Claws of the Cat

by Susan Spann

  “So you did,” Hiro said.

  Yaso nodded. “I arranged a meeting.” He paused. “Did I help one of Lord Oda’s spies?”

  “It’s possible,” Hiro said. “Did you tell Nobuhide about this?”

  Yaso looked at the ground. “I was frightened. He might have held me responsible.”

  “You are not responsible,” Hiro said, “but I understand your concern, and I will keep our conversation to myself.”

  Hiro left the relieved tailor and retraced his steps as far as Higashioji Dori, where he turned south and followed the road toward Tofuku-ji. The temple lay almost an hour’s walk away, at the very southern edge of Kyoto, but Hiro didn’t mind the exercise. He walked briskly down the empty street and considered the possibility that the merchant from Nagoya had killed Hideyoshi, either on orders from Lord Oda or for some other unknown reason.

  In some ways it made sense and in other ways none at all. If Lord Oda sent a spy to Kyoto expecting Hideyoshi’s cooperation, but the retired general refused, the “rice merchant” might have killed him to keep him silent. On the other hand, a daimyo like Lord Oda should know whose assistance he could count on. A man didn’t seize whole provinces by acting on unverified assumptions. Hiro wished he had learned about the stranger before the man left Kyoto, but put the thought out of his mind. A man who dwelled on past problems often missed the ones that stood ahead in the path.

  When Hiro reached the entrance to the Tofuku-ji grounds, he found Kazu standing in the middle of the road. The young samurai wore a robe of jet-black silk emblazoned with the shogun’s mon, a circle with five horizontal black and white bars, and he scowled at Hiro like a tengu demon from a children’s tale. He bowed as the shinobi approached, and the moment Hiro returned the bow Kazu drew his katana and leaped forward with a yell that sent birds flying from a nearby pine.

  Hiro’s katana left its scabbard with a hiss and met Kazu’s blade with a crash of steel on steel. For ten full minutes they fought, advancing and retreating along the road as the blades rang like cymbals in the silent morning air. From the moment Kazu struck, Hiro thought of nothing but the swords, and he barely thought of those. He fought by instinct as much as will, his world consisting only of a tiny sphere of ground and air and steel.

  Slowly, Hiro backed his opponent toward the river that bordered the northern edge of the temple grounds. Kazu shifted sideways to avoid falling off the bank, but failed to see a fist-sized rock behind his foot. His geta slipped and he fell.

  Hiro pounced for the kill, but Kazu rolled away and jumped to his feet. His sword deflected Hiro’s blade with a clang, but Hiro reversed his momentum without slowing and whirled around with the speed of a striking snake. His blade stopped less than an inch from Kazu’s side.

  Kazu’s face fell. He shook his head and raised his blade to his opponent, then lowered it and bowed—a deep and respectful bow that admitted defeat. Hiro answered with a lesser bow of his own and resheathed his sword.

  The fight was over. As always, Hiro won.

  A group of monks stood on a nearby bridge, where they had gathered to watch the fight. Hiro glanced in their direction. The older ones nodded respectfully. The youngest one even bowed. Then, one at a time, they turned and shuffled off toward various buildings on the expansive temple grounds.

  Hiro and Kazu walked south along one of the many gravel paths that connected the various buildings and twenty-four subtemples in the compound. Here and there monks walked around or knelt in meditation. A small group stood by the river practicing katas with wooden swords. The Rinzai sect of Buddhism had no objection to martial pursuits.

  Hiro led Kazu across the Tsuten-kyo, a covered wooden bridge that spanned a deep, natural ravine between the northern temple entrance and the abbot’s quarters to the south. In the middle of the bridge Hiro looked out over the tops of the myriad maple trees that covered the defile. A sea of feathery leaves spread out beneath the walkway as far as he could see. In autumn, when the leaves changed color, the bridge would look out on a sea of maple fire.

  At the south end of the bridge, Kazu slowed his pace and said, “I looked through the records and found no sign that the shogun wanted Akechi Hideyoshi dead. He didn’t blame Hideyoshi for his cousin’s defection. In fact, there’s a note in Hideyoshi’s file specifically stating that the shogun does not hold him responsible.”

  “I think Nobunaga did send a spy.” Hiro related his conversation with Yaso.

  Kazu frowned. “You have to get the priest to leave Kyoto. This morning, if you can.”

  “I don’t think he will go,” Hiro said.

  “Persuade him,” Kazu insisted.

  Hiro narrowed his eyes at the younger man.

  “I apologize.” Kazu blushed, remembering how substantially Hiro outranked him. “But many lives are at stake if the foreigner dies.”

  “Did you learn anything else of interest?” Hiro changed the subject to let Kazu know he forgave the breach.

  “Did you know Hideyoshi had a brother?”

  “Hidetaro?” Hiro stopped and looked around. There was no one else in sight. He stood with his back to the abbot’s house, facing Kazu and the bridge. “Does he have a record with the shogunate?”

  Kazu stopped too. “He was a high-ranking courier. He delivered secret messages for the shogun.”

  “A spy?” Hiro remembered Hidetaro’s faded robe and minor limp.

  “Not shinobi,” Kazu said, “just a trusted courier with a little training in disguise and sleight of hand to help him pass through enemy territory safely. He retired—”

  “After an injury,” Hiro finished.

  Kazu’s nose wrinkled. “He was never injured. He retired after his father died.”

  A flicker of movement behind Kazu caught Hiro’s eye. Someone had turned onto the bridge, and, despite the distance that separated them, Hiro thought he recognized the approaching samurai’s face.

  Hiro grabbed the shoulder of Kazu’s tunic and dragged the young samurai into a cluster of pine and maple trees by the side of the road.

  “Hey!” Kazu began, but fell silent at the look on Hiro’s face.

  Hiro crouched behind the wide trunk of an ancient pine. Kazu did the same. A screen of low-hanging maple branches between the pines and the path completed their camouflage.

  A moment later they heard footsteps on the bridge. A samurai in a faded blue kimono emerged from the covered passage and walked south toward the abbot’s residence. His muddy geta crunched on the gravel path.

  The even footsteps made Hiro wonder if he had mistaken the man for someone else. He glanced around the tree as the samurai passed.

  It was Akechi Hidetaro, and he wasn’t limping.

  Hiro waited until the samurai passed the near end of the abbot’s house and then whispered, “That’s Hidetaro. I’m going to follow him.”

  “Why?” Kazu asked. “It’s clear the merchant killed Hideyoshi.”

  “Never rely on assumptions,” Hiro said. “The last one always kills you.”

  “Follow him if you want to,” Kazu said, “but please try to get the priest to leave. Nobuhide isn’t reasonable, and he will kill the Jesuit if he can.”

  Hiro had started toward the path, but he turned back at Kazu’s comment. “I thought you didn’t know Hideyoshi’s son?”

  Kazu straightened. “The shogun has a record on Nobuhide too. He tried to join the shogunate but the reviewing general called him too stupid and shortsighted for command.”

  “The record says that?” Hiro’s right eyebrow crept up just enough to show disbelief.

  “The official report reads ‘best suited for duty as a yoriki.’ Read between the lines. No competent man is appointed to the police. It’s a service of last resort. The explanatory comments say Nobuhide refuses to accept direction or admit mistakes. If he decides the priest should die, you won’t dissuade him.”

  Hiro started after Hidetaro. “Then I’ll just have to persuade him that someone else deserves it more.”

 
Chapter 24

  Hiro reached the gravel path just as Hidetaro disappeared around the far end of the abbot’s residence. Hiro followed but didn’t hurry. A large, open yard lay beyond and he had no desire for Hidetaro to notice him at once.

  Whitewashed brick and wooden walls surrounded the distinguished gardens that lay on all sides of the abbot’s house. Hiro left the path and walked beside the wall to minimize his visibility as he rounded the end of the building.

  The square open yard had crushed gravel on the ground. The long wall of the abbot’s southern garden formed the northern boundary of the yard. At the eastern end of the white-painted wall stood the kuri, the temple kitchen. The building stood at least four stories high at the peak of its sloping roof, but most of the height was attributable to the giant eaves that ran from the ridge of the roof to the top of the ground floor wall. A gentle, concave curve ensured that snow would not gather on the roof.

  On the ground floor, a pair of swinging entrance doors sat directly in the middle of the western wall. Three wide wooden steps led up to the doors from the ground. The kuri had no other windows or entrances that Hiro could see from his end of the yard, and he didn’t waste any time looking. Hidetaro was just disappearing around the far corner of the kuri, on the path that led to the lesser temple of Ryogin-an.

  Hiro waited until Hidetaro disappeared from view before crossing the wide gravel yard. Ryogin-an lay across a short covered bridge that spanned the same ravine as Tsuten-kyo, though the little canyon was shallower here and not as wide.

  Wooden walls and tall trees surrounded the temple and its gardens. The path provided the only way in or out.

  Hiro took his time crossing the wooden bridge. Birds chirped and squawked in the maples and a squirrel chattered in the ravine. The air was filled with the pleasant smells of new growth and drying leaves, scents that reminded Hiro of Iga, of home.

  At the far end of the bridge an elderly monk cleared leaves from the path with a wooden rake. Hiro approached him and bowed.

  The monk bowed politely in return. “May I help you?”

  “I thought I saw my friend from across the yard. His name is Akechi Hidetaro.”

  Hiro didn’t expect the monk to know the name. Thousands of samurai visited the temple and meditated in its various gardens.

  To his surprise, the man nodded. “Hidetaro just went by a minute ago.”

  He pointed a wrinkled finger at the wooden wall that surrounded the temple building and its gardens.

  Hiro bowed in thanks and continued along the short gravel path. He spied Hidetaro kneeling before a dry garden on the eastern side of the temple.

  Like many Zen landscapes, the eastern garden consisted of a gravel bed studded with small rocks and boulders of various shapes and sizes. Some stood upright but most were placed at angles to the ground. The gravel was clear of debris and freshly raked into geometric patterns. Straight lines ran the length of the bed, broken by circles surrounding the larger stones.

  Hidetaro’s gaze focused on a slanting stone that sat near the center of the garden. He didn’t look up when Hiro arrived. Hiro didn’t expect him to. Zen Buddhism taught a form of meditation that shut out the world and focused on an object, space, or thought. The rest of the world existed only when the practitioner decided it could return to his consciousness.

  Hiro knelt to Hidetaro’s left and practiced his own meditation, opening himself and his thoughts to the surroundings that other forms of meditation tried so hard to ignore. His eyes and ears found each bird that sang in the maple trees. A falling leaf tapped against the garden wall and scratched the wood with its points as it fell to earth. When he ran out of new sounds, Hiro considered the spaces between the stones. In that, his shinobi training overlapped with the principles of Zen, though Hiro’s study of negative space focused on discovering usefulness rather than mere understanding of their existence.

  As Hidetaro returned from his meditative peace, he looked to his left and startled. Hiro kept his gaze on the garden and pretended not to notice. Hidetaro stood up and turned to leave.

  “Good morning,” Hiro said.

  Hidetaro turned back. “Good morning. I apologize if I interrupted your meditation.”

  Hiro gestured for the other man to sit and then turned to look at the stones. “Actually, I came to talk with you.”

  Hidetaro knelt beside the shinobi and faced the garden. “Has the foreign priest found my brother’s killer?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Both men studied the rocks again. Without Father Mateo to feign ignorance, Hiro had to comply with the samurai social conventions that forbade a direct approach.

  “This is a peaceful garden,” Hiro said. “Do you meditate here often?”

  “Do you like it?” Hidetaro’s wistful smile suggested a familiarity with polite but not heartfelt compliments. “Many people do not appreciate these dry landscapes, but then, few people really understand Zen meditation.”

  “Have you studied long?” Hiro asked.

  Hidetaro’s gaze flickered across the stones. “I wanted to become a monk.”

  An unusual ambition for a samurai’s son.

  “Your father did not agree?” Hiro guessed.

  “He naturally expected his eldest son to become a warrior, not a priest.”

  “So you did.”

  “Of course. I followed him into the service of the Ashikaga clan and practiced Zen on my own, mostly here at Tofuku-ji. I preferred this subtemple—Ryogin-an—because few people come here. Less chance of anyone telling my father that I had not abandoned my spiritual life.”

  A thin smile crept over Hidetaro’s face, suggesting an unpleasant memory.

  Hiro took a guess. “Your father found out anyway.”

  Hidetaro didn’t seem surprised. “Yes, and he disinherited me, though I did not know he had done it until he died.”

  “Yet you did not become a monk.” Etiquette wouldn’t let Hiro ask the reason, but it didn’t prevent him from pointing out the obvious.

  “Not for want of effort. I requested release from the shogun, renounced my stipend, but the monastery refused to let me join the order.” The thin smile flickered away. “The abbot believed the shogun sent me to spy on the monks’ activities.”

  “How strange,” Hiro said. It didn’t really seem strange at all, given Hidetaro’s training and the monks’ tendency to riot when displeased with the shogunate.

  “To this day the abbot refuses to let me take the vows, though I have permission to meditate here as often as I wish.”

  Hidetaro told the story without emotion, like a man recounting cities he had lived in or the food he ate for lunch. Hiro couldn’t help contrasting the current detachment with the previous day’s concern. Unfortunately, he didn’t know Hidetaro well enough to judge which persona was truthful and which a mask. He decided to find out.

  “By the way,” Hiro said, “your limp seems much better this morning.”

  Chapter 25

  Hiro watched Hidetaro. Hidetaro watched the rocks. The samurai’s right hand clenched into a fist and then gradually relaxed, but otherwise he did not move.

  After almost two minutes, he turned his face to Hiro and said, “The limp was an act, put on to make you believe I did not murder my brother.”

  Hiro narrowed his eyes. “Why would you need a limp for that?”

  “A dragging foot leaves different prints from one that lifts normally,” Hidetaro said.

  Hiro wondered how he knew about the footprints if he hadn’t seen Sayuri, but decided to take an indirect path to the answer.

  “What made you consider yourself a suspect?”

  “I am the older brother, but Hideyoshi had more success. I depended upon his goodwill for everything from my clothes to the food I eat. I had the good fortune to fall in love with a woman, and the misfortune to have my brother favor her too.

  “Any one of those could provide a motive for murder. Only a fool would not consider me a suspect, particularly when no other comes
easily to mind.”

  Hiro turned to face Hidetaro. “Shall I ask the obvious question, or would you prefer to answer without my asking?”

  “I did not kill him.” The samurai’s eyes remained on the stones and his posture did not change.

  “And the next, also obvious, question?” Hiro asked.

  “I do not know who killed him. Our cousin Mitsuhide recently swore allegiance to Lord Oda, but I doubt the shogun would kill a friend for the acts of a distant relative. In addition, I am still alive and so is Nobuhide. If the shogun wanted vengeance, he wouldn’t have stopped with Yoshi.”

  Mention of Nobuhide gave Hiro an opening. “Have you seen your brother’s family since his death?”

  “Yesterday morning. I tried to persuade Nobuhide of Sayuri’s innocence, but he would not believe me. That is why I went to see Matto-san.”

  Hiro ignored the mispronunciation of Father Mateo’s name. “How long have you known Sayuri?”

  “Yoshi invited me to the Sakura at cherry blossom season, to see the girl’s debut. I didn’t expect much. My brother was always bragging about some beauty from the Sakura. They rarely amounted to anything. Sayuri was the exception.

  “I never thought I would care for a woman.” Hidetaro’s gaze lost its sharpness as emotion took hold. “But Sayuri is not like any other woman.”

  Hidetaro fell silent as if struggling for an explanation. At last he said, “She laughs at my feeble jokes, and when she smiles at me she means it.”

  It was a strange compliment, but one that suggested honesty. Hiro would have discounted comparisons to birdsong or the moon, but Hidetaro’s simple phrasing rang true.

  It also gave Hiro an opportunity to learn more about the samurai. “What do you mean?”

  Hidetaro raised a hand to his face. “When most women smile, their faces become masks. The smile doesn’t reach their eyes.”

  He demonstrated. His lips turned up and his eyes glittered with feeling but their edges didn’t crinkle with real joy. Then he smiled a second time, in earnest.