Year of the Boar, Seventh Month, Day 13.

Chiyo cannot read and so my shame is known all about the House.  I could no longer bear the thought of what the scroll might contain so when Chiyo came in with some food for Crystal, I asked her to take the scroll away and read it. She was to come back and tell me the contents. If only I had made her read it to me there and then but the idea of watching her face as she read it was too much and so I thought it better if she took it away. If only I had not... When I thought back... perhaps there was a look of fear, embarrassment... of something... but she said nothing and when I looked up from my papers, she was gone and so was the scroll.
It has been a long while since I practised calligraphy and the weather was so beautiful this afternoon that I thought I would sit on my verandah with some ink and my brushes. It felt good to sit in the sun; the ink dried quickly and for a while, I let the fluid motion of my brush strokes soothe me and I quite lost myself as I filled page after page with standard practice characters. My hand was a little unsteady at first; the characters I produced spiky and uneven but as I repeated the practice strokes over again, I regained my natural, smooth hand reasonably quickly. I suppose I had been practising for two sticks or so and I thought I would write out some poems. I had re-dampened my ink and selected another brush when the doors to my chamber slid open and my peace was shattered.  One of the older maids entered my chamber dragging Chiyo by her sash. She knelt, pulling Chiyo to the floor with her and touched her forehead to the matting; her fingertips did not quite meet as she drew her hands together in an arc. I waited, expecting one of them to speak but neither did. I shifted, clearing my throat and breaking the silence but still neither of them drew themselves up from the floor. It occurred to me that Chiyo was crying and Atsuko (whose name I remember belatedly) seemed also, to be trembling.
It was only then that I remembered the scroll and I felt bile rise in my throat instantly. I tried to keep the fear from my voice but it shook anyway as I snapped "Tell me." Atsuko rose slightly, keeping her head lowered, her face curtained by straight, glossy hair which is unusually dark for the North. I could not see her expression. I did not need to.
Chiyo cannot read and so she took the scroll to another for help. Instead of taking it to one of my personal entourage or a Diplomat, she took it to her friend, one of the stable-hands. Naturally the gossip has spread faster than a wild fire and now there is not a person in the House and probably the Lands, who does not know the sordid details of what passed between Shigeru and me. Atsuko told me some of the things he had written but I cannot bring myself to defile the parchment with the disgusting, base things he threatens. Atsuko described his letter as sounding deranged; she said the Diplomats are actually concerned enough to have convened some sort of council. Half of them want to hide me away in the countryside or at the coast while the others believe that I will be safer here within the House walls.  I gripped the door frame, trying to stay upright, Atsuko's words spinning around in my head, refusing to settle; the only ones I could focus on at all were the ones concerning Chiyo.
"How is it" I hissed at them "That a member of my Household cannot READ?!" Chiyo seemed to actually shrink into the floor, the beige of her kimono blending into the matting as she sank. My knees trembled so much that I could barely stand and I felt so very sick. I knew that I focused on the wrong thing but I could not concentrate on anything other than the fact that Chiyo is illiterate. The only answer I had to my question was a sobbing, burbled answer which was muffled by the matting. Atsuko had no answer for me either and I could not stand them to be in my chambers any longer. I sent them away sharply before I allowed myself to sink to the floor and curl into a ball. I stuffed my sleeve into my mouth to stifle the scream that rose from my belly and I lay there for a long while with my eyes closed trying to still the sickness that rose with it.
How could I have been so stupid as to send Nanami away for an entire seven-day? Why did I not think it through more carefully? She deserves a holiday, I know she does but this would never have happened had she been here. I do not even know where she is; I have no way to contact her and bring her back. I wish Broken Rampart had not gone; I need someone to talk to so very much... and if I cannot have that... then a pipe... gods... anything to take away this sickness and this ever magnifying fear...