Autumn Bridge (59 page)

He put his arms around them both.

The baby woke, and soon all three were in tears.

Makoto was so stunned by Genji’s revelation, he barely noticed when Genji — that is to say, his father — excused himself and left the room. Not only was his father not the man he had grown up thinking was his father, neither was his mother the woman he had called by that name all his life. His attention returned to the present only when he found himself hand in hand with his little half sister. They were climbing a narrow staircase.

“Where are we going?”

“To meet Lady Shizuka,” she said.

“I thought you were Lady Shizuka.”

“I meant the first Lady Shizuka. My namesake. You don’t seem to know anything at all about yourself or your family. That means you have to start at the beginning.”

“Is there a beginning?” Makoto said. “If there is, I’ll be very glad.” The sequence of lies seemed to spiral endlessly backward.

“There are always beginnings,” his sister said. “Without beginnings, how can there be endings? Of course, both are only temporary.”

“Temporary? How can something in the past be temporary? It’s over and done with.”

“Just because there are beginnings and endings doesn’t mean anything is really ever over and done with,” Shizuka said. “Don’t they teach you that in America?”

Sixteen years had passed since Lady Nowaki had come to the abbey with her damaged child. Often during those years, the Reverend Abbess Suku reflected on the events that caused the banishment. She received frequent inspiration to do so from the screams and moans emanating from Shizuka’s cell at all hours of the day and night. Although exempted by her rank from the menial tasks of the abbey, the Abbess herself often undertook the mad girl’s cleaning and feeding. Her ability to touch the filthy body without hesitation and to endure the most disgusting sights and odors with no signs of distress brought much admiration from the other religious inmates. They all agreed the Abbess was a sterling exemplar of Buddha’s compassionate way.

Shizuka’s behavior did not change for sixteen years, and for sixteen years the Abbess’s attention toward her continued with the same unvarying kindness. Though instability and unpredictability were universal laws, the Abbess came to believe that three things would be constant: Shizuka’s madness, the incomprehensible nightmares that had afflicted the Abbess herself since Shizuka’s arrival, and her own lifelong devotion to prayer.

Then one morning she awoke unusually refreshed, and realized she had passed the night without a single nightmare. She was still contemplating this blessed phenomenon when two nuns arrived, breathless from their rush to reach her.

“Reverend Abbess!”

“Yes?”

“Shizuka is awake, Reverend Abbess.”

She knew immediately what the nun meant. There was no sound of mad lamentation coming from that wing of the abbey. Shizuka was quiet only when she was asleep, and not always even then. She was never quiet when she was awake.

The Abbess closed her eyes. She said a silent prayer expressing gratitude for the possibility of Shizuka’s redemption from madness. She was about to rise when the coincidence struck her. Shizuka had attained silence on the same day in which she had realized her liberation from the nightmares. Were they related, and if so, might the connection be a sinister one? She closed her eyes again and added a second prayer beseeching the enhanced protection of the guardian deities should the madness have taken a quieter yet more evil form. Then she went with the nuns to Shizuka’s cell.

The girl sat on the floor and quietly watched as they entered. Never before had the Abbess seen Shizuka’s eyes so clearly focused, her demeanor so like that of a normal person.

“Good morning, Shizuka,” the Abbess said.

Shizuka did not answer, but she continued to look at the Abbess with calm interest. The Abbess led the girl by her hand to the bath, cleaned her, and dressed her in fresh clothing. The recovery lasted only as long as the bleeding, then she plunged back into her former chaos.

The next month, when the blood flowed for a second time, she managed a longer respite. In the third month, her hold on reality was much firmer. At first, it was still necessary to change her clothing and bathe her several times each day, as she did not immediately understand the necessity of visiting the outhouse. But she learned before a week had passed. By autumn, a newcomer would have mistaken Shizuka for any other nun, except that she was younger than the others, utterly wordless, and given to observation rather than the usual inmate’s daily labor. She had gone from noisy insanity to quiet dim-wittedness. She no longer screamed and cried and huddled in fear for no reason, though sometimes she drifted away as before and became very still, her eyes almost closed, as if she were elsewhere. Sometimes she seemed to understand what was said to her, and sometimes not. She was not quite as others were, though she was much improved. Some nights, the Abbess looked in on her and found her sitting on her bed, eyes open, staring at nothing.

The apparent connection between Shizuka’s newfound sanity and the onset of her menstrual cycles worried the Abbess. She was not sure whether it was an appropriate concern, or one only called to mind because of the old superstition that women’s blood and witchcraft were intimately linked.

It was soon the time of the year for Lady Kiyomi’s annual fall visit. The widow of the late Great Lord of Akaoka and the mother of the present one, she was one of Mushindo Abbey’s two principal patrons. The other, Lord Bandan, ruler of Kagami, never visited. The Reverend Abbess Suku especially looked forward to seeing Lady Kiyomi this time. She could witness the miraculous cure wrought by Buddha’s infinite compassion, sixteen years of ceaseless prayer, and her generous support from afar.

But when she went to the gate of the abbey to greet the party from Akaoka Domain, she was disappointed not to see her noble patron. Lord Hironobu, her son, had made the journey without her.

“In truth, I have come in her stead,” he said. “I regret to tell you my mother is mortally ill. The doctors say she will not survive the winter. I came only because she insisted. I will camp outside the wall overnight, and turn for home in the morning.”

“We will recite sutras for her,” the Abbess said.

Her sorrow was deep indeed. Fate had intervened with mercilessly cruel timing. Lady Kiyomi would never enjoy the fruits of her kindness to Shizuka. She would learn of it in the letter the Abbess would send back with her son. But she would not have the joy of seeing the miraculous recovery for herself.

She said, “The rules of the abbey do not permit men entry under any conditions. Please wait here. Let us share tea together in the gateway, you without, and I within.”

One of the senior nuns leaned closer. She spoke softly so she would not be heard by any of the samurai.

“Is that advisable, Reverend Abbess? The sacred gateway defends Mushindo from visitation by evil. To pitch a canopy under it, to settle midway, is to deny its existence. Demons cannot fail to notice such a vulnerability.”

“The canopy is small,” the Abbess said, “the settling of brief duration.”

She felt great sorrow for Lady Kiyomi’s illness and great joy for Shizuka’s recovery. In her heart, these emotions existed with impossible simultaneity. A tide cannot be in flow and in flux at the same time. It was this confusion that led her to insist on the invitation. She would come to regret her lapse for the rest of her life.

Nuns on one side and samurai on the other erected the canopy, served the tea, and waited in attendance. Their faces betrayed their unease. What the old nun had whispered, they all believed. Only the Reverend Abbess Suku and Lord Hironobu were comfortable where they were. They reminisced about the past, which seemed longer ago to him than it did to her, he being considerably the younger of the two. When Suku was appointed Abbess of the temple, Hironobu had been a boy of eight.

“I remember standing on that rock,” Hironobu said, “and being chastised by Go for making myself a better target for assassins. I don’t suppose you remember Go, my bodyguard. He came with Mother and me only that once, and I don’t think he met you.”

“You were a young boy,” the Abbess said. She looked away, drifting into memory. “But you had already won two great victories. Lady Kiyomi was very proud of you.”

“I remember — Well, do I remember what happened, or am I remembering something I imagined?” Hironobu laughed. “We are such unreliable witnesses of our own lives.”

The Abbess turned back to Hironobu to reply. The movement of his hand holding the teacup halted halfway to his mouth and froze there. He looked past her shoulder into the front courtyard of the temple.

His eyes brightened.

A sudden tension in the muscles of his jaw tightened his visage.

His clenched teeth appeared behind slightly parting lips.

He inhaled sharply.

His breath remained in his lungs as if he were about to dive into deep waters.

The Abbess turned. She saw Shizuka walking toward them. She looked back at Hironobu, who remained transfixed. When she returned her attention yet again to Shizuka, she heard Hironobu exhale in a long, astonished sigh. She saw Shizuka then as Hironobu must have seen her.

In a nun’s drab habit, a young woman moving with preternatural grace. Within the hood, a face pale yet vivid, like moonlight. The hands exposed at the ends of the sleeves, small, with long, tapered, feminine fingers not unlike those gracing representations of the Compassionate One. The eyes, too large to be called beautiful, too arresting to be called anything less. Her nose, perfectly shaped yet small enough to avoid excessive prominence. Her mouth, tiny and full, above a chin that perfectly completed the oval of her face.

Seeing her this way for the first time, the Abbess was too stunned to react as quickly as she should have. Before she could speak, before she could order a nun to take the girl away, Shizuka stood next to the canopy. She looked at Hironobu and brightened, as if recognizing him.

Shizuka smiled and said, “
Anata
.” You.

Nuns and samurai gasped. It was the first word Shizuka had ever spoken, but this was not the reason for their shock. “Anata” was far too familiar a way for a nun, or any woman, to address a man she had just met, much less a lord. Even worse, she had said it softly, with lengthened vowels and the slightest of feminine lisps, a manner reminiscent of its usage in the bedchamber, where in certain circumstances the one simple word was expressive of the utmost intimacy.

“Shizuka,” the Abbess said. She stood, taking care to put herself between the two. “Return to the temple now.” Without being bidden, two of the nuns came to her assistance, each firmly taking an arm on each side of the girl, and immediately leading her away. “I am sorry, my lord. The girl is not well. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Shizuka,” Hironobu said. “That was Shizuka?” He continued to watch her until she entered the temple and could not be seen.

“She is insane, my lord. Thus she has been here since her infancy, will always be here, will die here.”

“When I was a boy, on every visit with Mother I schemed to find a way to see her. There were outrageous rumors. Some people even said she wasn’t human, or not completely so, anyway. My friends and I speculated on the nature of her fur. Badger, bear, fox.”

The Abbess said, “She might as well be part badger or fox. She cannot speak sensibly, or take care of herself, not even the most fundamental tasks of cleanliness. There are days when she is so unhinged, she must be confined in isolation. Then, she must be cleaned, for she fouls herself.”

“How unfortunate,” Hironobu said.

Reverend Abbess Suku hoped her discouraging words were discouraging enough.

They were not.

Hironobu left early the following morning as he had said he would. But his letter to the Abbess informing her of the death of his mother was shortly followed by Hironobu himself. His excuse for his return was Lady Kiyomi’s ashes, which he brought with him.

“I ask that her ashes be kept in Mushindo temple for one hundred days,” Hironobu said. “After that period of blessing, they will be returned to the columbarium of Cloud of Sparrows.”

He bowed and placed the urn on the table before him. As before, they met in the open. This time, however, the canopy under which they sat was set up entirely outside the walls of the abbey, nowhere near the gate or any other place affording a view into the grounds.

“It will be done, my lord,” the Abbess said, accepting the urn with a deep bow. “Sutras will be recited without pause for one hundred days. However, your saintly mother needs no such assistance to be insured a most beneficent rebirth. Her own good works during her lifetime guarantee it.”

“Thank you, Reverend Abbess.”

“When the hundred days have been accomplished, I will personally deliver her urn to you.” The Abbess had not left the temple for more than a few hours at a time since her appointment. Her reluctance to enter the world was less, however, than her fear of Hironobu’s return. The more often he was near Mushindo, the greater the danger that he and Shizuka would meet again somehow. The first meeting, though over in a few brief moments, seemed to her frighteningly portentous.

“For that kindness also, thank you, Reverend Abbess. But it won’t be necessary for you to undertake such an arduous journey. I will remain here until the hundred days have elapsed.”

“My lord?”

Hironobu gestured vaguely at the surrounding woods. “During my last visit, I found unexpected pleasure being in this untended wilderness. Surely it must be closer to what the gods created than the pruned and captive little forests of the south. So I have decided to build a small lodge and undertake a kind of bucolic retreat.”

The Abbess said, “I have always understood the mountainous forests of Shikoku to be among the wildest in the realm. Have they not swallowed up whole armies of invaders? Can these little hills and sparse woodlands really compare?”