Mishiko fell to her' knees before him. 'No, my lord!

I beg you! Do not punish them. What will their companions think when they see those who serve you loyally so cruelly rewarded?"

Her appeal for clemency was an oblique reference to the fate of the Herald Hase-Gawa. If Yoritomo made the connection, it didn't show. He stood up as the last of his armour was removed and helped her to rise.

'My dearest sister! An example must be made! The death of your children must be avenged!" 'The hot blood of those who conspired with Ieyasu will satisfy me,' she whispered. She extended a hand towards Kamakura. 'Let us give thanks that the G.o.ds have shown favour to your loyal Captain by sparing his daughter."

'Hah! Then he is doubly blest? cried Yoritomo. 'For I have made him Castle CommandantI' 'And General Tadoshi?"

'With the rest of my grand-uncle's vile cronies! In a cell!" Mishiko favoured Kamakura with a regal nod. 'I could not think of a more fitting recompense for your service to this family."

'Your highness is most gracious .... ' Mishiko beckoned to her maid-servant. 'Come, Oyoki.

Go with your father. Have him convey you to the safety of your family home. Remain there until I call upon you to attend me - and do your best to put this dreadful night out of your mind."

'Yes, my lady."

Catching the look in his sister's eyes, Yoritomo ordered his bodyguard and the other members of his entourage to remain on call, then ushered her into his private suite.

As his valet and personal servants went to follow, he motioned them to wait outside.

.When the doors closed he confronted Mishiko. 'You astound me. How can you concern yourself with the welfare of servants when your own children have just been murdered?!" 'Because I share your royal blood, my lord. Have you not shown your magnanimity tonight? It is by our actions towards the living that we are measured. We can do nothing for the dead except honour their memory. As for my children, I will bear their loss with the same fort.i.tude that has helped me endure our separation.

'May the G.o.ds nurture their innocent souls and grant me forgiveness! I bore them and treated them tenderly but I could never take them into my heart because they were never fully mine! They sprang from the seed of my late, unlamented husband, the Consul General-pumped into me by the same organ that was thrust daily into his gutter-wh.o.r.es!

'Now he is nothing - and I have nothing to remind me of him! I can wipe away ten years of shame! It can be as it was between us before Ieyasu drove me away!" 'Mishiko! Soon perhaps, but not ,now. This is not the time!" She seized his hands. 'Yes! Yes! This's the time!

We must seize the moment! Can't you feel it? With Ieyasu's death you have been reborn! I can see it in your eyes! You are the master now!"

She drew his hands onto her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

'Seal our victory by giving me your child tonightt Do not deny me this, for without your love, I have nothing to live for?

Yoritomo could feel her nipples pressing through the silken robe into the palms of his hands. The sensation rekindled the old desires he had never fully suppressed.

Mishiko was right. This was a rebirth. And tonight those youthful desires had been given an extra spice.

The killing, the blood, the violence, the heady taste of absolute power, his sister's emotional turmoil formed a potent c.o.c.ktail. For the first time he felt unashamed.

There was no need to hide. Let those around him disapprove if they dared. Yes! He was the master now!

'I shall deny you nothing, Mishi,' he whispered. 'For you were my first love, and will be my last .... ' After Yoritomo's servants had prepared them, they met again in the darkened bed-chamber, now perfumed by burning joss-sticks. Four charcoal braziers cast their warming glow over the large mattress-bed. Lady Mishiko greeted her brother with the required degree of respect for his position as supreme ruler of Ne-Issan, then slowly undressed him, covering his naked flesh with lingering kisses as more and more of it was revealed.

When the last garment fell away, and he stood before her, his pale skin tinted orange by the firelight, she gathered up the hem of the filmy silken shift she had been given to wear, lifted it over her head and cast it aside.

Keeping her arms lifted high and wide, she presented her heavy rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s with their erect nipples raised for his inspection, then turned her back on him.

Act One ....

These preliminaries were part of a ritual that her adolescent brother had cajoled and bullied her into.

She had quickly learned what pleased him, and over the years their furtive couplings had always followed the same pattern - like actors playing traditional roles in a Noli drama about star-crossed lovers.

Yoritomo's hands slid under her arms and up onto her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, flattening them against her rib-cage and drawing her body back against his. This was how it had begun during that long hot summer; the very first movement he had made on entering the shaded coolness of her room and stealing up behind her. Then as now, she felt her nipples sprout between his parted fingers as his great stick wedged itself between his belly and the cleft in her b.u.t.tocks.

Then she hadn't known what he expected of her, but there was no hesitation now. Raising herself up on tiptoe, she parted her thighs and straddled him as he slipped through.

Act Two... Even now, fifteen years and countless penetrations later, Yoritomo felt his mind reel as he relived the moment when his innermost desires were fulfilled. It was all he had dreamed of and more. She had become an ardent slave that he could bend to his will, could submit to, could suffer any indignity he fancied at her hands without losing control of the situation or her respect.

Mishiko also remembered that moment. He had come upon her like a rutting stag. And she, like a young doe in heat, had responded. Their first encounter left her feeling confused and ashamed, but it had opened a well-spring of desire. She had never loved Yoritomo, but she was - like their father- highly-s.e.xed. Their semi-secret relationship had provided the opportunity to satisfy her physical needs without going through the whole tiresome business of having to get married to a young man that her family approved of but who, by the very nature of things, she was bound to detest. Which was precisely what had happened when the family married her off to the Consul-General Nakane TohShiba.

It was only with the Herald, Toshiro Hase-Gawa, that she had experienced the joy and pain of true love, and the fulfillment it could bring to a physical union.

Mishiko thought of the Herald as she closed her thighs, trapping her brother in the honey-pit. Yoritomo gasped with pleasure then buried his face in the free-flowing shoulder-length hair she wore on these occasions as he continued to claw greedily at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Ohh... Mishi!... Mishi. His right hand slid down her belly, his fingers searching out the cleft between her thighs. He was ready. She slipped from his embrace and led him to the mattress bed.

Act Three... They clung to each other beneath the coverlet like lost children, their bodies touching from head to toe. She brought her lips close to his ear. 'At last! Oh, my lord and master! My one and only love!" Yoritomo drew his head away from hers. The past could not be expunged without calling his sister to account - and the need to do so overwhelmed his desire. 'No! How can you say that when you betrayed me? You gave your love to the Herald Hase-Gawa! You wrote to me, asking to marry him! Just the thought of it drove me mad! I wanted to kill you!" Mishiko brought his face back within reach of her lips.

'You would have been wrong to do so. Yes, I loved the Herald, but do you know why? Because the love that brought us together was our love for you! He never shared my bed, and never thought to!" This was quite untrue, but it was precisely what her brother wanted to hear.

Mishiko fed him more lies.

'Toshiro brought me news from court, but most of all he talked about you. I never tired of listening and he never tired of my questions.

When my husband was killed, falling from the sky, I took it as a sign from the G.o.ds. I thought that if I married your favourite, I would be able to return to live in the palace. To be near you." 'Was Toshiro aware of this?"

'Of course! Have I not said he loved you?!" Yoritomo sat up. 'May the G.o.ds forgive me! I have killed my one true friend!" Mishiko hugged him. 'Your other true friend. You still have me. Do not grieve. He will never die as long as you and I are together.

Come...

lie down beside me."

The pangs of guilt had robbed Yoritomo of his erection, but Mishiko knew how to arouse his desire with whispered words and a range of artful caresses.

He lay back, eyes closed as she brought him back up with her lips and tongue, then mounted him and deftly positioned the lips of her v.a.g.i.n.a against the head of his p.e.n.i.s. The delicious sensation generated by that first deep thrust filled Yoritomo from head to toe and made his nerve ends tingle.

She stretched out her body on top of his, framing his face with the long tresses of Mute hair that adorned her bare skull. Placing her legs outside his, she pressed his thighs together with her knees, then angled her feet in, planting them firmly over his. Starting in the middle of his forehead, she drew her hands round his face onto his neck then slid them along his shoulders and down his arms. Hand on hand, she entwined her fingers with his, locked them tight, drew them upwards to rest on either side of his head, and laid her elbows on his pinning him down on the mattress.

His p.e.n.i.s, lying deep inside her, jerked and stiffened.

Yoritomo liked to be dominated during the s.e.xual act.

The pretence of not being in control eased his feelings of guilt and shifted the blame for what happened onto his partner. His humiliation at their hands was a less painful version of the monkish habit of mortifying the flesh as a penance for harbouring sinful thoughts. When his desires had been satisfied he would berate himself for being weak and despise his partaer for exploiting that weakness.

Until the next time ....

But there would not be a next time. Yoritomo, who had come close to killing any capacity she had for real emotion through his warped desires, had destroyed the one great love of her life, the Herald Toshiro' HaseGawa, and now Mishiko was only seconds away from avenging his death.