The Samurai's Daughter by Lesley Downer Page B

but there was just a chance that he might.
    She sighed. ‘All the others are good at history and arithmetic and know the classics. They’ve all been studying ever since they were little but all I did was learn to sing and dance and play the shamisen. When my father was here they kept their mouths shut but now he’s gone they don’t care. Today we started
The Tale of the Heike
. Everyone knew it except me. They were whispering behind their hands, laughing every time I made a mistake. And then … And then …’ She couldn’t bear to recount the humiliation of how she’d forgotten herself and begun to sing and dance. Her eyes filled with tears.
    There was a silence, then Nobu murmured something. At first Taka didn’t catch his words. His voice was so soft she hardly heard him. Then she realized what he was saying. ‘ “The Gion Temple bells toll the impermanence of all things; the sala flowers beside the Buddha’s deathbed bear testimony to the fact that all who flourish must decline. The proud do not endure, they vanish like a spring night’s dream. The mighty fall at last like dust before the wind.”’ He was reciting the first lines of
The Tale of the Heike
, the ancient epic that she’d been struggling with that morning. She stopped, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for him to continue.
    He didn’t repeat mechanically, by rote, as they had at school. They were not just characters to be learned. He spoke with feeling, as if the words were wrenched from his soul. Suddenly, for the first time, Taka understood the meaning. ‘The mighty fall at last …’ Now she and her people were the mighty ones, but once, maybe, Nobu’s had been. In any case, all were destined to fall at last ‘like dust before the wind’.
    The faint notes of shamisens and the sound of singing drifted across from the house on the other side of the grounds.
    ‘How do you know that?’ she asked, astonished.
    He scowled and hung his head. ‘I learned it when I was little.’
    ‘You mean … you can read?’
    His scowl deepened. ‘I haven’t studied for years. I just remembered it.’
    Taka stared at him, her heart touched. He was probably a couple of years older than her, tall and gangly with dark hair sprouting on his cheeks. He shifted from foot to foot. There was so much she wanted to know about him – about his life, his childhood. But now that Eijiro had told her he was an Aizu she hardly dared ask. She felt he had a dark secret she ought not to probe.
    She remembered when he first came to their rescue. He had seemed part of another world. Now he was just one of the servants, yet she could see that, like her, he was different. She was different from the other girls, he was different from the other servants. She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully.
    ‘I’m so behind,’ she said. ‘Will you help me? I need to practise my writing. Why don’t we find somewhere to sit and I’ll show you the characters I learned today.’
    She didn’t want him to feel patronized. He seemed so touchy, she knew it would be all too easy to offend him. She had the feeling he’d just disappear one day. He’d flit away and be gone and no one would know where he was, they’d simply never see him again.
    He looked at her and his face lit up. She could see his black eyes shining in the gloom. He was completely transformed. Then he frowned. ‘But it’s wrong for you to be alone with me. I’m a man.’
    ‘I’m allowed to be with servants.’ They both knew that wasn’t quite true. Again she was afraid she’d offended him but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Come. I’ll show you my secret place.’
    Taka led the way, pushing aside branches and brambles and stepping over fallen tree trunks. Deep in the woods there was a hidden grove where she and Haru used to play. They’d dragged out logs to sit on and made a little roof to creep under when it rained.
    They sat side by side on a tree trunk. Taka cleared away pebbles and gravel and smoothed out a