Sword of Honour (49 page)

‘It is so,’ echoes a multitude of voices that chain all the way beyond the door and become muffled by the walls.

‘Why so many of you here?’ says the young woman.

‘It is the will of all us,’ says the elder. ‘We are in agreement.’

‘And what is it you have all agreed upon?’

‘We ask you to spare us. We ask you, humbly, to leave the village and take with you what you have . . . Take with you the beacon that shines around you in the other world.’

‘Leave?’ says the young woman.

‘We beseech you,’ says the elder.

‘Where am I to go?’ she laughs bitterly. ‘How am I to get there?’

‘We have considered that,’ says the elder.

‘What?’

‘We have bought passage for you upon a ship to Japan.’

That gives the young woman pause for thought. That was no cheap fare, and the village had no rich families. All of them together, then, a collective sacrifice, such the strength of their desire
to see her gone.

‘Is Tsutomu amongst you?’ says the young woman. ‘My sister’s husband, are you here?’

There is a sort of whimper, and then Tsutomu answers: ‘I am here, blessed yuta.’

‘You too agree with this? What would my sister say?’

‘Your sister is gone,’ says Tsutomu. ‘My children remain.’

‘We are all in agreement,’ says the elder. ‘We ask that you show us kindness and consent to this. We are entirely at your mercy. We will force nothing upon you. Doom us or
spare us.’

‘What if I avow to dispel the spirits?’

‘There are things more powerful than vows drawn to you, seeing one. We have seen their mischief already. Please, we beg of you, for the future of the village – choose to
leave.’

The young woman takes this in. This is not what she was expecting. The reason why this is unexpected takes a moment for her to find, an old piece of folk wisdom rising in her memory.

‘The ship leaves two mornings from now,’ says the leader, taking her silence for consent. ‘We shall bear you to the bay upon a palanquin.’

‘You name me a witch—’

‘We do no such thing, seeing one,’ says the elder quickly.

‘You name me witch, and yet you seek to put me upon a ship. Do you not know what is said to happen should one such as I take sail?’

‘We know,’ says the elder.

‘That a storm will come and the wind will blow and the waves will rise, and the mouth of the sea will open up and drag the ship down to the depths to hover there in the inverted world for
all time? Trapped in a moment of perpetual drowning – which amongst you knows this, and is prepared to sail with me on board?’

‘We know this,’ says the elder, ‘but—’

‘But?’ presses the young woman when the elder stops himself.

It takes a moment before he speaks again, but he knows he cannot lie in front of her. Then he says something so illuminating it is as if she were a child again, on that beach, in that single
memory of light.

What he says is:

‘But the Japanese do not.’

Chapter Thirty-two

See it as a bird sees it and how peaceful the streets of Kyoto, spread out as a mosaic pattern of rooftop tile and ochre veins of earth, the only violence visible that of the
jagged angles of towering pagoda tiers violating the sea of low roofs seeking to impregnate the sky. Yet down amongst these streets the breath of reason and tranquillity failed to blow, repelled by
moats and walls and formative castle structures, by perhaps even the encircling mountains themselves, stillness pervading, all that was there already trapped beneath the eaves of roofs, there
channelled and flowing, churning ignescent, low and rancid as the sweat it brought forth . . .

. . . the crowd glistening with this as they gathered outside a tavern. A half-curtain hung across the entrance obscuring their view, this made of green hemp and on it printed
in white the two characters for evening calm. The gathered people summoned by a sound, a violent sound that had erupted as brief as thunder but had not echoed and died as thunder did, had been torn
away as though the iron lid of a crypt had slammed down.

‘Did you hear? Did you hear?’

‘What?’

‘It’s them.’

‘Who?’

‘The Yoshioka.’

‘In there?’

‘Nnn.’

‘Who is it that . . . ?’

‘A swordbearer. Masterless.’

Murmurs of this sort, and then the Yoshioka re-emerged onto the street. They wore the looks of men enthralled to some otherworldly beauty. Three of them, each holding a bloody sword and in the
hands of the lead man a human head held by the hair. The leader raised this trophy up and let it swing upon its tresses, uncaring of the gore that fell upon his bared arm, his shoulder.

‘Musashi Miyamoto!’ he snarled exuberant, naming the slain. ‘Musashi Miyamoto!’

The head swung back and forth and rotated in his grasp so that all saw the dead man’s face well, his mouth lolling and his tongue visible, his eyes open, the wound on the neck ragged.
Sawed and pulled free of the body and offered up to the midday sun with such supreme pride and joy, rapture in the eyes.

‘Where are they?’ came the whispers.

‘Who?’

‘The black-clad men, the Edoites. The law!’

‘They . . . they’re the Yoshioka. Do they not have the right?’

The head there paramount and the Yoshioka oblivious of the shock and disgust, the gasp that scythed outwards like the breath of bellows across coals, passing into shouts the further it went,
informing or warning or fascinated. The head, the head alone worthy of attention, and from Miyamoto’s lip grey moustaches so long that the tips of them were sodden red, hanging like the tails
of dead foxes.

How many the men that lay with a woman and thought of another? A common sin or no sin at all, and here the Yoshioka now began to walk as men of this sort, the numb-legged aftermath of a
surrogate moment of ecstasy. The crowd parted for them and their trophy, blood running sweet, blood running hot . . .

. . . and here on sanctified ground a scorching heat, dry in its fury, the funeral pyre of Ujinari burning bright. The body was hidden by a white shroud, and Tadanari stood
not three paces away, watching as his hidden son was enveloped by the flames. As they grew higher he felt the coming of pain upon every inch of his bare skin, the heat scouring.

Members of the school stood behind him. Tadanari had not commanded them to help bear the body to the site. He had given no command since he had returned from the Hall. These the adepts that felt
the glow of rage behind their eyes (or as a noose around the throat through which they tried to swallow comprehension of defeat, or as acid fear hidden in the belly) and yet managed to keep it
suppliant had not stormed forth in thrall to it.

The most loyal of men and Tadanari unmindful of them. Ujinari’s longsword in his hands and this alone existed to him. He remembered seeing it sitting naked upon the stand on the day of its
blessing, admiring the lustre of its metal, and knowing, deeply knowing then, that that lustre would hold true and would be looked at in the same awestruck manner by his descendants in centuries to
come.

Fudo snarled unceasing upon the gorgeous scabbard.

What else was being cut, shed from him in that blaze? The last of the Kozei stood humbled, helpless but to stand at the mercy of the fire and let it rape him of all it pleased. And, in the
aftermath of that, though brightness was before him his mind went solely to dark places.

Soon he smelt the hair upon his arms begin to singe. He relented, stepped back from the pyre not into relief but only the embrace of the liquid heat of summer. The fire roared upwards, and he
looked up through its shimmering haze and saw the sky distorting as though the world were coming apart, and his sole wish was that this were true and that the destruction were the ultimate work of
his hand . . .

. . . now heels burning where they slapped upon cedar sandalwood again and again, another separate band of Yoshioka on another street and they in pursuit of Musashi Miyamoto
also. The masterless enemy fleeing without even drawing the swords at his side as was his cowardly wont, and they with glee in their tea-coloured hearts. Miyamoto a short man, stubby little legs in
miserable little rags, and in at least one of the samurai’s minds this jarred with the image of the lithe and slender giant that had faced down Seijuro, but still they chased, still they
screamed and cursed at his back.

Hammering a spectre, any spectre, into the grave vengeance had dug in them was better than leaving it empty. Necessary. Righteous.

Miyamoto rounded a corner and crashed into a line of taiko drums set on stands. They tumbled to the floor thudding loud and hollow, rolled, and he slipped and stumbled amongst them. No grace,
this Miyamoto, yelped as his forearms met earth. The lowerborn moving to help him as he scrabbled desperate and then receding immediately as the Yoshioka rounded the corner, shrieked their triumph.
They did not allow Miyamoto to rise, set upon him with their swords with him still on his hands and knees and hacked and hacked and hacked.

The crowd watched as again a head was eventually brought up, brandished in glory and gore for all to see . . .

. . . and a third head on a third street, a third Miyamoto, his swords scattered unbloodied in the dust of the street. The Yoshioka waving the head at Goemon Inoue, snarling
in joy, taunting the captain, and the captain standing there. His iron helmet heavy, his chainmail jacket like an oven upon him, the streets around them silent and staring.

The Yoshioka samurai slung the head underarm towards Goemon and, as it rolled and left a bloody trail, the tea-coloured samurai screamed, ‘There your dog! There your dog!’

There the challenge and Goemon fit to burst already, sucking it all up like a volcanic stone sucks up bitter saltwater, and still the Yoshioka dared him. On this street, on every other street
where they unleashed their chaos upon the innocent. Every instinct telling him to draw his sword and be as a samurai, and his men at his side as ravenous as a pack of wolves for the fight, and
around him the alien city that loathed him smothering him with its delight at his humiliation, and the wrath of the sun even upon all.

‘Hold,’ he commanded his men, and he hated saying the word. ‘Hold.’

They obeyed and let the Yoshioka go. The tea-coloured samurai retreated jeering them as cowards, left them the head and the corpse of the masterless, and Goemon could feel the enmity of his own
men at him for forcing them to yield.

But what else could he do?

He looked at the severed head, and he wondered what it was exactly he had unleashed in Miyamoto. A man who stood against nine and triumphed. Both an astonishing portent of this chaos that Goemon
could scant contain and his last hope also, the captain here bound by the chains of his duty that he felt so hot around the wrists, the spine, the throat . . .

. . . and a saucerful of water was thrown into the brazier and the coals flared and spat and hissed and steam rose, and Musashi stalked past wanting to feel the heat once
more, the heat inside his heart, that wonderful sunlike thing that assured him of all. Where was it? Where had it gone during the night? It had failed to rise with the dawn and now all seemed
dimmed.

Oblivious for the moment of Yoshioka violence, shrouded in the streets of the city that became his unwitting armour, avenues and roads in the hundreds and the Yoshioka that rampaged through them
few. Divers searching for a single pearl in a reef that spanned a score of leagues, and so many false pearls yet to distract them.

There was blood dried upon his clothes and his muscles still ached from the exertion, but there was no satisfaction in this pain as there had been previously. He ventured forth with no clear
direction, trying to quash the doubt of the night before, but of the form of the sign he sought he was not certain. Thus he wandered for the first time as no more than a querent, witnessing the
city rather than challenging, hoping that its currents would grant him reassurance in his victory.