This plain speaking cast Lady Sanjo into such agitation that she forgot to flutter her eyes. “Oh, no, Your Majesty. I would never dream of such a thing. I am merely doing my duty. My report is based on what her maid tells me. Of course, the woman may say things to make herself seem more indispensable as a nurse. I shall go myself and make certain of the facts, and then return to report again to Your Majesty.”
The emperor lost his temper. “You should have done this in the first place, Lady Sanjo,” he said with a scowl. “It is your duty. In the future you will not trouble me again with unverified reports. When you have investigated, leave a message with my secretary.” He saw with satisfaction that he had finally shocked her into comprehension. She gave him a pitiful look, sniffled a little as she prostrated herself, and retreated.
His contentment was gone. He regretted the brief affair with Toshiko – not just for spiritual reasons or because it had brought him little joy, but because it had brought her even less. At least she had not conceived. As soon as she was better, he would let her go. Naturally, in view of their relationship, he would reward her. She would return to her family a rich woman, endowed with a suitable gift of rice lands, or, if she preferred, she would be married to some provincial official. If neither of those options was to her taste, she could join his daughter’s household as one of her attendants. This struck him as excessively generous, considering how her family had tried to manipulate him.
He was saddened by the fact that he had never found a woman who had loved him for himself. There had been so many of them in his life. His childhood was spent in the company of women. To be served by so many women can be a cruel thing for a small boy. To be forever handled, petted, dressed, undressed, bathed, dandled, and made much of may suit a dog but it makes a boy very irritable.
There had been the matter of his dolls. Long before he was old enough to have any understanding, he was given an amagatsu doll to protect him. It was made of two crossed pieces of bamboo with a ball of silk for a head and a simple suit of clothes draped over the sticks. It stood at his head when he slept, arms extended protectively over him, and it stayed with him until he reached manhood at age fifteen.
The idea was for roaming evil spirits to mistake the doll for him and possess it instead.
From time to time, other dolls appeared. The paper ones he breathed on and then they were rubbed over his body before being burned to rid him of sins. The hoko dolls were mostly toys. They had soft silk bodies stuffed with floss silk and painted faces and black silk hair. They wore fine clothes resembling his own. He played with the hoko dolls much the same way the court ladies played with him. He dressed and undressed them, made them walk here and there, made them sit or stand, made them eat and dance, and sometimes he got angry and threw them at one of his ladies-in-waiting.
Now and then, an unstuffed hoko would make its appearance. The limp doll was used to exorcise his quarters in the palace. Being hollow, it gathered invisible ghosts and spirits inside it. These evil and jealous phantoms were attracted by his imperial presence. After the priest declared the premises free of them, the doll was ceremoniously drowned in the lake of the imperial gardens after being set afloat in a paper boat. He remembered enjoying this particular exorcism greatly – unlike that other one a few years later.
On the whole, he had regarded his dolls with mixed feelings. He was not sure if they were loving companions and protectors or hollow vessels which hid the very evil he must fear. Once he asked his nurse, Lady Kii, why the hoko doll was hollow and why it had to be drowned.
Lady Kii showed him that the amagatsu doll also had this “hollowness” because its frame was made of two crossed sections of bamboo. “Bamboo is hollow,” she said. “Evil spirits can slip inside. Better inside the doll than inside Your Highness.”
Afterwards, he had spent many days watching for the evil spirits and finally he had taken the amagatsu apart without finding anything. For his researches he had armed himself with his ceremonial sword to slay any apparitions that might approach.
When his Fujiwara grandfather heard about it, he had laughed. The story had got around. Prince Masahito threatening his amagatsu with his sword became an amusing topic for the courtiers and ladies-in-waiting. They came and peered at him as he stood watch, and ran away laughing. One day he crept behind a screen and cried.
Lady Kii found him there. She was a kind-hearted woman and took the trouble to explain the matter further. “You cannot see the evil spirits, Highness,” she said. “They are invisible manifestations of the evil in other people. If someone bears you a grudge, that evil intention slips into the doll. If someone is jealous of you, that, too, is trapped inside the doll. In this way, resentment which might turn murderous and kill you, either by poison, or sickness, or possession, cannot harm you. There is no need to watch. The doll does all the watching, you see.”
But the next day his brother, the emperor, heard the tale and stopped by to tease him. His Majesty’s attendants dutifully laughed as Sutoku, himself only thirteen at the time, made fun of his little brother. This had so enraged him that he had turned his sword against Sutoku. Only the presence of Lady Kii had saved His Majesty from receiving a serious wound.
The incident had painful repercussions. For a subject to raise a sword against the emperor was the ultimate sacrilege. Only the fact that he was a small child saved him. The question of exile was raised and rejected. In the end, it was decided that Prince Masahito must be possessed and would undergo formal exorcism.
Four ladies-in-waiting pinned him to the floor by kneeling on his arms and legs, while the abbot of the Ninna Temple and various celebrated clerics prayed over him.
They reported later that the spirit had spoken through the prince’s lips. It had said, “I hate all of you. I hate my brothers and sisters. I hate the emperor,” and uttered many dreadful threats. Eventually, the abbot had managed to subdue the demon.
The incident was not forgotten, but things returned more or less to normal afterward. Lady Kii wisely locked the ceremonial sword away, the brothers saw each other only rarely, and then only in the presence of others. But he was not made Crown Prince. His mother found the incident irritating but trivial, but his father expressed his first serious worries about Prince Masahito’s intelligence.
He had learned from all this that evil spirits emanated from people, who were as hollow as the dolls, and he believed that he would be safe only as long as he controlled them. Experience had proven him right.
Blaming Lady Sanjo for his glum mood, he rose and walked to his office. His secretary, Tameyazu, jumped up and prostrated himself. The emperor gave him the barest nod and sat down behind his desk. He looked at the arrangement of the furnishings, and wondered where Shinzei would fit in. Then he decided he did not want Shinzei here, not yet, maybe never again. Shinzei had counseled him to bed the girl, as had Otomae. And Kiyomori. He would never be anyone’s puppet again.
Flight
The maid snored.
Toshiko had been aware of the irritating habit for weeks. It was probably the reason why this woman, of all the servants, had been left behind to look after her.
Tonight she greeted the rasping sound with relief. As long as she heard it, she was safe. She began by applying her make-up, making it thicker and more garish than usual because she wanted to be taken for one of the professional entertainers. Then she dressed in her shirabyoshi costume, adding the small drum, the sword, and the hat. Because she had no one to help her, she was soon out of breath and weak-kneed and had to sit down to rest.