It was lighter now in the palace, for a wan sun was creeping upward in the pale heavens. There were signs of a dreary day about to dawn. Through the winding corridors of the palace the princess and the maid moved toward the august chamber of death. At its door they paused and the princess’s hand dropped from that of the maid. Having permitted her attendant to push the sliding doors apart, she entered the chamber alone. Without, the maid bent her face to the mats, stifling her sobs in her sleeves. Within, the little princess hesitated a moment in doubt, then rushed to the death couch, threw herself down by the still form there, and unmindful of those within, encircled it with her arms. But no cry escaped her lips, for well had she been bred as a Daughter of the Sun-god by the old Empress Dowager.
The days that followed were hazy and unreal to Sado-ko. Strange women and men, with cold impassive faces, were about her at all times. She could scarcely tell one from the other, and it wearied her to be forced to listen to their words of caution and counsel. Then she made a journey. Strangely enough, when she was lifted into the covered palanquin and the curtains drawn about her, she knew that now she was to be carried beyond the gray palace walls. The journey was made at night, and the tired little princess slept throughout it, so that she was spared the tediousness of time.
In the morning her eyes opened upon a new world. As the day streamed through the bamboo curtains of her norimon, she pushed them aside, to see that they were passing along what seemed to be a stone road, upon either side of which were endless buildings unlike anything she had ever seen before. Although there were throngs of people everywhere, a strange and solemn silence prevailed, as the norimon and parade of the princess passed along, and the people bent their heads to the earth. Sado-ko could see that many of the women and some of the men wept. She did not know that the whole nation had gone into mourning for the one she had loved so well.
Sado-ko, passive and unquestioning, saw the great funeral of the Empress Dowager; a dumb little shadow, she lingered with other relatives in the hall for the mourners, and still, with little understanding, she was carried in her norimon under the escort given only to a royal princess, through a bamboo grove and over the Yumento Ukibashi—“The Bridge of Dreams.” The mortuary hall was reached. The Empress Dowager, whose dearest wish had been to be buried close to her summer palace, where she had spent her declining years, was interred far away from it among the tombs of her thousand ancestors.
CHAPTER III
MASAGO
