Autumn Bridge (28 page)

Lady Nowaki bowed to him. “I regret I have caused you inconvenience, my lord.”

Hironobu returned her bow. “I am happy to see you again, Lady Nowaki.” He tried to think of more to say, but nothing came to him. She smiled at him, and he felt himself blushing. When had she become so beautiful?

Lady Nowaki said, “My, my, how he has grown in such a brief time.”

“Yes,” Lady Kiyomi said, “children—” She stopped abruptly as soon as she said the word, then went on rather too quickly. “Children grow at an astonishing rate.”

“You have much to look forward to,” Lady Nowaki said. “The young lord’s future is very bright.” Her eyes watered, but she smiled and no tears fell.

Hironobu didn’t hear the baby screaming. It must be asleep. He’d overheard two of his maids talking just before he and his mother had departed for the abbey. One of the maids said she had heard from one of Lord Bandan’s maids that the only time it didn’t scream was when it was asleep. The other maid said she had heard from the sister of one of Lord Bandan’s grooms that when it screamed, the horses panicked and tried to kick down the stable doors. Neither maid knew anyone who knew anyone who had claimed to have actually seen it, but both were nevertheless certain it was frightening to behold.

While his mother and Nowaki talked, he peeked into the room as inconspicuously as he could. He thought the sleeping baby might be behind Lady Nowaki somewhere, but it wasn’t. That was a disappointment. He was very curious. Go said the baby wasn’t deformed, but Hironobu didn’t believe him. A normal baby didn’t have that kind of weird, animal voice, and it couldn’t scream so loudly. A normal baby wouldn’t make horses panic, either, especially those of the fierce warlike kind ridden by Lord Bandan and his samurai.

What did it really look like? He was sure it had a big mouth, and maybe even a snout, like a bear. Sharp teeth, too. Well, it was too young to have teeth yet, but when it did, they would be sharp. Maybe in several rows, like a shark. Did it have unblinking eyes, like a snake? Thick fur like a badger, or the harsh, bristly hair of a wild boar? A long tail that thought for itself, like a cat’s? It must be a horrible little monster! No wonder Lord Bandan had exiled his daughter so far away from home. And who was the father?

Before the baby was born, the maids had mentioned the names of many samurai as possibilities, samurai in the service of Lord Bandan, Lord Hikari, and even Hironobu. But no one thought that anymore, the maids said. Everyone was now sure a demon or a ghost had been at work. It might have used a man’s body, but the man was just a tool; his identity wasn’t important. The important thing was, which demon, which ghost? In order for the right prayers to be said, the exorcists needed to know the specific malevolent spirit responsible. Incantations that served to drive one away could easily have the reverse effect on another, and make it stronger and more horrible than ever. It was, the maids agreed, a very tragic and dangerous situation, and everyone was much better off with the mother and child far away in an abbey to the north, since the evil entity would likely follow them there.

“Hironobu, what do you think you’re doing?” His mother’s words startled him. He hadn’t thought she was paying any attention to him. “You’re acting like a prowling thief.”

“I’m not doing anything, Mother. I’m just here with you, because Go said I should be.”

“I’m sure Go didn’t mean that you should stay. Now that you have paid your respects to Lady Nowaki, you may rejoin Go outside.”

Hironobu, a stubborn look on his face, made no move to obey her. He stood where he was, frowned, and said, “That won’t do. I’m being sent hither and thither by bodyguard and mother, which is not appropriate for a Great Lord.”

Lady Kiyomi smiled. “You are quite right as far as it goes. But it is entirely appropriate for a seven-year-old. Please act in that capacity and do as you are told.” She bowed, but it was the shallow bow of a mother bowing to her child, and not that of a lady bowing to her lord.

“The two are not compatible,” Hironobu said. “If I am Great Lord, then I am Great Lord. If I’m just a little boy, then that’s all I am.”

“Your two roles are not compatible, it is true,” Lady Kiyomi said. “Please reconcile them nonetheless. In the future, when you are leader of the clan in fact as well as in name, you will sometimes have to do two, three, even four or more things at once, and not one of them will be compatible with any other. If you cannot do these things, and bring them into harmony even if harmony seems impossible, then you will never truly be Great Lord. You will only have the name.” His mother bowed again, this time deeply, and held the bow. “I hope my lord finds my words not entirely without value.”

Hironobu returned her bow with one of appropriate depth, and also held it. He said, with equal formality, “Your words have much merit. I thank you for them.”

As he left the compound to return to Go, he heard Nowaki say, “You have done a splendid job. He is more little man than little boy.”

He was smiling even more broadly when he left the temple than he had been when he entered it. He hadn’t managed to see the baby as he had hoped. No matter. There would be other opportunities in the future. One day he would see. He promised himself he would. Maybe he could even clip off a bit of its fur to show to his companions back at the castle.

Go had just completed a careful circuit of the temple perimeter when he saw Hironobu returning. He had been seeking a weak point where he might be able to enter unobserved during some future night and had found none. Lord Bandan had built Mushindo Abbey like a small fortress. Go knew that the nuns who lived there had until recently been servants in Lady Nowaki’s inner chamber, which meant they were skilled with weapons like the long-bladed spear, the short sword, and the dagger. They were also likely to know how to cripple and throw attackers, too, and maybe worse. He did not recognize the three men of military bearing who occupied the groundskeeper’s hut outside the walls, but they were obviously samurai, not gardeners.

“I didn’t get to see the baby,” Hironobu said.

“As I told you,” Go said. “Lady Nowaki and the baby were sent here to be hidden, not displayed.”

“I still think it’s deformed,” Hironobu said. “What are you doing?”

“Walking. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I don’t know. More than just walking.”

Go smiled. Hironobu noticed things most boys his age did not. That was promising. Perhaps one day he would grow to fill the reputation created by two strange flights of birds and a string of unexpected battlefield victories.

“Go?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“What is the difference between a ghost and a demon?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it might help to know which fathered Nowaki’s child.”

Go stopped and stared at Hironobu. “Who says either did?”

“Everyone,” Hironobu said, “but they can’t decide which. What’s the difference? Aren’t both supernatural beings?”

“A demon is a creature with origins in another realm,” Go said. “A ghost is the spirit of a being who once lived here on earth.”

“Which is more likely to enter a man and use his body?”

“What?”

“I think a ghost,” Hironobu said. “A creature from another realm would just kill the man and do as he wished with the lady. But a ghost, a ghost has no body, and so has to use one that’s already here. That makes sense, doesn’t it?” He waited for Go to answer, but his bodyguard just kept staring at him in silence. He looked afraid, which was impossible. Go feared nothing.

Lady Nowaki’s sorrowful look touched Lady Kiyomi deeply. Losing children in violent death, as she had, was tragic, but it did not compare to the agony of having a living defective child. It was the great gift of the gods that inconceivable wellsprings of love began to flow in every mother as her baby grew within her. Thus, every hardship, every burden, every pain of maternity could be borne without complaint, and when the child arrived, it found a home in the bosom of an all-embracing, inexhaustible love. But where was that love to go, and to whom was it of even the least benefit, when the child was as Lady Nowaki’s? How unbearably sad to experience such crushing disappointment after waiting with such hope and happiness for so many months. And now, of course, the child’s father would never come forward, so Lady Nowaki’s situation was all the more lonely. She would have to suffer alone. The tears in Lady Nowaki’s eyes, which she was struggling so hard to contain, brought tears of her own to Lady Kiyomi. She raised the sleeve of her kimono to absorb them.

She said, “How the dust does get in one’s eyes here. It must be because the abbey is on a mountain, and lacks the protection of dense foliage.”

“So true,” Lady Nowaki said, using her sleeves as Lady Kiyomi did. She was deeply grateful to her for the excuse to do so, though of course she could not say anything of it. “And, unfortunately, winds so often raise the dust of mountains.”

As Lady Kiyomi and the unfortunate young mother wept together while pretending not to do so, Lady Kiyomi’s thoughts went to the child. She prayed to the gods and Buddhas to take the little girl to their realm very soon and grant her peace, a peace she would surely never find on earth.

By the time the great change occurred in her life, only the Reverend Abbess Suku still spoke of her as Shizuka. Out of the Abbess’s presence, everyone else called her Wild Eyes, a reference to her most noticeable characteristic, the rapid changes in direction, awareness, and expression that kept her eyes in constant movement — except when they stared relentlessly at a sight only she could see. Her penchant for screaming was not as pronounced as it had been in her infancy, though occasionally the sound of her agonized voice would echo through the temple without end for days at a time. So disruptive was her presence, refuge at Mushindo Abbey was sought only by nuns who were earnest, dedicated, not easily distracted seekers of the Way, despite the generous patronage of Lady Kiyomi and Lord Bandan, which made conditions there considerably less austere than at most places of religious discipline. One of the nuns, noticing that the eyes of dreamers moved about in similar fashion beneath closed eyelids, expressed the view that the girl was never completely awake or completely asleep. Eventually, the other nuns came around to this point of view, since it would explain why she seemed to see things that were not there when her eyes were open and never displayed any evidence of restful repose when they were closed. She twitched and shifted and cried and mouthed senseless words almost as much in either case. It was even possible she was more peaceful when she was awake, for there were long spells when she would stand or sit or lie inert, her eyes staring, as if frozen in place by what she saw.

When the change occurred, it came utterly without warning.

The two nuns responsible that day for cleaning and feeding the girl had decided to delay their tasks. The canine wail, interspersed with sobs, indicated to them that proceeding now would be futile. They were debating whether it would be better to ask the Abbess’s permission or act on their own initiative when the cries suddenly ceased. They were used to hearing the crazed, sorrowful voice slowly, fitfully choke and gasp into silence, as if by strangulation. Never before had they heard it end so abruptly.

“Something has happened,” the first nun said.

“She has died,” said the second.

The first nodded. Truth be told, it was entirely unexpected — it would not be appropriate in these circumstances to refer to it as miraculous — that she had survived this long. So extensive, relentless, and profound was the madness that possessed her, it limited her ability to perform the most fundamental survival tasks, even with the assistance of compassionate followers of the Way. What might be considered the minimum acceptable levels of nutrition, rest, and cleanliness often could not be met. It seemed likely that the girl’s time had come at last.

They rushed to her cell, expecting to find her body sprawled on the floor. At first glance, they saw what they expected. She sat slumped against a wall in the farthest corner of the cell, motionless. Steeling themselves against the stench, the two unlocked the door and entered.