T'is not too late to seek a newer world.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Chapter Four: The Spider's Webs

It was from a chattering maid that she learned of her husband's plans for their future. The tides of the sea had turned to the British, and the glory of their empire had risen like a victorious sun, and stolen the victorious sun of Japan. They had taken Japanese honor and pride, and forced a humiliating sphere of influence upon it. No longer did Japan rule itself, but rather puppet shoguns and provincial governors were more and more influenced and coerced by foreign interests, political and economic, until even the emperor himself was directly under Anglo-American control. And all around the world, the empires of the Western nations rose. The British controlling the entire Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the isles of Malaysia, and now they were to take Japan, too.

And this was the wave that Hidekei had sought to ride, to grasp at the opportunities provided by the disruption of the status quo and carve out new estates and new fortunes. Mitsouko knew that her husband would succeed, playing at this new foreign-controlled game with sharp and deadly skill, ruthlessly crushing complaint and opposition.

He was smiling smugly when he had received a missive from the British captain-general of the troops stationed in Kyoto.

"This day with the captain-general will show these British barbarians what kind of civilization we have, eh? His wife and the wife of other officials will be coming and I will show them what sort of women we have. If our inferior sex is greater than their men, it will only prove how pathetic their society is. Is that not so, lady wife?"

He had brusquely informed her that she was to practice at all of her talents so she could make him look all the better during the meeting with the foreigners. She had bowed gracefully with her usual dignity, and set forth to follow his instructions. Let them come, she thought, and see what superiority the East had.

She aired her white silk robes, wondrous fabrics as transparent as water, embroidered with a faint orchid design. White and thread-of-silver brocades, white velvets and a hundred robes of white, each lighter than air. Let them come and see in raiment like spider webs, one outfit that had cost a fortune. Let them see.