Autumn Bridge (31 page)

He was one of Lord Genji’s two most trusted retainers, second-in-command of the clan army, a man who had on several occasions risked his own life to defend Genji’s. The son of a samurai of humble origins, he had been elevated by Genji to the rank of landed lord. No one had honored him more than Genji. No one was more deserving of his faithful allegiance, his gratitude, his reverence. And Taro was turning his back on him to serve Lord Saemon, a man perhaps even more detestable than Lord Saemon’s late father, Kawakami the Sticky Eye, who had been the Shogun’s secret-police commander.

The Sticky Eye had received his just reward — decapitation — in a battle at this very place. Taro and Emily had both been among the handful of survivors at Lord Genji’s side.
Mushindo veteran
. He had heard the words spoken in awe many times over the years, and it had always made him proud. In a few moments, the words would have such different meaning. Better he had died then in honor. Though his cause was just, he knew the anguish of betrayal would make every one of his remaining days joyless, be they many or few.

Lady Hanako, whom he was also betraying, had lost her left arm in the battle defending her husband, Hidé, Taro’s best friend, now a lord in his own right and the senior general of the clan. He hoped there would be no fatal consequences in this case. He intended Hanako no harm. He would only hold her hostage until he could convince Hidé to join him. Surely even someone as stubborn and as blindly loyal as Hidé would accept the necessity and righteousness of these actions once he was forced to stop and consider them.

He stood in the shadows, in the dense foliage, with the light coming from the trees behind him. The angle of the sun was such that anyone looking in his direction would have their vision significantly impaired. Emily strolled leisurely toward a stand of pines. When she reached it, she would be approximately fifty arrow-lengths away. Even an archer as mediocre as himself could hit such a slow-moving target at that range. A rifle would be surer, but it couldn’t be used, for practical and political reasons. The noise and smoke would mark his position too clearly, in the first instance. In the second, the use of bow and arrow — traditional weapons having nothing to do with the outsiders — made a point of its own.

Emily’s death would have several immediate good results. It would trigger a violent response by the outsider nations, and if that response was like their previous ones, it would be ill-focused and excessive, increasing already feverish anti-foreign sentiment. It would also draw attention to Lord Genji’s inappropriate friendship with an outsider woman, further weakening his position, which was not strong to begin with. Then the required execution of the two failed bodyguards would aggravate the divided loyalties of the clan’s samurai, increasing the likelihood that fewer would remain loyal to Lord Genji as the crisis deepened. Finally, the unknown nature of the assailant, who would escape unseen, would enhance fear and suspicion, and fearful, suspicious people tended to make more mistakes than those who were not.

The scene was just as he had envisioned it. The two guards were too busy chatting to see him. Emily was walking so slowly, motion did not present any difficulty. Taro drew his bow. The bowstring in his fingers was on the verge of release when Emily stopped and began talking in her badly accented Japanese. Who was there? He could not fire without knowing. The person was well back in the trees because, try as he might, he caught sight of no one.

The moment had passed. He knew better than to press forward without auspicious circumstances. Another opportunity would come. He put the bow down in the brush and stepped out toward Emily. Though he was soon nearly at her shoulder, he still did not see anyone else. She appeared to be exchanging pleasantries with a pine tree.

“Lady Emily,” Taro said. “Is everything in order?”

Apparently everything was not, for after a few innocuous words about a pair of old foundation stones half hidden in the grass, Emily suddenly collapsed, unconscious. Wasn’t it bad enough that his lord had such a close friendship with an outsider woman? Did it have to be with one who was also prone to hallucinations and falling fits? It was yet another indication to Taro that he had made the right decision, difficult and rife with evil though it was. He fully accepted responsibility for the actions to which he had committed himself. At the same time, was it not undeniable that Lord Genji had made it impossible to do otherwise?

Last month, at a meeting with Hidé and Taro, Lord Genji had finally gone too far.

“All our samurai now have guns,” Genji said. “Soon, every troop will also have cannons on wheels that can go anywhere they go.”

“Yes, lord,” Hidé said, “and not many of them are happy about it.”

“About the cannons?” Genji asked.

“The guns as well, my lord.”

“They are not happy with the guns?” Genji seemed surprised. “Surely they are not expecting to fight future wars with swords?”

Hidé said, “It is not a practical matter. They do not believe guns properly express the spirit of samurai.”

“They can express their spirit as much as they wish,” Genji said, “but on the battlefield, spiritual expression is of little consequence without physical might.”

Taro said, “There is a combat aspect as well, my lord. The men point to the battle at Mushindo Monastery as an example of the continuing value of the sword.”

“How so? The outcome was determined by guns. What did swords do except demonstrate their complete inefficacy?”

“When the enemy stormed our position,” Taro said, “we fought them with our swords, and we defeated them.”

“Your memory seems to have deserted you entirely. Do you recall burrowing into the gory mud to escape the bullets? Do you remember hiding behind the spilled guts of our horses?”

Hidé said, “Taro is not entirely wrong, lord.”

“I must have been in a different battle. Please describe yours.”

“All the thousands of bullets they fired did not kill us,” Hidé said. “In the end, they had to come at us with swords.”

“You were there, yet you can mouth such nonsense? You are demonstrating precisely why the time of the samurai has passed away. It is not so much the swords in your sash that are the problem, but the swords in your heads.”

“Samurai have protected Japan for a thousand years,” Taro said.

“I would say ravaged, not protected.”

“Lord,” Taro said, “that is a poor jest.”

“A jest? Hardly. For a thousand years, we have excelled at slaughtering and enslaving those who are supposed to be in our care. If the murdered dead could stand alongside their slayers, who would be more numerous?”

“We have fought each other,” Taro said. “We have not waged war on peasants.”

“Oh, really? For every samurai who has fallen in battle, how many peasants have been trampled, starved, speared, beheaded, or simply worked to death? Five? Ten? More likely a hundred, or two hundred. We have done all the sword-wielding. They have done most of the dying.”

“That is the fate of peasants,” Hidé said. “They must accept theirs as we accept ours.”

“I wonder. The French peasants did not. They rose up and beheaded their nobles.” Genji smiled as if enjoying the thought.

“That could not happen here,” Taro said. “We are a civilized nation. Even our peasants are of a higher order. They would not even think of it.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. That’s rather sad in a way, isn’t it?”

“It is a matter for pride rather than sorrow,” Taro said.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Instead of waiting for our own Reign of Terror, it would be wise of us to innovate boldly and simply abolish ourselves, our domains, and the entire ancient order of lords and retainers.”

“Lord!” Hidé and Taro exclaimed in unison.

Genji laughed. “There’s an outsider expression: ‘Food for thought.’ Less worry and more nourishment would serve the both of you better.”

His words were poison, not nourishment. He had laughed, but Taro knew Genji meant what he said.

Now, when he looked back, Taro knew that was the very moment when he ceased being Lord Genji’s loyal vassal.

His first attempt at killing Emily had failed. His second would not.

“Are you sure you are well enough to sit up?” Hanako asked.

“Quite,” Emily said. Now that she was back in the restored abbot’s hut, she felt rather silly at having fainted that way. There had been no reason for such a reaction. Just because the beautiful young woman she had seen in the woods was not one of those who lived at the temple didn’t mean she had seen a ghost. The woman could have been from the village, though she had seemed far too well-dressed for a peasant. Perhaps she had been a passerby, temporarily separated from the rest of her company.

“Thank you.” Emily took the tea Hanako offered. “As I was saying, she was unusually beautiful,” Emily said. “Her eyes were particularly striking. They were more Western than Oriental. I suppose that is not all that remarkable. We are all human, after all, and not so very different.”

“You said her hair was very long,” Hanako said, “reaching all the way to the ground.”

“Yes, so far as I could tell. She was in shadow and I was in sunlight. It was hard to see her.”

“She appeared—” Hanako searched for the right word. “She appeared dim?”

“Not dim, exactly. Shadows often play tricks on the eyes. And the pattern of her kimono made it even more difficult.”

“The pattern of her kimono?”

“Yes.” Emily appreciated Hanako’s concern for her welfare. Still, the direction of her questioning and the detail into which she went were a trifle odd. “The pattern was very similar to the foliage in which she stood. The lack of contrast made her fade into the background rather easily.”

Hanako grew pale. Her eyes lost their focus, and her body wavered. For a moment, Emily thought Hanako, too, was about to faint. She did not, though she put her hand on the floor in front of her to keep herself from falling.

“What is it?” Emily said.

Hanako did not answer right away. She didn’t know what to say. Was it better for Emily to know or not? She was convinced Emily had seen Lady Shizuka, the princess witch who had either saved the clan in its earliest days, or laid a curse upon it that continued to the present. Or perhaps both. The large eyes, the long hair, the transparency of her person — for that is what Emily mistook for the pattern of her kimono. She was seeing through her. It had happened exactly as the scrolls had predicted — at Mushindo Abbey, in the old cell that had been her home in her childhood. Then perhaps all the other predictions in them were also true.

Only those of Okumichi blood ever saw Lady Shizuka. If Emily had seen her, then there was only one possibility, unlikely though it seemed.

“The day Lady Heiko left,” Hanako said. “Six years ago.”

“I remember it well,” Emily said. It had been the last time she had seen Heiko and Matthew Stark. Their ship had sailed for California on the outgoing tide.

“Lady Heiko told me something I did not believe.” Hanako hesitated. “I believe it now.”

It was New Year’s Day by the Japanese calendar, the first new moon after the winter solstice, in the sixteenth year of the Emperor Komei. Heiko doubted she would ever see another in her homeland.