by Ben Stevens
‘Be careful, Ennin,’ cautioned the magistrate. ‘Be exceedingly careful. Don’t make promises which you may very well not be able to – ’
Despite the seriousness of this matter, I could barely repress a smile as my master irritably waved this pompous idiot into silence.
‘Those footprints were all made by the victim herself,’ said my master then, so that I at once forgot my minor merriment. Instead I (along with the magistrate, suspect and two accompanying guards) stared askance at him.
‘Hitomi Aoki first walked along the riverbed wearing her own footwear. Then she changed into the sandals she was carrying – of the type commonly worn by men – and proceeded to walk backwards, alongside the footprints she had just made, to a point on the riverbank.
‘Then she had only to walk backwards again, returning to the point where we found her body. This would, of course, give the impression that she had walked to that spot with an accomplice – who had then returned from that place alone.’
‘What is… what is this…?’ breathed the magistrate.
‘She did this ‘backwards walking’ most skillfully, so that it took me a few moments to realize it,’ continued my master remorselessly. ‘And then we have only to look at this rope, to realize the rest of the puzzle. That is – broadly speaking. There are a few other, minor details which are, of course, immediately obvious to the trained mind.’
‘The… the murderer climbed up this… this rope, to the top of the cliff?’ stammered the magistrate helplessly. ‘But how does that explain… explain there are only two sets of footprints, and…’
Again, with a curt wave of his hand, my master dismissed the magistrate’s almost dazed-sounding ramblings.
‘I’d better be the one to detach this rope from the branch above; and then I shall return to the house where Aoki-san’s daughter now lives by herself.’
My master looked at the magistrate, continuing –
‘Kindly come to this house in approximately half an hour, accompanied only by my servant. This merchant you can put back in his cell, and these two guards can return to their duties. When you return from that house – having had all the facts relating to this case revealed to you – you can release the merchant immediately.’
‘But I –’
The magistrate’s voice fell into silence, my master not listening, instead pulling himself up the rope in a series of easy, fluid movements to the branch above.
Appearing rather dejected, the magistrate motioned for the guards and the merchant to follow him back to the small prison. And I followed them, in accordance with my master’s wishes.
4
When the magistrate and I entered into Rinko Aoki’s small house a short while later, it was to discover my master sat with that young woman in the small tatami room, a letter lying on the low table.
‘I informed this young lady that her best chance was to make a clean breast of what really happened, concerning the death of her mother, and she – to her credit – immediately obliged.’
‘You seemed to know of everything already, Ennin-sensei,’ said Aoki, gazing at my master almost in awe.
‘Tell the magistrate here what you said to me,’ commanded my master gravely.
The woman nodded, and then said –
‘Maybe you think I am now making a case for myself, but I do not believe that I would have seen the merchant named Akiyama be wrongfully convicted and executed for the murder of my mother – no matter how shamefully he treated her over the years.
‘But I did want him to suffer somehow – to believe almost to the last moment that he was going to die – as some sort of revenge for all that my poor, devoted mother endured at his hands.’
‘What… What is this?’ demanded the magistrate.
‘Read the letter,’ said my master. ‘This one, lying upon the table.’
As the magistrate picked up this letter, my master looked meaningfully at him and added –
‘Rinko Aoki should certainly receive some sort of punishment for her deception… On the other hand, she has recently suffered the loss of her mother, so that perhaps a short period of imprisonment would be sufficient. Certainly nothing more than this.’
The magistrate did not answer, instead focusing his attention upon that letter. He held it in such a way that I, stood close beside him, was able to read it too.
My dear Rinko (the letter read) –
By the time you read this, I will be dead. You knew I was to shortly die anyway, the doctor telling me that there is certainly a cancer growing inside of me. I have tolerated the pain this cancer gave me as well as I can and yet… Death, at least, will mean I no longer have to suffer that.
You have never approved of the man I have been seeing since the time you were very young; ever since the death of your father, in fact. And it is true that he has beaten me and been unspeakably cruel on so many occasions. And yet, for all of that I still loved him. Until I recently (very recently) discovered that he has begun seeing another woman. This I cannot forgive.
So for just this reason alone, I have taken steps to ensure that Akiyama the merchant’s wealth will shortly become yours. I will die knowing that my beloved only child, now parentless and without any other relation, will at least not have any financial worries in the years to come.
All you need now do is this –
Go to the top of the cliff that is beyond the small temple and the cemetery nearby. There you will find the end of a length of rope that has been weighted down with a rock. Pull on this rope, and within a minute or so you will bring up a knife and a pair of sandals tied to the other end. These objects – particularly the knife – will be bloodstained. I am sorry. Yes, it is this knife I used to end my own life, first tying it to this rope, the other end of which is hanging just a couple of feet above the riverbed that is below the overhanging cliff.
The sandals… Well, you need not concern yourself about these.
Recover these items, Rinko, taking great care not to be seen by anyone, and hurl them in the sea somewhere. Return to our house – or rather your house, as it is now – and await to be informed of my death. Affect the suitable level of grief, as well as surprise at the events which follow next…
My daughter, I beg you to recover from whatever sadness or shock this letter has caused you, and to do at once as I have requested. Time is most important.
With all my love,
Mama.
‘The way you reacted to the news that Akiyama had been arrested contrasted strongly with your almost sullen character of before,’ my master informed the young woman. ‘You could not play the part well; it did not sit easily with you.’
‘No,’ nodded the woman. ‘But as I say, still I wanted him to suffer, for all he had done to my mother.’
‘You nearly caused an innocent man to be found guilty of murder, and so to be –’
‘Yes, this we already know.’ My master curtly cut through the magistrate’s indignant (although also, it seemed to me, somewhat affected) bluster. ‘I would feel rather more sympathetic towards Akiyama – at the way this young woman’s mother planted ‘clues’ to frame him for ‘murder’, shortly before taking her own life – if it hadn’t been made abundantly clear to me just what sort of man he is.
‘So, as I say, this young woman should receive nothing more than a token punishment – is that clear?’
My master spoke these last words with the full authority of one who has served the Empress herself.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ nodded the magistrate, avoiding my master’s cold stare.
Without another word, my master left the house. I followed him outside, and we began walking.
‘Together, Kukai, we’ve faced murderous ninja, power-crazed daimyo and all manner of other dangers,’ mused my master, after a while. ‘And yet, give me any of these before the greatest danger of all…’
‘And that is, master…?’ I prompted.
‘A woman scorned,’ replied my master, with a gentle sigh.
The Touch of Death
The woman awoke to see her dead son standing beside her bed. In the early-morning gloom she could just see that he was wearing the kimono in which he’d been buried. His image seemed curiously to ‘fade’ for a few moments, almost disappearing entirely, before she could again make out his agonized expression.
‘Mother…’ he sighed, in a voice as cold as the winter sea. ‘Mother… I know now that I was… murdered… My death was not… natural…’
The woman was wholly incapable of answering; her tongue, her whole body, felt frozen as though in a nightmare.
‘I am… trapped, mother,’ continued the ghost. ‘Trapped between this world and the… next…
‘I cannot rest until… until…’
‘Until…?’ the woman finally murmured, her eyes wide and fixed upon this apparition of her son.
‘Vengeance…’ breathed the ghost. ‘Until… vengeance has been… taken…’
And with that, the apparition – and the words it uttered – faded into nothingness.
1
‘Do you think I am perhaps… insane, Ennin-sensei?’
The middle-aged woman asked the question cautiously, yet with a strange impression almost of defiance. As though daring my master to suggest that this was indeed the reason why she claimed to have been visited by the ghost of her recently-deceased son.
Instead, my master said sincerely –
‘My deepest sympathies for your loss, Hideshima-san. The loss of a child is surely one of the cruelest blows any person can receive; and this occurred not so long after your husband sadly passed away, you say?’
At my master’s sympathetic manner, the woman’s defensive attitude softened slightly, and she nodded.
‘Yes,’ she returned. ‘My husband died approximately a year ago after a short illness, leaving only myself and my son – fourteen at that time.
‘My husband’s death seemed only to focus my son’s mind even more firmly upon becoming an expert martial artist. My husband – a simple farmer – had always angrily dismissed Shintaro’s (our son’s name) ambition as being quite ridiculous.
‘To achieve such a thing – my husband told Shintaro any number of times – Shintaro would have done better to have been born the son of a samurai. And yet Shintaro had heard of this dojo, this martial arts training hall, that would take in any boy or young man with a genuine desire to learn, and a total commitment to endless hours of grueling training.
‘This dojo is called the ‘Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines’.’
‘Ah, yes…’ said my master, with a slight nod.
‘You have heard of this place, Ennin-sensei?’ asked the woman called Hideshima.
‘In passing, so to speak,’ shrugged my master. ‘The man who runs it is reputed to be one of Japan’s finest martial artists, and his dojo to be one of the best places for any young man to receive their training. And of course – any young man can go there. There is no attention paid to such things as their background, and so on.
‘This is, of course, somewhat unusual in Japan.’
It was the woman’s turn to nod.
‘That was what he told me, though how he’d come to learn all this was quite beyond me. Stories and rumors spread among his friends, no doubt, who all long for adventure, but who are instead obliged to train as farmers or shopkeepers, here in our village.
‘I had to admire my son’s tenacity, however; and after a reasonable amount of time had passed, following my husband’s death, he again asked that he be allowed to travel to this Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines – a journey which, by foot, would take him at least one week.
‘The other, older villagers were aghast when I finally gave him permission. Shintaro’s place (they said, quite possibly rightly) was by my side, helping me and my one worker on our small farm.’
The woman’s voice caught suddenly in a sob.
‘But I was once young myself, Ennin-sensei!’ she said determinedly, quickly recovering herself. ‘I remember what it was to have… dreams. So I said to Shintaro that he should go; and he left that very next morning, with some food and water to last him his long journey, and a change of clothing.
‘I did not expect to see him again for maybe two years – and then suddenly he appeared one morning, hardly any more than six months later…’
The woman gave a long sigh, and closed her eyes for a few moments. She was not unattractive, although her face had been prematurely aged by a lifetime of overwork and near-poverty.
‘He was absolutely crestfallen – though I noticed how much stronger his body appeared to have become, just in those six months. But my Shintaro admitted to me that he’d failed his very first test, in which those new students got to face the head-sensei himself for the very first time, to practice what they had learnt so far.
‘My son was confused, and obviously bitterly disappointed. He could not see what he had done wrong – so far as he was aware, he had performed all the moves flawlessly, despite taking some blows from the head-sensei or instructor in return. Yet when the results of the five newest students were announced, it was only my son who was declared to be unsatisfactory, and was thus dismissed from the Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines with immediate effect.’
‘I see,’ said my master. ‘And then…’
The woman shuddered, and had to swallow a couple of times before continuing –
‘And then just four or five days later my son died, Ennin-sensei. Quite unexpectedly, in his sleep. I went to wake him one morning, so that he might help me with some work around the farm, and…’
The woman looked away, unable to finish.
‘You must forgive me, Hideshima-san,’ said my master gently, ‘but I have to be absolutely clear on one thing. Your son – Shintaro – he did not have any injuries; he had not complained of feeling unwell…?’
‘On the contrary, I had never seen him looking better. That, at least, was some consolation for the fact that he had been rejected by this famous dojo so quickly…’
Again, the woman’s voice choked, and she looked away once more.
‘I will look into this matter for you,’ said my master. ‘I can promise you that, at least.’
‘Thank you, Ennin-sensei – thank you.’
Bowing, the woman left the small, private room at the inn where my master and I were staying. She’d arrived, quite unexpectedly, a short while earlier, requesting a meeting with my master.
‘Well, Kukai,’ said my master, once the woman named Hideshima had left. ‘We’d better be on our way.’
‘But – where to, master?’ I returned in some surprise. To be truthful, we’d had a recent succession of cases, so that I was enjoying the chance to rest at this small, comfortable inn.
‘To this Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines, of course,’ replied my master, as though it was somehow entirely obvious.
‘You think the answer to the boy Shintaro’s mysterious death is there?’
‘The answer to Shintaro’s death, perhaps – and also those two other teenage boys who have died in exactly the same circumstances this past year. Having been rejected from the dojo, and then shortly afterwards expiring from some mysterious if apparently ‘natural’ cause, that is.
‘And these are just the three cases of which I know – perhaps there have even been others…’
I stared at my master, aghast.
‘What is the meaning of this, master? With these three instances of ‘failed’ students dying in their beds – and there possibly being even more such victims…
‘This cannot be just… Just some awful coincidence…’
‘No, it surely cannot,’ replied my master, and his voice was low and his eyes dark. ‘And if I am correct in my suspicions – which are only hardening with every passing minute – then I am, in some terrible way, at least partially to blame for the deaths of these boys.’
‘Master – what… what is this…?’ I gasped.
‘Pack our few items,’ returned my maste
r briskly, making to leave this small room. ‘We will leave as soon as I return – for there is a message I must send first.’
And with that, my master was gone.
2
We hired two horses for the journey to this mysterious ‘Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines’. As we rode along narrow, twisting paths through forests and alongside rivers, I imagined that boy named Shintaro walking all this distance – and then having to return just six months later.
And then dying – from what? And not just Shintaro himself, either; and my master somehow blaming himself for the subsequent, mysterious deaths of these teenage boys…
None of it made any sense. All I could do in the present was to follow my master, who seemed almost instinctively to know the exact route to this Hall in the Sea of Waving Pines. He barely spoke, and permitted only minimal rest-stops. He seemed consumed – that is the word – with reaching this dojo.
So we arrived there in just two days – a huge building with sloping roofs constructed from wood and great lengths of bamboo, all around it (as, of course, the dojo’s grandiose name suggested) a mass of pine trees, the forest floor carpeted with their tiny green needles. I noticed that many of these trees were ‘connected’ by high aerial walkways, made from wood and rope. Also thick ropes dangled down from high branches; I watched as one young, bare-chested man climbed up using just his arms, his face contorting with the effort. There were other men – clearly students of this remote dojo – all absorbed in some sort of physical training.
At once, seemingly from nowhere, two males appeared to block our path. Their faces were hard and set; it was obvious just by looking at them that they were expert fighters. They also each carried a long wooden staff – a bo.
‘You have business here?’ demanded one of the men.
‘Kindly tell Yoshida-sensei that Ennin wishes to meet with him, if he is agreeable.’