23

“What a useless little person I do seem to have taken in.” The bishop's sister soon recovered sufficiently to order a nun's habit for the girl. It was a garb they were very familiar with, and soon the girl was wearing a dull gray robe and surplice. The other nuns, helping her into them, could not rind strong enough words with which to condemn the bishop's recklessness and irresponsibility. She had been a comfort to them over the days, an unexpected light in the mountain gloom; and now the light had gone out.

It was as his fellows had said: the bishop's powers were extraordinary. The First Princess having recovered, his name inspired yet greater reverence. Since complications can follow an apparent recovery, however, the services were continued. The bishop remained at court for a time. One still, rainy night when he was among the clerics on duty, he was summoned for nocturnal rites. The ladies-in-waiting, exhausted from the strain of these last few days, were resting. Only a few were in the royal presence. The empress herself was among them.

“I have thought so all along,” she said, “and now I feel more than ever that we may look to you for assistance in this life and the next.”

“I have been informed by the Blessed One that I have not long to live and that this year and next are particularly dangerous ones for me; and so I had thought to stay in solemn retreat, concentrating upon the holy name. Your Majesty's own summons has brought me here.”

The empress spoke of how stubborn the malign spirit in possession of her daughter had been, and how frightening it is when these spirits insist upon announcing themselves under a variety of names.

“Your Majesty has chosen to speak of malign spirits. I am reminded of a most unusual happening. Late this spring my mother, a very old lady, went on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse by way of fulfilling a vow. Taken ill on the return journey, she stopped over at the late Suzaku emperor's Uji villa. Evil spirits have a way of occupying large houses that have been neglected over the years, and I feared that she had chosen an unfortunate spot for her convalescence. I was right.” And he described how they had found Ukifune.

“What an extraordinary thing!” Quite unnerved, the empress aroused the women nearby. That Kosaisho~ in whom Kaoru had shown a certain interest had heard the bishop's story. The others had been asleep. The bishop, noting the royal perturbation, saw that his narrative had perhaps been too vivid, and did not go into further details.

“But let me just tell you a little about the young lady. On my way down from the mountain I looked in on the nuns at Ono. She wept as she told me how desperately she wanted to leave the world, and I administered vows. My sister, the widow of the guards captain, seems to adore the girl, and even to look upon her as a substitute for her own daughter. No doubt she is berating me for what I have done. The girl is a very pretty, I must say, a most elegant young lady, and it does seem a pity that she should be wasted in a nunnery. I have no notion who she might be.”

“But why should such a pretty girl have been left in such a place?” asked Kosaisho~. “Surely you have found out who she is?”

“No, I fear I have not—though she may have told my sister. If she is what she appears to be, a girl of good family, then the secret cannot be kept forever. Not of course that I would wish to be understood as saying that there are no beauties among girls of the lower classes. Ours is a world in which even the ogre maiden finds salvation.* But if she should prove to be a person of no background, then the fact that she is so lovely would mean that she came into this life with a remarkably light burden of sin from other lives.”

The empress remembered having heard of a girl who disappeared in Uji or thereabouts, in the spring it must have been. Kosaisho~ had had the sad story from the girl's sister. But of course they could not be sure that this was the same girl. And the bishop had said that the girl wanted her very existence to be kept secret, and had hidden herself away like a fugitive from some terrible enemy. He found it all very strange, the bishop said again, as if he did not want to elaborate further; he had brought the matter up only because it had occurred to him that Her Majesty might be interested. Kosaisho~ thought it best to keep the story to herself.

“It may well be the same girl,” said the empress when the bishop had withdrawn. “Suppose we tell my brother.”

But secrecy was important to both of them, it seemed, and no one was entirely sure of the facts; and Kaoru was such a difficult man to talk to in any case.