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I know she has His Majesty’s ear . . .’
    It was the fifteenth day of the fifth month of the first year of Keio, and the rains were late in starting. Every day was hotter, stickier and more oppressive than the last. Dark clouds hid the sky. The paper doors that divided the rooms and the wooden doors that formed the outer walls of the buildings had been taken out, turning the whole vast palace into a labyrinth of interconnected pavilions. But there was not even the tiniest breeze to rattle the bamboo blinds.
    That morning Sachi had been given a few minutes off from herduties. She dashed to the veranda and gazed out at the palace gardens. The lawns, neatly clipped bushes and spiky-needled pine trees spread before her in a dazzling patchwork of greens. The elegant lake with its half-moon bridges was as still as a picture. Bamboo shoots thrust out of the soil and gnarled branches groaned under fat new buds and leaves. She breathed the moist air, drinking in the warm scent of earth, leaves and grass.
    A cicada shrilled, shattering the silence. The sudden noise took her away, and for a moment she was on a hillside among thick trees. A cluster of slate roofs weighted with stones huddled in the valley below her. She could almost smell the woodsmoke and the aroma of miso soup. The village. The memory was so clear and sharp it brought tears to her eyes.
    As she did every day, she thought back to that fateful autumn morning when the princess had passed through. Sachi was back in the entrance hall of the great inn, feeling the wooden floor cold and hard against her knees. Women crowded around her and voices twittered. Her parents were bowing, her mother brushing away tears. Then her father had said, ‘You are to go with them. You’re a lucky girl. Never forget that. Whatever you do, don’t cry. Be sure and make us proud of you.’
    The next thing she knew, she had been walking along the road with a lady-in-waiting firmly holding her by the hand. She remembered fighting back tears, twisting around again and again, trying to keep her eyes on the village until it disappeared from sight. Many days later they had reached the great city of Edo and finally she saw the white ramparts of Edo Castle filling the sky in front of her. They had gone inside and the gates had swung shut behind them.
    How lonely she had been to begin with! She had never imagined it was possible to be so sad. She hadn’t even been able to understand what anyone said. There had been so much to learn – how to walk and talk like a lady, how to read and write. Since then four winters and three summers had passed. But every day she thought of her mother and father still and wondered how they were and what they were doing.
    Now she took her usual place beside the princess and began to fan her, trying to keep the air around her as cool and fresh as possible.A thread of fragrant smoke coiled from the incense burner in the corner. On the other side of the ornate gold screens that enclosed the princess’s private section of the room, groups of ladies-inwaiting reclined, chattering and laughing, their robes billowing around them like leaves on a lily pond. Only a chosen few were allowed behind the screens. If Sachi had not been so young she might have felt it strange that she of all people should have been there. But for some reason the princess cared about her. She found her company soothing, she said.
    Sachi glanced at the princess. She knew she was supposed to keep her eyes modestly lowered at all times, and especially in the princess’s presence. But there were so many rules, so much to remember. And besides, sometimes she felt that she was the only person who really cared about Princess Kazu. To Sachi she was perfection. Her handwriting was more elegant than that of any of her ladies, her poems more poignant, and when she played the koto, listeners were moved to tears. When she performed the tea ceremony, her movements were pure poetry. Yet there was something about