Read Online The Last Concubine by Lesley Downer - Free Book Online Page B

is not my place to say such things,’ Haru added, lowering her voice, ‘but you are lucky. His Majesty is gentle and kind-hearted. His predecessors have not all been so. And he’s young.’
    Nervously Sachi ran her fingers along the tines of her comb, hidden in her waistband.
    ‘What do you have there?’ asked Haru.
    ‘Nothing . . .’
    But it seemed wrong to conceal anything from Haru, so Sachi brought out the comb and showed it to her. Haru’s face changed.
    ‘Where did you get this?’ she snapped.
    Ever since Sachi came to the palace the comb had been tucked away in the folds of her garments. Now she looked at it properly. It was beautiful, tortoiseshell embossed with gold, with what looked like the crest of some noble family inlaid in gold on the edge. It caught the light and lit up the dark corner of the room where they sat.
    ‘I brought it with me from the village,’ she said, bewildered. ‘It’s my lucky comb. I’ve had it ever since I was little.’
    ‘Let me see it,’ said Haru. She took it in her hand and turned it this way and that. Sachi peeked at her questioningly. Haru was staring at her as if she was trying to find something in her face. Her usual sunny smile had entirely disappeared. Then she blinked and seemed to come back to the present with a start. Sachi snatched the comb and tucked it into her waistband again.
    ‘It’s a magnificent comb,’ said Haru, shaking her head as if to dislodge some private memory. ‘A very fine piece of work. I didn’t know they had such things in the countryside.’
    IV
    Long before evening Sachi was back behind the screens in the princess’s private section of the room, waiting for Lady Tsuguko to give her her instructions. Still the princess was not there. Sachi had never known her to be absent for so long. She knew she belonged to Princess Kazu and that Her Highness had chosen to give her to His Majesty. If only Sachi could be sure that whatever she did now would lighten the princess’s sadness, not increase it.
    ‘The time is approaching.’
    Sachi followed Lady Tsuguko into the principal dressing room. Oil lamps and tall candles lit up the darkest corners, casting flickering pools of light on the birds, trees and flowers exquisitely painted on the gold screens. Even the humblest items – the round mirrors on their stands, the towel racks, the make-up chests with brushes, combs, tweezers and tubs of cosmetics laid in neat rows on the floor in front of them, the round basins and long-spouted ewers – were lacquered in gold and marked with the imperial crest. Kimonos embroidered with summer flowers hung over kimono stands.
    Sachi knelt. The maid in charge of the dressing room opened the small iron kettle containing the mixture of sumac-leaf gall, sake and iron used to blacken the princess’s teeth. The bitter odour filled the air. Painstakingly the maid began to paint Sachi’s teeth. Sachi watched in the mirror as the white teeth she had known since childhood – as shiny as those of a savage or ananimal – disappeared. When she smiled she saw the cavernous mouth of an adult woman, one who has known a man.
    The maid shaved Sachi’s eyebrows, tweezing away every last hair. She massaged wax into her face, then brushed on a layer of white make-up and puffed powder on top. Then she dipped her thumbs into charcoal powder and carefully pressed them precisely a finger’s breadth above the place where Sachi’s eyebrows had been. Two smudged ovals like the tips of a moth’s antennae appeared on her forehead. The maid outlined her eyes in black, rouged her cheeks and painted a tiny petal of red safflower paste on each of her lips, turning her mouth into a small puckered rosebud.
    From the mirror a flawless white mask gazed back at her. Sachi had become a doll, like the dolls that they set on tiers for Girls’ Day.
    Other maids kneeling around her divided her hair into strands, tugging and easing it until it lay spread on the floor like a fan. They oiled