Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  Ken’ishi stood back and watched. Two other men jumped in and prised the fighters apart. Ushihara landed a parting kick to Michizane’s belly, doubling him over.

  “My brother died in Hakozaki, you peasant scum!” Michizane gasped.

  “At least he didn’t run!” Ushihara snarled back, his nose gushing blood.

  “Enough!” A deep voice boomed over them.

  The recruits turned toward the speaker. Standing with fists on hips, clad in a light breastplate and iron skullcap, a burly man filled the doorway, even though he stood shorter than all of them. His arms were like knotted boughs and his chin like an anvil. Deep-set eyes glared at them all in turn. His voice was like the rasp of a blade on a whetstone. “You should know that the penalty for brawling is flogging. Care to continue?” His gaze speared each of them for a long moment. “No? I am Sergeant Hiromasa, and this is my barrack. I don’t care what it was about, but if it happens again, it’ll be my hand on the cane.”

  Twice already Ken’ishi had been witness to talk of penalties for various infractions or crimes. Such things should not be necessary for men of honor, for samurai. But many of these men were not even ronin. That such rules existed bespoke stories of unruliness and other poor behavior that necessitated such things.

  Hiromasa’s eyes turned upon Ken’ishi. “What’s that there, ronin? You think this penalty harsh?”

  “No, Sergeant. I am...surprised it’s necessary. Are we not all blessed by fortune for the opportunity to serve under such a master as Lord Otomo? Who in his right mind would put that at risk?”

  Hand pressed against his nose, Ushihara snorted, spraying a fine mist of crimson across his arm.

  Sergeant Hiromasa burst into laughter, which continued until he finally composed himself and wiped his eyes. “In times like these, every peasant and eta gravedigger from here to Kamakura shows up at our gates thinking they can rise above their birth or seek a glorious death.” His gaze fixed upon Ushihara, who averted his eyes. “Perhaps some even can. Hold a spear, swing a sword, draw a bow, do it all bravely and there might be rewards for you. For those things, the barbarians won’t care whether your father is a leatherer or your mother a whore. You don’t have to be born a samurai, but under Lord Otomo, you will learn to die like one.” His gaze raked back and forth over them. “Now, get yourselves cleaned up. The lot of you smell like the trench of a shithouse.”

  Sergeant Hiromasa strode away.

  Ushihara grumbled, “Bastard.” Seeing Ken’ishi’s eyes upon him, he snapped, “What are you looking at?”

  “A fool,” Ken’ishi said.

  Ushihara stabbed a blunt finger at Ken’ishi’s face. “Now listen here, I’ve had about enough of you!”

  “I think you have not had enough, else you would be more respectful.” He gripped Silver Crane at his hip with his left hand.

  Ushihara took a deep breath to shout again, but Michizane said to Ken’ishi, “That was indeed quite a blow you struck in the trial bouts, Sir Ken’ishi. I have never seen such a technique before.”

  Ken’ishi bowed, glancing at Ushihara rubbing his chest with a scowl.

  “Tell me,” Michizane said, “how did you come to acquire Lord Tsunemori’s kozuka?”

  “He gave it to me in Hakozaki, after the typhoon.”

  “What were your exploits? The granting of such a gift goes beyond the mere foot-soldier.”

  “I killed some of the barbarians.” If he told them the truth of how many, would they believe him? “I saved the life of Otomo no Ishitaka.”

  “Tsunemori’s son!” Michizane said.

  “He was in my scout unit. We met a group of enemy horsemen. Ishitaka was wounded. We saved his life and killed the barbarians.”

  Ushihara listened, his eyes hooded and wary.

  “Where do you come from?” Michizane said. “Your accent is strange to me.”

  “I grew up on a mountain in the far north of Honshu, a land of forests and loneliness.”

  Michizane smiled. “A poetic soul.”

  “You have a country accent yourself.”

  “It is true. My village is small, but the Ishii family is proud,” Michizane said. “Ken’ishi, you may share my bunk.” He laid his hand on one of the racks.

  Ushihara snorted, wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand, and stalked away.

  Small bird, forgive me,

  I’ll hear the end of your song

  In some other world

  —Anonymous

  The serving girl knelt with the tea tray next to Kazuko, beside where Hatsumi lay on a futon. The earthenware pot steamed as the girl poured two cups of emerald green tea.

  Hatsumi lay with her head on a pillow of buckwheat husks, her face pale and drawn, both hands still clutched over her belly. A strange odor emanated from her robes, one Kazuko could not identify; similar to the sickly-sweet smell of rotten fruit, but there was something else as well, something deep and pervasive. She kept a scented kerchief at hand for the moments when it became too much.

  “It is wrong of you to care for me, my lady,” Hatsumi said, squeezing Kazuko’s arm.

  “How many times have you cared for me, Hatsumi, over the course of my life? How could I not? You have been with me for as long as I can remember,” Kazuko said. She had never seen anyone so ill before, and it frightened her. Even when her husband returned wounded from the battlefront, the worst of his fever had passed. Hatsumi’s bouts of strange illness had grown more frequent and more painful. But in all the other instances, they had ebbed.

  Her husband’s physician had not yet arrived. Where was he?

  Furthermore, she had not seen her husband since breakfast. Likely he was preparing for the induction ceremony tonight, the third in as many weeks as potential recruits filtered into the castle. With an imminent threat just across the sea, the bakufu had ordered the samurai lords of Kyushu to redouble their defense preparations and build their fighting forces. Word had come that representatives from the Hojo clan, the regents of the ten-year-old shogun, Minamoto no Koreyasu, would be arriving soon from Kamakura. He would bestow gifts upon the samurai lords and their vassals who had repelled the invaders.

  No one believed that the Mongol emperor of China, Khubilai Khan, would attack again any time soon after the loss of so many ships and men, but the consensus among the Imperial Court and bakufu was that he was too ambitious and tenacious to give up easily. The Mongol Empire would not have spread all the way to the lands of the setting sun without such ambition.

  Kazuko sighed and squeezed Hatsumi’s hand. Tsunetomo had invited Kazuko to observe the previous fealty ceremonies and afterward asked her impressions of the men, taking her insights into consideration before assigning them specific duties. In the weeks of his recovery, she had taken to reading a book on the art of war by a Chinese general, a book he had left for her when he departed for the battlefront. She could only admit to herself that she found this realm of men a fascinating one. She found no reason for it to be only the men’s pursuit. She hated the violence of war, but she loved the strategy of it. The insights into human nature of this ancient Chinese general were as astute today as they had been more than fifteen hundred years before. That she was one of the few women in the world not just permitted but encouraged to delve into the realm of men filled her with pride and trust in Tsunetomo. She could tell from her husband’s actions that he had diligently studied this book and others like it.

  She regretted missing the ceremony, but she could hardly leave Hatsumi alone at a time like this. No one else would care for her. The other servants all hated her, and Kazuko could hardly fault them. To them, Hatsumi was haughty and often cruel, with inexplicable bursts of anger that had been growing more frequent in recent months. She had no friends beside Kazuko, and her affair with Yasutoki—how detestable the mere thought!—had been foundering for months. Even so, Kazuko could not bear the thought of someone suffering alone.

  Hatsumi groaned and convulsed.

  Kazuko stroked her h
and. It was hot and coarse. “Poor, poor thing.” It was then Kazuko noticed the strange, bruised color of Hatsumi’s fingernails, shading to a disconcerting reddish purple at the base. They looked thicker than she remembered them, coarser, hardly a lady’s fingernails at all.

  “Kazuko, my dear, will you...” Hatsumi rasped. “Will you promise me something?”

  “Oh, Hatsumi, you are not dying!” Kazuko said. “You must brace up!”

  “As I lie here, something tells me I will not die, that this will pass as it always has. But something in me...I won’t be the same after this. Like an old woman whose fingers turn into gnarled twigs. My spirit is knotting up....” Hatsumi sounded almost delirious.

  “You will be fine. The physician will come. He will find a way to ease your suffering. Here, drink some tea. The warmth will ease your belly.”

  “Yes, tea.... But no physician! Please, no physician! This is no one else’s business.... This is between you and me....”

  Kazuko lifted the cup and held it to Hatsumi’s lips while she supported Hatsumi’s head with the other hand. Hatsumi’s last utterance had sounded almost delirious.

  A gusting breath burst from Hatsumi. “Ah, it’s such good tea! That is what I most enjoy about living here, you know. The tea fields. The best on Kyushu, they say.”

  Kazuko smiled. A point of pride for the people of this province was that this area boasted the highest quality tea, rivaled only by the fields in the mountains near the old capital, Kyoto.

  “Kazuko, you know I love you like a little sister, yes?”

  Kazuko blushed at such a direct and heartfelt sentiment. “I know, Hatsumi. And you are the sister I never had. Ease your mind! Rest now! I command it.” She smiled at the last.

  Hatsumi sighed again, straining and groaning to find a comfortable position. “Yes, rest.” Her voice grew fainter. “You must promise me, don’t leave me tonight. I...could not bear it. Please, promise. I will be better in the morning, I think.”

  Oh, where was that physician? Kazuko would call him to task the moment his bald head appeared.

  “Please, promise…. Don’t leave me tonight,” Hatsumi said.

  “I promise. I will not leave your side.”

  A labored sigh escaped Hatsumi, and she sagged against the floor as if all the tension had just drained from her.

  “Perhaps I’ll be able to sleep now, yes,” Hatsumi breathed. “You are too good to me, Kazuko....” Her voice trailed off.

  In the ensuing silence, Kazuko listened to Hatsumi’s breath grow shallower, steadier, descending into sleep. She stroked her servant’s hand with gentle fingers, stoked the coals in the brazier for more warmth, sipped at the tea. Whenever she took her hand away, Hatsumi’s eyes fluttered, turning toward her as if to ascertain that she was still present.

  Hatsumi’s fists relaxed, little by little, until they hung slack.

  Kazuko’s gaze kept sliding toward Hatsumi’s fingernails. What malady caused such an effect? She had no notion, but if that cursed physician ever appeared, she would ask him.

  “[F]rom the time one has been taken into a daimyo’s service, of the clothes on his back, the sword he wears at his side, his footgear, his palanquin, his horse and all of his materiel, there is no single item that is not due to the favor of his lord. Family, wife, child and his own retainers—all of them and their relations—not one can be said not to receive the lord’s favor. Having these favors well impressed on his mind, a man will face his lord’s opponents on the battlefield and cast away his one life. This is dying for right-mindedness.”

  —Takuan Soho, “The Clear Sound of Jewels”

  Ken’ishi spent the remainder of the afternoon meticulously preparing himself for tonight’s ceremony. After a stint in the ofuro, where he scrubbed off weeks of sweat and road dust and shaved his face, he shared the bath with several other men, luxuriating in its heat as respite from the winter. Meanwhile, several servants laundered their clothes. When he received his own again, they were warm and dry, smelling of smoke. The bloodstains were gone, but he lamented the holes and frayed hems. He had no other clothes. Everything he owned had been burned along with his house in Aoka during the barbarian attack, including the fine set of clothes Kazuko had given him three years before when he had fled her father’s domain. Those clothes would be helpful now, on this, one of the biggest nights of his life. Instead, tonight he would look like a vagabond ronin again, and the thought filled him with shame.

  He caught snatches of conversation throughout the afternoon, learning that recruits had been coming steadily in the past weeks. Tsunemori and his officers had been liberally refilling the ranks depleted by Mongol arrows. Previous newcomers eyed Ken’ishi’s group with skepticism and disdain, which seemed foolish to him, considering that not so long ago they had been in the very same position.

  At the Hour of the Cock, about sunset, the recruits were summoned to a banquet in the lord’s audience hall. They sat in precise rows along either side of the room, with Lord Tsunetomo’s place awaiting his arrival on a raised dais at the head of the room. Tsunemori, Yoshimura, and several of the other high-ranked commanders sat at the ends of the rows nearest the lord’s dais.

  Ken’ishi’s belly quivered with nervousness. The last such formal gathering he had attended had nearly destroyed him. He slammed a cage down around the wildly fluttering hope in his heart that his dreams could be achieved, lest they be crushed again by unforeseen circumstances.

  If the kami would just quiet down, he might be able to enjoy these moments, but the spirits of the air and earth, of the castle itself, were howling in multitudes of little voices as if he were sitting in a den of hungry, invisible wolves.

  Finally, Otomo no Tsunetomo entered the room, without fanfare, and the assemblage pressed their foreheads to the floor in obeisance until he settled himself on the dais. He moved with a sure, unhurried grace, and his presence filled the room with power, as if he were larger than the dimensions of his flesh. The lord settled himself on the dais and took a moment to survey the recruits. His eyes settled on Ken’ishi and held for a moment. Under the great man’s gaze, his ears felt like burning coals astride his head. The yearning to be found worthy formed an impassable gobbet in his throat, and breathing became difficult.

  Looking at the warlord directly would be rude, so Ken’ishi tried to size him up with surreptitious glances. He was tall, perhaps forty years old, a few lines of gray streaking his hair, but his eyes were sharp and deep. Compared to Tsunemori, the brotherly resemblance was plain, but Tsunetomo was the larger man, thicker in the chest and shoulders.

  “Welcome to my domain, warriors all,” Tsunetomo said. “I am pleased that my brother continues to find such strong, capable recruits.” Tsunemori bowed at this. “Let us commence.” His voice was as strong and sure as everything else about him, and it carried the weight of complete command. He was a man to be obeyed, without question or hesitation. Tsunetomo showed no evidence that he had been wounded during the invasion. He clapped his hands and several servants sprang out as if from nowhere, bearing trays of food for the assemblage.

  The servants brought course after course of rice, soup, fish, fruit, cakes, and some rich, mellow saké. Tsunetomo and his officers spoke about news from Hakata, Dazaifu, Hakozaki, and from the bakufu. Their conversation was good-natured and pleasant. Sometimes Tsunetomo smiled at someone’s anecdote, revealing for a moment a pleasant gleam in his eye, an easy good-humor. However, the gravity of the occasion held Ken’ishi and most of the recruits in silence. Besides, warriors did not typically indulge in frivolous chatter.

  Throughout the evening, Ken’ishi found the hope inside him threatening to burst from its cage, and he became more inclined to let it. After tonight, he would have a place. He would belong.

  The peculiar whisper of the kami sent gooseflesh up his arms, stood the hairs on end. Someone was watching him. The kami were screaming so loudly now he could not ignore them. Wariness tightened his muscles, prompted his gaze to scrutinize eve
ryone around him, over and over. What danger could there be here?

  One of the doors in the back of the audience hall was ajar. He thought someone might be there behind the rice paper, but he could not see for certain. Why should anyone be watching him? He had done nothing wrong here. He chided himself for a fool. What did he have to fear? Nevertheless, he stared at the crack, trying to discern a presence there. After one moment where he took a bite from his bowl of rice, the crack was closed.

  * * *

  From behind Tsunetomo’s dais, Yasutoki observed the audience hall through the crack between rice-paper doors, scratching his chin, feeling the delicious beginnings of new schemes spawning in his imagination.

  How strange that the ronin had turned up at his very doorstep!

  Concealing himself from the man, at least for now, felt like the proper path. As Yasutoki was not among Tsunetomo’s military advisors, it had been easy for him to beg off from the evening’s ceremony, citing an excess of work. New requirements for the amount of food to be stored in castle towns, as preparation against the eventuality of another barbarian invasion, had just come down from the bakufu.

  What tangled web of fate had brought Ken’ishi here now, to join the service of the lord who had married Kazuko? Had the ronin forgotten the affair? Did he hate Kazuko now at her father’s betrayal? He did not look like the sort of man who bedded a different peasant’s daughter in every domain. He had been beside himself with anguish when Lord Nishimuta no Jiro had announced his daughter’s betrothal to Tsunetomo. Was he here seeking some secret revenge? Was it possible that he did not know or remember who she married? No, that could not be. The ronin must know. The motive had to be simple revenge. If that were the case, having him implicated in some illicit scheme would be too easy.

  Yasutoki felt a grim, perverse fascination. My, wasn’t this interesting. Oh, the ways this could be twisted. What a wonderful pawn this man would be, more than he ever would have been as a servant sworn to Green Tiger. All he had had to do was wait for the threads of their destinies to cross once again. Lord Tsunetomo would soon have a would-be assassin in his very house. An assassin who might have been intimate with the lord’s wife before their marriage.