Autumn Bridge (34 page)

Saemon, whose self-opinion was always high, was even more pleased with himself than usual. His subversion of Taro would cripple Genji whether or not Emily Gibson was killed. The key was Taro’s treason itself. Taro didn’t realize this, of course. Primitive traditionalist that he was, he thought the outsider woman’s death was of great importance. Taro and others like him, caught in the useless mythology of the past, believed that by stopping modernizers like Genji, they could preserve the Japan they had always known. In fact, that Japan was already mortally wounded. It would stagger to its death in the next year or two, and a new Japan, much along the lines Genji envisioned, would take its place. Survival was not possible otherwise.

The English, the Americans, the Russians, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had gone everywhere, and everywhere the result was the same. What had happened to the Africans? They had been made into slaves. The great khanates of Central Asia were now to be found under the boot of the Czar. The rajahs of India bent their knees to the English sovereign, a woman! Was there any reason to believe these same outsiders would not try to do to Japan exactly what had worked so well for them elsewhere? Of course not. Had they not already begun the butchering and looting of China?

Genji’s determination to modernize was entirely sensible. Saemon knew as well as Genji that there was no other way for Japan to survive the onslaught that the outsiders were bound to launch sooner or later. But he would never say so. Let Genji and others like him take the necessary steps and absorb all the hatred. When such idealists were gone, then realists like himself would step forward and take over. Tradition was doomed, but in the meantime, Saemon saw great usefulness in those who still claimed to adhere to it.

It was truly laughable. Samurai pride in their traditions of loyalty and honor were little more than fairy tales, much like the outsiders’ fairy tales of Christian virtues. A great Commandment of their God was: Thou shalt not kill. They had slaughtered and ravaged their way across five continents under that banner for a thousand years. He did not condemn the outsiders for this. Hypocrisy was the essential nature of all modes of human control. The brilliant few did as they wished, while convincing the gullible many to follow rules they themselves disdained. In the same way as the Commandments did for Christian kings and lords, the mythology of loyalty and sacrifice cloaked a centuries-old tradition of self-aggrandizement and treachery for the samurai.

A genuine samurai was not blindly loyal, eagerly self-sacrificing, and bound by honor above all else, but rather a pragmatic, manipulative, and deceitful political genius — in other words, a man very much like Saemon himself.

Taro was only one part of Saemon’s secret campaign against Genji. There was also the matter of the law Genji had proposed, a proclamation of the equality of all, including the abolition of what he called “burakumin,” whom everyone called “eta.” The law itself was necessary, since Japan was required to at least put on a show of subscribing to the strange outsider beliefs of “liberty” and “equality.” But persistent reports told of Genji’s active participation in the destruction of an eta village in Hino Domain some years ago. Was that not a curious coincidence? Saemon believed Taro knew something about it, although he had not yet revealed anything. There was surely a way to induce him to do so. The trick, as always, was how.

There was no hurry. Saemon was a master at discovering the appropriate device for the appropriate person. He would find the one that suited Taro. In the meantime, he had already sent agents to California to investigate yet another strange report he had received. It was rumor more than information, but what a tantalizing rumor.

It was said that the geisha Mayonaka no Heiko, a famed beauty known to have been Genji’s lover at the time of the Mushindo battle, had been sent away to California shortly thereafter, and had given birth to a son a few months later. Exactly how many months later had not been established. His sources were also unable to confirm the identity of the father. Matthew Stark, Genji’s former American comrade-in-arms and current business partner, was considered the most likely. But — and this was the tantalizing part — Genji was also a possibility.

If Genji was the boy’s father, then what was the boy doing still in California? Even if he was the child of a geisha, he was a qualified male heir, and Genji had no other at present. This was especially baffling given Heiko’s background. A woman of her reputed talents and beauty would be a perfectly acceptable mother for an heir. She would not necessarily have become Genji’s wife, but she would certainly have been an excellent concubine. This had not happened. Why?

Was there some connection between Genji’s proposals regarding the abolition of the domains, the law regarding the outcasts, and the exile of a beautiful geisha who might be the mother of his only child? Saemon could think of no possible link that made any sense. Experience had taught him, however, that his inability to see an immediate connection between disparate elements did not mean that none existed.

Continued speculation was useless. The only way to find the truth was to investigate thoroughly — in this case, to investigate the past. The geisha Heiko had never returned. If anything had been concealed, it had been done in America, and that is where it would be uncovered. Saemon had already sent two of his best agents to San Francisco. In the meantime, he had set Taro in motion. One approach or the other, or perhaps even both, would eventually bear bitter fruit for Lord Genji.

“Lord Taro, we should not delay any longer.”

“We are not delaying,” Taro said. “We are accompanying Lady Hanako and Lady Emily. As long as they choose to stay, we stay as well.”

His lieutenant leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “The men grow nervous, and nervous men lack resolve. Lord, let us finish our accompanying and get on with our real mission.”

“What is there to be nervous about?”

Taro was irritated in the extreme by the mere fact that this conversation was taking place at all. What had happened to the great samurai virtue of unquestioning obedience? These young men were not like those of his youth. How different he and Hidé had been when they were this one’s age! No stream of questions, no unasked-for suggestions, no jittery impatience. Yes, lord, I hear and obey. That was it, no more, no less. What would old Lord Chamberlain Saiki have done if Taro or Hidé had told him what to do? Strike them with the flat of his sword, no doubt. That Taro would never think of doing this to his lieutenant showed how soft they had all become in a few short years.

“Mushindo itself, lord, makes them uneasy.”

“Uneasy? They should be honored to stand where our clan achieved one of its greatest victories.”

“They are honored, Lord Taro. I do not mean to suggest they are not. The problem is all the old rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“About ghosts and demons.”

Taro closed his eyes. He took a deep, calm breath, in and out, and another, to keep from shouting in anger, before he opened his eyes again. He spoke very softly, as he always did when he was enraged.

“When we return to Edo,” Taro said, “remind me to recruit real samurai, and let these disguised little girls return to their mothers.”

“Lord,” the lieutenant said. He bowed apologetically, which somewhat concealed the backward shuffling of his knees that increased the distance between them. “It is foolish, I know. But there are more than rumors. Strange noises emanate from the buildings, the woods, and it seems the ground itself. It is hard to blame the men.”

“The sounds come from underground streams,” Taro said. “Lord Shigeru once told me they sometimes well up in temporary hot springs. Very refreshing, he said they were.”

“Lord Shigeru,” the lieutenant said.

Taro took another deep breath. Very calmly, he said, “I am sure you will not tell me they are afraid of Lord Shigeru, too?”

“The villagers say he is seen in the woods from time to time. In the company of a little boy. With a kite in the form of a sparrow.”

“Do we live in an age so degenerate, samurai listen to the babbling of ignorant peasants? Lord Shigeru is dead. I saw his head with my own eyes, six years ago, not a hundred paces from where we now sit. I attended his cremation ceremony. When his ashes were placed in the columbarium at Cloud of Sparrows, I was there.”

“Yes, lord. I should have spoken more clearly. It isn’t a living Lord Shigeru the villagers claim to see.”

“Ah,” Taro said, exasperation drawing a sigh from his lungs. “His ghost.”

“Yes, lord.”

“Leave me,” Taro said, his patience at an end. He kept his eyes shut until the door closed behind his lieutenant. If these men were the most stalwart warriors he could find — and they were — how could samurai stand against the outsider armies? Ghosts, demons, disembodied voices. What foolishness.

There was one thing the lieutenant said that did bother him, albeit only slightly. He said the villagers saw the ghost of Shigeru accompanied by a little boy with a sparrow kite. The last time he had seen Shigeru with his son, the little boy was flying a kite Lord Genji had made for him.

A kite shaped like a sparrow.

How did the villagers know about that? The boy had never been to Mushindo. Undoubtedly, gossip of every kind spread far and wide in the mysterious way of gossip. No matter. What was important was the mission. The lieutenant was right about that. Taro needed a new plan, and he needed to carry it out soon. Before his men panicked, and before the two women decided to return to Edo.

Tomorrow. He would act tomorrow. Tonight, he would think of what to do.

Emily claimed to give no credence whatsoever to the prophecies contained in the scrolls, but it took her a long time to fall asleep, despite her exhaustion. Hanako would have spared her the worry if sparing her would make her safe. It would not. It was better that she knew the truth, and accepted it. When Emily’s breathing deepened and slowed, Hanako went to the door and opened it to reveal a sliver of the night outside. She could see one of the so-called guards in the shadow of the wall. She heard another cough on the other side of the hut. These would be better men than the ones Taro had assigned to protect Emily this afternoon, since their task was genuine. She would get past them the same way the rascal girl Kimi had.

The moon in its last phase was the merest suggestion of a curved edge in the sky, its light weak, the shadows it created faint. When a cloud obscured it, Hanako slipped through the door and into the shallow space beneath the hut. Here she waited, as Kimi had waited earlier. Thoughts of the girl made Hanako smile. She was really too bold for her own good. The trait would have been fine in a boy, because boys were supposed to be bold. A girl needed more restraint. Yin and yang. The balance of man and woman.

That Kimi had overheard much of her conversation with Emily was not entirely harmless. She would not be able to keep from sharing such tantalizing information with her friends, and it would quickly enter the realm of gossip and myth that constantly swirled around every Great Lord of Akaoka. Still, her presence under the hut also served a useful purpose. It insured that no one else was there at the same time. What she and Emily had to say could be overheard without serious danger by gossiping girls, but not by Lord Genji’s enemies, and they were everywhere. Even among his bodyguard corps. Or so she suspected.

Escape would be difficult. She could slip away. Emily could not, and Emily was the important one. How strange. Heiko had been right. Emily and Lord Genji were destined for each other, and contrary to every indication, Heiko and Lord Genji had not been. She had not returned to Japan from California. Neither had her son. That had to mean the boy was not Genji’s, since if he were, Genji would surely have called him to his side, even if, for reasons known only to himself, he intended to discard Heiko. Is that what had happened? Would she ever know?

Hanako knew that Emily was in love with Genji, of course, and had been for many years now. That was obvious to everyone. Emily was blind to the fact that her secret love was a secret only for her. The way she looked at him, the slight but consistent shift in her posture toward him whenever he was in her company, the change in the tone of her voice, not only when she spoke to him, but whenever she said his name. If all outsiders were as transparent, then every one of their affairs must be carried out like performances on a public stage. What must that be like, such a wanton disregard for the privacy of one’s emotions?

There was nothing in Lord Genji’s behavior that gave the slightest hint of affection beyond friendship. Since he was a master at concealing his inner self, this was not definitive. Still, it was very unlikely that he returned Emily’s feelings. He was possessed of highly refined tastes, even for a lord, and a foreign woman of Emily’s limited intimate understanding could have little appeal for him. If the prophecy of the scrolls was to come true, it must do so in a most unexpected way.