by T. C. Rypel
“My daughter, Miriam.” The tiny girl bore her father’s Roman features. She held her mother’s hand and, standing a bit behind her, stared at Gonji’s topknot. “We named her for Jacob’s wife. You needn’t be afraid of this man, dear. He’s a friend of your padre. A…a soldier.”
Gonji smiled and spoke reassuringly to the child, then drew up chairs for both of them and one for himself. He sat with graceful, noble bearing, there in Anton’s small parlor, feeling somehow out of place, wishing the pang in his spirit would abate so that he might find intelligent words to speak.
“So,” Lydia mercifully began for him, “are you here to help us overcome our troubles in Austria now?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. It wasn’t always easy to tell, he recalled, the meaning in Lydia’s speech. She was keenly perceptive, and her words could occasionally sting before one became aware of any threat. But there was sincerity in the azure depths of her eyes now.
He began to answer, but she halted him and sent Miriam out to seek sweets from Uncle Anton.
“No,” Gonji said at length, “I’m afraid not. My karma leads me elsewhere.”
“Home, I’ve heard.” She seemed disappointed when Gonji nodded, and he was perversely cheered by it.
“Tell me about your husband, before I see him myself.” He’d purposely kept his language vague, himself unsure of what he was trying to draw out of her.
“The others have said something to you, then?”
He made no reply, steering her into doing the talking as much as possible. She made small talk about their days in Noricum for a bit, then:
“He’s thrown over his faith, Gonji. He’s become something of a mystic under the tutelage of this…old wizard or whatever he is. He calls himself Brother Xeno. He plies Michael with cures for the body and soul. It’s strange…Michael talks more like you used to now. He doesn’t know what Wilf is about. Wilf insisted. He and the others. Do you know why they keep my husband in the dark?”
“No,” Gonji replied, concealing his unease. “But I’m sure it’s just general security. The fewer who know, the less chance of conspirators confounding Wilf. He’s smart. Listen, don’t worry about Michael, but I would like to see him before I go.”
“Is he in danger, Gonji?”
A pang of despair. It was clear that she was still in love with her husband. Yet Gonji was sure that she radiated some small attraction to him, even as he had been sure of it in Vedun. Or did he only need to feel that way, his own desires creating the illusion for him?
“I don’t know why he should be,” he said. “But I’ll look into it for you. It’s…the least I can do.”
She smiled warmly, gazing deep into his eyes in a way that discomfited him as few other women had ever done. Perhaps only one other. She inquired after his well being, and he found himself answering her questions truly, pouring out his feelings—save for those honor demanded he kept pent up. Once again, the presence of this strong-willed woman with hair like captive sunshine and the serene eyes of a goddess had disarmed him. He began to ramble.
“When I think of Vedun, speak of it again,” he told her, “I have an irrational desire to gather around me all those who have ever meant anything to me in Europe, and then wall off the rest of the world. We should have spared some of Mord’s monsters. Tamed them. Trained them to our service. And then stayed to scour the streets of the carnage. Kept out all but those who meant us no harm…”
The silence in the wake of his words seemed charged with yearning.
“I didn’t realize how much you…loved Vedun,” she said softly.
“More than I can ever tell you,” he replied without meeting her eyes. “I didn’t realize myself until much later.” He felt vulnerable, exposed. Took refuge behind platitudes. “O the valor we saw there! The height and breadth of Flavio’s vision of harmony for all!”
His eyes shone above lips pursed to stave off more tremulous words.
“You speak of an impossible ideal,” she reminded him in gentle rebuke. “You couldn’t have both the valor and the vision you speak of…”
He nodded. “Perhaps that’s what makes the memory so precious. For a time, we had both. In a way that can never be again.” They fell silent a moment. Gonji pondered something, decided she was the person to tell, if only to keep him in her mind awhile longer.
“Lydia-san, I am going to tell you something that you must withhold from everyone until Genya’s time has come. Then, you may tell her and her alone. I have my reasons.”
And when he had obtained her promise, he explained his intentions.
* * * *
When the others had spoken of Michael Benedetto’s illness, it seemed to Gonji, it was no wonder their speech had been couched in vaguery. If he was indeed ill, it did not seem to be an illness of the body, though he was thinner than the samurai remembered.
Gonji and Michael sat cross-legged, facing each other. The mystic, Brother Xeno, sat in a similar position about ten paces away beneath a solitary elm tree, lost in meditation.
“Do you recall the nasty arrow wound I took in the leg at Vedun?” Michael asked, indicating his smooth thigh triumphantly. “Not a trace, eh?”
“Magic?” the samurai asked in a voice loud enough to carry to the unmoving old wizard.
Michael looked at him curiously. “Zen meditation,” he declared, his brow furrowing with disappointment, as though he had expected Gonji to guess the answer. “I thought you understood that. You—who were the first to bring us the wonders of the East.”
Gonji glanced at the robed mystic, whose nostrils quivered ever so slightly.
“I know of no such complete healing ever occurring through Zen. Only the overcoming of the wound’s effects.”
Michael cocked his head, a trace of superiority in his mien. “You have perhaps been away from home too long. But I understand that that is where you are headed now. Is that right?” Michael sighed expansively. “Everyone is dashing off somewhere these days, it seems.”
In the man’s slim smile, Gonji thought he detected an intimation of privity. Did Michael know where Wilfred Gundersen had really gone? Gonji experienced a creeping chill of hostility. Even that did not prepare him for Michael’s next question.
“Are you still in love with my wife?”
Gonji felt the color rising to his cheeks, though he was sure his expression hadn’t changed. He abruptly found it hard to think for a moment. “I’m afraid your meditations have obscured your clarity of vision. That’s the opposite of the intended effect.”
Gonji could feel his skin crawl. Rarely had he stooped to such unmitigated deceit. Anger now took its place among the emotions that vied for preeminence. Michael’s unexpected sally had left him completely at a disadvantage. But now it was Michael’s move again.
“Come now, Gonji. I know you find her attractive, at the very least.” He smiled inoffensively now. The battle won. The enemy disarmed.
Gonji bridled. “I would suppose that most men find your wife attractive. Is it your practice to pose such a question to all who take note of her?”
“Relax, my friend. It was a simple question, that’s all. You’re a man of honor. Of all the men I know, I think I can trust you most. Do you recall what a temper I once had? I’ve conquered that, as well, with the aid of my sensei.”
Gonji found the use of the Japanese word offensive. Perhaps it was intended to be, inasmuch as Gonji himself was sometimes called sensei.
“I’d like to speak with Brother Xeno,” the samurai said.
“He may be beyond our reach for some time,” Michael replied.
But the wizard’s eyes snapped open, and he stared across the space between the two men as he said, “It would be an honor to speak with you now, Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara.”
Michael’s eyes flashed at Gonji, an
d his head bobbed encouragingly, as if the samurai were being done a singular honor. Gonji rose and, picking up his daisho—his matched set of swords—in one hand, he moved to face the old holy man. They exchanged bows, the wizard remaining seated, and Gonji sat to face him in the lotus position, carefully laying his swords in the place of easy draw: an open gesture of implied menace that any true Buddhist monk would have duly noted.
In a studied voice full of affected dramatic pauses, Brother Xeno spoke to Gonji of Japan, of the time he’d spent as a missionary on the island of Honshu, and of how he’d come to accept many Buddhist principles, amalgamating them with Christian tenets in an eclectic fashion that might have strained the tolerance of a Wunderknecht.
The quintessential Knight of Wonder.
Xeno went on to recall the many natural wonders of Dai Nihon, as well as its myriad cultural facets. Gonji listened to him closely, analyzing everything the old monk said. In truth, the samurai concluded that Xeno either had been to Japan or had been steeped in the details he related by someone else who had.
Brother Xeno explained the new order of Christian monks for which he was seeking papal sanction—the Order of Holy Piety, an ascetic order devoted to contemplation of the mysteries of the universe. In the midst of the Wunderknechten controversy, it seemed to Gonji, such a new order could not have been more poorly timed.
Xeno concluded with an appeal to their supposedly common way of thinking, assuring that his prayers would go with the Knights of Wonder wherever they ventured. Finally he asked Gonji to convey greetings to certain monks at a temple near Edo when he presently returned to Japan.
Gonji trusted him not a whit. Worse, he found himself deeply distrusting Michael, husband of the woman who occupied so much of his thinking.
“I’ve taken to heart Brother Xeno’s practices of self-denial, you know,” Michael was saying as he walked Gonji back to his horse. “They’ve done wonders for me…”
Gonji grew sullen and noncommittal, making replies only when absolutely necessary. He was profoundly disturbed by the changes in Michael Benedetto. And as he said his farewell and rejoined his waiting companions, he began to think of the shapes of evil. Shape-shifters—the chameleon who had befouled his life years earlier—the dreadful thing Grimmolech had supposedly done to Simon Sardonis in the womb…
He wondered now whether the man that strange mystic held in his thrall was really the man Lydia had married. Gonji felt a distinct premonition of dark fortune. For Lydia. For the colony here in Austria.
But there seemed to be no help for it.
* * * *
“Does it bother you to know that he desires your wife?”
Michael stiffened. His dark eyes flashed as in days of old. He felt a resurgence of what people once called his “Neapolitan temperament.”
“Yes, but I cannot let that occupy my mind. What is…simply is. There is no help for it.”
Brother Xeno smiled paternally. “You have learned well, my son. Yet your aura belies your words. What is it?”
“The old leg wound,” Michael replied, only a half-truth. “It aches again.”
“Because you have allowed yourself to lose control of your center. Your harmony of spirit is disturbed, and you have lost the power over the flesh. Is it not so?”
“I’ll be all right. And these people will respect me again, as they once did.”
“If you desire that, then you must conquer the spirits that bedevil you.” Xeno placed his hands inside the ample sleeves of his robe, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me…could you deal with your feelings if you discovered that this man had had his way with your wife?”
Michael’s head tossed as if he’d been slapped. His lips parted twice before he found words. “Yes…I can deal with anything I must deal with.”
“That is good. Every man must find a way to remove the obstacles to his harmony of spirit, if he is to be in control of his center.”
Brother Xeno ambled off quietly toward his austere shelter, leaving Michael to stare down the road, after the samurai and his departing band.
* * * *
“Be strong, Anton,” Gonji had said. “Strong and vigilant. Sayonara…”
He’d said his good-byes that evening to Anton alone, cautioning him to tell no one of their quiet departure. And as they slipped away from the settlement, Gonji felt a tremor of guilt again, as if he were abandoning them to fate. Yet there was nothing that could be done about it. Soon it would be clear that Wilf and the others had not gone to Vienna. Questions would be asked, and the evil conspirators who were surely about would learn Wilf’s purpose, if they were not onto it already.
“So what now?” Orozco asked. “Back to Italy and then by ship to France?”
“Funny you should ask,” Gonji replied. “That’s what you are going to do.”
“Me? What about the rest of you?” the former sergeant of lancers snapped.
“They will be split into squads,” the samurai said, casting a thumb over his shoulder toward the thirty-odd warriors who rode behind. “They’ll ride like the devil through the Empire and gain the Alpine passes. Some will enter Burgundy from the northeast, some from the southeast.”
“And you?”
“I go alone…the way my tormentors seem to like it least. Straight into the heart of that damned place.”
“That’s madness!” Father Sebastio fretted at their side, his horse tossing and snorting as it picked up the priest’s tension. “What—?”
“So sorry, Kuma-san, but this time we do it right. We infiltrate, arrive in small groups, without a fanfare. And I go alone because our opponents seem to enjoy killing off my companions, neh? We need to try a different tack anyway,” he said over their scoffing sounds. “Listen to me. They’ve had everything their own way thus far. They control the powers on this continent even as ju-jutsu turns force against itself. These evil connivers who cross worlds in search of ready conquest—they are the ones. Domingo Negro spoke truly of the complex powers who yearn for this world’s riches. She also spoke of their being entrenched in France, among other places. I didn’t listen, then. That’s why I planned things so poorly. I failed to understand the vast outreach of the enemy, and I was insufficiently committed. That is different this time.” He removed his sallet and bound his hachi-maki around his forehead, the samurai headband of resolution. “They make a game of opposing me. A game of torment which they fancy they’ve fixed in their favor. They set themselves up as clever puppeteers. I shall let them believe they hold my strings awhile longer, then deal with them in my own way. But I need your help, to the last sword-brother. This time we do not match them, strength for strength—our army of sacrificial victims against their powers of Hell. And I shall bear the guilt for that fool’s campaign until those poor men we left in France are avenged. This time we do it like the ninja, neh? As quickly and silently as venomous lightning. And if the Great Kami smiles upon our way, perhaps we have allies in Burgundy already. That is our first order of business—find out what’s become of Wilfred’s band, and of Simon.”
“So why am I going to sail to France?” Orozco grumbled, gesturing in perplexity.
“Did not Armand Perigor pledge to go along should we ever try to win back our lost face in Burgundy?” Gonji asked slyly.
“Ah, true,” Orozco agreed. “But…where is he?”
“Collioure,” Father Sebastio recalled, brightening. “He said, if ever we wished to find him, mention Corbeau in Collioure.”
“Hai.”
“That’s on the southern coast—and mighty close to Spanish power,” Orozco reminded, cocking an eyebrow in irritation. He affected his familiar victimized posturing. “I am still considered a renegade in my country.”
“Hai, that’s why I chose you,” Gonji said. “I need someone Perigor knows and trusts, and it’s easier fo
r a Spaniard in Spain to pretend to be something he isn’t than for anyone else.”
“How’s that again?” Orozco queried, leaning from the saddle in bewilderment. He eyed Sebastio and Leone, who were chuckling, and by his look Orozco appeared to be wondering whether Gonji’s double-talk hadn’t somehow made a fool of him.
“Never mind,” Gonji said. “You’re elected.”
“The Ox goes along?” the sergeant asked hopefully, meaning, of course Buey, who rode close behind them.
The samurai looked back to Buey, the massive ex-lancer, who was now more taciturn than ever, his dream of retiring in Austria gone sour. “That’s up to him. But I was hoping he’d take command of the company when I move on.”
Buey locked eyes with Gonji. “I don’t know. I ride along because I have no other choice. I think God must want me along on this. Maybe we’re repeating a mistake and He wants me there when He lets us get crushed.”
Gonji hissed in disagreement. “Or maybe He wants to see you vindicated, neh?”
The Ox thought about it a moment before nodding gloomily.
“Yoi,” Gonji said. “Good. And Kuma-san?”
Sebastio hefted his sword, the big Italian schiavona. “I don’t know that I can use this against men. But if what you’ve all said about this province is even partly true, then—” The priest shrugged and slammed the blade back into its scabbard.
“Domo arigato. All of you. You are true and noble friends.”
“Si,” Orozco said dismally, “and I want fresh flowers on my grave daily—and that damned silver you’ve owed me for two years already—”
Orozco’s caustic humor cheered them along the road, camaraderie spreading through the company. And when it came time for them to take their separate ways, Gonji briefed them, thanked them all with unaccustomed warmth, and had a brief, private word with each of the nearly forty men.
