by Lian Hearn
“You know I must have children—so I must sleep with my wife. Travel, getting away from a place she obviously dislikes, may make her care more for me. I’m sorry if it makes you jealous, Akane, but you have to accept the situation.”
“I would give you children,” Akane said, unable to stop the words, though she knew it was foolish even to think them.
“You give me cause for jealousy too. Kiyoshige told me about Hayato,” Shigeru said. “They say you interceded with my uncle for his children’s lives.”
“I would have appealed to you, if you had been here. I hope it does not offend you.”
“I was surprised my uncle was swayed by you. It made me wonder what he had demanded in return.”
“Nothing,” she said hastily. “I believe he welcomed the chance to demonstrate his compassion. He was drunk when he had Hayato killed. In the morning he regretted his hastiness and wanted to make amends.”
“It does not sound like my uncle,” Shigeru said quietly. He moved away from her, rose, and began to dress.
“Will you not stay?” she said.
“No. I can’t tonight. I must see my parents in the morning, and my wife, and start making arrangements for the journey.”
“But I will see you before you go?” She heard the note of pleading in her own voice at the same time as disappointment and despair sprang into her heart. I am in such danger, she thought. I am falling in love with him. Immediately she feigned indifference. “But of course, you will be very busy. Very well, I will await your return.”
“I will come again tomorrow night,” he said.
After he had gone and the sound of the horses had died away, she lay listening to the sea and the wind in the pines, berating herself for her stupidity. She feared loving him, the pain it would cause her: she feared losing him, to his wife or in battle—why had he spoken of war?—or because of her pact with Masahiro.
He came as he had promised the following night and talked a little more about his journey, planning to leave the next day while the weather was still fine. She tried to hide her feelings and devote herself purely to pleasing him, but the meeting left her unusually restless and dissatisfied.
She was even more disturbed when, after Shigeru had left the city, a message came suggesting she should make one of her customary visits to Daishoin that afternoon. It was not signed, but she had no doubt who it was from. She could not decide whether to go or not: the day was hot and she was tired and dispirited, but the prospect of spending the entire day moping indoors did not appeal to her, either. In the end she ordered the palanquin and dressed with care.
The heat made the temple roofs shimmer; white doves sheltered under the deep eaves, and their cooing mingled with the insistent cheeping of sparrows and the drone of cicadas. Red autumn dragonflies danced above the cool water of the cistern in the front courtyard. Akane rinsed her hands and mouth and bowed before the entrance to the main hall of the temple. The dim interior seemed to be deserted, and she walked, followed by the maid she had brought with her, into the shade of the sacred grove around the shrine. Here it felt a little cooler: water trickled from a fountain into a series of pools where gold and red fish swam lazily.
A man squatted beneath the trees, watching the fish. She recognized Masahiro. He stood when Akane approached. He did not greet her or bother with any other courtesies.
“I was wondering if you had any news for me.”
“Only what Lord Otori must already know—your nephew has left to escort his wife home.”
“But was that the real purpose of his trip or does he have other intentions?”
“Takeshi is to go to Terayama.”
“Yes, and Hagi will be a much pleasanter place without him.”
“I am sorry. He did not tell me anything else.”
“I expect he had other things on his mind.” Masahiro let his gaze linger on her form. “And who can blame him?”
She felt a pang of fear at his lust; she had to invent something for him. She recalled a conversation from some time ago. “He is interested in the Seishuu families. Maybe he plans to meet someone from the Arai or Maruyama.”
“He said that?”
“I am sure I have heard him mention it.” She knew Shigeru had not told her this explicitly, but the news had had the desired effect on Masahiro and had distracted his attention from her.
“I suspected as much,” he muttered. “I must inform my brother.”
It’s not true, Akane thought as the palanquin carried her home, so it surely cannot do him harm.
23
The journey was leisurely, for they had several weeks of fine weather ahead of them, and since its purpose was ostensibly of a domestic and peaceful nature, they took every opportunity to stop at famous places and sites of beauty along the way, as well as making formal visits to various Otori vassals and retainers. Shigeru’s true purpose in traveling so slowly was to allow the messengers he had sent to reach Otori Eijiro and bring back his reply. He also had to allow time for Eijiro’s two oldest sons to ride to Kumamoto and Maruyama to arrange a meeting with representatives from the Arai family and the Maruyama.
Kumamoto lay in the far southwest of the Three Countries, seven to ten days’ hard ride away. Maruyama was about seven days’ journey due west from Yamagata. As Shigeru and his retinue of mounted warriors, servants, foot soldiers, and packhorses, palanquins for his wife and her women, banners and sunshades, wound its way through the autumn landscape, the rice fields golden, the autumn lilies brilliant red, his thoughts were miles away with those distant messengers, urging them on their way, praying for a fruitful outcome to his swift planning. The messengers were from his own men, one of them Harada, who had ridden on a similar mission the year before to bring reinforcements to the border from Yamagata and Kushimoto. Harada had been deeply affected by the death of Tomasu, the man he had carried on his back across the Yaegahara plain. He was implacably opposed to the Tohan and alert to any kind of weakness among the Otori that might lead to appeasement. Shigeru had entrusted Harada with the letter to Eijiro, instructing him to travel on himself with the two sons. He recalled riding on the same road over two years before, when he had gone to Terayama to be taught by Matsuda. He looked back on his fifteen-year-old self with amazement. What a child he had been! He could see clearly how much he had grown up since then, and the changes that Matsuda’s teaching, Irie’s constant support, and the circumstances of his life had wrought in him.
Once back in Hagi, he had moved rapidly to bring about the desired meeting with the clans of the West. But he had kept this true motive secret, sharing it only with Irie and Kiyoshige. He had sought his father’s permission to take his wife to Kushimoto and Takeshi to Terayama, but it had been merely a formality. He had been making his own decisions for more than a year now, and the strength of his personality and character had increased to such an extent that his father now conceded to him on almost every issue. Shigeru no longer even kept up the pretence of consulting his uncles. Occasionally, when their protests and complaints annoyed him, he considered advising them to leave the castle, exiling them to distant country estates, but on the whole he preferred to keep them within Hagi, where he could keep an eye on their activities.
He discovered within himself an ability to dissemble. He took on an exterior that seemed affable, bland, and relaxed. But beneath the mask lay a different personality, watchful and tireless. Now the austere training from Terayama began to show its results. He needed very little sleep, could endure endless meetings as well as the campaigns on the border. He became accustomed to making quick decisions and never regretting them, acting immediately to put them into practice. His decisions were invariably proved right, which won him the trust of warriors, merchants, and farmers alike. Now he had a new idea that he would bring into being: an alliance that would bring peace to the Three Countries and protect the Otori against the Tohan. He was so sure of the justice and sense of this endeavor he felt he could create it purely through the strength of his w
ill.
This new ability to hide his true feelings helped him maintain a semblance of harmony with his wife during the journey. Moe was relieved to escape from the oppressions of life in the deep interior of the castle, but she was not a good traveler, did not care for horses, and found the movement of the palanquin disagreeable. She was anxious about the dangers of the road—sickness, bandits, bad weather—and the minor discomforts of fleas, stuffy rooms, and cold water irritated her. Shigeru spent as little time in her company as he could, though he treated her with unrelenting politeness. The rooms of lodging places with their flimsy screens did not encourage intimacy, and though he knew he should follow Irie’s advice and keep trying to approach her, despite his own words to Akane and his best intentions, he made no move toward her. He intended that she should spend the winter with her parents; when she returned to Hagi in the spring, they might be able to make a fresh start. He would be freed from anxiety about her and would be able to concentrate on the preparations for the war that he was increasingly convinced would break out within the next year.
It was with relief that he left Lord Yanagi’s house at Kushimoto and set out for Terayama on the journey home. He would leave his brother at the temple. He had taken Takeshi everywhere with him, wanting the boy to see the country and meet the retainers and the vassal families for himself, hoping to share with him his ideas of the fief as a farm, the need to support warriors to defend it. Takeshi was astute when it came to assessing the reactions of the Kitano, for example, and he got on well with the Yanagi boys, but it was obvious that he was more interested in swords and horses; he himself said so. Shigeru responded that without rice they would have neither: the warrior’s heroism was no use among the starving, and preparations for war included tilling the land as much as training men and arming them. However, he found little support for this view among the ruling families, apart from Eijiro; they were more interested in how taxes could be increased. Farming methods were old-fashioned; innovation if it happened was piecemeal and inconsistent. After the war is won, I will rehaul the entire fief, Shigeru promised himself. But now the most important task was to ensure the loyalty and military readiness of the whole clan. And that could be done only by confirming allegiances and not antagonizing anyone.
On the journey out he had made a point of staying two nights in Tsuwano, where Lord Kitano and his sons received him with chilly deference. The close friendship Shigeru had had with Tadao and Masaji seemed to have evaporated after Shigeru had demanded their return from Inuyama the year before. All three repeated their vows of allegiance and gave detailed reports of the troops they had sent to the eastern borders.
“I am a little surprised your sons are in Tsuwano,” Shigeru said. “I expected them to be in Chigawa until the beginning of winter.”
“Their mother has been unwell,” Kitano replied smoothly. “At one stage we feared for her life.”
“I am glad to see her so perfectly recovered!” Shigeru replied.
“If I may offer a word of advice, Lord Shigeru, it is better not to provoke Iida Sadamu any more than you already have. We have heard many reports of his bitterness against you. You have given him cause to hate you.”
“He seizes on any pretext to justify his aggression and lust for power,” Shigeru replied. “He knows that I am not afraid of him.”
“You must be aware that the Tsuwano domain would suffer the most from a Tohan attack.”
“All the more reason to ensure that it is properly defended.”
Kitano’s words stayed with him after he left Tsuwano, causing him some anxiety. He would have liked to journey farther south and meet Noguchi Masayoshi again. The memory of their first meeting also made him uneasy. Noguchi had accompanied Kitano’s sons to Inuyama: since then, Shigeru had had no word of his movements other than the formal interactions demanded by their relationship within the clan, the payment of rice levies and other taxes on the lucrative trade through Hofu. Matsuda had described Noguchi as a coward and an opportunist, and called both him and Kitano pragmatic. I should have insisted the boys come back to Hagi with me, he thought—and if only I had time to travel to Hofu.
ONE AFTERNOON TOWARD the end of the tenth month, when they were on their way back to Yamagata, Takeshi, who had been riding ahead with Kiyoshige, came cantering back to Shigeru.
“I thought you might like to know. The man we sent away in Chigawa, the burned one, is on the road ahead. I can’t imagine you want to talk to him, but . . . well, I was sorry I treated him so badly before, since he is in your favor, so I’m trying to make amends.”
Shigeru was going to tell Takeshi to send a servant to ask after the man’s health and give him some food, but the beauty of the autumn day and the lightening of his spirits since leaving Moe at her parents’ home suddenly prompted him to say, “We will stop for a while and rest. Tell the young woman to bring her uncle to me.”
A makeshift camp was swiftly set up beneath a small grove of trees, mats spread on the ground and covered with silk cushions, fires lit and water boiled. A small chair was provided for Shigeru, Takeshi sat next to him, and they drank the tea Moe’s parents had given them, picked on the southern slopes of Kushimoto, and ate fresh persimmons and a sweet paste made from chestnuts.
The air was crisp and clear, the sun still pleasantly warm. Ginkgo trees in the grove scattered their leaves in drifts of gold.
He can see none of this, Shigeru thought with pity as the girl led Nesutoro toward him.
“Uncle, Lord Otori is here,” he heard her whisper as she helped him kneel.
“Lord Otori?” He held his face up, as if trying to look with the last of his sight.
“Nesutoro.” He did not want to insult a man of such courage with pity. “I am glad to see your journey is progressing well.”
“Thanks to your kindness, lord.”
“Give him some tea,” he said, and the servants came forward with a wooden bowl. The girl took it from them and placed her uncle’s hands around it. He bowed in thanks and drank.
The girl’s movements were deft and graceful. Shigeru was aware that Takeshi was watching her, and he remembered how he had begun finding his eyes drawn to women. Surely Takeshi was too young! Was he going to be as precocious in this as in everything? He would have to talk to him, warn him against the dangers of infatuation. But the girl was attractive, reminding him of Akane, of how much he missed her.
“What will you do when you get to Maruyama?” he said.
“I believe the Secret One has some plan for my life,” the man replied. “He has spared me; he has brought me this far.” He smiled, making the scars and the sightlessness suddenly less ugly.
“I am glad to have seen you,” Shigeru said, and told the servants to give the girl some rice cakes. “Take care of him.”
She nodded and bowed in thanks, too awed, it seemed, to speak.
Nesutoro said, “May he bless and keep you always.”
“The blessing of their god seems more like a curse,” Takeshi remarked when they resumed their journey.
Shigeru turned in the saddle to catch a last glimpse of the girl leading the blind man along the road. Lit by the afternoon sun, the dust around them made a golden haze.
“I hope he will have a safe and happy life from now on. But can you ever recover from such suffering?”
“Better to take your own life—and far more honorable,” Takeshi said.
“The Hidden are forbidden to kill themselves,” Kiyoshige told him. “Just as they are forbidden to kill.”
It was the complete opposite of everything Takeshi had been brought up to believe. Shigeru could see that the idea was incomprehensible to him. He was not sure he understood it himself. Yet it seemed wrong that those who would not kill should be tortured and murdered: it was like slaughtering children or women for no reason or killing an unarmed man. He had seen for himself the results of blood-lust and unbridled cruelty and now realized the wisdom he had absorbed from Matsuda Shingen. The warrior had been given the ri
ght to kill; his class loved the way of the sword. But the right brought responsibility, and love of the way of the sword must never be allowed to become a love of killing for its own sake. He hoped Takeshi would learn this, too, in the coming year.