It was almost midnight and the rain had cleared. The moon glowed fitfully through a veil of clouds and shone eerily on the roof of the mansion and the ghostly gateway. Tameyoshi, about to retire for the night, heard loud knocks at the gate, and the night watchman remonstrating angrily. Tameyoshi went himself to see what was amiss, found Yoshikiyo, led him to a room facing an inner court, and there by the dim light of a lamp listened to his story.
Yoshikiyo found Tameyoshi not at all the dreaded person that rumors made him out to be. Circumstances were against him, and Tameyoshi, the grandson of a famous chieftain, was no more than the head of a warrior household. Still in his early forties, Tameyoshi of the Genji was pleasing of manner and amenable to reason.
"Certainly, I quite understand. I shall look into this matter immediately. There is too much talk nowadays of skirmishes between my men and the Guards, if your messenger is being held without cause, there shall be no delay in releasing him. Ho, there, Yoshitomo!" Tameyoshi called across the court to a room on the other side. Yoshitomo, his eldest son, soon appeared and knelt on the veranda at a respectful distance, courteously inquiring what was wanted. Yoshikiyo looked at the youth approvingly—a good son.
After a few words with his father, Yoshitomo departed to summon the housemen and servants and to question them; in a short time he reappeared and knelt outside in the garden.
"I have brought the honorable Yoshikiyo's messenger and one of our soldiers, who challenged him."
Gengo's face was swollen as though he had been badly beaten. He burst into tears at the unexpected sight of his master.
"Whose prisoner are you?" Tameyoshi demanded.
"Your son's, the honorable Yoshikata's."
"The reason for your arrest?"
Yoshitomo answered for the prisoner, explaining what had happened toward noon that day. Gengo, he said, was stopped at the Rashomon Gate and questioned by Yoshikata's soldiers for carrying what appeared to be an official document. Gengo had refused to hand over the scroll, insisting that it was sent by certain ladies to his master, and had added that the soldiers could not in any case read them.
"And then?"
Yoshitomo resumed: "I was told that Yuigoro snatched the scroll from Gengo and trampled on it, and Gengo then attacked him in a rage, crying that his master had been insulted. The other soldiers at the Rashomon Gate then rushed at Gengo, thrashed him soundly, and threw him into jail."
"So. Call Yoshikata," Tameyoshi ordered.
A youth, barely twenty, soon appeared. Tameyoshi rebuked him for the misconduct of the soldiers in his charge and, as he finished speaking, suddenly rose and kicked his son, who toppled from the veranda to the garden. Turning to Yoshikiyo, Tameyoshi then said: "I now leave you to deal as you will with this soldier and my son. I blame myself for what has happened and will go myself to Lady Taikenmon's palace to offer apologies. I deeply regret what has happened to your retainer. It was most unfortunate, and I beg you not to hold this against me, but will try to forget this matter."
Surprised and relieved by this unforeseen settlement of the affair, Yoshikiyo begged Tameyoshi to be lenient with Yoshikata and his soldier and then departed with Gengo from the mansion where he had expected to meet with the worst.
There was no denying that Tameyoshi came of distinguished forebears, Yoshikiyo reflected admiringly, for breeding like his was not to be found among common warriors. He was dogged, however, by foreboding. Tameyoshi was biding his time; it was apparent that the man had not forgotten how his grandfather had endured a lifetime of humiliation at the hands of the aristocrats, and that Tameyoshi waited grimly for some chance to take his revenge.
Around him the capital lay muffled in sleep. The moon drifted serenely through a curtain of clouds. And though no dirges came to his ears, Yoshikiyo was certain that such tranquillity would not be for long.
Kiyomori and Tokiko were married in December of that year. "Well, will you marry her?" Tadamori had asked Kiyomori, who flushed deeply at this query and merely replied: "Oh—"
There was no need for further words between these two who understood each other so well.
For three nights in succession, as was the custom, Kiyomori made his way in secret to the mansion near the shrine to the Medicine God to woo his future wife. Through the cold that nipped at his ears and over the sodden roads he went full of joy. The mansion was darkened in sleep, save for one small light streaming out into the night from under the lifted shutter of Tokiko's room. It was the symbol of love beckoning to him from the far end of the universe, filling Kiyomori with visions more stirring than his most impassioned dreams. And to those two, parting at dawn, something more profound than passion seemed to transform the crowing of cocks and the frosted boughs and dissolve the world in poetry.
In the ordinary course, Tokiko would have come to the house at Imadegawa as Kiyomori's bride, but Tokinobu's more spacious mansion became the young couple's home. Friends of both families agreed that the alliance between a penurious warrior's house and an impoverished nobleman's was eminently fitting.
As his share for the wedding feast Tokitada killed and dressed his prize gamecock, the one he had long concealed from his father, and offered it to Kiyomori.
"What! You killed your treasured gamecock for tonight?"
Tokitada merely grinned.
Kiyomori was speechless with amazement. He feared only his father, but the spirited temper of this mere boy chilled him. What unplumbed depths was he yet to discover in the lad's sister, his newly won wife?
In the following spring, 1138, Tokiko knew she was with child and told her husband. Kiyomori heard her in silence, flushed with dismay. Compunctions at the memory of the one night spent in the arms of a woman on Sixth Avenue assailed him and mingled with the realization that at twenty-one he had become a father.
". . . Are you not glad?" Tokiko hesitated
Fearing he had hurt her, Kiyomori quickly replied: "Happy —yes, but we're warriors, and it must be a son." Had he been a nobleman, he might have prayed that the child would be a girl who would grow in matchless beauty to win favor as an imperial concubine, but such thoughts did not occur to him. Not even the vague stirrings of parental love moved him.
Winter rolled round once more. On a morning in November after a heavy fall of snow, when the lying-in room lay deep in drifts, the cry of a newborn infant was heard. Tokiko's attendants hurried to the young father and congratulated him on the son born to him. Exulting, Kiyomori could only pace the hall between the lying-in room and his own.
"Old One—get out my horse, my horse!"
Mokunosukй, who with a number of other housemen from Imadegawa had accompanied Kiyomori to his new home, appeared. "My young master, how happy you must be!"
"Relieved—merely relieved!"
"Are you going to the shrine now to offer thanks?"
"No, I must see my father at Imadegawa before anything else. Old One, the snow is deep . . . you must stay here."
Kiyomori rode out through the gateway. As he approached the bamboo grove, he heard loud shouts from behind. It was his wife's brother, Tokitada, calling: "I'll go part of the way with you; the bamboos block the road," as he overtook Kiyomori's horse. Weighted with snow, the bamboos leaned over heavily to the ground and blotted out the road. Tokitada whipped out his dagger, slashed at the snow-laden branches one by one, leaping ahead like a hare, and looking back now and again with a look of triumph.
"Thank you, that will do," Kiyomori cried, watching the nimble, quick-witted lad with awe. His thoughts suddenly returned to the child born that morning and a warmth, the awakening of a father's love, flooded over him. That son—there was no doubt of it—was his very own by Tokiko!
As far as he could see, the roofs of Kyoto and the Eastern and Western Hills girdling the capital lay deep in snow. The solitary figure, galloping over the roads, startled occasional passers-by to curiosity and alarm. Kiyomori reached the gates of Imadegawa and soon was face to face with his father, to whom he announced breathles
sly: "Born at last—a son!"
"So he's come . . ." Tadamori replied, his eyes filling as he spoke.
Kiyomori could scarcely hold back his own tears as he gazed at the man whom he honored more than a father. Some strange fate had brought them together. They faced an uncertain future, for the portents of trouble were now unmistakable. In the past three years alone numerous mansions had been burned to the ground. The powerful monasteries fought among themselves with increasing violence, destroying temples and pagodas, and marched on the capital with their mercenaries to underline their demands of the authorities. And, in the meantime, the birth of Emperor Sutoku's son, the Heir Apparent, fanned the hostility between the Court and the Cloister Government, for the abdicated Toba had proclaimed his infant son by Lady Bifukumon the Crown Prince and successor to the throne.
Mounting disturbances throughout the country and general unrest caused the cloistered Toba to send for Tadamori, imploring him to take a post at the Palace once more. And Tadamori, at the time his grandson was born, finally consented, accepting the Fifth Rank and a position in the Justice Department. Kiyomori was also promoted at the ex-Emperor's wish, and the star of the Heike seemed to be rising.
Though the jealous courtiers did not oppose Tadamori's reinstatement, they soon intrigued to bring charges of treason against him. There had been gossip that Tadamori was secretly paying court to the daughter of a Fujiwara nobleman, Ariko, a lady-in-waiting at the Palace, who later became wet-nurse to the Heir Apparent. Tadamori's enemies were certain that his affair with one who served Toba's rival would bring a sentence of death against him. But the ex-Emperor had known for some time of the affair, and, unknown to the courtiers, encouraged and sanctioned the marriage by which Tadamori already had two sons.
Toba Sojo, who had spent a lifetime laughing at the world through his drawings, died in the autumn of 1140, full of years. As he lay dying, he said: "Though I am a monk, let there be no monkish rites for me when I am dead. I have lived too long mocking at abbots, bishops, and priests with tails peeping from under their vestments. To bury me with solemn chants and prayers would indeed be the supreme jest."
Under the thatched roof of the hermitage the Abbot now lay deaf to the sound of the falling leaves and the subdued murmurs of mourners, exchanging tales of his past and his oddities. His chief mourner, a high-ranking courtier, saw that the simplest rites were performed at the funeral, to which both the Emperor and the ex-Emperor sent their deputies; courtiers, arriving in their carriages, threaded their way on foot with the humble folk from the hamlet of Toba to the hermitage in the hills.
"The honorable Yoshitomo—this is most unexpected!"
Sato Yoshikiyo left his companion to address Tameyoshi's eldest son, Yoshitomo of the Genji, who quickly stepped to the side of the road and greeted Yoshikiyo with great courtesy: "I was not quite sure whether it was you or not, since I met you only once that night . . ." he began.
"I fear it was an intrusion to have come so late that night on the matter of my retainer. I have not seen your father since then, but I renew my apologies to him," Yoshikiyo replied.
"No, the fault lay with us, I am ashamed to confess. Have you come to pay your last respects to the Abbot?"
"Ours was a slight acquaintance, but if it were possible to see him again, I would gladly go in pursuit of him," said Yoshikiyo. Recalling his companion, he quickly introduced him. "This is Kiyomori of the Heike. Have you never met before?"
"Ah? Possibly we have."
Yoshikiyo watched the unconcealed pleasure with which the two young warriors greeted each other, and it suddenly occurred to him that this chance encounter was somehow significant. A Heike soldier and an officer of the Police Commission—a Heike and a Genji!
"I shall soon be on my way east to settle in Kamakura—to my fiefs, where so many of my clansmen are. You must not fail to visit me if ever you are in those parts," Yoshitomo said on parting.
Yoshikiyo, ever reticent, seemed more silent than usual today. Such taciturn natures did not attract Kiyomori. They walked on in silence until they reached a crossroad, where Kiyomori took his leave. Yoshikiyo then asked: "Are you on your way home?"
"Yes, the roads in that district are deserted at night and my wife and son anxiously await my return. My greatest joy these days is to see my son."
"How old is he?"
"Just two."
"How winsome he must be! There's no way to explain the tenderness one feels for a child. . . . You must hurry to him now."
And they parted in the dusk.
A month later, on the 15th of October, Yoshikiyo vanished.
Kiyomori, incredulous, made inquiries among his friends and acquaintances about what had happened and was told that on the day before his disappearance, Yoshikiyo had left the Guard Office with a cousin slightly older than he. The two had gone home, discussing the emptiness of human existence, and had parted with promises to meet the following morning. That night the cousin suddenly fell ill and died, and Yoshikiyo, who went to meet his cousin the following morning, stood outside his cousin's house and heard the sorrowing cries of the young wife, the aging mother, and the young children. There and then he discovered he could not grieve with them, for it came to him that death, the inescapable fate of all men, was after all a daily occurrence, a platitude repeated once more before his own eyes. Yoshikiyo thereupon left his cousin's house for the Palace, where he handed in his resignation and without a word to his fellow Guards went home. His abrupt departure puzzled Palace circles; there seemed to be no explanation for his strange behavior, for Yoshikiyo stood high in the ex-Emperor's regard as a gifted poet, and there had ever been talk that Yoshikiyo would soon be promoted to the Police Commission.
Later, when he arrived home, Yoshikiyo appeared distraught, and the servants listened anxiously to his young wife's weeping in an inner room where Yoshikiyo was closeted with her for some time. When he reappeared, it was with an air of forced calm, but when his much-petted four-year-old daughter ran and clung to him, Yoshikiyo savagely thrust her from him, telling himself as he did so that he must forget all human ties if he were to take leave of the world and enter holy orders. He then drew out his dagger, sheared off his topknot, and flung it at the ancestral tablets in the family oratory before fleeing from the imploring cries of his household.
Ten days later it became known that Yoshikiyo had taken the vows of priesthood and assumed the Buddhist name of Saigyo. There were some who had even seen him near the temples of the Eastern Hills.
Kiyomori listened perplexed to his father-in-law's remark: "It is difficult to believe that one so young, so gifted, could have made this decision on mere impulse. It is possible that Yoshikiyo has chosen to follow a more positive and higher way of life." Kiyomori thought of obtaining a more satisfactory explanation from his father, but soon forgot even this, for more disturbing than the disappearance of his friends were those events which marched on him one by one; he now felt the quickening of a powerful vision within him.
CHAPTER VIII
COMET OVER THE CAPITAL
In December 1141, though it surprised no one, the twenty-two-year-old Emperor Sutoku was suddenly dethroned, and the three-year-old-son of the ex-Emperor Toba and Lady Bifukumon was declared ruler and duly installed.
In mid-January, less than a month later, a young monk walked alone through the leafless woods of the Eastern Hills, gathering twigs broken off by the heavy fall of snow. Few would have recognized him as Yoshikiyo of the Guards, though his monk's robes sat ill on him.
"Ah, is it you?"
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