by Steve Bein
And for that reason, he was suddenly unsure. “Wait,” he said. “Goemon, until now you’ve counseled patience. What changed?”
The bushy-haired ronin nodded with approval. “A good question. You tell me: why did the old abbot on the mountain warn you against telling Hideyoshi the truth straightaway?”
Daigoro closed his eyes, trying to remember it word for word. He liked the abbot of Katto-ji. His bald head and wizened face always made Daigoro think of a sea turtle—an ancient one, a great-grandfather of the ocean, possessed of a buddha’s wisdom. The old man could be as aggravating as a pebble in a boot, but his advice was always sound. He was the one who first told Daigoro of his father and the Battle of Komaki. “ ‘Shichio manipulates men as deftly as a potter shapes clay,’” Daigoro said. “As soon as I tell Hideyoshi the truth, I’ll also have revealed that it was my father who bested him that day.”
“Not bested,” Katsushima said. “Duped. The difference between those two is the difference between having never heard of Shichio and having Shichio as your worst enemy.”
“I am the last person you need to remind of that. So what changed? Why should I loose this arrow now, when before you advised me to stay my hand?”
“Have I changed my counsel? No. Your wife tells you to put this arrow to the string. I say that is good advice—if you are right about this new enemy in Hideyoshi’s court. If Shichio has a rival there, someone who can wring the truth out of his lies, then arm this person with every weapon you can give him. Let him be the one to destroy Shichio.”
Akiko gave Katsushima a startled look. “I thought you would tell my husband to claim his vengeance himself.”
“Against a man, yes. Against a viper, no. Better to stand back and let someone else stomp the life out of it. Less chance of getting bitten that way.”
Katsushima looked at the bow and arrow in his hand, then held them out to Daigoro. “She’s right about this much: you have one shot. How certain are you that this new rival has come to call on Shichio?”
Daigoro only had to think about it for a moment. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
“Then do not miss.” He bowed as Daigoro took the bow from him, followed by the arrow. Then he headed for the stables.
That left Daigoro alone with his beloved. The sun was still hot, so Aki took him by the hand and drew him into the shadow of the gatehouse. For the thousandth time he wondered why she even consented to hold his hand. His fingers were callused and scarred; hers were as soft as chrysanthemum petals. Her father had once hoped to marry her to one of the great lords of Kyoto. Instead she was the abandoned wife of a penniless cripple. Theirs was an arranged marriage, but they had quickly fallen in love. Daigoro had no idea what she saw in him.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he asked her. “Make sense, I mean.”
Akiko smiled sweetly. “It might. We could be certain if we knew the regent was expecting a new visitor. Someone of high station, of course. Better still if we knew this person had vested interests that were at odds with Shichio’s.”
“Aki, what haven’t you told me?”
She pressed her lips together and refused to speak. Her eyes glittered giddily.
“Aki?”
“There’s been a bird. I overheard my father talking with his pigeon keeper this afternoon.”
“And?”
“Nene, Lady in the North. Hideyoshi’s wife. She arrived yesterday. Rumor has it she’s come to rid herself of Shichio once and for all.”
9
The sun was setting much too fast for Shichio’s liking. He had no love of traveling by night. Not in Izu, not so long as the Bear Cub was unaccounted for. His sedan chair was safe, but by the gods, it was slow.
He slid back one of the side panels and barked at the headman of the bearers. “Hurry, damn you! I’ll have your skins if we don’t make camp by nightfall.”
Cool air and the scent of juniper washed over him. He could still taste the salt on the air, but at this altitude the tang of the sea wasn’t so strong. The view from here was breathtaking. Far below him, where the northern slope of Mount Daruma ran down to the shore of Suruga Bay, the water had taken on a lavender hue. Beyond the bay loomed the ghost of Mount Fuji, purple like the sky beyond it, all but invisible. To the west, an orange sun fell swiftly toward the waves.
For that instant, Shichio regretted his grudge against Hashiba for setting camp in such an inconvenient spot. Shichio’s company had reached the wharf ages ago, only to find the fleet at sea. Even now he could see the turtle ships. They seemed to be ablaze, their interlocking metal shields reflecting the sunset like a hundred bonfires. Beyond them lay the flagship, Nippon Maru, so huge that it looked like an island castle in the middle of the bay. When Shichio demanded a launch to be sent at once, the garrison sergeant in the harbor pointed up at Mount Daruma and told him the regent would receive him at camp. That sent Shichio into a rage, and the sergeant had a bloody mouth to show for it. But now, for a fleeting moment, he had to admit the landscape was quite beautiful.
Even so, he still wondered whether he ought to turn the procession around and march straight back down to the bay. It was safe by the water. Shichio could have commandeered the harbormaster’s home and set a guard. For that matter, he could have boarded the flagship alone and waited for Hashiba to come to him. Hashiba wouldn’t be pleased, but suffering his wrath was better than feeling the Bear Cub’s sword biting through his flesh. Somehow the whelp still remained unseen. It followed that he could not be traveling by road or by sea, and that only left hiking overland—possibly on a darkening mountain slope just like the north face of Mount Daruma.
Three days earlier, when he’d sat down to tea with Inoue Shigekazu, Shichio had blown and blustered about the Bear Cub, insisting that all the tales of the boy’s prowess were grossly exaggerated. The truth was that even the wildest exaggerations weren’t far from the truth. In the month since his wedding disaster, Shichio had steadily gathered all the facts. There had never been a creeping horde of ninja at the Green Cliff, as he’d told Inoue. Daigoro had no more than one shinobi in his employ. Together, the two of them had overpowered the night watch of a naval frigate—all armed men, trained well in their duties. There hadn’t been any need for the fools to defeat the Bear Cub; they had only to live long enough to sound a horn. But the Bear Cub could move invisibly at will.
An entire warship, stolen. Not a word raised in warning. The same ship broke Shichio’s blockade. Not a single spyglass saw it happen. From there the whelp and his shinobi went on to cut down fifty men at the Green Cliff. Some survivors said the boy’s tattered, gray-haired ronin fought as well. Others swore they watched arrows and musket balls shatter against the boy’s skin. All agreed that “Bear Cub” was the most misleading epithet ever given. “Demon Spawn” was closer to the mark.
And now here was Shichio, surrounded by twenty samurai and whispering to himself, “Only twenty.” When he finally spied Hashiba’s encampment, the sight was like air to a drowning man. He wished he were sitting in a saddle, not a sedan chair. He’d have whipped his horse like a courser in the final stretch, galloping for the safety of camp.
The camp was a series of fabric walls suspended on taut lines from tall poles. Some were white, others red, others gold. All were emblazoned with the kiri blossom of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The longest walls formed large, four-sided enclosures, and at this hour many of them glowed as if foxfires were trapped within. Shichio could smell wood smoke from the cook fires, and got a whiff now and then of succulent pork or sizzling fish. There were the other smells of camp too: horse dung, rice steam, sprays of tansy to ward off mosquitoes.
Hashiba’s enclosure was the largest of them all, closest to the center. By their very nature the long fabric walls tended to form ad hoc roads, and that made the palanquin impractical. Corners were tight, and there would be no straight path to Hashiba’s side. The camp always came into being organically, with no preordained design. Hashiba was in the center because he w
as always in the center. His high command staked out claims next to his. After that, the various platoons settled in more or less at random. There was no disarray; this was a military encampment, after all. Every corner was a precise right angle and every guy was tied with a perfect tent-line hitch. It was perfectly orderly; there just wasn’t any logic to it. But there would be no Bear Cub here, so Shichio stepped out of his palanquin and into the cooler evening air.
He wended his way through the maze, greeting officers when he recognized them and paying the common men no mind. Hashiba’s enclosure was at least ten jo on a side, large enough to practice mounted archery—which was precisely what Hashiba had been up to, judging by the wide rings of hoofprints and the target posts at their center. There wasn’t a drop of warrior’s blood in Hashiba’s body, but ever since the emperor bestowed him with the right to wear the topknot and daisho, he did enjoy playing at being samurai.
He’d called for a tall tower to be built along the back wall. That must have been a colossal task for the carpenters, given that there wasn’t a tall, straight tree trunk anywhere on the mountain. Shichio guessed the uprights were spare masts plundered from the fleet in the bay. He could also guess at the tower’s purpose. Hashiba always preferred to look at the world from high above, as much for the quiet as the feeling of lordship. This tower would afford him a majestic view of the sunset on the bay, and of the stars when they came out in their fullness.
Shichio brushed aside a fold of canvas and slipped into Hashiba’s enclosure. Even as he entered, he heard Hashiba coming down from the viewing deck. He was speaking to someone, too softly for Shichio to make out the words. In the failing light he couldn’t see Hashiba either; attendants had erected two bright fires on either end of the square, which left spots in Shichio’s vision.
“Shichio-san,” said a voice from above. “Your timing is most fortunate. We were just speaking of you.”
Shichio’s heart sank into his stomach. He knew that light, lilting voice. Now he had no choice but to kneel in the dust and bow. “Nene-dono. I wasn’t told you had come.”
“I have been away from my husband for long enough,” said Nene, Lady in the North, first and foremost of Hashiba’s wives. She wore orange and gold tonight, lavishly embroidered with crisscrossing cedar leaves. The train of her kimono was half as long as she was tall, and the cuffs of her sleeves hung down to her knees. Long black hair spilled down her back, with two neat tails draped over her collarbones and hanging down to the tips of her breasts. Her lips were painted black, her face white, with two black dots halfway up her forehead to symbolize the eyebrows she’d shaved away.
Nene walked with her hands tucked inside her voluminous sleeves, not arm in arm as Hashiba often walked with his wives and concubines. The regent had never been shy of physical contact, but he and Nene maintained quite a chaste relationship. She had provided him no sons—no children at all, in fact—but more than this, Hashiba seemed to think of her like an elder sister. She was ten years his junior, but from the beginning of their marriage, she had been his confidante and political advisor. It was absurd. No other warlord in the land would allow his wife to dictate policy.
In truth Nene dictated nothing. She had nothing to do with his military council, but in his political dealings she had been a central figure for as long as Shichio had known him. Even Oda Nobunaga had held her in great esteem. For that matter, Shichio had to admit that he himself gave her respect in his own way. She was his only worthy adversary. She was the reason he’d first seduced Hashiba into sailing to Izu instead of riding up the Tokaido. Nene had no stomach for sea travel, and avoided ships at all costs.
“Come on, get up,” Hashiba said. “Let’s have a seat. We’ve got things to talk about.”
As if by magic, attendants appeared out of the deepening shadows. They arrayed three folding stools near one of the fires, and Hashiba sat in the center. It did not slip by Shichio that Nene sat at Hashiba’s right hand.
No, he thought, not Hashiba. That had been his name when Shichio first met him, and so Shichio had called him ever since. But in the company of others, Hashiba became the great Lord General Toyotomi no Hideyoshi, Chief Minister and Imperial Regent. Shichio must speak to him as his lord, not his equal. That too separated him from Nene. She had always spoken to him like a sister. He was still a powerful man, and she accorded him that respect, but she was allowed a degree of familiarity that Shichio could only express when he and Hashiba—no, Toyotomi-dono—were alone.
By the time Shichio sat, servants were already on their way with sake and tea and cold soba noodles to whet the appetite. “Shichio, tell me,” the regent said, “did you see the sunset?”
“I did, Toyotomi-dono.”
“Beautiful, neh?”
“It was, Toyotomi-dono.”
“Good. Let it be the last one. We’re going back to Kyoto.”
Shichio bristled but could not let it show. It was true that Hashiba bored easily—bored as easily as a child, in fact—but this idea sounded like Nene’s, not his.
“My lord, the Bear Cub—”
“Grew tiresome long ago. Don’t mistake me: that wedding of yours was the best entertainment I’ve had all year. Oh, take that look off your face. You’d see the humor in it too, if only you didn’t take that boy and his monk so damned seriously. We’re going home, Shichio.”
Shichio willed himself to stay calm. He would not walk away from the Bear Cub. He couldn’t. Glorious Victory Unsought was the only thing that could sate the mask. Apart from that, Shichio was not one to forgive a grudge. The whelp had to die. As painfully as possible. That was all there was to it.
He looked at Nene, who gave him a friendly smile. “If this Daigoro is an enemy of the throne, then by all means, remain here,” she said. “May I ask what sort of threat he presents?”
The whelp knows the truth, Shichio thought, and that truth will kill me as surely as a kaishakunin’s sword. It was a miracle that the story hadn’t reached Hashiba’s ears already. At long last Shichio’s spies had captured a mail carrier, whose packet included a letter describing the Battle of Komaki in exacting detail. The trouble was, they’d only intercepted the one. If the Bear Cub had finally decided to circulate the story, Shichio’s men should have run across it more than once by now. Something was very, very wrong.
But none of that would persuade Hashiba or Nene. “He embarrassed me publicly,” Shichio said. “Is it not enough that I should defend my honor?”
“Oh, yes,” Nene said. Her frown seemed to convey genuine sympathy. That was a sham, of course, but the woman had real talent. “My people passed word to me about that atrocious wedding. Believe me, Shichio-san, my husband may find it humorous, but I do not. I sympathize with your plight entirely. In fact, I’ve found a way to heal the wound. If you’ll accept it, of course.”
My people, Shichio thought. He knew she was well informed, but this was something else. The reference to her “people” meant she hadn’t heard about the wedding from Hashiba, but that raised a new question: how did the woman have spies this far north? Had she brought them with her? Did they fly ahead of her, heralding her advance like a swarm of fireflies? If so, then why hadn’t Shichio’s agents warned him of her arrival?
He forced a sweet, submissive smile. “My lady, I am eager to hear your proposal.”
“Kanagawa-juku. My old friend Oda Nobunaga had many allies there. I have found a suitable house for you, an old and respected clan with some ten thousand koku. House Urakami. Their fief includes one of the largest cities in the province.”
The largest, and still a fishing village. Shichio knew of it. It was thirty-odd ri north and east of Izu, which was to say thirty-odd ri deeper into the barbarian hinterlands. Its remoteness was its tactical value. Shichio knew of it because the Odawara Hojos were one of the last holdouts in the north, and sooner or later Hashiba would have to fight them. As a coastal power, they would be difficult to attack by sea. By land, every approach from the south was utterly predictable
. Shichio’s plan was to sail past them by night, putting ashore at the sleepy little post town of Kanagawa-juku. From there the army could land in force and march on Odawara from the north.
“It is so far from Kyoto, my lady.”
“But not so far from Izu. If this boy remains a threat, root him out. Then hold the north for us. Marry well and live well. As I said, House Urakami is a noble and venerated clan. Its lord died of the flux and now his dowager rules in his stead. I sent word to her and she has consented to accept your hand.”
“Sent word?” Shichio was ashamed he’d uttered it aloud. Ordinarily he was the master of his own tongue, but this was outrageous news. Nene must have written weeks ago if she’d heard back from these Urakamis already. How long had she been simmering this little scheme?
“My lady, I appreciate your generosity. Let no man say I don’t. But—”
“Excellent,” said Hideyoshi. “It’s settled, then.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. When he smiled, he exposed teeth jumbled so haphazardly that they seemed to have been thrown into his mouth. They were sharp, and instead of standing like soldiers in an orderly line, they leaned against one another like so many drunks. “Steward!” he called. “Rice. Fish. Cook up some of that southern beef, too, the cut we had last night. Shichio, you’ve got to try this stuff. Nene’s cooks brought it in her baggage train. It’s the best damn thing you’ve ever tasted.”
