The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Cat took the short, knotted cord of coppers from her sleeve and counted them. There were forty-five. She replaced the book and started to move on.

  She felt a shy tug at her sleeve and whirled around. She had almost forgotten about her hostage. Kasane held out a square brocade purse on a long cord. It clinked.

  Cat grabbed it from her, dragged her into a dark alleyway, and pulled her down behind a big two-wheeled cart. “Don’t wave money around, you rice bale.”

  “I’m sorry, master.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “My last master stole it from a gambler in Hiratsuka.”

  “And you stole it from him?”

  “He’s a black-bellied man, master. He’s evil.”

  Cat smiled to herself as she emptied the lumpy silver coins and the strings of a hundred man into the tail of her jacket. The peasant wasn’t as stupid as she looked. Cat counted the coins. She tucked the silver under her sash and the copper into her sleeve. She stuffed the purse into her other sleeve. The coins were anonymous, but such an ornate purse embroidered with its owner’s crest would be recognized.

  When the procurer was discovered in the closet, someone would come looking for his trollop, if only to recover the gaudy rented robes. Cat had to get rid of them.

  “Have you other clothes in that pack?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Put them on. Be quick. I’ll keep a lookout.”

  “Here?”

  “Where do you think?” Cat was so exasperated with her unwanted captive and her harsh country accent, full of extra syllables, she wanted to pull the child’s ears.

  Sniffing back tears, Kasane stooped so the cart hid her body from the nearby street. Fear and the unfamiliar complication of the clothing made her clumsy. She wasn’t used to intricately tied sashes and sleeves that dangled past her hips.

  With trembling fingers she tore at the knot in the long, wide ornamental sash, then the undersash and the tightly tied cord beneath that. She pulled off the lined kimono and the loose undershirt and shivered. Bare-chested, the hard tips of her dark brown nipples taut from the cold, Kasane struggled with the cord holding the scarlet crepe cloth wrapped around her as an underskirt. Cat forced herself to wait patiently. The sooner she was rid of this country simpleton, the better.

  Cat was surprised to see that Kasane’s own clothes consisted of a white pilgrim’s robe. Even though the robe was torn and stained, Cat could tell it was new.

  While Kasane was tying the cheap sash around her, Cat folded the rented clothes and stuffed them behind the cart. Then she wet her towel in a nearby water barrel and scrubbed off most of the white powder and the rouge.

  “Do you remember what I said about trying to escape?”

  “Yes, master.”

  But Cat still kept a suspicious eye on her as she returned to the book vendor.

  “I’ll give you forty coppers and this fine purse for the guidebook. “

  “Stolen?” He held the purse up to the light of the street lantern.

  “Do I look like a thief?”

  “Yes.” The vendor handed her the guidebook and gave a perfunctory nod of a bow.

  For some reason being mistaken for a miscreant pleased Cat. She felt free and independent and dangerous. She had watched Musui in his dealings with innkeepers and tea shop owners, and she had gotten the hang of it. She was elated by the sound of silver and copper jingling in her sleeve. The prospect of asking the price of things, of counting out the coins and handing them over, excited her.

  As she browsed she kept her eyes open for weapons but found none for sale. Only members of the noble and military classes were allowed to carry long-swords and naginata and spears. The makers would be situated discreetly on a back alley somewhere. Cat dared not attract attention by asking about them.

  Her first purchases were a large, dark blue cloth to use as a furoshiki, a stout walking staff, and a wide-brimmed bamboo hat. To hide her face, she wore the new hat instead of carrying it slung on her back. Musui’s writing on her old one made it too distinctive, and she had left it at the inn. She regretted having to abandon the calligraphy “We two, pilgrims together” that he had painted on it for her. It would have been a valuable keepsake.

  From the clusters of sturdy straw sandals dangling about an old woman’s person, Cat selected eight at ten coppers each. She started to put them onto the furoshiki, but Kasane held her hand out to take them and the cloth bundle, too. The world was back to normal. Someone else was carrying Cat’s burdens.

  Next Cat shopped for food for the journey. She hadn’t the least notion how to cook anything, but she had learned that the kitchen staffs of inns would prepare food supplied by the guests, thereby cutting down on lodging expenses. The variety of food for sale here was bewildering.

  “Our confections were celebrated by the august tea master Sen no Rikyu himself, Your Honor.”

  “Here, here. The renowned prawns of Totsuka. Take them back to the folks at home.”

  Kasane was even more bewildered than Cat. She had never seen so much food. She couldn’t read, so she didn’t know what was in the artistically wrapped and labeled packages of local delicacies, the “Name-things” for which Totsuka was famous. She did know that they were expensive. She watched in amazement as her new master bought pickled ginger and Totsuka’s prawns, as well as small dried flying fish plaited horizontally into a straw cord and rice dumplings stuffed with sweetened bean jam and wrapped in the papery sheaths of bamboo shoots. Cat did buy tea and raw rice, but only the most expensive type of each.

  When she bought tooth powder and a willow twig toothbrush, the woman selling them bowed low and presented her with a tiny packet of toothpicks as omake, a bonus.

  “Luck to the seller,” the woman said. Cat was as pleased by the modest gift as by any expensive present she had ever received.

  Next she bought an ink stick and stone in a plain wooden writing case and brushes in bamboo tubes. She added a flint, a tortoiseshell comb, and a crisp, dark blue loincloth.

  She bought four coppers’ worth of Willow brand tobacco, a packet of cheap paper handkerchiefs, and a heavy paper folding wallet in which to put them. She chose a hempen travel cloak and a paper raincoat permeated with persimmon juice to make it water-repellent. She smiled when the merchant threw in a small towel for omake.

  Cat tied her final purchases, two sleeping straw mats, on top of Kasane’s pack. By the time Cat finished, the furoshiki had grown so big that Kasane could hardly be seen behind it. Kasane was astonished. She had never seen such extravagance. Her new master was the sort to carry a lantern on a moonlit night.

  Vendors and merchants were packing their stock into bags and baskets and extinguishing their lanterns. Cat heard the squeal of wooden axles as farmers wheeled their unsold goods away in their cumbersome barrows. The market was taking on an abandoned air.

  The crowd was thinning. The beggars were leaving with their straw cushions under their arms. Street entertainers were gathering up their instruments and props. Soon all the stands would be screened with mats or boarded up or dismantled. Not enough people would be left to provide cover for Cat and her silent, unwelcome companion.

  Cat knew she dared not stay at an inn. Kira’s men and the book with her picture in it had probably visited them all. Kira’s son Lord Uesugi had enough retainers to send one or two to each of the fifty-three government post stations between Edo and KyMto. And he would still have men left to maintain his father’s bodyguards at home.

  The black ribbon of sky between the eaves of the buildings was spangled with stars. No rain likely. Cat and the peasant could sleep somewhere on the grounds of the local temple, in an abandoned building or chapel or under a roof sheltering a bell.

  Cat glanced at Kasane. She looked young and tired and frightened. Cat could tell from her callused hands and her new pilgrim’s robe that she hadn’t been whoring long. “You didn’t sell yourself to the flesh broker, did you?” Cat asked.

  “No,
master.” Kasane spoke so low, Cat could hardly hear her.

  “Kidnapped?”

  “Yes, master.” Kasane hesitated. “The others were killed,” she murmured.

  “What others?”

  “From my village. Thirteen of us were traveling to the great shrine at Ise.” Kasane stopped in confusion. She hadn’t meant to draw attention to her plight.

  Cat turned away to discourage further revelations. She didn’t want to find out any more about the dirt-eater. She might feel obligated to help her, and she didn’t need anyone else’s troubles. She already felt guilty about taking the money the child had had the foresight to steal from her captor. Cat soothed her conscience by reasoning that she would arrange for her to be found in the morning. Then she would be someone else’s problem.

  Cat bought a cheap lantern with a carrying pole, a collapsible paper shade, and a few extra rolled paper wicks. Then she stopped at stacks of round wooden tubs filled with various types of oil. The oil peddler stood among them and scratched his back with the long handle of his sieve.

  “Where’s the nearest temple?” Cat asked as he measured out whale oil into a bamboo container.

  He waved his sieve toward the west. “You’d be better off at the shrine on the main road to Edo, though,” he said. “It’s dedicated to Daikoku and his magic mallet. The fat businessmen flock there to clap their hands before his image and bargain with the god of wealth for a bountiful crop of gold and silver.

  “On the other hand, the temple has fallen on hard times. It doesn’t even have a bonze. The ShintM priest changes his robes and goes there now and then to chant the Buddhist services.”

  Impatiently Cat started to bid him good night. Then she thought better of it. “Is the temple deserted?”

  “Only by the living.” The oil seller grinned and wiped oil off his hand and onto his heavy black apron. “In my grandfather’s grandfather’s day it was famous for its warrior-monks, adept at the art of the spear. The graveyard is full of the tombstones of the foolish young students of the warrior’s Way who journeyed there to challenge them.”

  “Thank you.” Cat bowed and backed away. When she was out of sight she doubled back behind the buildings and headed for the deserted temple.

  CHAPTER 25

  GHOSTS AND GIRLS

  As she walked along the dark road, the expression on Kasane’s plain round face was stoic, but she had no illusions about her future. She knew that her new master might be intending to take her to a deserted place and rape and kill her, but she doubted it.

  Kasane was a shy child and a virtuous one, but in the past few days she had come to think of herself as merchandise.

  She had been kidnapped at sea by a pirate masquerading as an honest boat captain. He had sold her to the procurer, who had peddled her to innkeepers twice and then restolen her. He would have done it again if the mysterious, ferocious young stranger hadn’t interfered. Now this latest master would undoubtedly go into business, too, with Kasane as his stock. One didn’t waste anything that could be exchanged for money.

  Before leaving for the pilgrimage to Ise several days earlier, Kasane had never been beyond the call of her village drum. Since then she had seen only the worst of men, but this one was nothing like the pirate and the procurer. For one thing, he was very young. And he was certainly extravagant. Even though the moon was only beginning to wane and was almost directly overhead, he had lit the lantern.

  Kasane carried the baggage and the lantern too along the deserted farm road. She walked in front and held the lantern’s pole to the side and behind her so it lit her new master’s way. She glanced back over her shoulder only once. The light and shadow had transformed Cat’s glower into a hideous mask. She looked to Kasane like Lord Emma, the king of hell.

  The temple grounds were beyond the fields, among the steep folds of the high hills west of Totsuka. A heavy mist swirled low to the ground there. In the darkness of a grove of trees, Cat almost missed the slender granite marker indicating the turnoff onto a badly maintained path.

  As she and Kasane moved forward cautiously, the trees and bushes closed in around them. A fox barked. Something rustled in the black depths of the undergrowth. Kasane stopped so abruptly, Cat almost bumped into her.

  “A goblin,” Kasane whispered.

  “Keep walking, simpleton.”

  In the stillness of the night Cat’s own voice sounded harsh to her. She thought of Musui’s kindness and felt small and mean. She remembered his gentle admonition. A true warrior knows compassion. Cat decided to leave the child some money when she abandoned her.

  In the moon’s bright light, tears glistened on Kasane’s cheeks. Her lips trembled as she felt her way along the dark, rocky path. A gust of wind blew, and both she and Cat heard a rattling, like bones.

  Kasane gave a small cry and shrank back when something tall and thin loomed from the ground fog. She felt rather than saw more shapes in the darkness under the trees.

  “Tombstones.” Cat lowered her voice and took a firmer grip on her walking staff.

  Hundreds of tiered stone monuments rose up from the fog and crowded the slope of the hill. A forest of tall wooden funerary laths, some new, some old and neglected, clattered against each other in another gust.

  Cat and Kasane walked past granite columns and slabs, carved with snarling lions and the ferocious faces of Buddhism’s guardian kings. In the mist the grave markers looked like a silent army turned to stone.

  The lantern had been burning low. Suddenly it guttered and went out.

  “He said it held enough oil for two hours’ light.” Cat was furious that the oil vendor had cheated her. She knew he had long since closed up for the night and decamped; but she wanted to march back to Totsuka, rap him on the head with her staff, and demand her money back.

  Kasane shrank back against her and clutched her sleeve.

  “Don’t be a fool.” But Cat herself spoke in a whisper. “When our eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, the moon will guide us.”

  Kasane didn’t dare point out that the massive cedars were now shutting out most of the moon’s light. Still clinging to Cat’s sleeve, she strained to see around her. “Did you see that?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Cat murmured. Suddenly Kasane’s presence was a comfort to her.

  A flame flared in the distance, then softened and broadened into the glow from a lantern. It lit portions of the gravestones around it and in places left angular sheets of night.

  Three huge shadows stooped and reared against the granite monuments. Each shadow sported a pair of pointed fox’s ears.

  “Where?” The word drifted, like a fragment of a lost conversation, through the gravestones.

  “Over here.” The voice was nervous and subdued.

  “Bring the light, you bucket of night soil.”

  “Two of them in one night.” The first speaker sounded as though he had fortified himself with strong drink, home-brewed sweet-potato wine, probably. His dialect was too coarse to belong to someone who could afford sake. “What luck.”

  Cat heard the rhythmic kachunk of wood striking stones and saw the curved shadows of two mattock blades rise and fall on the monument. She thought again about returning to Totsuka but dismissed the idea. The inns would be tightly shuttered. Even if she could have found shelter in a shed or chapel in town, she would have had the problem of avoiding Kira’s men in the morning. The idea of sharing her night’s lodging place with this sort of riffraff made her skin crawl, though. The only solution was to evict them.

  With both hands gripping the staff lightly, she held it up as though it were a long-sword, parallel to her body and with the tip slanted outward. Her pulse thrummed in her ears as she started forward, crossing each foot in front of the other in the buoyant scissor gait of a sword player.

  She was concentrating on centering her thoughts and breathing properly when she felt a hard tug at her sleeve. She whirled, dragging a heavy weight with her. She struck down and behind her with great force
but stayed her hand at the last moment. When the staff landed on Kasane’s side, it was painful but not damaging.

  Kasane shut her eyes tight and held on to Cat’s sleeve with both hands. She had decided she would rather die of a blow from her strange new master’s staff than release her grip.

  “Let go of me, you idiot!” Cat whispered as she tried to disengage her. “Wait here.”

  “Don’t leave me, master.” Kasane spoke in a tiny, strangled voice. “Kill me, but don’t leave me in this haunted place.”

  Cat could see the hysteria rising in the peasant’s contorted face. She shook her hard by the shoulders. “I’ll be back. I’m only going to see who they are.”

  “They’re demons or ghosts.”

  “I doubt it. I think they’re human, and they’re up to no good.”

  Cat pried Kasane’s rigid fingers loose. She brandished her staff and started forward again, using the gravestones for cover. She lifted each foot deliberately and set it down as softly as a leaf landing. She thought they were mortal, but she wasn’t certain.

  Kasane stood in the gloom and watched the only being who might possibly be human desert her. From the corner of her eye she thought she saw something stir in the well of night behind a tombstone. The roots of her hair tingled at the nape of her neck. She tucked her robe’s skirts up into her sash. Crouching, she crept after Cat.

  Kasane wanted to scream to drown out the noise of the mattocks and the rustlings and squeakings and the liquid hooting of the owl in the darkness. She could only whimper far back in her throat. She remembered the old proverb, “Ghosts and girls are best unseen,” but it was no comfort.

  “When were they buried?” The man’s voice sounded so close, it startled Kasane. It distracted her from the sharpening odor of rotting flesh.

  “The other one’s only a few days old. This one’s been here almost a week.”

  The light of the lantern was close enough now to make the darkness around Kasane complete in contrast. But at least she could see the beings that were casting the shadows. She could see that the fox ears were formed by the stiff knotted ends of the towels tied around their heads. She also could see that these demons were wearing filthy loincloths and collections of paper rags.