A shabby palanquin, its wickerwork torn, lay toppled and abandoned under a large willow near Lord Asano’s grave. The bearers and attendants obviously had fled. At the grave itself, four men surrounded a small figure wearing over her head the large white scarf of a Buddhist nun.
The men wore nondescript clothes, but even without seeing the crest of three paulownia leaves, Hanshiro was sure Kira had sent them. He would be trying every means possible to find his enemy’s daughter before she incited the AkM men to revenge. But he would be discreet. He was already in enough trouble.
The fugitive called Cat must have exchanged Shichisaburo’s monk’s disguise for a nun’s, but Hanshiro saw that he had guessed right. She had come to her father’s grave to pray for his soul. Kira’s men had caught her. Now all Hanshiro had to do was take her from them. He was disappointed. He had allowed himself to look forward to the chase.
Two of the men shoved their captive toward the palanquin, and the scarf fell away. The woman’s eyes were calm, remote, as though none of this had anything to do with her. Even with her head shaven she was beautiful, but she certainly wasn’t young enough to be Asano’s daughter.
Hanshiro leaned his umbrella against a tree. Fanning himself casually, he stepped into the open.
“Move, stray dog.” One of the men tried to push past him while a second held the woman’s arm and the other two drew their swords.
Moving too fast to be seen, Hanshiro snapped the iron fan closed and drove it into the closest man’s neck, just under his ear. He fell like a stone down a well and lay unconscious. From his ineptness Hanshiro judged him to be a hireling and not one of Uesugi’s well-trained retainers.
The one holding the woman shoved her aside, and he and the other two circled, carefully. They weren’t very skilled, but they weren’t stupid, either. They could see that the rMnin was faster than anyone they’d faced. They knew that if they attacked him at once, they would most likely end up slicing each other.
As always when in battle, Hanshiro fell into mushin, “no-mind.” His mind and his body were one. His body and his weapons were one. He and his opponents were one. He could react, without conscious thought, to their moves, just as he could react to the fingers of his own hands. Hanshiro could tell from his opponents’ stances that being-not-being was a state they talked about, bragged about, strived for, and had never attained.
Hanshiro raised the fan into the path of the second sword as it swept downward toward his skull. So far, the contest had been almost silent. Now steel rang against iron, and the sword snapped. The broken end clattered onto the paving stones.
The children stopped their play and lined up to watch from behind the tombstones. Pain from the impact of the sword on the fan ran like an electrical current up Hanshiro’s arm. The man drew his short-sword but warily kept his distance. Hanshiro could tell from his eyes and his posture that he was considering flight. He was beaten already.
Hanshiro’s graceful dance of thrust and parry continued as he used the New Shadow school technique of “circling crows” to avoid his opponents’ strikes. The fact that he didn’t bother to draw his long-sword enraged the other two. They knew they were being mocked.
Holding his sword raised in both hands, the third man attacked from the rear. Hanshiro whirled, ducked, and dropped sideways to one knee, his other knee bent and his foot braced in front of him. His lunge brought him up between the man’s two arms and his sword. He shoved his shoulder into his opponent’s groin and raised his other arm, pushing the fan up under the man’s chin, paralyzing his windpipe. The samurai dropped onto all fours, gagging and trying in vain to suck in air.
The fourth shouted his name and charged an opponent who was no longer there. He screamed in pain as Hanshiro slammed the fan onto his fingers, crushing bones against the sword hilt.
The first man was still unconscious. The second sheathed his short-sword, turned tail, and fled. The other two were no threat. The woman had disappeared, probably taking refuge with the monks, who were also prudently absent.
As Hanshiro turned to go, he saw a knotted, blue silk scarf dropped by the nun. Printed in the center were two crossed feathers, the AkM-Asano crest. The nun had been either Lady Asano or Lord Asano’s outside-wife.
When Hanshiro untied the knot, the four corners fell away and hung over the edges of his big, outspread hands. In the center of the scarf lay a shiny black coil of hair. Hanshiro raised it to his face and smelled it.
Sandalwood. Musk. The camellia oil with which the shampooer had dressed Cat’s hair. The sensuous aromas brought back Cat’s rooms, complete in every detail, except one, her face. Hanshiro retied the scarf and put it inside his jacket, next to his travel papers. The wind chilled the sweat on his face, and he wiped it with his sleeve.
He realized he was slightly short of breath. His fingers were numb from the sword blows to his fan. Sparks, like tiny fireworks, exploded in front of his eyes.
Hanshiro wondered what his sensei would think of his performance. Not much, he thought. He almost smiled at the memory of entering the gate of the No-Sword school and challenging the master.
By the time Hanshiro had been sixteen he could beat anyone in a street fight. And brawls were common between the Yamanouchi family’s peasant recruits and young warriors still loyal to the old order. At sixteen Hanshiro was already strong and fast and fearless. He had been absolutely sure he could beat the old man in spite of his reputation.
As he remembered what happened, Hanshiro actually allowed himself the briefest of grins. “Come at me any way you want,” sensei had said as he stood with hands empty.
So with a shout, Hanshiro attacked. He felt the blow on his chest that rattled his teeth and knocked the breath out of him, but he never saw it. The hardwood floor flew up and hit his back, and his sword slithered across it.
Sensei had looked down at him, no trace of amusement or triumph in his mild eyes. “Try again.”
Hanshiro did. He tried all day, until evening shadows darkened the practice hall and Hanshiro was so exhausted he could barely pick himself up from the floor. Sensei looked as rested as when he started. “The Way of a warrior,” he said, “is a road of the mind, not a road of the body.”
Hanshiro remembered every detail of that day. It had been raining when he left the school, and his arms had been too tired to open his umbrella. But he had reported at the gate of the No-Sword school before daybreak the next morning to sweep the grounds and clean the floor. He studied with sensei for nine years, until he could fight challenger after challenger, for days if need be.
Five years ago a fight like this wouldn’t even have caused him to sweat. He thought of the old poem that had meant so little to him five years ago.
If only, when one heard
That Old Age was coming
One could bolt the door,
Answer “Not at home”
And refuse to meet him!
Not at home. Hanshiro rumbled an old drinking song far back in his throat as he set off toward the Great Eastern Seaway, the TMkaidM Road.
CHAPTER 12
SIDETRACKS
As Viper trotted toward the foothills west of Kawasaki, his song blew back in great gusts around Cat.
What I like to lie beside,
The body of a young girl.
Her flesh is smooth
And firm as bean curd.
Sitting cross-legged, Cat clung to a strap hanging from the carrying pole running across the top of the flimsy contrivance. She had ridden many times in palanquins, but she had never had a ride like this one. Cat weighed so little, the kago felt almost empty to Viper and his companion, Hiyameshi no Jimbei, whom Viper referred to as Cold Rice.
Sleep with her one night,
And you’re mixed up seven days after.
Viper and Cold Rice sang ditties that the family servants wouldn’t have dared repeat in Cat’s presence; and they sang them lustily.
The body of the young girl
Is beau-u-u-tiful!
Cat’s mother’s palanquin had been a lacquered wicker coach three times this size, with silken cushions and gilded interior. Now Cat sat on a duty straw mat infested with fleas. Her flea powder was in the pack strapped to the carrying pole.
This was a mountain kago, built as light as possible for carrying up steep slopes. It was only a large, shallow circular basket hanging from the carrying pole by triangular woven panels at front and back. A flat, rectangular mat served as a roof. The entire contraption squeaked and groaned rhythmically to the beat of Viper’s bare feet. Cat’s staff was tied alongside the kago’s carrying pole, and the iron rings jangled loudly.
As Cat bounced along she felt as though her organs were being wedged up into her chest. For what seemed hours, Viper and his partner had headed toward the line of blue-green hills to the west. They were following a raised path through the brown rice paddies that covered the southern edge of the broad plain of Musashi. Cat looked out at the farmers thrashing rice or measuring it under the watchful eyes of the government’s tax collectors.
She watched the tiny hamlets pass, one after the other. They all looked alike to her— ramshackle huts and small garden plots perched on higher ground, surrounded by brown, stubbly fields and irrigation ditches. The women sat in their dooryards spinning yarn or cranking small rice hullers. The dusty, half-naked children stared at Cat as she passed.
In his Wind book Musashi warned that to all Ways there were sidetracks. “If you follow the true Way and diverge a little,” Musashi wrote, “this will later become a large divergence.”
This was becoming a large divergence. Cat was about to shout at Viper, to tell him to stop, when he turned onto a precipitous track hacked from the side of the first high hill. Cat fell against the flimsy back of the kago as the front of it tilted upward abruptly.
She had a terrible headache, and with each bounce pain chipped away at the backs of her eyeballs. Hunger and the jostling had unsettled her stomach, and she tasted bile rising in her throat. How did one tell, she wondered, if one’s present situation resulted from karma or merely a stupid decision?
“Go on, go on!” From the rear of the palanquin, Cold Rice called encouragement to his partner. “Are you asleep up there?”
“You’re the one who sleeps,” Viper shouted good-naturedly over his shoulder. “I hear that while you’re away your wife powders her face with rice flour. She waits with her rolled mat under the Bungo Bridge and services the bargemen.”
“Your old woman consorts with badgers and grave diggers.”
At the next jolt, Cat’s head hit the carrying pole. Her teeth snapped shut on her tongue, and pain coursed through her mouth. She tasted blood. She was furious.
She held on to the bamboo frame and leaned out to berate Viper’s bare buttocks and soles, the only parts of him visible, and she stared over the edge of the footpath and into a deep, boulder-choked ravine. Hastily she pulled back inside. This was not the place to get into an argument with kago bearers. Kago bearers had been known to dump irascible or stingy customers off the sides of mountains and laugh about it afterward, over their teacups full of sake.
“Ekkorasassa!” Viper hissed as they rounded a sharp turn. It was the signal to set the kago down.
Cat heard the clack of the men’s stout oaken sticks as they transferred the carrying pole to them and lowered the kago to the ground. A samurai stood, arms akimbo, in the middle of the trail. He was a small man, which may have been why he wore a kataginu, a formal sideless vest with shoulders quilted and stiffened to stand out like triangular wings. His partner waited at the chess board set up on a stump outside their matched shelter.
Like most fugitives, Cat assumed everyone was after her. She draped her towel over her head to hide her face. She began rubbing the beads of her rosary and droning the Lotus sutra as though deep in meditation. Her staff was tied along the carrying pole, so while she chanted, she assessed the distance to Viper’s heavy oak stick.
“Whom do you carry?” The samurai used the guttural, clipped speech of men either used to authority or bent on acquiring it.
“We carry only a mad priest to cure a worthless stone-woman.” When Viper bowed low, the tiger tattooed on his buttocks seemed to smile at Cat.
“Lord Katsugawa wants no madmen or beggars depleting his resources or spying.” Lord Katsugawa’s retainer walked closer to inspect the tall hat hanging next to Cat’s staff. Priests of empty nothing were often employed as spies.
“The holy one will perform the necessary exorcism, then be on his way, Your Honor.”
“Your papers.” The samurai was so close, Cat could see the dust in the weave of his leggings.
Viper produced his travel permit from the pouch that hung from the carrying pole. The samurai studied it for what seemed an eternity. Finally he handed it back.
“Pass.” As parting proof of his rank, he rapped the top of the kago with his staff.
Viper and Cold Rice picked up the pole. “Ho-yoi-yoi,” they shouted as they settled it on their callused shoulders. Except for grunting the nonsense syllables “Ho-yoi-yoi” in time with their footsteps, they didn’t speak until they were safely out of hearing.
Viper signaled to set the kago down. There was a short silence, and then Cat heard the sound of a stream of water hitting a rock. “ ‘Lord Katsugawa wants no madmen and beggars on his lands.’ “ When Viper finished urinating he hawked and spat and tightened his loincloth.
“All the madmen and beggars are in Katsugawa’s employ,” he said. “I happen to know that that fool standing in the road like a ri-marker is the third son of a millet farmer. Did you see him inspect that paper, Cold Rice? Solemn as a clam. And the idiot can no more read than a toad can dance.”
A stone-woman, Cat thought. A woman who could not bear children. Of all Viper’s cheerful obscenities, this was the only one that shocked Cat. It was a phrase women never spoke aloud.
Viper had said he wanted Cat to speak to the dead. Was the stone-woman dead? Was her soul in Stone-Woman’s Hell, condemned for eternity to dig bamboo shoots with a lamp wick? Was her spirit the one to which Cat was supposed to speak? Or was she alive and her barrenness caused by a homeless ghost?
When Cat left Edo she had been prepared to fight mortal enemies. She hadn’t considered immortal ones.
Even so, the hissing “Ekkorasassa!” was welcome when Viper and Cold Rice finally set the kago down. Viper hurried around to untie Cat’s pack and hat and staff. Even in the cold air his sturdy body glistened with sweat as he bowed Cat out of the basket.
“Welcome to our humble village.” He gestured cheerfully. “It’s three ri from a wine shop and two ri from a bean curd shop.”
Cat stood stiffly and leaned on the staff, waiting for the sensation to return to her legs. The lower end of her spine felt bruised from the jolting, but the cold air revived her. The pain in her head subsided. She looked around.
Twenty or thirty small houses were scattered on several levels of a hillside that was covered with bushes and tall trees. The houses’ steeply pitched thatched roofs almost reached the ground at the eaves. The walls of unpainted timber and pressed earth had weathered a dark brown. Straw thatch covered enormous wood piles.
Bamboo pipes caught water from the many rivulets and tiny waterfalls and directed it to stone pools and cisterns. The sound of running water was constant. The low mountains were neatly terraced with fields carved into the slopes.
The women stopped their spinning and their hulling. The men put down their flails and their square measuring boxes. No one looked directly at Cat, but she could feel their suspicion. The place had an air of foreboding.
The headman stepped forward. He was not old, but his face was furrowed with care. Concentric, semicircular folds of skin hung under his eyes. He beckoned Viper to one side, but Cat could hear the murmured conversation.
“What news do you bring, nephew?” he asked.
“This priest has kindly consented to cure my foolish wife. He will speak to the troubleso
me ghost.”
“One trusts he’s not a cheat, like the last with his mossy skull of a so-called saint and his demands for contributions.”
Under the villagers’ surreptitious scrutiny, Cat felt young and inept and a contemptible mountebank. She was also angry that Viper had taken her so far out of her way and made such extravagant promises on her behalf.
Still, Kira’s men weren’t likely to look for her here. Maybe they would press ahead in their search, leaving her to follow them. She would feel much safer behind them than in front of them. As for the stone-woman’s barrenness and the homeless ghost, she would do what she could.
She pounded the butt of her staff on the ground, jangling the iron rings on top of it. Everyone bowed a little lower but peered at Cat obliquely.
“Namu Amida Butsu,” she intoned through her nose. She rattled the rings again. “After I have bathed and purified myself, I shall question the woman,” she announced. “I shall speak to the spirit.”
“I’ve tried all the cures.” Viper’s wife, Okyo, lay under a faded quilt with matted gray cotton wadding escaping from the torn seams.
Her closed eyes were sunken into hollows the color of ripe eggplant. She was so thin and wasted-looking, Cat jumped when she spoke. She had thought she was dead. As for Okyo, when she turned her head and looked at Cat, she was surprised to find that the priest was a boy, beardless and beautiful.
In the kitchen Viper sat with his back stolidly toward this small sleeping room. He and Sakuta, the village headman, were discussing Lord Katsugawa’s latest assessment added to the sixty percent taxation rate the farmers were already paying.
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