A step crunched on the gravel behind him and Kobe put a hand on his shoulder. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve run out of ideas how to help you, and lost my patience.”

Akitada choked back the lump in his throat. “Your patience? You surprise me. I didn’t know you had any,” he said. The smile which was to accompany the comment failed.

But Kobe grip on his shoulder tightened briefly before he took his hand away. “Would you like me to send my children’s tutor over? Or could the children come to my house? My children would like that very much.” Kobe was pleading.

Emotion gripped Akitada again. “Thank you,” he choked out. “Yes, perhaps something like that … I suppose I should have … Time has a way of slipping past.”

“Good. I’ll send the man over. You’ll like him. He did very well at the university but unlike you he failed miserably as a young official and is now forced to earn his living teaching children.”

Akitada thought about his own career. Had he done well? He doubted it. And now? It was probably over. He had left his post in Kyushu without permission, had not reported when he reached the capital, and had not returned to his former position at the ministry. He had done nothing.

Fujiwara Kaneie had sent for him and later called in person, but Akitada had claimed illness so as not to have to deal with him. Would he end up teaching other people’s children? It was ridiculous when he could not even manage to teach his own. For the first time, it struck him that he had no income and that hunger and homelessness might be more unbearable than grief.

Or perhaps not. His grief was his own private world, but its effects were felt by his household. He had no right to it. A wave of self-pity washed over him. He had nothing; not even the right to grieve for Tamako’s death.

Kobe cleared his throat. “Don’t look so dismal. It will get better. I know. For a while you think nothing will ever be right again and then one day you find yourself laughing, and a bit later you will feel happy about something, and in the end the person you’ve lost will be a treasured memory of your youth.”

Akitada turned his head away. “You mean well, Kobe. I thank you for it, but telling me that the pain will pass will not speed up my recovery. Your reminder that I have obligations forces me to face the world when I lack the strength to do so.”

Kobe gave him a searching look. “You have always lived for your obligations, Akitada. Even at times when it was foolish to do so. I think you will do so again, and soon.” He touched Akitada’s arm. “I must go now, but you only have to send for me if there’s something I can do.”

Akitada remained in the garden a while longer. Then he went in search of the children. He found them outside Tamako’s pavilion and had to steel himself to go closer. Yoshi sat on the veranda, dangling his feet and watching his sister. His daughter had wrapped one of her mother’s gowns about her and paraded back and forth on the veranda, waving a fan and reciting something.

Akitada recognized the gown and felt a stab of pain. He was furious with his daughter. “Yasuko, take that off immediately,” he shouted. “How dare you dirty up your mother’s things in your silly games?”

Yasuko spun around and froze when she saw her father. Her eyes grew large and her chin trembled. Then, with a sob, she ran inside.

Yoshi was pleased. He jumped up and ran to embrace his father’s knees. “I told her not to do it, Father,” he cried. “She’s a bad girl.”

Akitada detached him. He stared at the pavilion in the summer sunshine. There on the veranda they had sat together, watching the children at play, looking at the garden, talking. It had been a regular occurrence every time he had spent the night with his wife.

No more. Not ever again.

He would not weep before his children. He would be strong and walk up the veranda steps. He would go inside, into the room where they had been together, and he would speak to his daughter calmly, explaining to her that her mother deserved respect even after her death.

But before he could do so, a woman appeared in the doorway. Tamako’s maid Oyuki. Yasuko’s tear-stained face peered out from behind her with frightened eyes.

“Sir? Is it you?” the maid said, bowing to him. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

The fact that they had apparently made themselves at home in Tamako’s pavilion angered him again. “Why should you be informed about my plans?” he snapped. “And what are you and the children doing here?”

“We live here.”

“You live here? By whose permission?” Akitada started toward them with a face like thunder.

The maid fell to her knees. “I’m sorry, sir. I only did as I was told. We’ll leave this moment. Please forgive the mistake.” She started knocking her forehead against the boards of the veranda floor. Yasuko burst into a wail, and behind him Yoshi began to cry as well.

Akitada stopped. He should not make his children cry. No matter how he felt himself, they were innocent of wrong doing. “Please get up, Oyuki,” he said more calmly. “Nobody told me. Who suggested that you and the children live here?”

Yoshi cried, “I don’t live here, Father. I have my own room.”

“Good,” said his father. “You must show me later.”

Oyuki, who was also weeping by now, got to her feet. “Lady Akiko thought it was best if Lady Yasuko took her mother’s room. Lady Akiko said I was to be Lady Yasuko’s maid now.”

Lady Akiko! His sister. Meddlesome as always. “Well,” he said, “I’m sorry if I spoke harshly to you. I didn’t know. I suppose this is a practical arrangement. Only my daughter seems rather young to take possession of my wife’s things.”

“We asked permission of Lady Akiko because Hanae said you weren’t to be bothered. Lady Akiko and I looked through Lady Tamako’s things and chose two gowns that could be shortened for Lady Yasuko. Lady Yasuko was trying on the gown, sir.”

And so he had been put in the wrong. He always seemed to become the ogre in his children’s eyes. A flash of another memory crossed his mind: Yori looking up at him with frightened eyes after a reprimand. Yori, who had died shortly afterward of smallpox. And his father had spent the years that had passed wishing he could take back his harshness, wishing he had instead held his son and told him that he loved him.

He raised his hands to his face and groaned. Then he lowered them, turned to his son and held out his hand, and said, “Come, Yoshi. Let us go up to your mother’s pavilion and see your sister’s room.”

Yoshi came reluctantly. “You will come and see mine also? I have a picture of a very fierce tiger.”

“I will come and see it.”

They climbed the steps together. Oyuki stepped aside, and Akitada looked down at his daughter’s tear-stained face. “I’m very sorry, Yasuko,” he said. “It’s been a very hard time for me. I miss your mother very much, you see.”

She burst into new tears and flung herself into his arms. He ended up kneeling on the veranda and holding his weeping children.

And weeping with them.

Oyuki sniffled and withdrew.

3

A Conspiracy

Later that day another visitor arrived. This time, Akitada made an effort to be hospitable.

The gentleman announced by Tora was Nakatoshi, formerly his clerk in the Ministry of Justice, but now senior secretary at the Ministry of Ceremonial. Nakatoshi had called before to express his condolences, but he had seen how deeply wounded Akitada was and left again quickly.

Nakatoshi was one of the few friends who had never asked Akitada for anything, while Akitada had gone to him on numerous occasions for assistance that always been freely given. He had obligations to Nakatoshi.

Nakatoshi came into Akitada’s study almost timidly. “Forgive me,” he said, just as if he were still his clerk. “I hate to intrude. You must tell me to go if it’s an imposition.”