The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Did you leave his swords?” Cat asked.

  Hanshiro nodded over his shoulder, indicating that the swords were in the rolled sleeping mat he carried there. “I’ll give them to the priests.”

  Hanshiro walked in silence while he phrased the question that had been on his mind. “My lady,” he said finally, “if I am to be of any use to you, I should know as much as possible about the councilor.”

  Cat almost retorted that details about her father’s councilor were none of his concern. But she knew he was right. If she was going to accept his services, she would have to surrender information, some of it personal.

  “Please allow me time to consider an answer,” she said.

  Cat wondered how she could describe Oishi. He had always been a quiet, solid presence in her life, but she knew less about him personally than she did about the lowliest privy cleaner in her mother’s mansion. Instructing Cat in the naginata and the warrior’s Way had been only a minor function in Oishi’s years of service to Lord Asano.

  His skill as Asano’s adviser was already well known, but Cat was not about to tell this surly stranger about Oishi’s other role. For twenty years he had acted as go-between for Lord Asano and his beloved outside-wife, Cat’s mother. As the years passed and Lord Asano’s legal wife bore no children, Oishi’s job became more difficult.

  Cat would not speak of the occasions Oishi had taken her and her mother to temple festivals or special outings because her father’s duties, official and conjugal, kept him away. Oishi, not Lord Asano, had accompanied Cat to the ceremony marking the entry of her name on the temple rolls. And more years than not, at the festival of the Weaver Maiden, Oishi was the one who held her up so she could tie brightly colored silk threads and examples of her best calligraphy to the branches of the cherry tree in the garden.

  One of Cat’s most vivid childhood memories was the grip of his strong hands on her waist. Of being lifted high into the air as though suddenly weightless as a kite. She remembered being held aloft by that unwavering grip as her small fingers fumbled with the knots tying the threads and the fluttering strips of paper containing her childish poems.

  With a rush of awareness that left a hollow, churning sensation in the pit of her stomach, Cat realized that she felt betrayed as well as abandoned by Oishi. She had trusted him as she had trusted her father. She had assumed he would always protect her and guide her along the Way. His feet would always follow the honorable path. If, as rumor asserted, he was carousing in the Shimabara while his lord’s spirit remained unavenged, then he was making a mockery of everything he had taught her about life and honor.

  Cat sorted through a lifetime of memories and picked out the two facts most relevant about her sensei. “Oishi Kuranosuke is a master of the Yamaga school of strategy,” she said. “He served my father for twenty years.”

  “Did you receive instruction from him?”

  “Yes.”

  Hanshiro grunted pensively. Actually he didn’t need any more information. He could tell from Cat’s bearing and the disarray of her enemies that the man who had taught her was an exceptional fighter and sensei. One day with a great teacher, he thought, is better than a thousand days of study.

  “The councilor has not betrayed you,” he said.

  Cat stiffened as though he could read her mind. “How do you know?”

  Hanshiro stopped and turned to face Cat. He knew from her long silence that she had traveled into the past. He knew the journey must have been a sorrowful one.

  “Consider Oishi’s actions.” As Hanshiro stared into her eyes, he thought how easily he could be hypnotized by them. “Until six months ago he did everything possible to convince the government to reinstate your father’s brother. He would not attack Kira for fear of ruining his chances. Since your uncle was sent to Hiroshima, Oishi has been offered employment by several lords, yet he accepted none. I do not know what his plan is, my lady, but I can assure you that he has one.”

  “Dare I hope that?” Cat whispered.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  They walked through the sleeping town of Yokkaichi and pounded on the shutters of the Nightingale Inn. When the sleepy proprietress showed them to their room, Kasane disappeared behind the screen set up for her. She fell asleep on her hard pallet almost instantly. Cat, however, sat wide awake and restless. She could not, even at risk of starting inquisitive tongues to wagging, lie down next to Hanshiro. She excused herself on the pretext of “going somewhere.”

  When she didn’t return Hanshiro became alarmed. He padded in his stockinged feet down the quiet corridors and woke the ancient servant sleeping on a mat in the vestibule. He handed him his wooden chit to retrieve his swords from the rack, tipped the old man to let him out, put on his sandals and went in search of her.

  He found her beyond the wind-mauled pines on the beach behind the inn. She was kneeling in the sand near the water’s edge. She held her naginata across her thighs. The starlight that tipped the gentle waves of the bay glowed on her head and shoulders. It outlined her sloping forehead, her high nose, strong chin, and the sensuous curve of her nape. Hanshiro studied her as he would an exquisite painting or a statue of Kannon-sama, the lovely goddess of mercy.

  “How I waste away . . . “ He thought of the old poem. “I who thought myself so strong, now feeble with love. “

  Cat was obviously deep in reflection, but she glanced up at the shadows of the pine grove where Hanshiro thought himself hidden. She too was developing the sight beyond sight, the sense that transcended hearing, touch, and smell. In her case, the ability had been sharpened by the fact that she was pursued night and day by enemies. And perhaps because Hanshiro’s spirit called to hers.

  For more freedom of movement, Cat ignored the cold and pulled her right arm out of her robes, exposing her breast. She tied back her left sleeve with a long cord. She crossed it in the middle of her back and knotted the ends. She folded her towel diagonally into a strip and tied it around her head. Then she rose in a whisper of russet-colored hakama skirts.

  She stood facing Hanshiro. Her expression was remote, haughty. She held the naginata over her head with the curved blade behind her. The stance was an invitation to join her in performing kata, the warrior’s ritualized series of thrusts and cuts, evasions and parries.

  Hanshiro took off his cloak and pulled his arms out of his sleeves, letting the top half of his robe fall down around his waist. He drew his long-sword, held it with both hands in front of him, and stepped out of the shadows to share the chilly starlight with her.

  They began with the simplest forms and increased the pace slightly with each succeeding set of motions. Cat knew that Hanshiro wasn’t expending himself fully, but she was keeping him on the defensive a respectable part of the time. She closed in with small, fast steps, spinning the naginata in its powerful, deadly circles as she came. Hanshiro parried and leapt and barely avoided a slash to his shins.

  Cat moved a fraction too slowly in the follow-through, and Hanshiro’s sword swooped down in a blur. It stopped with the blade resting on the nexus of Cat’s neck and shoulder. She neither flinched nor changed the imperious look in her dark eyes.

  In the next form she used her front hand as a fulcrum and pivoted the blade upward, forcing Hanshiro to release his right hand from his sword to keep his forearm from being severed. Cat whirled again. She stamped for momentum, and the blade flashed through an overhand arc and came to rest against his inner thigh.

  They advanced and retreated and circled, Cat hissing now and then with the effort and the concentration. Their movements were reciprocal and restrained and palpable with danger. The slightest error in reflex or judgment would have killed or maimed one or the other of them.

  As they fell into the rhythm of the kata, their dance became an affirmation of trust that went far beyond the words of an oath, even one written in blood. Surrounded by the aura of eternal present, they moved to the pulse of life and death and rebirth. They were invulnerable. Time slowed for them u
ntil each could clearly see, even in midstroke, the temper marks on the other’s blade.

  When they finished they were panting from the exertion. Hanshiro sheathed his sword, and Cat held her naginata off to one side. They stood so close that Hanshiro could feel Cat’s breath stirring the dark hairs on his bare chest. She looked up into the shadows and lights of his face, ravaged in defense of her. She could hear his harsh breathing over the sigh of the spent waves brushing the sand nearby. Nothing held Cat there except Hanshiro’s tiger’s eyes and the sea mist that wound around the two of them.

  Hanshiro lightly touched her mouth with the tips of his fingers. He cradled her pale face in his scarred hands, leaned down, and gently brushed her temples with his lips. Cat trembled under his touch. A plover cried mournfully from the river shoals.

  “The bridge, my lady,” Hanshiro murmured.

  Cat walked with him to the massive stone pylon supporting the arch of the wooden bridge nearby. Hanshiro spread his cloak on the sand. The air was cold, but that wasn’t why Cat trembled.

  “ ‘For her straw mat bedding . . .’ ” As he recited the ancient poem, Hanshiro untied the cords of Cat’s hakama so that it fell around her feet.

  “ ‘The Lady of the Bridge spreads the starlight out . . .’ ” He unwound her sash.

  “ ‘And in the waiting night . . .’ ” With the palms of his hands he pushed back the front edges of her robe and undershirt. As he did so he caressed her breasts, taut and satiny as the buds of cherry blossoms. He bent his head and touched each nipple with the tip of his tongue.

  “ ‘She lies in the darkening wind.’ ” He knelt with her on the cloak and laid her gently back.

  CHAPTER 63

  PASSIONATE LOVE AND A COUGH

  Cat and Hanshiro lay entwined on top of Cat’s travel cloak and under Hanshiro’s. Over them arched the intricate wooden corbelings and underpinnings of the bridge. The river murmured nearby. Plovers cried plaintively from the shallows. Cat pressed harder against Hanshiro and drew in long, slow breaths of contentment. So this was what all the courtesan’s songs and stories were about.

  Hanshiro himself was stunned with joy. Years of sorrows and disappointments had fallen away. He felt as giddy and carefree as a child at a temple fair.

  “I was so cruel to you.” Cat rubbed her cheek in the thick hair of his chest. “Making you sit in the rain.”

  “To serve when the master treats you well is not to be a retainer.” Hanshiro ran his hand along the sinuosity of her side and hip. He kissed her bare shoulder, then pulled the cloak up to cover it. “To obey a master who’s heartless and cold, that’s true service.”

  “Do you think me heartless and cold?”

  “I thought you had neither blood nor tears.” He brushed unruly wisps of hair from her eyes.

  “Why did you persist?”

  “I knew you would relent. You returned Lord Hino’s letter of safe passage to me instead of tearing it up.” Hanshiro’s smile stretched the torn skin and muscles of his cheek, but he hardly felt the pain. “By giving me the letter to hold, you made me the pawnbroker of your fate.”

  “I thought you cold and cruel, too.” Cat touched his lacerated cheek tenderly with the tips of her fingers. “I was frightened of you.”

  “Not as frightened as I was of you, my sweet lady.”

  “You’re making fun of me again.”

  “I’m not.” Hanshiro threw aside the cloak and reached between Cat’s legs for the end of the red silk loincloth she had worn. “ ‘More fearful than a tiger,’ ” he whispered in her ear, “ ‘is a length of scarlet crepe.’ ”

  Half of the cloth lay under Cat. Hanshiro drifted the other end lightly along her thigh and across the dark thicket that sheltered the confluence of desire. He increased the pressure, drawing the silk into the swollen folds and pulling it between them until it glistened with a satiny moisture. Cat moaned as it pressed against the hidden kernel, the core of her delight, and tugged it tantalizingly upward. She could also feel the other half of the cloth sliding forward, tight and insistent, along the crevice of her buttocks.

  The long silken caress sent Cat soaring in a tightening spiral toward the bursting. When the cloth pulled free of her weight, Hanshiro teased it lightly across her belly and breasts. Using knots reserved for one’s most beloved, he wound it around her neck and wrists. He tied it so that by pulling her wrists Cat could tighten the cloth’s pressure on her neck and increase her own pleasure.

  As she writhed in Hanshiro’s tender bonds, he licked her breasts and throat, her chin and mouth. The heat of his tongue and mouth and the chill of the night air on Cat’s wet skin concentrated her entire awareness to the surface of her body. Bared to the indifferent night, to the stars, to any passerby, Cat, though bound, felt a wild freedom.

  She pulled on the silken manacles until her head spun and light exploded into incandescent copper dust behind her eyelids. She increased the pressure until she was gasping for air. As though he were traveling with her, Hanshiro knew when she reached the peak and hovered there. He knew the exact instant between soaring and falling, and he spread the soft folds of her groin and touched her once, lightly, with the tip of his finger. She cried out, a single descending note that set off alone into the darkness. A plover answered with its mournful cry.

  Hanshiro untied her wrists and cradled her as she floated back to him. In the distance a wakeful rooster crowed.

  “ ‘If I were to make this night into a thousand nights . . .’ ” Hanshiro murmured into the tumbled fragrance of Cat’s hair. “ ‘Many a sweet word would remain unsaid when the cock heralded the dawn.’ ”

  Kasane awoke before the rooster crowed. The twisted rush wick of the night lantern had burned out, and the room, an inner one, was dark. She dressed quietly in her servant’s livery and sneaked past the mattress and quilts, still as unrumpled as when the maids made it up for Hanshiro and his disciple. But the quilts were heaped high, and in the dark Kasane couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not.

  When she reached the front of the Nightingale, she found the old servant sitting, stark naked, in the wan light of a rush lamp. He was mending his worn loincloth.

  “More traffic,” he grumbled when Kasane handed him the wooden ticket for her sandals and her pilgrim’s staff. “In and out, all night. A body can’t get any sleep.”

  Kasane refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t been asleep. With much mumbling and wheezing and creaking of leathery joints, the old man produced her sandals from among the fifty or so pair stored neatly on shelves against the wall.

  Kasane stepped from the raised floor of the entryway onto the big flat boulder, then into her sandals. She lit the small travel lantern with the inn’s name on it and hung it from the end of its pole. She pulled her cloak about her and ducked out the small side door into the darkness of the sleeping town.

  The eaves of the two rows of buildings almost met over the narrow street. The cold wind from the bay blew down it as though through a tube. The scuffle of Kasane’s soles reverberated off the rows of heavy wooden shutters.

  Kasane passed through the large open market for which Yokkaichi, Fourth Day Market, was named. The small stands were shuttered with screens of woven bamboo or with straw matting. A few booths and two-wheeled carts sheltered their owners, who slept curled up on matting with other ragged mats pulled over them. A scrawny dog growled at her. Sleepy chickens stirred on their roosts along the rooflines of the sheds.

  Kasane approached the transport office, where a pale necklace of bare male nates ringed the fire in the trampled yard. The hostlers, porters, couriers, and kago bearers were warming themselves. Kasane could hear their slang and their laughter when she stopped to read the official notices on the bulletin board. They were only the usual edicts and admonishments, though, none of which concerned her mistress.

  Kasane turned onto the lane leading to the local temple and walked between the shuttered souvenir stands that linked it. Doves cooed and fluttered among the massive,
ornate eaves of the roof over the temple’s wooden gate. Kasane was disappointed to find no letter addressed to the Floating Weed among the posted notices, the sutras, and the pleas for health or the return of wayward mates. She began scanning the message board again.

  “Forgive my rudeness. ...” The voice was diffident, but it startled Kasane. She took a firmer grip on her staff and whirled to face the speaker. The accent identified him as being from Kazusa, her home province.

  Traveler stood in the shadow of the eaves of a shuttered noodle stand across the way. His face was hidden by the square straw hood on his head and by the towel pulled low over his eyes and tied under his mouth. He wore used clothes, the fringed apron and ragged jacket of a low-class ne’er-do-well for hire.

  He didn’t know what had become of the shy young maiden who had stolen his heart at the See No Evil in Oiso, but by now he was sure she was embarked on a venture sown with peril. He had decided to go into the disguise business himself until he solved the mystery.

  “I was instructed to give this to the one serving the Tosa rMnin and his disciple.” The young man bowed deeply as he held out a thin bamboo pole with his latest letter wedged into the slit in the end. The letter was on the finest pale yellow Sugiwara stock. It was adorned with a single sprig of pine.

  “Where is the one who asked you to deliver this?”

  “Not far away, Your Excellency.” Traveler backed deeper into the shadows. He was sure Kasane could hear his heart thumping like a hand drum. Truly, he thought, one sight is worth a thousand hearings.

  “Did the sender give you any verbal message to accompany this?” Kasane had been waiting for ten days to meet her suitor face to face. She didn’t know whether to be despondent or relieved or angry that he hadn’t arrived yet. He’s as slow as a centipede tying on sandals, she thought.

  “The author of this letter said only that I would know the object of his regard by beauty of form and tenderness of expression.”