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Tayasu and Shimizu families, blood relations of the Tokugawa family.
    Everything, in fact, that anyone could ever want was there. Once the women entered the castle they knew that, unless they were unhappy or behaved badly, they would be there for the rest of their lives. Of course they were permitted to visit their families from time to time. Sachi knew that soon she too would be allowed a few days to visit her family, though her old life seemed so far away she could barely remember the little girl she had been when she lived in the village.
    In the past when the princess made the daily journey to greet the shogun, Sachi had stayed behind in the royal apartments. But today something had changed. Perhaps, Sachi thought, it was to do with her age. Now in her fifteenth year, she had come of age and her monthly defilement had begun. Her hair was knotted in a more adult hairstyle and she wore a style of kimono that marked her as a junior handmaiden. She even had a new name.
    Instead of Sachi, ‘Happiness’, she was now officially Yuri, ‘Lily’. She liked the new name. It made her feel delicate and feminine and rather grand, part of a more splendid world than before. Her body too was changing, sprouting nearly as fast as a bamboo shoot in the rainy season. Her arms and legs had grown long and slender and her small round breasts had to be squashed into place inside her kimono. Even her face seemed different almost every time she looked at herself in the mirror.
    Perhaps that was the reason why, that morning, Lady Tsuguko had told her to prepare to attend the welcoming for the shogun. But it was not her place to ask questions. As the older women reminded her again and again, she herself and her feelingscounted for nothing. No matter what happened, no matter what she felt, she must strive to maintain a placid, unruffled surface, like a pond becoming still again after a stone has been thrown in. The key was to remember her place, to be obedient and never to bring shame on herself or others.
    At mid-morning, as the hour of the horse approached, the women prepared to leave. The princess rose to her feet and, holding her ceremonial cypresswood fan at her waist, glided out of her apartments. She moved so softly that the smoke coiling from the censer barely quivered. Her wide red trousers rippled and the quilted hem of her brocade coat spread like a fan behind her. A subtle perfume enveloped her, wafting from her scented robes. Her ladies followed, like an endless procession of huge flowers in their thin white summer kimonos and bulky vermilion skirts. Usually Lady Tsuguko would have been at the head of the line, as befitted her rank of chief lady-in-waiting. But today she stayed at the back, shepherding Sachi at her side.
    Outside, the passageway was full of women on their knees. Bowing again and again, the ushers greeted the princess. Sachi scurried along with tiny steps, wary of the swathes of fabric that eddied around her feet. Being shorter than everyone else, she almost had to run to keep up. Once she stumbled over her train. ‘Smaller steps,’ Lady Tsuguko cautioned, tucking an elegant finger under her elbow. ‘Toes turned in. Hands on your thighs, fingers straight, thumbs tucked in. Head down. Look at the ground.’
    Preceded by the ushers, the princess and her ladies glided infinitely slowly, with measured steps, along one corridor after another, their robes swishing gently like waves lapping at the edge of a river. The palace was a maze. Pattering along, eyes fixed firmly on the tatami mats, Sachi wondered how she would ever have found her way back again if she had been on her own. Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of the long corridor disappearing into the distance, lined with rows of closed wooden doors. Behind them, she knew, would be the crowded rooms where some of the hundreds of ladies-in-waiting and their maids lived.
    When she peeked again they were skirting a vast audiencechamber. Most of it was swallowed up in