“Give up and we won’t hurt you.” The leader of the group swaggered out in front of the others. He was powerful and ugly. He wasn’t much taller than Cat, but he had long arms.
“You must enter the tiger’s den to catch the cub,” Cat taunted. She assumed a fighting stance, with the spear held close to her side, the blade pointed up at an angle.
Ragged strands of lightning illuminated the pass in an explosion of light. The ensuing thunder resonated in Cat’s chest, which felt taut as a drumhead. She remembered Oishi’s advice, “Move calmly, like a lotus flower in the middle of a raging fire.”
Kira’s retainers drew their swords and advanced with a caution Cat found flattering. She faced them with a cool, remote stare. She regretted only that she had no helmet in which to burn incense so that if her head were taken, it would be perfumed and presentable.
“I am Asano no Kinume.” To be heard above the wind, Cat had to shout her challenge. “I am the daughter of Asano Takumi-no-Kami Naganori, lord of AkM castle and third master of the Banshu-AkM clan.”
Cat took a deep breath. She felt as though she were part of the storm rising around her. “I am a person of little merit,” she continued, “but it’s a matter of indifference to me if I live or die here today. If you care to test my arm, step forward.”
The leader of the group refused to lower himself by answering a woman’s challenge. With the flat of his blade held carelessly against his shoulder, he strode forward as though Cat were unarmed. As he cleared the narrow passageway he brought up his sword to parry her blow and disarm her, but he was too late.
Cat used the blow Oishi had taught her and that had served her in the fight at the ferry near Kawasaki. Her spear moved in a blurred, precise arc. It sliced deep into the forearm. Then she lunged, driving the blade through the man’s jacket and into his chest, pushing him back against the rock. She heard the muffled scrape of metal on stone as the blade passed through him.
The weight of his body pulled the spear downward as he slid into a crouching position at the base of the rock face. Cat put a foot against his chest and yanked the blade out. She could see he was dead, and she turned her attention to the next man.
Holding the spear horizontally above her head, she dropped onto her left knee with her right leg out in front of her, the knee bent, the foot braced. She swung the butt section around to parry the second man’s downward blow, then dispatched him with a sweeping strike that opened his stomach. When he fell she stabbed the point into his ear, finishing him.
His corpse lay in the opening between the rocks, making a third attack even more difficult. While two of the survivors tried to hold Cat’s attention with feints and threats, the third clambered up into the wind-sculptured hollows and crevices of the huge outcrop to her left.
He planned to get above or behind her, but Kasane was hidden and waiting for him. She hadn’t room to swing her crutch in the narrow defile, so she had tied a fist-size stone into one end of her towel. As the man passed below her she whirled it three times, then slammed it down on the shaved crown of his head.
He slumped, but his body was too tightly wedged in the crack to fall. Kasane hit him until splinters of bone drove into his brain.
Panting and shaking, Kasane lay stomach down across the boulder above him and peered over the edge at the two remaining samurai. She ducked out of sight when they scanned the rocks for their missing comrade.
“Shiro,” one of them called out. “Where are you?”
“In hell!” Kasane shrieked with laughter so demonic even Cat shivered, and wisps of hair stirred at the nape of her neck.
The men turned and ran, stumbling in their haste to get away from a place that was clearly haunted.
Kasane scrambled down from her perch and ran to the heap of stones generations of travelers had left next to a small statue of JizM. She moved several of them to the edge of the cliff. Cat realized what she had in mind and helped her. They each found a rock that took both hands to lift. As they waited with them poised over their heads, they smiled grimly at each other.
When Kira’s two retainers came into sight on the switchback below, Cat and Kasane threw the rocks down on them. Most missed, although Kasane, who had thrown rocks at crows in the fields, had the better aim. Her second stone hit one where his neck joined his shoulder. He pitched sideways, rolled headlong down the steep incline, and hurtled over the side. The other man rounded the corner at a run and disappeared from sight.
Kasane helped Cat heave the two bodies over the edge of the mountainside and into the river far below. Cat knew she couldn’t keep the men’s swords, but she considered ramming their points into the ground so they stood upright in the middle of the road.
It would have been an act of defiance, a message to Lord Kira. But she thought better of it. The wisest course was to leave behind as little evidence as possible. The swords followed the bodies over the side.
“Where’s the other one, elder sister?” Cat stuck her hands in her sleeves to hide the fact that they were shaking.
Together they pulled out the body and disposed of it, too. They had just finished when the first large, cold raindrops hit their faces and bare arms so hard that they smarted. Then the rain began to fall in torrents. It diluted the blood on the rocks and the ground, tinting it pink before washing it away.
Cat and Kasane stood in the shelter of the outcrop while they caught their breaths, and Cat put the iron cap back on her spear’s blade.
Already rivulets were turning to streams and wearing new channels as they rushed down the steep road. They carried first pebbles, then larger and larger rocks, with them.
“You did well, elder sister.” Cat held up her staff in salute. “I’m proud of you.”
“Your Ladyship has taught this unworthy person to do everything thoroughly. You have taught her that if one eats poison, one should lick even the dish.”
The rain splattered on Kasane’s back as she bowed very low, to the proper level for addressing the daughter of a daimyM. She had heard Cat call out her real name. “She is honored that Your Ladyship looks on her miserable person with favor.”
Cat smiled ruefully as she took Kasane’s arm to help her along the treacherous path. Kasane had risked her life for her again. She had proven herself not only courageous and loyal, but resourceful as well. She deserved to see the bottom to the bottom. She deserved to know the real story.
CHAPTER 48
SOMETIMES A TRICKLE, SOMETIMES A WILD SEA
The Oi River lay just beyond Shimada, the twenty-third post station. It was always treacherous. In flood it was deadly, the worst of the many rivers that flowed down from the mountains and cleaved the TMkaidM.
The Oi wasn’t usually flooded at this time of year, but the weather had been unusually warm. Melted snow from the mountains covered the wide floodplain. It carved steep banks and formed deeps where shallows had been before. The rains washed away mountainsides. The trees that had grown there rode the flood’s crest. Rocks and gravel and mud traveled downstream, to be deposited near the river’s mouth.
Cat stood in the mire at the river’s edge while Kasane read the government order on the sign posted there.
“It says we mustn’t cross.” Kasane slowly sounded out the characters. “It says the transport office will advise all travelers when the way is safe so that ‘they may proceed according to their rank.’ ”
“Even if the water recedes today,” Cat said, “the lords’ processions will require all the available boats and porters to cross. We would still be delayed for days.”
Cat and Kasane glanced back at the thatched roofs of Shimada. The rain had turned the town into a quagmire. Muddy sandals were heaped at the doors of any establishment that could provide lodging. Layers of sodden straw raincoats hung dripping from the eaves.
The inns were filled with the retainers and porters and attendants of Lord Hino’s councilor, who was traveling to Edo. Half his people had crossed the river and were waiting for the rest, stranded on
the far side. Lord Wakizaka’s retinue hadn’t arrived yet, but already those without the privileged status of daimyM were sleeping under roofed gates and verandas, chapels and bridges.
Cat knew she had to keep in front of Lord Wakizaka, who was heading in the same direction she was. He was allowed to take a thousand men when he traveled. Even if he only had a fraction of that with him, he would cause long delays at every river ford.
“What shall we do?” Kasane followed Cat, who was already slogging along the path that led upriver.
“Find a boat.”
The boat groaned and shuddered. For what seemed forever it hung motionless in the maelstrom, suspended from the boatmen’s poles. Then its stern flipped up, plunging the long, flattened prow into an eddy that spun it around.
Cat and Kasane and the tubs and bales that made up the cargo slid down the shallow bilge, ending in a heap in the bow. Cat grabbed Kasane’s legs in time to keep her from pitching over the low gunwale and into the clay-colored water surging and heaving around them.
Cat lay sprawled among the straw-wrapped bales of rice. She was prepared to die, but she resented being seasick. She hauled herself up, rested her chin on the downwind gunwale, and vomited into the waves. She sighed with relief and slumped back down.
Cat had seen carpenters and porters, coopers and gardeners and stonemasons, perform tasks that seemed much too strenuous for the fragile apparatus of muscles, tendons, and bones. She had seen peasants carrying their own weight and more in the loads on their backs. But she had never seen anyone work as hard as the three men in this boat.
For the last half of the hour of the Monkey they had been struggling to reach the opposite shore, still five cho away. With feet braced, they stood at the stern and wrestled with the sweep and the poles that usually propelled their battered old dory. The poles were bending like bamboo in a typhoon. The sinews on the men’s arms and backs and the veins on their foreheads bulged until Cat thought they surely would break.
Kasane grabbed Cat’s arm. “Look!”
Cat turned to see a barge broach in a whirlpool upstream. Sideways and out of control, it raced toward them through the gathering darkness. It seemed to swallow up the scenery as it came.
Cat held Kasane close and stroked her wet hair as though she were a child. “None of us is destined to live forever,” she said.
Kasane didn’t seem terribly comforted. She would have liked to live long enough to hear her suitor’s voice. And she was terrified of river demons dragging her under and ripping out her liver.
“Namu Amida Butsu. “ Kasane’s chanting was muffled because she had buried her face in Cat’s jacket. “Homage to Amida Buddha.” The drone of her chant sent up tickling vibrations in Cat’s chest.
With her arms around Kasane, Cat watched the barge angle in on its disastrous course. The slimy black planks of its side loomed over them, filling her field of vision. She could see the terror on the bargemen’s pale faces as they clung to whatever handholds they could find. They were shouting, but they couldn’t be heard over the roar of the water.
Cat didn’t flinch when the barge hit the bow, knocking it aside with a bone-rattling jolt. The wet wood shrieked as the barge scraped its entire length along the smaller boat’s forward section.
The huge sweep, chiseled from the trunk of a cypress, slammed back and forth in its cradle. With each swing it thumped the side of the boat until Cat was sure it would shatter it. Then the barge was clear of them.
It hit a submerged boulder with a grinding crash that sent its crew flying. When they landed the water closed in over their heads. The barge split apart as if it were a toy.
In its fatal journey it must have gathered to itself all the malevolent spirits of the flood, because the rest of the passage was uneventful. Cat had prepared herself so well for death that she was surprised when the keel plowed into the mud of the Oi’s western shore. Two of the crew helped Cat and Kasane across the sagging gangplank and up the slippery bank. After the plunging and surging of the boat, the ground seemed to rise too solidly to meet Cat’s feet, and she walked stiff-legged.
While the men secured the line, Cat and Kasane stood shivering among pyramidal stacks of the river porters’ ladderlike pallets. They were surrounded by fish weirs, algae nets, discarded wooden lunch boxes and wrappings, straw raincoats, and broken sandals, the detritus of commerce and travel.
“We are mortified at the discomfort you have suffered in our poor craft.” The owner and captain of the boat bowed apologetically. Ashore he was much smaller than he had seemed at the sweep.
“The blame is ours for inconveniencing you in such weather.” Cat slipped a paper packet into the captain’s sleeve. It contained all the silver coins she had left. “Please honor us by accepting this insignificant token.”
The boat’s owner slid his hand tactfully into his sleeve and hefted it. “It’s rude of me to disagree, but this is too much.”
He bowed until Cat could see only his back, the black whisk of a topknot, and the long, wet hanks of hair that had escaped it and clung to his neck. “Our fee is one hundred and sixty coppers for each passenger.”
“But the river is so dangerous ...”
“Please ...” While he talked and bowed, the captain separated out the equivalent of three hundred and twenty coppers and rewrapped the rest, all without taking his hand out of his sleeve. “We could not cheat you by asking for more.” He returned the packet.
“An honest man’s head is the seat of the gods.” Cat and Kasane bowed low. “The Lord of Immeasurable Light will bless you.”
With wishes for a safe journey, the three boatmen trotted off into the dusk toward Kanaya. The town’s main street was marked by a string of lights snaking up into a narrow, tree-choked cleft in the foothills.
Now that the danger was past, Cat stood on the bank and watched the water rush by. Musashi said the spirit was like water. It adopted the shape of its receptacle. It was sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea. Both in fighting and in everyday life, Musashi said, one’s spirit must be calm yet determined.
Cat stood there until her legs had stopped trembling and her spirit had calmed. By the time she and Kasane reached Kanaya, the watchman was making the first of his night’s rounds. He clapped his wooden blocks, and in a lilting chant he warned householders about the dangers of untended hearths.
“How does your ankle feel?” Cat asked.
“Much better. The Okitsu medicine is as good as it’s claimed to be.”
“Mitsuke lies about seven ri ahead, and there are no rivers that require porters between here and there. Can you walk that far tonight?”
“The crossroad ogres might wish us harm, my lady,” Kasane murmured.
“I’ll warn them away with my staff.” Cat pounded her pilgrim’s staff thrice on the road, setting the iron rings to jangling.
“And if they don’t heed the warning, I’ll skewer them like dumplings.” She flourished the staff and made a comic face.
“Let’s go, then.” Kasane smiled gamely.
Kasane was uncertain about traveling at night. On the one hand she was terrified of the evil beings that lurked in the dark, especially at the meeting of the roads. But Mitsuke was where she hoped to find a message from her pilgrim.
She knew he himself was probably somewhere behind her, but she was learning the ways of the road. She knew he could pay a messenger to carry the letter ahead and post it on the temple gate. Since Okitsu she had studied each messenger jogging past with his wooden letter box on his back. Perhaps in one of them lay a poem written in her lover’s strong, simple hand.
CHAPTER 49
DRAWN ON BY MOONLIGHT
A line of singing children danced past Hanshiro and his new traveling companion, the pilgrim who had been following Kasane. The children were calligraphy students from a school on Tub Makers’ Street in Mariko. They wore identical white robes and bamboo hats, each inscribed with an inspirational verse painted by their teacher. To keep their group toge
ther they held on to a straw rope that caused frequent entanglements on the crowded road.
Now that the rain had stopped, the muddy TMkaidM was a-swarm with youthful pilgrims again. The urge to go to Ise had reached at least as far as here. Hanshiro’s companion smiled at the noisy children as though they were innocent, poppy-cheeked Buddhas. In fact, everything seemed to cause him delight.
“They say that what with this holy call to the children and the arrival of Lord Wakizaka and Hino’s men, Shimada looks like an earthquake in a thread shop,” he said.
Hanshiro grunted in reply.
The young man called himself Traveler. He had an angular face, a wide mouth, squared jaw, and narrow black eyes. His high nose belied his peasant origins. He wore brown leggings and brown cloth arm coverings with flaps that extended to the first knuckles of his callused fingers. He had on a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat with the shallow rim that shielded his face. He wore a pilgrim’s robe and trousers of cheap white cotton. He carried a wicker pack on his back. His pilgrim’s scroll was rolled into his straw sleeping mat to keep it dry.
The lad was a relentless optimist. As far as Hanshiro could tell, he was a model of his class. He extolled hard work and the nobler virtues. He was friendly, earnest, honest, cheerful, and candid. He was almost handsome. Hanshiro wanted nothing more than to run his sword through him and leave him squirming in the mud.
For Hanshiro, emotions of all sorts were infrequent and unwelcome guests, but he had never experienced jealousy before. He had gone back on his resolve to ignore Lady Asano’s vulgar indiscretion, and he was furious with himself. Instead of continuing his journey, he had waited for the recipient of her letter to retrieve it from the temple message board in Okitsu. The discovery that Lady Asano was carrying on a flirtation with a peasant had Hanshiro almost speechless with rage.