Autumn Bridge (25 page)

“Go! Come share sake with us!”

“Great General! Come, come!”

“Your name will live among the greatest heroes of Yamato forever!”

It was easy for the samurai to praise him lavishly. He was an outsider and would always be an outsider. Thus, he was no threat to any of them. He would never conspire against his lord, never seek dominion for himself, never lead an army to Kyoto to induce the Emperor into granting him the Shogun’s mandate. An outsider could never rule a domain, never command the loyalty of other lords, never be Shogun. That highest honor was reserved for not only samurai but those select few of Minamoto blood, the clan of the legendary Yoshitsuné. Hironobu, through his maternal grandmother, was distantly related to that great family. Perhaps one day he could think of it. But not Go. He was not even Japanese. So the samurai did not hesitate in their loud and sincere praise for him.

Go did not know what the storm portended, but he was not optimistic. He remembered what the old tribesmen said. According to them, the last time the thunder of horses’ hooves had sounded so loudly in the clouds above, the greatest witch of the Nürjhen Ordos had been born.

Tangolhun of ancient times.

His mother’s ancestress.

The one who told the legendary Attila to follow the sun westward. Supposedly, centuries ago, Attila had done exactly that, the Huns had followed Attila, and they had found their destined homeland at the western edge of the world, where they lived with their herds in fecund pastures to this very day, protected by a ring of mountains, and encamped on both banks of a vast river.

No matter how strongly Go had insisted that this was just a story his mother had made up to support her outrageous claims of magic, the old people could not be convinced.

The Huns of yore, they said, had not all been slaughtered by the Mongols. The ones who had followed Attila had survived to flee beyond the high Urals. One day, the Nürjhen, too, would go there.

The old, secret truths were known by witches, they said, whose spirits rode the storm, the wild herds above. One day, those who shared the secrets would also ride the storm.

His mother’s prognostications, they said, were deadly accurate, and the power of her spells was beyond denial. One day, a sorceress would arise whose spells would reveal all mysteries without exception.

Go had laughed at them. His mother was a self-serving, manipulative fake, nothing more.

Now, in far Japan, with the sound of ten thousand invisible steppe ponies thundering above him, he couldn’t laugh. Something was coming.

Go did not think it was a blessing.

“Oh.” The whispered exclamation followed the sensation of a soft body colliding with his own. He looked down to see a woman sprawled at his feet.

“My apologies,” he said, silently cursing his clumsiness. In the open, astride a horse, Go was as nimble as the dragon dancers who had spun around the flames of the Ordos campfires. Inside walls, his nimbleness was more akin to that of a harnessed ox. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

He reached his hand out to help her to her feet. She gasped and shied away.

She was very pretty. And very young. It was only because of what he had felt when their bodies had met that he knew she was a woman and not still a girl. But she was a woman whose first blush was not long past. By her mode of dress and the delicacy of her movements, he knew she was a noble lady, probably a daughter of one of the visiting lords. Many such were here. Hironobu’s improbable triumph had suddenly made him the most eligible six-year-old lordling south of the Inland Sea.

“Are you hurt?” Go said.

The collision had not been particularly violent. No daughter of a Nürjhen khan would have fallen, much less remained on the ground for so long. They could ride and shoot as well as any man, and only a warrior who could outdo them on horseback and with a bow and arrow would dare to woo them. The wives and daughters of Japanese lords were the opposite. They gloried in their weakness. Indeed, they always pretended to be weaker than they actually were. He had once seen his own wife, who had then been a favored concubine of Lord Masamuné, Hironobu’s father, break a drunken samurai’s collarbone. The man, the retainer of another lord, not knowing who she was, had grabbed her wrist. She made a quick movement with her arm. The next instant, he flew head over heels into a pillar. Another inch to the right and he would have broken his neck.

How did you do that? Go had asked her.

Do what, Lord Go?

Throw the man.

Throw him? I? She covered her mouth with her sleeve and giggled. I am so small and weak, my lord, how could I throw anyone? He was drunk. He tripped. That is all.

No, that wasn’t all. But she never said more, even after they were married. Even now, ten years later and after the birth of their son, Chiaki, she would never say anything about it.

It’s such a secret, is it?

She laughed and said, How can anything womanly be of sufficient consequence ever to be elevated to the level of a secret?

Go said, If I tried to do something you didn’t like, would you throw me?

I could never dislike anything you wished to do, my lord. You are my husband.

What if I wished to cause you pain?

Then I would be happy to feel pain.

What if only your agony could bring me joy?

Then agony would be joy, my lord.

Go laughed loudly. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t really believe she would go that far, but she was so serious and so adamant, he couldn’t continue with a straight face.

He said, I give up. You win.

She said, How can I win, when I yield to you in every way?

I don’t know, Go said, but you always manage somehow, don’t you?

She smiled. Do you mean to say I win by losing? That makes no sense, my lord.

Go wondered if this young woman also knew how to throw men. It seemed unlikely. She looked very fragile, even taking into account the way these women all exaggerated the appearance of fragility. She waited for him to step back, then got to her feet with some effort. Her right hip seemed to be injured. She took a tentative step forward, was unable to support herself, and began to fall. Go was ready. He caught her.

“Oh,” she said again, as softly as before.

She held on to his arm and leaned her full weight against his chest. It was not much. Besides being very pretty and very young, she was also very light. Perhaps, unlike the others, this one was really as fragile as she seemed. Though she leaned on him out of necessity, her eyes regarded him fearfully, as if she should flee from him rather than press against him for support.

He said, “Be at ease, my lady. I am Go, Lord Hironobu’s chief bodyguard. You may rely on me as you would him.”

“Oh,” she said yet again.

Go smiled. “You say ‘oh’ very sweetly, my lady. Try another word. Let us see if you can speak it as sweetly, or if your charms are limited to ‘oh.’ ”

At this, the young woman smiled. Looking up at him shyly, she said, “I am Lord Bandan’s daughter, Nowaki.”

Just then, another peal of thunder echoed through the castle. Something must have shown in Go’s face.

“Are you afraid of thunder?” Amusement brightened young Lady Nowaki’s face. “I thought you were a mighty Mongol who feared nothing.”

“I am not a Mongol at all.”

“Aren’t you the Go who landed at Hakata Bay with the invaders ten years ago?”

“I am. I was Nürjhen then, and I am Nürjhen now.”

“Isn’t that a kind of Mongol?”

“Are you a kind of Chinese?”

Lady Nowaki laughed. “No, of course not.”

“Just as everyone who wears silk, drinks tea, and writes kanji is not Chinese, so, too, not everyone who rides a horse, follows the herds, and lives free is a Mongol.”

“I understand, Lord Go. I will not make the mistake again.” She bowed.

Since she was still holding on to him, her bow took her head to his chest, putting her hair close to his face. A most subtle fragrance arose from her abundant tresses. It reminded him of meadow flowers, lost for the year a season ago. Only someone so young would wear a spring fragrance in autumn. The childish inconsistency bespoke a refreshing guilelessness.

“May I assist you to your family’s quarters?” Go said.

Nowaki, her head against his chest, could hear his voice above her and hear it, too, resonating within his body. She hoped he didn’t feel the beating of her heart. She closed her eyes and did her best to calm her breathing. There was no reason for fear. Everything was going well. She had easily lost her nursemaid. The old woman, growing ever more vague with the years, had become easier and easier to evade. Otherwise, she would never have been able to engage in her dalliances with Nobuo or Koji earlier in the summer. They were handsome young samurai, but that’s all they were. Soon, inevitably, they would grow up to be the men their fathers were. Dull, drunken, loutish, repetitious, bragging country bumpkins.

All that seemed so long ago now. Go was holding her in his arms! He hadn’t noticed her following him. She’d kept her courage and took a path that crossed his, colliding with him and pretending injury. Was she brave enough to do the rest?

Ever since she was a little girl, she had heard tales of the fearsome Mongol barbarian who served Lord Masamuné. When her father was allied with Masamuné, awed voices extolled Go’s limitless courage, his superhuman strength, his magical control of horses. When the two lords were relentless enemies — which seemed to be about as often as they were faithful friends — his heartless brutality, his animal cunning, and his monstrous perversity were the only things that were said about him. Both kinds of stories fascinated Nowaki. Her life in this provincial wasteland was utterly dull, with dullness her future fate as well. Her father was a country lord with painfully limited vistas. So were all the lords she knew. Her older sisters had been married off to buffoons like her father and brothers — lords of dirt, night soil, and smelly fish. None of them was more than barely literate. None was anything like the cultivated, sensitive, romantic heroes of
The Pillow Book
and
The Tale of Genji
.

Go was unlikely to resemble those heroes, either, but at least he did from afar. He had ridden across the vastness of Asia with Kublai, Great Khan of the Mongol Hordes. He had seen the jeweled cities of China, the land of the ice people in the far north, the exotic beasts of the southern jungles, the high mountains of Tibet. She had never been farther east than the Inland Sea, and no farther west than here in Akaoka Domain. If she did as she was expected to do, she would soon be betrothed to one of those bumpkin lords. Hironobu was the best candidate, and he was a snotty child of six! She would be his nursemaid for the next few years, then she would initiate him, bear his heir, and that would be it. She would spend the rest of her life listening to his drunken lies instead of her father’s. Or perhaps her father’s other plan would come to fruition, and she would be given away as bride or concubine to a noble of the Imperial Court in Kyoto. She had seen a noble once, a prince who had come calling on her father for help of some sort. He was a pale and powdered weakling who wore finer gowns than she did. He spoke an effeminate, lilting Japanese she could barely understand. The journey from Kyoto was so arduous, he had said, that it almost killed him. Then he’d covered his mouth with his sleeve and giggled like a girl. She would rather die than be touched by such a degenerate, no matter how exalted his ancestors.

Then one day, early in the summer, she had gone into one of the larger villages of her father’s domain, accompanied by Nobuo and Koji, who were serving as her bodyguards, an amusing fact considering their dangerous intimacies with her. Out of boredom, she had stopped at the hut of a crone who was said to be a soothsayer. The old fake put on a good show. As soon as Nowaki stepped through the doorway, the woman, who was supposedly blind, stared
open-mouthed in her direction, dropped the pot she was holding, and stumbled backward to the far wall.

It’s you, the woman said.

Yes, it’s me, Nowaki said, trying hard to keep from laughing, and not quite succeeding. Do you know who I am?

I am blind, but I can see, the woman said, in her best portentous voice.

Oh? And what do you see?

Not as much as you will see.

Now she had Nowaki’s full attention. Will I see much?

Much, the woman said.

What will I see? Nowaki hoped the woman would speak of faraway places. If she did, Nowaki would eagerly believe she was a real visionary. Tell me quickly, without delay.

You will see… The woman paused with her mouth still open. Her lips trembled, her eyelids flickered, her sunken cheeks twitched.

Nowaki waited patiently. Provisionally, at least, the woman deserved forbearance. Even if she couldn’t really tell fortunes, she was at the least a very good performer and, like all good performers, had her own sense of timing, which must be respected. She was quite wasted in this isolated little place. If she were in Kyoto or Kobe or Edo, she would no doubt attract quite a clientele.

The woman said, You will see what no one else has ever seen — will ever see in your lifetime — save one.