The Old Men of Omi: An Akitada Novel (Akitada Mysteries Book 13)

by I. J. Parker

  Not that Saburo did not have his own troubles. There was his mother for example. Only this morning, she had informed Hanae that it was high time she had another child. Pretty Hanae had burst into tears.

  Saburo had told his mother, “I don’t want you to say hurtful things to my friends. You’ve made Hanae cry. Why did you do that?”

  His mother had scoffed, “Women are a good deal tougher than you think. We are made to bear children. You should be glad I bore you. But I get little thanks from you or from your sister. I’ve slaved away my best years so you should have everything, and look at you! You went away never to return, and your sister threw me out of her house. But do I cry? No. I came from her to you to offer my help and support, because that is what mothers do.”

  Saburo wished fervently she had not come. He had to watch her constantly lest she make more trouble. Cook would have walked out several times already if Saburo had not bribed her with pieces of silver from his savings.

  As for his leaving her, it had been she who had given him to the monks who had made him a spy and sent him among their enemies.

  He touched his scarred face. These days, he felt little beyond a scruffy growth of beard and greasy makeup to cover the worst. But those wounds had gone deep. And his visit to Enryakuji had brought back the horrors of that torture and given him nightmares again. And now he also worried about Tora’s moodiness. He had seemed all right when they brought him back, but Saburo knew some wounds go below the surface. And the fact that Tora would not talk about his stay even to him, suggested that something had left permanent scars beyond the bruises to his face and the wounds to his wrists.

  The incident between his mother and Hanae convinced him to make another attempt to find out what was going on with Tora. He found him outside his small house, just sitting there on the steps to the veranda and staring down at his hands.

  “There you are,” Saburo said in a tone of false cheer. “I came to apologize for my mother once again. I’m afraid she upset Hanae.”

  Tora looked up. “It doesn’t take much these days,” he said listlessly. “Don’t worry. It’s not your mother. It’s me.”

  Well, it was an opening.

  Saburo sat down next to Tora. “So, what’s up with you then?”

  Tora sighed. “Everything. I’m no good to anyone anymore.”

  Saburo raised his brows. “What makes you think so?”

  “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  So he had been shut out again. Saburo thought a moment, then said, “I think it has everything to do with me.”

  Tora raised his head. “Don’t be silly. How could my problems have anything to do with you? I tell you, it’s not your mother.”

  “All right. I’m glad about that anyway. She’s a great trial to me.”

  Tora’s lip twitched.

  Encouraged, Saburo forged on. “I think it has something to do with what happened on the mountain.”

  Tora turned away and started to get up.

  Right, thought Saburo. That’s it. I thought so. He said, “Sit down, brother. I feel responsible for letting you go into that place when I knew better. If I tell you what happened to me, will you talk about what happened to you?”

  Tora turned his head away. “Nothing happened to me.”

  Saburo heaved a sigh. “I know it’s hard to talk about. I’ve kept it in for five years. But at some point it wants out, or it eats you from the inside. As if you’d swallowed a snake and it was chewing up your insides.”

  Tora snorted. “You’ve got a way with words. You may have swallowed a snake, but I didn’t. Nothing’s eating me.”

  “Will you listen? I’ve never talked about this to anyone.”

  Tora nodded, but it was clear that he had no intention of sharing secrets.

  “I was thirteen when my mother decided I should become a monk. It was obvious by then that I was short and scrawny and would never be much good in the army. She sent me to Nara. The monks there were good to me. They taught me how to read and write, how to keep accounts, and all the most important prayers. At first they sent me out to ask for food and money. I was still a child and looked so hungry and pitiful that people were always generous. But then I got older and was not quite so scrawny anymore. It was at that time that they noticed my only skill. I could climb just about anything and used to run along the monastery roofs like a cat, jumping from one building to the next. That’s when they decided to send me to Mount Koya to be trained by the sohei there. Only I wasn’t trained as a soldier monk. I was trained as a spy. I was very good at spying.”

  “We’ve known that you were a monk and a spy,” Tora said dismissively. “The master didn’t like it.”

  “No. I can see his point, and I don’t have much else to offer. As it is, I’m much older now and out of practice, so I’m not what I once was. But I haven’t told you what ended my career.”

  “You got caught and carved up,” Tora supplied.

  “Yes. That was later. Five years later. By then I’d made a reputation for myself. One day, my temple decided to send me to Onjo-ji. The two abbots were friends, you see, and Onjo-ji was having some problems with Mount Hiei. They wanted to know how many warriors Enryakuji had hired. There’d been rumors that they’d built a separate monastery on the mountain to accommodate their army. Onjo-ji’s abbot was afraid and wanted proof so he could petition the emperor to intercede.”

  Saburo had Tora’s attention now. “And you went up there and found them?”

  Saburo grimaced. “Yes. I got what Onjo-ji wanted, but I decided it wasn’t good enough, that I could get more by getting inside. I did get inside one night and climbed around the buildings without learning much. So I went back again and again. Once I almost got caught when a guard heard me jump down from a roof. I got away. The next night I found the hall where they had their meetings. I overheard plenty. They were planning to provoke a fight with the Onjo-ji monks and then attack the temple and burn it down.”

  “How can monks behave like that?”

  “Well, there are monks, and then there are sohei. The monks squabble amongst each other about doctrine, honors, and land, just like nobles. And just like nobles, they keep soldiers. The soldiers think like soldiers. They plan to attack.”

  Tora said bitterly, “Most soldiers are honorable. Those bastards had no honor.”

  “True. In a regular army they wouldn’t tolerate such men, but monasteries tend to be pretty gullible. They believe the men that come to them wanting to be monks. And they protect them from the police. To get back to my disaster: I was lying on one of the great beams above them and picking up all this interesting information when a cat got curious about what I was doing there. I tried to shoo it away with my hand, but the cat clawed me. It was an uneven contest. The cat hissed, they looked up, and I tried to flee. The cat was in my way, and in my hurry I slipped and fell right into the middle of their council of war.”

  Tora’s eyes were wide. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing to do. They had me, and they wanted to know who sent me.” Saburo grimaced again.

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Not right away. I had some foolish notion of protecting Onjo-ji, my temple by then. After a while, I didn’t care about Onjo-ji, but I was afraid that they would kill me as soon as they knew, and I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction too quickly.”

  “That was very brave of you!”

  “No, it was stupid. I talked in the end. I talked plenty. I made up stories. I was the biggest coward you ever saw. Pain will do that to a man.”

  “I still think you were brave. But they didn’t carve me up. I think they were afraid. Somehow they knew I was connected to the tribunal. Someone came in and told them not to mark me up. That’s when they tried other things.”

  “What things?”

  Tora turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh.” Saburo said nothing for a while, then, “Yes, they did that to me, too.”

 
Tora turned his head, “You didn’t mind?”

  “Not like the knives, but I did mind, yes.”

  Tora sat silently, digesting this. After a while he said, “I think I could’ve taken the knives. They made me feel like I was nothing, like I could be used and thrown away. They tied me down over a rice bale, and one of them straddled my neck.” Tora clenched his fists. “I fought. Oh, how I fought!” He held out his lacerated wrists for Saburo to see. “It was no good. They pulled down my pants and I kicked them, but they laughed and made jokes. That’s when their general heard the noise and came in. They left me alone after that. But I’d lost my honor by then.”

  Saburo sighed. “Well, they haven’t changed. I was pretty sure they were the same bastards. What do you want to do about it?”

  “What can I do? They are gone by now. All I’ve done was to let a tiger loose in the market place. I’ve failed my master, I’ve failed poor Kinzaburo and his wife, and I’ve failed Hanae. I’m no good to anyone anymore.”

  “The people who love you know better. You have a family that depends on you. Me, I’m alone. Nobody cares what happens to me. But you’ve got a wife. Don’t let those bastards win.”

  Tora jumped up, white-faced. “I shouldn’t have told you.” He went inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Saburo sat a little longer. When he heard raised voices inside, he got up and left.

  ∞

  Later that day, Tora came to him, looking very uneasy. “Forgive me, brother,” he said quite humbly. “I didn’t mean to speak to you that way.”

  Saburo smiled and nodded. “I understand. Don’t worry about it.”

  He expected Tora to turn away again, but he did not. Instead he stood there, looking around and up at the sky while clenching and unclenching his big hands.

  “I have to go into town to pay off some merchants,” Saburo said after a while. “How about walking with me? The cherry trees are blooming along the canals.”

  Tora nodded. “Why not?”

  At first neither said very much beyond a comment or two on the weather and on the cherry trees. The scene along the canal was a happy one. Children played on the banks and a few young women washed clothes. The trees were covered with blossoms, white turning to pink, but the first petals were already falling. They paused on one of the arched bridges and leaned on the wooden railing to watch the scene below.

  Saburo said, “Cherry blossoms always make me sad these days. I courted Shokichi under the cherry trees. It seems like an age ago.” He heaved a sigh.

  “So?” asked Tora.

  “It’s hard, being alone.”

  “There are plenty of women.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  They fell silent again. Then Tora said, “You noticed we’re having troubles, Hanae and me.”

  “I heard.”

  “It’s my fault. I’m no good to her anymore. I try, but I can’t.”

  Saburo pursed his lips. “I’m sorry, brother. I expect it’ll pass.”

  “No!” Tora grasped his arm and shook it. “ I’m no good to anyone. I’m useless. I couldn’t even give the master his exercise in Otsu. He sent me home because he has no more use for me. But I’m no use to anyone here either.”

  It was on Saburo’s tongue to point out that Tora had fixed the leaking roof once again and also patched the outer wall, that he had played with the children, and carried wood for the cook. Instead he detached his arm and said quietly, “You are still the same man. They could not change that.”

  Tora shook his head. “How could you go on living after what they did to you? A man cannot live with himself after that. The shame, it’s unbearable.”

  “Oh,” said Saburo, keeping his voice matter-of-fact. “They were cruel bastards all right, but I’d been a monk for years. I got used to sex between men in a monastery. It’s nothing.”

  Tora thought about this, then said, “It wasn’t that they tried that. It was being helpless. And I’m still helpless. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone as much as I want to kill those bastards. Never! I think sometimes that I’ll go mad if I don’t kill them.”

  “I see,” said Saburo heavily. “Yes, I dream of that almost every day and most nights.”

  Tora was not listening. “The worst bastard got away. Kojo! I’ll never find him again.”

  “Perhaps we will,” Saburo said. “We could try at least.”

  Tora looked at him. “Did you say ‘we’?”

  Saburo nodded. “Yes. It may be time for both of us to lay the ghosts and kill some devils.”

  “He could be anywhere by now.”

  “He’s on the mountain.”

  “You think he went back? But the monks wouldn’t take him back. They said so.”

  Saburo gave Tora a pitying look. “Mount Hiei is large. There are many temples there. Kojo had friends.”

  “Would you come with me?”

  “Would you disobey the master again?”

  Another, longer, silence fell. Then Tora nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  More Secrets

  The morning after a long and futile day trying to get information from Sukemichi’s servants, the prefect’s constables arrested a vagrant not far from the manor. Before either Akitada or Kosehira could interfere, they had a confession. The man, who was very poor and not in his right mind, admitted readily that he had climbed the wall of the Taira manor and killed its owner.

  The prefect was elated to have closed the case so quickly and conveniently. Sukemichi’s widow was pleased and momentarily forgot her grief-stricken demeanor. The young lord shared the general relief.

  “I don’t like it,” Akitada told Kosehira as they prepared to return to Otsu.

  “Well, he may have done it. He looked strong enough.”

  “There is no proof.”

  Kosehira finished putting on his boots and said, “There is a confession. A confession outweighs proof.”

  “He did not seem a very sensible sort of person to me,” Akitada persisted. “It sounded as though he was actually proud of what he confessed to.”

  “Ordinary people can be quite simple, Akitada,” Kosehira pointed out. “Not everyone has studied law at the university and is aware of legal matters. He enjoyed the attention. I expect he’ll change his attitude.”

  “Perhaps, but I still don’t like it. And I’m troubled by the Jizo. I don’t think that was a coincidence.”

  “Yes, that was a little strange. But you said yourself that Sukemichi wasn’t like the others. He was a ranking nobleman and much younger.”

  Akitada nodded unhappily. “It’s none of my business, but you might tell the prefect not to rush the case to trial.”

  Kosehira said, “I cannot ask the man to do that. He deals with matters in his district.”

  “Yes, only the man they arrested—I didn’t believe him. I think he’s just a foolish creature who will agree to anything you tell him.”

  At this point there was an interruption. A servant came to announce that the Okuni headman was outside and wished to speak to Akitada. Hoping against hope for something to support his conviction that all five murders had been committed by the same man and that Sukemichi had not been killed by a demented vagrant, Akitada rushed out into the courtyard.

  The sturdy figure of Masaie stood waiting. He was looking about him with a lively interest. When he saw Akitada coming down the steps toward him, a broad smile lit his face.

  “A very good morning to you, my lord,” he said with a deep bow. “They tell me you’re leaving us?”

  “Yes. The governor and I both have work waiting in Otsu. We’ll leave matters in the prefect’s hands. What brings you?”

  “Two things, sir. You’ll be pleased to hear that one of our people went down into the gorge to look for another Jizo. And you were right, sir. It was there all the time.”

  “Excellent work, Masaie.” Akitada found a piece of silver in his sash and passed it over. “With my thanks to the brave young man who cli
mbed down.”

  The grin was back. “Thank you, sir. He’ll be glad of it. His wife’s expecting.”

  “What was the other matter?”

  “Well, I’m asking for advice, sir. There’s a young woman who walked into the village yesterday, crying her eyes out. It seems Lord Sukemichi’s first lady had her thrown out. The girl swears she’s done nothing wrong. Sir, she was born in this house and has no family left. A young woman like that isn’t safe on the roads. All sorts of people pass through looking to make money at the fairs. Thieves and highwaymen, most of them.”

  So the maid had been dismissed after all. Akitada’s heart hardened toward Sukemichi’s widow. Whatever the relationship between her husband and this maid had been, she owed their servants more consideration, especially when they had grown up in the household. Her action had been unnecessarily cruel. He said regretfully, “Masaie, I cannot help you or her. This is a family matter and none of my business.”

  The headman nodded. “I understand, sir.” He bowed and left.

  ∞

  They had nearly reached the highway to Otsu, when Akitada stopped Kosehira.

  “Forgive me, brother,” he said. “I want to go back to Okuni. Something bothers me about that dismissed maid. You go ahead. I’ll try to catch up, or else get there a little later.”

  Kosehira was disappointed. “I meant to show you the water channels of Azuchi. It’s on our way and quite famous as a hiding place for wanted criminals. Why the interest in the maid anyway? So Sukemichi slept with one of his servants. There’s nothing remarkable about that.”

  Akitada agreed it was not remarkable in most noble houses, though neither he nor Kosehira (he hoped) engaged in such behavior. “It’s not that but the fact that she has been dismissed so suddenly. There is a reason, I suspect, and I’d like to know it. The family already has too many secrets for my taste.”

  Kosehira looked astonished. “You think the girl murdered him? Or that his lady suspects her?”

  “Probably not. Jealousy alone doesn’t quite explain it.”

  “Hmm. Well, go back then. Be sure you let me know what you learn.”