Grass for His Pillow (6 page)

I lay for a long time, listening to the sounds of the house. I could hear the breathing of the women in the downstairs room, the men in the loft. Beyond the walls the town gradually quieted. I had gone into a state I recognized. I could not explain it, but it was as familiar to me as my own skin. I did not feel either fear or excitement. My brain switched off. I was all instinct, instinct and ears. Time altered and slowed. It did not matter how long it took to open the door of the concealed room. I knew I would do it eventually, and I would do it soundlessly. Just as I would get to the outer door silently.

I was standing by this outer door, aware of every noise around me, when I heard footsteps. Kenji's wife got up, crossed the room where she'd been sleeping, and went toward the concealed room. The door slid; a few seconds passed. She came out of the room and, a lamp in her hand, walked swiftly but not anxiously toward me. Briefly I thought of going invisible, but I knew there was no point. She would almost certainly be able to discern me, and if she couldn't she would raise the household.

Saying nothing, I jerked my head in the direction of the door that led to the privy and went back to the hidden room. As I passed her I was aware of her eyes on me. She didn't say anything, either, just nodded at me, but I felt she knew I was trying to get out.

The room was stuffier than ever. Sleep now seemed impossible. I was still deep within my state of silent instinct. I tried to discern her breathing, but could not hear it. Finally I convinced myself that she must be asleep again. I got up, slowly opened the door, and stepped out into the room. The lamp still burned. Kenji's wife sat there next to it. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them and saw me standing in front of her.

“Going to piss again?” she said in her deep voice.

“I can't sleep.”

“Sit down. I'll make some tea.” She got to her feet in one movement: Despite her age and size she was as lithe as a girl. She put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently down onto the matting.

“Don't run away!” she warned, mockery in her voice.

I sat, but I was not really thinking. I was still bent on getting outside. I heard the kettle hiss as she blew on the embers, heard the chink of iron and pottery. She came back with the tea, knelt to pour it, and handed me a bowl, which I leaned forward to take. The light glowed between us. As I took the bowl I looked into her eyes, saw the amusement and mockery in them, saw that she had been flattering me before: She did not really believe in my talents. Then her eyelids flickered and closed. I dropped the bowl, caught her as she swayed, and set her down, already deeply asleep, on the matting. In the lamplight the spilled tea steamed.

I should have been horrified, but I wasn't. I just felt the cold satisfaction that the skills of the Tribe bring with them. I was sorry that I hadn't thought of this before, but it had never occurred to me that I would have any power at all over the wife of the Muto master. I was mainly relieved that now nothing was going to stop me from getting outside.

As I slipped through the side door into the yard, I heard the dogs stir. I whistled to them, high and quiet so only they and I would hear. One came padding up to investigate me, tail wagging. In the way of all dogs, he liked me. I put out my hand. He laid his head on it. The moon was low in the sky, but it gave enough light to make his eyes shine yellow. We stared at each other for a few moments, then he yawned, showing his big white teeth, lay down at my feet, and slept.

Inside my head the thought niggled:
A dog is one thing, the Muto master's wife is quite another.
But I chose not to listen. I crouched down and stroked the dog's head a couple of times while I looked at the wall.

Of course, I had neither weapons nor tools. The overhang of the wall's roof was wide and so pitched that, without grapples, it was impossible to get a handhold. In the end I climbed onto the roof of the bathhouse and jumped across. I went invisible, crept along the top of the wall away from the rear gate and the guards, and dropped into the street just before the corner. I stood against the wall for a few moments, listening. I heard the murmur of voices from the guards. The dogs were silent and the whole town seemed to sleep.

As I had done before, the night I climbed into Yamagata Castle, I worked my way from street to street, heading in a zigzag direction toward the river. The willow trees still stood beneath the setting moon. The branches moved gently in the autumn wind, the leaves already yellow, one or two floating down into the water.

I crouched in their shelter. I had no idea who controlled this town now: The lord whom Shigeru had visited, Iida's ally, had been overthrown along with the Tohan when the town erupted at the news of Shigeru's death, but presumably Arai had installed some kind of interim governor. I could not hear any sound of patrols. I stared at the castle, unable to make out if the heads of the Hidden whom I had released from torture into death had been removed or not. I could hardly believe my own memory: It was as if I had dreamed it or been told the story of someone else who had done it.

I was thinking about that night and how I had swum beneath the surface of the river when I heard footsteps approaching along
the bank: the ground was soft and damp and the footfall was muffled, but whoever it was was quite close. I should have left then but I was curious to see who would come to the river at this time of night, and I knew he would not see me.

He was a man of less than average height and very slight; in the darkness I could make out nothing else. He looked around furtively and then knelt at the water's edge as if he were praying. The wind blew off the river, bringing the tang of water and mud, and along with it the man's own smell.

His scent was somehow familiar. I sniffed the air like a dog, trying to place it. After a moment or two it came to me: It was the smell of the tannery. This man must be a leather worker, therefore an outcast. I knew then who he was: the man who had spoken to me after I had climbed into the castle. His brother had been one of the tortured Hidden to whom I had brought the release of death. I had used my second self on the riverbank, and this man had thought he had seen an angel and had spread the rumor of the Angel of Yamagata. I could guess why he was there praying. He must also be from the Hidden, maybe hoping to see the angel again. I remembered how the first time I saw him I had thought I had to kill him, but I had not been able to bring myself to do so. I gazed on him now with the troubled affection you have for someone whose life you have spared.

I felt something else, too; a pang of loss and regret for the certainties of my childhood, for the words and rituals that had comforted me then, seeming as eternal as the turn of the seasons and the passage of the moon and the stars in the sky. I had been plucked from my life among the Hidden when Shigeru had saved me at Mino. Since then I had kept my origins concealed, never speaking of them to anyone, never praying openly. But sometimes at night I
still prayed after the manner of the faith I was raised in, to the Secret God that my mother worshipped, and now I felt a yearning to approach this man and talk to him.

As an Otori lord, even as a member of the Tribe, I should have shunned a leather worker, for they slaughter animals and are considered unclean, but the Hidden believe all men are created equal by the Secret God, and so I had been taught by my mother. Still, some vestige of caution kept me out of sight beneath the willow, though as I heard his whispered prayer I found my tongue repeating the words along with him.

I would have left it like that—I was not a complete fool, even though that night I was behaving like one—if I had not caught the sound of men approaching over the nearest bridge. It was a patrol of some sort, probably Arai's men, though I had no way of knowing for sure. They must have stopped on the bridge and gazed down the river.

“There's that lunatic,” I heard one say. “Makes me sick having to see him there night after night.” His accent was local, but the next man who spoke sounded as if he came from the West.

“Give him a beating, he'll soon give up coming.”

“We've done that. Makes no difference.”

“Comes back for more, does he?”

“Let's lock him up for a few nights.”

“Let's just chuck him in the river.”

They laughed. I heard their footsteps grow louder as they began to run, and then fade a little as they passed behind a row of houses. They were still some way off; the man on the bank had heard nothing. I was not going to stand by and watch while the guards threw my man into the river. My man: He already belonged to me.

I slipped out from beneath the branches of the willow and ran toward him. I tapped him on the shoulder and, when he turned, I hissed at him, “Come, hide quickly!”

He recognized me at once and, with a great gasp of amazement, threw himself at my feet, praying incoherently. In the distance I could hear the patrol approaching down the street that ran along the river. I shook the man, lifted his head, put my finger to my lips, and, trying to remember not to look him in the eye, pulled him into the shelter of the willows.

I should leave him here,
I thought.
I can go invisible and avoid the patrol.
But then I heard them tramping round the corner and realized I was too late.

The breeze ruffled the water and set the willow leaves quivering. In the distance a cock crowed, a temple bell sounded.

“Gone!” a voice exclaimed, not ten paces from us.

Another man swore, “Filthy outcasts.”

“Which is worse, do you reckon, outcasts or Hidden?”

“Some are both! That's the worst.”

I heard the slicing sigh of a sword being drawn. One of the soldiers slashed at a clump of reeds and then at the willow itself. The man next to me tensed. He was trembling but he made no sound. The smell of tanned leather was so strong in my nostrils, I was sure the guards would catch it, but the rank smell of the river must have masked it.

I was thinking I might attract their attention away from the outcast—split my self and somehow evade them—when a pair of ducks, sleeping in the reeds, suddenly flew off, quacking loudly, skimming the surface of the water and shattering the quiet of the night. The men shouted in surprise, then jeered at each other. They
joked and grumbled for a little longer, threw stones at the ducks, then left in the direction opposite the one they'd come from. I heard their footsteps echo through the town, fading until even I could hear them no more. I began to scold the man.

“What are you doing out at this time of night? They'd have thrown you in the river if they'd found you.”

He bent his head to my feet again.

“Sit up,” I urged him. “Speak to me.”

He sat, glanced briefly upward at my face, and then dropped his eyes. “I come every night I can,” he muttered. “I've been praying to God for one more sight of you. I can never forget what you did for my brother—for the rest of them.” He was silent for a moment, then whispered, “I thought you were an angel. But people say you are Lord Otori's son. You killed Lord Iida in revenge for his death. Now we have a new lord, Arai Daiichi from Kumamoto. His men have been combing the town for you. I thought they must know you were here. So I came tonight again to see you. Whatever form you choose to come in, you must be one of God's angels to do what you did.”

It was a shock to hear my story repeated by this man. It brought home to me the danger I was in. “Go home. Tell no one you saw me.” I prepared to leave.

He did not seem to hear me. He was in an almost exalted state: His eyes glittering, flecks of spittle shimmering on his lips. “Stay, lord,” he exhorted me. “Every night I bring food for you, food and wine. We must share them together; then you must bless me and I will die happy.”

He took up a small bundle. Unwrapping the food and placing it on the ground between us, he began to say the first prayer of the
Hidden. The familiar words made my neck tingle, and when he'd finished I responded quietly with the second prayer. Together we made the sign over the food and over ourselves, and I began to eat.

The meal was pitifully sparse, a millet cake with a trace of smoked fish skin buried in it, but it had all the elements of the rituals of my childhood. The outcast brought out a small flask and poured from it into a wooden bowl. It was some home-brewed liquor, far rougher than wine, and we had no more than a mouthful each, but the smell reminded me of my home. I felt my mother's presence strongly and tears pricked my eyelids.

“Are you a priest?” I whispered, wondering how he had escaped the Tohan persecution.

“My brother was our priest. The one you released in mercy. Since his death I do what I can for our people—those who are left.”

“Did many die under Iida?”

“In the East, hundreds. My parents fled here many years ago, and under the Otori there was no persecution. But in the ten years since Yaegahara, no one has been safe here. Now we have a new overlord, Arai: No one knows which way he will jump. They say he has other fish to gut. We may be left alone while he deals with the Tribe.” His voice dropped to a whisper at this last word, as though just to utter it was to invite retribution. “And that would only be justice,” he went on, “for it's they who are the murderers and the assassins. Our people are harmless. We are forbidden to kill.” He shot me an apologetic look. “Of course, lord, your case was different.”