After a while, the maid came to remove the half-empty bowl of gruel. She looked sullen. Toshiko no longer trusted her and pretended to be asleep. She suspected that the woman had been carrying out Lady Sanjo’s orders.
During the long day, she nibbled on a few rice cakes and drank more water. When the maid refilled the flask, she worried that the water might also be poisoned. This time, the woman asked, “Are you feeling better, Lady?” and Toshiko murmured weakly, “No. Go away.”
She knew that she must leave as soon as she was strong enough to walk, but her options were few. She could not go to Takehira who lived with other guard officers in his military quarters in the imperial city. She could not go home without money. In any case, neither her parents nor her brother would make her welcome. She would simply be returned to the palace with apologies.
Perhaps she could seek refuge in a temple. But His Majesty would find her there more quickly than any place else.
There was only Doctor Yamada. She wanted to go to him more than anything, but she was afraid. What if he did not want her? This brought tears to her eyes again. Oh, she thought, this weeping must stop.
She tried to stand and managed a few wobbly steps to relieve herself in a bucket behind a screen. Encouraged, she returned to her bed with her mirror. The light was poor with the shutters closed, but she could see enough to know that she looked pale and unattractive. She cried some more and then slept.
Toward evening, the maid brought another bowl of the warm gruel. When she left, Toshiko smelled the food. She fancied it had an odd odor and was grayer than usual. She put it back untouched and ate another rice cake. Her appetite was coming back quickly. The cake tasted delicious.
During the night, Toshiko considered how to get away. The gate to her small courtyard was barred, so she must leave another way. Fortunately the building was nearly empty, and her maid did not seem to be watchful. She thought about her coach journey to the imperial palace. They had passed through a gate, then traveled northward before turning west to the river. It had not taken very long to reach the river. If she could leave at night while everyone was asleep, she should be able to get out of the building unnoticed. But the gate guards would surely stop her. What to do?
Toward morning she thought of a way. Only one more day.
The Emperor’s Dolls
With his move to the Hojuji Palace, the emperor decided to break with the past. The world of the senses had become too oppressive, too fraught with disappointment and self-recrimination. He was determined to purify himself of all delusions and walked around his new residence in the first flush of pious enthusiasm.
He would take up his cloistered life here, at peace at last. The new palace combined the best of the two worlds he would henceforth inhabit, directing the nation and treading the eightfold path to enlightenment.
There was the new temple hall, the Rengeo-in, with a thirty-bay-long Buddha hall consecrated to the thousand-armed Kannon. He planned to take the tonsure there, bidding farewell to the world of physical passions.
Soon, very soon now.
He even put aside his collection of songs because it reminded him of his sins of the flesh — troublingly fresh and frequent in his thoughts. Otomae had not returned since the incident of the “Little Snail” song. It was as well, for she, too, made him feel vaguely ashamed and foolish these days.
Only Lady Sanjo was left to remind him of his lapse, and she demanded to see him nearly every day, always claiming urgent business. The urgent business, as often as not, concerned Toshiko.
When he returned to his private rooms, she appeared again. He noticed that she had grown amazingly fat. At the rate she was expanding, it would be no time at all before she looked like that unfortunate woman in his Scroll of Diseases, the one who was so obese she had to lean on two maids to support her as she waddled along.
Lady Sanjo collapsed into an obeisance with a grunt and puff of breath. Really, thought the Emperor, eyeing her cherry-blossom-colored gown with distaste, what possessed her to wear such unsuitably youthful colors at her age?
“What is it now?” he snapped.
She sat up on her knees. “Am I being a bother, sire?” she asked with a simper, blinking her eyes at him over her fan.
“I am busy, as always.”
“Oh.” She turned her head a little and blinked some more. “I can come back later, when it is more convenient, Your Majesty.”
“No,” he said quickly. The infernal woman would just continue to pester him the rest of the day. “Is something the matter with your eyes?”
She bowed again with that odd little grunt. “Oh, Your Majesty is always excessively kind. I am afraid I am blinded by the sun whenever I set eyes on you, sire.”
Irritating female! It was this sort of adulation that made getting rid of her awkward when he was tempted to do so.
Most recently there had been that unpleasantness of the regent complaining of her rudeness to his son. The young man had been drunk and stumbled into the women’s quarters by accident, not an unusual occurrence during the many festivities of the New Year. Lady Sanjo apparently had accused him of trying to rape one of the women. Naturally, the young man and the regent had been offended. But she could hardly be dismissed for being watchful. Frowning, he said sharply, “Make it brief.”
She blinked again. “It is about Lady Toshiko.”
He sighed. “It is always about Lady Toshiko. What is it now?”
“As Your Majesty may recall, the foolish girl indulged in too much rich food over the holidays and was too ill to be moved with the other ladies.” Lady Sanjo paused to wait for his reaction.
He compressed his lips. “I remember. I trust she is better and has joined you?”
“No, Your Majesty. We have tried everything, but she seems worse. Apparently the food here does not agree with her. I suggest that she be allowed to return to her family.” She blinked and fluttered her fan nervously.
The emperor stared at her, wondering how sick Toshiko was. In his efforts to cleanse his mind and body from earthly attachments, he had avoided her. But if she was really ill, he should go and express his concern. The image of her, lying amid tangled bedding, her long hair spread around her young body, troubled him. “Hmm,” he said. “I did not know it was so serious. What are her symptoms?”
Lady Sanjo twisted her fan in indecision. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “It is not nice to talk of such things in Your Majesty’s presence.”
“Nonsense. I take an interest in medicine and have seen sickness before,” he snapped.
“Yes, sire. She still cannot keep any food down, sire, and earlier she suffered from the flux. I do beg your pardon for mentioning such a dirty thing.”
He frowned. “She’s not with child?”
“Oh no, sire.”
Relieved, he pursed his lips. “Hmm. I should pay her a visit, but at the moment I am very busy. Perhaps my physician can have a look at her.”
“Sire, it is not permitted to send a man to the women’s quarters,” cried Lady Sanjo.
The emperor snorted at such old-fashioned ways. “The man is old enough to be her grandfather, Lady Sanjo,” he said. And so he was, for this was his personal physician and not that clever and handsome young Doctor Yamada who was entirely too knowledgeable about sexual matters to be dispatched to Toshiko. “If she has not been able to eat anything for the past two weeks or more, she is far more seriously ill than you have given me to understand. Or are you exaggerating again just to see me?”