David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

… so she creeps closer along the wall until she smells tobacco and hears voices. She crouches in the shadow of a large barrel. ‘Any more charcoal?’ a voice drawls. ‘My nuts are nuggets of ice.’

A scuttle is rattled empty. ‘That’s the last,’ says a high voice.

‘We’ll throw dice,’ says the drawler, ‘for the privilege of getting more.’

‘So what are your chances,’ says a third voice, ‘of having those nuggets melted in the House of Sisters during Engiftment?’

‘Not good,’ admits the drawler. ‘I had Sawarabi three months ago.’

‘I had Kagerô last month,’ says the third voice. ‘I’m at the back of the queue.’

‘The Newest Sister’s bound to be chosen,’ says the third voice, ‘chances are, so we acolytes shan’t snatch a peep all week. Genmu and Suzaku are always the first to dig their hoes into virgin soil.’

‘Not if the Lord Abbot visits,’ says the drawler. ‘Master Annei told Master Nogoro that Enomoto-dono befriended her father and guaranteed his loans, so that when the old man crossed the Sanzu the widow had a stark choice: hand over her stepdaughter to Mount Shiranui or lose her house and everything in it.’

Orito has never considered this: here and now, it is sickeningly plausible.

The third voice clucks admiringly. ‘A master of strategy, our Lord Abbot…’

Orito wishes she could tear the men and their words to pieces, like squares of paper…

‘Why go to all the bother to get a samurai’s daughter,’ asks the high voice, ‘when he can pick and choose from any brothel in the Empire?’

‘Because this one’s a midwife,’ answers the drawler, ‘who’ll stop so many of our Sisters and their Gifts dying during labour. Rumour has it she brought the Nagasaki Magistrate’s newborn son back from the dead. Cold and blue, he was, until Sister Orito breathed life back into him…’

That single act, Orito wonders, is why Enomoto brought me here?

‘… I’d not be surprised,’ continues the drawler, ‘if she’s a special case.’

‘Meaning,’ asks the third voice, ‘that not even the Lord Abbot honours her?’

‘Not even she could stop herself dying in childbirth, right?’

Ignore this speculation, Orito orders herself. What if he’s wrong?

‘Pity,’ says the drawler. ‘If you don’t look at her face, she’s a pretty thing.’

‘Mind you,’ adds the high voice, ‘until Jiritsu is replaced, there’s one less-’

‘Master Genmu forbade us,’ exclaims the drawler, ‘ever to mention that treacherous bastard’s name.’

‘He did,’ agrees the third voice. ‘He did. Fill the charcoal bucket as penance.’

‘But we were going to throw dice for it!’

‘Ah. That was prior to your disgraceful lapse. Charcoal!’

The door is flung open: bad-tempered footsteps crunch towards Orito who crouches into a terrified ball. The young monk stops by the barrel and removes its lid, just inches away. Orito hears his teeth chatter. She breathes into her shoulder to hide her breath. He scoops up charcoal, filling the scuttle lump by lump…

Any moment now, she shakes, any moment now…

… but he turns away, and walks back to the guardhouse.

Like paper prayers, a year’s good luck was burnt away in seconds.

Orito gives up trying to leave through the gates: she thinks, A rope…

Her pulse still fast and frightened, she slips from the purple shadows through the next Moon Gate into a courtyard formed by the Meditation Hall, the Western Wing and the outer wall. The Guest Quarters are a mirror reflection of the House of Sisters: here the laymen of Enomoto’s retinue are housed when the Lord Abbot is in residence. Like the nuns, they cannot leave their confinement. General supplies, Orito gathers from the Sisters, are kept in the Western Wing, but it is also the living and sleeping quarters of the Order’s thirty or forty acolytes. Some will be sound asleep, but some will not. In the north-western quarter is the Lord Abbot’s Residence. This building has been vacant all winter, but Orito has heard the housekeeper talk about airing the sheets in its linen cupboards. And sheets, it occurs to her, can be knotted into ropes.

She creeps down the gully between the outer wall and the Guest Quarters…

A young man’s soft laughter escapes the doors, and falls silent.

The fine materials and crest identify the house as the Lord Abbot’s.

Exposed from three angles, she climbs up to the gabled doors.

Let them open, she prays to her ancestors, let them open…

The doors are shuttered fast against the mountain winter.

I’d need a hammer and chisel to get inside, Orito thinks. She has nearly walked around the perimeter, but is no nearer escaping. The lack of twenty feet of rope means twenty years of concubinage.

Across the stone garden of Enomoto ’s Residence is the Northern Wing.

Suzaku, Orito has learnt, has his quarters here, next to the Infirmary…

… and an infirmary means patients, beds, sheets and mosquito nets.

Entering one of the wings is a reckless risk, but what choice is left?

The door slides six inches before emitting a high, singing groan. Orito holds her breath to hear the noise of running footsteps…

… but nothing happens, and the fathomless night smooths itself.

She squeezes through the gap: a door-curtain strokes her face.

Reflected moonlight delineates, dimly, a small entrance hall.

An odour of camphor locates the Infirmary through a right-hand door.

There is a sunken doorway to her left, but the fugitive’s instinct says, No…

She slides open the right-hand door.

The darkness resolves itself into planes, lines and surfaces…

She hears the rustling of a straw-filled futon and a sleeper’s breathing.

She hears voices and footsteps: two men, or three.

The patient yawns and asks, ‘ ’S anyone there?’

Orito withdraws to the entrance hall, slides the Infirmary door shut and peers around the shrieking door. A lantern-bearer is less than ten paces away.

He is looking this way, but the glow of his light impairs his vision.

Now Master Suzaku’s voice can be heard in the Infirmary.

The fugitive has nowhere to run but the sunken doorway.

This may be the end, Orito shivers, this may be the end…

The Scriptorium is walled from floor to ceiling with shelves of scrolls and manuscripts. On the other side of the sunken door, someone trips and mutters a curse. Fear of capture pushes Orito into the large chamber before she can be certain that it is unoccupied. A pair of writing-tables is illuminated by a double-headed lantern, and a small fire licks a kettle hanging over the brazier. The side-aisles provide hiding-places, but hiding-places, she thinks, are also traps. Orito walks along the aisle towards the other door, which, she guesses, leads into Master Genmu’s Quarters, and enters the globe of lamplight. She is afraid to leave the empty room but afraid to stay and afraid to go back. In her indecision, she glances down at a half-finished manuscript on one of the tables: with the exceptions of the wall-hangings in the House of Sisters, these are the first written characters the scholar’s daughter has seen since her abduction, and despite the danger, her hungry eye is drawn. Instead of a sutra or sermon, she finds a half-composed letter, written not in the ornate calligraphy of an educated monk but a more feminine hand. The first column she reads obliges her to read the second, and the third…

Dear Mother, The maples are aflame with autumn colours and the harvest moon floats like a lantern, just as the words of The Moonlit Castle describe. How long ago seems the Rainy Season, when the Lord Abbot’s servant delivered your letter. It lies in front of me on my husband’s table. Yes, Koyama Shingo accepted me as his wife on the auspicious Thirtieth Day of the Seventh Month at Shimogamo Shrine, and we are living as newly-weds in the two back rooms of the White Crane obi-sash workshop on Imadegawa Street. After the wedding ceremony a banquet was held at a famous Teahouse, paid for jointly by the Uedas and Koyamas. Some of my friends’ husbands turn into spiteful goblins after capturing their bride, but Shingo continues to treat me with kindness. Married life is not a boating party, of course – just as you wrote in your letter three years ago, a dutiful wife must never sleep before her husband or rise after him, and I never have enough hours in the day! Until the White Crane is well established, we economise by making do with just one maid, as my husband brought only two apprentices from his father’s workshop. I am happy to write, however, that we have secured the patronage of two families connected with the Imperial Court. One is a lesser branch of the Konoe-