7

The presentation of the Akashi girl at court had been fixed for late in the Fourth Month.

Murasaki went with Genji to the Miare festival, which preceded the main Kamo festival. She invited the other Rokujo~ ladies to join them, but they declined, fearing that they might look like servants. Her procession was rather quiet and very impressive for the fact, twenty carriages simply appointed and a modest number of outrunners and guards. She paid her respects at the shrine very early on the morning of the festival proper and

took a place in the stands. The array of carriages was imposing, large numbers of women having come with her from the other Rokujo~ households. Guessing from considerable distances whose lady she would be, people looked on in wondering admiration.

Genji remembered another Kamo festival and the treatment to which the Rokujo~ lady, mother of the present empress, had been subjected. “My wife was a proud and willful woman who proved to be wanting in common charity. And see how she suffered for her pride—how bitterness was heaped upon her.” He drew back from speaking too openly about the horrible conclusion to the rivalry. “The son of the one lady is crawling ahead in the ordinary service, and the heights to which the daughter of the other has risen bring on an attack of vertigo. Life is uncertain for all of us. We can only hope to have things our way for a little while. I worry about you, my dear, and how it will be for you when I am gone.”