The bright moon disk was sailing in and out of long, undulant, narrow clouds that suggested a slight curve as they flowed from north to south in a circle maybe hundreds of miles across. Erratic hot gusts stippled the viscous-looking moat surface.
“Dangerous, if it comes this way,” he said, thoughtfully.
Yazu bobbed his bony head in agreement, in his normal semi-crouch. His clothes were dark in a baggy attempt to look ninja which his master was too kind to discuss.
“Yes, sensei,” he semi-whispered. “It seems unwise to risk —”
“Were it wise I would have nothing to do with it.” He loosened his shoulder with a stretch and roll. “I’m really too big to make a good ninja.”
His pupil was staring up at the tilted, sheer castle wall faintly luminescent in the off and on moonlight.
“So high,” he said. “And –”
“Hand me the jug.”
“More, master? I fear that—”
“Are we married?” He took the jug and inhaled a long, long swallow of the sweetish, lukewarm sake. He already had that easy, relaxed, slightly floaty feeling. “I never come here sober.”
Without warning he drew and slashed with his short sword, making sure the edge would be checked just short of his disciple’s head. The steel had been blackened and was invisible; but Yazu melted aside with a kind of awkward ease and drew his own gleaming blade.
“Good,” said his master, re-sheathing. “You had no time to do anything but be natural. You saw without seeing. That’s the whole secret. Keep practicing but don’t try to practice that.” The moonlight softly winked off and on as the clouds flowed overhead. “Stay concealed and wait for me.”
“What can you achieve here, master?”
“I owe the lady Issa a pinprick and Reiko a question.” He went into the water, softly and swam quietly with one hand, holding the sword above the surface. He winced at the rank smell of decaying vegetation and muck.
About half way up the cliff-like wall his fingers were getting sore from gripping the climbing hooks. He hadn’t done this in a long time. He was sweating in the sticky, close air and the gusts of wind were picking up and tugging at him.
I’ve had better ideas… maybe I’ve never had a worse one…
The stones were big, wide with just enough space for toe and hook-holds. He groped with a foot, then eased, inched up and caught the next edge above, swinging free a second and feeling like he weighed 500 pounds. Sighed and grimaced. Caught a glimpse of the moon to his right gleaming on the vast, dark bay.
Good thing you’re numb, said a thought.
Up… another… another… scrape… grope… pull… He noticed the day’s heat radiating from the wall, the warm rock smell…
“I’m too heavy to go back this way,” he whispered, finally getting his arms inside an open, unshuttered window. He hoped it wasn’t full of swordsmen.
There are, sometimes, defects in my planning…
Clambered in, not as quietly as a passing shadow; at least nothing banged or rattled as he eased himself into a dark and silent chamber.
Actually, he admitted, I don’t have a plan… Crouching across the darkened room to where a side door faintly showed; the painting on it suggested big, shadowy flowers, maybe chrysanthemums… and, judging from my past plans.… Gently moving the panel open until he could peer into a corridor lit by a single, dim reddish lantern at the far end showing another closed door… better to have none…
This was the Chamberlain’s floor though he didn’t know which way his quarters were. His face felt thick and hot and pulsed as his heart slowly slowed. He blinked his sore and foggy eyes.
He withdrew his head as the door opened and two men came out, silhouettes against the greater brightness behind them. Their voices were hushed. He recognized both of them: Reiko and Yoshi.
He shut the door and pressed himself to the wall. If they came in he’d kill Yoshi and subdue the chamberlain – the problem would be noise. He’d have to strike instantly in near-blackness.
The voices were just outside the door and the men stopped walking.
Forty-Two
On the beach
“This way,” said Taro as the three of them went north heading out on the low tide flats close to where the still retreating surf was breaking among massive rock shoals, the beach itself a blur of shadow on their left, the village falling behind: faint, soft lantern light, flashes of moving torches, shouts and commotion faint and wrung away by the uneven gusts of the gathering wind as the rising moon went into and out of the long undulations of rainless clouds that had suggested to Takezo the extreme rim of a great, cyclonic storm out at sea. “They’ll expect us to go downcoast,” the disgraced policeman concluded.
“How do we get to the city?” Osan asked. “As this is the wrong direction.”
She took off the wicker basket head covering and let it dangle from the string down her back.
“Fishing villages all along the coast,” Taro explained. “Use a boat.”
“Why did you come here?” she asked, stepping over a long, narrow tidal pool. Something scuttled near her feet into the water.
“For my health,” said the policeman.
The sand was wet and firm. The surf, a little distance out, was crashing heavily. Osan was noting the time between the crashes.
“We’ll have to get a boat quickly,” she said. “There’s a very big storm out there. If it comes this way soon we’ll never make it.”
“Then we’ll take horses,” said Taro.
They were close to a jagged ridge of rock, a reef at high tide, featureless and vague, darkly gleaming, then fading as the moonlight came and went almost regularly.
“Wait,” said the Zulu, quietly.
Out of moonshadow a small figure suddenly staggered into the silver glow from around the edge of the rocks. A woman. She took a few steps forward, then fell, arms outstretched, into a shining pool, splash water glittering around them.
uMubaya bent and turned her onto her back, tugged her to drier sand. A shadow passed over and away: they could see her pale clothes were dark stained and slashed. She’d been recently wounded, fatally.
“Poor woman,” said Osan. Bent closer: “Who hurt you?” she asked.
“Can’t be far off,” uMubaya put in, scanning the shadowy shapes ahead, the pale gleaming surfline.
The woman was middle-aged. Her eyes were closed, mouth full of night and uneven teeth, Blood drooled as she rasped out:
“Samurai… came killed… fishermen… children… everyone …”
“What was the village’s offence?” asked Taro. Not just families but whole town could be held responsible for perceived crimes.
“No, noo,” she strained to say. “They… they …”
“Peace,” Osan soothed. “Save your strength.”
The dying woman’s eyes went suddenly wide in a shock of staring as the moon brightened. Almost colorless, blood-caked lips moved in her suffering face, smoothly painted by the subtle, silvery tones.
“Bad things …” the woman managed. “Stupid… want boat… we offered boats… many boats… no good… stupid!” she virtually spat it out with a gob of blood. “Take boats… don’t kill us… wrong boat …”
*
At the jail
Through the wooden crossbars a guttering torch that threw more shadow than light lit the tall Italian. He faced Colin. The feeble illumination created a sketchy impression of the powerful, battered Scot who was leaning on the latticework, thick fingers gripping through the squares.
The only guard was outside so they were alone. The cell room was narrow and clean.
“Well then?” asked Colin in Spanish.
“It is not clear,” the Italian said. “Osan was not in the grave. She may live.”
He still had trouble with that idea. Saying it seemed strange. The idea that he might see her again was exciting and, yet, troubling.
Perhaps she could pose for the picture, he thought. We could discus
s… many things… perhaps that Takezo fellow is right and I love… but how can a man love what he does not know… he then loves something born in his own mind…
“Who did I see, then, so bloody and fair of form?” Colin asked.
Gentile shrugged.
“They say it was a prostitute,” he replied. “Do you love her?”
Colin just stood there, leaning towards the bars on the stretch of his arms.
“They’re going to cut off my head,” he said. “That’s what I think about. I don’t know what else is left in me.” He sighed. “I wish… I were back at sea.”
“They have no excuse to kill you, now.”
“Ha. They have law.”
“Yes,” murmured the tall man with the big, sad eyes. His fingers, unconsciously, twisted the ring in his inner, silken pocket. “But I think they’ll have to free you, friend.”
“They’ll free me,” the Scot said.
Then Gentile’s fingers went to the bauble. The answer hit him. It had to be right…
*
Back in Hideo clan stronghold
Reiko and Yoshi had stopped outside the sliding door but didn’t open it.
Leaning into the linen-covered panel, Takezo listened in the dark room, blackened short-sword drawn in one hand.
Maybe, since you see so badly, he told himself, you will learn to hear…
“The cursed boat has not been located,” Yoshi was just reporting. “All who had information seem to be dead. Every method was used to question the living but to no avail. The fishermen. The pirates that were left. That fool Kame, in his arrogance, struck down the pirate chief, thinking the ring would be enough.”
“Yes, yes,” hissed Reiko. “Then he puts it on the corpse of the whore like a Chinaman in love.”
“He’d already courted her,” said Yoshi, with perverse amusement that coldly angered and disgusted the eavesdropping spy.
“He was a degenerate,” snarled the chamberlain. “A dim-brain. A… a …”
“The men are ready. The time is at hand. There can be no turning back.”
Reiko’s voice was dulled and disturbed. Takezo could hear fear in it, as he said:
“Meanwhile, if we lose, the great ninja will slip away into the shadows and we will die alone. Death is nothing. Life is sweet. I have risked my whole life to rise to where I belong and ride this skittish horse of state. I will not serve the stupid. A new world is before us and the blood of those who resist will wash our feet.”
How would you know the stupid, to serve them? Takezo sarcastically wondered. How to tell them from yourself? I’ll see you drown in blood, not wash in it…
“You expect to be Seii Taishogun?” Yoshi inquired. Neutrally.
“Who better?”
Takezo nearly laughed. He wanted to bang their skulls together.
“With your consort?” wondered Yoshi.
Reiko’s voice showed discomfort as he shifted the subject:
“The girl remains safe?”
Yoshi’s voice had a shrug in it.
“At last report,” he said. “She is unimportant, now.”
“Yes, to you women matter little. Unlike the ring,” Reiko said with barely suppressed fury. “Not all the master ninja in the province can find this single thing and wrest it from that drunken, insolent outcast. He must have given it to another. All who know him closely should be arrested and tortured. Half-boiled alive and taken out and put in again and again.” This pleasant prospect enhanced the chamberlain’s speech with a kind of dreamy quality as if he could actually see it: the victims thrashing in the bubbling water as their skin blistered and sloughed off. He sighed, savoring the vision.
“Hmn,” uttered the captain, judiciously. “Maybe when he learns of this his slit lips will open.”
Interesting how others see you, the ronin thought, amused. My lips are well-shaped…
“When we capture him again,” Reiko said, “he will suffer.”
Useless to kill them, Takezo reasoned. But what does the boat have to do with the ring? Madness…
“The Mongol ‘slow death,’” offered Yoshi. Cutting and cauterizing someone a tiny piece at a time, starting with the first joint of the pinky.
“Not slow enough.”
“It could take weeks.”
“A thousand years would be too short for that shameful wretch.”
And then there was a newcomer. An almost blissfully confident, smooth voice – could this be the “master?” Kill him and to hell with loose ends. He had no client. He was serving only fate and the memory of love.
“No question of failure,” said the almost jolly voice. “The unholy one will be overthrown.”
Reiko grunted. Takezo knew that grunt. And the voice wasn’t the ninja boss in the graveyard, either. Better to listen.
“If you monks stop fighting each other for half a day,” the chamberlain hissed, “maybe there’d be some progress. That and the cargo of the accursed foreign ship.” He sighed. “My two wishes for the deaf gods to hear.”
So it didn’t sink, Takezo realized, at once.
“You have a cargo of faith,” the monk’s smooth voice said fluidly. “Worth more than weapons of steel.”
“When you renounce the world must you renounce your brains, Abbott?” Reiko wondered.
“Ah ha,” put in Yoshi, “they will pray our enemies to death like En-no-Gyoja.”
“Take not such a name in vain,” the prelate said, uneasily, “lest his ancient and undying spirit form from shadows in some lonely place and stop your foolish heart with hellish chill.”
“I respect all spirits, good and ill,” said Reiko.
“Bah,” uttered Yoshi. “Men are skin stretched over bone. They die like leaves in autumn. Where are the spirits of leaves, priest?”
“Leaves are neither gods nor men,” rejoined the happy voice. “You-”
“Pray this, captain Yoshi,” interrupted Reiko, “that your master is sneaky enough to destroy the ‘unholy one’ and make things much simpler.”
Must be Nobunaga, Takezo the spy, concluded.
“Any man, high or low, rich or poor, priest or sinner,” Yoshi said, coldly, pointedly, “can be assassinated. Safety is a dream that death wakes you from.”
“Yes, yes,” said the cheerful Abbott, “you are closer to the Buddha than you imagine.”
“I too believe all is nothingness,” Yoshi said with contempt.
“That is a false view,” the buoyant voice went a little stern, “you —”
Cut off again by Reiko:
“Enough nonsense,” he said, nervous, angry. “We all agree on what must be done. Do it.” They were moving away now, and Takezo pressed his ear to the door panel. “After the assassination fails. After the ship is not found. After the priests squabble to the brink of doom, we must still find a way to win.”
They agree, quipped Takezo, on poking boys in the rear end, why should not Yoshi and the monks agree in all things?
They were moving away. He carefully cracked the door a few inches. They were back down by the lantern, going around the bend as he slipped out and followed, padding along close to the wall as he’d been taught. Blend in shadows, know that you can’t be seen.
That’s a good one, he thought, wobbling slightly out from the wall, starting to lose the voices. Peering around the corner they were about 50 feet down where another single lantern shone faintly behind them, stretching their weak shadows along the corridor.
“Tomorrow, at the second trial,” Reiko was saying, “we have witnesses to swear that the foreigner killed the yujo, Lily, to cover himself and with the connivance of that Black Devil raped and kidnapped Osan. All this was learned from the dying confession of the traitor, Nori.”
“Ah,” said Yoshi with approval. “That explains the body and makes the crime much worse.”
“Such evil is ever the result of human lust and delusion,” said the Abbott.
Delusion? Delusion? Takezo nearly spoke out. You want to wash the wor
ld in human blood in the name of the Compassionate One?
“The Black, who has so far escaped justice, took the innocent child for his own pleasure and by now may have killed and eaten her, since such wild men may be capable of any atrocity.”
“Better and better,” agreed Yoshi. “These crimes cry out for blood.”
“I have heard of such Black Devils,” the Abbott added in. “They are the rebirths of monstrous men and supernatural fiends.”
“Further,” Reiko went on, “the tall, pale foreigner was set a spy in the house of Hideo by ever-scheming Izu. This at the behest of his puppeteer, Nobunaga, whose hand fills his empty shape and moves him as he pleases.”
“Curse him,” said the prelate. “What a union of wickedness.”
What a union, the ronin sighed, mentally, of shit, piss and poisonous vomit…
“As your master has agreed,” Reiko went on, pacing a step or two before the light, his faint shadow shifting near where Takezo crouched and overheard, “we will all have many, many men concealed around the magistrate’s. In a fit of just rage, Izu and his people will be slain. War will soon begin.”
“Yes,” breathed Yoshi. “Yes.”
“With or without the ring being discovered.” The chamberlain sighed. “Well, Abbott, go and prepare your monks for war. Captain Yoshi, I’ll see you at the trial.”
As the monk went down the stairs into dimness, Yoshi’s silhouette moved closer to the chamberlain who had begun to mount the steps to the next floor.
“Bad news,” he said. “The girl ran away from the village.” Reiko’s response was to breathe deeply as Yoshi continued: “She must not return here.”
“I sense that miserable heinan’s hand in this!” snarled Reiko.
“By horse or boat, she could be here at any time.”
“No harm can come to her! Have men posted at the castle, Izu’s and at the magistrate’s. See to it! Bring her to our boat.”
Quick thinker, Takezo acknowledged.
“Yes,” said the captain, heading downstairs without ceremony.
Reiko paused a moment on the steps. Then called down in a soft shout:
“No harm! Be certain!”
Takezo heard no reply. He was thinking, as he moved quickly down the corridor after Reiko, blackened sword drawn:
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 30