The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p)

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “I made a pilgrimage to Shojuin Temple and left a statue of the sainted JizM-sama there.” Okyo hadn’t the strength to speak much above a whisper.

  The damp night air was cold, and she shivered under the quilt. Cat rose onto her knees and moved across the plank floor to the cupboard. Balls of dust and lint nested in the corners. Okyo had been ill a long time, and her young maid had no one to supervise her.

  Inside the cupboard Cat found another coverlet in as poor condition as the first. She shook it out and laid it over the woman. Then she sat back and fingered her beads. Cat’s flea bites made her frantic to scratch, but she forced herself to listen quietly.

  “I burned incense and prayed to Benten-sama,” Okyo said. “I asked Kannon-sama for help. I slept in the room with my husband’s sister, who has given birth to three children. I jumped over the birth sacks of the last five babies born here.” She paused to catch her breath.

  “I’ve asked my husband to divorce me.” A single tear spilled over her eyelid and coursed slowly down her hollow cheek. “If I live, I shall wear a pilgrim’s bell and roam the earth. I cannot stay here. The people of this village believe I’ll cause all the wombs to wither. They think I’ll cause all the women to become no-life-women like myself.” Okyo reached under the cover and held up a doll made of straw. “This was found nailed to the oak in the center of the village. Someone put it there to lay a curse on me.”

  “Maybe it was meant for another.”

  “It was meant for me.”

  “Your husband believes the bones unearthed in the new field have caused your barrenness.”

  “He doesn’t want to admit the real reason.”

  “What do you think is the real reason?”

  “Ours was a love marriage,” she murmured. “Not one of duty. We have been self-indulgent, reckless with our feelings.

  This is our punishment. I will have no children to make offerings when I die. But my husband can remarry and have children by a worthier woman.”

  “I will ask the spirits the true reason.”

  Cat had seen diviners at work. She knew the procedure, if not the sorcery behind it. And if she wasn’t a priest, she was at least a bat in a birdless village. She would have to do.

  She held out a bowl of water and a slat of wood on which she had written Okyo’s name. Okyo dipped the wooden tablet in the water and sprinkled Cat with it.

  Cat leaned her elbows on a box and rested her forehead in the palm of her hands. She heard no voices from beyond, but then she hadn’t expected to. However, the wave of grief and loneliness that swept over her took her by surprise. She felt a terrible, aching pity for the time-ravaged bones unearthed by strangers in a field.

  “I’m hungry.” When she finally spoke her voice was strained by grief and sounded alien in her own ears. “I’m lonely. I’m frightened. No one cares for my soul as I travel the Three Paths.”

  Okyo’s eyes grew wide.

  ‘ ‘Bury my bones properly.” Cat knew, as clearly as if the owner of the bones had spoken to her, what she must do. “Say prayers over my remains. Burn incense. Feed my spirit, and I will haunt this woman’s womb no longer.”

  CHAPTER 13

  TO MOVE THE SHADOW

  Cat sat near the small stone shrine to the village’s tutelary god. Next to her was the mossy boulder that would serve as a seat for the restless spirit. In front of it Cat had planted a wand of anise wood with diagonally folded white paper strips and a lock of Okyo’s hair attached. On the other side of the boulder knelt Okyo. The villagers sat among the moss-covered tombstones and tall wooden funerary stakes of the cemetery.

  “I ‘m only a priest of inferior rank.” Cat could hear the blood thumping in her temples. “My prayers may not be of much use.”

  In spite of her disclaimer, a purl of alarm spread through the villagers when she rubbed her rosary beads together with a loud clicking noise. The beads were sure to rouse the malicious ghost. A baby cried at the rear of the crowd.

  Cat began chanting lines from a No play in which a spirit was summoned. She was quite sure no one here would have heard it before.

  Pure above and pure below. Pure inside and pure outside. Pure in all six Realms. Gallop here now on your big gray horse.

  A sudden wind shook the pine overhead, and Cat thought she smelled the odor of stagnant water, the effluvium of a ghost. Okyo moaned. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets, and her head fell forward, then lolled from side to side.

  Cat stopped in alarm. What if the poor woman had a seizure in front of the entire village? What if Cat really did call up something hideous and demonic? But she’d gone too far with this act to stop now.

  She rubbed the beads harder and began to shake violently. Maybe she could distract Viper’s wife and transfer the tension to herself.

  “Hear me.” Again Cat’s voice sounded like a stranger’s to her, though she knew it was only the strain of the act she was putting on. She remembered to take loud, deep breaths, another sign of a shaman’s trance.

  “My name is Saemon of Izumo. This is my sad tale.” She began her account of how the mouse-gnawed, amber-brown bones had come to lie in the recently cleared field.

  “Many years ago I fell in love with a beautiful courtesan. To pay for my carousals, I sold my house and all my possessions. My children had to beg for grains of millet to ease the pangs in their shrunken bellies. My loyal wife drove a knife into her breast and expired while our little ones wailed around her.”

  Cat was gratified to see her listeners wiping their eyes on their sleeves.

  “This woman who had bewitched me was no ordinary being.” Cat lowered her voice to draw them further into her tale. “The ravishing creature who nibbled my earlobe and trailed her fingers down my naked spine ...”

  When the audience sucked in its breath and leaned forward as one, Cat remembered she wasn’t entertaining guests in the Perfumed Lotus. The villagers wanted demons and lust, but they wanted them disguised as a morality tale.

  “The woman I loved was a demon cat with eyes like coals and teeth like razors. It had ripped open the throat of the gentle, lark-voiced beauty and had drunk her blood. It had dragged her body under the porch and scratched out a grave with its claws. Then it took her form.

  “I began waylaying drunken passersby at night, stealing their money and selling their clothes to pay for the favors of my beloved. My friends suspected supernatural mischief, so they hid behind a screen and waited until my lover and I entered. Again and again she demanded that I satisfy her, until at last I lay as though dead. When she began to suck my soul out through my fingertips, my friends knew she was a demon.

  “They fell upon her and stabbed her. With a shriek she trembled and contorted. Her nose broadened and her eyes widened to the size of hand drums. Whiskers and fur sprouted on her face. Her ears grew pointed. She snarled and hissed. Then, lashing her long black tail, she ran out the door, leaped onto the roof, and disappeared.

  “When I had regained my strength I went in search of my children. But they lay in unmarked graves at the dry river bottom where executed criminals are exposed.”

  The nose blowing grew louder, and when Cat paused for breath she heard weeping.

  “As penance I vowed to crawl the length of the land. When I reached here, I was waylaid by bandits who stole the rags from my back and left my bones to molder.”

  Cat leaned forward and rested her face in her hands. She was shaking and weary. The people around her sat absolutely silent. Finally she sat up straight.

  “Saemon regrets that he has caused the kago man and his good wife such grief.” Cat spoke in her usual voice, but it was thick with fatigue. “When we have chanted the proper prayers over his remains, he will become a Buddha. If you continue to leave offerings to feed his spirit, he will trouble you no more.”

  As the villagers rose quietly, Cat stared straight ahead. She prayed that the bones would not trouble her, either. She worried that her sacrilege had imperiled her own soul. Each of her thou
ghts and deeds in this world affected her karma. Evil bred evil. Good bred good. Cat hoped that her efforts to put a troubled spirit to rest would be considered good.

  Cat tried to sleep on the hard pallet stuffed with rice husks, but the coarse hempen covers abraded her skin. She had put aside the block of cedar that was to serve as a pillow and cradled her head in the crook of her arm. She felt under the edge of the mattress for the reassuring touch of the four-foot-long stave she had hidden there.

  She had pleaded exhaustion and excused herself early from the feast. The strain of the exorcism and burial and the gratitude of the villagers had worn her out. All afternoon women had whispered to her as they passed, asking her to pray for ailing children or aged parents. Men had taken her aside to request amulets to ensure virility.

  Cat knew that if she didn’t leave at first light, the elders would have her march through the fields on the mountainside, asking the gods’ benediction. These were people capable of staying afloat in life’s capricious current, but they could hardly be blamed for grabbing on to a raft if one appeared.

  Cat drew up her legs to ease the cramp knotting in her stomach. The food had been plentiful that evening, but not of the sort she was used to.

  To provide this room for Cat, Okyo had gone to stay with her sister-in-law. In the only other room of the house, Viper and headman Sakuta and the older men of the village were continuing the party around the hearth. They had draped their arms across each other’s shoulders and were swaying from side to side as they sang. Viper put a towel over his head, tied it under his chin, and flipped open a fan.

  As the men clapped time he began a burlesque of a courtesan’s sensual dance. Cat could feel the thud of his feet vibrating through the floor and the thin walls. The men’s laughter filled the small house. When he finished he sat down in a storm of applause.

  “Did I bring you a fine holy man or did I not?” he shouted.

  “You did.” Sakuta’s voice was a bit slurred. “Never have I seen a priest so wise and so young. Some are saying he’s the holy O-Daishi-Sama himself, walking among us in disguise.”

  “We can raise subscriptions and build a temple here,” someone said. “People will come from everywhere to worship. Women will flock to leave offerings to rid themselves of the curse of childlessness. Our village will become a center of piety.”

  “We’ll build an inn and tea shops and souvenir stands, a more practical mind added.

  “What’s the use. He’ll take what we earn.”

  Suddenly the talk grew much quieter. They were discussing Lord Katsugawa’s extra tax levy, and what they were saying was treasonous. Lord Katsugawa’s profligate ways had placed a heavy tax burden on the people of Viper’s village. As headman, Sakuta was responsible for either producing the added koku of rice and millet, and watching his people starve, or protesting the injustice. Since the penalty for protest was death, neither alternative was appealing.

  Talk of taxes meant little to Cat, so the men’s low voices lulled her. She remembered a song her mother used to play on the silk strings of her koto, her long, horizontal harp of paulownia wood. The notes had fallen like drops of water into the still black pond of night. Cat sang the words silently to herself as she lay in the darkness of the shabby room.

  So lonely am I

  My soul is a floating weed

  Severed at the roots.

  From somewhere out on the plain of Musashi below, a temple bell tolled as though to guide lost souls through the darkness. Before its mournful call finished sounding in the still air, Cat was asleep.

  The wispy touch of fingertips on her shoulder jolted her awake. In an instant she was out of bed and across the small room, the heavy stick raised in attack position. The night lantern had burned out, leaving behind the stench of whale oil. Cat strained to distinguish her assailant in the darkness.

  “Don’t kill me, most noble shining prince!” The serving maid held the quilt in front of her while she groped for her discarded sleeping robe. “I hoped you would grant me your favors. Pillowing with you will ensure that I have children.”

  “Go away, child.”

  Cat knew that rumors were flying around the village. Everyone said the handsome young exorcist was more than he appeared, but they couldn’t agree on his real identity. Some insisted he was the illegitimate son of a court noble. Others thought he had failed in a suicide pact with his lover, leaving her to journey to the Western Paradise alone. Some even suggested he was the ghost of the tragic young lord Yoshitsune, still fleeing his murderous brother.

  When the maid scurried out Cat replaced the stick and crawled back under the covers. She slept until just before dawn when Okyo, looking much better, brought in a tray of food. She asked after Cat’s health, then bowed her way out. Cat dressed and sat cross-legged in front of the tray. She morosely surveyed the meager heap of pickled vegetables and the cup of hot water flavored with parched millet.

  She almost called Okyo back. She almost complained about the meal. Then she remembered the feast of the day before. Cat didn’t doubt that Viper and his wife would give her the best they had. After yesterday’s extravagance this was all they had.

  “Good morning.” Viper came in, bowed deeply, and sat cautiously, as though he feared his eyeballs would fall out and roll away if he jostled his head too much. He busied himself with his pipe as Cat picked up the chopsticks and the bowl of vegetables and began to eat.

  “I apologize for the wretched accommodations, holy one,” Viper said. “My poor house is not worthy of someone of your stature and piety. I hope our drunken foolishness last night didn’t offend you or keep you awake.”

  “I slept very well.” Cat captured the last fragment of radish and ate it. Then she sipped the hot water.

  “My partner and I will take you back to the TMkaidM today. I’m very sorry to have delayed you from your mission.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’ll take you to the Yaguchi ford.”

  “But there’s a ferry. ...”

  “Local people use the ford. If a man had enemies, he would be less likely to meet them there. Maybe one or two enemies would be stationed at the ford. No more.”

  “Take me to the ferry.” Cat wondered just how much Viper knew and why he was talking of enemies.

  No matter.

  It’s time to move the shadow, Cat thought. It’s time to strike the enemy and make him respond so I can identify him and learn his strength.

  “Of course, holy one.” Viper bowed. “One as young and virtuous as you certainly wouldn’t have enemies.” He reached into the front of his coat and drew out a small cloth sack. The contents clinked when he held it out to Cat.

  “The wretch of a kago man with the dragon tattooed on his arm sends his most abject apologies for so gravely insulting you at the Shinagawa barrier. He offers you these few miserable bu as a gift for your holy work. And he sincerely prays for your forgiveness, though he knows he deserves none.”

  “But how ...” Cat was astonished. She hadn’t even mentioned the bearer who had dropped feces in her begging bowl. Viper gave a deprecating wave of his hand.

  “The road stretches many ri in front of you, holy one,” he went on. ‘ ‘Every crossroad is haunted by foxes and demons and cutpurses, all bent on mischief. Perhaps this will be of use.”

  He handed her a small bundle wrapped in a cloth. She unwrapped it to find a stick a bit longer than her hand and about as thick as her wrist. It was carved of soft sandalwood with a large knot at each end. It looked innocuous, but it was a weapon.

  “What makes you think I would know how to use a yawara?”

  “You speak the language of the bushi, the warrior, holy one. I assumed you would know how to use it.”

  “And what are you doing with this?”

  “Ah ...” Viper bowed to hide his smile, which was directed at himself, not to her. “Even dirt-eaters have secrets.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE WAY OF DEATH

  Cat felt as tho
ugh she had been pleated like a fan, stuffed into the tiny kago, and shaken thoroughly. She had tied her towel across her mouth and nose to keep out the worst of the dust. She knew that if she could stand the journey, Viper and Cold Rice would cheerfully carry her all the way to KyMto in their kago.

  She also knew that if the two kago men were caught at the government barriers with a fugitive, their heads would be cut off and set out like melons in the marketplace. Besides, strong as they were, without fresh teams to spell them they would soon become exhausted. And even if they made it safely, Cat had no funds to pay them. They would lose almost a month’s worth of income that their families desperately needed.

  Cat had been taught that part of her duty as a member of the ruling class was to be benevolent, protective, and just toward subordinates. She wanted no innocent blood on her hands. She didn’t want to cause hardship to those who tried to help her. So she was content to ride only as far as the Tama River just beyond Kawasaki.

  Viper and Cold Rice trotted past a covey of pilgrims and a line of plodding pack ponies. They bowed and called out irreverent greetings to each pair of kago bearers who trotted toward them. When they passed a farmer’s wife shoveling horse manure off the road and into a basket, Viper slapped his rump and offered to make a donation. In a hail of indelicacies they evaded the pair of bald-headed nuns who offered to entertain them in exchange for a donation to their temple. When they outpaced a merchant dozing on a rented horse, the road ahead was clear of travelers.

  Beyond the rice paddies, Cat saw the first of Kawasaki’s handful of shops and ramshackle houses. She called out loudly enough to be heard over Viper’s singing and the rhythmic jingle of the rings on her staff, which was strapped alongside the carrying pole.