by David Kirk
‘The monks here claim he was a rasetsu demon manifested,’ said Akiyama. ‘An enemy of enlightenment that shepherded the barbarian Christ onto our shores. Believe that if you will. However, as I said, this used to be home to many warrior brethren. Thousands in their white cowls and with their great glaives, driven to interfere with courts and creeds not of their own. They would march down carrying Buddhas above them, march to surround the city in one big snake chasing its tail. This before the Regent built the walls and the moats, so you could get up on the roofs and look out and see the holy warriors every which way you looked, at the height of noon or at night with their lanterns glimmering. Broaching rivers uncaring of the current. They would chant together, so loud, things like, “Break what is bent and widen the path!” over and over. Fearsome . . . And they had a particular umbrage with the ascent of the Lord Oda.’
Musashi heard all that and said, ‘So this is a dead place.’
‘It seems to live once more to me.’
Musashi shook his head. ‘I don’t like it.’
Akiyama placed his bowl down, swallowed his last mouthful. ‘I have duty to attend to. Let me see to it first.’
They left Ameku and Yae in the enclave whilst one of the monks courteously led the pair of them to the graveyard. He was a young man and he cast glances at Akiyama when the samurai was not looking, staring at his odd appearance. Musashi stared in turn at him until the man became aware that he was caught, and from then on he looked only ahead. The three of them walked in silence.
Musashi found himself looking around the slopes and all that enveloped them. Hiei continued to unsettle him. Not green upon the floor but dark, last year’s leaves and this year’s petals an entropic carpet through which the nooses of roots emerged. Boughs of ferns compacted into strata as they clambered upwards over one another, those pushed beneath withering into nothing. A raised vein of earth set with stones that held memories of definite edges, once a stairway perhaps, the bulging ground beneath it pushing what remained of the order apart and devouring the rocks themselves. Tall trunks of bamboo, etiolated grey at their bases, the emerald blush of vitality growing rib by incremental rib upwards. Insects upon his flesh drew blood before he could slap them away, the silhouette of a bird of prey gliding silent and eternal.
The nature of this forest, he saw, was to consume.
They passed an obelisk robbed of its dignity, set with some form of parable the letters of which fingers would struggle to feel, let alone eyes perceive a meaning. Up upon the slopes he began to see the burnt remnants of temples and shrines, ugly charcoal smears and stunted beams that were throttled by ivy.
The graveyard was set on a slope where hundreds of square pillars of dark stone stood in erratic rank and file, weathered by years. Evidently they had escaped Oda’s desecration. Akiyama led them through the narrow paths. Chiselled names surrounded them, some forgotten and faded or the neat gouges of the recently deceased filled in by fresh red paint. A cat yowled at them as they passed, stub-tailed, grown fat off woodland vermin and the offerings of food that people left for their beloved departed, a contented king basking in his morbid little empire.
They came to the crypt of Akiyama’s family. It was in a sorry state. A colony of spiders had woven thick webs between the namestone and its neighbours, the green and yellow creatures the size of a man’s palm. Water had pooled and scummed in the hollows of the empty stone candelabras that stood either side of the crypt, itself small and rife with moss.
Akiyama sighed in dismay. The pale-eyed samurai found a stick and began to run it through the webs, scattering the spiders. He swept the moss away, and together he and Musashi picked up the heavy candelabras the best they could and tipped the filthy water from them. Their hands were slick with slime and they rubbed them on leaves and grass until they were clean. Akiyama then produced two pears, yellow and fat, and placed them on the altar. Then he set the candles and incense he had brought before the crypt and lit both.
Smoke curled.
Musashi watched as Akiyama sat down cross-legged preparing to pray, saw the wince his wounds still drew from him. Saw the diligence and sincerity in the man’s eyes. Saw what he was faithful to, and felt a twist in his own heart.
‘I will grant you solitude. I will meet you back at the enclave with the women,’ said Musashi. Akiyama nodded his agreement.
The monk was waiting at the entrance of the graveyard. ‘Are there any remaining temples upon Hiei? An altar that I might . . . ?’ Musashi asked him.
‘There is the hall back from whence we came,’ said the monk. ‘That is the centre of Hiei now.’
‘No. That looks like a stable.’
‘It was a stable. All that was left.’
Musashi shook his head. ‘It must be . . . proper.’
The monk nodded his head and led him back along the trail. Now that they were but two young and able men, he led Musashi up an arduous shortcut. They wound their way up a steep and narrow little crevice filled with loose rocks and smooth pebbles, what must have once been a stream but the mountain having long since sucked it dry. It led back to the well-travelled trail, and there the monk stopped by the foot of an old stone stairway and pointed upwards.
‘There,’ he said. ‘One of Hiei’s last remaining temples.’
Musashi peered through the trees. He could see nothing but the vague sliver of a small roof appearing above the slope of the stairs. ‘There’s an altar there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you wait here a few moments?’
The monk bowed his head in acquiescence. Musashi set off up the stairs. Echoed upwards, he heard the distant voices of the circumambulators once more, following him softly:
‘PraisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida, praisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida, praisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida . . .’
The stones of the stairway were so old their surface had turned moss green, trembled in the loose earth as he climbed. It was a steep ascent, yet short, no more than fifty steps. The temple he found at the top was also small, perhaps ten paces around either side and set upon a squared dais of stone. The wood of it was almost the same colour as the forest around it, set with scabs of bright moss and fungus. Evidently ancient. Yet when Musashi stepped inside he found new things there – a chest set for coins, a swathe of red cloth draped over an altar, the remnants of recently burnt incense standing in a clay cauldron of sand.
The scent of the smoke could not ward away the underlying stench of the place entirely, the odour like a ditch. The interior was dominated, he was surprised to find, by two large wooden statues of Raijin and Fujin. They were Shinto gods of thunder and wind, ogreish beings that cavorted in chaos, and here they stood in the frozen throes of their dance with their robes blowing around them and panels of smoke and fire rising behind them. They were placed either side of a smaller statue, one of bronze and equally as old, he guessed, showing the Bodhisattva of wisdom Monju sitting cross-legged atop a lotus, this in turn borne on the back of a snarling lion.
Musashi had no coin to offer up to the chest; all he had was the fullness of his heart. He looked around and ensured that the monk had not followed him, that none could see him. Then he dropped to the knees he had sworn he would never bend for any man, pressed his brow to the ground and rose with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in prayer:
‘Raijin. Fujin. Monju. Amaterasu. Enlightened Buddha. Both heavens, please hear me. I ask that you grant my uncle Dorinbo health and life and fortune. He is the best of men, and I ask that you watch over him in my stead.’
He repeated the prayer inwardly a dozen times, more, until the prayer had become wordless, no more than a fervent feeling, and he thought that this was wrong and so he began to speak aloud. He sang the prayer-songs of Shinto that Dorinbo had taught him, warbling in a low resonant monotone, not caring that here was Buddhist ground. His motive was honest, he was honest, and the heavens would understand that. And in the singing of it he remembered how his uncle had sung it – how melodies s
eemed to haunt him now – and he thought deeper of the man, and he was twisted with a profound longing. Wondered what it was Dorinbo was doing at that precise moment. Thought of how he would be standing. Imagined the look in his eyes at the exact moment he would recognize Musashi on the day of his return. That day to come when he was permitted home, that day which had no date, and yet Musashi both vowed and knew was near. Had to be near. Perhaps even before the snows this year. The day when he had attained that nebulous thing he sought, achieved a thing of worth. When all was done in Kyoto, and all was achieved, and all saw and recognized this, and all was right.
Live until that day, Uncle.
Live.
Musashi prayed until his words were spent and he was satisfied that some higher entity could not have failed to hear him. Then he placed his hands upon his thighs, took a steadying breath, bowed a final time, and opened his eyes.
He found himself looking up into the faces of Raijin and Fujin.
The statues were unchanged.
He looked and he saw that the wood they were carved from must have been as old as the temple itself. They had been painted once, but with the rotting of the timber the paint had peeled away and so they were left marred, garish colours outlining dark abscesses of wood-flesh, growths of moss mottled in pallid green; they looked a pair of plague-bearers. They grinned and snarled down at him, delighted in their disease, whilst Monju sat placid, content to be amongst the filthy.
How long had they stood here? How many prayers like this had the three of them heard? How many lives had inadvertently intersected here? How many people were beneath Musashi in the wave he now stood on the cusp of, and would be in time sucked down into just as those before him had been?
Musashi looked up at the pair of statues and something began to formulate within him, somewhere between anger and fear and loneliness at the inkling that perhaps he had mistaken the nature of the forest that surrounded this altar for the nature of existence itself.
It was only the sound of voices from outside that broke his bleak reverie. Men’s voices, many of them, distant, growing closer.
Angry.
Demanding him by name.
Chapter Fifteen
Denshichiro Yoshioka rose with the dawn. At the washing trough of the barracks he splashed tepid water over his body, cleaned himself of the sweat of night. He was a man of broad shoulders, forearms coiled with muscle, a square head heavy with bone and lacking neck. To look at him was to see that his ancestors were likely those men who chased and wrestled wild horses to force bridles upon them.
Naked, he went through his exercises. He brought his chin up to a beam thirty times. He clutched a boulder to his chest and dropped into a squat fifty times. He took up a broad training sword weighted to be five times heavier than a true blade and ran through the motions of striking from either side of his body two hundred times.
When he was done, Denshichiro washed himself again. He dressed. He made sure he was alone. Then he went and he brought forth a length of silk from where he kept it in a chest in his chambers. It was one of the standards of the Tokugawa that had fallen in the explosion at the garrison. A member of the school who had fought the fires had recovered it and presented it to him. Yards of it, immaculate and white.
With great care Denshichiro folded it so that the black crest of the Tokugawa was framed in a neat square. He placed this on the ground outside. Then he took out his penis and pissed upon it. Swung his cock back and forth, blighted the emblem with great yellow slashes, grinned to himself.
His duty that morning was to pay a cordial visit to the school of the Kiichi. They were an older school than the Yoshioka, having held a modest compound up by the Ichijo canal for centuries, but their prestige had never risen anywhere near as high. Neither school contested this and their relationship was amiable and well defined as superior–inferior; this was why Denshichiro had come in place of his elder brother Seijuro, who was head of the school, and this was why the master of the Kiichi was not offended by the coming of the second in line.
The master of the Kiichi presented Denshichiro with the quaint antique guard of a cavalry sword. Denshichiro in turn gifted him a cask of fine shochu spirits. They drank a measure each as they ate a plate of satsumas. They spoke platitudes of no real import, commented upon the Shogun’s castle and the beheadings there, agreed that next month’s arrival of a famed wrestler from distant Kyushu was something to look forward to.
Before midmorning Denshichiro bade his farewells and was on his way out of the school when one of the adepts called out to him. He introduced himself politely as Eijun Yamanaka.
‘Sir Yamanaka.’ Denshichiro nodded. ‘What is it you want?’
‘I am sorry to intrude upon your time, Sir Yoshioka, but I happened to witness something strange yesterday. Something in which I think you would have interest. That odd-looking fellow, the Foreigner – does he still serve your most honourable school?’
‘I believe so. Though I do not recall seeing him of late.’
‘Indeed. I encountered him yesterday before the gates of the city. He looked ragged and worn, and he was not wearing the colour of tea.’
‘You are certain it was him?’
‘He has a very particular appearance.’
Denshichiro could not argue with this. ‘What was he doing?’
‘That was the queer thing. He was in strange company. Some kind of witch or devil-woman, and a masterless. A real brute, a dog who tried to cut me down.’
‘I am glad to see you remain unharmed,’ said Denshichiro, the sentiment entirely perfunctory. ‘Have you a name for this masterless?’
‘I do: Musashi Miyamoto. I have not heard of him.’
‘Neither have I.’
‘With good reason I would imagine,’ said Eijun. ‘He was the definition of indignity. Held my attention with his repugnance – it was only when they were leaving did I recognize your man. Seeing him only compounded the oddity of the whole thing.’
‘Indeed,’ said Denshichiro. His body settled into a slow contemplative nod.
‘The Foreigner,’ said Eijun, matching the nod.
‘The Foreigner.’
There came an awkward little pause. Denshichiro’s expression revealed nothing, and it was Eijun who brought it upon himself to speak first.
‘In truth I am not surprised,’ the samurai said. ‘He came here once, the Foreigner. I looked into his eyes and there was something aberrant about them. It was like looking into a fox’s. Made my skin crawl when he smiled, as though he were planning some cruelty for me of which I was unaware.’
‘Indeed.’
‘In any case,’ said Eijun, ‘I recalled that your most honourable self would be visiting our school this morn. I thought that you would care to know of a man shirking your colours, and so I sent my squire to follow the pair. The boy said they spent the night upon Mount Hiei, what with those Edo interlopers deciding to bar the gates of the city. I myself had to take lodgings in a room with ten other men, if you can believe that, and, a fine thing, the Edoites relented and opened the gates this morning or I—’
‘Where are the pair now?’ interrupted Denshichiro. It was easy for a man of his appearance to impose himself, even to his elders.
Eijun recovered his poise adeptly: ‘Still upon Hiei. My squire waits there now at the foot of the trails with a few friends of his, either to track them if they move on from there or to point them out to you should you so desire it.’
‘This is a great service you have rendered us, Sir Yamanaka,’ said Denshichiro, already turning for the door. ‘You have my gratitude.’
‘It is nothing, Sir Yoshioka,’ said Eijun, and he bowed humbly at his departing back. ‘A simple matter of respect between our two schools.’
The Foreigner.
He was like a ghost to Denshichiro. Seijuro, five years his elder, had told him with the dark relish that only elder brothers could muster that the man had that reddish skin of his because he bathed in the blood of children
. Though Denshichiro eventually realized this to be nonsense, he had been told it at a young enough age that the sentiment of it was inexorably ingrained in him. Denshichiro remembered nights before he had been awarded the longsword of adulthood when he would stalk the dark halls of the school, placing his feet on their edges to see if he could walk entirely silently like an assassin, and always there would be the light of a solitary candle in the library to spoil his imagined stealth. He would peer in and see the Foreigner there sitting reading, back entirely rigid, eyes shimmering gold.
Denshichiro had wanted to throw salt at him each and every time, as though he himself were some exorcizing priest. That was the Foreigner’s realm, darkness and silence. Unsettling, and now rumours of desertion. The thought of desertion in itself unsettling – he could recall no man who had willingly forsaken the colour of tea. He thought it over as the crowded streets parted for him.
He went straight to Ujinari, whom he found working the school’s accounts, flicking the beads of an abacus and filling in the waiting columns of a ledger. Ujinari was his closest friend, had been since childhood. They were of an age, born only months apart, and perhaps their fathers had planned this. Ujinari was Tadanari’s son, after all, and Tadanari had been as close to Denshichiro’s father as a brother. The Kozei and the Yoshioka all but blood, so why not have their two progeny grow up as fraternal kin?
Denshichiro thus sought his counsel above all others. He innately felt that Ujinari understood both his own nature and the world in general better than he himself did – though he would admit this to no one – and he told Ujinari what he had learnt that morning. Ujinari listened and nodded along.
‘This Musashi Miyamoto – have you heard any of him?’ said Denshichiro.
‘No.’
‘Then why would he be consorting with the Foreigner? Or the Foreigner with him?’
Ujinari thought about it for a moment, knelt there scratching at the shaven pate of his head out of habit. Both of them wore their topknots in the fashion of the samurai youth of Kyoto, the bared skin no more than the width of two fingers, a mere line cut through the hair instead of the tradition of the full crown and pate bared. Then an idea occurred to him, and he led Denshichiro to the archives room.