The doctor’s garden was quite large, because he had bought an adjoining property when that neighbor’s house burned down.  Here he grew his medicinal herbs around a small pavilion which served as his pharmacy.  But the original garden behind his house was his special joy.  He had planted a smaller version of the charming landscapes that surrounded the elegant villas and temples.  Many-colored azaleas grew here, and cherry trees.  Handsome pines twisted above picturesque rocks.  Moss and rare ferns flourished in shady corners; colored koi swam in a small pond where lotus bloomed; and frogs had taken up residence on the pond margin.  When the weather allowed it, all of his free time was spent in his gardens.

Otherwise, his needs were simple and taken care of by three servants: an older woman, a man who was severely disfigured by burns, and an orphaned boy.  The woman, Otori, had served him since childhood and ruled the small household, including its master.  She cooked, washed, cleaned the house, and dealt with peddlers and patients who came to his door.  The man’s name was Togoro.  He did the heavy work and kept the property in good repair.  The boy had no name.  They called him “Boy,” or sometimes, “Demon,” or “Stupid.”  Since he was a foundling, nobody knew his age, though the doctor guessed that he must be about fourteen.  Boy swept, ran errands, and stole occasionally.

For Doctor Yamada, daily life ran smoothly in Mibu street – or at least it did until his fateful meeting with Oba no Toshiko.

This morning, he got up and stepped out into his garden.  The sky was clear and the early sun flung golden patches across his shrubs and trees.  On the roof, the doves murmured in the warmth, and a sparrow splashed in the shallow bowl of the stone water basin beside his veranda.  Catching sight of the doctor, it shook off drops like sparkling jewels and flew away.

A hollow bamboo pipe, balanced on a wooden contraption, carried water from a cistern above.  The doctor tipped it down to refill the basin and washed his face and hands.  Then he drank from a small bamboo dipper to rinse out his mouth and spat the water into the green cushion of moss below the basin.

He cast a glance around his property, then filled a bucket from the rain barrel and started watering.  A self-sufficient man, he participated in the life of his garden, happy when a plant was thriving and unhappy when it did not.  The plants were in his care and, like his human patients, they suffered the vicissitudes of fate, disease, starvation, or cold and flourished in times of plenty.  It was enough — or at least he had always thought so.

Moving on to the herb garden, he harvested leaves and roots for his small pharmacy.  As he hung them up to dry under the roof of the veranda, his thoughts shifted to the patient he would visit later.  The Retired Emperor’s cook was a man unacquainted with the principles of moderation and therefore suffered periodically from wind and a painfully distended belly because he ate too much.  This last bout was particularly severe.  The doctor had administered purges, and the cook had taken to his bed with a good deal of weeping and moaning at the cramping of his insides.  Today the doctor hoped to find him much improved, but he checked his supply of powdered ginger, bark of cinnamon, and fermented black beans, in case the flux had not abated and a stool-firming decoction was in order.

Inevitably, a visit to the cloister palace turned his thoughts to Toshiko.  She was too young for the life she was embarked on, too young to be so alone in the world, too young to bear the burdens of womanhood which would soon be hers.

His studies at the university had included sexual matters and the female anatomy.  Besides, he knew the facts and dangers of childbirth first-hand.  He was afraid for her because he had seen too many women die during and after giving birth.  Not that he was likely to assist in the delivery of an imperial concubine -- or any noblewoman, for that matter.  Such births were handled by midwives, occasionally with the advice of old men.  But he had helped poor women give birth in hovels where no one cared that he was young and male, and he would never forget the bleeding that no art of his could stop.  The only time he had seen more blood well forth from a human body had been on the battlefield.  In either case, there had been no surviving such wounds.  And that child Toshiko was much less sturdily built than those poor women had been.

“Master?” Otori called him to his morning rice, and he walked back to the house.  She always brought his bowl of hot gruel to his room there.  He usually gulped it down while checking his medical texts or making notes about the treatment of his patients that day.

Today he had no difficult cases, and his mind was on other things.  Instead of eating, he sat down and looked around his room.  In his modest dwelling, he was surrounded by the things that had given him pleasure and contentment for the past five years.

His medical books and scrolls of illustrations were neatly stacked on shelves, interspersed with the tools of his profession: sets of silver needles used in acupuncture, silver spatulas in many sizes for probing the body’s orifices, an ivory doll with which he explained the seat of the disease to the patient and his family, and on which the patient could point out the location of the pain.

But in his mind was more than medical knowledge.  His studies at the university had opened a world to him unlike any the warriors in his family would ever have understood: poetry, music – he played the flute and was passably adept on the zither – painting, and the pursuit of those unseen forces of fate, the incredible intricacies of horoscopes which lead to the making and reading of calendars, the language of dreams and omens, and most of all the behavior of his fellow humans.

To this he had since added a familiarity with plants and with the small creatures he encountered in his daily life: the cats and dogs of the neighborhood, and the birds, mice, beetles, spiders, bees, and fish of his garden.

His solitary life had seemed full until now.  He used to feel passion and joy in observation, experiment, and discovery.  He had been happy and his life in harmony with the universe.  Now nothing would satisfy him but the girl from the palace.

As a physician, he recognized his symptoms as a form of disease.  It was unnatural for a man in his mid-twenties with a fulfilling profession and a rich and useful life to yearn for a fourteen-year-old girl.  He had never needed women before, except for the occasional visit to a courtesan when his physical well-being required it.  Physical needs could be satisfied quite easily with such women, but the very thought of lying with Toshiko made him uncomfortable.  It seemed as unnatural as if she were his sister or daughter.  Clearly his condition was abnormal, disharmonious, even culpable.

Otori returned for the bowl and saw that he had not touched the gruel.

“What’s the matter?” she snapped with the easy familiarity of a family member.  “You don’t like it?  Or are you ailing with something?”

“No,” he said listlessly, shoving the bowl toward her.  “I’m not hungry.”

“Not hungry!”  Her sharp eyes fixed him.  “It’s no life for a man,” she said, wagging her finger.  “Work, work, work, and never any joy.  When will you take a wife and play with your own children the way you play with the neighbor’s brats?”

He had heard the speech before and ignored it.  “I’m seeing His Majesty’s cook this morning,” he said, getting up.  “If someone calls, tell them I’ll be back soon or take a message.”

“Don’t I always?” she grumbled.  “Better wear your good robe if you’re going to the palace.  You never know who’ll see you.  It wouldn’t hurt to get a few noble patients for a change.”

That, too, was a familiar complaint.  Since his income came from his family’s estates, he did not have to rely on his fees as a physician and, to her mind, he treated far too many poor people for free.  A steady trickle of unsavory characters frequented his house, and she was convinced that this detracted from his reputation.  About this, at least, she was quite right.  People think that a man who works among filthy and disease-riddled beggars and prostitutes cannot be an able physician, and worse, that he is likely to bring their diseases into the houses of his paying patients.