Cloud of Sparrows (3 page)

Sohaku, grim coldness in his eyes, rose to his feet and strode out of the hojo. He moved, not with the slow, mindful, deliberate steps of the Zen monk that he now was. His steps were long, aggressive, permitting no possibility of pause or retreat, the steps that were habitually his before he took the two hundred fifty vows of monkhood, when he was the samurai Tanaka Hidetada, commander of cavalry, sworn vassal in life and in death of Okumichi no kami Kiyori, the late Great Lord of Akaoka.

“Idiots!” He stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. With his arrival, the three burly men in the brown robes of Zen acolytes dropped instantly to their knees, their shaven heads pressed hard against the floor. “Where do you think you are? What do you think you are doing? May you and your fathers be damned as women in all your incarnations to come!” None of the three men moved or made a sound. They stayed as they were, pressing themselves as far downward as they could go. They would remain there, Sohaku knew, until he permitted them to rise. His heart softened. They were, in truth, good men. Loyal, brave, well disciplined. This business of being monks was difficult for them all. “Taro.”

Taro raised his head slightly off the floor and peeked up at Sohaku. “Yes!”

“Take Lord Shigeru his breakfast.”

“Yes!”

“And be careful. I don’t want to lose another man, not even one as useless as you.”

Taro smiled as he bowed down. Sohaku was no longer angry. “Yes! I will do so immediately.”

Sohaku departed without another word. Taro and the other two, Muné and Yoshi, rose to their feet.

Muné said, “Lord Hidetada’s mood has been consistently foul of late.”

“You mean the Reverend Abbot Sohaku,” Taro said, ladling bean curd soup into a serving bowl.

Yoshi snorted. “Of course his mood is foul, whatever name he chooses to use. Ten hours of meditation every day. No training with sword, lance, or bow. Who could endure such a regimen without becoming foul?”

“We are samurai of the Okumichi clan,” Taro said, chopping a pickled radish into bite-sized pieces. “It is our duty to obey our lord no matter what he orders.”

“True,” Muné said, “but is it not also our duty to do so with good cheer?”

Yoshi snorted again, but he picked up a broom and began sweeping the kitchen.

“‘When the archer misses his target,’ ” Taro said, quoting Confucius, “‘he looks within himself for error.’ It is not our place to criticize our superiors.” He put the soup and the pickled vegetables on a tray along with a small pot of rice. When Taro left the kitchen, Muné was washing the pots, being very careful not to bang them together.

It was a beautiful winter’s morning. The cold that penetrated his flimsy robe invigorated him. How refreshing it would be to wade into the stream beside the temple and stand under the icy flow of its small waterfall. Such pleasures were forbidden to him now.

He was certain it was only a temporary prohibition. While the present Great Lord of Akaoka might not be the warrior his grandfather was, he was still an Okumichi. War was coming. That was plain even to a simple man like Taro. And whenever there was war, the swords of the Okumichi clan were always among the first to redden with the blood of enemies. They had been waiting for a long time. When war came, they would not remain monks for long.

Taro stepped lightly on the small stones of the footpath between the main hall and the residence wing. When the stones were wet, they were treacherously slippery. When they were dry, they made the sound of a small landslide with every step. Reverend Sohaku had offered a year’s exemption from stable duty to the first man to walk the path in silence for ten paces. So far, Taro had attained the best results, but he was nowhere near inaudible. Much practice was still required.

The twenty other monks would be sitting in meditation for another thirty minutes before Muné rang the bell for the first meal of the day. Nineteen monks, that is. He had forgotten about Jioji, whose skull was fractured yesterday while engaged in the very task now assigned to Taro. He made his way through the garden to the wall marking the perimeter of the temple grounds. Near the wall was a small hut. He knelt at the door. Before announcing himself, he brought his senses to full attention. He had no wish to join Jioji in a funeral pyre.

“Lord,” he said, “it is Taro. I have brought your breakfast.”

“We fly through the air in great ships of metal,” came the voice from within. “In the hour of the tiger, we are here. By the hour of the boar, we are in Hiroshima. We have traveled through the air like gods, but we are not satisfied. We are late. We wish we had arrived even earlier.”

“I am entering, lord.” Taro removed the wooden rod that kept the door locked and slid it open. The heavy stench of sweat, feces, and urine immediately assailed his nostrils and twisted his stomach into a trembling knot. He rose and stepped away as quickly as he could without upsetting the food on the tray. With effort, he managed to keep the bile from rising all the way up into his mouth. He would have to clean the room before he served breakfast. That meant he would also have to clean its occupant. This was not something he could do alone.

“In our hands are small horns. We whisper to each other with them.”

“Lord, I will return shortly. Please calm yourself.”

In fact, the voice was calm, despite the insanity of the words it pronounced.

“We hear each other clearly, though we are a thousand miles apart.”

Taro quickly returned to the kitchen.

“Water, rags,” he said to Muné and Yoshi.

“By the Merciful Buddha of Compassion,” Yoshi said, “please tell me he hasn’t fouled his room again.”

Taro said, “Strip down to your loincloths. There’s no point in dirtying our clothing.” He took off his robe, folded it neatly, and put it on a shelf.

When they came through the garden and could see the hut, Taro realized with a shock that he had left the door open. His two companions stopped abruptly as soon as they saw it.

“Didn’t you lock the door before leaving?” Muné asked.

“We should get more help,” Yoshi said nervously.

Taro said, “Wait here.”

He approached the hut with extreme caution. Not only had he left the door open, the stench had been so repulsive to him that he had failed to look inside before going for assistance. It was unlikely that their charge could have escaped all the bonds that held him in place. After the incident yesterday with Jioji, they had not only tied Lord Shigeru’s arms and legs tightly to his body, they had also tied him with four ropes that extended to each of the four walls. Shigeru could not shift more than a foot in one direction before at least one of the ropes prevented further movement. Still, it was Taro’s responsibility to make certain.

The putrid odors were as bad as before, but he was now too worried to care.

“Lord?”

There was no answer. He looked in quickly without exposing himself to attack. The four ropes were still connected to the walls, but no longer to Shigeru. Pressing himself against the outside wall to the left, he peered into the right side of the hut, then reversed his position and checked the other half of the small space. The hut was definitely empty.

“Inform the abbot,” Taro said to Yoshi. “Our guest has departed his residence.”

While Yoshi ran to spread the alarm, Taro and Muné stood close together and looked uncertainly around the immediate area.

“He could be gone from the temple grounds, on his way back to Akaoka,” Muné said. “Or he could be hiding anywhere. Before his illness, he was a master of concealment. He could be in the garden with a dozen horses and cavalrymen and we wouldn’t see him.”

“He doesn’t have horses or cavalrymen with him,” Taro said.

“My point,” Muné said, “is not that he does, but that he could, and we still wouldn’t know where he is. Himself alone, how easily he can escape detection.”

Taro was prevented from responding, first, by the look of horrified astonishment on Muné’s face as he looked, not at Taro, but just past Taro’s shoulder, and second, by what he later learned was a fist-sized rock that slammed into the back of his head just a moment later.

When Taro regained consciousness, Sohaku was attending to Muné’s injury, an eye swollen completely shut. With his other eye, Muné fixed a baleful glare on Taro.

Muné said, “You were mistaken. Lord Shigeru was still in the hut.”

“How can that be? I looked everywhere and no one was there.”

“You didn’t look up.” Sohaku checked the dressing at the back of Taro’s head. “You’ll live.”

“He was clinging to the wall above the doorway,” Muné said. “He came leaping out when you turned your back to talk to me.”

“Unforgivable, lord,” Taro said, trying to bury his face in the ground. Sohaku prevented him from doing so.

“Calm yourself,” he said in a mild voice. “Consider this valuable training. For twenty years, Lord Shigeru was the chief martial arts instructor of our clan. It is no shame to be defeated by him. Of course, that is no excuse for laxity, either. Next time, be sure he’s secure before leaving him, and always lock the door.”

“Yes, lord.”

“Raise your head. You’re aggravating the bleeding by groveling that way. And I am abbot, not lord.”

“Yes, Reverend Abbot.” Taro asked, “Has Lord Shigeru been found?”

“Yes.” Sohaku smiled without humor. “He’s in the armory.”

“He has weapons?”

“He’s a samurai,” Sohaku said, “and he’s in the armory. What do you think? Yes, he has weapons. In fact, he has all the weapons. We have none, except for what we are able to improvise.”

Yoshi came running, still only in his loincloth, but now carrying a ten-foot staff freshly cut from the temple’s bamboo grove. “He has made no effort to break out, sir. We’ve blocked the doors of the armory as best we can with logs and barrels of rice. If he really wants to leave, however . . .”

Sohaku nodded. There were three barrels of gunpowder in the armory. Shigeru could blow away any obstruction. Indeed, if he so chose, he could blow up the entire armory, with himself in it. Sohaku rose.

“Stay here,” he said to Yoshi. “Take care of your companions.” He made his way through the garden to the armory. There, he found the other monks all equipped as Yoshi had been with ten-foot staffs of green bamboo. Not the ideal weapon with which to face a swordsman who, despite his present condition of debilitating madness, was almost certainly the best in the nation. He was glad to see that his men had arrayed themselves properly. A thin screen of four observers at the closed back of the building, and three teams of five men each at the front, where Shigeru was likely to appear if he tried to escape.

Sohaku went up to the front door, blocked, as Yoshi had described, with logs and heavy barrels of rice. Inside, he could hear the swift movement of steel through air. Shigeru was practicing, probably with a sword in each hand. He was one of the few modern swordsmen strong enough and skilled enough to follow the legendary Musashi’s two-sword style of two hundred years ago. Sohaku bowed respectfully at the door and said, “Lord Shigeru. It is I, Tanaka Hidetada, commander of cavalry. May I speak with you?” He thought his former name would cause less confusion. He hoped it would also elicit a response. He and Shigeru had been comrades in arms for twenty years.

“Air you can see,” the voice within said. “Layers of color on the horizon, garlands for the setting sun. Beautiful, unbreathable.”

Sohaku could make no sense of the words. He said, “May I be of assistance in some way, lord?”

The only answer from within was the hiss of swords slashing air.

The longboat knifed through the water toward the intricate network of wharves that formed Edo Harbor. Light sea mist rising from the bow wave touched Emily’s cheeks with icy dew. Astern, a Japanese lighter hove to beside the
Star of Bethlehem,
ready to shift cargo from ship to shore.

“There is where we are bound,” Zephaniah said, “that palace beside the shore. Its master calls it the Quiet Crane.”

Brother Matthew said, “It looks more like a fort than a palace.”

“A most excellent observation, Brother Matthew. It is well to bear in mind where we are going. Among the most murderous heathens on the face of the earth. Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”

“Amen,” Brother Matthew and Emily said.

Emily tried not to let her expectations get the better of her. Her destiny lay ahead. When it was revealed, would it match her hopes? She sat beside her betrothed, the Reverend Zephaniah Cromwell, and gave every appearance of peaceful quietude. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. In her bosom, her heart thundered so loudly she was surprised to be the only one who heard it.

She turned toward Zephaniah and saw him staring at her. His cheeks and brow, as usual, were tight with a righteous concentration that caused his eyes to bulge, his lips to turn down, and the deep lines of his face to grow ever deeper. That fierce and knowing visage always made her feel his gaze deep in the most secret depths of her being.

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower,” Zephaniah said. “The righteous runneth into it, and is safe.”