Autumn Bridge (26 page)

Nowaki clapped her hands together happily. The one other the old woman spoke of had to be Go. He was the only one she knew of who had ever seen anything no one else had ever seen. And now she would see those things, too!

Thank you, thank you so very much, Nowaki said, bowing deeply. When I return to the castle, I will have rice and sake and fish sent to you.

The old woman held up her hands defensively and shook her head. She still sat on her haunches with her back to the wall where she had first fallen. No, no, you owe me nothing.

Oh, but I do, Nowaki said. You have made me very happy.

That very afternoon, she began thinking of ways to first meet Go, then to seduce him. It was true that she was very young, but she had read the classics of seduction with great care, and she had already had actual practice with Nobuo and Koji. Go would be more difficult, of course. She was confident she would find a way, if only she could also find an opportunity.

The celebration of Hironobu’s victory in the Muroto Woods gave it to her.

“I don’t want to go where my family is,” Nowaki said. “Everyone is drunk, and they keep repeating the same stupid things they always say when they’re drunk.”

“They are celebrating a great victory,” Go said, “and so have every right to be drunk.”

“You have won the victory, not them,” she said, looking up at him. “With Mongol tactics and Mongol courage.” Nowaki felt his body tighten. Oh, no. She’d made the mistake again and called him a Mongol. What was it he had said he was? Foreign words were very hard to remember. Na-lu-something. She was afraid she had spoiled everything by making him angry. She feigned pain and leaned more heavily against him. Her show of distress seemed to work, for when he spoke again, he didn’t sound angry.

“The victory is Lord Hironobu’s,” Go said, holding her a little more firmly as she pretended to weaken.

“Lord Hironobu is a baby of six,” she said, “barely big enough to go to the toilet alone without falling in.”

Go laughed. “Nevertheless, the victory is his. And he won’t be six forever. You would be wise to think of him in a different light. Soon he will be a man as well as a lord, and he will seek a worthy bride. He has been favored by a great omen carried to him on the wings of many birds.”

“I don’t believe in omens,” Nowaki said. “Do you?”

Lightning crackled, followed by long moments of eerie silence.

A wave of brightness rolled overhead.

Daylight shadows played across the courtyard, then faded back into a darkness that seemed to rush in their direction.

At last, the sky broke apart and the gigantic sound of collapsing celestial mountains cascaded toward them from above.

Within weeks after Lady Nowaki’s return home from Hironobu’s celebration, it became apparent that she was with child. Though she had always been a quiet and obedient daughter, she now adamantly refused to name the child’s father, knowing that her father and brothers would surely kill him. When they threatened to abort the child, she promised to kill herself if they did. Lord Bandan executed the girl’s nursemaid, who should have exercised more careful supervision. Still, she refused to speak. He executed two of his own men, whom he suspected of excessive fondness for his daughter. Still, Lady Nowaki remained silent.

“I am at my wit’s end,” Lord Bandan said.

During this crisis with his daughter, he had taken to visiting Cloud of Sparrows Castle and seeking Lady Kiyomi’s advice. Though he was only a little older than she, he had spent so much of his life in military campaigns that in appearance and behavior he seemed like a grizzled old warrior of an earlier generation. His interest in women had extended only as far as the conception, birth, and nurturing of potential heirs, and thus he knew next to nothing about women beyond their basic anatomical structure. His own daughter’s sudden wayward behavior and subsequent stubbornness baffled him completely. The girl’s mother had died during childbirth, and there was no woman in his own castle he trusted enough to speak with so openly.

“Why won’t she just tell me who the father is? That’s all I want. Is that too much for me to ask?”

Lady Kiyomi said, “What will you do if she tells you?”

Lord Bandan slammed the table with his fist, causing the maids to jump forward to keep the teacups from bouncing off and spilling their contents onto the mats.

“I’ll kill him,” he growled, “and not slowly.”

She covered her mouth with her sleeve and laughed.

“Have I made a joke?” Confusion wrinkled his brow. “I didn’t intend to.”

“Lord Bandan, do you really expect a young girl to reveal her lover’s identity to her father so he can then torture him to death? Her child would be orphaned before it’s born.”

“But he has dishonored us all, whoever he is.”

“Lady Nowaki is not thinking of honor. She is thinking of love. All you have done with your anger and your threats is to prevent the young man from coming forward and seeking your belated blessings.”

“You know that he’s a young man?”

“I know nothing at all. But your daughter is only fourteen. It is doubtful she would have fallen in love with anyone so very much older.” Lady Kiyomi’s expression darkened. “I hope he was not one of the two samurai you executed.”

“He wasn’t. She cried when I showed her their heads, but not as much as she would have cried if he had been one of them.”

Lady Kiyomi blinked. “You showed her their heads?”

“Yes, to prove I did what I said. Otherwise, she might have thought I was bluffing.”

“Lord Bandan, no one who knows you would ever suspect you of bluffing. It was quite unnecessary to provide such gruesome proof.”

“She’s not going to tell me, is she?”

“No, she’s not.”

“Then what should I do? The shame will be unendurable. My daughter having a child whose father is unknown to me. By all the gods and Buddhas, what wrongs did I commit in past lives to deserve such punishment? I could build a temple and have prayers said night and day, for all time. I can’t think of much else that’s left to do.”

“That’s a possible solution,” Lady Kiyomi said.

Now Lord Bandan laughed. “This time I
was
joking. I am a warrior, not a priest. I don’t beg heaven for favors. I solve my problems with my own hands. I’ll think of something.”

“You already have. Build a temple.”

Lord Bandan scowled. “If the gods failed to preserve her virtue then, they are not likely to deliver up the culprit to me now, whether I build one temple or ten.”

“Build a temple, not for yourself,” Lady Kiyomi said, “but for Lady Nowaki. Let her enter into retreat there for, say, two years. She can have the child away from gossips, have time to regain her emotional equilibrium, and adjust to the demands of motherhood. And when she returns, she will no longer be such an object of curiosity and spiteful speculation. By that time, it is likely that the father will have made himself known, most likely by flight, thanks to your threats of torture and death. You will then—”

“—hunt him down like the dog he is and eviscerate him!” Lord Bandan proclaimed.

“—forgive him and her for their youthful transgression in full understanding of the romantic impetuosity of the young—”

“Forgive him? Never!”

“—and realizing further that only by welcoming the father into your family,” Lady Kiyomi said firmly, “can embarrassment and scandal finally be left behind.”

Lord Bandan had already opened his mouth to utter further protests, but stopped before any words came out. He closed his mouth and bowed.

“You are right, Lady Kiyomi. That is the only way to proceed. Thank you for so wisely guiding this ignorant warrior. I already know of a suitable site. My cousin, Lord Fumio, rules a domain in the north that will be suitable for our purposes.”

That winter, Lady Kiyomi began to have strange dreams. The strangest aspect of them was that she was never able to remember anything except the stunningly beautiful young woman who appeared in every one, and the way she spoke to Lady Kiyomi. She called her “Lady Mother.” That was how women addressed their mothers-in-law. Convinced that she was dreaming of Hironobu’s future bride, Lady Kiyomi began examining the face of every little girl she saw in an effort to recognize the woman in her dreams. Though the dreams continued, she never remembered anything more of them, no matter how hard she tried. And though she searched for the woman in every girl she saw, she did not find her.

The following spring, several weeks before his seventh birthday, Lord Hironobu won a second great victory, this time on the slopes of Mount Tosa. At the same time, in the neighboring domain, Lady Nowaki gave birth to a daughter. The child was unusually quiet — so quiet, few expected her to survive. Though she was given a name befitting her noble status, everyone called her Shizuka — Quiet.

She did not die, and she was not quiet for long. In her second week of life, she began to scream and weep almost ceaselessly. She stopped only in exhaustion, or to sleep fitfully, or to suckle with a fierce desperation, and then not for long. She was an infant, and infants cannot see, yet what she could not see terrified her. Her eyes flitted in panic in every direction.

She screamed.

She would not die and she would not stop screaming.

Now she was called Shizuka, sometimes out of hope, always out of despair, and more and more often as a curse.

The next year, when Lady Kiyomi visited Mushindo Abbey, she had occasion to contemplate the recent past. The four seasons just completed had spanned the strangest, most turbulent year of her life. She understood now why people sometimes abruptly became world-leavers and entered a monastic life. If she had such an inclination, then this would be a good place for it. It was too far from home to make visitations easy, but not so far as to make them impossible. This meant that friends and relatives from the old life would not constantly appear to weaken one’s dedication to holy solitude, but would also not be cut off entirely. That would not be compassionate. Leaving the world was often harder for those left behind than for those who did the leaving.