Shichisaburo was about halfway back in the long line of actors and their apprentices and servants. He was followed by musicians, carpenters, wig makers, shampooers, tailors, dressers, stagehands, and almost a hundred porters. He was keeping a close eye on the man carrying the lacquered box that held his carved head. During the riot at Kambara he had rescued it at some peril to himself.
Like the other actors, Dragonfly was hidden beneath the huge rush hat he was required to wear when mingling with people on the road. His wadded silk travel robe, the color of cloves, was covered by a drab, rusty-black paper cloak. His paulownia wood geta were of a utilitarian height, which made life easier for the servant who walked behind him, holding a paper umbrella over his head. His son, identically dressed, was at his side as always.
Dragonfly was possessed by curiosity about the handsome boy he had helped escape. He had spent most of the trip trying to wheedle information from the taciturn rMnin of Tosa. Hanshiro had replied only in noncommittal grunts. He himself had learned that rumors abounded among the members of the company. The one closest to the truth said the young stranger was an Asano retainer, trying to deliver a message to the councilor, Oishi Kuranosuke.
As Dragonfly walked he held a small piece of sandalwood to his nose, to mask the mélange of odors around him. He stepped delicately around a pile of horse dung that hadn’t been collected yet by some enterprising farmer’s child.
‘ “Travel is a gloomy and trying experience.” He waved a limp hand at the passing throng, which, strangely enough, seemed to include more than the usual number of children. “Candles exhaust themselves to give light to men.” He sighed the words in a wan, melancholy tone.
“If I had known you were going to rest your head so uneasily on your pillow last night,” Hanshiro said, “I would have invited you to share my accommodations.” He was amused to discover that he liked the actor. He found him easy to talk to. Dragonfly had the sensitive nature of a cultured woman, yet he wasn’t bent on seduction for profit.
Hanshiro suspected that Dragonfly’s complaints masked the real cause of his unhappiness. He missed the loving wife and three young daughters waiting for him in Osaka.
“Oh, hideous!” Dragonfly tilted up his chin so he could give Hanshiro a look of sympathy from under his hat brim. “I pity you. Spending all night in that police office with those ruffians.”
“It was very instructive,” Hanshiro said.
The police had deftly chain-tied all the offending farmers together and herded them into a small outer room. By nightfall they had sobered up and were quite chastened. But because Hanshiro had been kept in a separate room with the others of his class, he had been able to listen to Kira’s men talk among themselves. He hadn’t learned much that he hadn’t been able to guess already, however.
Bureaucracy wasn’t to be hurried. The magistrate had spent most of the afternoon listening to the complaints of exasperated farmers from a nearby village. The headman’s grandmother had been stealing again. Because everyone in the village knew of her predilection, the only thing she had found to take were buckets of night soil. She had collected quite a hoard of them before the stench revealed her crime. The story was a complicated one, entailing a series of events that went back years. The magistrate listened patiently to all of it.
He was probably avoiding the larger problem that filled the police office and overflowed into the yard, where the rioting farmers’ families had set up camp. So many people had been involved in the artistic debate at the Nakamura-za’s performance, the magistrate had insisted on sending to Edo for advice.
The young westcountryman who called himself Nameless had sat silently in a corner throughout the night as, one by one, men were called in to present their cases. He was still sitting there when Hanshiro finally left at dawn. Like Hanshiro, he seemed to be considering the consequences of his own folly.
The hunter pursuing the prey sees not the mountains, as the old saying went. Hanshiro had been so intent on his fight with Nameless that the police had been able to twist their blunt pitchforks into his sleeves, immobilizing his arms. It had been humiliating. As Hanshiro had sat, straight upright, through the night, he had thought of the ancient poem:
Beautiful lady, standing alone,
None in the world like her,
A single glance and she upsets a city,
A second glance, she upsets the state.
She had certainly upset him. The prospect of seeing Lady Asano was still distracting him. He was even conscious of the shabbiness of his appearance for the first time since he had left Tosa.
“ ‘He wonders if he ought to wash his clothes,’ “ he recited aloud.
“ ‘ Having lived with them for a while . . .’ ” Dragonfly continued the old poem. “ ‘He now loves the lice.’ ”
Dragonfly smiled to himself under his big hat. He understood now the purpose of the stoical rMnin’s quest. He was in love with the fugitive lad from Edo.
As they passed the salve shops clustered outside the big gates of Seiken temple, Dragonfly studied the bright robes and broad sashes of the lads who sold the wonderful salve that was Okitsu’s most famous meibutsu, “name thing.” The painted boys themselves were Okitsu’s second most famous product. They didn’t impress Dragonfly, though. He slanted his brim up again to share a look of disdain with Hanshiro.
Okitsu boasted over two hundred houses, and the shopping district around the temple was always busy. But the activity today seemed even more frenetic than usual. Laughing, shouting children dodged among the two-wheeled handcarts and the stacks of vegetables and goods. The adults’ voices were loud. An almost palpable excitement shimmered in the air, which was already charged with an oncoming storm.
Hanshiro and Dragonfly and his son passed between the old plum trees outside the temple gate. The trees’ limbs had grown so heavy that they crept along the ground. A child stood sobbing among them as people brushed past him.
He was very young. His head was shaved except for a round patch of hair gathered into a bunch on his crown. He wore a bib and loincloth and quilted jacket and a small damask bag at his side for the amulet that would protect him from childhood’s calamities.
Hanshiro crouched in front of him. “What’s the matter?”
“My brother went to the shrine of the Sun Goddess without me.”
“You’re too young to travel so far.” Hanshiro wiped the boy’s eyes and nose with one of his paper handkerchiefs.
“But I found one, too.” The child opened his bag and drew out a wrinkled scrap of paper.
“Where did you get it?”
“They rained down during the night. We’ve been finding them everywhere. Everyone says they’re a holy sign. The other children are going. I want to go, too.”
Hanshiro studied the smudged writing on the paper. It was hastily done, but even though he knew it was highly unlikely, Hanshiro thought he recognized Lady Asano’s hand. Fool, he thought. You imagine her everywhere.
“Dame! Impossible child!” A frantic woman scooped up the boy and hoisted him onto her back. He clung to her neck while she supported his small bottom with her forearms crossed behind her. He bounced along as, without a glance at Hanshiro or Dragonfly, his mother trotted off through the crowd.
Hanshiro stood and looked around. The clerks of a nearby thread shop were writing names and addresses on wooden tickets to hang around the young pilgrims’ necks. Another merchant was giving them straw sandals. Beside the gate a woman was passing out oranges from a large basket.
Was this the beginning of something like the mysterious mass pilgrimage to Ise that had happened almost sixty years ago? And could Cat have started it? As Hanshiro entered the temple’s grounds behind Dragonfly, he stopped to look over the hundreds of messages, invocations, and pleas written on wooden tags and hung from the message board near the massive gate. He did it at each big temple or shrine he encountered.
“Anything there from someone you know?” Dragonfly asked.
Hanshiro g
runted noncommittally. But he stayed where he was as Dragonfly swept on through the gate with his son, his servants, and the Nakamura troupe after him.
The bold, black calligraphy of one letter was unmistakably Lady Asano’s. “To the Traveler,” it said. “From the Floating Weed.”
Hanshiro knew the reference, of course. It was from a poem written nine centuries earlier by Lady Ono no Komachi, one of the six poetical geniuses. “So forlorn am I, that my body is like a floating weed.” “Floating weed” had come to symbolize a precarious, uprooted existence.
For the briefest of instants Hanshiro imagined the letter was addressed to him. While people streamed past him he reached out and touched it lightly with his fingertips. His heart, his soul, his marrow, ached to open it.
But as surely as he knew the calligraphy was Lady Asano’s, he also knew the letter’s contents were not meant for him. Even if it could tell him her whereabouts, honor would not allow him to take it down and read it.
There is no medicine that will cure a fool, he thought. You aspired to break off the flower, but the branch is too high for the likes of you.
CHAPTER 47
IF ONE EATS POISON
“Your five-fun strumpet looks like a rice mortar wearing a kimono.” As the wind blew swirls of dust around him, BMshk continued an argument that had been meandering along since he and his brother left Fuchu.
“Yours has a face worn down in the middle like a mounting block.” Hairy turned away from the gusts to light his pipe. He puffed on it as he walked on the other side of the mare’s nose from his brother.
“Remember when the sandal bearer got drunk and annoyed the women of the Three Gate House, and they dared him to screw a sea urchin?”
“It stung him until his stalk swelled up like a paper lantern.” Hairy waddled a few paces. “For two days he walked like a duck visiting fire victims.”
“That’s the only time his stalk was ever thicker than a dumpling skewer.”
Even though it was only midday, the BMshk brothers had rested several times along the way. At each stop they had washed down the dust of the road with cheap wine. After each stop they had become more waggish. By the time the first of the many stands selling Mariko’s famous sweet-potato stew came into view, they were laughing uproariously. They were boiling tea in their navels, as Kasane put it.
They were also wearing a hole in Cat’s bag of patience. Fortunately the double gates to Fuchu’s pleasure district had been closed when they passed through the town, or the brothers would surely have found an excuse to detour by way of it. As it was, for the one and a half ri to Mariko they had regaled each other with stories of their past adventures there.
Cat was worried. Viper trusted this pair, but wine jugs had mouths. “We’ve hired a pair of oil sellers,” she muttered.
Kasane gave her a sympathetic glance. Door-to-door oil vendors even made their way to her village from time to time. Their habit of stopping to gossip with the housewives had earned them a reputation as laggards.
The journey to Mariko may have taken longer than Cat had anticipated, but the frequent stops hadn’t been wasted. She and Kasane had been grateful for the chance to stretch their cramped legs each time the dust clogged the hostlers’ throats and they stopped for a drink. And thanks to the two BMshk, they had new travel permits bought from a forger at a hundred and fifty coppers each.
Cat’s name was now Jimbei and Kasane was Sugi. As their home they named Kururi, the capital of Kasane’s home province of Kazusa. There would be a mix of dialects there, and even if they encountered an official who could distinguish accents from individual villages, they might be able to pass. It was risky, but not as risky as trying to use their old permits.
Better than the permits, though, was Cat’s new staff, also purchased in Fuchu. It looked harmless enough. It was a wooden pilgrim’s staff with a pointed iron cap that fitted tightly over the shaft. Six iron rings, three on each side, dangled from the two filigreed loops.
It looked very much like the first staff Cat had carried when she left Edo. But the cap on this one could be lifted off to reveal a straight, double-edged blade, sharp enough to shave a nun’s head. The decorative bands of beaten brass around the shaft added strength to the places most likely to be struck with a sword or staff.
Kasane had been too preoccupied to notice the mare’s slow pace. With her legs dangling from the front of the open pannier frame, she had leaned her elbows on the rim. When she wasn’t glancing behind her, looking for her pilgrim, she gazed dreamily into the future. Cat could guess what she was thinking.
Kasane had passed the hours singing old tunes softly to herself. Her voice was full and pleasant, and all her songs had been about love. So was the one she was singing now.
Time cannot alter
The flow of water,
Or love’s strange, sweet way.
BMshk dropped back to walk alongside Cat’s pannier. “For five hundred more coppers, Your Honor, we’ll take you over the Utsu-no-yama trail.”
“That’s too much money.”
“The pass is dangerous. A murder was committed there just last month.”
“Surely you two fierce men aren’t afraid?”
“Of course not. But even in daytime the trees make the road so dark that if someone were to pinch your nose, you wouldn’t see him. Besides, the nag wears out a bale of sandals on the rocks.”
“Looks like we can’t go with you for any price.” Hairy pointed his pipe at the mob of porters, hostlers, horses, and kago bearers milling about in the yard of Mariko’s transport office.
With a rolled scroll, probably a labor requisition, a minor transport official waved the brothers over to the side of the road. “Excuse the inconvenience,” he called out.
Cat slumped in her seat, lowered her head so her face was hidden by her hat, and pretended to be dozing. Her hand rested casually on her staff.
“How fares your saintly mother, BMshk-san?” the official asked politely.
“Still waiting for good fortune, Your Honor.” BMshk squinted into the blowing dust.
“Fortune and misfortune are entwined like the strands of a rope.” The official sucked air through his teeth philosophically. The amenities observed, he brandished the scroll. “Lord Hino’s councillor is on his way to Edo and will stay here tomorrow night,” he said. “Lord Wakizaka will be here tonight on his way back to Harima.” With the processions of two lords arriving, the official had reason to look harried. “The members of the two trains are like the teeth of a comb in number. Lord Wakizaka must have your steed.”
Cat stiffened. Lord Hino had been an ally of Cat’s father. Wakizaka, lord of Tatsuno, was from Harima, the same province as her father. His warriors had accompanied the government’s agents when they took possession of the Asano castle and lands.
“Lord Wakizaka!” Hairy grumbled from behind Cat’s pannier. “Lord Wakizaka tries to pay with promissory notes or samples of his poetry. He’s pawned his genitals to the money lenders.”
“We are at the august lord’s service.” BMshk bowed sardonically.
“Report this afternoon for your assignment.” As the official walked away the wind whipped his hakama about his thin legs.
BMshk turned to face Cat. “Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor, but may I suggest you wait until tomorrow and follow Lord Wakizaka’s procession? Your safety will be assured on the Utsu-no-yama road.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Cat said. “But my sister and I will go on alone.”
“It’s a risky undertaking,” said BMshk.
“A teacup on the edge of a well,” Hairy added.
The Bosho brothers were right. The Utsu-no-yama trail was steep and rocky and lonely and dark. And though it was early afternoon, a coming storm made the road even gloomier than usual.
Thunder grumbled among the peaks. Wind moaned through the tops of the towering cedars, causing their trunks to creak. It rustled the dense undergrowth ominously.
The kagos and hor
ses for hire had all been detained at the transport office in Mariko. Most foot travelers had already taken refuge. The road was almost deserted. Cat knew she was being followed, though. She had looked over the edge and counted five men coming up the narrow switchback below.
She used a long cord to tie her sleeves back out of the way with the warrior’s dragonfly knot. She rolled her towel into a band and tied it around her head to keep tendrils of hair from blowing in her eyes. When she finished she did indeed look like the young lord Yoshitsune, trained in the warrior’s Way by mountain demons.
She waited at the far side of two huge rock formations flanking the road. The trail narrowed here until only one person at a time could pass comfortably between them. The outcropping on her right jutted out from the cliff at the top of the pass. Behind the one to her left was a drop-off into a narrow gorge three cho deep. Mist rose from the river that foamed and tumbled over the rocks at the bottom of it.
“Elder sister,” Cat said, “go on ahead. You can catch up with the pilgrims who passed a while ago. Wait for me across from the gate of the Wisteria Inn in Okabe.”
“We could hide until they pass, younger brother.” Kasane had seen the five men, too.
“They must know I’m here. They’d find me eventually.” Cat had decided that if she must fight, this was the best possible place. “Even if they try to kill me, I won’t die until I’m fated to.”
“Then I’ll stay with you.” Kasane was still using her crutch, but the swelling in her ankle had gone down. She could walk with a slight limp. “I won’t die until I’m fated to, either.”
Cat sighed at the obstinacy of peasants. “ Stay out of sight.”
Cat heard the men’s voices before they rounded the corner. When they saw her they stopped to confer and tie back their own sleeves. Even though there were five of them, they would have to run at Cat one at a time. And each attacker’s sword arm would be constricted in the narrow defile.
The Tokaido Road Page 38