With the clepsydra taken away and the sun obscured, it was impossible to tell time. Okura guessed that Yasuhira’s arrival occurred about midday, the Hour of the Horse. Because of the servants, she had one of them place her screen of state conveniently, and upon hearing his footsteps on the verandah she knelt behind it. Also for his sake, she thought wryly. Their world falling to pieces around them, the old proprieties mattered perhaps more than ever.
He and she spent a while in formalities and small talk. Thereupon she broke convention and pushed the screen aside. Once that would have implied lovemaking to come. Today a poetic reference or two among the banalities had made it clear that such was the intent of neither. They only wished to speak freely.
The maids Kodayu and Ukon might well be more taken aback by this than by any union of bodies so daylit blatant. They preserved blank deference and brought in the refreshment. Good girls, Okura thought as they went away. What would become of them? Slightly surprised, she found herself wishing the new master would keep the staff on and treat them gently. She feared he would not, being the kind of creature he was.
She and her visitor settled onto the floor. While Yasuhira courteously contemplated the floral pattern on his wine cup, she thought how he seemed to have aged overnight. He went gray years ago, but moon face, slit eyes, bud of a mouth, tiny tuft of beard bad remained as handsome as in his youth. Many a lady sighed and compared him to Genji, the Shining Prince of Murasaki’s two-hundred-year-old story. Today rain had streaked the powder and blurred the rouge, revealing darkened lower lids, blotchy sallowness, deepened lines, and his shoulders were slumped.
He had not lost the courtier grace with which, in due course, he sipped. “Ah,” he murmured, “that is most welcome, Asagao.”—Morning Glory, the name for her that he used in private. “Savor, aroma, and warmth. ‘Resplendent light—‘“
She was compelled to cap the literary allusion by saying, “But not, I fear, ‘everlasting fortune,’” and whetted that a little by adding, “As for Morning Glory, at my age might not Pine Tree be better?”
He smiled. “So I have kept some of my touch in guiding conversation. Shall we get unpleasant topics out of the way at once? Then we can discourse of former times and their joys.”
“If we have the heart to.” If you do, she meant. I never had any choice but to make myself strong. ‘”I had hoped the Lord Tsuchimikado would retain you.”
“Under these circumstances, dismissal may be less than the worst thing that could happen to me,” she said. He failed to completely hide puzzlement. She explained: “Without a family holding rice land, I would be scarcely more than a beggar, lacking even a place of my own like this to retire to when off duty. The others would despise and soon abuse me.”
“Indeed?”
“Women are as cruel as men, Mi-yuki.”
He nibbled a cake. She realized that was cover for the collecting of his thoughts. At length he said, “I must confess, the knowledge of the situation made thin my expectations for you.”
“Why so?” She knew the answer perfectly well, but also knew that explaining to her would help him.
“It is true that Lord Tsuchimikado stayed at peace during the uprising,” he said, “but if he did not work against the Hojo chieftains, neither did he assist them. Now I daresay he feels a need to curry favor, the more so because they may then make one of his line the next Emperor when our present sovereign dies or abdicates. Ridding himself of every member of any family that was in revolt seems a trivial gesture. Just the same, it is a gesture, and Lord Tokifusa, whom they have set as military governor over Heian-kyo, will take due note of it.”
“I wonder what sin in a past life caused Lord Go-Toba to try to seize back the throne he had quitted,” Okura mused.
“Ah, it was no madness, it was a noble effort that should have succeeded. Remember, his brother, the then Emperor Juntoku, was with him in it, and so were not only families like ours and their followers, but soldiers of the Taira who would fain avenge what the Minamoto did to their fathers; and many a monk also took up arms.”