The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p)

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Once inside they found the compound mobbed. The noise of drums and bells and the loud, eerie moan of conch trumpets drowned out everything else. After hours of chanting and preparation, priests of the Shingon sect were about to perform the fire-walking ritual.

  “Where is Inari-sama?” Kasane had to put her mouth to Cat’s ear and shout to be heard.

  “I don’t know.” Cat tried to get her bearings as the faithful surged past her. This was a Buddhist temple compound, but the guidebook said the shrine dedicated to Inari, the ShintM god of rice, swordsmiths, and fishermen, would be found here.

  Cat checked her wallet, fastened to a cord around her neck and stuck deep inside her jacket. This crowd was a paradise for cutpurses. She held out a short straw rope, and Kasane caught the other end of it. They didn’t so much follow the crowd as allow themselves to be carried by it.

  They moved past the temple’s drum tower toward the center of the compound where a huge pile of burning logs was spewing flames and sparks. The ceremony had started hours ago, but as the climax approached, more and more people swarmed through the gates and added to the press. As Cat and Kasane pushed forward, the drone of chanting grew louder.

  It filled the compound and resonated in Cat’s chest and skull. From the sound of it a hundred or more priests must have been reciting sutras to Fudo, the fiery god of immovable strength. Cat glimpsed their orange and yellow robes through the crowd as she worked her way around the open square cordoned off by straw ropes.

  Even as far back as she was, Cat began to perspire. The holy men standing within arm’s length of the flames didn’t seem to notice the heat, though. And here toward the center of the crowd the faithful were calm, their eyes fixed on the sacred fire.

  Even so, everyone shrank back when the priests scattered the huge pile of embers. Sprays of sparks shot into the darkening sky, arced, and fell in a glittering rain. With long-handled rakes the priests began spreading the glowing coals into a path about twenty feet long and wide enough for two or three people to walk abreast.

  “Over there.” Cat gestured to a chapel set in a grove of trees away from the cluster of buildings around the main temple.

  Now that the pyre had been leveled, the red torii gate and the distinctive thatch and uncluttered roofline of the ShintM building were visible beyond the roped-off area. As Cat got closer she could see the two slender stone foxes sitting on pedestals on either side of the entrance.

  Cat and Kasane slipped through the crowd, moving outward, until they reached the chapel. Looking back across the path of embers, Cat could see a solid mass of worshipers filling the compound. Here, however, only scattered groups of people moved among the deep shadows cast by the trees and the buildings.

  Up close, the stone foxes and their massive granite bases were taller than Cat. Their backs were covered with dark green moss. Their legs were dappled with silvery lichens. Their pointed muzzles had broken off, giving them a raffish look. Their long, oblique green quartz eyes seemed to regard her mischievously.

  Cat searched among the charms and invocations and notes written on wooden tags and hung on the roofed message board. Two letters addressed to the Floating Weed had also been hung there. Traveler’s was folded as usual. The other had been knotted elegantly.

  “Two letters, younger brother?”

  “So it seems.” Cat regarded the two pieces of paper as if she expected them to grow the wings and claws of a long-nosed mountain demon and leap at her.

  The letters were side by side. Both were addressed to the Floating Weed, but the writing had been done by two different hands. Cat recognized the earnest, childlike strokes of Kasane’s pilgrim. She recognized the other, too. She remembered Hanshiro’s calligraphy from when he and the monks and Musui had composed poetry that night so very long ago.

  As Cat handed the pilgrim’s letter to Kasane, she studied the dark forms of the people around her. Suddenly they looked sinister. With shaking hands she opened the second letter. It contained the first part of a linked verse written by the master Shohaku over two hundred years earlier. She read it quickly by the dim light of the lantern next to the stone fox.

  Now is not the time

  To be thinking of yourself

  As one all alone.

  He had signed it, “One who asks to serve you.”

  As Cat folded it quickly and stuffed it into the front of her jacket, she saw Hanshiro approaching.

  “My lady,” Hanshiro said.

  In the noise of the nearby ceremony, in the rush of fear and rage that roared through Cat, Hanshiro’s words and the nuances of his gesture were lost to her.

  In his Fire Book Musashi said the voice was a thing of life. He said to shout against the fire, against the wind, against the waves. He said to shout before one flourished one’s sword and after cutting down the enemy.

  Cat shouted, then she charged Hanshiro. He hardly moved to avoid the thrust of her spear. The passing blade riffled his side-lock. He stepped aside as the force behind the blow carried Cat past him.

  “Well done, my lady.” Hanshiro had seen Cat pass the pilgrim’s letter to her companion, the young peasant woman. Maybe Lady Asano was only serving as scribe for another’s affair. Hanshiro didn’t smile, of course, but joy shone in his eyes. Given the circumstances, it made him look triumphant.

  “Burei-mon!” Cat said. “Impudent wretch! Kill me, but do not mock me!”

  As though to oblige her, Hanshiro raised his sword and assumed the fighting stance. He had seen the ruffians closing in. He knew Kira’s man had been in the drum tower directing them with hand signals, but they had arrived sooner than he expected. The bystanders had prudently disappeared.

  “Younger brother,” Kasane cried. “Behind you!”

  Cat slid sideways, ducking behind the stone fox where Kasane was hiding. She hadn’t much time to observe or to plan. The Tosa bounty hunter was on one side. From the other came a group of men armed with knives and staves. And she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw in the shadows a young rMnin who looked familiar. He too was advancing with sword raised.

  “Take off your sandals,” Cat muttered to Kasane.

  Kasane didn’t question the command. Crouched behind the statue, she could hear the shouts of the men and the clash of steel and wood over the din of the drums and cymbals, conchs, rattles, bells, and the priests’ chanting. She yanked off her sandals and hastily crammed them into her sleeves. Taking advantage of the shadows and with Kasane close behind her, Cat ran toward the only path of escape.

  “The holy men haven’t drawn out the heat,” Kasane shouted when she realized what Cat had in mind.

  She was right. The priests were lined up at the far end of the fiery path of glowing coals. They seemed to shimmer and dance in the rising waves of heat and smoke. Only after they had walked across, neutralizing the fire’s effect, would the faithful follow.

  “No time.” Cat took Kasane’s hand, lifted the straw rope, and ducked under, pulling Kasane after her. The priests’ chanting faltered, and they looked at her in horror. A groan went up from the crowd.

  Cat heard Hanshiro shout, “Stay away from the drum tower!” Then she took the first step onto the coals.

  CHAPTER 56

  THE WHOLE TIGER

  “Walk slowly.” Cat ignored the thousands of eyes fixed on her. “Put your heel down firmly and roll forward smoothly. Push off with the ball of your foot.”

  Cat tried to catch her breath. She had seen this done, but she’d never walked herself. Her mother had once told her that when walking on fire the innocent and the serene needn’t fear. But what about the harried and the frightened?

  Cat set her bare heel down in the deep bed of coals, pulsing with heat and light. Kasane did the same. The two of them took one step, then another. They felt only a pleasant warmth underfoot as they walked, hand in hand, the length of the path.

  The head priest looked inclined to berate them, but he was reluctant to further disrupt the ceremony. He glowered at them
as they murmured apologies and slipped through the ranks of brightly robed bonzes lined up to walk across the fire pit. They ducked into the crowd and disappeared.

  Cat pulled Kasane behind a tall stone lantern and studied the roofed-over two-story gate and the drum tower near it. A shadow moved in the tower. Someone there was watching the compound and the gate. Cat would have been willing to wager that men were waiting outside the gate to catch her if she tried to leave by it.

  Kasane held up a straw cord broken in her haste to strip off her sandals. Breaking a sandal tie was very bad luck.

  “Buddha will protect us.” Cat gave her another sandal from the pair tied to her sash.

  She put on her own muddy sandals and began working her way along the high wall. She dodged among the people and used the huge cryptomeria trees and the stone lanterns and monuments as cover. Her mouth was dry as silk floss, and she stopped at the stone cistern so she and Kasane could rinse their mouths and drink from the bronze, dolphin-shaped spout.

  As Cat gulped the cold water from her palm, she kept watch. She had no trouble picturing the bounty hunter striding after her across the coals. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find him close behind her.

  The faithful had pressed into the center of the compound to take their turns at fire walking. That made the going easier here at the fringe. It was also darker away from the lights of the ceremony.

  Cat followed a path into the blackness of the cryptomeria grove. She passed the Revolving Library, the Hall of Bones, and the Founder’s Hall. Beyond them was the temple’s kitchen. Cat and Kasane picked their way through the usual debris discarded behind it. From there three paths branched off. Cat chose the one without a marker of any kind.

  She took Kasane’s hand, and going by the feel of the stone paving through the soles of her sandals, she groped toward a distant light. When they reached the end of the lane, they stayed in the shadow of the trees and surveyed the thorn hedge in front of them.

  It was twice as tall as they were. The thorns were as long as Cat’s thumb. The only opening was a wooden gate flanked by lanterns and two red-painted wooden statues of the ferocious guardian kings who frightened away demons. Sitting at the gate was a small group of black-robed bonzes, their shaven heads gleaming in the lantern light. They seemed to be keeping a vigil as they rattled their rosaries and intoned the sutra of the Jewel in the Lotus. Above the hedge Cat could see the roof tiles of a building.

  She considered the situation. Getting over the roofed, two-story-high wall around the temple compound would have been very difficult, if not impossible. The grounds were vast. Finding another way out in the dark might take all night. This was the time of the new moon, a “moon-hidden” day, and they could expect no light from above.

  If Cat returned to the main area, the crowds would provide some protection, but she was sure the rMnin from Tosa would find a way to capture her, witnesses or no. He had plenty of help, and he was better than good at his job. He was supernatural. The fact that he had anticipated her arrival at the temple, then had had the effrontery to taunt her with a letter, had unnerved her. As for his warning about the drum tower, she was sure it was a trick of some sort.

  If Cat stayed in the forest, she risked his finding her and capturing her with no one but Kasane to see him do it. With no witnesses there was no telling what the beast would do. He might force himself on her. He might kill Kasane to ensure her silence.

  However, whatever was beyond that hedge seemed to be off limits to the laity. If she and Kasane could sneak inside, they might be safe for the time being.

  With her flint, Cat lit their collapsible travel lantern and trimmed the wick as low as it would go. She tugged Kasane’s sleeve, dragging her back up the path. When they came to the kitchen, Cat searched stealthily through piles of broken tools and utensils. Kasane gave a little squeak when Cat disturbed some roosting chickens and they flapped away. Cat felt around until she found what she needed.

  “Catch hold of that end of the tub,” she whispered.

  “It has no bottom.” Kasane peered through the wooden cylinder. The fitted staves were still held together by twisted bamboo strips, but it was missing a bottom.

  “I know.” Cat blew the lantern out again and waited until her eyes adjusted as much as possible to the darkness.

  The two of them carried the cumbersome tub back toward the end of the path. Cat stubbed her toe and bit her lip to hold back tears. The pain was intense, but she knew if she started crying, she might not be able to stop.

  She and Kasane hauled the tub around the outer perimeter of the hedge, feeling their way through the deep underbrush. Every time the leaves rustled, Cat held her breath and waited for someone to shout, “Halt!”

  Finally Cat thought they had gone far enough. The darkness here was almost complete.

  “Set it down,” she whispered.

  “What will we do now?”

  “Help me shove it into the base of the hedge.” Cat lined up the tub with one of the open ends facing outward. “Keep your head down so no thorns stick you in the face. And keep your eyes closed.”

  She rolled the cylinder back and forth until she found a spot between the individual stalks of the plants. She and Kasane pushed the tub into the hedge until it formed a sort of tunnel to the other side. Cat took off her bundle and pushed it and her staff through the opening. Then she dropped to her stomach and wriggled after it.

  “It’s safe.” The tub amplified and distorted Cat’s voice. It startled Kasane, but she hastily put her furoshiki into the hole and pushed it ahead of her.

  When they stood and looked around, they saw they were at the rear of a chapel. Stone lanterns lit patches of the bare ground in front of the building, but not much of their light reached here. A mist rose from the damp earth. The building had a forsaken, haunted look about it.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Kasane whispered.

  In the darkness under the broad, low-hanging eaves, Cat felt along the back wall for a door.

  “We’ll get into trouble,” Kasane whispered.

  Cat almost laughed out loud. Irritating officialdom was not Cat’s definition of trouble. “Stop grazing on the roadside grass and help me find a way inside.”

  “Avoiding the fire, they leap into the water,” Kasane muttered. But she dutifully began fumbling among the water barrels, door frames, and stacks of poles and shingles. “Here, mistress,” she called softly.

  The bottom of the window was about chest height. The pale light coming through perforations in the cedar shutter looked like constellations of stars. Kasane and Cat heaved up the shutter that was suspended over the window casing by iron hooks.

  While Kasane held it, Cat propped it open with a pole. She looped her waist cord through the tied ends of her furoshiki with her narrow straw mat attached and lowered it quietly through the window. When it was resting on the floor inside, she let loose one end of the cord, retrieved it, and used it to put Kasane’s bundle and mat inside. She poked her staff through last.

  Cat climbed onto a barrel and ducked under the shutter. She threw a leg across the bottom of the casing and eased herself over. Then she helped Kasane in.

  They were in the area behind an altar set on a platform approached by wooden stairs at the front. Light filtered through the altar curtain, once dark red but now faded to a streaked and dingy gray. The light illuminated a jumble of dusty statuary, portable altars, chests, draperies, scrolls, and screens leaning at angles against the wall. They could hear chanting from the chapel beyond.

  They knelt on the floor. Each licked the pad of a middle finger and tapped it lightly against a rice paper pane of the screen beyond the curtain. They wet their fingers and tapped again, repeating the process until they each had made a small hole. They put their eyes to them and peered into the main hall of the chapel.

  The room was lit as bright as midday by hundreds of lanterns crowded among the rafters. It was hazy from the smoke spewed by bundles of incense sticks in large brass urn
s. A few priests sat on the floor with legs crossed and palms together, fingers pointed upward. They were facing Cat and Kasane, but their eyes were closed. They held their rosaries draped over their hands as they chanted.

  Cat and Kasane moved away from the curtains and screens and into the shadows.

  “We can spend the night here,” Cat whispered.

  She edged around the corner of a panel of the altar shrine to see which form of Buddha was being venerated. Instead of a statue of Amida, serene and inanimate, she saw a mummy. He was dressed in the tall conical hat and brilliantly colored robes of an abbot. His brown skin was so desiccated, it stretched over the bones of his face, drawing his mouth into a hideous, toothless grin.

  His eyelid twitched.

  Cat clamped her hand over Kasane’s mouth before she could scream. “Don’t be afraid,” she murmured in her ear. “He’s an honorable tree-eater.” She removed her hand.

  “He’s alive,” Kasane whispered.

  “He’s probably at the end of his fast.”

  Cat and Kasane retreated as far as they could get from the living corpse. They sat huddled against the rear wall, under the window.

  “Tree-eaters subsist on nuts and berries and bark for a thousand days or more,” Cat whispered. “At the end of their allotted time they eat only pine needles. Their flesh and organs wither away, leaving only skin and bones. If this one is truly blessed, he’ll expire on the last day of his fast and his body won’t decay.”

  “Why do they do it?”

  “They believe they won’t really die. Their souls can stay in their bodies and wait for the coming of the Blessed Buddha.”

  Cat and Kasane spread their mats where they could find room and lay close so they could whisper to each other. Each drew comfort from the other’s presence.