by Adam Baker
‘There was a purse tied to my belt,’ said Raku, his voice distorted by split, swollen lips. The woman looked shifty.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it.’
She raised the bowl of water to his lips and he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. He looked monstrous. His face was split down the middle. Crude stitches holding together crusted, inflamed flesh.
‘May I ask who attacked you?’ asked the woman.
‘A bandit.’
‘With a sword? An axe?’
‘A sword.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Like fire.’
‘I’m sorry. We have no poppy.’
‘I don’t need poppy. I need food. I need my strength.’
The woman brought food. She helped him sit up. He threw back his head while she lowered noodles into his mouth. He gave a wry laugh:
‘I feel like a baby bird being fed a worm.’
She held up the bowl so he could drink the remaining broth. Another glimpse of his face reflected in the rainbow oil-sheen of the liquid.
‘How long have I been insensible?’
‘A day and a half.’
‘Bring me clothes.’
‘You need rest. Lots of rest.’
‘I’ll rest when I’m dead. Bring me clothes and shoes. I need to reach General Motohide. Lives depend on it.’
Early morning. The river took a right bend. The samurai checked the position of the sun and tried to estimate their bearing.
‘This is drawing us off course,’ he said. ‘So I suppose this is where we leave the river. Bring us in to shore.’
Tameyo used the bamboo pole to bring them to the bank and they jumped ashore. They dragged the raft out of the water and unlashed their packs.
‘Hide the raft under some reeds,’ said the samurai. ‘If any of you survive this little adventure, you might need it for the return journey.’
The convicts tore reeds and camouflaged the raft. They bent and stretched, resentful to be travelling by foot once more. They clapped their hands to get warm.
‘Not long now, by my estimation,’ said the samurai. ‘The mountains lie beyond those hills. Two days at the most.’
He set off.
The girl followed him. The convicts shouldered their packs. They could almost feel the debilitating proximity of their goal. As they drew closer to the castle their breath came a little shorter and their feet hurt a little more than before. Cold dread weighed them down.
They climbed a hill. The samurai got half way then turned and waited for the others to catch up. Tameyo and Ariyo strode without difficulty but Masaie struggled to climb the heavy gradient.
‘What’s wrong with your leg?’ asked the samurai.
Masaie ignored him.
‘Do you need me to carry your pack?’
Masaie limped past and continued his doggedly resentful climb of the hill.
* * *
‘There,’ said the samurai pointing north-west. A distant mountain capped white by the first winter snows. ‘The castle is on the other side of that peak. They say a dragon slumbers beneath the mountain. Once every hundred years he shifts in his sleep, and the mountain shakes.’
‘Godforsaken,’ said Tameyo, contemplating the distant peak. ‘No wonder they chose that place for a fortress. An army would exhaust itself reaching the foot of the mountain, let alone lay siege.’
‘Motohide’s choice of home says a lot about the man,’ said the samurai. ‘He could stay in Sekino, the provincial capital, the administrative centre of his domain. There is a fine palace. Small by Imperial standards but impressive. On the one hand, he would be more vulnerable to assassination, but on the other hand, he would be well placed to govern his kingdom. He could monitor the factions and rivalries that inevitably divide any court. Instead he has shut himself away. He is physically secure but fatally remote from the governance of his lands. If I had any influence with the Imperial House, if I had been one of their counsellors, I would have advised against attacking the general. He might be a charismatic commander, the perfect man to lead troops into combat, but he will fail as Daimyō. He does not need to be toppled by an external aggressor. The machinations of his own court will ensure his downfall soon enough.’
‘You doubt his intelligence?’ asked the girl.
‘He lacks guile. An ugly trait but necessary for a lord. And despite his superficial courage in battle he is ruled by fear. We shall of course find some way to turn that weakness to our advantage.’
‘So what do we do when we reach the castle?’ asked Tameyo. ‘How do we get inside the walls? How do we get past the guards?’
‘I have the seed of a plan,’ said the samurai.
* * *
They emerged from trees and saw a building up ahead. An ancient temple at the centre of farmland with weathered walls and a cypress-shingle roof.
‘The Temple of the Blue Skies,’ said the samurai. ‘They will give us a bed for the night.’
‘I’d rather keep moving,’ said Ariyo. ‘We came to Etchū to fight. Let’s get on with it. Confront our fate.’
‘This will be our last chance to pray, to lighten our souls. Let’s not squander the opportunity.’
They walked through acres of cleared forest. Monks in blue linen samue tended the ring of farmland surrounding the temple. They fed penned cattle, tilled vegetable plots and readied them for spring.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ said Tameyo, gesturing to the monks as they walked the path towards the main temple building. ‘Volunteer to live and die on the same little plot of land. No women. No anything.’
‘They have embarked on a voyage of inner exploration,’ said the samurai. ‘They cross endless deserts and uncharted oceans. It all happens behind their eyes as they sit in stillness and silence.’
They climbed a long flight of stone steps to the temple doors. An iron bell hung from the wall. A hammer hung on a rope beside it. The samurai beat the bell and they waited for the doors to open. It would be impolite to knock twice so they stood and restlessly shifted foot to foot. The convicts looked around, uncomfortable to find themselves at a monastery. They felt the serenity of their surroundings as a reproach for chaotic, dissolute lives.
They heard the rasp of metal latches pulled back. A novice in black robes opened the door and bowed greeting. The samurai bowed in return.
‘We are travellers. We’ve come a long way and we have far to go. We request shelter for the night.’
It was a routine request. The monastery was honour-bound to offer succour to the sick, the elderly and passing travellers. They would provide basic food and shelter from the wind and rain.
The novice nodded and pulled the door wide. They stepped into the inner hall and let their eyes adjust. Vaulted shadows inadequately lit by grease lamps. A cloying smell of incense. The drone of meditation from a nearby hall. Multiple voices produced a harmonious nasal hum which seemed to gently vibrate through the ancient timbers of the building.
‘Please follow me,’ said the novice.
The monk led them down a low-ceilinged passageway. He carried a lamp. Crooked walls and roof beams were lit by weak candle-flame. He led them to a bare room at the back of the building. The travellers’ lodging. There were rice-straw mattresses laid on the floor, a couple of tables and a couple of wash basins in the corner. The novice lit a charcoal brazier and stoked it with an iron rod. He set the lamp on a table and returned with a jug of water and some cups.
The convicts propped their packs against the wall. Masaie carefully laid the explosives in the corner well away from the fire, sat on the floor and massaged his leg.
‘Reckon they’d sell us food?’ he asked. ‘Supplies? For the journey?’
‘Maybe. No meat. But I’m sure they’d give us a little rice, a little bean curd.’
‘Appetising.’
‘As a wise man once said, hunger is the best chef.’
Tameyo unlatched the shutters, pulled them wide and looked
out the window onto the monastery graveyard. Countless stone markers surrounded a three-tiered pagoda, testament to the generations of monks who had lived and died within the temple precincts. He looked beyond the graveyard and could see low hills and, in the distance, the mountains. He watched cloud-shadows wash over the landscape. Wind rippled through wild grass. In a few more days it would be the depths of winter and the landscape would be white with snow. Roads would be impassable and the monastery would be sealed against the cold. The monks would rely on stored food and a wood pile to survive until spring. The surrounding land would be an unforgiving wilderness and any foot travellers caught in the open would risk hypothermia. They would shiver, then experience the treacherous warmth that lies beyond cold. They would stop at the roadside to rest tired limbs and freeze stiff as statues. Their flesh would turn to ice. Their black mummified bodies would be revealed by the spring thaw.
‘I should have been a monk,’ said Masaie.
‘It’s not too late,’ said the samurai. ‘There are countless monasteries in and around Kyoto. When this is over you could present yourself. Plenty of warriors spend their later years in contemplation. It’s a well-trodden path. I understand the abbot of this temple used to serve in the Imperial guard.’
‘Let’s not kid ourselves there will be a life beyond this,’ said Masaie without turning from the window. ‘We’ll die on that mountainside and even if we don’t the Emperor will have our heads as soon as we return. Let’s enjoy our last days free of illusion.’
He stood at the window and drank in the view until Ariyo said:
‘Close the shutter. It’s freezing in here.’
* * *
The sun headed towards the horizon. The samurai knelt on the terrace and prayed. There was an altar inside the building for monks to venerate. It was, presumably, a massive and elaborate structure. A huge stone Buddha at the end of a great, windowless hall, glimpsed through a broiling veil of incense fumes and weak candlelight. The Amida Buddha: a blank-eyed, impassive effigy surrounded by elaborate stone filigree that had taken lifetimes to carve. A halo of swirling, intertwining designs intended to suggest the cyclic impermanence of the material world, but a stranger such as the samurai would never see it. He would never be permitted to enter the inner sanctum. Instead he and fellow travellers were directed towards a more modest altar on a terrace at the rear of the building. A fat, laughing Hotei radiating happiness and abundance – the public face of the Awakened One for common folk who hadn’t the opportunity to choose monastic seclusion and explore deeper mysteries. They hadn’t had the time to meditate upon the texture of awareness, the falsity of personal identity.
The samurai knelt on a cushion. He leant forward and placed his forehead on the cold granite flagstones, the first time he had executed the gesture with one arm. It felt awkward like a one-armed press-up, but he repeated the gesture for each of his relatives.
He lit incense and prayed to his grandparents. He had no recollection of them. They died before he learned to walk. But he prayed to them anyway, prayed to an ancestral lineage that stretched back into unrecorded history. He asked for their blessing and support. The samurai was the last of his line. His ancestors had pulled themselves up from farm folk. They had, by a process of incremental, generation-by-generation advancement, managed to secure extensive lands and title and establish the family as minor gentry. But all their work and ambition had been undone in a single season when a provincial turf war saw their land seized and home burned to the ground. The samurai swore, as the last of the line, not to disgrace his forebears.
He lit incense and prayed to his mother and father. The samurai had kept the memory of his parents secure in a lock-box in his head. Since the death of his master he had been compelled to drop his family name. He embraced anonymity, found melancholy strength in becoming a ghost. He told himself he had no parents. He was simply a piece of the world, like trees or rocks, like sunlight or snow. But on occasion he chose to turn the key and lift the lid and there were his mother and father, the recollection of their faces, the timbre of their voices. He asked them to bless this final mission and to grant him strength to see it through.
He lit incense and prayed to his elder brother. The last time the samurai saw his elder brother he was sitting on horseback in full armour. His brother bowed to his parents as they stood under the eaves of their house. He nodded farewell to the samurai before spurring his horse and heading down the road to join his cavalry regiment. Later that month the regiment rode into battle and the samurai’s brother was swallowed by history. The samurai suppressed this heartbreaking recollection and instead recalled happier and younger days. He and his brother chasing each other through a nearby meadow, laughing and duelling with sticks. The samurai asked his brother to accompany him into combat, to strengthen his remaining arm and help him strike with lethal speed and accuracy.
Finally, when his filial duties were done, he prayed for himself. He prayed for clarity. He prayed to be free of the attachments of this world so he could move to the next life unencumbered. Then he sat quietly and listened to the oceanic breeze as it rippled through tall grass on the hillside below. Most men would say, if pressed, they weren’t scared of death. When the end comes, in whatever form, they assure themselves they will look it in the eye and walk into oblivion proud and courageous. Easy to say when you’re young and in good health. Quite another to stare death in the face knowing your days are short and you are doing most things for the last time. He sat and watched the sunset. He became absorbed in the immediacy of his own existence. Priests called it naka-ima. The eternal present.
The girl joined him and sat by his side.
‘Your illness is getting worse, neh?’
‘Is it obvious?’ asked the samurai.
‘I haven’t seen you eat for a couple of days.’
‘It’s difficult to digest food.’
‘Have you tried the emetic?’
He shook his head.
‘You must eat. You need your strength.’
‘The pain is constant,’ he said.
‘Use the poppy.’
‘Not yet. Only at the very end.’
The sun dipped below the horizon. The landscape turned red.
* * *
The girl was forbidden to sleep in the same room as the men. The novice led her to the kitchens to help prepare food for the monks. She was to provide a few hours domestic service as payment for food and shelter.
The kitchen was a wide room with preparation tables and open fireplace. The tables were cluttered with stacked wooden trays and teetering towers of bowls. The fire was dark and unlit. The cook was a large woman well used to ruling the kitchen, well used to bossing the maids. The cook gave the girl a bunch of carrots and a knife.
‘Peel and chop.’
‘How many monks are there?’ asked the girl as she diced carrots.
‘A hundred and fifty.’
The girl looked around as staff brought vegetables from a storeroom.
‘Two cooks? For so many men?’
‘Rice and steamed vegetables,’ explained the cook. ‘The same meal every day. And jugs of water from the well. A simple menu.’
‘The food never varies?’
‘This is a temple. There are no luxuries, nothing that can distract the monks from their devotions. Food is sustenance, nothing more.’
The girl filled a cauldron with water drawn from the well. She heaved the pot up the steps and back into the kitchen then hung it on an iron tripod over the fire. She fetched fresh logs from the woodpile, stacked them beneath the pot and set them alight. Tinder flared and the logs smouldered and burned. Smoke was drawn through a flue-hatch in the ceiling. The fire transformed the room. The gloomy space was filled with warm light and comforting wood-crackle. The cook bustled, oblivious to the flames, but the girl turned her face towards the fire and relished the heat. Maids lingered by the fireside and enjoyed the warmth each time they collected a tray loaded with jugs and cups for the refector
y. A black cat squeezed through the gap in the kitchen door and curled in front of the hearth. The room filled with steam and became hot as a sauna. The girl wrapped a rag round her forehead to absorb sweat. She stood next to the bubbling cauldron and threw in scoops of rice from a burlap sack. She stirred the pot with a wooden paddle.
An old woman knelt at a little table in the corner of the kitchen ignoring the heat and hubbub around her. She dipped a brush and with deft strokes drew a single kanji symbol on sheets of coarse linen paper. She laid the sheets on the floor to dry. Maids stepped over the calligraphy barely sparing the woman a look.
The cook knelt next to the girl and trimmed beans with a little paring knife.
‘Who is that?’ asked the girl, gesturing to the old woman. ‘The lady with the brush?’
The cook didn’t look round but continued to strip beans and drop them in a bowl.
‘She’s the niece of local nobility. Her family fell out of favour with the previous Daimyō and were put to the sword. She was brought here as a baby, the sole survivor and has lived here ever since. I suppose that is how warlords convince themselves they are good men. Slaughter thousands but let the occasional sweet child live to convince themselves they still have a soul.’
‘There are nuns? Here?’
‘They have their own prayer hall and their own dormitory.’
‘What is she doing?’ asked the girl, nodding towards the old woman.
‘She feels a connection to everyone she has ever met. If she shared a moment with someone, no matter how inconsequential, she believes their lives are inextricably linked. So once a year she sends a greeting.’
‘To everyone? Everyone she ever encountered?’
‘Every servant, every farmer, every washer-woman and maid.’
The cook spoke matter-of-fact. Metaphysical speculation was an everyday part of her work environment. She served men and women trying to commune with the core reality of the universe same as she would serve folk who spent their waking hours making shoes.