“The play was getting interesting,” his fellow in red and black said.
“You are like a blind man praising a painting by touching the paper,” the other responded. No one else was paying attention to them.
Reiko, disentangled now, had to just stand there: furious, sweaty, pop-eyed, flushed as his self-control was gradually restored and his face became a mask, again. Takezo realized the lord they all deferred to had to be Nobunaga or his right hand general Hideyoshi. He came up close to the stage without mounting it. Then the thick, mustached, features of the famous warlord looked flatly at him. His expression was about like the metal faceplate, the detective assumed he’d worn at the barn meeting, except fiercer. Takezo knew that in battle this warlord wore European plate armor.
“Give back what you stole, please,” Reiko recommended.
Takezo, man of the theater, sheathed his blade. Rensai and Sakura worked their way, quietly, back to the bridge, shedding their costumes as they went.
“You found the foreigners,” the warlord said. “Where are they?”
He didn’t remember the voice but it had been muffled by the mask.
“Ask chamberlain Reiko, my lord,” the detective answered.
“You deranged, drunken outcast,” said Reiko. “Robber of the dead. Who will heed your mad words?”
Akira laughed, Hideo started to speak and the various actors, coming out of the mirror-room started asking questions.
“May I continue, honored chamberlain?” requested Nobunaga, very quietly which silenced everyone better than a blow from a club. “Sir, I doubt your play will bring you great applause. Was it needed? Why not have spoken frankly?”
“I tried that, my lord,” the ronin answered, looking at Hideo.
“This play is excrement,” said that lord. “What does it signify?”
“A stench. Ask Chamberlain Reiko,” the detective suggested, again, with a jerk of his head. “Or sniff him.”
“Insolent outcast!” exclaimed Reiko. “I will kill you myself.”
“Quiet,” said Nobunaga. “I am certain it is merely an attempt at art. Not likely to offend any but the discerning critic.”
“A fool could see it is excrement,” Hideo repeated.
“I needed you all to listen,” Takezo said, noting, peripherally, the gauzy shadows of Seki and the others on the bridge. “Look, that foreign ring was put on the corpse supposed to be Osan. The question: why? What has become of her? If dead, where is her body?”
“Enough questions,” said Hideo. “I warned you once, come back with answers or stay away forever.”
“Give back the ring, then, or remain a thief,” Reiko said.
“Maybe I don’t have it, Chamberlain,” Takezo pointed out. “Anyway, it didn’t fit. Nothing fits.” Takezo bowed, deeply, for once. “Please preserve the foreigners, if that is still possible,” he requested. “I think a trial may free Lord Izu of any shame.”
“We all wish to keep the peace,” declared Nobunaga.
“No matter how much war it takes,” Takezo added.
“Pretty true,” Nobunaga laughed. To Hideo: “Where is the fire-haired foreigner?”
“Gone,” answered Reiko. “Freed or escaped. My men are looking for him and the black demon.”
“Do you think she’s alive?” the warlord asked Takezo.
“I only know she was not the one buried in the cemetery of Achi hill.”
“Who was buried, then?” asked Hideo, trying to take it all in.
The detective shrugged.
“A shirabyoshi or maybe just an unlicensed whore,” he said, thoughtfully.
“Like your lover,” Reiko put in, face utterly still and almost friendly, now.
A threat? Takezo asked himself. I walk on a sword edge under a sky of arrows, anyway…
The great lord gestured and Takezo came close to him, faces inches apart. He seemed human enough to the detective though his face was set like stone.
“You claim a token from me, actor. Important to know who gave it to you.”
“You did not, lord?”
“I did not.”
A high-ranking member of Nobunaga’s entourage had come up and whispered in his ear. He turned and started to leave at once.
“‘Uniter’ has to leave,” he said, over his shoulder. “My apologies to Seki and his troupe.”
Behind him Takezo heard Seki’s voice:
“Resemble me? Fools! The performance is in tatters!”
The relatively favorable critic from the chorus called over to the ronin as he was heading back to the bridge past Seki and the other actors – Taro had wisely chosen to wait inside the mirror room.
“How does it end? Disappointing not to know.”
“Bah,” said his companion. “What matter? A journey begun on a bad horse ends on a bad horse.”
“The swordplay wasn’t too convincing though,” the first said.
Takezo turned around at the bridge and said back: “We’ll have plenty of chances to rehearse.”
As he passed Seki and the others the long-nosed actor who’d predicted misfortune, in the dressing room, commented:
“Lucky. I was sure you’d be beaten but didn’t expect anyone to really try and kill you.”
“Wait until the next performance,” Takezo assured him. “Blood will flow.”
“I wasn’t sure I followed the argument of the play,” long-nose said, further.
“Follow it?” interjected Seki, as the ronin passed him. “One should run the other way from it!”
“We don’t really look so much alike, it’s true,” Takezo said, going through the doorway into the dressing room where the young women just stared at him. “You seem older.”
With Taro and the other two they went back outside past the laconic doorkeeper into the side street. A long series of lightning flashes cut the sky in half, bouncing wild shadows over the buildings and front garden of the theater.
“You never mentioned who would be in the audience,” the big policeman said.
“I wasn’t sure,” Takezo replied, smiling faintly.
“Even a bad guess would have kept me home,” Taro told him. “Your show wasn’t worth a popped pimple much less anybody’s life, Zo, even yours.”
“Sakura was quaking,” Rensai put in.
“Ha,” said that round-bodied worthy. “When Nobunaga spoke you made water.”
“Both of you were mute after the performance,” said Takezo. “Remarkable for actors.”
Who first hired me? he was wondering. Izu knew nothing about it… not Hideo nor Nobunaga… I feel like a fish in a sea of nets…
The wind kept gusting, kicking up dust and leaves into swirls. Branches soughed, lanterns swayed, tossing soft light and shadow everywhere. Rain spattered unevenly as thunder rattled and boomed closer. People were closing windows and battening them down. There was a little relief in the humidity, already.
He decided he wanted to watch them all come out after the show and see what he could see, so he sent Taro and the others on after giving the two actors the money he’d promised.
Went into the big garden that fronted the theater and stood on a small bridge over a stream: the landscaping was the wild woods style, dense with bush and clustered trees, complex paths running in and out of the virtual miniature forest.
In the uneven flash of approaching lightning and the lanterns swinging on poles marking the way he could see the path went on from the little, rustic bridge, bent left and right and went out the gate to the main street 100 or so feet away. Maybe 200 feet behind him, was the wide, enclosed gallery that surrounded the theater building. He could hear music and the muffled voices of actors, blurred by the shifting wind. His loose robes pulled and flapped a little around him. There was a cool, wet scent in the air, now.
And then a tall man came down the path from the building in strange tights, puffy, ruffled shirt and a slouch hat. He joined him on the little bridge. Obviously, this was the third foreigner. Must have come with Izu.
“You are from the lost ship?” Takezo inquired.
“Yes,” was the reply as both bowed, slightly. “I saw you onstage.”
“And you come to praise my skill.”
“Most difficult to understand theater in another tongue, sir. I thought I’d take the air.”
“Polite. Apparently, what we did was hard to grasp in any language.” Takezo grinned. “You came with Lord Izu?”
“Yes. He has employed me. He said I could refuse. But …”
“Wise to say yes.”
“I am grateful, naturally.”
“The black warrior and the other man are your friends?”
“We met on the ship. They say you saw them?”
“Recently. We were captured. Corin was a prisoner. I escaped. I’m a troublemaker.” Grunted. “Have you seen your ship again, sir?”
“At last glimpse it was foundering in the waves. As I was, myself.”
“You saw it sink?”
“No. But it was surely doomed.”
“Interesting.”
Maybe the biggest mystery yet is what Nobunaga has to do with it? I think I have eyes that see no more than stones set in a carven face…
Takezo was now concentrating on the windy, wild-shadowed, blue-white, lightning lit garden landscape. A whirling gust rattled and shook the foliage and the lanterns in a sustained whoosh. A few fat, warmish raindrops hit hard enough to sting.
There are men in the shadows, he thought. Maybe guards… He doubted that, however. Feels wrong…
A stocky man stepped from behind a 6 foot rock representing a cliff and came up the path towards the bridge as Takezo, with Gentile a few steps behind, moved to meet him. Inside, the music and drums were pounding and piping to some dramatic climax.
The gleaming blade in the man’s hands seemed to flicker in the flailing light. Shadows shifted across his face, showing a long scar across the nose and cheek. Takezo knew him, at once. Drew in a long breath as the stocky figure stopped at the edge of striking distance.
“Ah, the bane of women,” he said. “Are you as pleased as I am by this chance meeting? Clearly you cannot be alone, to come so close to me.” He gestured Gentile to stay back where he was on the bridge.
I am missing something, here, he thought. This place may be full of men… yet there are bodyguards inside and that Akira who’s worth any 10 of them…
“Maybe your time has come, at last, drunkard,” declared Yoshi, the scar across his cheek and nose showing as a shifting shadow in the jumping light.
“Who set you on me the first time? Issa? Reiko?” Takezo still wanted to figure out who’d hired him in the barn.
Yoshi raised his blade, two-handed, over his head and moved to close. His opponent paid little attention. He was glad he was sober because the next gust of wind that shook the landscape also deflected the hurled shiruken so that it went just under his chin instead of hitting his neck and he knew there’d be another following up so he reacted by ducking off the path into the bushes, drawing and snapping a sweeping full extension clearing backcut at almost ground level that clipped Yoshi in the ankle, glimpsing the second hurled, star-shaped weapon glinting in the lightning flashes as it zipped through where he’d just been standing.
He crouched between a rock and a small pine, listening and looking, though movement was masked by the erratic, flailing light and shadow, the crackle-bang of thunder and the veering twists and bursts of wind and spatter. He could hear Yoshi curse and groan where he crawled, then limped back down the path towards the gate.
How many? He wondered. Why?
Was it an ambush for somebody else or an afterthought for him? He peered around the rock and made out the tall foreigner alone on the far side of the bridge, short cloak flapping around him.
A stream of warm light as the sliding main door opened and a small cluster of men came out into the gathering wind. He was sure it was Nobunaga and his retainers, maybe four or five men. They headed for the bridge where Gentile stood and he made way for them. Nobunaga may or may not have bowed as they passed – the light was too jerky to tell – and, as they reached the path on the side of the stream close to Takezo, samurai seemed to be everywhere, coming up from under the arch of the bridge where willow and low, dense oak overhung the water. In front of the ronin from under a thick flowering bush a ninja stood up with a heavy throwing dagger in each hand and as he went for the preemptive throw (about 15 feet from the target) the rain suddenly crashed down almost like, Takezo thought, a bathing vat had been emptied over everyone.
Takezo knew the ninja would try to close the distance and was up and running, crashing and splashing through the already saturated bushes and branches that whipped and tugged at him, so that as the wiry, almost invisible hooded figure in black made to snap the dagger into the great lord at point-blank distance, the detective struck and barely felt the assassin’s arm resist the blade that sliced it off, seeing Nobunaga’s expression in the streaming rain as they both turned to face new attackers coming on the path and out of the shaking, storm-blasted garden: faces, steel, lightning, shadows.
“Back to the building!” shouted Nonbunaga, his resonant snarl barely heard above the din. To Takezo: “Thank you. Dangerous people seem to protect you. Look into it. You are honest. Who can remain so?”
The rain was a massive, warm pressure, saturating him. Attacked from all sides, Takezo spun, fended and ducked, slashed up into someone’s chest in a puff of blood and breath, glimpsing the foreigner, thin sword out, assisting the retreating men. In the wild light and dark moments through semi-solid downpour, a blade ripped past his shoulder. He blocked a spear thrust that nearly caught his thigh… stabbed into a shadow that seemed to form from the rain and heard a cry of pain… stepped on the ninja’s severed hand and slipped, fell and rolled to his feet, just off the path, back to a tree, branches breaking up the downpour so he could see samurai going up the path past him in leaps and blurs and the commotion at the theater building as dozens of armed men poured out in defense of Nobunaga who’d cut his way back to the porch.
Protect me, he thought. Interesting… he’s giving me something… maybe his protection too… who does he mean?
The air was cool as he worked his way towards the street, staying just off the path where the water was hissing and spattering: foliage bounced and swayed around him; heard the banging of what sounded like a loose shutter, the muffled shouts and clash of arms, hollow thunder echoes… and then a sense that the attackers were withdrawing back across the garden.
He had to leave his dripping cover to go out the front gate; saw men hurrying down the path, far too many men; didn’t want to climb the wall because anybody exiting the garden would be doing that too and who knew how many might be waiting on the other side. There was less lightning visible now with a cloud right overhead but the thunder went on pounding away. He was glad his soaked kimono was dark blue.
Maybe I should have gone back to the building, he thought. If I hide and Hideo’s men find me that will look bad and they’ll claim I was part of the plot…
He ducked through the slackening rain; the wind still twisted and gusted, wildly as he half-ran for the archway. The gate had broken loose and was slamming open and shut. He was almost out when a huge lightning bolt, so close it sizzled and ripped the air, blasted a tree in the garden. He felt his soaked hair partly rise and a stinging on his face and hands. In the lingering brightness made out Yoshi sitting on a rock, back on the wall, tying a rag bandage around his wounded ankle. He looked, up seeing the deadly ronin a few steps away, coming to finish the job.
Except, blade raised and ready, Takezo hesitated. He had time – the samurai falling back from the abortive attempted assassination were still just blurs in the misty, lightning-shot, now steadying rainfall. The air smelled of wet earth and green.
“I don’t have to kill you,” Takezo called over, sheathing his sword. “I can make up my own mind. Unlike you. Die another time, fool.” Takezo went out the swinging gat
e, pushing it wider against the wind.
“You are the fool, soft-belly,” snarled Yoshi. “Missed your chance.”
Across the street, the ronin saw the blurry outlines of several armed men in doorways or crouching under overhangs. The seething rain dinned on the roofs and ran in thick streams into the bubbling mud. The storm front had passed over, the wind falling off, the rain coming almost straight down, at times.
Yoshi stared along the wall at the flapping gate. He was chewing his lower lip so hard blood was beading out and diluting away in the warm rainwater.
“I am captain now, openly, and much greater in secret. Kill all the fleas and none remain to bite. Kill the one my father still forgives,” he muttered, almost bitterly, as if someone were listening. “I will rise high. Why not?” The lightning flickered softly, freezing the raindrops in semi-rhythmic beats. “Easy for monks and writers to criticize a man who seeks to rise. Bah. I will not swallow other men’s dirt. I am not a puppet in a puppet show. Why should others stand above me? Because of the winds of time or the stars of heaven? The spurt from a father’s cock? Bah. I will reach out and move the stars, if I can.” Slammed his swordblade over and over into the bubbling mud as if the very mass of the earth itself offended him. “Bow to no one, in the end.” Shut his eyes as other samurai came up to him. “That bum! I want to piss in his mouth,” he said to himself. “He’s a boil on my ass I’ll lance.”
Twenty-Five
That bum went quickly along the board sidewalk, too wet to care, barefoot because he’d lost his split-toed sandals in the garden. He was considering Miou. Some things about her didn’t make sense and he wanted them to make sense. Lovers, he knew from professional experience, are like any true believers who want to make the facts fit the case. He was sure, for instance, that Hideo had proven to himself, more than once, that his wife was loyal and chaste.
And Miou, he thought, sighing, is only the sweet victim of fate I want her to be… you look at what you want to see… yes, truly, I have eyes like a carved head of a man… better learn to focus soon…
But he knew he couldn’t afford that, either. He had to talk to her; he had to have answers because it had finally occurred to him that she might be a target, too; that, in fact, the dead ninja who’d invaded her room might have come for her and not him.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 15