The long fabric wall luffed lazily in the breeze, but her cloth-of-gold kimono did not move at all. Even her hair remained undisturbed, which struck him as eerie; a ghost’s hair was said not to move in the breeze either. On another level it made him miss his own thick, luxuriant hair.
Nene dipped her head in a tiny bow. “Shichio-san. You’ve conducted yourself with grace tonight.”
“How could I not? You have bestowed such lofty honors on me.” He made little effort to conceal his vitriol.
“I? Surely you mean my husband.”
“I most surely do not.”
“Then you’ve lost none of your cleverness.” She bowed again, deeper than the last time. Shichio didn’t miss the subtext: she respected the ability if not the man. “I was glad to see you accept the gift in the spirit in which it was given.”
“Oh, quite. I will be the only hatamoto within a hundred ri. And a hundred and fifty ri away from anything that matters.”
Nene allowed herself the faintest ghost of a smile. It put not a single wrinkle in her white face paint. “You do not yet know of my greatest gift to you,” she said. With a pale and slender hand she removed a sheet of fine paper from her sleeve, ornately folded to make a perfect square. The wax seal was broken. In the dim light Shichio could not make out whose seal it was, but it hardly mattered. Regardless of who penned the letter, its content would spell Shichio’s death.
“You intercepted one such letter,” she said. “One and only one. What you do not know is that you received it only because I released it to you. My spies have intercepted the rest. I know all about your failure in the Battle of Komaki. I know you are responsible for my husband’s most public shame. But more importantly for you, my honored husband knows not a word of it.”
If the letter set his heart to racing, Nene nearly caused it to stop dead. “What? Why?”
“You will accept my gifts. Land. Lordship. Wealth. Esteem. And above all, quietude. Retire to your new estate and never return to the capital. If I see you there again, if I hear you have even pointed your horse in Kyoto’s direction, my honored husband will hear of your treachery. You will die on that infamous table of yours, the same as my old friend General Mio.”
Shichio seethed with rage. “No. I can beguile him, the same as you—”
“Not the same. Do not mistake me for his lover just because I am his wife. My concern is for my husband, and then for the good of the empire. I could not care less where he puts his cock.”
“He cares. That’s all I need.”
Nene laughed out loud. She was so small, and her voice so high, that she sounded like twittering birds. “How long have you two known each other? Five years would be my guess. Hideyoshi and I have been married for twenty-seven. Do you have any idea how many playthings I’ve seen come and go in that time?”
She chirped again, as merrily as a flock of sparrows. “I’m told you are a special talent in the bedchamber,” she said. “That’s good. A whore ought to be talented; she has nothing else to recommend her. So by all means, find yourself a northern lord that wants to bugger you. Take as many lovers as you like. Just never let me hear from you again.”
10
Nene could not help but laugh. Shichio looked so comical that he might just as well have been an actor on the stage. The man was cunning, to be sure, but when he lost control of his temper he raged like a little child.
“We will go back to the banquet now,” she said, “and you will give me no more of these petulant looks. In exchange, I will not provoke you. In fact, I will say nothing to you unless I must. You will accept compliments and laugh at jokes and do everything else required of a noble lord. You will not be the first to leave, and you certainly will not spend your evening brooding in some dark hold of that monstrosity floating in the bay.”
She’d heard far too much about his behavior after Lady Okuma’s marriage to her infant groom. That was a shameful affair. Shichio might have been half child and half serpent, but he was one of Hideyoshi’s generals, and the office warranted a high degree