Their father, Kaneto, stood on the perimeter of the fenced yard near the house, arguing with a well-dressed bald man on horseback. Behind this man were three big men with a horse harnessed to a carriage. Tomoe recognized the man on horseback as the tax collector of the local governor, the shugo. Every year, the tax collector showed up to collect the rice owed the governor.
“That’s three times as much as last year!” Kaneto’s beard seemed to stand on end in his agitation. “I will barely be able to feed my family, let alone have any left to sell.”
The tax collector stared off into the distance. “You would do well to adhere to the law. Some of your neighbors haven’t had the wisdom.”
Tomoe stopped where she was. He had to be talking about the Wada family. Wada’s father had long complained about the rice tax, and their crops had been poor this year. They’d hardly had any goods to trade for the rice.
“How many do they owe?” Kaneto asked.
“They are fifty pounds short.”
Kaneto made a slicing motion through the air. “But perhaps the Taira can see fit to repair our roads? The one to Miyako has been nearly impassable for two years. It’s still covered in fallen trees from last winter! Why do we pay for things we never see or use?”
“There are many things to govern besides roads.” The tax collector frowned. The three big men moved imperceptibly forward. Tomoe thought of the swordmaker, and her stomach tensed. She and the boys spread out, eyeing the men. Yoshinaka glanced at Tomoe, then at the smallest man. She would take that man on.
“Feeding the fat bureaucrats in the capital.” Kaneto saw Tomoe and the boys. He paused at the sight of Yoshinaka’s face, but said nothing except, “Boys, go to the barn and get twelve more bags of rice. No. Thirteen. To help cover our neighbor.”
Tomoe’s heart lifted. Wada’s family would not be in trouble after all.
“Thirteen, Father?” Kanehira’s eyes darted from his father to the man on horseback. “We only have twenty at the moment. Can we get through the rest of the year with only seven?”
“Do not question. Go!” Kaneto barked.
Kanehira and Yoshinaka ran off.
Tomoe began to walk past with Yuki, intending to put her horse away. She hoped the rice would be enough and the Wada family wouldn’t be punished.
She felt the strangers watch her as she went by. She kept her eyes on the ground, treading carefully on the muddy path, stepping over a steaming pile of straw-studded horse dung.
“I didn’t know you were training onnamusha, Kaneto-san,” the tax collector remarked from the back of his horse. Tomoe’s nostrils flared. The hand that gripped the naginata tightened. With one movement, without much effort, she could behead this man. But what good would it do? They’d send someone else in his place.
No, she had to cut off the head of the snake. Not this powerless minion.
“Let me look at you.” The tax collector stuck his muddy foot in front of her chest. She froze, trembling. An outsider would think she was afraid, but she was fighting the urge to lop off this appendage. She cast a pleading look at Kaneto. He did not look at her, but his eyebrows knitted. She felt him thinking, Calm. She bowed her head and forced her shaking to stop. The tax collector tsked. “You’d get more use out of such a beauty by sending her to the dance house. I know I’d pay a bag of coppers for her.” His cohorts chuckled.
Tomoe went cold. She bowed, her eyes glittering. “I would love to spend the night with you, sir,” she purred, “but you might find yourself leaving with less than you came with.” She tossed her naginata high in the air, flipping it in a dangerous circle, toward the tax collector. The men gasped. In one movement, she jumped in front of the tax collector’s horse and atop of Yuki, catching the long sword by the handle, just before the sharp blade came down on the man’s bald head. His horse whinnied and reared.
“Impressive!” one of the bodyguards murmured, before the tax collector shot a dark glance at him. Kaneto laughed, his eyes bright, covering it with a cough. Her father could never hide his pride in her.
“Tomoe!” Chizuru called from the front step, her hands on her hips. “Come here. Now!” Tomoe brought Yuki into the yard. Her mother’s eyebrows were knitted into a deep frown.
“Too much?” Tomoe asked innocently. She stopped at the water pail, rinsing blood off her hands.
“You put us all in danger, Tomoe. Clean up and come inside.” Her mother’s face was white and drawn.
Her mother was overreacting. That shugo and his men were all talk. In a real fight, they could not overpower this family and the farmers Kaneto trained, and everyone knew it. Only old swordmakers. Was the Taira going to send an army to their farm to punish Tomoe? She doubted it. Besides, her father would not have laughed if he was worried. And if Kaneto wasn’t worried, then neither was she.
Tomoe scrubbed at the blood and dirt, taking her time. She watched as Kanehira lugged a bag of rice across the yard to the waiting cart. Yoshinaka appeared, a wide easy grin on his face, though he had a fifty-pound bag of rice slung across his back. He motioned to her.
She crossed the yard quickly, drying her hands in the cool air. “What is it?”
“You showed them. So am I.” He opened the bag to show her. Rice was mixed with pebbles.
She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t. They will catch us out.”
“They won’t realize it for months. I put the good ones on top.” He closed the bag. “The Taira lords could use a bit of extra roughage, don’t you think?” He slung the bag back over his shoulder.
Tomoe watched as Yoshinaka put the bag into the cart, moving other bags on top of it. He gave her a wink so showy she was sure the tax collector couldn’t miss it. She turned away.
“Tomoe!” her mother shouted. Reluctantly, Tomoe turned and went inside the house.
SEVEN
Tomoe Gozen
MIYANOKISHI
SHINANO PROVINCE
HONSHU, JAPAN
Summer 1169
Tomoe weighed each green bean in the palm of her hand for heaviness before attempting to twist it free. If it did not give way immediately, she knew it was not ready. Such fruits were good only when the mother plant released them.
She knelt in the crumbling black earth, feeling for the beans her eyes could not see. The morning was still cool, the heat not yet oppressing. This was Tomoe’s favorite time of day, and often she would arise in the first wan light to begin her chores. “Tomoe is more reliable than our rooster,” Kaneto would say. She’d never contracted the adolescent malaise that had overtaken her younger brother and Yoshinaka, causing them to sleep in past the dawn.
This morning, Kanehira and their parents had gone to town, taking eggs and some rice to barter. Yoshinaka was out in their rice fields, on horseback supervising the dozen or so workers Kaneto employed. It was something Kaneto had begun having him do only this year.
The clop-clop of hooves caused her to look up. Yoshinaka dismounted and came at her, full force.
Tomoe stood, upsetting her basket of beans. “What’s wrong?” she said.
Yoshinaka grinned, his eyes big with excitement. “Come on! I have to show you something.”
She looked at the rows of beans she had not yet touched. “I cannot. I am not done.”
“Tomoe. This is important.” His voice, beginning to deepen, had an authoritative edge. Tomoe had overheard Yoshinaka bragging to her brother he already had hair in places where only men had hair. The thought made her blush. Yoshinaka took her hand, his tone softening. “Come with me. Please. I promise you’ll like it. And bring that basket.”
She allowed him to lead her to the horse, a sturdy brown mare the boy was riding bare-back. “All right. But can’t you give me at least a hint?”
He laced his fingers together to give her a foot boost. “No.” He scrambled up behind her. His gaining strength surprised her. S
he could feel the strong muscles in his thighs, alongside her buttocks, squeezing her into place. His chest was as solid as a wall. He gripped his arms around her, cradling her, and kicked the mare. She put the basket between her legs and held on to its mane.
The breeze whipped through Tomoe’s hair, blowing back onto Yoshinaka’s face, fanning over his head like a bolt of silk. “It’s like I blindfolded you,” she said teasingly.
“I can ride blind,” Yoshinaka said, “but I want you to close your eyes.”
She shut them, her heart fluttering. What was he going to show her? She hoped it wouldn’t be a terrible schoolboy prank. That he wasn’t taking her to see an animal corpse or something equally disgusting. Sometimes she didn’t know if Yoshinaka could tell the difference between her and her brother.
But that look he’d given her after his fight with Wada—could he really be jealous of Wada? Did Yoshinaka truly like her, or did he just not want her to want anyone else?
The trouble, Tomoe mused, was the necessity of encouraging Yoshinaka’s huge ego. A general must be confident in himself, almost psychotically so, if he is to succeed, Kaneto said. He must have a kind of audacity that nobody else has.
Audacity. That Yoshinaka had plenty of.
They rode for a while. Tomoe could tell by the sounds that they moved beyond their fields and into a forest. She heard wind blowing through the pines in a whistling wail, close now. The sunlight on her disappeared into shadow. She held the coarse horse mane a bit tighter. She could feel Yoshinaka’s pulse beating through her light summer robe, into her spine. “Are we almost there?”
The horse stopped abruptly, but Yoshinaka kept hold of her. “We are.” He jumped down, then reached for both of her hands. She landed upright. “Keep your eyes closed.” She heard him moving a branch, the crack of the wood breaking. She felt a sudden shaft of warmth on her torso. They were not in the woods. She heard birds singing, many of them, their song loud as though they were inside an aviary.
“Open,” he commanded.
She blinked. They stood in the middle of a small cherry orchard, two lines of a dozen trees. Ripe fruit in shades varying from a yellowish pink to dark red hung low from every branch. This was what the birds sang about; they darted in and out of the trees, gorging themselves on the cherries. Tomoe didn’t blame them. If she were a bird, she would be here, too. Cherries were her favorite, and they didn’t have any trees.
Yoshinaka bowed and swept his arm toward the booty. He smiled, his teeth two white lines, his square jaw flexing. Tomoe’s pulse skittered. “Welcome to the Minamoto private orchard,” he said. He reached up and plucked a cherry. Tomoe watched the muscles of his neck knit, how straight his posture was even when contorted. A brilliant primary red, so crimson it seemed unreal, as if it had fallen out of a painting. “For you.”
She opened her palm, but Yoshinaka broke off the stem and pushed the fruit against her lower lip. “Open.”
She obeyed, and he pushed it into her mouth, his salty finger swiping the inside of her lip. The sweet juices exploded inside, and she couldn’t prevent the smile from overtaking her face. She savored the cherry, sucking every piece of meat off the pit before she spat it out.
Yoshinaka watched her with a half smile, leaning against a tree. “Worth it, right?”
She looked around. Beyond the orchard was another field, and behind them was a wood. Surely some neighbor had planted these trees. Whose land were they on? She worried they would get into trouble. “Yoshi,” she said, “whose orchard is this?”
He popped four cherries into his mouth, then grabbed more handfuls, tossing them into her basket. “What does it matter? They are too lazy to pick them. They’ll go bad if we don’t.”
She pictured arriving back home with a basket full of stolen cherries. Kaneto would have a fit. “You know Father won’t like it. It’s thievery. And why are you out wandering around instead of supervising?”
“Our farmers don’t need me to watch every second. Kaneto said so. It makes them feel downtrodden.” Yoshinaka lay down on his side on the flattened green grass, patting a spot beside him. He spat out a pit. “Let’s eat them here, and then we won’t have to deal with your parents.”
She sank to the ground and accepted the cherries. “We could trade for them,” she suggested.
Yoshinaka hit the basket, tossing it over. “Stop, Tomoe. We don’t need to trade. This orchard belongs to the Wada family. And Wada-chan won’t care. They’ll be happy they didn’t go to waste. They have too many other worries.”
The cherries rolled away, bruising on the earth. Unusable. She looked at Yoshinaka accusingly. “What a waste.” She hadn’t known, in all these years of being neighbors, that the Wada family had this treasure trove. She would have thought Wada would bring some cherries to her family. How often had she and Chizuru picked eggplant, beans, spinach from their gardens and given them to Wada-chan to take home? Nearly daily, in the summer. He had not, she realized, reciprocated.
He stood, grabbing the basket. “I’ll pick more.”
“I’ve no appetite.” She got to her feet, shaking out the bits of dirt and grass from her yukata and pants. “Don’t eat yourself sick.”
“Tomoe!” Yoshinaka grabbed her arm. He put his face very close to hers, pressing himself into her side, length to length. “Do you think me a child?”
She stared hard into his eyes, that warm brown-black-red color, the dilated black pupils. Their breath, through their lips, matched. His breath smelled of sweet cherries. She did not answer, but pulled his head into hers, her mouth crushing his.
His hand slid off her arm, caressed her waist, her hips, her breasts. A hardness between his legs pressed on her stomach. She gulped. Her heart bounced. Unfamiliar shoots of warmth went all over her body. He shoved his tongue into her mouth, too eager, too sloppy.
She had to stop him. She stepped away, wiping her chin, her cheeks flaming. He was no child. And he was not her brother. “I have to go finish my chores before they get back.” She steadied herself against a tree, light-headed.
She thought he might grab her, do it again. He shouldn’t, she thought. But oh. She wanted him to.
He turned away. “Take the horse. I’ll walk.”
She watched for him for the rest of the day, but he did not return until the family was already eating their evening meal. He was dirty and sweaty and without the basket. He sat without talking, eating as Kanehira tried to jostle him out of his dark mood. Always with his accusing eyes on Tomoe. They had no chance to talk privately, however. Tomoe decided it would be better to speak tomorrow, when the memory wasn’t so fresh. This is not meant to be, she would tell him.
—
Later, when Tomoe and the boys were already in bed and her parents talked softly by the lamp light, there was a knock at the door. Kaneto slid open the door. “Wada! What brings you here at this hour?” Kaneto whispered, and Wada said something indecipherable, and her father bowed before closing the door.
“What is it?” Kanehira said, sitting up. Tomoe looked, too. Kaneto held up a gift, wrapped in a bright red square of silk and a small note.
“A note from Wada-chan’s mother. We have been too busy and ill to pick these, but Yoshinaka helped us out today,” Kaneto read aloud. “Please accept these with our gratitude, as always.”
Chizuru unwrapped the silk knots and held a handful of cherries aloft. She smiled. “Oh my! They’re beautiful. I had forgotten they had an orchard. Yoshinaka, what a nice thing that was to do.”
Yoshinaka nodded modestly, but stole a glance at Tomoe.
Impulsively, she got out from her futon and ran across the room to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “Very nice,” she whispered.
Yoshinaka’s grin broadened. “Never forget. I will do anything for you, Tomoe.”
EIGHT
Tomoe Gozen
KISO-FUKUSHIMA TOWN
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p; SHINANO PROVINCE
HONSHU, JAPAN
Summer 1170
Tomoe and her mother peeled lotus root outside. They were cooking a dish for a wedding feast—one of the Wada daughters had gotten married to a low-ranking official from Miyako. Quickly she worked the knife over the surface of the smooth light-brown skin. Their two curly-tailed Akitas sniffed at the peels and left them alone. “Picky beasts,” Tomoe said fondly. “You should take whatever you can get.”
“The dogs are too smart,” Chizuru said, wiping her hands on her work kimono. “Tomoe, you are quick.” She indicated the half-dozen roots Tomoe had already peeled to her own two. “Good girl. I knew you would beat me one day.”
Tomoe patted at her slightly damp forehead, her hair secured by a blue wrap. “It’s much easier to wield a sword,” she countered. “To kill someone you only have to make a few sweeping gestures.”
Earlier in the year, Tomoe had unearthed one of Kaneto’s old short swords, a tachi, so she could spar with Yoshinaka and Kanehira. Women were supposed to fight only with the naginata, but she watched how easily Yoshinaka drew out his tachi while he was on horseback. How nimble that sword was, unattached to a cumbersome pole. She wanted to try it. A tachi needed no retainer to carry it. She would be more mobile. More ready for any surprise.
And more powerful. A sword like Yoshinaka’s was said to be able to slice through seven corpses with one blow. One side was sharp, the other defended like a shield. With a tachi, she could attack as well as defend. A bow and arrow could do only so much, she realized. This would work well for close combat.
She and Yoshinaka sparred every afternoon. “Don’t go easy on me!” she always warned Yoshinaka. She suspected he was holding back.
“I never do,” he responded each time, always with a ready grin. It was her goal to make Yoshinaka huff and puff and perspire, and generally she was successful.
One evening, Yoshinaka and Kanehira both attacked her with their swords. They wore no armor for these practice events, trusting they were good enough to avoid real damage. She deflected Kanehira easily, disarming him, before she cornered Yoshinaka and cut through his outer jacket.
Tale of the Warrior Geisha Page 5
