Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn Read Free Book Online Page B

find
you clean footwear. I am Junko. Lady Noguchi has sent me to wait on you. I'll speak
to her later about clothes.”
    Junko left the room and came back
with two girls carrying a bowl of water, clean socks, and a small carved box.
Junko washed Kaede's face, hands and feet, and combed out her long black hair.
The maids murmured as if in amazement.
    “What is it? What do they mean?”
Kaede said nervously.
    Junko opened the box and took out a
round mirror. Its back was beautifully carved with flowers and birds. She held
it so Kaede could see her reflection. It was the first time she had looked in a
mirror. Her own face silenced her.
    The women's attentions and
admiration restored her confidence a little, but it began to seep away again as
she followed Junko into the main part of the residence. She had only seen Lord
Noguchi from a distance since her father's last visit. She had never liked him,
and now she realized she was afraid of the meeting.
    ———«»———«»———«»———
    Junko fell to her knees, slid open
the door to the audience room, and prostrated herself. Kaede stepped into the
room and did the same. The matting was cool beneath her forehead and smelled of
summer grass.
    Lord Noguchi was speaking to
someone in the room and took no notice of her whatsoever. He seemed to be
discussing his rice allowances: how late the farmers were in handing them over.
It was nearly the next harvest, and he was still owed part of the last crop.
Every now and then the person he was addressing would humbly put in a placatory
comment—the adverse weather, last year's earthquake, the imminent typhoon
season, the devotion of the farmers, the loyalty of the retainers—at which the
lord would grunt, fall silent for a full minute or more, and then start
complaining all over again.
    Finally he fell silent for one last
time. The secretary coughed once or twice. Lord Noguchi barked a command, and
the secretary backed on his knees towards the door.
    He passed close to Kaede, but she
did not dare raise her head.
    “And call Arai,” Lord Noguchi said,
as if it were an afterthought.
    Now he will speak to me , Kaede
thought, but he said nothing, and she remained where she was, motionless.
    The minutes passed. She heard a man
enter the room and saw Arai prostrate himself next to her. Lord Noguchi did not
acknowledge him either. He clapped his hands, and several men came quickly into
the room. Kaede felt them step by her, one after another. Glancing at them
sideways, she could see they were senior retainers. Some wore the Noguchi crest
on their robes, and some the triple oak leaf of the Tohan. She felt they would
have happily stepped on her, as if she were a cockroach, and she vowed to
herself that she would never let the Tohan or the Noguchi crush her.
    The warriors settled themselves
heavily on the matting.
    “Lady Shirakawa,” Lord Noguchi said
at last. “Please sit up.”
    As she did so, she felt the eyes of
every man in the room on her. An intensity that she did not understand came
into the atmosphere.
    “Cousin,” the lord said, a note of
surprise in his voice, “I hope you are well.”
    “Thanks to your care, I am,” she
replied using the polite phrase, although the words burned her tongue like
poison. She felt her terrible vulnerability here, the only woman, hardly more
than a child, among men of power and brutality. She snatched a quick glance at
the lord from below her lashes. His face looked petulant to her, lacking either
strength or intelligence, showing the spitefulness she already knew he
possessed.
    “There was an unfortunate incident
this morning,” Lord Noguchi said. The hush in the room deepened. “Arai has told
me what happened. I want to hear your version.”
    Kaede touched her head to the
ground, her movements slow, her thoughts racing. She had Arai in her power at
that moment. And Lord Noguchi had not called him captain, as he should have
done. He had given him no title, shown him no courtesy.