text: "Are you sure he said we must wait here for him?" Matsudaira Konnosuke asked the slight young girl before him. Obviously awed by the company, she bowed low to the ground while mumbling her replies. "It will go hard for you if you are lying!" he warned, and she shivered as she looked at his severe face.
  
  He was dressed in brocade silks. His topknot was black and straight as a sword slash. Though Midori knew him to be a stern man, administrator of life and death for the imperial city of Miyako, still she thought she saw a hint of sensuousness in the narrow lips and classical profile. He continued looking at her speculatively. Midori, experienced in the ways of men, still could not tell about this sample of the upper classes. She had simply had no experience with such high-class persons before. She looked around her nervously. The middle-rank guesting house was luxuriously appointed. Monks were supposed to be abstemious, as were pilgrims, but the Shogun's government demanded a minimum of comfort for its minions, at least the important ones.
  
  The smooth, bare wooden pillars and beams of the room were clean and well made, exuding the faint fragrance of hinoki wood. The painted fusuma panels had been decorated by an artist, and the finger holes for the sliding fusuma doors were made of lacquered copper, each cover a different play on the shape of a crane. Peculiarly, the lord before whom she sat was unaccompanied by any attendants except the two women for whom she had searched, and so far neither had said a word. She had been several days on the way, searching for traces of Lord Matsudaira, and had then spent several days more searching for his resting place. All that time, fear for Elder Sister Osatsuki had driven her on.
  
  There was an altercation outside, followed by a low voice calling for Matsudaira's attention.
  
  "Forgive the intrusion?"
  
  "Yes?" answered Matsudaira.
  
  "A message from the ronin Miura Jiro, my lord." The retainer slid the fusuma door open, stepped in, knelt, and slid it closed. He was a young samurai, plainly dressed in black overcoat. He bowed and handed a folded slip of paper to Matsudaira with both his hands, then turned and left.
  
  Matsudaira read the short note and smiled. "Jiro is at the nearby teahouse—"
  
  He had barely finished speaking before there was a rush of movement. The slim woman Midori identified as Okiku rose quickly to her feet. She bowed (rather perfunctorily) in Matsudaira Konnosuke's direction and slipped out the door, not before flashing a brief smile at Midori. The other cowled figure stirred impatiently but did not move.
  
  Governor Matsudaira looked at Midori. He smiled at her for the first time. "It seemed you were telling the truth, girl. Mr. Miura says he has Osatsuki with him."
  
  "Wonderful! Oh, wonderful!" Tears of happiness coursed down Midori's cheeks, and she bowed gratefully.
  
  Rosamund looked on curiously. The yamabushi girl was attractive in a common sort of way. Her most impressive feature was a mass of soft brown hair, unusual amongst the denizens of the Japans, whose hair was usually a coarse black. Rosamund longed to touch those soft tresses. She wondered if Goemon felt the same, hiding his feelings behind the stern exterior of his official persona. It was exciting to have Jiro back, and she was getting bored sitting in the guest house. She could not move around freely, since in her guise as Matsudaira Konnosuke's concubine she was restricted to her quarters or palanquin. She had wanted to visit the great monastery of Mount Koya but found the entrance forbidden to women. She wished they could all resume their former guises—Goemon as an itinerant doctor, Jiro as masterless samurai, a ronin, Okiku as pilgrim—and go travelling once again. The enforced inactivity of life in the House of Women, bound about by formal rules and the restrictions of her own uniqueness in this society, had palled long since.
  
  "Goemon..." She started to ask for some respite from boredom, when she was interrupted by noises from the outside.
  
  Okiku, Jiro, and Osatsuki bowed their way into the room.
  
  "Elder Sister!" Midori squealed, her position and all decorum forgotten.