You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.

Excerpt from Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright

Chapter 3: The Ivory Fan

Her maids had tittered and gossiped over the very young foreign captain who was so beautiful in the face. Always like the gabble of geese that she could almost ignore, but not quite, they speculated on whether he had a wife, or perhaps if loneliness would drive him to find a wife here.

Finally, she snapped at them. They filed out obediently and abashedly, leaving her alone to wait for her hair to dry. Washing her hair often meant a long, arduous process, for it was by now longer than she was tall. Sections were sorted out and then washed several times. Then it was air-dried like dark linen and dried as best it could. It was almost dried, and floated up like wisps of black silk in the wind. It felt so light and one of the women said that it was running one's fingers through water.

She had always loved her hair, loved the feel of it against her face and how it fell in graceful waves around her, like she was bathing in a sea of dark waves. How she wished that she needn't put it up into a stiff hairstyle of boning, supports, and ointments to make it stay in an artificial shape. The feel of it in the spring wind, even in the dusty city, felt delicious. She used her ivory fan to fan herself, as the sun became stronger.

Lazy birds called raucously, and the scent of green things in the private garden drifted towards her. How wonderful it was, she thought, to sit in this garden drifting with plum blossoms and smell the green and feel her hair as light as air against her face.

Footsteps on the grass behind her gave her warning that someone else had joined her. It was the young foreign captain and he looked as angry as he was the day she arrived. Luckily, he did not see her in only her sheer under-robe as he sat heavily on the bench by the fountain. He sat there, staring moodily into the little babbling brook, with floating lotus flowers drifting gently.

He stood again, as if too angry to sit for long, and paced restlessly. Unfortunately at that moment, her fan dropped from her lap as she moved to push her hair back. His head whipped around to examine the noise and his eyes traveled up the trunk of the tree to the branch where she was sitting.

She blushed. Of all things, what a sight she must be! Dressed only in a violet under-robe and perched on a tree branch, of all things, with her long waves of hair billowing softly around her like her enormous long robe. Both were carried upon the wind and drifted like clouds, sunset purple and dark. Her face was unpainted and naked to the world, with her pale-colored freckles evident without the white lead paint. And surrounding her, were green leaves and little purple blossoms, and the evening birds called to each other softly.

His eyes stayed on her as he approached. It were as if she could feel them like a touch, intent and hot. He stopped short of the tree, to wait for her to descend from her perch, but she did not. His eyes were trained on her, unblinking in their blue intensity.

As he proffered her fan, she blushed pale pink. He smirked with an arrogance she had never seen.

"Rest safe, my glorious lady, for your virtue is safe with me." His deep voice seemed to vibrate within her. She tilted her chin coldly.

"I do not need your protection, whatever it may be." She retorted, carefully enunciating the difficult words.

And the spell of the moment was broken, as her handmaidens reentered to see their young mistress reclined on a tree branch, with pale purple robes and dark hair drifting in the wind, and a young, frightening foreigner regarding her as if seeing a goddess for the first time. They surrounded her, made shooing motions at him, and three gently lifted her off of the branch like a butterfly softly descending to a green earth.

She turned her head slightly to indicate his audience with her, if it could be called that, was over. In turn, his knowing smile came and he bowed with almost an exaggerated courtesy to her.

"My little lady Mitsouko, light of my life, what have you done?" Her scandalized nurse asked. The pet name she had given her, Mitsouko, meant "mystery," for when young she disappeared and reappeared like a phantom, a little mystery no one could fathom or find. There were few who truly knew her name, and even that nurse did not. As the protected daughter of a feudal lord, even names could be a danger to her. Now only her surviving family knew that name: Her sister. Her mother had died in childbirth, of their eighth child, and their father in an enemy ambush was cut down with a sword, her three brothers, dead as infants or children. Two more sisters were dead in a strange virulent disease during their fifteenth year, and the remaining brother was alive, thank the gods, to inherit the ancient ancestral seat. He, however, was removed from her, being much older and not inclined to affection. Thus, he only knew her as "The lovely sister Mitsouko, who had the secret name, whom he has not seen for ten years."

And thus was she given into a loveless marriage with the remote Hidekei.