The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (66 page)

He knew that she had been about to ask to go with them. The silence in the room became strained. Hanshiro understood it. He knew he had no place here. Even Lady Asano, for all her determination and skill and noble blood, had no part in this.

For almost two years these men had lived only for this night. They had abandoned their families and destroyed their good names. They were risking the ignominious death of criminals and perhaps subjecting their families to the same fate. They had given up everything to keep faith with their honor. In the process, they had become a unit with a single mind and arm and purpose. They could admit no one else.

Oishi lifted his right leg from under him and by dropping it forward, shifting his weight, lifting the other, and pivoting, he moved along the mat. In his full black
hakama
he seemed to glide across the floor until, almost knee to knee with Cat, he put his legs under him and settled back on his ankles.

‘ ‘Whether we find our enemy tonight or not,” he said gently, “all who embark on this will die as a result of it.”

“I’m not afraid to die,
sensei.”

“I would expect no less of you, my lady. But true courage is in living when it is time to live and dying when it is time to die. In your veins alone flows the blood of your father. If you die before bearing an heir, your father truly dies. While you live, his spirit lives. Future generations depend on you.” Oishi paused to give Cat time to think about his words.

“For me there will be no moment like this one,
sensei.”
Cat’s grief threatened to overwhelm her, so she retreated behind the barrier of decorum. “None of us can hope to live forever,” she said. “But your names and your devotion will live in the hearts of those to come.” She bowed low. “On behalf of my mother I thank you. I will pray for your success.”

“We are grateful, my lady, that Amida of Immeasurable Light has spared us to see this night. And to see you before we follow our liege on the dark path.” Almost as though he were talking to himself, Oishi quoted Li Po. “ ‘Heaven and earth,’ the poets say, ‘are but a roadside inn for Time, a traveler on a journey through the ages, and our fleeting lives are but phantoms in Time’s dreams.’ “

Oishi was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice for the first time betrayed his weariness. “Please,
hime,
when you see your mother, tell her I deeply regret the sorrow my actions must have caused her. Tell her she has always been in my thoughts.”

“ I will,
sensei
.” Cat knew the time had come for her to go.

Hanshiro held a brief, whispered conference with Oishi, then he and Cat left the room. As they walked down the quiet corridor, the voices of the men faded behind them.
As though but phantoms in Time’s dream,
Cat thought.

She and Hanshiro tied on their sandals at the stone stoop of the veranda and walked out into the night. The temple bell tolled five times, marking the hour of the Dog. They had three long hours until the watch of the Tiger and the raid on Kira’s mansion.

“What did
sensei
say to you?” Cat asked.

“I volunteered to perform a service.”

Cat was about to ask what service when she saw Viper and his partner. They were standing next to a battered open wickerwork
kago,
and though they were suitably solemn, the expression in their eyes was triumphant.

Suddenly Cat was exhausted. The temple bell had stopped ringing, but the sound continued to reverberate in her skull. The strain of speaking with her father’s men for the last time had used up the strength that had brought her through the long ordeal of the trip. When Hanshiro helped her into the basket, he was alarmed at how cold her hands were. She settled back against the worn cushions and closed her eyes. Viper draped a ragged quilt over the
kago
to keep out the worst of the wind.

“The Circle Inn.” Hanshiro’s voice seemed faraway to her. “HonjM-chMnai, HonjM ward.”

Cat imagined she was a snowflake, whirling on a high wind before gently dissolving into nothingness.

A DREAM, AN ILLUSION, A BUBBLE

The seven-foot scroll hanging in the
tokonoma
contained a single ideogram as long as Hanshiro’s arm. At the serifs of its bold black strokes, splatters of ink arced out onto the white paper, testimony to the calligrapher’s vigor. The character spelled “DREAM,” the single word the priest and swordsman Takuan was to have written just before he died.

Hanshiro lay on his side with his arm across Cat’s waist and studied the scroll by the dim light of the night lantern. As he stared at it, the ideogram seemed to separate from the soft rice paper and brocade of the scroll and float in the clouds of incense from the bronze pot nearby. It was a universe in itself. Hanshiro knew that each angle of the strokes, each irregularity left by the calligrapher’s brush, had meaning, if he could only interpret it.

The midnight tolling of a distant temple bell told him the time had come to get up. He lay still a few moments longer, breathing in rhythm with Cat and savoring the feel of her body pressed against him. As he lifted his arm off her and eased away, he tucked the quilt around her bare back so the cold air wouldn’t waken her.

His good clothes and the ones Cat had worn as his disciple were draped on racks. Fragrant smoke drifted up from the incense pot under them. Hanshiro’s swords, helmet, long-bow, and quiver of arrows and Cat’s
naginata
rested on racks in front of the
tokonoma.

To retrieve his helmet and bow, Hanshiro had detoured by the tenement where he rented a tiny room. Viper and Cold Rice had waited in the street, standing guard over their borrowed
kago
and its sleeping occupant while Hanshiro hurried inside. He had been relieved that Cat had been asleep and didn’t see the shabby neighborhood where he lived.

Then they had trotted through the throngs on the tall arc of the Ryogoku Bridge. The Sumida River below had been crowded with boatloads of partygoers eating and drinking and enjoying the moonlight on the snowy landscape. The boat’s strings of lanterns spangled the night. The aroma of broiling eel and the sounds of hand drums and
samisens
and laughter drifted upward.

They had made their way through the busy, brightly lit district of stores and
sake
shops and riverfront restaurants around the bridge. They had passed the gate into HonjM ward and walked down the quiet, residential streets to the Circle Inn. Hanshiro had carried Cat, still sleeping, through the small side door in the front gate.

Now it was time for him to prepare for the night ahead.

He ignored the new clothes he had bought when he intended to pledge his sword to Lady Asano’s cause. Instead he put on his old
hakama
and jacket and wadded coat. He wrote a message for Cat should she wake up, although that didn’t seem likely. She had been sleeping so soundly when they arrived, he had felt as though he were carrying a body from which the spirit had fled. She had barely awakened long enough to bathe.

Hanshiro settled his swords precisely in his sash. When he left, his stockinged feet made no noise on the boards of the corridor.

Viper was waiting for him outside. He was flanked by a merry band of carpenters and roofers, plasterers and stonemasons. They appeared to have been celebrating early the arrival of the New Year.

At Spring Hill Temple Hanshiro had realized that Viper was determined to help Cat whether she wanted him to or not. So he wasn’t surprised to see that while he and Cat had been sleeping Viper had been enlisting the aid of men from HonjM ward’s
otokodate,
the society of “brave men.” Hanshiro, however, thought of them by the less flattering name of
machiyakko,
town underlings. For Hanshiro, an alliance with Viper and his friends was as cautious as it was temporary.

Many of the
shMgun’s
bannermen entertained themselves by roaming about the city and brutalizing merchants and laborers. For protection, some of the merchants funded societies formed by the local artisans and guild bosses. Sometimes the
otokodate
also fought with low-ranking
samurai
and
rMnin,
many of whom now made their living by theft and extortion.

To
otokodate,
a
rMnin
like Hanshiro was a potential enemy. And to those of the
samurai
class, common street brawlers like Viper and his friends were beneath contempt. But the
otokodate
were skilled with a variety of weapons, many fashioned from the tools of their trade. They asked no member about his past, which was just as well, since many were gamblers and men with stained histories.

The
otokodate
claimed that they were sworn to help the downtrodden. Hanshiro, however, had often found them to be disposed to violence for its own sake and to be dishonest when it profited them. He also knew that among the various leaders of
otokodate,
Chubei of HonjM was one of the most powerful.

There must have been thirty or forty of Chubei’s men here now. Their small topknots were fashionably askew, and their sidelocks stood out in disorderly fringes from their florid faces. The reinforced linings of their collars were stained, their cuffs frayed, and their jackets much mended and patched. A few carried ladders or used their long rules as walking sticks. Others had stuck their hands into the fronts of their jackets to warm them. Most carried their tools—mallets and planes, chisels and adzes—dangling from their sashes.

“Propitious dreams,” they shouted as they bowed to Viper and Hanshiro. They went off discussing where they could buy
sake
and women at this hour. Their straw sandals squeaked in the snow. They left a wake of laughter in the quiet of the street.

Hanshiro turned to Viper. He knew he would have to be diplomatic in rejecting the
kago
man’s help and that of his friends. They were an unpredictable lot. Insulting them would surely cause trouble for Cat and Oishi and his men.

“Regulations forbid that the ‘chastisement of an enemy be attended with riot,’ ” he said.

“Everything will be done with discretion, Your Honor.” Viper gave his sly, ingenuous smile. He was a bit more circumspect with Hanshiro than with Lady Asano, but not much.

“Good evening.” The man who joined them from a side street was dressed in the dark blue trousers and tight-sleeved wadded jacket of an artisan.

He carried a carpenter’s long-handled adze with a mattock-shaped steel blade. His short legs were bowed, but his chest was round and solid as a rice bale. He had big, callused hands, and his arms strained the black canvas arm guards. His bushy brows almost met at the concave bridge of his nose. A shaggy mustache sprouted from under the lumpy end of that nose like rank grass from under a boulder.

“Good evening,” he said.

Hanshiro nodded in reply to Chubei’s bow. He had met the boss once, many years ago, while intervening for a young wastrel in debt to a gambling boss in HonjM.

“So, Tosa, tonight you’re not here to bargain for the balls of a young dandy.”

“No.” Hanshiro was impressed with Chubei’s memory. The affair had happened long ago.

“It grieves me to observe,” Chubei said with a smile, “that sons are quite inferior to their fathers these days and that grandsons rarely offer hope for improvement.”

“Just so,” Hanshiro said politely. “As for what brings me to HonjM, Viper and I were just discussing the regulations concerning the proper conduct of a vendetta.”

“Ah, yes. The dog
shMgun’s
regulations.” Chubei’s grin widened. “ ‘The chastisement of an enemy may not be attended with riot.’ ” He spoke in a low voice, but it carried in the silent street. From somewhere behind a nearby wall a dog began barking.

“Is there a place we can talk in private?” Hanshiro asked.

“Certainly.”

Chubei lit a lantern and led Viper and Hanshiro through the narrow back streets to the large shed, open on two sides, that sheltered his cluttered workshop. Hanshiro sat on the rough-hewn surface of a huge cypress log that was being dressed as a beam. Viper and Chubei sat cross-legged among the fragrant curls of wood that the apprentices’ adzes had shaved off the log. Around them were stacked the beams and posts of the house Chubei had been engaged to build.

“This is no ordinary street brawl,” Hanshiro said. “It involves men of great honor who are determined to right an infamous wrong.”

“I’m not a fool, Tosa.” Chubei’s voice was still cordial, to show he meant no real offense. But he was no longer smiling. “I know who is involved.”

“Who else knows?”

Chubei chuckled. “Viper told only me, but everyone suspects. Edo has been waiting two years for this night.”

“Then the object of the endeavor might suspect, too.”

“No more than usual. For two years Kira’s been as suspicious as a cat with its head in a bag. He rarely peeks out from behind his walls.” Chubei stroked his mustache lovingly. “My wife’s cousin is a rice dealer. He says the food bills for Kira’s extra bodyguards are ruinous. He’s only recently sent some of Uesugi’s bowmen back to Azabu, probably so his son can feed them for a while.”

“If Kira had done the honorable thing and opened his belly,” Viper said, “or even shaved his head in penance and taken holy orders, folk might have felt more kindly toward him.”

“It’s more important to shave the heart than to shave the head,” Chubei said. “And Kira’s heart is as hard as ever. Many’s the man, even among us wretched Edokko, who would like to see him pay.”

“This isn’t a matter for commoners.” Hanshiro looked hard at Chubei. He had to make this very clear. “For them to participate would sully the honor of the men involved. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Tosa,” Chubei said. “It’s understood.”

Chubei rose and walked to the open side of the shed. He stood in the rectangle of moonlight and looked up. “My old and tender friend Viper has suggested an evening stroll to view the moon.” He threw open his arms, as if to embrace the full moon, which was almost directly overhead. Then he turned to face Viper and Hanshiro.
“Mairimasho ka?
Shall we go?”

For the next hour Chubei showed Hanshiro which street gates would be open and which would be locked. He showed him where the vantage points would be and where the blind alleys were. He introduced him to the gate guards and to the men of the fire watch. And when Hanshiro parted company with him he gave him two brown canvas firemen’s coats.

When Hanshiro returned to the inn he slipped in the small side door that he had paid the night attendant to leave open for him. He padded down the dimly lit hall to the room he shared with Cat.

He took off his old clothes and put on the white satin loincloth, the new undershirt of wadded
habutae
silk, and the black-and-white wadded silk robe and black
hakama.
An undertaking such as tonight’s required purity of heart and mind, body and dress.

He knelt and shook Cat’s hip gently.

“Is it time?” Cat sleepily ran a hand over her skull, fuzzy now with a six-day growth of dark hair.

“Yes.”

She rose and pulled her quilted sleeping robe closer around her. She went to the low desk, mixed ink, and wrote what she dared not say aloud. “What did you speak to
sensei
about?”

While Hanshiro wrote a reply, she knelt and tied on his leggings.

“I offered to watch for messengers trying to reach Uesugi to ask for reinforcements.”

“Viper is plotting something.” Cat’s nervousness showed in her calligraphy, but her only fear was that some outsider would interfere with Oishi’s plan.

“I know.” Hanshiro put down the brush and helped Cat tie her
hakama
cords. Then he wrapped her long sash three times around her waist. As he bent down to tie it in a warrior’s dragonfly knot, he leaned over her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “He and HonjM’s boss showed me the area while you slept. But they understand that they must not interfere.”