The year is 1177 of the Common Era.

It is the age of cathedrals in Europe. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Aztec priests are settling in the marshlands that will become Mexico City, guided by a vision of an eagle devouring a snake. On the south-eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the fate of the Holy Land lies in the balance, with plans afoot for a third Crusade. The Arab world is enjoying an age of great scientific discovery, while in Asia, the Mongols are at war with the Han Chinese, who have just invented gunpowder.

In Japan, it is the three hundred and eighty-third and final year of the Heian period, a time of unprecedented cultural refinement and sophistication. Power and influence cohere in the capital, Heian-Kyō – the city later known as Kyoto – and their epicentre is the Imperial court. Heian Japan is a profoundly religious society, steeped in the precepts of Buddhism and older, ancestral beliefs, haunted by spirits of Nature, and a multitude of demons and ghosts. A violent society, too – heian means ‘peace’, but these are turbulent times. Powerful clans are fighting for supremacy, provoking unrest and rebellion. Passions are stirred by the struggle for succession to the throne. Fierce rivalries herald the weakening of Imperial power, the outbreak of the Genpei War, and the rise of the first shoguns. And yet, amid the chaos, Japanese culture is undimmed, with poetry hailed as the noblest of the arts.

Readers will see that I have tended to use modern place names throughout – Japan for Nihon, Kyoto for Heian-kyō… I have done this so that we may follow the characters on their journeys, in hopes of achieving an acceptable balance between historical accuracy and accessibility.
I hope that you will enjoy reading this novel as much as I enjoyed writing it.

One

Never had anyone heard tell of a fire on the scale of that which tore through the streets, avenues and gardens of Kyoto in the third year of the Angen era. It began in the night, in the central wards of the Left City, and quickly gained strength, fed by storm-force winds that stirred up great tornados of flame. The fire raged for three days, leaving a third of the buildings razed and their inhabitants prey to looting and lawlessness. Thousands perished. The nobility and court dignitaries were not spared; many of the finest, most luxurious dwellings were reduced to ashes, and the Emperor himself was forced to take refuge in another residence while his palace was consumed by the flames.

Over the days that followed, the dead were counted, and widely differing theories circulated as to the cause of the catastrophe. For some, it was the work of a demon. Others attributed it to a destructive astronomical alignment. Still others saw it as divine punishment for the moral degeneracy of the Japanese people. The truth was known to one indi- vidual alone. That person knew that neither the gods, nor demons, nor the stars were to blame. They knew this with absolute certainty because they had started the blaze with their own hand.

The fire-raiser sat for two days, gazing down upon Kyoto from the heights of Hiei-zan, observing the unstoppable spread of the monstrous conflagration. Perched like a crow on a cliff-edge, the arsonist watched as fire devoured the Imperial city, coiffing it with a plume of smoke that eclipsed the sun and plunged the entire valley into semi-darkness. As to the thoughts stirring in the depths of that tormented soul, the wisest of men would have been powerless to dis- cern them, unless he could travel back in time, over seven long years.

The song of the frogs
Lulls the moon that sleeps submerged In the rippling pool
Where the firmament dances
Bright rings spread from a tossed stone

Matsuo had finished setting out the poem on a sheet of fine paper. Then he rolled it up carefully and ran to present it to his mother, who was returning from the garden, her arms full of fresh flowers. Mother unrolled the sheet and fixed her gentle gaze on the words. Matsuo waited for her verdict. He was eleven years old.

Mother wore trousers of silk, and a simple white tunic; light clothing for the hot weather. Her long hair shone with a bright, bluish sheen. Matsuo loved to brush it in the evenings, as she made ready for the night. She read the poem, then bestowed a radiant smile on her son.

‘It’s very beautiful, Kiku,’ she told him.
Matsuo felt his heart swell with joy. Kiku – ‘chrysanthe- mum’ – was the affectionate name she had given him after the very first poem he had written for her, his first poem ever, at the age of five, when he was barely able to trace the kana on the paper:

Say, Chrysanthemum,
Which is the loveliest flower
In the whole garden?
Of all, Chrysanthemum said,
The prettiest is Mother

The verse was a tanka, naïve and childlike, of course, but formally correct: a ‘short song’ in the tradition of waka poetry, composed of alternating lines of five and seven syllables. It was Mother who had introduced Matsuo to the delights of this exquisite art. She adored poetry, and she had sought to instil the same passion in her son from his earliest child- hood. Together, they would scan the syllables of infantile lines of verse, stringing them together to create delightfully absurd nursery rhymes. The game of choosing and arranging words to release their magical music soon became Matsuo’s favourite. Nothing, it seemed to him, could better express the beauty that inhabited all things. And still, the essence of that beauty must be set down on paper, which was why Matsuo worked hard to master his calligraphy. Kneeling at his writing desk, he manipulated the brush and lost all sense of time, carefully making his marks, perfecting the curves, tirelessly seeking that harmony of soul and gesture which, alone, said Mother, would bring the words to life.

Every day, Matsuo wrote a tanka for Mother, to which she replied each evening, with a poem slipped beneath his pillow while he slept. And that was how Matsuo had begun each day – with the discovery of a new tanka from his mother – ever since he had learned to read.

Matsuo lived with his parents in a large house not far from Miiri, in Aki Province, ten days’ ride from the capital. It was harsh, rugged country. Their estate was planted with giant pine trees that Matsuo’s father harvested with a small team of labourers. Yoshitsuna no Morito was the manager of a sawmill that supplied the whole region with wood for construction. The Yoshitsuna residence, solidly built in wood that showed the patina of age, stood at the foot of a hill beside a river. The main house was backed by a covered terrace, the engawa, on its north side, and flanked by wings, each adorned with a gallery. The ancestral home was a small world where Mother reigned supreme, seconded by two serving-women whom she had recruited from the hardy peasant stock roundabout.

Ōmiya, Matsuo’s mother, had never given him the little brother or sister he so desired. The cause was an illness that had struck when Matsuo was still a baby. Mother had survived but could no longer have children. As the daugh- ter of the governor of Aki, Lady Ōmiya was one of the most accomplished women the province had ever seen. She had never wanted for anything, but felt the misery of abject poverty and showed compassion to those on whom fortune had not smiled. Ōmiya had helped a great many peasant women in one way or another, and it was well known that no beggar ever left her house hungry. Clothes were her only acknowledged weakness. She took pride in her appearance, and arranged for dresses, fans and other sophisticated accessories to be sent from her older brother in the capital in the most fashionable colours, prints and motifs. Her authority in matters of taste was uncontested throughout the region. And when Ōmiya put on ceremo- nial attire – a kimono of twelve layers, the colours carefully orchestrated to reflect the season – there was not a woman to rival her in elegance.

At the front of the house, a creek fed a pond whose banks had been planted to form a garden. This small paradise was dotted with cherry and apple trees, and a multitude of flowers that Ōmiya grew herself, never hesitating to dig into the fertile topsoil with her delicate fingers. Matsuo was always eager to help. He loved gardening with Mother. He would pick the loveliest flowers for her, from which Ōmiya would compose remarkable arrangements, combining the ephemeral masterpieces of Nature with objects of every sort – reeds and seashells, feathers, old prints and books, crumpled sheets of correspondence, ribbons, pebbles, dead leaves, anything that caught her artist’s eye. She would create ravishing miniature worlds or magnificent tableaux, drawn from the living and inanimate worlds. Poetry, calligraphy and floral arrangements were not the only arts she cultivated. She was gifted with a wonderful voice and loved to sing, accompanying herself on the biwa.

Aki Province offered little in the way of pastimes or enter- tainment. Mother visited a few other high-ranking ladies. Twice each month, her friends would meet to chat and eat sweetmeats. In fine weather they would take a walk in the countryside, accompanied by a train of servants. Dressed in their finest clothes, they would picnic beside a stream, shaded by parasols. Mother would always bring her son along and have him recite poems by the Old Masters, or his own childish verses, to the unfailing delight of the other women. His Mother’s proud smile was the highest reward Matsuo could imagine: its radiance lit his path into the land of dreams. But on nights when Father’s official duties took him away from home, Matsuo would hear Mother sobbing, through the thin partition that separated their bedrooms. And then he would slip into her room, her bed, and hold her tight in his arms until her tears dried and she fell asleep at last, comforted and soothed. The next day, when he asked Mother why she had been crying, she would claim to have no idea what he was talking about.

‘Brush my hair, Kiku, would you?’
Matsuo could only guess why his Mother cried alone at night. He made her tears the subject of melancholy tankas:

May her teardrops dry
With the first glimmer of dawn
When sorrow takes flight
Nothing shall moisten her eyes
But droplets of morning dew

Matsuo never showed these poems to his mother, preferring to keep them for himself.