The Harsh Cry of the Heron (27 page)

‘Then we will go
first to Akashi,’ Akio said.

As a child Hisao’s
father had taught him some of the travelling theatre skills of the Kikuta - playing
the drum, juggling, singing the ancient ballads that country people love, of
old wars, feuds, betrayals and acts of revenge -that they had always used in
their journeys across the Three Countries. In the week after Kazuo’s return
Akio started juggling training again; a large supply of straw sandals was
prepared, dried persimmons and chestnuts were collected and packed, amulets
taken out and dusted off, weapons sharpened.

Hisao was not a
gifted performer: he was too shy and did not enjoy attracting attention, but
Akio’s combination of blows and caresses had made him skilful enough. He knew
all the juggling routines and rarely made a mistake, just as he knew all the
words to the songs, though people complained he mumbled and was hard to hear.
The idea of travelling filled him with both excitement and trepidation. He
looked forward to being on the road, leaving the village, seeing new things,
but he was less enthusiastic about performing and uneasy about leaving his
grandfather’s grave.

Gosaburo had received
Kazuo’s news with joy, and questioned him closely. He did not speak directly to
Akio at the time, but the night before their departure, when Hisao was
preparing for sleep, he came to the door of the room and asked Akio if he might
speak privately to him.

Akio was half
undressed, and Hisao could see his face scowl in the dim lamplight, but he made
a slight gesture with his head and Gosaburo stepped into the room, slid the
door shut and knelt nervously on the matting.

‘Nephew,’ he said, as
though trying to assert some authority of age. ‘The time has surely come for us
to negotiate with the Otori. The Three Countries are growing rich and
prosperous while we skulk here in the mountains with barely enough to feed
ourselves and the prospect of another freezing winter ahead. We could be
flourishing too: our influence could be extending with our trade. Call off the
blood feud.’

Akio said, ‘Never.’

Gosaburo took a deep
breath. ‘I am going to return to Matsue. I will leave in the morning.’

‘No one leaves the Kikuta
family,’ Akio reminded him, his voice expressionless.

‘I am rotting away
here. We all are. Otori has spared the lives of my children. Let us accept his
offer of truce. I will still be loyal to you. I’ll work for you in Matsue as I
always did, provide funds, keep records . . .’

‘Once Takeo - and
Taku too - are dead, we will talk about truce,’ Akio replied. ‘Now get out. I
am tired, and your presence is repulsive to me.’

As soon as Gosaburo
left, Akio doused the lamp. Hisao already lay on the mattress: the night was
mild and he had not pulled the cover over him. Little fragments of light danced
behind his eyelids. He thought briefly about his cousins and wondered how they
would die in Inuyama, but mostly he was listening to Akio’s movements, every
cell, it seemed, aware, with a mixture of dread and arousal, physical longing
for affection and an only half-acknowledged sense of shame.

Akio’s anger made him
rough and hasty. Hisao bit back any sound, conscious of the latent violence and
afraid of provoking it against himself. Yet the act brought some fleeting
release. Akio’s voice was almost gentle when he told the boy to sleep, not to
get up, no matter what he heard, and Hisao felt the brief moment of tenderness
that he craved as his father caressed his hair, the back of his neck. After
Akio left the room Hisao buried himself under the quilt and tried to close his
ears. There were a few muted sounds, someone gasping and struggling; a heavy
thump, a dragging on boards, then on earth.

I am asleep, he told
himself, over and again, until suddenly, before Akio returned, he had fallen
into a sleep as deep and dreamless as death.

The next morning
Gosaburo’s body lay slumped in the laneway. He had been garrotted in the way of
the Tribe. No one even dared mourn him.

‘No one leaves the
Kikuta and goes unpunished,’ Akio said to Hisao as they prepared to depart. ‘Remember
that. Both Takeo and his father dared to leave the Tribe. Isamu was executed
for it, and Takeo will be too.’

Akashi had sprung
from the years of conflict and confusion, when merchants had profited from the
needs of warriors for provisions and weapons: once they had become rich they
saw no reason to lose their wealth to the depredations of these same warriors,
and had banded together to protect their goods and their trade. The city was
surrounded by deep moats, and each of its ten bridges was guarded by soldiers
from its own army. It had several great temples that protected and encouraged
trade, both in the material and the spiritual realm.

As warlords rose to
power they sought beautiful objects and clothes, works of art and other
luxuries from Shin and beyond, and these the merchants of the free port gladly
supplied. The Tribe families had once been more powerful merchants than any
within the city, but the increasing prosperity of the Three Countries and the
alliance with the Otori had led many of the Muto to move to Hofu, and even the
remaining Kikuta had become more interested in trade and profit, during Akio’s
self- imposed isolation in the mountains, than in espionage and assassination.

‘Those days are past,’
Jizaemon, the owner of a busy importing business, told Akio after welcoming him
somewhat less than wholeheartedly. ‘We must move with the times. We can be more
successful and exercise more control over events by supplying arms and other
necessities of life, by lending money. Let’s by all means encourage the
preparation of war, while with luck avoiding its outbreak.’

Hisao thought his
father would react with the same violence as he had against Gosaburo, and he
felt sorry. He did not want Jizaemon to die before he had shown Hisao some of
the treasures he had acquired, mechanical gadgets that measured the hours,
glass bottles and drinking vessels, mirrors and delicious new foods - sweet and
spicy, liquorice and sugar: words he had never heard before.

The journey had been
tedious. Neither Akio nor Kazuo were young any more, and their performance as
actors lacked fire. Their songs were old-fashioned and no longer popular. Their
reception on the road had been grudging, and in one village hostile: no one
wanted to give them lodging and they had been forced to walk all night.

Hisao studied his
father closely now, without appearing to, and saw that he was old: in the
hidden village Akio had an innate power as the undisputed Master of the Kikuta
family, feared and respected by everyone; here, in his old, faded clothes, he
looked like a nobody. Hisao felt a stab of pity, and then tried to extinguish
it, as the pity, as always, opened him up to the voices of the dead. The
familiar headache began: half the world slipped into mist; the woman was
whispering, but he was not going to listen to her.

‘Well, maybe you’re
right,’ he heard Akio say, as if from a distance. ‘But surely war cannot be
avoided for ever. We had heard of Otori’s messengers to the Emperor.’

‘Yes, you only missed
them by a few weeks; I’ve never seen such a lavish procession. Otori must be
truly rich, and more than that, gifted with taste and refinement: they say that
is his wife’s influence—’

‘And the Emperor has
a new general?’ Akio cut short the merchant’s enthusiasm.

‘Indeed, and what’s
more, cousin, the general has new weapons - or very soon will have. They say
that’s why Lord Otori is seeking the Emperor’s favour.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘For years the Otori
have kept a strict embargo on firearms. But recently the embargo was broken and
firearms were smuggled out of Hofu - it is said with the direct help of Arai
Zenko! You know Terada Fumio?’

Akio nodded.

‘Well, Fumio arrived
two days after the arms to try to get them back. He was furious; first he
offered large sums of money, then he threatened to come back with a fleet and
burn the city if they weren’t returned. But it was too late: they were already
on their way to Saga. And I can’t tell you what it’s done for the price of iron
and nitre. Sky high, cousin, sky high!’

Jizaemon poured
another cup of wine and urged them to drink with him.

‘No one cares about
Terada’s threats.’ He chuckled. ‘He’s nothing but a pirate. He’s smuggled far
worse himself before now. And Lord Otori will never attack the free city, not
while he needs his own merchants to feed and equip his army.’

Hisao wondered at
Akio’s lack of response. His father simply drank deeply, and nodded in
agreement at everything Jizaemon said, though his scowl deepened and his face
grew darker.

Hisao woke in the
night to hear his father whispering to Kazuo. He felt his whole body grow
tense, and half expected to hear again the dull sounds of murder, but the two
men were talking about something else: about Arai Zenko, who had allowed
firearms to escape the Otori net.

Hisao knew of Zenko’s
history: that he was the older son of Muto Shizuka, and Kenji’s great-nephew,
some sort of cousin to himself. Zenko was the only member of the Muto family
not execrated by the Kikuta: he had not been involved in Kotaro’s death, and
was rumoured to be not completely loyal to Takeo, despite being his
brother-in-law. It was suspected that he blamed Takeo for his father’s death,
and even nursed a secret desire for revenge.

‘Zenko is both
powerful and ambitious,’ Kazuo whispered. ‘If he is seeking to ingratiate
himself with Lord Saga, he must be preparing to move against the Dog.’

‘It’s a perfect time
to approach Zenko,’ Akio murmured. ‘Takeo is looking to threats from the East:
if Zenko attacks from the West he will be caught between them.’

‘I feel Zenko will
welcome an approach from you,’ Kazuo replied. ‘And, of course, since Muto Kenji’s
death, Zenko must be the next Master of the Muto family. What better time to go
to the Muto to mend the rift in the Tribe, to bring the families back together?’

Jizaemon, glad
perhaps to get rid of his visitors, provided them with letters of passage and
fitted them out with the clothes and other appurtenances of merchants. He
arranged for them to travel on one of his guild’s ships, and within a few days
they set sail for Kumamoto by way of Hofu, taking advantage of the fine, calm
weather of late autumn.

Maya did not travel
as the daughter of Lord Otori, but in her other fashion, disguised in the Tribe
way. She was younger sister to Sada, and they were going to Maruyama to see
their relatives there and find work after the death of their parents. Maya
liked playing the part of this orphaned child, and it gratified her to imagine
her parents dead, for she was still angry with them, especially with her
mother, and deeply wounded by their preference for Sunaomi. Maya had seen
Sunaomi reduced to a snivelling child by what he thought was a ghost - in
reality an unfinished statue of the all-merciful Kannon. She despised his fear
all the more, for it was trivial compared with what she had seen that same
starless night, the third night of the Festival of the Dead.

It had been easy
enough to follow Sunaomi using ordinary Tribe skills, but when she came to the
beach something about the night and the smouldering fires, the intensity and
grief of the festival touched her deeply, and the cat’s voice spoke inside her,
saying, ‘Look what I can see!’ •

At first it was like
a game: the sudden clarity of the dark scene, her huge pupils taking in every
movement, the scuttling of small creatures and night insects, the quiver of
leaves, the drops of spray borne by the breeze. Then her body softened and
stretched into the cat’s, and she became aware that the beach and the pine
grove were full of phantoms.

She saw them with the
cat’s vision, their faces grey, their robes white, their pale limbs floating
above the ground. The dead turned their gaze towards her and the cat responded
to them, knowing all their bitter regrets, their unending grudges, their
unfulfilled desires.

Maya cried out in
shock; the cat yowled. She struggled to return to her own familiar flesh; the
cat’s claws scrabbled on the black shingle at the sand’s edge: it leaped into
the trees around the house. The spirits followed her, pressing round her, their
touch icy on her pelt. She heard their voices like the rustling of leaves in
the autumn wind, full of sorrow and hunger.

‘Where is our master?
Take us to him. We are waiting for him.’

Their words filled her
with terror, though she did not understand them, as in a nightmare when a
single obscure sentence chills the sleeper to the bone. She heard the snap of
the branch breaking, and saw a man come out of the half-demolished house with a
lamp in his hand. The dead retreated from the light, and it made her pupils
narrow so that she could no longer see them clearly. But she heard Sunaomi
scream, and heard the trickle of water as he pissed himself. Her contempt for
his fear helped her master her own, enough to retreat into the shrubs and
return unseen to the castle. She could not remember at what point the cat had
left her and she had become Maya again, just as it was not clear to her what
had made the cat shape manifest itself. But she could not rid herself of the
memory of the cat’s ghost vision and the hollow voices of the dead.