26

She refolded the note and added a note of her own: “This seems to have been missent. I am not at all well, and am sure that you will forgive me for not writing a decent letter.”

He smiled as he read it. This talent for evasion had not been apparent earlier. He could not really be angry with her.

She was in despair. He had not exactly said so, but he had hinted rather broadly that he knew. The strangest, unhappiest of fates was pressing down upon her.

“Why are you sending the general's letter back?” Ukon had come in. “That's as good as inviting bad luck.”

“It doesn't seem to be for me. The address must be wrong.”

Ukon thought her mistress's behavior very odd, and (knowing per-fectly well that good servants should be more reticent) unfolded the note as she took it back to the messenger.

“Very sad,” she said to Ukifune, not letting it be known that she had seen the letter. “For you, for me, for all of us. The general seems to have guessed.”

Ukifune flushed and did not answer. She concluded that someone had been talking. She did not ask who it might be. How would she seem to her women, what would be on their minds? She had not asked for these complications. Her hapless destiny was working itself out.

“Let me tell you about my sister,” Ukon was saying to Jiju~. “It was when we were off in Hitachi. This sort of thing can happen to the likes of us too, you know. She had two men after her, and she just couldn't make up her mind, they both seemed so fond of her. Then she began edging toward the new one and the other up and killed him. And never spoke to her again. So we lost a good soldier, and the other one, the one who did the murdering, he was a good man too, but naturally he couldn't be kept on. So he was ordered to leave Hitachi, and my sister was let go from the governor's house, because, after all, nothing would have happened if it hadn't been for her and her bad habits. She stayed on in the east and (more's the sin) Nurse* goes on weeping for her to this very day. You may think I'm asking for trouble when I say so, but it's just not the sort of thing people do. I don't care what sort of families they come from, a muddle is a muddle. It doesn't always end up in bloodshed, of course, but things every bit as bad can happen, I don't care whether you're a princess or a laundress. I don't know, maybe it's even worse for a princess. Maybe she'd be better off dead than in a predicament like my sister's. Well, my lady. Make up your mind. If the prince seems so fond of you, just panting after you, then go to him, and stop moping. There's no point at all in letting yourself waste away. Your mother is so worried, and Nurse is all in a dither about the general and his plans for you. Myself, I wish the prince would just go away and stop trying to snatch you from under the general's nose.”

“You're dreadful.” Jiju~ preferred Niou and did not hesitate to say so. “No one can fight his destiny, my lady, and yours is to go to the one you're even a little fonder of. And really, the prince is so warm about it all, so sincere, why, my lady, you couldn't think of throwing it all away. I can see that you're not happy about these people trying to rush you off into the general's arms. You may have to hide yourself for a little while, but I say you should go to the one you like best.”