Sword of Honour (41 page)

The tree bears fruit until it fails to do so, and then it is cut down and made into furniture to enthrone and comfort the young.

This was fact, this was duty. All they could do was endure it.

The familiar sound of the Goat’s scabbard-cane rattling across the wooden floor preceded his arrival. Goemon heard it approaching his chambers, and he wondered for a moment if the man did
not exaggerate his limp also. The old samurai barked his presence from outside. Goemon gave him permission to enter. He slid the heavy door open and stepped inside, bowed. It was still before
midmorning.

‘Something has arrived for you, sir,’ he said. ‘From Edo.’

‘Edo?’

‘Yes, sir.’

That was odd, and the Goat’s expression did nothing to encourage Goemon. ‘Bring it up to my chambers.’

A team of men hauled the arrival up the ladder and placed it reverently upon the hard floor of Goemon’s room, bowed to it and then to their captain, and left. It was a cube of about
knee-height and even sides, wrapped in a sheet of blackened hemp patterned with the Tokugawa crest.

He and the Goat looked at it for some time.

‘A gift,’ said Goemon.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Specifically addressed to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘To whom do I owe gratitude?’

‘No name was attached.’

‘From the clan itself, perhaps.’

The Goat said nothing.

Goemon cast back the sheet. Revealed within was a thing of beauty. It was ostensibly a board for playing go, but that would be doing a disservice to the craft and art that had gone into its
construction. It was a perfect cube of matte ebony wood, the grid of the game carved into the topmost surface barely seen black-on-black. Wrapping around three of the sides was the image of a tree
painted in vivid gold leaf, the trunk of it gnarled and curved and its branches wide, grasping and bare.

The captain beheld the wonderful object for a long moment, and then a low groaning sigh escaped him. He sank down into a squat and wrapped his hands over the back of his neck, clawed his fingers
into his flesh. ‘You may as well line a cask with salt now, Onodera,’ he said. ‘It seems my head is due in Edo imminently.’

The gift was a veiled message. A game board indicated strategy. It had been given to him in pointed anonymity, save for that it had come from the Tokugawa, and that designated Goemon’s
strategy in relation to the duty he had been assigned by that body. The tree so elegantly depicted upon its sides was bare, meaning they believed his strategy was failing, or had failed. Had
withered and died. Was entirely fruitless.

All these things it meant, and Goemon did not move, just crouched there with his hands now upon his cheeks, pulling the lower lids of his eyes down.

‘It must be the riot at the castle, they must have heard about it,’ he muttered. ‘The architects told them, or some spy, or . . . Did the scandal truly reach that
far?’

The Goat did not reply. He read the hidden message just as well as his captain. Yet, faithful adjutant that he was, eventually the old samurai was compelled to move forward and examine the go
board more closely. Stiffly, he sank down to his knees.

‘Ah,’ he said happily. ‘Look here, sir.’

‘What?’

‘The branches of the tree – don’t you see? They are rife with buds about to bloom.’

His gnarled finger ran itself over a swathe of branches at the very extremities of the tree’s reach. Goemon looked carefully. There were little nubs there, perhaps, but whether they were
intended or simply mistakes in the manufacture of it, a brush slipped or a twist of gold that fell unwanted, he could not tell.

‘Do you not think this is encouragement, sir?’ said the Goat. ‘That they are faithful in the imminent flowering of your strategy?’

It was a mercy he was offering, another lie he was pretending to believe. The kindness of it hurt Goemon such that he dismissed the man, and sat in baleful solitude for the rest of the morning
staring at the portent of his doom.

In the afternoon he set out upon the streets. The Goat accompanied him. Goemon’s mood had not relented and he felt alien to the sun. His belt was tight around his waist
and beneath the iron of his helmet the tiger’s claw of his sodden topknot toyed with his scalp, ran its needle points back and forth with a malicious joy at his helplessness.

The level countenance the captain maintained upon his own face almost faltered. He took to fidgeting to try to distract himself, pulling at the cords of the helmet beneath his chin, setting his
thumbs into his belt, rippling his fingers across the grip of his longsword.

‘Where are we meeting this fellow?’ he asked the Goat, eyes roving back and forth in search of nothing.

‘Somewhere furtive, sir. Can’t have a man such as he present himself in the higher wards.’

‘You are certain he is trustworthy? Men of this calibre . . .’

The Goat sucked air through his teeth. ‘He was drunk when he suffered his disgrace. That’s why he was spared seppuku. In the years since then, he has served faithfully. Perhaps
he’ll be given his swords back soon.’

‘Or perhaps he has been forgotten.’

‘The clan never forgets, sir.’

‘No,’ said Goemon, ‘it doesn’t.’

On the intersection of Kamanza and Koromonotana there was violence brewing. Two teams of taiko drummers were squaring up to one another, and all was rendered absurd because they were growling
grave curses into the faces of one another whilst wearing the gaily coloured jackets and head-scarves they would wear in the coming Regent’s festival. For weapons they had the thick
drumsticks they clutched in either hand, and their instruments stood silent and ignored. The band clad in striped yellow were accusing the cherry-blossom-pink gang of stealing a jar of polishing
wax from them overnight, and threats were uttered and shoulders were rolled and some grave pugilistic rhythm was threatening to break out until Goemon bellowed for order.

The sight of samurai and swords quelled them, and they stood before him like sullen children. The striped yellow men were obstinate and would not disband until their wax was returned to them,
that their drums might shine to properly honour the Regent, they said, and they were entirely unafraid of Goemon. Stood there demanding petty justice of a blooded warrior, and the captain simply
looked at them in disgusted disbelief.

These were the kinds of men and these were the kinds of things he would be beheaded for.

The captain could bear it no longer, and neither did he have the time to investigate and resolve some probably errant suspicion. He reached into his pouch of money and threw a handful of coins
at their feet, many times over what a new jar of wax would cost, and turned and left the striped yellow men scrabbling in the dust.

But of course – inevitably – as he left, a hidden voice yelled at him from behind and above: ‘Why not just murder them as you murdered the Yoshioka, Edoite?’

And there it was. He was a buffoon to some and a tyrant to others.

What was a city but its people?

He didn’t look back, didn’t try to scour out the source of the voice. Whoever it was would be hidden by some bamboo blind, and probably revel in how foolish he would look trying to
locate them. Goemon walked on. Over his shoulder the cherry-blossom troupe began to practise once more. The sound of the drums came to him, the pounding bass driving out a low rhythm:
a-bom,
a-bom, a-bombombom.

Shortly, the Goat pointed out the mouth of an alley. It was shaded and unremarkable. He had Goemon stop and wait at its mouth as he hobbled in to confirm all was according to plan. Up against
one of the walls a man was sprawled as though in a drunken slumber. The Goat peered down at this apparent malingerer, prodded at him with the point of his scabbarded longsword. The man stirred
angrily, yet calm words were exchanged, perhaps some codes or passwords of verification. Then the man rose to his feet, entirely sober and steady, and the Goat looked to Goemon and gestured for him
to come.

‘Here he is,’ said the Goat as the captain drew near. ‘Our surreptitious riverman.’

The agent was disguised so well that Goemon wondered if it even was a disguise any longer. He wore a filthy old sleeveless jerkin and short leggings that ended at his shins. His flesh was dirty
and jaundiced and his hair was short and matted. Yet in his eyes remained something of the samurai he had once been, some remnant pride, and his face was marked by a scar that could only have come
from a sword, a neat straight line that parted his beard and ran from the corner of his mouth to below his ear.

‘Sir Inoue,’ the man said, bowing.

Goemon looked him up and down. ‘On your knees,’ he said.

The agent was surprised by this. He hesitated, looked to the Goat for confirmation. The Goat in turn looked to Goemon.

‘If we are discovered, if people witness this,’ said the captain, ‘I’ll not have them thinking I am conversing eye-to-eye with a vagrant.’

The agent was reluctant. It seemed he was disappointed. Perhaps he had been relishing the opportunity to talk equally with swordsmen as he once had. But he was condemned to penance and he
swallowed his objections and sank to his knees, placed both palms out upon the earth.

‘Now then,’ said Goemon. ‘The man you are watching—’

‘Draw your sword,’ said the agent in a low voice, daring to look up for a moment.

‘What?’ asked Goemon.

‘Draw your sword and hold it to my throat,’ said the agent. ‘If we are discovered, it will appear you are imparting justice on some lowly scapegrace.’

Goemon looked at him for a moment, perfectly affronted.

‘Do it,’ implored the man. ‘A finer image, no?’

‘I will not relegate the sword my father wielded into becoming some prop in a clandestine charade!’ Goemon hissed.

The agent said nothing more, and the Goat looked at his captain as though it were a reasonable idea. Goemon bridled for three furious heartbeats, but then he saw it for what it was – just
another facet of this absurd city and risible circumstance, and what use pride for the already disgraced, the already dead? He slid his longsword out of its scabbard, this marvellous icon that he
had wielded at Sekigahara, that his father had in the campaign against the Ashina, and placed its brilliant edge at the filthy throat.

Very carefully, the Goat spread his legs and then began heaving his shoulders with his breath as though he had either just delivered some form of violence or was just about to.

‘The subject,’ said Goemon to the agent. ‘Your vigil over him is constant?’

‘Save for this sole moment, sir.’

‘He has no idea of your presence?’

‘He walks always with eyes on the horizon,’ the agent said, and Goemon could feel the man’s voice through his sword, the words humming up the length of the blade.
‘Everyone in Maruta gives him a wide berth, scared of him. He is quite safe, I believe, but I remain vigilant for any attempt upon him.’

‘Good,’ said Goemon. ‘And of the other pertinent elements as discussed with Sir Onodera?’

‘He’s found a common place, a low place, nothing suspicious growing there, I believe. I walked freely through it without challenge. Speaks often with a blight-eyed islander woman,
nothing more.’

‘Blight-eyed islander?’

‘From over the seas, sir. Ryukyu. Taken of a sickness.’

‘Is he smitten with her?’

The agent shrugged. ‘He tends to her nightly. Why else would a man spend time in the company of a woman?’

‘Do you believe she will suffice?’

The agent nodded.

Goemon sniffed, rubbed the sweat from either side of the bridge of his nose. Then he made the decision that had weighed upon his mind for days. ‘Very well. When you get the order . . .
make it vivid.’

The agent peeled his throat away from the sword and, through a mime of grovelling for clemency, bowed his understanding. Curtly, Goemon raised his weapon and sheathed it, and then jerked his
chin away in command. Dismissed, the agent ran to the mouth of the alley as though he were terrified and vanished into the streets outside.

‘Cherish the mercy of the benevolent Shogun!’ the Goat shouted after him for good measure.

The two samurai were left standing in the murk. Goemon took a breath and steadied himself. The Goat turned to look at his captain, and there was genuine concern in his old eyes.

‘This is a desperate strategy, sir,’ he said.

‘What else is there I can do, Onodera?’

The Goat might have answered, but at that moment further into the alley something moved and caught Goemon’s attention. The Goat tensed at the sudden turn of his captain’s head,
brought his sword up as if to draw it, but Goemon gestured at him for calm. It had been small, an animal of some sort. Now that he listened intently he thought he could hear its panting, and
curiously he went to look for it, moving slowly so as not to startle whatever it was.

Behind a stack of old abandoned rice-straw casks he found a small dog sitting. It was evidently a stray, a mangy-looking thing of a wretchedly sparse tan hide and one of its ears torn away. It
sat there with its tongue lolling and its mouth wide in what seemed an idiot’s smile, fighting its battle against the afternoon’s heat with the constant heaving of its lungs.

Goemon squatted down before it and reached out. With one hand he began to gently stroke the dog, and then, seeing its calm reaction, the second also.

The dog sat there and panted and yawned and rolled its sickly tongue, and Goemon, hidden away from the streets and all who might judge him, watched all this and smiled. He felt a rare moment of
calmness. He had always felt a liking for dogs. Back in distant Mutsu, back across leagues and years, it had been his pleasure to own an entire pack of hounds, great hale things with their heads up
to his waist more similar to wolves than this tattered little mongrel.

Of course, then had come the glorious summoning from his most noble Lord Tokugawa. He had left the dogs in their pen, and they had howled for him as he departed, yelped with such a clamour that
he heard their cries long after his estate had passed from his sight. It would be nice to think that they remembered him still, that if his scent no longer lingered in the air some remnant trace of
it remained within their hearts.