The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Hanshiro was in the audience, and he was as drawn into Cat’s spell as she was into Dragonfly’s. He stood with arms crossed at the rear of the deaf gallery, near the main entrance, the “rat gate” under the drum turret. He had taken his long-sword from the rolled mat and stuck it back into his sash. His umbrella and his iron fan were at hand.

  He had already identified seven men who were probably Kira’s retainers scattered through the crowd. An informer at the temple must have discovered Cat’s presence and alerted them. Hanshiro knew there were informers. One of them had identified Cat’s job on stage for him.

  One of Kira’s men wore a towel sling supporting his broken arm. He had ended up in the bottom of the ravine behind the pilgrims’ inn in Mishima after Cat had disabled him. Hanshiro assumed he had been brought along to identify Lady Asano when they captured her.

  In spite of the certainty of trouble, Hanshiro concentrated on the small, lissome figure in black. As he watched Cat dance with the rod, he thought it fitting that she should be the butterfly enraging the lion. It was a part she was playing well in the interlude that was life.

  The beat of the drums became louder and faster and more insistent. The samisen sounded alarmed. The mask reared and swooped in Dragonfly’s hands as the lion chased the butterfly on the end of Cat’s rod. The wooden blocks rattled, increasing in speed with the swelling music and the drums’ tempo until the tension seemed unendurable. Then, as the clappers gave a resounding crash, Dragonfly turned his back to the audience. Cat crouched unobtrusively again.

  Two other black-clad kurogo moved up next to Dragonfly. Each one pulled a thread in the shoulder seams of his robe. The pale purple silk with its drifts of clouds and flights of magpies dropped open. One of the assistants unfastened the wide sash, which also fell away.

  Underneath was a dragon’s-blood robe emblazoned with huge gold flames and silver lightning bolts. Another assistant slipped off Dragonfly’s wig while two more replaced it with the lion’s wild white mane, the train of which dragged on the stage floor. A kurogo held a mirror while Dragonfly, still on stage and in a matter of moments, repainted his makeup.

  When he turned back around he had become a ferocious lion spirit. The crowd went wild.

  “You’re as good as your father!” they shouted. “We’ve been waiting for this!”

  Cat hardly heard them. She and Dragonfly moved as though connected by a taut, invisible cord. Time and again Cat whisked the butterfly out from under the lion’s nose. She teased him with it until Dragonfly was whipping his long white mane about his head in a frenzy.

  “Sun!” The crowd was delighted. “Light of my life!”

  When Dragonfly chased Cat into the wings the audience applauded wildly. People in the pit threw flowers onto the stage. They called out Dragonfly’s clan name, family name, and art name. The elite in the box seats extemporized poems to his genius.

  One by one, Kira’s retainers, using the uproar as cover, closed in from the sides. They reminded Hanshiro of a line from an old poem, “A flock of sparrows raises quarreling voices ...” He followed casually at a distance. The men were obviously planning to catch Cat backstage.

  Cat didn’t stay backstage long, though. She was to assist for the last act of the Soga brothers’ famous epic. Kasane, now dressed as a boy herself to avoid the theater’s ban on women, quickly handed Cat a towel. Cat lifted her black veil and wiped her sweaty face with it. Her heart was pounding with exertion and excitement.

  “Did you see your pilgrim?” Cat whispered.

  “Yes!” Kasane’s eyes sparkled. “He’s sitting near the front. He sent another poem.” She put a hand to her waist where the letter was hidden under the sash of her jacket.

  “I’ll help you read it when the performance is over.” Cat ducked back through the “coward’s door” and crouched at the rear of the stage again while the turmoil died down.

  Now that she had finished the most difficult part of her duties, she could look out over the crowd and see individuals instead of a noisy blur. The first individual she saw was Hanshiro.

  “Burei-mono!” she muttered. “Impudent clod!”

  Once she discovered Hanshiro she wasn’t surprised to see his cronies, Kira’s retainers, flanking the stage. Their robes were tucked up, and their sleeves were tied back for action. The pairs of swords projecting from their sashes marked them as samurai. Various affectations, such as the patterns on their jackets, the knots in their sashes, and the way they wore their headbands, identified them as residents of Edo.

  Cat also recognized the man with the broken arm, and she was sure that more of Kira’s lackeys were stationed behind the theater to cut off her retreat. In the middle of it all sat Kasane’s pilgrim, enrapt and oblivious.

  “Daikon! Radish!” A roar of disapproval met Shichisaburo’s entrance. During the first two acts the pit had formed a strong dislike for the villainous Lord Kudo.

  Shichisaburo gamely declaimed his lines, although he was drowned out by cheers when the gallant Soga brothers appeared. The cheers turned to more shouts of “Radish!” and “Turnip!” when Kudo motioned imperiously for his guard to arrest the brothers.

  “This play is no good!” A hulking farmer stood up in the third row. “Those two brave young men can’t fight against so many. I, Buhei, am strong.” He pushed up the sleeves of his coat to show the corded muscles of his arms. “I’ll help them.”

  “Yes, help them!” the farmers shouted. Their fury at Kudo’s villainy spread to the rest of the fans in the pit, many of whom were primed by sake for a diversion anyway.

  “Help them!” The cry was taken up as far back as the deaf gallery, where people weren’t even sure what was going on.

  Someone threw a heavy straw cushion at Shichisaburo, who ducked. The cushion landed with a smack on the wooden floor of the stage. The kurogo tried to fend off the mats that followed, but the musicians crowded through the “coward’s door.”

  Shichisaburo hiked up his skirts and fled for the wings in a hail of mats, wooden lunch boxes, soft persimmons, and chopsticks.

  Women started screaming. The farmers stormed the stage. The pilgrim, fearing for Kasane’s safety, began laying about him with his staff, and a brawl broke out in the pit.

  In his haste to escape, one of the musicians knocked a round box off a stand just inside the wings. Shichisaburo’s wooden head fell out of it and bounced across the stage. Buhei reached it first and held it up triumphantly by the topknot. The people in the deaf gallery cheered and surged forward.

  Cat saw Kira’s men shoving through the crowd. They would reach the wings before she could. Hanshiro was close behind them.

  The last singer was at the nearby “coward’s door” pushing the man ahead of him into the one ahead of him. Cat grabbed him by the back of the sash and whirled him away. He collided with the first of Kira’s men climbing onto the stage. They tumbled over the edge and into the farmers.

  As Cat ducked through the low door, she scooped up a chopstick. When the samurai who was following her cleared the low lintel and raised his head, she swung the pointed end upward. She gave it the full force of her arm, stabbing it through the back of his chin. As the chopstick drove into his palate, it impaled his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He dropped to his knees in the doorway and made squealing noises in his throat as he clawed at the short, protruding butt of the stick.

  Cat couldn’t see Hanshiro using his fan and umbrella to dispatch her enemies in the mêlée on stage. “ ‘A flock of sparrows,’ ” he chanted to himself as he sent another man sprawling, “ ‘raises quarreling voices for a place to sleep.’ ”

  He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Nameless, who attacked Hanshiro with the stout stick on which he had carried his lanterns. Hanshiro was surprised to see Nameless, but he wasn’t surprised to find him a challenging adversary, even for one so young. The two of them were fencing with umbrella and stick when the police entered the rat gate and people began scattering through the matting along the
sides.

  “What’s happening, younger brother?” Backstage, Kasane was wide-eyed with fear.

  “Ruffians!” Dragonfly ran shrieking toward them. “Save me from the uncultured beasts.” When he clutched at Cat she felt the weight of a packet of coins drop into her sleeve. “Follow my son,” Dragonfly whispered.

  He started screaming hysterically again, and he kept on screaming. He was screaming when he brought a stool down hard on the first of Kira’s men to find his way through the dark maze of backstage corridors, piled with scenery, curtains, and props.

  The boy slid open a closet door under a stairway and pulled away the pile of bedding stored there. He had washed off his makeup, but he still wore his red maid’s robes, geta, and wig. Cat and Kasane crawled into the closet as Dragonfly’s son’s head disappeared through a trapdoor in the floor and down a ladder.

  Kasane scrambled after him. Cat followed and closed the door over her, leaving them in darkness. She could smell the dust of centuries in the passageway. It must have been built for escape when bands of warrior-priests and monks from rival temples attacked and counterattacked in the ancient wars. Cat heard a rat’s squeak and the skitter of small toenails across the plastered wall. She jumped when she felt the boy’s gentle touch on her arm.

  “Exchange clothes with me,” he whispered. From overhead came shouts and the heavy tread of running feet.

  Feeling slow and clumsy in the dark, confined space, Cat stripped off her black head covering, the veil, her black jacket, trousers, and tabi. Going by feel, she handed them to the boy and received his robes and geta and wig in return.

  “Continue along this passage.” As he whispered he put on the kurogo’s costume. Kasane buttoned the tabi for him while he tied the sash. “It will bring you out in a chapel to JizM-sama in the cedar grove. There’s a small door in the wall there.”

  “What will happen to all of you?” Cat asked.

  “Shichisaburo-san will talk us out of this. He has before.” The boy didn’t have to say that without Cat and Kasane there to incriminate them, the official inquiry would go much better.

  He started up the ladder again. “Father says to tell you to be careful of Satta Pass,” he whispered over his shoulder. “It’s dangerous. But the view is the most beautiful in the world.”

  Cat and Kasane saw his slender form black against the wedge of light when he opened the door. Then he closed it, leaving them in total darkness again.

  CHAPTER 43

  TO SPIT AGAINST HEAVEN

  Just beyond Kambara’s outlying fields, the TMkaidM became steep as the skirts of the mountains swept precipitously to a towering, pine-fringed escarpment above the sea. Along the top of the cliff snaked the road over Satta Pass. Cat and Kasane had walked almost to the bottom of the long ascent that would take them over it.

  Cat kept looking back over her shoulder for pursuers, but all she saw were a pair of postboys and their shaggy mare.

  “Hitch up your underwear and speed away. ...” The two men were singing off key as they ambled up behind Cat.

  One led their pony, and the other rode her. They were barelegged and dressed in belted, blue cotton wadded jackets. They had draped blue-and-white towels over their heads and knotted them under their chins. Their large, conical hats dangled on each side of the horse’s haunches.

  “Forty coppers for both the hats,” Cat called out.

  “Thirty each and they’re yours.” Both men bowed deeply and sardonically.

  “Fifty for the pair.”

  “Sold.”

  When the man who was afoot moved to untie the hats, the horse laid back her ears and drew her lips over her teeth. She sidestepped daintily and kicked out with her rear hooves. The postboy ignored her.

  As he exchanged the hats for the string of coppers, the hostler gave Kasane and her scarlet robe and wig an appraising look.

  “How much do you charge for her?” he asked.

  “More than you can afford,” Cat answered.

  As they trotted away the two men started their song again.

  Hitch up your underwear and speed away;

  We’ll spend the night at Mitsuke.

  Whatever happened to Hachibei?

  The horses ate him along the way.

  When Cat heard Hachibei, the name on her travel papers, her hand tightened on her staff. She relaxed only when the horse’s rump disappeared around a bend, and she remembered that Hachibei was a common name among the lower classes.

  Cat was now dressed in the boy’s clothes she had bought for Kasane. Kasane was wearing Dragonfly’s son’s wig and red silk robe. She had tucked the long skirts into her sash, but the geta made keeping up with Cat a struggle.

  Kasane was in high spirits in spite of the rough road. She read aloud the signs of the roadside stands. She had been infected with the excitement of the theater, and she was anticipating rejoining Shichisaburo’s troupe in Okitsu. She had been backstage when the fight broke out, and she didn’t realize that the mêlée at the performance had been more than the foolishness of farmers. She didn’t know that she and Cat were in more peril than usual.

  Also, she was enjoying the feel of the red silk dress. She was vaguely aroused by the cloth’s soft cling and by its subtle shifting of colors in the sunlight. She didn’t know that Cat intended to put her back into cotton at the first opportunity. A peasant in silk could attract the attention of officials as well as hostlers.

  As for her suitor, Kasane wasn’t very upset about leaving him behind in Kambara. This game of cat and rat seemed only to fan the fires of his passions, and she was sure he would find her again. Kasane preferred the chase because it postponed a decision as to the disposition of her virtue.

  She touched her sash where the pilgrim’s latest letter was hidden in an oiled paper under her robe. He had addressed it to “the Floating Weed” and signed it “the Traveler.” Something his hand had touched was touching her bare body. Kasane’s face warmed at the thought. Part of her elation was due to the fact that, with Cat’s help, she could now read the Traveler’s words.

  “What happened to the Soga brothers?” Kasane asked.

  She had been particularly taken with the younger brother, Goro, in the Revenge of the Soga Brothers. The actor’s dramatic pose, with his outer robe flung off his shoulders and the map to Lord Kudo’s hunting camp clamped in his teeth, had made her dizzy with a romantic fever.

  “They avenged themselves on Lord Kudo for the death of their father.” Cat was understandably distracted. She glanced back again, expecting to see the unkempt rMnin of Tosa closing in on her. “Juro-san was killed in the fight.”

  “And Goro-san?”

  “He was captured and condemned to be beheaded with a dull sword.”

  “That’s not fair! Wicked Lord Kudo killed their father! Juro-san and Goro-san registered their vendetta legally.” Kasane was outraged. “That play is foolish. The farmers were right to protest.”

  “The play is only a mirror reflecting life. One cannot change one’s fate. Juro and Goro killed Lord Kudo. They avenged their father. They died satisfied.”

  Cat thought of Lord Kira, safe in his mansion while she pursued what might prove to be a fool’s undertaking. She would have considered it a bargain to have her head sawed off with a blunt sword in exchange for the privilege of beheading Kira. She pictured the long, glittering curve of a naginata blade slicing as easily through his neck as a honed knife through bean curd. She imagined the feel of it, the resistance his spinal column would make.

  If she were to execute him, she would not even try to leave a piece of skin intact. She wanted to see his head, lifeless eyes still bulging in terror, bouncing across the ground.

  “Something’s happened ahead.” Kasane nodded toward a group of people standing in a circle in the middle of the road.

  In low voices they were discussing a pale gray river rock, a bit larger than a man’s fist, which sat in the dust. A black cord was tied around it. It was a path-barring-stone. It said, “Go
no farther.”

  The two small feathers fastened to the cord carried an additional message. Their shafts had been laid at right angles to each other and lashed with thread. Many families used variations of crossed feathers as their crests. Banshu-AkM was one of them. Cat assumed the warning was meant for her.

  A few people turned back. Most joined together into larger groups for protection in case the stone’s warning was genuine. They all had heard the stories of bandits at Satta Pass. The travelers tied back their sleeves, pulled their loincloths tighter for the climb, and started up the treacherous slope.

  Cat sauntered off the road to a shed housing a traveler’s convenience. She needed time to think.

  As she loosened her loincloth and squatted over the hole, she stared at the simple lines of an opened umbrella carved into the wall in front of her. A woman’s name and a man’s name were incised in flowing, vertical characters, one on each side of the umbrella’s shaft. A man and woman sharing an umbrella was an old conceit. It meant they were lovers.

  Cat sighed. As far as she was concerned, lovers were of a different species. She couldn’t imagine being in love. She couldn’t even imagine sleeping through the night with a quiet heart.

  She was suddenly overwhelmed by despondency again. Her enemies were everywhere. How long could she avoid them?

  Who had known she would pass this way and had left the stone for her to find? If she must stop to fight for every foot of ground between here and KyMto, how could she ever reach Oishi? And how often could she engage her enemies before she was caught and punished?