第37节

past

interference in her life, would be only too pleased to tell her brother

the good news. And second, was that the conspirators planned to use a

deadly mixture of fact, fiction and Mute magic to poison Lady Mishiko's

mind and turn her into an assassin ....

Lady Mishiko, at this point in time, knew nothing of this.

Since the welcome death of her husband and the untimely demise of her

lover Toshiro Hase-Gawa, she had become a semi-recluse living in her

brother's household, while she tried to put the pieces of her shattered

life back together.

With her three children and her small personal retinue of servants, she

had her own permanent apartments in all the princely households, and

followed her brother in his seasonal moves around his four domains.

Mishiko was the only close relative so favoured; her three elder

sisters, all married, as she had been, into noble houses closely allied

with the Toh-Yota, were only seen at court on great state occasions

such as the annual ceremony each spring when the domain-lords of

Ne-Issan gathered in all their martial splendour to renew their oath of

fealty to the Shogun.

But as the Inner Court gossips knew, Mishiko's sisters had not become

one of the permanent focal points of their younger brother's warped

desires. Each of them, before being married off, had been bullied or

cajoled into submitting to varying degrees of physical intimacy and

responding in kind, but for one reason or another his interest in them

had slackened then disappeared entirely (to their great relief) as

Mishiko began to blossom into womanhood.

Most noblewomen had small bosoms, some had almost flat chests like men,

and this had become the accepted fashion. The traditional upper-class

japanese style of dress was not designed to display the female bosom,

and any woman whose chest measurements exceeded the norm took care to

conceal her abundance under a binding cloth.

On reaching puberty, Mishiko's breasts had budded quickly and to her

dismay had continued to grow full and firm, surmounted with generous

nipples. Tormented by her slim-breasted sisters, she was haunted by

visions of being weighed down by two overripe melons like her

moon-faced Korean wet-nurse, but to her great relief this hadn't

happened.

By her sixteenth birthday- the age when noble families started thinking

about suitable marriage partners - Mis-hiko was left generously endowed

but not grossly overburdened.

But by that time, she' was no longer a virgin.

Yoritomo, gripped by the feverish fantasies that plague young men as

the sap begins to rise, had already forced himself upon her.

Having shared the bathtub with Mishiko and his other sisters from early

childhood to the age of puberty, Yoritomo had seen her breasts begin to

bud. From that moment on, using a great deal of ingenuity, he had

contrived to spy upon her nakedness. The vision of her swelling body

and the desire to fondle it - as she herself did in her most private

moments - became an obsession.

It was, as he confessed to her later, like a worm in the brain - eating

away at his sanity.

Given the dissolute atmosphere that permeated the Inner Court during

his father's reign, it was hardly surprising that Yoritomo's incestuous

desires were able to flourish unnoticed and unchecked. As the heir to

the throne, the courtiers who served his father treated him with the

utmost deference, and his sisters were also obliged to humour him for

fear of what might happen to them when he became the Shogun.

It took some while for Yoritomo to realise this but when he did, and

finally summoned up the courage to turn his youthful fantasies into

reality, he began the fumbling sexual conquest of his sisters. One by

one, singly and in pairs, with increasing proficiency, the secret

liaisons continued until the magic moment when Mishiko came of age.