Death at the Crossroads (17 page)

“That’s all right. I can’t understand myself sometimes. Let’s have some breakfast, then I want to go back to thinking.”

The charcoal seller and the samurai shared a simple peasant’s breakfast of cold millet gruel and hot soup. After cleaning up, Jiro excused himself to go out and work in his fields. Kaze nodded and settled back into the lotus position, closing his eyes and thinking about what he had seen and heard over the last several days.

His breathing slowed and his entire being was focused on the meaning of the two bodies at the crossroads. In his mind he reviewed everything he had seen on the two bodies, carefully cataloging anything that seemed unusual or out of place. He tried to recall exact details, like a hunter examining the subtle turnings of grass blades or faint impressions on hard soil, searching out his quarry.

In his mind, he tried to replay every conversation he had had with every person he had met over the last several days, relistening to words and intonations and trying to recall minute changes in facial expression.

He also thought about his own actions, and he realized he had been hasty. He should not have eliminated the Magistrate as the first killer on the basis of a few arrows grabbed in panic on the night he played the trick on the village. The Magistrate could have several types of arrows. Boss Kuemon was also a possibility, perhaps killing
the first samurai while someone else killed the boy. But was it likely that two different people would use the same type of high-quality arrow to kill? Even a woman could use a bow, and, if she was close enough, it would not take special skill or practice to hit her target. So Aoi was a possibility. Kaze knew Ichiro was probably capable of killing if provoked. Who knew what might provoke him if he or his family was threatened? So many choices to consider, and being hasty was not the way to consider them.

The sun climbed slowly to its zenith and started descending toward China. It passed behind the peaks of the mountains that ringed the village of Suzaka and caused the blue twilight that marked the time when the men and women trudged home from the fields. Before Jiro got home, Kaze opened his eyes. He said, “Good.”

“H
urry! Hayaku!” Nagato pulled the sniveling girl deeper into the forest. The girl hung back, tugging at his tight grip on her wrist. Nagato found it gave him a jolt of pleasure to cruelly twist the youngster’s arm. She bent downward under the strain put on her limb and yelped in pain. He smiled. “You should be happy for what I’m about to do to you, you little whore!” he said.

He turned and continued to drag the eleven-year-old into the woods. Lust shot through him as sudden and hot as the desires of a sixteen-year-old. With the crying girl stumbling behind him, all his frustrations with Manase-sama and his wife and Boss Kuemon and the loss of money that the death of Boss Kuemon meant seemed to fade. He felt that he was truly a man after all, capable of conquering others, even if the other was just a young child and her peasant family.

Just a few minutes before he had been stomping away from the village, upset because of his latest fight with his wife and crone of a mother-in-law. His wife, as if sensing the fact that he was putting money aside for the purchase of a concubine, had been spending at a profligate rate. Nagato realized that money could buy power and
that money could buy pleasure, and he was ready for either, but his wife seemed determined to deny him both.

Ideas came slowly to Nagato, and the idea that money could change his life had come equally slowly. But once the thought was planted, he embraced it with gusto. Unfortunately, it was Nagato’s mother-in-law who had the money. He had not been clever enough to arrange for the assets of his father-in-law to be transferred to him upon death. As an adopted son-in-law, he inherited the position of Magistrate, but his mother-in-law still had the house, land, and money that should have been his.

Three years after their marriage, his wife had finally conceived a son, but soon after the birth of a Nagato heir, his wife had lost all tolerance for sex and started rebuffing him when he made his clumsy attempts to crawl into her futon at night.

Nagato, a man violent and bad-tempered with all underlings, was at a loss as to what to do about the abrogation of his rights in the marriage futon. Worse yet, his wife had told her mother about her new preference for sleeping alone, and the sharp-tongued old harpy had supported her daughter, threatening economic consequences if Nagato beat his wife or forced her to submit. This turned Nagato’s world upside down, because he assumed it was the natural right of any husband to beat a wife who displeased him. That there might be consequences to this action befuddled and frustrated him, and he could think of no action to set his domestic world right except to find a concubine whom he could abuse and treat in a manner that he thought was fitting for a man to treat a woman.

The spring before, his interest had alighted on the daughter on the village headman, Ichiro. As was customary for all women and men in the village, during the hot months all the peasants worked stripped to the waist. Ichiro’s daughter, Momoko, had just turned eleven, and she was helping the other village girls in the planting of the tender shoots of rice into the fetid water of the rice paddies.

This was a community effort, for no individual farmer could prepare
the fields, plant the rice, care for the growing green shoots, and finally harvest and winnow the rice by himself. Some said this was why Japanese village culture was so close-knit and interdependent, but, to the peasants involved, acting cooperatively was the only way to survive.

The young women lined up along one edge of the field, and rice seedlings, which had been carefully nurtured from the best grains of the previous year’s crop, were tossed to them in bundles, each bundle of precious shoots carefully gathered together and tied with a twist of straw.

The planting always started festively enough, but by the end of the day each woman was exhausted by the constant bending and tedious work. Some might welcome some of the gawking men on the edge of the paddy as potential marriage prospects. The crowd included men who had no real interest in the planting except to see all the young woman of the village lined up in one place. Nagato was such a man.

Many of the girls were fifteen or older and thus already married. Nagato didn’t find these types appealing. Not because they were married, but because they looked too assured, too much like women. For some reason that made the Magistrate very uncomfortable.

Ichiro’s daughter was joining the rice planting for the first time, and as such she was tentative and unsure of herself. She shrugged off the top of her kimono, letting it hang down from her waist sash. Since she was used to working and playing in summer with her chest exposed, she was not intimidated by the costume for planting. She was simply cognizant of the fact that her invitation to participate in the rice planting marked a passage for her, from the ranks of children into the ranks of the young women of the village.

Nagato found her hesitancy very appealing. He couldn’t say why, but this quality made him have lustful feelings toward the child. That’s why it seemed like an omen when Nagato, in a black mood after his fight at home, stumbled across the daughter of the village headman gathering roots at the edge of the forest. The child had the
flat basket used for collection of roots in her hand. If she had a shallow round basket, she would be gathering mushrooms. She was with her mother, a woman Nagato dismissed as he did most of the peasant women in the village.

Nagato had been marching through the village to calm down from his fight and perhaps to find a peasant to yell at. He stopped when he spotted the girl and watched her with narrowing eyes. He carefully noted the way her body pushed against the cloth of the kimono and her innocent gesture of pushing her scraggly hair out of her face as she straightened up. She wasn’t aware of the Magistrate, but her mother was.

Stepping between her daughter and the view of the Magistrate, Ichiro’s wife bobbed in a low bow and said, “Good morning, Magistrate-sama!” Her voice was a little too cheerful, as if she was forcing herself to be bright and friendly, all against her better judgment.

The Magistrate said nothing and continued to stare past the woman at the child. The young girl had turned with the voice of her mother and was now looking at the Magistrate with surprise. It occurred to Nagato that he really didn’t have to buy such a creature. As village Magistrate, he should be able to just take her. He stepped toward her.

“Would you like some freshly gathered roots, Magistrate-sama?” the mother said. Her words were innocent, but her voice took a sharp edge as she read the look on the Magistrate’s face.

“Get out of my way,” the Magistrate said as the woman further imposed herself between him and the child. Now the child had a look of fear on her face, and this incited Nagato’s lust even more. She looked as if she was about to run away.

“Please, Magistrate-sama, won’t you have some roots for your table?” the mother was pleading now, holding the basket before her like some offering. The words didn’t match her thoughts, but it was plain she knew what was on the Magistrate’s mind.

“I’ve told your stupid husband enough times what I want your
daughter for, but he just doesn’t seem to understand,” Nagato told the woman. “Now I see it runs in the entire family. Now get out of my way. I am about to bestow a great privilege on that daughter of yours.”

“Please Magistrate-sama! She’s much too young! Take me instead. Please, Magistrate-sama! We can go into the woods right here and I can please you. The girl is still a child. She’s too young for such things. Please!”

For Nagato, the woman’s pleading evoked no pity. Instead, it quickened his need to take the child. He felt powerful and in control. His bluster, which so often crumbled when confronted with his new District Lord or his wife or the strange ronin, was now channeled into new and novel directions. He liked it and stepped closer to the child.

The mother imposed herself again, which surprised Nagato. The idea that a peasant might love a child and would want to protect it was one that had never occurred to him. Peasants were simply rice-producing machines: slow, stupid, dishonest, and untrustworthy. They had no human feelings.

The child was starting to run away, which enraged Nagato, and the mother had now dropped the root-gathering basket and dared to grab at his arm. “Please, Magistrate-sama! We’ll go together into the woods, neh? You don’t need the child. I can—”

Nagato struck her full force with his fist. The effect was even better than he had hoped. The woman crumpled to her knees, dazed. She released her grip on his arm, and it actually got the child to return to him and her mother.

“Please, Magistrate-sama! Don’t hit my mother!”

Nagato smiled. “Come with me and I’ll leave your mother alone.”

“But Magistrate-sama—”

Nagato raised his fist to smash the now-defenseless woman kneeling before him. The child ran to him, grabbing at his arm. He reached over and grabbed the girl’s wrist in a cruel clasp, twisting her arm and bringing a wince of pain to her face.

With her struggling to break free, he dragged her into the woods after him. Just before he stepped into the trees he looked over his shoulder and saw the mother staggering toward the village, her face cupped in her hands.

For once, Nagato felt powerful and completely in control. He actually smiled when he found a clear space in the woods and dragged the child close to him. He always knew he could kill any peasant with impunity, but he had never considered the other possibilities of what he might do.

He ignored the child’s cries as he roughly stripped the kimono from her. Because she wouldn’t stop struggling when he ordered her to, he gave her a backhanded slap that snapped her head back. He shoved her to the ground and fell on top of her, using his superior strength and weight to hold her down while he fumbled with his
fundoshi
loincloth.

He finally got his manhood free, but the child was still squirming and crying, and he coldly slapped her again. He wanted her chastened and subdued, but not unconscious. He found he enjoyed her struggles and the mewing pleadings that were coming out of her peasant mouth. He reached down with one hand to guide himself into her jade gates when he gave a large gasp. It was not a gasp of pleasure, it was a gasp of pain.

He reached behind to grasp the thing digging into the flesh of his back and felt the thing release its pressure. He brought his hand back to his face and was surprised to see it was covered in crimson. It took him a few moments to understand that his hand was covered in blood. His blood.

He rolled off the girl, the shock starting to ebb and the pain taking over. He could see Ichiro, the village headman, standing above him with a dagger in his hand. Nagato was astounded. A peasant in the village attacking him was unthinkable. The penalty for such an attack was the death of the peasant, the death of his family, and the death of at least four of his neighboring families. Collective responsibility extended beyond the need to cooperate to grow rice. It also meant
collective punishment if one member of the village broke the laws protecting samurai and nobles.

Ichiro also seemed to understand the import of his act, because his weapon hand was shaking. His rage and need to protect his child had fueled his first thrust into the fleshy back of the Magistrate, but now, coming face-to-face with the consequences of his action, he realized he had murdered the child he wanted to protect, along with himself, his wife, and his other children. And for attacking a Magistrate, the deaths would not be quick ones.

Nagato made a bellow of anger at the sight of the village headman and reached for his swords, still tucked into the sash of his kimono, which he had not bothered to take off.

At the movement of the Magistrate toward his swords, the instinct for self-preservation took over Ichiro and he lunged forward, the sharp blade of the dagger catching the large man just below the breastbone, skittering downward into the soft flesh of his belly. Nagato clawed at the blade, roaring in pain and rage. He engaged in a desperate struggle with the smaller peasant, feeling his strength, blood, and life ebb away through the dagger wounds. Finally, still clawing at the weapon, he expired.

Ichiro’s daughter had had her leg pinned by the corpulent body of the Magistrate during the entire struggle. The weight of the struggling Magistrate, the pain, and the shock of the attack had driven her to hysterics. She was pushing at the Magistrate’s corpse, crying and not yet comprehending what had happened. Seeing his daughter’s predicament, Ichiro dropped his weapon and helped the girl to push the large body of the Magistrate off her. Then, putting her torn kimono around her shoulders to cover her nakedness, he held his daughter to him as she sobbed and shook from her experience.

He tried to provide some comfort to her, but he had no comfort in his own heart. All he could think about was that he had killed them all with his rash act against the Magistrate. He racked his brain but saw no escape from the inevitable results of this killing. No one in the village would side with him, because his action had killed many
of them due to the collective responsibility that samurai imposed on peasants. He couldn’t run, because anyone who sheltered him would also be killed, along with their family, too. He couldn’t plead that he was defending his daughter, because he had no right to defend his daughter, at least not from the village Magistrate.

His daughter was crying, and tears formed in his eyes, too. His daughter’s tears were tears of shock and relief, but his tears were tears of despair. Through his tears, he saw a movement in the woods and, suddenly, standing before him was the strange ronin.

Kaze took in the scene in an instant. The half-naked girl being comforted by her father, the large body of the Magistrate with blood covering his stomach, the bloody dagger still impaled in the body of the official.