“Ha! What’s a shout or two when we consort with
“Please excuse me, wouldn’t Choko be a better choice? She’s prettier and younger and sweeter. I’m sure he would enjoy her more.”
“Yes, child. But Akiko’s strong and very experienced. When this sort of madness is on men they’re inclined to be rough. Rougher than you’d imagine. Even Omi-san. I don’t want Choko damaged. Akiko likes danger and needs some violence to perform well. She’ll take the sting out of his Beauteous Barb. Run along now, your prettiest kimono and best perfumes . . .”
Gyoko shooed Kiku away to get ready and once more hurled herself into finishing the management of her house. Then, everything completed—even the formal cha invitation tomorrow to the eight most influential Mama-sans in Mishima to discuss a matter of great import—she sank gratefully into a perfect bath, “Ahhhhhhhhh!”
At the perfect time, a perfect massage. Perfume and powder and makeup and coiffure. New loose kimono of rare frothy silk. Then, at the perfect moment, her favorite arrived. He was eighteen, a student, son of an impoverished samurai, his name Inari.
“Oh, how lovely you are—I rushed here the moment your poem arrived,” he said breathlessly. “Did you have a pleasant journey? I’m so happy to welcome you back! Thank you, thank you for the presents—the sword is perfect and the kimono! Oh, how good you are to me!”
Yes, I am, she told herself, though she stoutly denied it to his face. Soon she was lying beside him, sweaty and languorous. Ah, Inari, she thought bemused, your Pellucid Pestle’s not built like the Anjin-san’s but what you lack in size you surely make up with cataclysmic vigor!
“Why do you laugh?” he asked sleepily.
“Because you make me happy,” she sighed, delighted that she’d had the great good fortune to be educated. She chatted easily, complimented him extravagantly, and petted him to sleep, her hands and voice out of long habit smoothly achieving all that was necessary of their own volition. Her mind was far away. She was wondering about Mariko and her paramour, rethinking the alternatives. How far dare she press Mariko? Or whom should she give them away to, or threaten her with, subtly of course—Toranaga, Buntaro, or whom? The Christian priest? Would there be any profit in that? Or Lord Kiyama—certainly any scandal connecting the great Lady Toda with the barbarian would ruin her son’s chance of marrying Kiyama’s granddaughter. Would that threat bend her to my will? Or should I do nothing—is there more profit in that somehow?
Pity about Mariko. Such a lovely lady! My, but she’d make a sensational courtesan! Pity about the Anjin-san. My, but he’s a clever one—I could make a fortune out of him too.
How can I best use this secret, most profitably, before it’s no longer a secret and those two are destroyed?
Be careful, Gyoko, she admonished herself. There’s not much time left to decide about this, or about the other new secrets: about the guns and arms hidden by the peasants in Anjiro for instance, or about the new Musket Regiment—its numbers, officers, organization, and number of guns. Or about Toranaga, who, the last night in Yokosé, pillowed Kiku pleasantly, using a classic “six shallow and five deep” rhythm for the hundred thrusts with the strength of a thirty-year-old and slept till dawn like a babe. That’s not the pattern of a man distraught with worry,
What about the agony of the tonsured virgin priest who, naked and on his knees, prayed first to his bigot Christian God, begging forgiveness for the sin he was about to commit with the girl, and the other sin, a real one, that he had done in Osaka—strange secret things of the “confessional” that were whispered to him by a leper, then treacherously passed on by him to Lord Harima. What would Toranaga make of that? Endlessly pouring out what was whispered and passed onward, and then the praying with tight-closed eyes—before the poor demented fool spread the girl wide with no finesse and, later, slunk off like a foul night creature. So much hatred and agony and twisted shame.
