Fudoki (44 page)

Another block. Another. My uncle’s residence and grounds filled a city block. I walked around it—four identical walls—and I saw seven gates. This was a problem I hadn’t even considered. I didn’t remember what the servants’ gate looked like, so I could not slip back in unnoticed—even supposing it were possible. Had that guardsman been disgraced?—that woman, the one who had wished me good luck, turned away from her work? How could I not recognize my own gate, the gate my carriage had entered and exited a thousand times? All those years, and I had never actually looked at it, always thinking of something else. I knew I might slip into any gate, but the last thing I wanted was to enter the one my uncle and cousin used most often and possibly meet them. It would be hard enough to deal with their anger without stumbling into it unprepared, unwashed, and unfed.

And whichever door I entered, there would be guards. They would see me looking like this. I would have to tell them who I was, since they’d never seen my face; and then I would have to wait there, ragged and barefaced, until one of my women came and got me. I would be a mockery.

I had run away from my marriage; humiliated my future husband, my family, and even, perhaps, my half-brother Shirakawa; disgraced myself by behaving like a peasant, a child, a badly trained dog. By now, the entire court would be aswarm with this scandal. All this, and what I was really worried about just then was a servant laughing at me. I straightened my shoulders and limped to the nearest gate.

There are not many mercies in this world, and they all seem to be small ones—hot wine on a cold day, fresh-washed hair, a
kaze
-cold that finally lets go. It was a little-used gate, and there was only one guard, and he too young for me to take seriously. I stepped onto the covered walkway, kicking off the hated ill-fitting clogs. Young maybe; but I still could not quite bring myself to meet his eyes. “Please find Shigeko for me,” I said, my face averted to inspect the blisters on my feet. He hesitated a moment, probably worried about leaving his post unattended, then he was gone, feet drumming across the gardens toward the north wing, my wing.

I tipped my head back, looking into the small eaves of the gate. In the eaves’ light I saw movement: a spider, one of the brown-and-silver ones I had called in my notes (when I was still interested in spiders) Lady Teishi, for a woman at court who favored those colors and displayed certain familiar characteristics. And there was a fly the iridescent purple-green of crow feathers, caught in the spiderweb: trapped. The web was too high to reach, and there was nothing to stand on. “I am sorry,” I whispered to the fly. “I cannot help you.”

More feet drumming: lighter sounds this time, women’s bare feet running on walkways. Then the gateway was crowded with women laughing and crying and talking: “We thought we’d lost you, my lady, that you were drowned, murdered, assaulted.” One of the women had snatched up a robe, and she threw it over my filthy clothing—a gesture that would have been even more thoughtful, had the robe not been one they were stitching together, and had both sleeves been in place. Another threw a scarf over my head; another fell to her knees and touched my blistered feet with soothing cool hands, exclaiming.

Shigeko said nothing and helped the other women not at all. She stood a little aside watching all this, her hands tucked in her sleeves. I thought perhaps she was angry until I saw tears slip from her jaw, and leave widening circles on the collars of her robes.

Another mercy: my uncle and cousin were away from the house just then, no doubt at court or my husband-to-be’s house, trying to find me or (more likely) to contain the scandal. I returned to my rooms. My women bathed me and combed the dirt from my hair and clothed me in clean silk. They fed me
ayu
-trout and little salted birds, and rubbed herbs onto my blisters, and then they left me to sleep in my familiar little enclosure. I fell asleep immediately, and awoke once, when I felt Shigeko’s tears on my hand, and heard her voice whispering, “Never leave me again. Please.”

I was let off lightly. I had caught a
kaze
-cold while I was running away—convenient since my uncle had told the boy (and, the next day, his insulted and infuriated family) that I had been taken suddenly, frighteningly ill, and that all anyone could do was pray that I lived. Within a day, I was sent out of town, to recover somewhere no one could report on my true state of health.

“We will attempt to patch things up with his family,” my uncle said before I left. “My lady,” he snapped as an afterthought; for I was still a princess, after all.

“I will not marry him,” I said, and coughed.

“If you do
not
marry him,” he said, “or he does not want you, you will become a nun, and there won’t be any more of this childishness. My lady.”

“
Out
,” Shigeko said. “My lord. The healers have said she must not be disturbed.” She had no authority over this man—quite the contrary—but she has a certain way of speaking that I think would bring all the demons of Hell into an eager, servile line.

And out he went. And by sunset, off I went, to the temple at Uji.

Uji, while distant enough from the capital to be considered exile (and for most of us, this means anywhere outside the walls, with the possible exception of our summer homes on Biwa lake), was close enough for frequent visits from anyone with a carriage and half a day free, so I had a number of visitors from court. Since I was in disgrace (or might be, anyway; there had been no formal statements, of course, but I
had
fled the city, a sure sign that
someone
thought I was in disgrace) their visits were purportedly to leave offerings at the temple; but their perfunctory prayers were followed by long visits in my rooms.

My uncle and cousin were frequent visitors, though it was clear they could barely speak to me, so angry were they at the failure of their plan—for my erstwhile husband’s family expressed no desire to overlook the slight. Visits with them varied between icy silence meant to express displeasure; bitter animad-versions on the ruin I had wreaked on their family, my good name, my half-brother’s and nephew’s patience, and the court’s sympathy; and furious shouting: what had I been thinking? Was I mad?

I knew they could not see me well through the screens, so I learned to slip a small notebook into my sleeve, to have something to read during these visits: if they had nothing useful to say, I saw little reason to attend carefully. I actually read all the way through the Diamond Sutra in this fashion, which I am sure did more for my soul than any remorse they might have hoped to engender.

My nephew Horikawa was emperor by now, but I heard nothing from him beyond a short note expressing regret that “illness” had taken me from the city. It meant nothing, though it was well expressed; my nephew was always very elegant in his phrasing. My half-brother and I exchanged many short letters. I ached to be the little girl who could tell him all and then cry on his shoulder, but we were adults now. Nothing was stated clearly anymore. Our obliquities depressed me, and I stopped reading his letters, leaving them to Shigeko.

Shigeko behaved with kindness and restraint throughout all this. I was grateful, for I think a harsh word from her would have broken down my careful strength, and left me crying for a hundred days.

In many ways, my life changed little. One set of walls looks very like another; a set of chrysanthemum-colored robes do not lose their intensity when one is disgraced. My women were still with me, if somewhat prone to weeping as they served. Shigeko still oversaw them all, and harassed the temple’s cooks into providing meals not appreciably different from those at court. The temple was a prosperous one, and its courtyards were as elegant as anything at home—and better maintained, for there were a vast number of young, otherwise useless acolytes set to such things as removing fallen leaves from the graveled areas.

I developed quite a liking for the abbot of this place. He was a cousin of some sort, but had gone into the temple so young that I had met him only a few times, when we were both young. He had grown into a witty, articulate man, and he visited often. We discussed doctrine whenever he felt compelled to do so by his position; but mostly we played
sugoroku
-backgammon and gossiped about mutual acquaintances.

There was a day when we spoke of life at court: my nephew the emperor’s flute-playing; the rain in the galleries; the mice that seemed to be everywhere; the snow-mountains my half-brother and his consort oversaw a winter ago, before he had retired. When we were done, the abbot said, “I am told you are to stay, and we would gladly offer you shelter from the annoyances of court if you wish it. But you don’t belong here, do you?”

“No,” I said, in that moment wishing I did. “Not yet.”

“I will see what I can do.” He left me; eight days later, my half-brother wrote requesting my company at the
i residence, one of his homes. The emperor my nephew could not have done this: he was too young, and not strong in resisting the desires of my uncle—who was still infuriated, and even went so far as to argue with Shirakawa. But Shirakawa had disregarded my uncle’s advice back when he was emperor and my uncle his regent; he had no difficulty in doing so now.

Shirakawa was everything kind to me, but we did not speak of the failed marriage, nor of why he had rescued me (nor indeed how). After a year, my nephew the emperor summoned me to court, and except for a private coldness on my uncle’s and cousin’s part, life returned to what it was.

Some years later, I saw the boy I was supposed to marry, when he was grown and wed to a niece of mine. We did not speak directly, but I overheard enough of his conversation to learn that he grew up well mannered, polite, and kind—everything I had tried to comfort myself with when I still thought I must marry him. In spite of this, I went back to my rooms that night, and wept with gratitude that I had not married.

I asked my half-brother once why he had brought me back without urging that I reconcile with the boy. “Why should you marry him?” he said. “It seemed foolish to punish you for not wishing to do something you hadn’t chosen in the first place.” I thought then that, himself a retired emperor and constrained by ritual and the demands of others as I was, he sympathized with me for the restrictions of my life, and offered this one small freedom, the right not to marry someone I did not choose for myself.

But now I think that he also understood about D
mei.

The ki-stockade was
near the Abe’s main estate, but sturdier and better-placed for launching or defending against an attack. The stockade was small, just large enough for six buildings and a courtyard with a square well. It has been a long time since the northern barbarians have been a nuisance to anyone but themselves, so the place had been abandoned, and the thatched roofs and even some of the original walls were gone. The walls around the stockade were a rank of tree trunks upended into earthworks; it was obvious that many of these had tipped and been repositioned, for there were signs of hasty construction everywhere. Several of the upright logs were new, so fresh that green leaves still hung from the scars left by lopped-off branches.

The Abe had nearly a day in the
ki
-stockade before the war band arrived: enough time to throw up hasty entrenchments and create sturdy platforms behind the upended logs, high enough for archers to fire over the walls. When the war band approached the stockade, arrows whistled down, and curses; and when they got closer, large stones and boiling water, though Takase’s men were not near enough for these to have any effect.

The only injury was someone who had not tightened the laces on his armor since the battle at
gen; an arrow slipped through a gap and lodged itself in his shoulder.—And the men’s pride, of course. No one likes having things thrown at them, especially if one cannot retaliate.

The war band withdrew out of arrow-range. “Fine,” said Takase, and set the men to establishing two camps on the little plain around the stockade, one on each side, both just out of range.

Takase sent Kitsune and a squad to explore Abe no Norit
’s estate; Kagaya-hime rode along. They found it abandoned by anyone of rank, none but peasants and servants left to defend the tumble-down walls—for what country estate does not have collapsed walls? There is always something better to do with one’s time: mares to foal, crops to oversee, stories to share; sleep. Walls keep some (but not all) animals out, and they offer a certain sense of protection from robbers and undefined enemies, but they do little more. A single enemy within the walls makes them frail as grass.

Kagaya-hime and the others shot everyone who showed his face and burned everything flammable. The pillar of thick smoke was just becoming visible when they returned. Howls of anger rose from behind the walls: a flurry of arrows shot at extreme range. One arrow ticked against Kitsune’s shoulder armor, and dropped like a fallen scroll. He picked it up and fired it back at the stockade. It skinned over the logs and vanished: “Should have written your name on it, my lord,” one of the men said, “then they’d know who to look out for.”

Takase looked tired and irritable. He’d sent envoys to the
ki
-stockade with letters to Abe no Norit
; the responses had been short, sharp, and defiant. They had fired on the returning envoys, and the closeness of the misses indicated not sloppiness in their aim, but great skill. “Well?” he snapped at Kitsune when they met with the captains at dusk.

“They evacuated everyone to here,” Kitsune said. “And they brought the contents of one storehouse. Rice and buckwheat, it looked like from the dust everywhere. I can’t say how full it was.” Takase looked at Kagaya-hime, who added nothing, only nodded.

“I see these options,” Takase said. “They mean to come out and attack us tomorrow or the next day, when they are rested. Or they mean to sneak away from the stockade the next moonless night, or during a distraction of some sort. Or they mean to stay inside the stockade until we grow tired of waiting and leave.”

“Siege?” a captain said. “Are they
mad
? It’s the wrong season; they won’t have enough food this early in the year”—for last year’s crops would be nearly eaten up, and this year’s were still no more than new greenery.

Takase held up his hand for silence. “The place isn’t well designed for sneaking away. We’ll remove the underbrush, just to be sure. I think that we will wait for them.”

This startled everyone but Kagaya-hime. Common as siege may be in the Chinese manuals of war, it is not a usual thing here in the Eight Islands. We are too impatient to wait for a mouse at its hole; if our enemy goes to ground, we are more likely to give up and return another day. Only Kagaya-hime knew that sooner or later the mouse comes out.—Unless he has another hole, anyway.

Siege. I think it must be hard for everyone involved, this mix of tedium and gnawing fear. Is there enough to eat, to drink? Does the enemy plan some trick that we are too weary or bored to see? Have the gods changed the rules in the night, so that we are now somehow within range of their arrows? And how do my distant family fare as I wait here for something to happen? Have the crops been planted, the silkworms harvested? Both sides in a siege fret; neither can do anything to ease their concerns.

The small river that ran through the valley was clean water, safe to drink, but food was short at the camp. The war band had carried some food and stolen more; but it is astonishing how much food even two hundred men (they were sixty horsemen now, and one hundred thirty grooms and attendants) can eat. Takase sent out people to take what they needed from nearby farms, but the longer a war band stays in one place, the more time there is for the neighbors to grow nervous and relocate what little they have to a secure location; and he was forced to rely increasingly on his hunters. The monkeys came down from the mountains to steal their food and mock at them, but after the first day the men did not waste arrows on them, for they had a tendency to grab any arrow that missed them and swing hooting into the trees. It was only half a joke when the men talked about going into the woods to find the monkeys’ secret armory.

The horses were accustomed to fending for themselves; but the valley was not large, and they had grazed parts of it down to bare dirt within days.

The days of siege were perfect weather: the seventh month, brilliantly clear and as warm as it gets so far north. The members of the war band wore their
kote
over their torsos instead of the full armor as they moved about the camps. It rained twice, summer showers as pretty and translucent as gauze, good only for damping down the dust the camps kicked up.

As the siege continued, many of the men injured by arrows at
gen died, their deaths variously tranquil or violent. Some death-blows are obvious, as when bright blood froths on a man’s lips, or a wound turns color and begins to smell of carrion. Others are subtler: a man loses his appetite as dull bruising spreads across his abdomen; a man’s breathing bubbles in his chest until he turns blue and dies; night by night a man’s fever grows until his skin burns like iron in sunlight.

There was little news from inside the stockade. They saw the thin smoke of cooking fires; gold light from lamps and fires on cool, foggy evenings. A breeze brought the scents of cooking onions, boiling
taro
root, hot metal. They heard smiths’ sounds, for the ringing of hammers can carry for a mile: new arrowheads and
hoko
spearheads, no doubt. Sometimes men shouted, or a horse whinnied. On certain nights when the air was still, they heard the faint rumble of men talking behind the stockade walls, or sudden unexpected noises: a baby crying, a woman shushing it.

As the moon thinned and the nights became darker, men slipped from the
ki
-stockade, one or two at a time. Some vanished unnoticed; others were caught and questioned. This was no organized plot on Norit
’s part, though one of the captured men admitted that his goal had been to return with reinforcements from his own lands. Most wanted only to return to their families, their crops. Takase and the war band learned from these men that there were three hundred in the stockade; that there were a thousand, or one hundred; that Norit
had sent for allies who were coming, who were not; that he had six months’ food, or half a month’s; that Norit
’s wives and children were there; that they were all at a monastery far to the south, to the north, anywhere but here. People are not by their nature honest; they say what they must to survive—though in this case, they did not survive; Takase killed those he captured if he thought they would bring help for Norit
. The rotting heads had been dropped into kegs of brine; the row of barrels downwind of the camp grew longer.