Read Online The Samurai's Daughter by Lesley Downer - Free Book Online Page B

them over, writing them with his finger on his hand again and again as he cleaned the house. At night in the servants’ quarters he’d take a lantern, bury his head under the bedclothes and work through the books Taka had given him. Even if it was instructions on how to be a good housewife, every new word added to his vocabulary.
    He’d begun to discover there were things he could teach her too – old stories his mother had told him, tales from ancient history that she didn’t seem to know. And sometimes they just talked – about the house, the family, her teachers, her school, her hateful schoolmates, about history, geography, poetry, painting, the Chinese classics and the English books she was starting to read.
    ‘I’d like to be a poet or an artist or a scholar,’ she told him one day. They were sitting side by side, leaning against a tree. She wriggled closer to him and rested her shoulder against his arm. He sat as still as he could, feeling her warmth and smallness, her body touching his. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than to be sent off as a bride, like my sister Haru was,’ she whispered, looking up at him. ‘I’d rather stay here with you.’
    And once, to his intense delight, she danced for him, singing softly, moving to her song, telling a story with her hands – reading an imaginary letter, wiping away imaginary tears. When he applauded she blushed and laughed and threw herself down next to him on the leaves.
    Okatsu kept watch and on the way back to the house they looked for fern heads or butterbur to fill their baskets with. No one challenged them or seemed suspicious and they started getting bolder. When Fujino and Eijiro were out, Taka and Nobu sometimes sat swinging their legs on the veranda outside the large airy room where Taka did her writing and painting, looking out at the trees and rocks and flowers shimmering in the heat, kicking their feet together.
    It was not all good. Nobu still didn’t get paid so he had no money to send to his family, though he heard from them from time to time. When he had a day off he tramped across town to visit his mentor, his father’s old friend Hiromichi Nagakura, who had given him the fateful note and sent him off on the journey that ended at the Black Peony. There were letters waiting for him there.
    He read them himself now, Nagakura didn’t have to read them to him. His two eldest brothers were doing well, they wrote, he had no need to worry about them. He could see they wanted to reassure him. Yasu, the oldest, was still out of work but Kenjiro, the brilliant one, who spoke and read English, had found a job interpreting for some foreign technicians in some remote area, though his health was still poor. Both, being older than Nobu, had had time to complete their education before they found themselves out on the streets. They were hoping to get back to Tokyo and find somewhere to live so they could see him from time to time. There was no word from Gosaburo or Nobu’s father, living in poverty in the far north of the country. Nobu had to assume that they were all right, that if they hadn’t been his brothers would have told him.
    Eijiro was a worry too. He was almost always out, doing whatever it was spoilt young men of twenty did. But when he was around he made Nobu’s life a misery. He’d come into the kitchens shouting, ‘Nobu, you lazy dog, where are you? The shoe cupboards need cleaning,’ or ‘The toilets are disgusting. Give them a good wiping out.’ Nobu did whatever he wanted, trying not to give a hint of resentment, to make sure Eijiro had not the slightest excuse to throw him out. They both knew where they stood. Eijiro was a Satsuma, Nobu an Aizu, and the Satsuma were at the top of the dung heap, for the time being, at least.
    He frequently reminded himself that his life here was too good, it couldn’t last, but he might as well enjoy it while he could.
    He tied the last branch of the pine to the trellis, made sure it was firmly