The moaning drew near, directly outside the shoji. Heat burned away everything inside me. I was a hollow, throbbing husk.
Hands fisting and opening in frustration, Ashikaga growled. “Sing, then,”
I opened my mouth, and reaching with all my might, tried to find that comforting cold, the kami’s power. I pictured my mother’s long dark hair, imagined the shock from plunging in to Whispering Brook in the spring, swollen with winter run-off. From somewhere deep inside my lungs, the soothing chill otherness of the kami crystallized.
It is for your sake,
That I walk, careless, the fields in spring,
My garment’s hanging sleeves sodden with falling rain.
I sang mother’s Jindo warding song, my voice husky but sure. The moan rose to a wail, a desperate, aching sound that filled the room with despair. How could anyone in the whole palace still be sleeping? Still I sang on, and the wail went on and on.
The wail faltered, a sob, and then ended in a long, drawn out shriek, ripping a hot slice in the air like Father’s fillet knife through a brook trout’s gullet
Air came rushing back into the room, along with my lordling’s anger.
I collapsed like a wet paper lantern onto the tatami. Ashikaga slid over to the shoji and slid it open a crack. A pale face topped with a tangled nest of hair flashed by the opening. Ragged, crimson trails of cloth shushed against the mulberry paper. Then, it was gone.
“What was that thing? That wail?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But as soon as I said it, something tickled me in the back of my brain. I had felt that presence before. A long time ago. I wrestled limp limbs into a sitting position. My lungs had returned to normal, the smothering heat and the kami’s chill otherness gone, but I felt hollowed-out and weak. Too tired for the scolding I knew was coming. My lordling hated feeling powerless. “It wasn’t fox magic.”
“But the Jindo song scared it away? Still using forbidden magic, Tiger Lily?”
A hot blush crept across my cheeks at his use of my village nickname. Tiger Lily. My father had given me the name Lily-of-the-Valley in an attempt to ward off the bad luck influence of my Tiger birth year. My whole life, I’d been called Tiger Lily by villagers, emphasizing my above-average height and rough-cut features. Ashikaga stayed away from that name—unless wielding it to wound.
I lashed back from exhaustion. “Still denying the kami’s power?”
Ashikaga stood there, arms crossed, regarding me from the height of noble disdain. Oh, I’d done it now. Ashikaga had the stubbornness of our shared Tiger year, and the Jindo ways were a sore point between us. I knew that the anger before hadn’t really been directed at me, but that pale face we’d glimpsed, whatever it was, had horrified my lordling, and I was an easier target.
“You won’t let me, will you?” said Ashikaga, words tight and controlled with the nuance of noble speech patterns. “I think it safer if you remove yourself back to the servant quarters until morning.”
The moaning danger was gone. Safer? Ashikaga put me in my place. Pushing me away, despite all that had passed between us this night? My lordling could be carelessly cruel. My mind fell back into a familiar groove, as well-oiled as the shoji-door of my lordling’s chamber. If I was just a peasant to be used, a servant, then why these secret trysts? Why drag me all across Yamato away from my home to this godless capitol?
I bit my lip, dragging myself up to stand, eyes downcast, hands folded in front of me like a proper handmaiden. My temper surged, but I knew why Ashikaga Yoshinori could not leave me behind.
The secret.
Whether Ashikaga regretted that heated moment in the charcoal maker’s hut when my lordling revealed the Ashikaga family’s secret to me—a peasant—only death could take away that knowledge now.
There were just a handful of people with whom my lordling could truly, fully relax that iron-bound guard without fear. In that handful, only I understood the wearying, every day labor against the sad destiny fated for females born in the year of Tiger.
“Until tomorrow, then, my lord,” I said. I slid past, fighting back tears. If only it didn’t tug at my heart so to see those stiff shoulders. Easier if my arms didn’t ache to touch in comfort.
“Lord Ashikaga is ill,” my lordling said. I stopped in the doorway. The Daimyo had kept to his rooms since we arrived in the Capital. The last year the Daimyo battled some sickness. Was it more serious than I’d thought?
Ashikaga continued without turning around. “With my brother so busy, it falls on me to attend my father. Meet me here in the afternoon after the Emperor’s bathing ceremony.”
Ordering me back here as if my lordling’s harsh teasing meant nothing. I was an Ashikaga handmaiden, yes, but I was also Dawn’s daughter, beloved of the kami. Trying to remind me of my place? Well, then. I would play the role to the hilt.
“I’m going with the other unmarried handmaidens to Ryoan-ji,” I said. In truth, I’d been asked by Little Turtle yesterday, but had no intention to go at all until this moment.
“Praying for a husband, are you, little flower?” said my lordling, the words making a bitterness like peppery mizuna leaves coat my mouth.
“That’s what girls usually do at Ryoan-ji,” I said. Chew on that truth. I would go to one of the Emperor’s temples and pray. No matter I had no hope for a husband, not as a spinster Tiger Year. Ashikaga couldn’t miss the reminder of how little hope both of us had for a family.
My lordling drew a sharp breath. One hand shot out and pulled me. I was crushed in a fierce embrace.
Those tight arms crushed my wounded feelings as well. In their place, shame welled. Tiger pride blinded me to the real truth. I was one of a few people who knew Ashikaga’s secret, but my lordling was the only person in Yamato who understood my loneliness. We were both constantly at pains to keep ourselves secret. I suspected my lordling wished for a family, for children, as fiercely as I did, knowing full well the spirits had made that all but impossible.
I shouldn’t bait my lordling. This was not how it was meant to be between us. I looked up into the shadowed, creased face, as familiar now as Little Brother’s, with an apology ready on my lips. But before I could speak, Ashikaga released me.
“Go now.”
I fled.
Too much. The kami’s grumble, that seething moan, the raw places inside where Ashikaga’s bitter words prickled and the cold emptiness following the kami’s indwelling overwhelmed me. Tears spilled over my cheeks as the floor sang beneath my feet.
I slid open the brown-painted fusuma-door to the handmaiden’s room, trying not to trip over the neatly arranged bundles of sleeping women. Little Turtle gave a soft sigh as I settled on the bedroll next to hers. Her soft hand crept across the tatami to rest, once, on my own calloused palm. Then she turned over and began to snore, a delicate, human sound in the burdensome darkness.
Only a touch. A groggy gesture in the dark. This scrap of affection filled me with gratitude.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think on Ashikaga or moans or the cherry tree kami. Instead, I pictured father, in the Daimyo’s kitchen back north in Ashikaga Village, stirring a huge pot of stew. And Little Brother, his arms out to greet me as he did every day, returning from temple school.
Be content, I told myself firmly.
Chapter Two
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING dawned bright and clear and very, very early.
“Wake up!” called Little Turtle in my ear. “The Buddha himself has gifted us this lovely morning and you lie asleep wasting it.”
I groaned and opened my eyes. The others had thrown open the windows to the outside gardens and cool air streamed in with the yellow sun, straining out sleep-must and odor like hot water through a tea-sieve.
“Pull off her cover,” said Beautiful from across the room. “It’s the only way to oust a Tiger from her den.”
Beautiful and Little Turtle were the only other handmaidens who’d come from the Ashikaga domain. The other handmaidens were locals—haughty and polished capital girls who barely deigned to smile at Beautiful and Little Turtle, let alone acknowledge my existence. They dealt with my uneasy status—clearly not refined enough to be a house servant, but not sewage-removal class either—through snubbing.
I had grown up fending off frogs in my shoes and rude names from villager boys; reserved disdain was nothing to what I’d endured at home. Besides, our little Ashikaga trio was the first time I’d had females to talk to, other than my sisters.
I cut off that thought. Sister. Only May now. Best not to linger on that.
I sat up and knelt next to my bedroll to neatly fold it up like the others stacked against the wall. The clear light of the morning had chased away all the little resentments and anger-pricks from last night like a broom clearing cobwebs.
“Who brings tea to Lord Yoshinori this morning?”
Little Turtle jerked her chin at one of the local handmaidens dressed in a silk robe—most likely a castoff from a court lady—with long trailing sleeves dyed a rich chestnut brown. Her name was “Harmony,” but she insisted on using the foreign, Middle Kingdom, reading of her name-characters like the nobility. Kazue sniffed through her nose if I sat too close, as if I still smelled like the mud and sweat of rice paddies. There was no convincing her to trade duties with me this morning.
I didn’t want to waste my free morning on a trip to Ryoan-ji. Little Turtle pinched my elbow. “You aren’t thinking of trying to escape our company?”
Beautiful peered through the long cascade of hair she was combing. “If she’s too nervous to walk in the Capital, we won’t persuade her.”
Nervous? Of crowds and street peddlers? “It’s not that.”
Little Turtle’s finely drawn eyebrows made little, worried dips high on her forehead. “Oh,” she said. “Is it . . . that thing?”
I blinked.
“You know,” she said. She carefully folded the trailing ends of her gray linen robe under her knees and knelt next to me to whisper. “Your mother?”
She meant Jindo. My mother, another Tiger Year girl, had been known in Ashikaga Village for two things; being the only Tiger spinster in the North to find a man crazy enough to wed her, and for being a secret practitioner of Yamato’s native religion. The Emperor had decreed when I was very small that the foreign monks bringing their tales of the Shining Land and the compassionate Buddha taught the one, true path. All over Yamato, shrines big and small had been plundered for their sacred mirrors and gold fittings, and then left to rot.
My mother, Dawn, had defied the Emperor and the Daimyo’s edict. She’d secretly prayed to Whispering Brook at a hidden shrine in the forest. And that’s where she disappeared one day as I lay sleeping next to her on the moss-covered ground underneath a cryptomeria tree.
“No, ah, that’s not a problem,” I said. I ducked my head and peered sideways at Kazue and the other locals. “I have nothing but respect in my heart for the Buddha.” It was true. Any prayer I offered to a lifeless statue would be heard and appreciated by any kami happening to live nearby. The Emperor could close all the shrines and order humans not to bring offerings, but he couldn’t destroy the kami. The spirits slept their quiet dreams just under the surface.
Unless something disturbed their rest.
That strange, red light, that sobbing sound—like a heart broken over and over. Whatever had passed outside my lordling’s room last night had roused the cherry trees.
“Oh, Ryoan-ji is not like our temple at home,” said Little Turtle. “There’s no Buddha statue for offerings. Just rock gardens. It’s mostly for the nobles to come and sit zazen.”
Beautiful flung back her hair. “That’s why we go there to pray for husbands. Who wants to stare at a round-faced Buddha when one can appreciate all those elegant, noble backsides sitting in the temple like a row of ripe persimmons?”
Little Turtle screwed up her face into a mock disapproving glare. “We go there to open our hearts to the Buddha’s peace.”
One of Kazue’s friends covered her mouth and tittered. They had almost finished their combing, plucking, and face-whitening. In another few minutes they’d all leave to wait upon Lord Yoshinori and the Daimyo—giving the three of us a rare morning off. Little Turtle was right, I shouldn’t waste my morning. I would go with them to Ryoan-ji and see the famous gardens so I could write a description to Father. I ate better in Kyo no Miyako than I had any other time in my life, but I missed the leftover confections Father sometimes secreted away for me from the Daimyo’s kitchen. Little Turtle, who had a sweet tooth to rival mine, had mentioned that one of Ryoan-ji’s peddler stalls sold steamed red-bean buns imprinted with the foreign characters for good luck.
“I’m going,” I said. Ashikaga would wake up grumbling anyway. Let Kazue serve.
“Let’s hurry, then,” said Little Turtle. “We only have until noon. Any later and the Chamberlain will have our hides for dawdling.” She lived in fear of the burly man who ran the Ashikaga Kyoto Residence’s maids and pages with an iron fist.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” said Beautiful. She rose from the floor in one graceful motion and struck a demure pose. “He never gets angry with me.”
It had been Beautiful’s idea in the first place to seek permission to go to Ryoan-ji—her way of reminding the unmarried Chamberlain she was available. I shook my head, smiling. Beautiful had ambition. I suspected she intended to stay here in the Capital when the rest of us headed back North.
Kazue and the others swept out of the room, headed towards the kitchens for my lordling’s morning tea. Beautiful and Little Turtle finished blacking their eyebrows and lightly streaking their lips with expensive safflower pigment. I combed my unfashionably short hair—only down to my shoulder blades despite two months of growing it out—and tied it back with a piece of string. Beautiful clucked at my appearance, but Little Turtle tucked her arm into mine.
“Let’s go!”
The guards at the wooden side gate weren’t familiar. The two men had the Ashikaga paulownia crest dyed into their hachimaki headbands, but their hair was tied high on the back of their heads in the style of the Capital. Most likely they were more borrowed locals. Stepping through the gate made a spark dance up my spine—thrill and anxiety both. Good to be free from the close confines of the palace, but the streets of Kyo no Miyako never felt exactly safe.
Ashikaga village had Auntie Jay’s teahouse where all the codgers and biddies sat and gossiped. But a shuttered house with small tables and mats stood on each corner here. The bitter smell of roasted leaves and popped rice wafted onto every street from underneath indigo-dyed hangings, the foreign character for “tea,” with its funny little roof, inked on to each cloth, unlike the picture of a teacup Auntie Jay used. A torrential downpour of gossip must rain down daily throughout the Capital with this many teahouses. I couldn’t even imagine enough biddies and codgers to fill them!
The Ashikaga Residence was in the central part of Kyoto, nestled in a curve of the gray and tightly confined Kamo River. The streets were cobbled with stone quarried from the nearby mountain that towered over the southeast, Higashi-yama. I wasn’t used to the clacking sound our high, wooden geta made as we walked. Other maids in layered robes, fundoshi-clad workers carrying sedan chairs, and swaggering soldiers made a steady stream of people heading north—towards the commercial and temple district.
Little Turtle’s arm kept me from stumbling as I gaped like a country bumpkin at merchant guild-houses. Short-haired apprentices laid cypress bark out to dry on shingles, preparing them for being carved into rice paddles a
nd spoons. Two streets down, two old codgers sat on stools in front of a giant salt barrel. I had to tear Beautiful away from the guild-house where she lingered in front of a display of parasols inked with Middle Kingdom sketches of mountains and clouds.
Past the guild-houses, the cobbles turned into rice-straw lined, packed dirt. Instead of warriors and maids, we were joined by biddies and male servants bearing gifts for the temple-monks. Schoolboys, late for calligraphy lessons, raced past us up the gradually steepening path, their cloth-wrapped bentos banging unlucky knees. My heart gave a twinge for Little Brother.
“How much longer is it?” said Little Turtle. She’d been careless with the bottom hem of her outer robe. A sprinkling of brown dust stained the edge. Crinkling her nose, she stepped with Beauty over a muddy ditch to make way for three unmarked sedan chairs and their bearers, who jogged past us, forcing everyone out of their way.
Nobles, for sure.
“We’re almost—” Beautiful stopped short. Ahead of us stood a giant, two-story shingled gate. The tips of the shingles curved up like wings over a wooden foundation. I’d never seen anything so garishly red and huge in my life. Three symmetrical doorways built tall enough for a Daidarabotchi giant revealed glimpses of white-swept courtyard. “—there,” she finished. For all her ambition, Beautiful was still a Northern hick like me.
If Ashikaga were here, I could have followed him up the stone steps through that gate with the other nobles. I could have run my hands over that polished, red wood. I’d never felt anything stirring in Abbot Ennin’s temple back home. If the foreign gods sent any parts of themselves over the ocean to Yamato, it would be here, in the Capital. Was there spirit in that gaudy gate like I’d felt in my mother’s hidden shrine?
“That’s Ryoan-ji?” I said. Listening to the tales of locals I’d envisioned low wooden buildings surrounded by the famous raked-gravel dry landscape.
The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight Page 2