Death at the Crossroads (19 page)

“Take out your sword!” Kaze demanded. Manase backed up a step, his hands still up in the air. Kaze advanced, his sword at the ready and threatening. “Take out your sword and fight!”

Manase shook his head. “You killed five men by yourself with your sword. I’m no match for you. You’re too strong for me.”

“You killed General Iwaki at Sekigahara,” Kaze said. “He was a good swordsman. There’s no reason for you not to fight.”

Manase shook his head. “I didn’t kill him. During the confusion of the battle, my friend and I found the General and his bodyguard. They had all committed seppuku. They were dead when we found them. We dragged the General’s body away from his bodyguards and cut it up so people wouldn’t know he had committed suicide on the battlefield after his defeat. My friend lost courage, but I saw that this was my opportunity. I took the General’s head to Tokugawa Ieyasu to get a reward. I think Tokugawa-sama was too wily not to be suspicious, and that’s why he gave me this miserable little district as a
reward instead of something grander. The samurai I killed was my friend from that battle. He returned to Ise and eventually heard about the reward I got for taking the head of General Iwaki. He came here demanding money, but I have no money. I’ve spent it all. I was even borrowing money from Boss Kuemon. That’s why Kuemon started robbing shipments to me, to get his money back. My friend said he would tell Ieyasu what I had done and get his reward from the Tokugawa government for turning in a fraud. I had no choice but to kill him.”

“And the young boy?” Kaze shouted.

Manase flinched, but, looking at Kaze’s blade still glistening in the sun, he said, “My friend was stopped by Boss Kuemon. He told Kuemon that he was a friend of mine from Ise. Kuemon, thinking that my friend could get money from Ise to help pay off the loans I owed him, had my friend brought to me. That young boy was the person who led him to me. After you killed Kuemon, the boy showed up at my manor asking to be taken into my service. He could link me to my dead friend, and I decided it was better if he died, too. After all, although my friend was a samurai, that boy was just a peasant. His death was meaningless.”

Kaze scowled. “We’ve had too many meaningless deaths over the last few years.”

Manase shrugged. “Are you going to take me to the next district to present your case?”

“No,” Kaze said softly.

Manase looked puzzled. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to execute you.”

Manase sputtered, “How dare you! You’re a miserable ronin and I’m a District Lord. I demand that I be given a proper hearing.”

Kaze shook his head. “No. As you point out, I am a ronin and you are a District Lord. If I bring a case against you, it’s impossible to know the results. I am sure that you won’t tell the authorities in the next district the same story about General Iwaki that you told
me. That fraud alone would carry the death penalty for you. You are a very clever man, Lord Manase, and by the time we got to the next district, I’m sure you would have developed an equally clever story that will put me in the wrong and you in the right.”

“So you’re going to kill me?” Manase said incredulously.

“Yes.”

“I found a great deal of money at the bandit camp,” Manase said hastily. “It’s yours, all yours.”

“This is not about money,” Kaze said. “No amount of money can bring the dead back to life.”

“This is ridiculous,” Manase spluttered. “You can’t murder a District Lord.”

“No,” Kaze agreed, “but I can execute one.”

Manase stopped cowering and stood up straight. “All right,” he said. “But I insist that I be allowed to commit seppuku—that is my right as a District Lord and samurai.”

Kaze considered a moment, then said, “Remove your swords from your sash, and drop them on the ground.” Manase did as ordered.

“Now step away from them,” Kaze said. Manase walked four paces away from his swords with Kaze following him.

“All right,” Kaze said. “You can commit seppuku, but you’re going to do it right here and right now.”

“Here, without preparation?”

Kaze gave a short bow. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to insult you, but the truth is I don’t trust you. I think given enough time, you will find a way to get out of this situation. Therefore, if you want to commit seppuku, I’m asking you to please do it now. Otherwise I will have to execute you.”

Manase gave his high laugh. “That’s almost a compliment. You don’t trust me.”

Kaze gave another bow. “I’ve learned that your love of delicate and refined things does not make you any less a killer. I should not confuse a love of refinement with a lack of bushido.”

“Fine,” Manase said. “Right here and right now.” He sat down
on the soft green grass of the meadow, his legs tucked under him. He looked up at Kaze and said, “Will you be my second?”

Kaze nodded.

Manase looked about him. “I don’t have paper to write a death poem.”

“If you recite a poem, I will remember it,” Kaze said. “When I have a chance, I’ll write it down and send it wherever you want.”

“To the shrine at Ise?”

“Yes, if that’s where you want the poem sent.”

“About the handwriting …”

Kaze understood. “I have a good hand, but if you’re worried about that, I know a priest who is a master at calligraphy. I will have him write your death poem to send to Ise.”

“Good,” Manase said.

Kaze took Manase’s short sword from the ground and handed it to him. Then he stood at the ready, his sword still and poised.

Manase paused, looking around at the fresh green trees swaying in the wind and then upward at the blue sky. He sighed. “It’s a fine day to die, isn’t it?”

Kaze made a noncommittal grunt.

“It’s a shame I don’t have ink, brush, and paper.”

“You will not be embarrassed by the quality of the hand that writes it.”

“It’s good of you to be sensitive to my concerns. I mean no disrespect to you. I simply don’t want the slightest possibility that someone may think that my death poem doesn’t reflect the most delicate refinement.”

Kaze nodded his understanding.

Manase sat for several moments, contemplating his final poetic statement in this life.

                     
Graceful elegance

                     
Was no buffer from my death
.

                     
Even flowers die
.

When he was done reciting, he looked up at Kaze. “Can you remember that?”

Kaze nodded, “Yes, I’ll remember every word. It’s a fine death poem.”

Manase gave a curt bow of thanks. He shrugged his kimono and white inner kimono off his other shoulder, leaving his torso bare. He took the wakizashi Kaze had given him and put it in front of him. He did a quick bow, picked up the sword, and slid it out of its scabbard.

“I don’t have any paper to wrap around this blade,” Manase remarked.

Kaze looked around but saw no paper, so he took the sleeve from his kimono and ripped off a strip. He handed it to Manase. Manase took the strip of torn kimono and wryly said to Kaze, “You should have taken the new kimono I gave you.”

He wrapped the strip of cloth around the blade of the short sword, right beneath the sword’s
tsuba
, or guard. This allowed him to grip the short sword on the blade, so that the blade of the sword was more like a dagger. Kaze walked over and picked up the water bottle that Manase had dropped. He shook it to make sure there was some water left in the bottle. Then he took his sword, the blade facing upward, and poured a tiny amount of water on the blade down its whole length in a ritual purification. The water slid off the oiled blade in a silver curtain that spattered on the ground.

Kaze walked over to Manase, gave another bow, and handed him the water jug. Taking the jug wordlessly, Manase bowed back to Kaze and poured some water on the blade of his short sword, then he put the bottle to his side and grabbed the blade with two hands, holding tightly to the cloth wrapped around the highly polished metal. Kaze got in position to the left and slightly behind Manase, raising his sword blade at the ready.

“It’s a shame all must end like this,” Manase remarked. “Do you know I never once got to give a real Noh performance? If I have any regrets or harbor any animosity toward you, it’s the fact that your
disappearance robbed me of the opportunity to give a performance before an audience that would recognize and respect my talent.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaze said.

Manase made no reply but took a deep breath, holding the short sword at the ready. “All right?” he asked.

“I’m in position,” Kaze answered from behind him.

Manase nodded once, closed his eyes, and plunged the sword into his stomach with all his strength. He gave a short groan of pain and surprise as the silver blade entered his flesh, but before he cried in agony or even drew the blade across his stomach, Kaze’s own sword flashed down, neatly striking Manase’s neck and severing his head from his body.

A red spray of blood gushed from Manase’s severed neck, and his head hit the ground and rolled for a short distance as his body swayed and then collapsed to the earth. The eyes of Manase’s head opened and the lids fluttered violently for a few seconds before they were finally stilled.

Kaze stood surveying the scene before him, breathing heavily, waiting for the tension to drain from his body, just as the blood drained from Manase’s headless corpse. Kaze looked down at Manase’s robes and decided not to wipe his sword on them, so he tore another piece of his kimono sleeve and used that to clean his blade before he returned it to its scabbard.

He walked over and picked up Manase’s severed head by the hair and brought it back to his body. He took the body and rolled it over on its back, straightening its legs and putting its hands peacefully across its chest. He picked up the water bottle that Manase had placed on the ground and used the few remaining drops of water in the bottle to clean the dirt off Manase’s head and to pat his hair back into place. Then he placed the head next to Manase’s body. He got on his knees in the meadow and bowed deeply to the corpse of the District Lord, touching his forehead to the ground.

He sat up and looked at the lifeless face. The chalk-white makeup on the face didn’t hide the newly gray pallor of the flesh underneath.
The eyes were looking back at him with the ridiculous painted eyebrows high on the forehead. Kaze reached over with his two fingers and closed the eyelids. Then he bowed once again.

“I’m sorry to bring trouble to your house and to end your life like this,” Kaze said to the corpse of Manase. “But I want your spirit to know some things that I didn’t care to discuss while you were still alive and there was a possibility that you could still escape.

“I was also a District Lord, just like you, except my district was several thousand times larger and I had every anticipation that, as my master prospered, I would prosper, too. My master, however, was loyal to the Taiko, Hideyoshi. When the war to decide who would succeed the Taiko occurred, he backed the Toyotomi forces and not Tokugawa Ieyasu. The battle that raised your fortunes, Sekigahara, is the battle that ruined mine. My Lord was defeated at Sekigahara, and I wasn’t even there to die with him. Instead, I was leading an expedition back to his home castle that was under attack by an ally of the Tokugawas. I got there too late, and my Lord’s castle was sacked.

“My Lord’s wife and child were captured during the siege. I managed to rescue his wife, but not his child. As she was tortured, she was told that their daughter would be sold into slavery. The sorrowful fate of her child would eat at her like some tiny animal living in her heart. Because of the torture she lived only a short time after I rescued her, but she made me promise to find her child and free her.”

Kaze bowed once again, touching his forehead to the ground. He sat up and said, “So you see, I’m sorry I brought misfortune to your house and caused you to commit seppuku. But the Tokugawa government, the government that now rules Japan, is not one that I can go to for justice. And I’m very sorry to have to say this, Lord Manase, but you were not a good ruler.

“Our beliefs tell us that harmony and balance must be kept if a Lord is to rule according to the natural order of things. Then peasants, merchants, priests, and other people can understand that there
is a natural hierarchy to society and that the ruler is in place at the top of this hierarchy because of the benefits he brings to all, not just to himself. I’m sorry, but you forgot that principle and devoted your life to your own pleasure and interests, abandoning the people who depend on you to incompetent magistrates, bandits, and their own resources.

“That is why I decided to take action in this case, even though it involved only the death of one samurai and one peasant in a land where hundreds of thousands have died through wars and other types of injustices. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Kaze bowed once more, then he stood up. He took Lord Manase’s horse and tied him to a bush on the road. When they came to look for the District Lord, they would find the horse and thus find the body in the meadow in the woods.

Kaze made sure his sword was secure in the sash of his kimono, then he turned and started walking down the road, starting his often-interrupted journey out of the District. He felt no elation over the outcome with the strange District Lord, but as he walked, breathing in the clean air, looking at the blue sky filled with small white tufts of clouds, he soon shrugged off his concerns.

He started humming an old Japanese folk song under his breath and stopped to examine the tattered sleeves of his kimono. As he did so, he found the bit of cloth with the senbei that the youth had given him at the inn and finally decided to eat it. He unwrapped the cloth and took a bite from the toasted rice cake he found inside. After all this time, it was a bit stale but still tasty. He was about to toss aside the scrap of cloth it was wrapped in when he froze, dropping the rice cake and holding the cloth in both hands.

There, on the inside of the cloth, was a mon with three plum blossoms. It was the mon of his Lord and Lady. It was the mon on the clothing of the girl he was seeking. Perhaps the cloth came from someone else in Kaze’s scattered clan and perhaps it was simply a rag that had somehow come into the possession of the motley trio
intent on revenge. And perhaps, just perhaps, it was a tangible link between that trio and the girl Kaze had been seeking for over two years.