoko took her back downstairs.

  ‘Listen to me. There are many ways of pleasing a man and your future master will expect you to know them well,’ she said and began to explain in more detail what would likely be expected of Temperance.

  ‘I’d rather kill myself,’ Temperance muttered and turned away, putting her hands over her ears. She could feel her entire body grow hot, then cold, at the thought of having to learn such things. Surely ordinary women were never expected to act thus with their husbands? She’d been told only that she must submit to his needs, as and when the time came for her to marry. There hadn’t been talk of anything else.

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’ Nyoko grabbed her chin and forced her hands down. ‘You get used to it, trust me, and you’ll be amply rewarded. Who knows, your master may even fall in love with you – there’s no accounting for taste – and make you one of his consorts.’

  ‘Never. I won’t do this.’ Temperance stubbornly kept her eyes tightly shut, no matter what Nyoko said, until the latter finally lost patience.

  ‘Very well, if you insist on learning the hard way, that is your choice.’

  Before Temperance knew what was happening, Nyoko had called for Imada-san and some of the other girls to come and help. He came striding into the room, already angry at having been disturbed during an afternoon nap. When he was told that his latest acquisition was proving difficult, he didn’t hesitate for a moment, but lashed out instantly with both fists. Heavy blows rained down on Temperance, everywhere except her face, and Imada bellowed a string of epithets at her while panting with the effort of hitting as hard as he could.

  The beating seemed never-ending to Temperance, but probably only lasted a short while. Whenever she tried to duck or step aside to avoid the worst of it, the other girls pushed her back into Imada’s reach. At first, she tried not to cry out, but the pain soon became unbearable and she couldn’t help it. This was far worse than any punishment she’d ever received from her father.

  ‘Are you going … to stop … being so … stubborn?’ Nyoko’s words penetrated Temperance’s befuddled mind in snatches.

  Temperance held out for as long as she could, but in the end she realised that it was futile and she was only making matters worse for herself by delaying the inevitable.

  ‘Very well,’ she cried at last. ‘I’ll do whatever you say.’

  Nyoko stopped
Imada by pulling him away, and they both stood glaring at her, his chest heaving. ‘See that you do, or I’ll have to do this again,’ Imada panted. ‘I’ve got better things to do with my time.’ Without a backward glance he strode off, closely followed by Nyoko and the others. Temperance noticed that there was no sign of sympathy in their eyes. She was the odd one out, in more ways than one.

  When she was alone, she sank down and lay on the floor, curled into a ball, every part of her body throbbing with pain. She cried silently, tears coursing down her cheeks, but not for long. There wasn’t any point and if she wished to survive at all, she would have to accept her fate stoically.

  A gnarled hand gripped her shoulder and she looked up into the wise old eyes of Mai. ‘Come, child,’ she said. ‘I will take you to the bathhouse. A good long soak in hot water is what you need. There will be bruises, but they’ll heal in time. I hope you have learned your lesson? I did warn you.’

  Temperance nodded mutely. She had indeed learned her lesson and something inside her had hardened in the process. This was her life for now and she would submit, but she would bide her time. There had to be a way out of this.

  Chapter Ten

  Nyoko threw herself into teaching her reluctant pupil with gusto, triumphant now that she had the upper hand, and this time Temperance paid attention, albeit listlessly. Her entire body still ached every time she moved and she was as stiff as an old woman with gout.

  ‘Are you listening to me? These things are important if you wish to please your master.’ Nyoko frowned.

  ‘If you say so.’ Temperance’s reply was sarcastic, but the more she listened to Nyoko, the more she began to wonder if perhaps she wasn’t overreacting just a little. After all, the other girls here seemed content enough with their lot, apart from the very youngest who, like Temperance, had yet to come to terms with it. Maybe it wasn’t such a dreadful thing after all, especially if she would only have one man to please?

  ‘It won’t be so bad,’ Cho said, when Temperance questioned her again about why she didn’t mind being one of Imada’s girls. ‘If the man you’re with is skilled in the art of love-making I’m told it feels heavenly.’ She giggled. ‘I hope I attract the handsomest of the men.’