Sword of Honour

by David Kirk

  ‘Do you accept, dog?’ asked Denshichiro of Miyamoto.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then come die now.’

  He jerked his brow towards the street, and Miyamoto matched the hatred in his eyes, started to walk hobbled on his sutured leg, but Goemon put a hand on his shoulder, pulled him back. ‘No!’ he said with little decorum. ‘This cannot be!’

  ‘It is my right,’ said Denshichiro. ‘Do you not know your own law, Inoue?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It is my right.’

  ‘I consent,’ said Miyamoto. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘No,’ said Goemon, eyelids like the wings of dragonflies. ‘No. There has been enough chaos to last the summer long and—’

  ‘Do not deny me what is lawfully mine!’ said Denshichiro.

  Goemon yielded: ‘A . . . a fortnight, then. I sanction a duel between the two of you in a fortnight. That is an auspicious day, the ides of the month. The serenity of the heavens and the harmony of the earth shall not be disrupted on such a day.’

  ‘I demand vengeance for my brother now!’

  ‘A fortnight,’ said Goemon, and he raised a hand. The men of the Tokugawa made their presence known, arrows nocked to strings but not pulled taut, not yet. ‘I concede that you know your law well, Sir Yoshioka, and this the compromise I offer. Accept.’

  Denshichiro’s eyes went across the courtyard replete with longbow and able arms, then back to Goemon’s: ‘A fortnight, then.’ And on to Miyamoto’s: ‘Before the Hall of the Thirty Three Doors at the hour of the monkey. Do you accept?’

  ‘I accept,’ said Miyamoto.

  ‘It is sanctioned,’ said Goemon, his tone reluctant, his expression that of the defeated. ‘This shall be made public. Should Miyamoto fall foul of some violence before this, the integrity and honour of the school of Yoshioka will be sorely tarnished.’

  ‘I know the Way,’ snarled Denshichiro, jerked his chin at Miyamoto. ‘He’s the dog that needs leashing.’

  ‘Two weeks and I’ll bite your throat out.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Goemon. ‘Disperse.’

  Denshichiro might have said something further, but again Tadanari marshalled him, took him by the shoulder and led him away out the gate. Neither one of them bowed or even looked back. Their men followed them, into the street, where they marched away before the ruins of the fire-claimed block opposite, ashes and charred beams still waiting to be cleared.

  Goemon turned to Miyamoto: ‘This then what you wanted?’

  ‘Good enough,’ he said, rolled his shoulders, and in his eyes Goemon saw the infallible certainty of youth.

  Miyamoto left then, limped the opposite way the Yoshioka had gone. Goemon followed him to the gate, its frame still damaged, its roof still bare of tiles, watched him go. He could feel that the Goat was hesitant to approach him as duty dictated, either fearful of his mood or vicariously embarrassed at the outwitting of his superior.

  ‘You may draw near, Onodera,’ he called.

  The Goat hobbled over on his ersatz cane. Tentatively, he asked, ‘Are you not dispirited, sir?’

  ‘No more than my usual temperament.’

  The Goat nodded, then stood in silence for ten heartbeats just to be certain. When he felt he could speak once more, he said, ‘We could have slaughtered them there, sir. There was open threat and insult.’

  ‘No, we couldn’t,’ said Goemon, ‘not here. People would forget those, and remember solely that the massacre took place on our ground. It would become part of the history of Kyoto, an irreversible and sordid legend of the Tokugawa.’

  ‘They’d be wrong.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter. What is a city but its people?’

  He smiled blackly. The Goat did not understand his captain’s apparent pleasure in saying such a thing. Instead he followed Goemon’s gaze to Miyamoto, the tall swordsman’s shoulders visible above the crowd, lurching with his limp like a ship on the ocean.

  ‘Ragged odd cur, that one,’ the old samurai said. ‘Forgive me for the intrusion, but I could not help but hear him ranting in your chambers, sir. A lot of words, but the weight of their meaning I would not wager against a single chicken feather.’

  ‘He is young.’

  ‘Young in a way I wasn’t. Can’t believe he of all people bested Seijuro. Can’t believe that nick on his leg is all he suffered.’

  ‘A fortnight will see him stand right once more,’ said Goemon as Miyamoto vanished from his sight. ‘Mark him well, Onodera. Do you understand me? Mark him very well.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Inevitably today upon the streets an added fascination, and a lurid one at that. People still bowed, still yielded the way for the Yoshioka, but once they had risen from their deference their eyes followed after. What ideas coalesced within their multitude hearts, Tadanari wondered, found himself angered by. Things they should not be feeling. Things he should not be feeling.

  Denshichiro marched at the head of the two columns, proud, oblivious. Tadanari glared at the back of his head, and what was within him waxed whiter and whiter. The very moment the gates of the school closed behind them, Tadanari grabbed Denshichiro by the back of his neck and dragged him away, heading for a place of even further privacy.

  ‘Fool!’ he hissed in his ear. ‘Have your wits fled you? Provoking the Tokugawa like that! Idiot!’

  ‘Do not talk to me in such a—’

  ‘I’ll talk to you as you damn deserve!’

  Alongside the hall of the dojo and the long buildings of the barracks they went, heading for the inner sanctum. Those they passed knew to keep their ears closed, melted to the sides, scarred men in rough vestments of sparring or lowerborn girls in jerkins carrying basins of water, each bowing regardless, ceding, heeding nothing.

  ‘Your brother lies stricken and you seek to join him immediately!’

  ‘We must have vengeance for the men they killed!’

  Grip held tight around the neck as they broached the cloistered domain of the elders of the school, an enclave within an enclave where Tadanari and the Yoshioka family had their residency. At the centre of it was a private garden, a secret little oasis nestled between high walls and the boughs of green trees and bushes, in which lay a bordered bed of grey sand immaculately raked into pristine ridges.

  Into this were set thirteen boulders, some smooth, some pointed, some set with moss or inlaid pattern of the earth’s creation. They were placed with expert artistry around each other so that only twelve could ever be seen at once from any level angle. At the head of the bed was a wide low wooden dais, a place for seated contemplation towards which Tadanari gave his ward one final push: ‘Sit.’

  ‘I will not,’ said Denshichiro, rounding on him, voice unchecked. ‘This is not a time for passive things.’

  ‘I ask you not to be passive. I ask you to think. Is it not enough that you scandalize the school with your violation of Hiei, you go and insult the Shogunate?’

  ‘What is there to think about? Enemies abound. We face them. We take their heads. That is the Way.’

  ‘The Tokugawa are a hundred thousand men, two hundred thousand. Who knows their numbers? And what are we? Less than a hundred, spread across the country. Balance that math in your head, before you go threatening to kill their captain in their garrison.’

  ‘They turn my stomach, the thought of them here in this city.’

  ‘Mine also. And because of you I had to bow to them, boy.’

  Tadanari was speaking in rare coldness. Denshichiro’s voice dropped to match it.

  ‘You fault my reasoning?’ he said.

  ‘I question its very existence.’

  ‘I acted as I ought to act. They slew four of our men. That is unforgivable.’

  ‘And we shall not forgive them. But neither can we punish them.’

  ‘You scorn me but in confronting the Tokugawa I act no different from you.’

  ‘What do you imply?’

  ‘Do you think I do not know it was you who a
rmed those provincial men with the gunpowder, organized that whole incident with the fire? Your insidious little arsonists hidden amongst the lowerborn too—’

  ‘Where was my hand visible in all of that?’ said Tadanari. ‘Nowhere. Nowhere. No aggressor wore the colours of the school.’

  ‘Then why attack them at all?’

  ‘It was no attack! The black powder was not placed in the garrison itself; I did not want to kill them. I was reminding the city of who it ought to hate.’

  ‘What is the difference?’

  ‘Can you not see?’

  Perhaps Denshichiro could. Perhaps he was just being obstinate, but Tadanari doubted it. The young man stalked off cursing, feet heavy on the dais beneath him, stood and looked over the boulders and the bed of sand until he remembered that was what Tadanari wanted him to do. Then he simply turned away with his arms crossed.

  In this rage he stood as a true inheritor of the Yoshioka line. Rage of this sort as deep within their blood as the span of their shoulders or the hardness of their brows. Tadanari had seen it and where it led. Had seen it break Naokata, father of Seijuro, father of Denshichiro and the truest friend Tadanari had known.

  It was just after the War when Naokata had first shown signs of his illness. Struck with a convulsive fit the likes of which he had never had before, and yet by the time the moon had grown anew he had experienced the spasms twice more. A pain in his side developed, just below his ribcage on his waist. Grew so vivid that soon Naokata would talk of splitting himself open, a merciful seppuku of sorts, certain that whatever it was was a solid thing like a tick or a leech lurking there, something that he could pull from himself. Mad words uttered under the throes of agony.

  Within six months his muscle had faded into nought but skin that hung across him like a shroud of leather. All that ability, all that strength that he had worked for decades to hone, hollowed out so thoroughly and so ruthlessly. Tadanari had wanted to weep when he looked upon Naokata in his repose.

  Then, of course, Captain Inoue had come on behalf of his master. Had traipsed around the hall of the finest school in the nation with his foolish iron hat on, halfway between a warrior and a diplomat and without the dignity of either. Had acted as though the divine mandate of the Son of Heaven did not grant the Yoshioka immutable precedent as swordmasters to the Shogunate. Had demanded, should the Yoshioka care to audition for what was rightfully theirs, Naokata present himself in Edo; no less than the head for the head of the nation.

  Tadanari had raised a bureaucratic tempest, sent missive after missive to Edo pleading for time, hoping that some miracle would manifest and Naokata would suddenly and immediately regain his health. He found Edo exactly as the mould their man must have been cast from: not dismissive, not angry, just completely impassive to the absence of the true inheritors.

  From his bed Naokata demanded to know what was happening, and when he might expect to receive the Tokugawa honour. Tadanari had to tell him the true state of things eventually. Immediately Naokata had demanded his horse to be saddled, as though he would ride to Edo himself. A skeleton’s conceit, Seijuro and Denshichiro had hoisted their father up onto his mount, the thumbs and fingers of their hands encircling his shins entirely. Naokata had steadied himself, brought his whip down on the flank of the horse. The beast did not notice, so feeble was the blow. Again, again, Naokata pinned immobile like some harrowed, withered child trapped in the boughs of a tree, fists no more than an irritant where they pounded.

  There the Yoshioka rage ignited, but the first time Tadanari had seen it unleashed without any care for others witnessing it. How his heart had broken for the indignity of it all.

  The decision was made to send Seijuro instead. The heir apparent. Whatever happened in Edo, Tadanari didn’t know. Seijuro never spoke of it, and when he eventually returned he wore the composure of a man who had been shamed, or who felt it keenly. He returned too late, though, a month or so after the final missive from Edo had arrived. Naokata had made Denshichiro read it to him, the Tokugawa informing the school of Yoshioka that they had deigned to favour the Yagyu instead.

  ‘Precedent!’ Naokata had howled as Denshichiro had, of outrage in the Tokugawa garrison, only with all the force and vigour excised, no more than a look in the eyes and the sound like a boot pressing down upon a lung. ‘We have the precedent!’

  This was his great and final anger, what undid Naokata as a man, as a human being. Those were his last coherent words. He endured for a perhaps a week after, a collection of organs in a bed clawing at strands of light and nothing more. Then he died.

  That the rage of the Yoshioka. More and more apparent with each generation. Tadanari had considered Naokata’s father Naomitsu completely inscrutable; Naokata had told him that the old man had a taste for drink, and only then what had lain within had been exposed. Naokata himself wore it as a clam wore a pearl, a secret that those who dived deep enough knew about, yet only truly prised from him when everything else had been hollowed out from within him.

  But in Seijuro and his brother manifested so clearly. Seijuro undone on the Rendai moor because of it, and now Denshichiro seething and seething and Tadanari let him, knowing that the only thing that would expunge the anger would be itself. He forced it out of himself in turn, felt the pressure lessening on his throat, his chest.

  ‘What news of Seijuro?’ Denshichiro asked.

  ‘He is out of the city already, sent to healers at the Hozoin temple. If he lives – if – he will be crippled, however. Lamed arms, if not a malformed posture. He will no longer be able to wield a sword, and thus he can no longer lead the school of Yoshioka.’

  ‘Then I am now the head.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tadanari. ‘And now you must behave worthy of that stature.’

  ‘I am acting in a worthy manner. Are not the Tokugawa to be hated?’

  ‘They are. But you must not make hatred your entire definition; it is a vile and short thing to live in thrall to.’

  ‘You read the reports of our men in Edo just as I did. The Tokugawa are going to move the capital there. This aberration cannot come to pass.’

  ‘It cannot be stopped.’

  ‘Our prestige will be lessened.’

  ‘Lessened, but not entirely vanquished. Skill will always be respected. Our school will continue to send our swordmasters out elsewhere across the nation, speaking in halls to Lords and samurai who will listen keen and attentive, and there they can start whispering against the Tokugawa. One man turns another, that man turns two, their sons are many and learn their lessons well, and eventually, though it may take generations, the numbers will balance out. Then the Tokugawa can be punished.’

  ‘But I want—’

  ‘Is not the concept of “I” itself against the Way? You bear the name Yoshioka. Your duty is foremost to that. You and I are bested. Accept this, bear the humiliation. We – the school, the Yoshioka, the Kozei – will endure long after you and I are individually dead, and that is the “we” that will prosper. Unless you dash all that attempting to seek a selfish, violent satisfaction you cannot achieve.’

  The thought of being denied enkindled the rage anew in Denshichiro, eyes flaring, lip curling. Tadanari said, ‘And you have Miyamoto. As the Tokugawa are to us, we are to him.’

  That quelled him. His eyes went distant, no doubt images of tremendous violence calming him. It in turn brought forth the swordsman in Tadanari, the teacher who had made countless assessments of the ability of men. He asked Denshichiro earnestly, ‘Can you beat him?’

  ‘Of course I can. You doubt me?’

  ‘The sword free of thought cuts with the keenest meaning. Are these not your father’s words?’

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘So sit,’ said Tadanari, indicated the dais, the bed of sand. ‘Consider.’

  Denshichiro obeyed. He sat on the dais and assumed a meditative pose with his legs entwined, soles and palms upwards. This the posture of inner peace, and yet upon Denshichiro it looked a crossbow pri
med to fire, his shoulders taut and coiled. Diligently he set his eyes upon the foremost boulder in front of him, stared waiting to see beyond, to see nothing.

  The boulder he looked at was crested with a knife-ridge of obsidian, set like a sundial so that at noon either side would be illuminated equal but here in the morning a shadow cast on the western face, black and blacker, differences in the black that Tadanari knew would guide and lull the conscious mind into egoless contemplation.

  But no peace in Tadanari. Not the obsidian he looked at now but rather Denshichiro. Could he truly be taught? Seijuro had only earnestly listened to Tadanari’s urgings for meditative discipline only after he had returned from Edo and whatever disgrace he had faced there, when he had been made aware of something lacking in him.

  Even then what good had that done? Provoked by the simplest trick, and now maimed.

  And here, Denshichiro. Denshichiro who had heard that haunting final tirade of his father’s, the toneless invective against the Tokugawa, which had degenerated into no more than a rattle of pure pathetic anger, feeble and heart-destroying. What chance for him to forget that? Or in those hisses had he found the definition of his nature calcified, had his fury made indelible?

  Denshichiro turned from the rock, looked up at Tadanari: ‘I already know the answer here. Twelve of the thirteen boulders only visible – no man can achieve everything. Humility, things like that. Must I sit here longer?’

  ‘Do you really think,’ said Tadanari, ‘your father, and his father before him, would have sat here for so long, if the answer was so simple?’

  Even if he didn’t, Denshichiro turned back, rolled his shoulders, stared into the obsidian once more.

  Patience. Patience a virtue.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Unleashed from the Tokugawa garrison, Musashi walked the streets of Kyoto on his wounded leg. Into the crowds that swarmed as thick as he had ever seen he went as an individual, and he went in search of evidence of his achievement.

  The day before on the way to the Rendai moor he had barely noticed the city around him, focus entirely on the duel. It overwhelmed him now. Between the buildings the heat was channelled, billowing, a swaddling embrace like a pillow across the mouth, the nose. Musashi felt drops of sweat begin to collect in his eyebrows, taste the salt of it on his lips. Unrelenting, turning corners expecting the relief of a breeze and finding none, hundreds of fans in hundreds of hands fighting hundreds of battles in vain.