He was in such an ecstatic state that he could not focus his eyes or hold the letter without it shaking too much. The Mikado’s own calligraphy! For all Lord Kiso’s successes, fame, military expertise, and greatness, he was at heart and by origin a country lord, a provincial, a rough man from the mountains. Never in his life did he expect to hold a letter addressed to him by the Mikado’s hand! This may seem a contradiction from a man with audacious plans; but such a contradiction was Kiso Yoshinake, in this and many things.
Without being asked, Tomoe Gozen took the paper from her husband’s hand and read it to herself. Then she folded it and put it inside Lord Kiso’s sleeve, so that he might take it out and look at it and smell it and feel its every crease when he was alone to do so. To the shi-tenno and for her husband’s immediate knowledge, she made this summary:
“Tomorrow aftermoon there will be a celebration for us and our chosen guests in the Mikado’s palace, at which time the required titles and commissions will be given.”
Kiso Yoshinake tried to sit with utter composure, a man indifferent to such things. But he could not disguise his feelings. He kicked his feet out from under himself and gave a shout of glee. The shi-tenno—dark Nenoi, pale Tade, young Imai, funny Higuchi—these men laughed with their lord. Tomoe Gozen stood and went outside.
Shortly, meetings came to a close, and Yoshinake’s shitenno strolled together through the gardens between the Imperial palace and the military one. This garden was much larger than the one inside the gates of the newly occupied headquarters. The place was like a fairy-forest, especially at dusk, when the whole of the world was most surreal, faded, still. As it was autumn, only a silktree blossomed; but the garden was no less lovely. There had been no battles here; therefore leaves of maple, peach, plum and cherry were still a soft, untrampled mattress. Naked branches were black cracks against the redness and yellow of sunset. There were dwarf pines, green-black in the failing light, and these smelled sweet in lieu of spring’s flowers. Servants of the Mikado’s palace were about, although few at this hour, lighting garden lanterns as they passed between the hedges and along the magic forest’s highway (the lane between the palaces). They were so ethereal in their movements, these servants, that they added to the fairy-quality of the place.
The shi-tenno divided into two couples, and, strolling on, they appeared as pairs of lovers; and indeed it was common knowledge, without the least ill-thought, that dark-skinned dark-clad Nenoi Yukika and light-skinned light-clad Tade Shimataka were the worst enemies of women. It might have been supposed that youthful, playful Imai and Higuchi were more likely to be lovers; but they had not considered it. Imai Kanchira looked so like his sister that, on times, Lord Kiso petted him, and Imai liked his lord’s attention, but innocent man that he was, he never was aroused. Higuchi Mitsu was an extraordinary lady’s man, his voice as smooth as his face, always eager to make some girl laugh and cause infatuation. In fact this was his weakness; a samurai should be more careful than Higuchi sometimes was. All the same, when these lovely men sat themselves beneath a leafless tree, upon the mattress of the leaves, it must have looked to be a tryst to anyone who noticed. Happy smiles were on their faces and they whispered things which might have been sweet promises, or not. A maid of court happened by the lane, saw them, giggled, and hurried on. Higuchi and Imai saw her in turn, but could not guess what she thought funny.
“There is Amaterasu’s obi unrolled across the sky!” said Imai Kanchira of a stripe on the horizon. “Truly she has made herself ready for her bed.”
“That rosy stripe has been there the whole day,” said Higuchi Mitsu. “In fact I’ve seen it in the sky, unchanged but for position, on each day since your sister brought the yamabushi.”
“That long?” said Imai. “I have not until this moment had the chance to notice!” He sighed, as though disappointed in himself, then added, “I must strive to notice such beauty as that more often.”
Darkness completed its formation as the two men sat and spoke. In the dark, they became more serious in their conversings, and Higuchi Mitsu said,
“Imai, my stalwart, tell me: Do you ever nurture doubts about the thing our lord has planned?”
“Never for a moment!” said Imai, for Lord Kiso was his god. “How can you ask me such a thing?”
Higuchi Mitsu said, “We are among his council. Therefore it is proper that we, along with Nenoi and Tade, think in ways which other vassals never should. In order to give good advice, we must have previously considered every action and its possible outcome. We must even judge the intentions of ourselves, and of our lord. Think for instance of the sorts of advice Tomoe gives in council! It is advice which Nenoi sometimes seconds, so she is not just being a disagreeable wife. She has coined the phrase ‘great treason.’ Even Lord Kiso uses it, as though it were an irony and not a terrible fault. You cannot deny our lord is quite a stubborn man.”
“An admirable trait!” said Imai of stubbornness, looking a bit upset with Higuchi’s ruminations.
“What we’ve done until this day,” said Higuchi, “serves equally the Shogun and Mikado, not only our Lord Kiso. From this day hence, this changes. The Mikado becomes our tool as he had been that of the Ryowa. The tool becomes a weapon against Lord Kiso’s lord.”
“Lord Kiso’s only lord is the Mikado. Why serve first a regent?”
“That’s what I asked you,” said Higuchi. “For myself, I cannot answer.”
“If I knew you less well,” said Imai Kanchira, “I should question your faith in our lord. You talk as though you think we have merely shuffled power; but truly we have improved matters here. Why do you doubt it? I will not accept that Lord Kiso is an unreasonable man. If it seems so at times, it is only because his reasoning is beyond you and me.”
“Beyond your sister also?”
“Perhaps she calls him unreasonable because her heart is frozen!”
“You think that?” Higuchi Mitsu did not ask his friend to pursue this notion, but said, “It’s no insult to say Lord Kiso is stubborn or unreasonable; resolve is always like that, itself a noble thing. Nor is it a contradiction of fealty for his shitenno to consider these things.” Higuchi quoted an old aphorism: “‘They who serve a wicked master are the noblest retainers. Who serves a kind master are never tested.’ Do you remember a story, Imai, about a retainer named Hodo Doshijei?”
“Yes I do,” said Imai, and told this tale: “Hodo Doshijei was beaten by his lord and sent on useless errands here and there. For this, he received too little rice to feed his family. Then one day his master received a letter from a wealthy acquaintance. The letter said, ‘Lord Toba, you have a retainer by the name of Hodo Doshijei whose courage I admire. As my own retainers are useless men, I would like to receive Hodo Doshijei as a gift.’ Lord Toba sent for his retainer and said, ‘Useless man though you are, yet has someone noticed you, and this someone I dare not resist. Go serve him from now on!’ Hodo Doshijei hurried home to tell his family, ‘I have been given the opportunity for us to live more highly, but who would serve Lord Toba if not me? No one likes him, so there is none to serve him well enough.’ Therefore Hodo Doshijei composed this letter for the prominent man who was seeking a third or fourth retainer: ‘Sir. I am honored by your desire to have me in your service. As I have many children and live in poverty, I consider this the chance of my life. Yet my present master, who cannot afford a proven man, would be unable to manage his affairs if I abandon him. Though I go hungry everyday of my life, and my wife and children suffer, still must I beg you reconsider my master’s position.’ Soon enough Lord Toba received this final missive from his acquaintance: ‘You have the only true retainer in Naipon! I have been impressed by his sincerity. Can you forgive my bad manners in trying to take him from you?’ Lord Toba sent for his retainer and, when Hodo Doshijei arrived, thrashed him soundly and sent him on some foolish errand.”
Higuchi Mitsu slapped his knee and said, “That is exactly the story! When first it was told to me, before I had the fortune
to serve Lord Kiso, I used to think about Hodo Doshijei and ask myself, ‘Was he a stupid man or valiant?’”
“He was exactly like us!” said Imai, glad to have discovered this good way of viewing Yoshinake’s occasional irrationality. “Doshijei was an admirable man!”
Standing nearby was a samurai who had approached unnoticed, by accident hearing the end of this conversation. When she set foot off the swept lane, she was heard by the sound of brittle leaves crinkling. She stepped out of darkness, into the light of a garden-lamp, and stood above the two men who had been chatting beneath the leafless peach. “You should not talk so loud,” she said, “or people cannot help but overhear.” Actually she had heard very little; but, since she, too, knew the tale of Hodo Doshijei, she understood completely the good impressions Imai and Higuchi had about themselves. She said, “When your families starve to death, then tell yourselves you are men like Hodo Doshijei! When Lord Kiso’s errands are useless and he strikes you about the shoulders when you bow, say it then! Hodo Doshijei was a selfless man, whereas each of us benefits by what we do.”
Higuchi and Imai looked between their knees, sitting formally beneath her gaze, a gaze as dark as that of Nenoi Yukika in his worst of moods. Seeing she had struck them to the core, and they were filled with doubt about their virtues, Tomoe Gozen softened toward them and said, “Nevertheless you are extraordinary men of battle and have minds as well. You are fine council for Lord Kiso. Please continue to remind him of his other options. If in the end he does not waver, we will see this to its end.”
She brushed past them. They turned upon their knees to see her go; and they bowed a firm agreement, although she did not see them do so.
This was precisely the kind of conscience Tomoe Gozen had become for Yoshinake, his shi-tenno, even the yamabushi. It might have been that she could have presented these things in better ways. Good advice should not make men feel stupid. Even young men like Higuchi and Imai did not like to be made to believe themselves foolish. Wise, reflective men like Nenoi Yukika and Tade Shimataka liked it less. As for Lord Kiso, he could not bear it the slightest, scowling at the sting of Tomoe’s blunt opinions. It would have been better to word things in such a way that those corrected were led to believe they thought such things of their own accord. But Tomoe Gozen was convinced her influence was small (which never was the case) and saw no need to do more than register her disapproval from time to time. The result was that many of her ideas were shrugged aside by men who otherwise must feel smaller.
From that moment in the garden, Tomoe ceased attending important meetings, thinking her input little valued. She did so of her own accord, but there were none eager to insist she come. That is how it happened that she was thereafter excluded from things Lord Kiso truly would prefer to share.
As the yamabushi had been mostly under her command, Tomoe Gozen was not certain she could ignore their reported behavior. She strode the nighted avenues of Kyoto to judge for herself. Everywhere was dance and laughter where that morning had been terror. The night was lit by multitudes of paper lanterns of every color and by the strangely luminescent band of rosy mist in the sky. Samurai and warrior-monks tested one another playfully, only occasionally injuring by accident; and as accidents were considered part of the games, none had vengeful thoughts. Girls and women who had never seen or heard such deviltry as was going on were less aghast than might have been expected. Many were titillated beyond recount. Some gave up their mildness in favor of indulgence. A few were glad to offer their virginity to bonze or samurai; although it was later avowed that fewer of those ladies were as virginal as purported. Many colorful costumes were worn askew. A city noted for its taste and etiquette came apart at its seams; but one could be of the opinion that the pretty ways of the Imperial City could do with these kinds of improvements.
She was less appalled than she had thought she would be, though there was very little which appealed to her personal sense of celebration. Perhaps those aristocratic complainers who sent letters to Lord Kiso were stuffy old men and prudish old women. Certainly there was no dearth of young nobility playing in these streets. Some of them may have thought it a kind of tribute to their liberator, himself a man from an unruly province, trained through youth by the mountain priests before he raised his armies. Many words of praise were said for Yoshinake; a fragment of a sentence heard here, another over there, informed Tomoe of this. Perhaps things did not go so badly as Tomoe had been fearing! If the citizens were pleased, then she had been wrong to tell him to be more attentive of their needs; Lord Kiso knew the situation better than she!
It was very odd to see these youths of royal families acting as they did. It was possible their emotions had been pent up for so much of their lives, only to see death so near in these past days, that now from sheer relief and reawakening, they were eager to aid in the propagation of the yamabushi sutra, whatever it might be, so long as it had something to do with the way the strong priests cussed as they pleased and swaggered.
But could it be that Tomoe Gozen was blinded by her tolerance? She had learned about the attraction of men like Yoshinake, and like the yamabushi, beside whom she was pleased to fight. Did such feelings for them cause her to look upon their celebration superficially? It was always easiest to see those who dance and laugh and willingly indulge in this or that. But what about the darker corners of the night? Over there behind a tree sat a girl, her obi trailing away from her body, for some cruel man had unwound it. She was weeping. Tomoe Gozen started near to see if she could help, but the girl got up and ran away, dragging her untied obi through the darkness. And what was that bonze keeping in his robe if not a rare piece of lacquer ware? Who else had bags of things? A muffled shout made Tomoe stop and turn around, but she did not hear it again, never knew what it was that happened. Now that she began to look closer into the eyes of those citizens who mixed so well with drunken priests and soldiers … was there not a little madness in their eyes? Weren’t these once-coddled folk of Kyoto looking back at Tomoe Gozen with something of desperation?
She passed a temple which the yamabushi had taken over and turned into a saké den. It was the temple of a peaceful god—exactly the sort warrior-monks could not respect. The sound of gambling and lewd songs pulled Tomoe Gozen back toward this place, for she wanted to rush inside and reproach the men she had fought beside. But what use a token gesture? She stood at the bottom of a stairway, gazing up at the closed door to the temple, and there was fury in her mind. Dare she contradict her husband’s proclamations? The city is not yours!
Before she could decide, the temple door burst apart with hardly any warning. Priest Kakumei himself came out backward, landing on his back at the foot of the steps. “Damn!” said the big wall of a man, as Tomoe Gozen looked down on where he lay, wondering who or what could toss him out like that. She turned her face toward the broken door, saw inside the ravaged temple. An old man with shaven pate had been tied up to the rafters, dangling with the rope about his waist. His eyes were clenched tight, but he could not close his ears to the blasphemies in his temple. What an awful thing to do to him!
Kakumei got up from the ground and brushed himself off, looked at Tomoe whom he had always liked, and said to her in a chagrined fashion, “There’s a shoki in there!” Then she saw the monster peering out. It was a thing too ugly to be a man, but somehow man it was, or parody of one. His face was flushed the color of peony blossoms. His hair, too, was red, like fire. In a funny way, he looked like a yamabushi, wild and hairy and strong; but certainly that red hair set him apart. Priest Kakumei said, “Those old shoki devils are attracted to two things: defiled churches, and saké. I guess we conjured him ourselves!”
Tomoe Gozen went into the temple and let the old priest down from the rafters. The poor fellow would not open his eyes and, now that he was loose, he quickly put his hands to ears, trembling. The shoki swaggered around the room but the yamabushi pretended to hardly notice. Priest Kakumei was following Tomoe, hovering about her. He was almost as b
ig as the shoki but not quite. He said, “We must ignore the thing. They tend to go away if not noticed. There is only one other way to get rid of one, and I would not like to try it.”
A drunken bonze came up to the resident priest who Tomoe had set free. This bonze tried to force saké into the old man’s clamped mouth. Tomoe glowered at the bonze. He shrugged and left off. Meanwhile the shoki was being a nuisance, shaking empty saké bottles and saying things like, “None in this! None in this one either! Hurry-hurry! Give me wine!”
What a stinking den of iniquity she had come across, not one yamabushi sober, nor the wenches they had brought … fancy whores, for plain ones never lasted long in Kyoto, where etiquette so mattered. Hastily indentured servants (usually they farmed) came in and out from the back room of the temple, trying not to see the red-faced red-haired shoki (the yambushi advised them of this). They brought freshly warmed saké to replace the bonzes’ empty bottles; and so the saké-loving shoki noticed who they were. “Sister!” cried the shoki, then, “Sir,” but the girl servant and man servant hurried back into the other room. Tomoe Gozen lifted a full saké bottle out of the hand of a bonze. He looked up at her but did not try to get it back.
“Shoki devil,” said Tomoe. “Here is a full bottle!”
The big fellow was like a fawning horse eager for something sweet. He came over and took the bottle and drank it down. The yamabushi gave a collective groan, for who could get rid of a shoki once it thought it could have what it wanted? Priest Kakumei groaned loudest, pulled his hair, and said to Tomoe Gozen, “What did I tell you? Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I’ve made him settle down a bit,” said Tomoe, feigning innocence about the matter. She knew exactly what she had done. It would make the yamabushi think twice before committing more devilish acts, attracting worse devils than themselves, and ones they could not handle. She looked Priest Kakumei in the eye (she craned her neck to do it) and this is what she said: “I have never seen a fiend like this red-haired shoki in my life; but I have heard the best way to get one to go back to his secret haunt is to challenge him to a drinking-match. Is there none among the yamabushi who can hold more than a shoki?”
The Golden Naginata Page 25
