Autumn Princess, Dragon Child

by Lian Hearn

  And the final reason for giving up and returning to the temple was that she would be rid of Hisoku—she could see no other way to shed him, apart from having someone kill him, and among the few men at Matsutani the only one she could call on to carry out an assassination was Hisoku himself. He believed he was indispensable to her, that his adoration of her gave him some claim over her. He exaggerated his abilities and made much of the fact that he could approach the house with offerings, without having anything thrown at him.

  “You don’t see that you are their slave,” she said. “You are not in any way their master.”

  “Slowly does it,” Hisoku replied. “I am working up to it, just as I am working up to you.”

  He treated her with increasing familiarity and she knew he expected to be her husband soon. The thought made her skin crawl, yet again she could blame no one but herself. She had played on his devotion, using him to obtain the documents that proved Matsutani was hers, allowing him to accompany her, relying on him to take command of the Miboshi men who had fled after Shikanoko’s attack on Kuromori, as if he were her husband and lord. It was only natural he would eventually demand payment. From Haru’s remarks, she knew that everyone thought she and Hisoku were already man and wife in all but name, and this filled her with revulsion, at the same time driving her toward him as if she were under a spell. Her sense of obligation, the lengthening days, the budding of spring, late and cold as it was, her own body with its frank needs and desires, all conspired to weaken her resolve.

  In the fourth month the rain lessened, and late one afternoon Tama walked toward the west gate, trying to come to a decision. She resolved she would leave that week, walk to the coast, and take a boat to Minatogura, as she had done a year ago. This time she would truly renounce all earthly desires and cut her hair. A weight lifted from her and she began to whisper her goodbyes to her childhood home, bidding farewell to the living and the dead.

  Chika appeared beside her, seeming to materialize out of the drizzle. He was soaking, moisture beading his thick lashes and the smooth skin of his face.

  “You startled me,” she said, trying to smile.

  His stare was unresponsive and cold. “Your man is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Hisoku is dead.”

  She thought his eyes shone with secret glee. Let me feel grief, she prayed, let me not feel relief.

  “They hanged him,” Chika went on.

  “Who?” She looked around wildly.

  “Some men from Miyako. They are coming here. One of them came before to attack Kuromori. He knew the mountain path because he grew up there. But the defenders were warned.” He glanced up at her, unable to keep pride and self-satisfaction from his voice. “He was the only survivor. Can you guess who it is?”

  “Masachika,” she said. He had been offended and humiliated by Hisoku and now he had taken revenge. To hang him was an outrage. Why could he not have simply taken off his head? She could feel tears threatening. So, she could experience grief—not only for Hisoku but for Masachika and herself, for the married couple they once were and the brief, fierce happiness they had known in the house, once beautiful, now derelict and haunted.

  Chika was watching her face. “Is he friend or foe to you?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  She composed herself and went to the west gate to wait for Masachika. From the house behind her she could hear the spirits’ voices. They sounded agitated.

  “Matsutani lady, who are you waiting for?”

  “Where is Hisoku? We are hungry and thirsty.”

  “Is it another great monk, like Gessho?”

  “Gessho is dead. He lost his head!”

  “Hisoku is dead, too,” Tama said quietly.

  “Oh yes! Oh yes! Born to be hanged!”

  “It’s the one that came before, that we sent the bees to sting.”

  “Didn’t the bees kill him?”

  “We’ll send more this time.”

  “I beg of you, be still,” Tama said, “until we know why he has come.”

  “You should have been still, Matsutani lady. You should have waited before you tore out our master’s eyes.”

  “Before you turned him out into the Darkwood.”

  “I regret that with every fiber of my being,” Tama whispered.

  “Too late, too late, too late!” they both jeered, running the words together.

  “Toolatetoolatetoolate.”

  * * *

  “I did not expect you,” she addressed Masachika when the men rode up and he dismounted. She recognized one of the riderless horses they led as Hisoku’s, and the sight of the horse alive, when its master was dead, pierced her unexpectedly. “If anyone came, I thought it would be Shikanoko, who has been at Kuromori all winter.”

  He bowed his head to her, and gave his horse’s reins to the nearest man.

  “Shikanoko is indeed the reason I am here.”

  “Hisoku rode out thinking it was him, making an outflanking attack. You did not need to kill him. You were on the same side!”

  “He and his men surprised us in an ambush,” Masachika said. “They did not declare their names nor did they have any banners or crests. Anyway, they are all dead now.”

  “Toolatetoolatetoolate,” sighed the spirits.

  Masachika glanced toward the garden. “So the house is still possessed?”

  “Yes, and they will be more fractious now. Hisoku brought them offerings. He was the only person they allowed through the gate.”

  “I have seen what they can do.” Masachika bent forward to whisper in her ear. “But I believe I possess the key to controlling them.”

  The horses were beginning to fidget impatiently. Masachika said, “Let me organize food and shelter for my men. Then we will talk and I will show you what I have.”

  Tama looked around for Chika, but he was nowhere to be seen. He had vanished as silently as he had appeared earlier at her side.

  The rain began to fall more heavily.

  “Will it never clear up?” Masachika said.

  “They say Heaven is outraged.”

  “We all have to get over things. I suppose one day Heaven will, too, and the sun will shine again.”

  “Come to Haru’s house,” Tama said. “I am living there. But first, please bury the men with honor. We do not want any more offended spirits.”

  There was no dry wood for fires; the ground was sodden and any graves dug filled immediately with water. Masachika’s men carried the bodies up the mountain and threw them into one of the limestone caves, sealing the entrance with boulders. For weeks the northwest wind would bring the smell of death wafting down the valley.

  Haru greeted Masachika coldly. “On whose orders do you come this time? I hear you have been both Miboshi and Kakizuki.”

  “I have been sent by Lord Aritomo,” he said. “My mission is to speak with Shikanoko. I am sure you will be able to get in touch with Kuromori, through your son, like last time. Don’t be alarmed. A year ago I would have slit his throat if I had been able to lay hands on him. But now he can be useful to me. Tomorrow he can take a message. I need to talk to Lady Tama in private. If I catch your brat eavesdropping I really will slit his throat. And that goes for you, too,” he said, addressing the girl, who had been sitting silently by her mother. She stared back guilelessly as though she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I’ve learned that women and girls are as dangerous as men when it comes to spying,” he said to Tama when they were alone on the veranda of the attached room where she slept. “More dangerous, as they are so often overlooked.”

  “That’s a mistake most men make,” Tama replied.

  “Men make many mistakes.” Masachika gave a deep sigh. “And many more are forced on them by circumstances.”

  “Have you come to rake over the past, Masachika? That’s a fire whose embers went cold long ago.”

  But, even as she spoke, she knew her words were not wholly true.

>   “What I have to show you may cause you pain,” he said, taking a small carved box from inside his robe. “This box contains the eyes of Sesshin. If we place them back on the gate, I believe the spirits will be placated.”

  “Show me,” she said in a low voice.

  He opened the lid. The eyes lay on their silk bed, still bright and glistening.

  Tama began to weep silently.

  “Let your tears wash them,” Masachika said, his own voice breaking.

  “I have missed you every day since we were parted,” Tama cried, sobbing now. “It was because I was taken from you that I became cold and cruel. I hardened my heart so I would not die of grief.”

  “I feel the same. I have committed many sins, I have killed and betrayed. When the eyes see me, they show me everything I have ever done wrong and it all stems from the day when you were taken from me and given to Kiyoyori. My hurt was so great I wanted only to savage others. I felt that my own father and my brother betrayed me. I have trusted no one since then.”

  “I am sorry, I am sorry.” Tama wept before the eyes’ unblinking stare. “Can I ever be forgiven?”

  Masachika put his arms around her and drew her close to him. His tears fell on her hair. All the regrets of the past years rose before them, no longer suppressed, no longer hidden. “I forgive you,” he said.

  “Only you understand what was done to us.”

  She felt the thrill of desire run through him at the same time as her own body leaped for him. The feel of his arms round her was so familiar, his smell, his skin, every muscle. She ached for him as she had when she was just a girl, newly married. He put his hands under her hair and lifted her face to his, covering it with kisses, finding her mouth. She loosened her sash and let her robe fall open, pressing herself against him as though she could absorb him through her skin.

  She knew all his faults, as he knew hers, yet it seemed she had never stopped loving him.

  “We are still husband and wife,” he whispered, as he loosened his own clothes.

  “Nothing can change that,” she replied, as she did for him all that a wife does for a husband, and as they took and received bliss from each other she said silently to the spirits, “You are wrong. I was wrong. It is not too late.”

  The following morning, Tama sent for Chika, Haru’s son.

  “Lord Masachika has an errand for you. You are to go to Kuromori and tell Shikanoko to come here.”

  Chika’s eyes flickered at the word lord and she felt he saw right through her. She did not care. Let the whole world know that Masachika was her husband again.

  “Tell is not how you should address Shikanoko,” Chika replied. “Ask or invite or even beg might be more appropriate.”

  “Tell him to present himself here,” Masachika commanded, “if he wants to save the life of the Autumn Princess.”

  “I believe he will be on his way already,” Chika said. “I will go and meet him and tell him you are expecting him.”

  “Who is the Autumn Princess?” Tama asked after the boy had left.

  “The daughter of the false emperor Yoshimori’s foster parents, and the only person, apart from Shikanoko, we think, who knows where he is. I will explain everything to you, but first we must replace Sesshin’s eyes.”

  They took the box to the west gate and placed the eyes behind the carved frieze in the architrave. Both had dressed carefully, Tama in multilayered robes in spring shades of pink, Masachika in a hunting robe that Haru had kept in a rue-strewn chest and that had been Kiyoyori’s. He wore the sword he had found in the shrine at Nishimi. They wept again, knelt, and asked for forgiveness for the mistakes and misdeeds of the past. For the first time in years they felt whole, each completing the other.

  Tama had brought rice wine and spring flowers for the spirits, but these offerings did little to alleviate their distress.

  “I don’t want to go back to the gatepost, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. I like it in the house.”

  Masachika said, “Your master’s eyes are restored. You are revered and honored now. There is no reason for you to continue to be a nuisance.”

  “Who is that speaking?”

  “It is the husband of Matsutani lady.”

  “Matsutani lord?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Masachika?”

  “Yes, Masachika.”

  “So, the bees didn’t kill him?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Shall we try again?”

  “You most certainly will not!” Masachika said. “You will cease all your destructive acts. You will not throw anything or hurt anybody.” Masachika spoke with stern authority. “You will dwell in the gateposts and watch over Matsutani as Master Sesshin commanded you.”

  “Curses!”

  “A thousand curses!”

  “A hundred thousand curses!”

  “No!” Masachika said. “You are only allowed to pronounce words of protection and blessing.”

  “Oh, all right,” they said grudgingly. “Blessings, blessings, blessings. Are you satisfied now?”

  “I will be when you are back in position,” said Masachika.

  “It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

  “It was like Paradise. But all things pass.”

  “Everything that has a beginning has an ending.”

  “That is much better,” Masachika said. “That is how guardian spirits should talk.”

  There was a ripple of movement across the courtyard and the two gateposts seemed to glow with inner light.

  “Back to work,” sighed the voice from the left one.

  “I wanted the left. Why do I have to take the right?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “If it makes no difference then swap over!”

  “No!”

  The bickering voices grew fainter and fainter until they could no longer be heard.

  “They are funny,” Tama said, as Masachika opened the gate and they walked to the house. “I will miss them in a way.”

  The years had fallen away. She felt like the young girl who had married him when she had been fifteen and he seventeen.

  “Now at last we can make the house as beautiful as it used to be,” Tama said, stooping to gather up the various objects that lay scattered on the ground. “Some of these things can be saved. Matsutani will be restored.”

  When they stood on the veranda peering into the dark rooms, Masachika said, “Kiyoyori’s daughter was concealed at Nishimi.”

  Tama stood frozen in surprise. All she could think of to say was, stupidly, “Where is Nishimi?”

  “It is on the western side of Lake Kasumi. It belonged to the father of the Autumn Princess, a nobleman, Hidetake. While I was with the Kakizuki at Rakuhara I learned she was in hiding there and I went to arrange her capture and transport to the capital. I was told Hina was there, too. I did not see her myself. She ran away, and she is believed to have drowned in the lake.”

  Tama said nothing for a while. She looked at the things she was holding and placed them on the floor, brushing the dirt from her hands. Then she said, “Poor Hina. I was jealous of her, of Kiyoyori’s love for her and for her dead mother. I tried to be a mother to her, but she was a cold little thing, always pushing me away, preferring Haru or her father. I was told she was dead, like my son. But how did she end up at that place?”

  “You know Yukikuni no Takaakira? Aritomo’s right-hand man?”

  “I have heard of him.”

  “He had taken Hina there. He must have found her in our family’s house in the capital. For some reason he decided to spare her life.”

  “Without Aritomo’s knowledge?” She found it hard to believe. What could explain such a rash act? And then she remembered Hina’s unnatural intelligence and, she had to admit, beauty. She felt the old jealousy stir and was both relieved and sad that its object was dead.

  “Exactly,” he said. “I could have guessed you would understand all the implications.”


  “But how can you be sure it was her, if you did not see her?”

  “From all the Kakizuki spy told me, it could only be her. And then I found the box with the eyes. Hina must have taken them with her when she left Matsutani. Afterward, Takaakira confirmed it—he even asked me directly about her.”

  “I wondered why you had them,” Tama said.

  “I also found this sword. Do you recognize it? Could it have been Kiyoyori’s?”

  He drew the sword from the scabbard and held it out to her.

  “It may have been,” she said. “There might be something familiar about it, but, at the same time, I don’t really recognize the hilt or the braiding. Could it have been recast after his death? It would have been burned with him.” She touched the hilt gently. “You know, people say he is not really dead but lives on in some form and will return when the time is right.”

  Masachika was silent.

  “We must get to work at once,” Tama said, turning and stepping back into the garden. As they walked to the gate she asked, “Masachika, are you with the Miboshi now or are your sympathies still with the Kakizuki?”

  “The Kakizuki are doomed,” he replied. “Only a fool would side with them. But I am first with Matsutani and its lady.”

  Tama smiled. “I suppose I have already abandoned the Kakizuki, since it is the Miboshi who endorsed my claim.”

  “I am Aritomo’s man now,” Masachika said. “My main task here is to approach Shikanoko on his behalf.”

  “Shikanoko is nothing,” Tama said. “He was a wild boy whom the bandit Akuzenji found in the forest. Your brother spared his life because he considered him harmless.”

  “He has Lord Aritomo and the whole of Miyako worried about him,” Masachika replied.

  They passed through the gate and Tama bowed to the eyes and then to each gatepost, murmuring words of thanks.