“This is as far as we journey together.”
“We’re still half a ri from the ferry, holy one,” Viper said.
“I’ve inconvenienced you too much already. Please take me into the grove. I’ll get out there and be of no further bother to you.”
Viper and Cold Rice turned onto a narrow path through a stand of pine trees and a head-high thicket of bushy bamboo. The path ended at a huge pine loosely girdled by a thick rope of braided rice straw. The rope and the diagonally folded white paper streamers that hung from it set this tree apart as sacred. At the base of the pine lightning had formed a long, sinuous, elliptical opening. The elements had sculptured the creases and folds of the wood around it into what looked like a woman’s secret gate.
Hundreds of small red wooden torii gates were stacked in front of it. A haze of incense rose from the bundles of joss sticks stuck into the sand. Papers containing women’s prayers for love or children or protection from venereal disease had been folded lengthwise and tied around the twigs of the nearby shrubbery.
When the basket settled, Cat levered herself out. She rolled her head to relieve the aching cramp in her neck.
“Thank you for the ride. Buddha will bless you.” She bowed to Viper and his partner, who both bowed back.
But Viper made no move to untie her belongings. Instead he threw himself to the ground and pressed his forehead into the forest loam. Cold Rice did the same. Cold Rice was bewildered but curious to know what turn this strange affair would take next.
“Untie my belongings,” Cat commanded. If Viper recognized her, it didn’t matter. The worst he could do was inform on her and collect whatever reward Kira was offering. She was about to confront Kira’s men anyway.
“Consider me an unworthy successor to Benkei, O most illustrious general.” Instead of obeying her Viper brandished his kago stick. “ ‘Cleaver of Rocks’ and I will stand with you.”
Benkei? Cat stared at him. Benkei. So the fool thinks I’m the ghost of Minamoto Yoshitsune.
“Your youth, your beauty, the monk’s disguise . . . I’ve suspected from the first.” The fact that Yoshitsune had been hunted by his ruthless brother and forced to commit seppuku more than five hundred years before made no difference to Viper. Moreover, he fancied himself as the young hero’s loyal companion, the great, irreverent, brawling monk Benkei.
Shire mono, Cat thought. Idiot. I should let you be destroyed for meddling in the affairs of your betters.
And why not? Commoners were expendable. A peasant’s fate was to serve and to die and to hope for a better lot in the next life. Then Cat thought of Viper’s frail wife and the smile on her face that morning as she’d waved the kago out of sight. She thought of her father’s instruction in the manner of treating one’s servants.
“I go on from here alone,” Cat said. “You’ve repaid me for any service I might have done you. There’s no need to entangle yourself in my affairs. I ask you again to untie my belongings.”
“Fools, like scissors, will work. It only depends on how they’re used.”
“I have no need of fools or scissors.” Cat forced herself to be patient. She wasn’t used to arguments from commoners.
She waited for Viper to retrieve her things, but when he untied the pack he upended it as though by mistake. The lid fell off and the wrapped naginata blade tumbled out at his feet, along with the box of food Okyo had packed, spare sandals, the flea powder, the dried bonito, and the paper rain cloak.
“I’m such a clumsy oaf, my lord.” Viper grasped one end of the cloth wrapping and lifted it, causing it to unwind and to tumble the big blade onto the ground. Cat had it unsheathed and the tang in her grasp before Viper had half bent over to pick it up. Holding the blade’s curved edge at his throat, she backed him up against the pine. Incense smoke twined around their ankles like cats.
“Do not toy with me, peasant,” she hissed. “You take foolish advantage of my good nature. I spare your life only out of regard for your unfortunate wife.” Still furious, she lowered the blade slightly. “Now get out of my sight, you insolent wretch.”
“Mylord. . .”
“Begone!”
Viper edged around Cat and threw himself to the ground next to the kago. It was a fragile shield at best, but Cold Rice had already put it between himself and the inevitable beheading of his reckless partner by a ghost. He too was as close to the ground as he could get without using a mattock.
“My lord, trying to curb my mouth is as impossible as wrestling with a shop-front curtain,” Viper said. “If you will not accept my humble offer to fight for your cause, honor me by releasing me from the travail of this mortal path.”
Still prostrate, Viper bared his neck to Cat’s blade. He and his partner waited for the death blow. If the young priest were of noble or warrior birth, as Viper suspected, he would have the right and the inclination to behead the two commoners right there.
Cat sighed in exasperation. The peasant’s impudence and obstinate loyalty were causing her annoyance and delay. “I’ll make a bargain with you.” Her voice was still sharp with anger.
Viper remained kneeling with his neck bared.
“This involves some risk.”
“I will happily risk all to serve you, lord.”
“You have only to risk that device of torture you call a kago.”
She held out the bag of silver coins and the strings of coppers Viper had given her that morning. When he didn’t take them she dropped them onto the matting in the bottom of the kago.
“I cannot take payment from you, lord.”
This is to pay for the kago. You will abandon it at the ferry.”
Cat detached the iron cap and scrollwork from the top of the staff. She slid the shaft out from inside and inserted the tang of the blade into the slot cut for it. Then she searched through her pack for the twine to wrap around it.
“My debt to you is too great to accept money also.” Viper looked at the coins in consternation.
Cat stopped wrapping the cord around the shaft’s head and stared at him coldly. Her nostrils flared in fury. “If you do not take the money, I shall curse you with impotence, you impudent radish.”
Viper opened his mouth, then closed it. He sidled over to the kago and picked up the coins.
They were all the money Cat had, but that was the least of her worries. Musashi said that the Way of the warrior was the Way of death. Cat knew that to fight well she must be more than just prepared to die. Life and death must be matters of indifference to her. Killing a man, Oishi had once said, is only difficult if you want to keep yourself alive.
When Cat had given Viper and Cold Rice their instructions and they had trotted off with the kago between them, she sat cross-legged by the tree. She breathed deeply, drawing in ki, the life force, and filling the hollow vessel of her body with it. When she breathed out she felt her breath pressing against her diaphragm, concentrating her strength in her belly.
Her thoughts sank to her abdomen and calmed. Aware of everything around her yet unaffected by it, she felt as though she were being held aloft like a feather on her own breath.
CHAPTER 15
TYING A LINE OF FISHES
Kawasaki wasn’t situated where travelers were likely to spend the night. Usually all they left behind them was dust from distant provinces and contributions in the farmers’ wayside conveniences.
A one-legged beggar sat on a frayed square mat across the road from the open-air tea shop near the ferry. He kept up a steady racket, beating with a mallet on the flat bell lying in front of him. He had been droning sutras since before Viper and Cold Rice arrived.
“I ‘m terribly embarrassed about the poor quality of the tea.”
The tea shop’s owner arrived with the tray held over her head so her breath wouldn’t contaminate the contents. She set it down between Viper and Cold Rice. “The typhoon ruined the crop.”
“This is tea to make a palate rejoice.” Viper held up the cup and admired it politely.
He an
d his partner dangled their feet from the wide bench outside the shop. Their kago stood between them and the open shed that sheltered the ferry’s waiting passengers. A pair of dusty mats had been thrown over the kago’s carrying pole.
“May I bring you anything else, Boss?” Viper was Oyabun, Boss of the brotherhood of kago bearers for this section of the TMkaidM.
“Can you serve us some fresh news, Kiku-san?”
“I can indeed!” Kiku, Chrysanthemum, was so small that she had to double her blue-and-white tie-dyed cotton robe twice under her sash to keep from tripping on the hem. She was also shy, but she lit up at the chance to relay gossip.
“A pack of rascals passed through,” she said in a low voice. “They waited a day at the Full Moon Inn. Then they left three men behind and continued on. The three have been squatting there like toads ever since, drinking all the Full Moon’s sake and complaining endlessly.”
“Who are they waiting for?”
The waitress beamed from behind her tray. This was the best part. She looked around, leaned closer, and lowered her voice even more.
“A terrible brigand.” She was elated that a terrible brigand might pass through Kawasaki. “Travelers from Edo say the Eastern Capital is buzzing with stories about him. He single-handedly fought off a horde of enemies and burned down half the pleasure district. They say he’s extremely handsome and he may even be disguised as a woman.”
“Who are his enemies?”
“I don’t know. But I hear they’re wicked. I hear the lone warrior intends to annihilate them and give all their gold to the poor.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Thank you.” Viper bowed and smiled. “We’ll finish our tea and trouble you no more.”
“No trouble at all, Boss Viper.” She bowed as she backed away. In her tall geta she clattered back to the domed clay stove where her kettle simmered.
Viper thought of the mysterious young lord as he had last seen him, a slender, stoic figure in dusty priest’s robes meditating in a cloud of incense smoke at the foot of the pine tree.
“This whole affair is a fire across the river,” Cold Rice muttered into his teacup. “It doesn’t concern us.”
“It’s entertaining, my old friend.”
“The boy-lord’s orders were to leave the kago near the ferry, then disappear.” Cold Rice persisted in his attempts to dissuade Viper from folly, even though he knew it was hopeless.
Viper just smiled into his teacup. He counted among his friends members of Edo’s otokodate, gangs of commoners who fought against the depredations of samurai and bannermen. He had been in more street brawls than Cold Rice could count.
“Arguing with you is like driving a nail into bran.” Cold Rice was exasperated.
“Which of them do you suppose are the spies?” Viper studied the assortment of people sitting on the benches under the thatched roof.
“How should I know?”
“There,” Viper said. “Our young lord approaches.” He felt around next to his bare legs to make sure his oaken kago stick was close by.
Through the square of open mesh in her hat, Cat saw Viper about the same time he saw her. “Idiot!” she muttered.
She was furious that he would defy her. So be it. If he was determined to become a Buddha, she wouldn’t stop him.
Clutching her staff, Cat walked slowly past the dusty weeds and dry, brown rice paddies west of Kawasaki. She had tied back her sleeves to be ready for action. From inside her big hat she surveyed the few wretched hovels that fronted directly on the roadway. Except for the activity at the ferry, the village seemed almost deserted.
The passengers who had just arrived from the other side of the river were dispersing. Some rested in the shade of the tall trees along the river or stopped at the shabby tea houses. Others continued their journeys. Cat gave a start when a merchant strode up to Viper and demanded to hire his kago.
“You’re too fat,” she heard Viper say. “Walk. The exercise will do you good.”
Cat left Viper to argue with him and watched the two-horse pack train that was delaying the loading of the ferry. The flat-bottomed boat could only hold one animal at a time, and neither horse was cooperating with the driver. While they waited, the travelers chatted or rooted in their cloth bundles for radishes and rice dumplings. Children selling sweet bean cakes and straw sandals and toothpicks swarmed around them.
The boy JMshk was selling tea from his portable stand. When he saw her, he looked worried. Several surly men from Edo and a formidable rMnin from Tosa had been asking about the handsome young priest of empty nothing. They might show up at any moment. JMshk had told them nothing, of course. He owed the young priest a great debt for the wonderful future he had read in the six copper coins.
The beggar stopped his chanting and bell ringing. He hung the cords of the mallet and bell around his neck. He emptied the coppers from his begging bowl into his sleeve, slid his rosary onto his wrist, and tucked his mat under his arm. He hauled himself up on his staff, hiked the hem of his long robe up into his sash, and hopped off on his one leg.
The spy, Cat thought. Now she only had to wait until the beggar alerted his employers.
The travelers waiting at the ferry were the usual sort. The pack horse leader. A pair of dry-goods clerks with their pilgrim’s scrolls slung on their backs. A panderer for harlots at ten percent. A pawnshop owner. A ditch cleaner with his broom and rake. And the retinue of two prosperous rice brokers from the bustling Kitahama commercial district in Osaka, where, it was said, money flowed past the wharves and strolled in the streets.
There were also three women going to the vast temple complex dedicated to Kobo Daishi in the forest on the opposite side of the river. And a young artist, a westcountryman, who painted folding paper lanterns with pictures of Benkei on the Gojo Bridge. He had set up shop on an overturned tub.
The artist seemed to be seventeen or eighteen, a year or so younger than Cat. He wore his towel over his head with the sides folded across his cheeks and tied under his lower lip. Peasants covered their heads that way, and so did men who wanted to obscure their faces.
JMshk wandered casually up to Cat. “Tea, Your Holiness?”
“Thank you,” Cat answered.
‘ ‘Beware.” To cover his voice JMshk rattled the wooden ladle against the side of the water bucket. “Several men are looking for a priest, and they mean him harm.”
“ Thank you for your kindness to a stranger. “Cat bowed and accepted the small cup of tea. She drank it as though nothing were amiss.
When Cat didn’t retreat JMshk followed her at a distance. He scanned the river’s broad dry bed and the treeline for enemies. He jumped when Cat pounded the butt of her staff on the ground, jangling the iron rings.
“Allow me to read your fortunes, gentlefolk,” she said. “Your future is written in your face.”
The rice merchants ignored her. They sat on their travel boxes, smoking and discussing the recent fortuitous typhoon. The storm had created food shortages around Edo and made them both wealthy men.
“Permit me to read your face.” Cat stopped in front of the painter of paper lanterns. The cloth of his hakama was the orange and blue and yellow plaid common to the area around AkM. She wanted to make him speak to see if his accent confirmed her suspicion about his origins. “You, sir, have a long-life eyebrow. “
The artist waved his sleeve peevishly at her and tried to avoid her gaze, but she persisted. “Note how his eyebrow is wide, and the hairs are longer at the tail than at the head.”
The three women and several of the children crowded close to look. JMshk set down his big water buckets and watched from a distance. The artist became increasingly agitated, but he said nothing. He stood up suddenly and knocked over his water pot and scattered his brushes in the sand. He tied back his sleeves with a long cord and knelt to collect them.
“Please do me the favor of reading my future, holy one,” one of the women sai
d. She and her two friends giggled behind their sleeves as if life itself were a wonderful joke. They were merry with the intoxication of travel and the freedom from responsibility.
Cat took off her hat and leaned her staff and pack against one of the shed’s corner posts. She studied the woman’s face. “You have a long head and a wide chin. You’re a fire person.”
“Is that good, holy one?”
“You are polite, but you have a hot temper.”
“That’s you!” The two friends laughed.
From the corner of her eye Cat saw Kira’s three retainers hustling across the trampled beach toward the ferry landing.
“Your clear voice and thin body mean you’re combined with wood,” Cat went on. “Success and fame will probably come to you after age thirty.”
JMshk hissed a warning, which Cat didn’t seem to hear. She bowed low as she accepted the woman’s donation of ten coppers tossed into her begging bowl. While the other two congratulated their friend on her good luck, Cat moved out to meet Kira’s retainers.
“Allow me to read the future in your faces, kind sirs.”
The men were startled. They had expected her to run or at least to be frightened. But Cat was following Musashi’s advice. She was making her fear transferable. By appearing calm, she was transferring restlessness to her enemy, the way one transferred sleepiness by yawning.
“You, sir. . .” Cat pointed her staff at the leader. “You have a small gray ear. Not a good sign.”
“Come with us.” When the leader and his two companions drew their long-swords, the passengers, the children, and the ferryman ran for the tea shop. Only the young artist remained, holding his paintbrushes.
Cold Rice stood back to belly with the others under the shop’s eaves, as though sheltering from a sudden and violent storm. Viper stayed where he was, sitting on the bench with his legs dangling. He held his kago stick ready, but he suspected that his young lord wouldn’t need much help.
“A gray ear means you can’t be trusted to keep a secret.” Cat threw back the matting over the kago’s carrying pole. She unloosed the slipknots and released the six-foot-long naginata from alongside the pole.
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