Autumn Bridge (2 page)

“How consistent you are, my lord. Such clarity of thought, always.”

“I take it I am mistaken.” Kiyori poured tea for them both, a polite formality since Shizuka, as usual, did not take hers.

“The great difference in their social status is not an impediment?”

“Because the future will bring chaos, character is far more important than status.”

“How wise,” Shizuka said, “how liberated from the artificial strictures of social convention, how in keeping with the times.”

“You disagree?”

“Not at all. My views are antiquated, and I know so little of the outside world, yet it is clear even to one with such constricted understanding that inherent merit is now far more valuable than inherited rank.”

“You agree, yet you seem amused by my words. I take it Hanako and Genji are not destined for each other.”

“There is always more to know,” Shizuka said. “Whether it should be known is another matter. Do you wish to know more?”

“I wish to know no more than what I must know to insure the well-being of our clan.”

“Then you know enough,” Shizuka said.

Kiyori sipped his tea. His expression was placid, hiding the immense irritation he felt at her failure to satisfy his obvious curiosity. Would Hanako and Genji fall in love? He could not ask her, not because the question was inappropriate — it concerned the succession of the prophetic power to the generation after Genji, a singularly important matter, and not one of mere romantic speculation — but because the asking itself raised an implication he had managed to avoid for sixty-four years. If she was going to tell him, she would have to do so without any request from him.

When it became obvious that he would not continue the conversation, a look of sadness came into Shizuka’s eyes. She became very still. This happened not infrequently during their times together. In such moments of melancholy repose, her beauty was particularly ethereal. Could a man behold a vision so exquisite it alone was enough to drive him mad? If so, it would explain much, would it not? He had seen her at her most enchanting many, many times.

As he rose to leave, Shizuka surprised him. She said, “I have never asked you for a favor, my lord, nor will I ever ask another. Will you grant this one?”

“What is it?”

“If you will consent, you must do so without knowing.”

To hesitate would be unmanly. “Then I consent.”

Shizuka bowed deeply, her head to the floor before her. “Thank you, my lord.”

Kiyori waited for her to continue. She kept her head down for a long time without speaking. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. He could not remember ever having seen her cry before.

Tears streaming, she said, “Take your evening meal here, then stay the night with me.”

“This is a most unfair request,” Kiyori said, genuinely aggrieved. “You have tricked me into agreeing to do what I have pledged my life and honor not to do.”

“I ask only that you share my chamber, not my bed. My blood is as purely samurai as your own. I would never deceive you into violating a pledge.”

Kiyori was still upset. He may not start the night in her bed, but being in the same room with her for an entire night, could he avoid ending there? Though his resolve was strong, he was a man, with all of a man’s weaknesses. But there was no choice. He had already agreed. “Very well. Just this one night.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Shizuka said. She looked up and smiled at him through her tears.

Kiyori did not return her smile. It would be a very long night.

Hanako packed her belongings for the trip to Edo. She could hear two of the younger maids chattering in the next room.

“Lord Kiyori has ordered that dinner tonight be served to him in the high tower.”

“No! How many settings?”

“Two! And he specifically said there was to be no sake.”

“Dinner in the high tower. And no sake. How strange. He would only have dinner there if he intended to see an important guest in private. But for such a guest, he would order sake, wouldn’t he?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t expect a guest of the usual kind.”

“You don’t mean—”

“Yes!”

“His wife, do you think, or the other?”

This had gone too far. Hanako put down her folded clothing, went to the door dividing the two rooms, and slid it open. The two maids jumped, saw who it was, and sighed in relief.

“Oh, it’s you, Hanako.”

“Yes, it’s me, fortunately. What if it weren’t? What if it had been Lord Kiyori?”

“Oh, he never comes into the maids’ quarters.”

“Nevertheless, stop gossiping,” Hanako said. “Or, if you must, then do so more discreetly.”

“Yes, you’re right,” one of the maids said. “Thank you for reminding us.” They both bowed to her.

Hanako began to close the door between the rooms again when one of them spoke up quickly, in a loud semblance of a whisper.

“Who do you think it is, Hanako? His wife? Or the other?”

“I don’t speculate about it. Nor should you.” She closed the door on the wide-eyed girls. After a few moments of silence, she heard them whispering to each other again.

In truth, Hanako had an opinion, of course, though she would never speak it. It would have been less distressing if Lord Kiyori were meeting his wife, Lady Sadako. But Hanako doubted that he was. During the thirteen years she had been in the service of the Okumichi clan, she had overheard bits and pieces of Lord Kiyori’s private conversations many times. When he was with his unseen visitor, he never said Lady Sadako’s name. And the voice he always used then was the hushed and secretive one characteristic of clandestine lovers. He was not meeting his wife’s ghost. He was meeting the other.

A chill ran through her body. It stopped under her skin just short of a shudder, and bumps rose on the skin of her arms, back, and neck as if tiny needles were poking her from within.

She wondered if Lord Genji would also meet with the other. Then she wondered whether he already had.

Shizuka sat in meditative silence for several minutes after Lord Kiyori left the room. Then she rose and went to the window where he had stood and looked outside. Had he seen what she now saw? The evergreen hills of Shikoku Island, the heavy gray sky, the white fringes of waves whipped to life by distant ocean storms and winter winds? She should have asked him. Perhaps tonight she would. They would stand together by this window in the high tower of their castle, and they would look out over their domain of Akaoka. It would be their last night together. They would never see each other again.

“My lady.”

“Enter.”

The door slid open. Her chief lady-in-waiting, Ayam�and four other attendants bowed at the
doorway. None of them bowed in the normal ladylike manner, with both hands placed on the floor and
the forehead lowered gracefully nearly all the way down. Instead, they knelt on one knee only and
bowed at a slight incline from the waist, the bow of warriors on the battlefield. They were dressed
in trouser like
hakama
instead of the elaborate, flowing kimonos of women of the inner chamber, and the sleeves of their abbreviated jackets were tied back out of the way, so their arms could more freely wield the long-bladed
naginata
lances they carried. In addition to the naginata, each of the attendants had a short
wakizashi
sword tucked into her sash. Ayamé alone had two swords at her waist, a long-bladed
katana
in addition to the wakizashi. Except that she was a young woman of seventeen, she was the picture of a heroic samurai. Even her hair had been cut, no longer flowing to the floor and behind her, but truncated into a ponytail that stuck out barely ten inches from her head. Man or woman, how easy it would be to fall in love with someone so handsome.

Ayamé said, “It is as you said it would be, my lady. Lord Hironobu has not returned from the hunt. No messenger has come from him. And here at the castle, none of the samurai known to be loyal to the lord and to you can be found.”

“My lady,” said one of the attendants behind Ayamé, “it is not too late to flee. Take a horse now and ride to Lord Hikari’s castle. He will surely protect you.”

“Lord Hikari is dead,” Shizuka said. She went on as shocked gasps came from her ladies. “So is Lord Bandan. And their heirs and all their families. Treachery has reached almost everywhere. Tonight, their castles will go up in flames. Tomorrow night, the traitors will be here.”

Ayamé bowed, again the short military bow of the battlefield, her eyes locked with Shizuka’s. “We will take many of them with us, my lady.”

“Yes, we will,” Shizuka said. “And though we will die, they will not triumph. Lord Hironobu’s line will continue long after theirs have been extinguished.” She felt the child kick and placed a palm on her swollen belly. Patience, child, patience. You will enter this tragic world soon enough.

Her attendants bowed their heads and wept. Ayamé, the bravest of them, fought back her tears. They welled in her eyes, but did not fall.

It was as dramatic as a scene in one of those Kabuki plays that Lord Kiyori sometimes mentioned. But, of course, there was no such thing now. Kabuki would not be invented for another three hundred years.

Shigeru alternated between great stillness and sudden movement, sliding from shadow to shadow through the corridors of his own clan’s castle as stealthily as an assassin. Though the ordinary eye could apprehend him if it alighted upon him, he moved in such a way that neither servants nor samurai noticed him. If they had, they would have acknowledged his presence, greeted him respectfully, and bowed. He in turn, seeing what was not there, would draw his swords and cut them down. This was his fear and the reason for his stealth. His control was slipping and he didn’t know how much he had left.

His ears resonated with a demonic cacophony. His eyes struggled to ignore transparent images of torture and slaughter. Though he could still distinguish the world he walked through from the world that emanated from his mind, he doubted that he could do so for much longer. He had not been able to sleep for days and the visions that kept him awake pushed him ever more strongly toward insanity. He was widely considered to be the greatest warrior of the present era, the only samurai in two hundred years worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the legendary Musashi. With neither excessive pride nor false modesty, he believed his reputation was valid. But all his martial skills were useless against this enemy within.

As his malady worsened, he had resisted turning to the only person who could possibly help him. His father. As Lord Kiyori’s only surviving son, Shigeru had been too ashamed to confess such weakness. In every generation of the Okumichi clan, one was born with the gift of prophecy. In the generation before, it had been his father. In the generation after his own, it was his nephew, Genji. In his, the burden had been placed on Shigeru himself. For over sixty years, Kiyori had used prescience to guide and protect the clan. How could Shigeru go crying to him the moment his own visions began?

Now, almost too late, he realized he had no choice. Visions did not come in the same way to everyone, nor could every seer cope with them on their own. He was being inundated with a hallucinatory deluge. Gigantic freakish machines resembling monsters of fable and legend writhed over the landscape, consuming passive lines of people dressed in bizarre uniform clothing. Air in colorful, putrid layers smothered the castle and the town. At night, the sky itself growled like the belly of a huge invisible beast and gave birth to a rain of fire that washed over screaming victims below.

What did this mean? If they were visions of the future, in what direction did they point him? Only someone with a similar experience could understand.

The conversations of maids told him where Lord Kiyori was. In the high tower. Because he was compelled to avoid being seen, it took Shigeru the better part of an hour to travel a distance that would normally have taken only a few minutes. But he congratulated himself on getting there undetected. No one had greeted him, so no one had died. Also, during the prolonged journey, his visions had abated. They would surely return soon enough, but the respite was welcome. He was just about to announce himself to his father when he heard him speak.

“I am sending Hanako to my grandson,” Kiyori said, “because now that he has assumed most of the formal duties of the Great Lord of our domain, he is in greater need of reliable servants than I am.”

Kiyori paused as if listening to a response, then spoke again. He continued in this way for some time. Outside the door, Shigeru focused his entire attention as carefully as he could, but did not succeed a single time in hearing the voice of whoever was with his father.

“Because the future will bring chaos,” Kiyori said, as if answering a question, “character is far more important than status.” Then after a short pause, “You disagree?” And after another pause, “You agree, yet you seem amused by my words. I take it Hanako and Genji are not destined for each other.”