The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Never turn loose the reins of the wild colt of the heart, he thought bitterly.

  Traveler was such a simple, countrified sort that Hanshiro suspected a ruse. He was too innocent to be plausible. Maybe he was putting on a cat show, feigning innocence.

  Hanshiro preferred to think so. He wanted to believe Traveler was not a suitor, but a conspirator in the Asano cause. The love letter was only a subterfuge, a way of passing messages.

  Traveler wasn’t behaving like a conspirator, though. He was behaving like a man addled by love. He looked like a pigeon that had swallowed a peashooter.

  For the past five ri Hanshiro had listened carefully for mistakes in his speech, but his dialect was flawless. Either he was a superb actor, or he was what he appeared, a rice farmer from the province of Kazusa. And he was receiving love poems from the most beautiful, ferocious, accomplished woman Hanshiro had ever known. The woman who called herself the Floating Weed.

  “I haven’t spoken to her yet, but when I saw her with the actors in Kambara, she was dressed as a boy.” The worst of it was that Traveler insisted on discussing his dalliance. “She looked charming, really charming. And she’s so cultured for someone of her class. She writes the most exquisite poetry.”

  “Umh.” Hanshiro was appalled by the possibility that with very little encouragement this bumpkin would recite Lady Asano’s amorous poetry.

  Hanshiro had coaxed from the young man the information he wanted. Now he was ready to quit his maddeningly genial company. Traveler was to leave his reply to Lady Asano’s last letter on the board near the east gate of the main temple in Mitsuke. He already had bargained with a messenger to run ahead with it, but he was hopeful of finally speaking face to face with his beloved there. That explained his ebullience.

  Unless, of course, the whole story was a fiction.

  “Bow down! Bow down!” A liveried runner trotted along the road, scattering people in front of him.

  Behind him Hanshiro heard the calls of Lord Wakizaka’s shouters. Above the dispersing crowd he could see the rhythmic shiver of the plumed fringes on the heralds’ tall staffs. The rear of the procession wound up the slope and out of sight around the crest of a hill. Pedestrians were either disappearing into the refuge of tea houses to wait out the train’s passing or they were kneeling by the side of the road and bowing until their heads touched the ground.

  Hanshiro sighed. No wonder the Tokugawa family had held on to power for a hundred years. The mandatory annual visits to Edo drained the provincial lords’ coffers. And when Wakizaka traveled he insisted on making a display of every sandal bearer and armor polisher he was allowed.

  Hanshiro didn’t much care that the expense was ruining Wakizaka and adding to the influence of the money lenders. He did care that the TMkaidM would be clogged for days. Unless he stayed ahead of Wakizaka, he wouldn’t be able to find a bed or a river porter or a decent meal anywhere. Fortunately, staying ahead wouldn’t be too difficult since daimyM trains only averaged four or five ri a day.

  Traveler, however, was awed by the ranks of banners, emblazoned with Wakizaka’s crest and snapping in the breeze. He gaped at the guards in their matching jackets and hakama and wide-winged vests. The pike bearers and bowmen and the caparisoned horses bearing the swordsmen were followed by clerks, grooms, footmen, sandal bearers, and servants of all varieties.

  Just coming into view on the slope were the women’s black-lacquered palanquins with their swaying gauze curtains. Walking beside them were maids and ladies-in-waiting wearing bright cloaks and veils and twirling their parasols. Still out of sight behind the hill’s crest was the baggage train that extended back a ri.

  They entered the town limits of Mariko in a silence that intensified the solemnity and splendor. The heralds twirled and tossed their tall, feather-decked staffs in rhythm with their stride. Behind them the footmen drew their left feet up to their lower backs in unison and extended their right arms, then reversed the order. As they advanced they appeared to be swimming through the air. Hats and umbrellas and banners and feather-fringed pikes danced with the motion of the march.

  The government that required travel of the daimyM tried to deny it to the peasantry. Government edicts forbade “sightseeing and rambling over the hillsides.” As with most edicts, this one was often ignored, but Traveler had never in his nineteen years seen such a sight. He prostrated himself in the mud but indiscreetly tilted his chin so he could peek at the marchers as they approached.

  With legs astraddle and his hands on his hips, Hanshiro looked down at him. If the fool weren’t careful, some fifty-koku field warrior with rice paddy manure still between his toes would catch his eye, take offense, and lop off his head as though it were a cabbage.

  Hanshiro didn’t consider Traveler’s well-being his concern, however. He took a few quiet steps backward, turned, and joined the people ducking into side streets.

  By nightfall he reached Fujieda and found it crowded, too. The daimyM’s retinues were augmented by youthful pilgrims who slept everywhere. He read a note pinned to a door: “We have gone to give thanks at Ise.”

  The word of the holy signs found in Okitsu had surged on ahead of Hanshiro. People were camping in courtyards and under the roofs of well sheds. Charitable merchants were offering free food and tea and towels and sandals. As the town watchman made his rounds, he called for a lost child.

  The horde of pilgrims was wonderful cover for someone passing as a pilgrim herself. If Cat had started this flood, she could now lose herself in it. She would be the translucent fish, the white-bait. “The white-bait, just like the color of water, itself moving,” as the poem said.

  Hanshiro knew he could find lodging and a warm welcome at the Iris inn no matter how crowded the Fujieda might be. The Iris’s gentle, soft-spoken proprietor would serve him herself.

  She would ladle scalding water over him in the bath. She would laugh softly behind her hand as she caught him up on the gossip since his last visit. When the night lantern burned low, she would slide under Hanshiro’s covers.

  When he left the next day she would demonstrate her love. She would leave her gate and come out barefoot into the cold dew and the public’s gaze. She would wave to him until he was out of sight.

  Hanshiro had never felt worthy of such affection, bestowed like a gift, without thought of thanks or repayment. He certainly had never encouraged it, except to treat her with the grace and affection he accorded all the women he admired. Her silent, enduring devotion had always mystified him, but it had been as comfortable and warm and all-enveloping as the Iris’s satin quilts.

  Thoughts of the Iris’s cooking and quilts would have to suffice for now. Hanshiro only paused to look through the gate and into the inn’s small garden. He knew the Oi River was in flood and Shimada was jammed with people; but he would not stop. He would use a ruse that was risky but had worked for him before.

  He had supplied himself with a lantern on which was painted “official business.” It was the sort carried by the men escorting government messengers. It would get him across the river ahead of the processions of Hino and Wakizaka.

  The moon rose late, halfway to morning; but it was worth the wait. Even in its last quarter it was so bright that it threw shadows from the rocks in the road. The silvery light gave a soft, spectral glow to the houses and trees and signposts. It gleamed from the bald heads of the JizM statues in the stone niches along the roadside.

  As he strode through the light, Hanshiro savored the elegant syllables of an old poem.

  Drawn on by moonlight

  He passes right by the inn

  Where he meant to stay;

  A traveler in the night

  Is walking tomorrow’s road.

  “Ssst. Your Excellency ...” The nighthawk stood in the shadow of a wooden bridge that arched over a stream. She was careful not to let the moon’s beams fall on her face and expose the wrinkles there. “For a trifling thirty mon I shall play your flute as it’s never been played,” she whisp
ered hoarsely.

  “I’m grateful for your kindness, auntie,” Hanshiro said good-naturedly. The moonlight and the solitude had restored his composure. “But I haven’t time for heavenly music tonight.”

  CHAPTER 50

  A BELL ON THE END OF A POLE

  On the road to Nissaka, at the pass called the Middle Mountain of Little Night, a cluster of tiny shops sold the sweet rice cakes that were the local specialty. The hour was late, and all the shops had closed but this one. Its lantern was a welcome beacon in the darkness.

  As Cat bought the rice cakes, wrapped in bamboo sheaths, she could see the proprietress’s children sitting around a small firewell in the platform at the rear of the single room. Their belongings hung on pegs or lay scattered about. The exposed and homey clutter of the shop seemed especially poignant against the wilderness that surrounded it.

  As Cat and Kasane left, the proprietress extinguished the flame in the lantern out front. Then she slid the heavy wooden shutters across the shop’s wide front opening, leaving Cat and Kasane feeling alone and abandoned. But the light from their small travel lantern cheered them as it skipped and slid along the rocky path. The lantern’s glow threw into relief portions of the huge cryptomeria trees around them. The deep shadows just beyond the trees made them seem even more immense and mysterious.

  Kasane peered nervously into the darkness beyond the massive trunks. She knew of an astonishing array of supernatural beings. To pass the long miles she had told Cat stories of those who lived in rivers and streams and wells or who lurked around bridges and gates and even privies. But according to Kasane, more varieties of demons, ogres, and ghosts lived in the mountains than everywhere else put together. On this particular stretch of mountain road Kasane was apprehensive about tengu, the long-nosed devils who inhabited cryptomeria trees.

  “Teach me a song.” Cat didn’t want to hear any of Kasane’s terrifying stories here.

  Kasane thought a moment. “They sing this one in my village. “ She gathered her confidence, then sang in her high, sweet tremolo.

  There are men you marry

  And life is boring.

  There are men you don’t marry

  And love consumes you.

  “Shame is thrown aside when one travels.” Cat smiled at her. “You must be thinking of your Traveler and not the man you’re betrothed to.”

  Kasane blushed.

  “Beware of men who want a marriage not entered in the temple registry, elder sister.”

  “I’ve met some of them.” Kasane’s breath caught in her chest at the thought of them.

  She remembered the procurer peddling her from inn to inn. She remembered men poking her and pinching her as though she were a fish for the table. She remembered the pirate, probing to feel if she was intact, and her face grew hot.

  They walked a while in silence, then Cat sang softly.

  The loves of a short time ago

  And the smoke of tobacco

  After a while leave only ashes.

  Its plaintive notes lingered in the stillness.

  “It’s lovely, mistress. Did you learn it. . .” Kasane paused shyly. “In that place?”

  “Yes.” When Cat told Kasane the story of her father’s death and her mother’s ruin, she had included her decision to sell herself into the pleasure district and Kira’s attempt to murder her there. Cat was amused by the fact that Kasane, who a day ago had known nothing about the Yoshiwara, was now as avid for fashionable gossip, Floating World-talk, as any jaded Edokko.

  “Are the young men handsome in that place?” Kasane asked.

  “Some of them are, I suppose.” Cat thought back on the many men she had entertained and the very few for whom she had consented to loosen her sash. She couldn’t recall a single face. It was as though they had never existed. “Lust is applauded in the Floating World,” she said. “But love is not permitted.” She thought of the other connotation of “Floating World,” an existence of suffering and impermanence. “If I could have supported my mother from hell, I would have preferred to go there.”

  “Higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea.” Kasane didn’t have to elaborate. All children, high and low, learned the saying as soon as they could speak. It described the height, depth, and breadth of their obligation to their parents.

  Cat also knew that Kasane must be unhappy about failing her own mother and father. “If fate allows it,” Cat said, “you will see your parents again.”

  “The fallen blossom never returns to the branch,” Kasane murmured sadly.

  When they came to a clearing in the trees, they sat on a large flat stone in the brilliant starlight. A shallow depression had been worn in the stone by the countless other travelers who had rested there. Kasane put out the flame to save oil, and soon their eyes became accustomed to the light from the stars. As they cooled down after the exertion of walking, they doubled their travel cloaks and sat under them, shoulder to shoulder, to share their body heat. Cat unwrapped a rice cake and handed half to Kasane.

  In a niche cut in the rock face beside them stood a weathered stone statue of JizM, the guardian of travelers, pregnant women, and children. JizM-sama was a comfort in such a lonely place. Some grieving mother who had lost a child had supplied him with a new bib and infant’s cap of red cloth. Worshipers had put pebbles on his shoulders and arms and heaped them at his feet.

  In the afterlife, a hag-like demon stood at Sanzu, the River of the Three Ways, and reviled sinners crossing over to hell. She stole the clothes from the deceased children who came within her grasp. She forced them to pile stones endlessly on the river’s banks. To help JizM-sama ease the children’s terrible burden, travelers had piled up the pebbles.

  In the road in front of Cat and Kasane stood a rounded boulder, about head high and firmly planted. The boulder was spectral in the starlight, as though awash with silver made molten in cold fires.

  “The guidebook says it’s called the Night-Weeping Stone.” Cat spoke in a hushed voice. The starlit scene was too chimerical to disturb with loud talk.

  “Does it really weep?”

  “So they say.” Cat divided a second rice cake with Kasane.

  “One night, long ago, a woman heavy with child set out from Nissaka. She was headed for Kanaya to find her husband. At this very spot bandits attacked her and killed her.” Cat lowered her voice even further. “Blood fell on the stone, and it has wept ever since. They say it’s the dwelling place of the woman’s spirit.”

  “Did they catch the murderers?”

  “The merciful goddess Kannon-sama passed by disguised as a priest. She took the child from the dead woman’s body and raised him. Years later the son took revenge for his mother’s murder.”

  “As you will avenge the spirit of your father, mistress.”

  Cat stared at the haunted rock standing so lonely and eloquent in this desolate place. She savored the taste of sweet rice cakes shared with a young peasant woman who had become, she realized, a beloved companion.

  “Sea Weed,” Cat said suddenly, softly. “My father called my mother Sea Weed.”

  Kasane said nothing. Cat’s confession of something so personal was too astonishing for a reply.

  “The name comes from his favorite poem.” Cat recited part of it in a voice strained with grief.

  Pliant as the swaying sea tangle

  She lies beside me,

  The woman I love with a love

  Deep as the ocean.

  The ensuing silence was broken by the sound of running footsteps, a rhythmic crunch in the darkness on the road behind them. Maybe the steps belonged to a courier. Maybe they didn’t.

  Cat tied her towel over her head and knotted it under her lower lip. She tugged the fold at her brow low to shroud her face in shadow. She loosened the iron cap over the blade of her spear but left it in place.

  “We can hide in the bushes, mistress,” Kasane whispered. “They’ll pass without seeing us.”

  “They’ll only meet us somewhere ah
ead, in a place not so secluded.” Cat moved to stand facing the northeast, with the Night-Weeping Stone at her back. She held her staff ready.

  “You have a higher purpose.” Kasane was bolder now that Cat had entrusted her with the secret of her mission. A straightforward, albeit dangerous, elopement had turned into something much greater. And in any case, a good servant took an active interest in her mistress’s affairs. “Do not throw your life away before you’ve achieved it, my lady.”

  “The warrior-priest Saigyo once asked, ‘Why regret leaving a world that merits no regrets?’ “ Cat smiled sadly at Kasane. “He said we save ourselves only when we cast ourselves away.”

  Kasane sighed. She selected a rock from the road and twisted it into her towel. She swung it to test its heft and balance. She picked up another rock to throw and waited for an enemy to come within range.

  They heard loud, rhythmic panting, then a lone figure rounded the bend. His face was shrouded by shadow and by the towel he wore low on his forehead. Cat couldn’t see that he was the young rMnin who called himself Nameless, the one whose nose she had broken at the ferry. He had exchanged his clothes for those of a nondescript underling of the merchant class. His sword was inside the rolled sleeping mat on his back.

  When Nameless saw Cat standing in the road, staff poised, he improvised. He yelped in surprise and dropped to his knees. Before he prostrated himself he yanked on the paper cord that suspended the cloth purse inside the front of his torn and faded jacket. He broke the cord and shied the clinking bag ahead of him. It skidded to a halt not far from Cat’s feet.

  “In the name of the Merciful Buddha, most kind sir, have pity on me.” He had learned to disguise his west country dialect, but he hadn’t quite gotten the Edo accent right. His face was so low to the ground, though, that his body muffled his voice, which was trembling with exertion. “A thousand apologies for the thinness of my purse. May those few miserable coins help you in your time of need.”