Tale of the Warrior Geisha

by Margaret Dilloway

  Yamabuki clasped her hand to her own, putting it over her heart. “Will you always be my friend, Akemi?”

  “Always,” Akemi said. “I will always, no matter where we both end up.” Akemi slipped out and slid the door closed. Yamabuki listened, but could not hear the girl’s footsteps on the gravel. As if she’d grown wings.

  —

  The next evening, near twilight, bluish light giving everything an unearthly glow, Yamabuki sat behind the screen once more, perfectly proper, her hands folded across her white kimono, as Akemi brought in her visitor. A clink of coins sounded, and Okāsan clicked her tongue greedily.

  “Are you ready, Yamabuki-chan?” Akemi asked, settling down in a back corner of the room, her long hair oiled and scented. One of the visitor’s male servants poked his head around the screen. “Hi, Akemi!” he sang.

  Akemi blushed and looked down.

  Yamabuki felt a stab of possessiveness. “Shouldn’t the man’s servants wait outside?”

  “Hush,” Okāsan said. Her voice shook. This visitor was important, but Yamabuki had no idea who this man was. Her mother bent to her. “You had better not mess this one up, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The visitor spoke, the voice deep and forceful. “Konbanwa.” Yamabuki blushed. It was a man, a full-grown one, and, though he was hidden behind the screen, she was still not used to being around real men. She was glad, for once, of the screen shielding her.

  “Greetings, my lord,” Yamabuki responded. Her mother stood so she could see both Yamabuki and the visitor. Her mother’s hands shook. Yamabuki had never seen her so anxious, and that was saying something. Okāsan was always high-strung.

  “Can you tell me? Are the Minamoto rising again?” His voice was quick in its urgency. His shadow leaned forward. “Will they overthrow us?”

  Yamabuki’s head shot up and she glanced at her mother. Okāsan glared at her in warning.

  Yamabuki looked around. Why did people think spirits knew the future? She closed her eyes and, when she reopened them, saw her grandmother standing in front of her, between Yamabuki and the screen. “What’s the answer?” she whispered to Obāchan-obake.

  “I haven’t got all night,” the man said.

  Obāchan pursed her lips. Yamabuki felt a thrill of dread. The same kind she’d had seven years ago, when Obāchan told her that the baby was dead. Her stomach fell. Oh no.

  Okāsan’s nails dug into Yamabuki’s leg until tears came into her eyes. “Tell him what he wants to hear, little daughter,” she said brightly.

  Yamabuki looked at Obāchan-obake, at the silvery face with its network of wrinkles like a spider’s delicate web. “Obāchan?” she whispered.

  “Not your obāchan. His ancestors.” Okāsan could not contain her impatience. “This is Kiyomori Taira.”

  Yamabuki felt her breath fall out of her. Kiyomori Taira? He was the head of the Taira clan. Her father’s employer. The shōgun. Well, really, the emperor was her father’s employer, but Kiyomori was the one who was truly in charge. Everyone knew it, and Kiyomori took advantage of this fact to put all his friends and family in the highest offices.

  Obāchan-obake put a cool hand on Yamabuki’s shoulder. Do not tell him the truth.

  “What is the truth?” she asked.

  You know.

  Her mouth was so, so dry. She couldn’t possibly speak. Desperately she looked at Akemi, but the girl wouldn’t look at her. Yamabuki had never told Akemi about Obāchan-obake. Akemi was so practical, she knew she would scoff at her. Her mother’s eyes glowed, waiting for her. She had to think of the truth, and the opposite of that truth. What could it be?

  She heard the man shifting impatiently next to him, his servants shuffling their feet restlessly.

  Yamabuki concentrated on the water lily. Words came into her head. The Minamoto are rising. She did not know where this answer had come from.

  The opposite. She had to say the opposite. “No,” she said abruptly. “No one can defeat the Taira. So says your father’s father’s father.” She shut her eyes briefly.

  The man drew in an audible breath. “And what, pray tell, is his name?”

  “His name?” Yamabuki repeated dumbly.

  “My great-grandfather’s name. What is it?” His voice was sharp.

  Yamabuki screwed up her face. “Taira?”

  Okāsan’s hand closed around the bag of coins. She got out from behind the screen, an almost unheard-of event. “Your money back. I’m so sorry, sir,” she said, her voice charming and smooth. “My daughter has a fever today. I’m afraid it is not the best time.”

  “Of course, we cannot force the supernatural,” Kiyomori said gruffly. They exited, Akemi escorting them out.

  Once the outside gate closed, Okāsan returned to her in fury, throwing aside the screen. It clattered against the wall. “You little bitch,” she said, her cheeks flushing red. “You are a liar, aren’t you? I always knew it. But if you’re going to lie, at least be good at it.”

  “I am not a liar.” Yamabuki raised her head defiantly. “Obāchan-obake is real. And for your information, the truth is that the Minamoto are rising again.”

  Okāsan raised her hand and struck the girl across the cheek, knocking her head painfully back on her spine. Yamabuki fell, her palms smacking on the floor. “You bring shame to this house,” Okāsan shrieked.

  The door slid open. Yamabuki’s father rushed in and went to his wife. He put his arms around his wife. “Stop! You knew she wasn’t a real soothsayer all along.”

  The woman threw off her husband, sending him tumbling backward. “You have ruined us, Yamabuki!” Okāsan roared. “Your father will be demoted. Are you happy? Stupid brat.” She kicked Yamabuki in the ribs, the stomach, her arm. Her toes jabbed Yamabuki in the soft spaces between her bones, finding the most sensitive nerves. Over and over. Her ears rang and the room spun. She tried to take a breath, but she couldn’t.

  Her father lay on the floor between his wife and daughter, shielding his daughter with his own body. “Stop! I beg you.”

  Okāsan paused, her hair flying wildly around her face. Lines cracked out in rays from her nose, marring her once-beautiful features. A demon. She spat into her husband’s face. “Pitiful roach of a man. Skittering around picking up the crumbs of the great. You should be great. We should be great.” She wiped the back of her mouth and left.

  Yamabuki stared at the open door, her breath finally coming back. She inhaled, then began crying. She could never do anything right. No matter what.

  Otōsan examined her. “Are you all right?” He smoothed her hair back. “I am sorry, little daughter. Your mother did not mean it. She will calm down.”

  Yamabuki nodded. Her ribs and stomach ached, but she was able to sit upright with her father’s help.

  More commotion came from outside. Her mother cursing and yelling anew. Yamabuki looked. Her mother had a willow switch and her arm flew back and forth, whipping a cowering servant.

  Akemi. Her face in the daffodil bed, crushing the yellow flowers, as Yamabuki’s tiny mother took out her anger on the innocent girl. Akemi would not wail or scream or cry. Instead she looked up at Yamabuki, a level gaze like that of a stone statue. “Otōsan. Help Akemi!” she begged, taking her father’s hand in her own.

  “Better Akemi than you,” Otōsan said roughly, freeing his hand. He shut the door and sighed. “No more obake sightings, all right?”

  “I am not a liar,” Yamabuki repeated. “I am not.”

  “Failure is a difficult thing to admit. Believe me. I know.” He stood and left her there alone.

  ELEVEN

  Tomoe Gozen

  MIYANOKOSHI FORTRESS

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Summer 1173

  Over the next two years, Yoshinaka and his supporters built a fort he called Miyanokoshi, higher u
p in the mountains, harder for the Taira to get to. You knew the way there, up through the forests and rocky passes, only if you had grown up in the region. “One step closer to avenging Kaneto,” he said. A small battalion he’d raised lived with them. “You are Kiso to the city people, but that is exactly why the country folk trust you,” Kaneto had once told Yoshinaka, and it was true. Yoshinaka had widespread support around the north, as people heard of how he’d faced the Taira, and of the new fort.

  His cousin Yoritomo, head of the Minamoto clan, had sent word of his support. “The time is coming, cousin,” the note had read. Yoshinaka would control the north, the others would get the east and west, and together they would conquer Miyako and the south.

  At Miyanokoshi, tall log walls enclosed a small village of houses. Tomoe had seen little of Yoshinaka. She had not slept well since that fiery night when her father died, always waking to benign sounds she feared were the beginnings of a battle. Feared, or hoped?

  “There’s nothing to do except wait, and live, Tomoe,” her mother told her one rainy summer morning, as she prepared to go out for supplies.

  “I know, Mother.” Tomoe stared up at the walls of the fortress from the porch. Her new cage. Wait and live. But what kind of life was this?

  “At least there is rain.” Chizuru put on a big straw hat and grinned. “We have that.”

  Yes. There was that. So what if the roads were never cleared and their rice taxes disappeared into nothing? As long as people had a bit of food, they were reluctant to do anything. There were a few uprisings here and there, but nothing the Taira couldn’t put down. They would need a great deal of dissidence before anything happened in the Minamotos’ favor.

  Perhaps she should have tried to marry Wada after all. A life in the city might be preferable to this one. An existence of waiting.

  She stared at the rain sullenly. Her days passed helping her mother or farming. She tired of cutting through trees. Imagining her tachi had real blood on it.

  She picked up her tachi and left the fortress, going deep into the woods until she could no longer hear the chatter of people stuck inside their houses, until there was nothing except the sound of heavy rain.

  She came across—because she was searching for any such animal—a deer wandering, alone, through the beech forest. A fawn, separated from its mother, bleating pitifully. A bad limp. It would not survive. Its large brown eyes looked at her pleadingly. She would be doing it a favor. Ending suffering was allowed in Buddhism, she told herself. Just like battle was.

  She strode toward it without hesitation and swung the tachi. In the space of a breath, the head lay bleeding on the grass, liquid so thick it refused to soak through to the ground. Its expression was no different from what it had been before. She waited to feel some remorse. She had none. Only a new heaviness unexplained by any garment or equipment.

  Tomoe lifted her face to the sky, washing it clean.

  She left the fawn there and returned to the fort.

  —

  The rain stopped before she returned. Tomoe walked through the wooden-log gates, past men practicing with swords, past merchants who had come to sell their goods. This place was like a miniature town. Several people greeted her and she responded absently. The flies here were dreadful, the ground mud from being constantly trampled, mosquitoes bothersome all summer. It would almost be a relief, she thought, to get out into battle, into the countryside, where there were no walls. Where the breeze would sweep over her at night, uncontained.

  She slid open the door of her parents’ house, slipping off her geta. Instead of her mother, she was surprised to find Yoshinaka kneeling in the center of the floor, on the tatami. Mochi filled with sweet red-bean paste were spread out on the low table, clumsily arranged in two rows of three. He had added a sprig of orange-smelling blossoms. A teapot and black tea waited in small earthen cups.

  Tomoe was touched. Her face warmed. “What’s all this?”

  He blushed and got a shy smile, looking for that instant like the little boy she had known. “For you. Because I cannot write poetry.”

  She sat to his left. He handed her a cake. “Even if you could, you would not write a poem for me,” she said. “Does the mochi serve as official notice? Am I your wife?”

  He ignored this, on purpose, she thought, catching up her hand in his. “What happened?”

  She glanced down at her forearm. Blood was spattered there. She had missed it.

  She withdrew her hand. “I am fine. A would-be suitor knows better, now.” She was only joking, but she added this last on purpose to get a rise out of him. Yoshinaka was notorious for his jealousy. Once, when they were in the village and a merchant had offered her a flower, Yoshinaka knocked it out of his hand.

  He did not disappoint her. “Who is he?” His eyes lost their softness, became hooded with rage. “If you haven’t finished him, I will.”

  She bit into the mochi. It was chewy, like rubber, the beans bitter. Terrible. She wondered where he had gotten it. “It was an injured fawn,” she admitted, and waited for his rebuke.

  “A helpless creature. Then, I suppose all creatures are helpless before you, Tomoe Gozen.” He settled down, popped a mochi into his mouth. Beans protruded at the sides, moist and thick like congealed blood. Her stomach turned.

  “Not all creatures.” She put her cool hand over his. “Not you.”

  “Especially me.” His face contorted momentarily. “If I weren’t helpless before you, I would send you away to be married. But instead, I selfishly keep you here.”

  “No one keeps me.” What was he getting at? Tomoe managed to eat another bite of the mochi. She took a sip of tea.

  “Then why don’t you leave?” Yoshinaka peered at her sideways.

  “Why don’t you marry me?” She folded her hands. The truth was, she had nowhere else to go. Her place was with him and her family.

  His nostrils flared, but he kept his eyes locked on hers. “My cousin Yoritomo is searching for a suitable bride for me, to build our alliances.”

  A bride. She wanted to hit him. “And you trust him?” Her voice caught. She would not cry in front of him. He hated it when she cried. He would get up and leave. She fought for control. “I’m beginning to think this army building is a sham. When will we move against the Taira? When will there be a war?”

  “We cannot move before the time is right.” He wiped his mouth with his hand. “You of all people should know that.” He bent and glared into her eyes. “Every move I make has to be for this cause, Tomoe. We cannot fail this time. If we do, the entire country loses. The Minamoto will be crushed forever.”

  She hated that he was right. About everything. That she would never leave, that he needed to marry someone else, that they couldn’t start a war just yet. She pushed the mochi plate away, this lame attempt to seduce her. Make her think being second was acceptable. It was not. “These beans are rancid. Get your money back from whoever you bought these.”

  “I made them,” he said in a low voice. He stood and left the room.

  Tomoe made no move to stop him. She imagined him next to Chizuru, trying to make the mochi, stubbornly throwing aside Chizuru’s attempts to help, his big clumsy fingers pounding the rice into a smooth paste, cooking the beans. The only thing Yoshinaka had ever made before was fish, out in the wilderness, cooked over an open flame. Guilt overtook her, shaking her limbs. She waited until he closed the door, then ate every bit of mochi, every single cake, knowing it would make her sick.

  —

  Tomoe’s mother came in as Tomoe was cleaning up the dishes, stacking them to take outside. “I saw Yoshinaka storm out of here,” Chizuru said, bending to help. “How was the mochi? He wouldn’t let me taste them. Stubborn as ever, that boy.”

  “I’ll clean up, Mother.” Tomoe moved in front of Chizuru, blocking her from the table.

  “Ai. No need to be so rough.” C
hizuru held up her hands. “Sometimes gentleness is called for.”

  “I am what I am.” Tomoe knew her mother was talking about Yoshinaka. She cleared her throat. “I believe Yoshinaka wants me to be his concubine.” She forced the words out. They didn’t want to come.

  Chizuru knelt on a cushion, folded her hands in her lap. The light green kimono she wore was dusty, her fingernails embedded with dirt, yet Chizuru’s face and hair were clean as could be. “I know.”

  “You knew and you said nothing?” Tomoe stood up with the dishes in her hands. They clattered in her grasp.

  “What did you expect?” Chizuru said sharply. “You know he cannot marry you. He needs to make an alliance. This isn’t about who he loves. A concubine isn’t the worst thing in the world. You will be protected and cared for. Men like him take a wife and two or three concubines. You know that.”

  Tomoe bent her head. Her pulse beat so loud in her ears she thought there must be blood pouring out of them. “A concubine is second. I don’t want to be second.”

  “You will always be his first, Tomoe, in his heart.” Chizuru stood, took the dishes from Tomoe. “I know this is difficult, little daughter. But either you can fight against the way things are, or you can accept them and make the best of it.” She left, closing the screen door behind her.

  Could it be true? Did Yoshinaka care for her as much as she cared for him?

  Tomoe’s stomach knotted in pain. Her monthly cycle was starting. Always, it was light, too light to make good babies, said her mother. But painful anyway. She ran outside.

  —

  The next afternoon, she sought out Yoshinaka. Someone told her he’d gone fishing at the stream outside the fort.

  She walked along the water. Songbirds chirped and darted among the trees. She sidestepped the mud, keeping to the drier grass on the crest of the bank.

  It took almost an hour to find him. He was far upstream, around a curve, so she saw him before he saw her. He held a fishing pole and stared off into the blue horizon. It could be a scene for a painting, Tomoe thought.