Sword of Honour (53 page)

He went for his sword, began to march forth.

The Goat grabbed his captain’s arm, stopped the blade from being drawn. Tried to hiss advice in Goemon’s ear but the man could hear nothing in that moment, struggled to advance with
his adjutant clinging on to him, and the Goat saw that he would not stop and he knew what it was that he had to do.

He lurched forward ahead of Goemon, hobbled towards the Yoshioka samurai and hauled his own longsword free of his scabbard. Faced the man much younger than he and drew his weapon up and uttered
an insult that was low and crude and comprehensible.

This he did because he knew that, if Goemon had engaged the Yoshioka samurai, the captain, young and hale and in the colours of the Tokugawa before the castle of his Lord and the eyes of the
people of Kyoto, might very well have triumphed.

No balance on his cloven foot and strength and speed all but fled from his old arms, it was over in a single movement. The Yoshioka man cut the Goat across the chest, split his ribs and his
sternum and his stomach before the arc of the Goat’s attack was even conceived. This was not surprising but the pain was.

No crime to die, no hand of a tyrant apparent here. This duty. The Goat fell to his knees and then onto his back. Dimly he was aware of some howl of outrage, and this pleased him, that the men
he served with might consider his loss an affront.

Above him unseen the Yoshioka began to flee and the Tokugawa made to chase them. ‘Halt!’ barked Goemon.

‘They must—’

‘Let them go!’

‘But the—’

‘Stay yourselves, damn you! I command you!’

‘Why? Why!’

Goemon did not answer, quelled them with a look, and reluctantly his men obeyed him, watched the Yoshioka samurai vanish with utter hatred. All eyes turned to the Goat where he lay. One of the
men picked up the old man’s sword and another his scabbard; they reunited the pair and then placed it in the Goat’s right hand. Goemon knelt in the dust and took the other.

‘Onodera,’ the captain said, a fierce respect in his eyes because he understood what it was the Goat had done for him. ‘Thank you.’

He pulled the old man’s jacket across to hide the wound and give him a measure of dignity. No red visible on the black. The Goat nodded, his hand grew tight on his captain’s.
‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘Force it. Today. Tonight. Do it.’

Goemon nodded. ‘You will be avenged.’

The Goat understood this, but he could say nothing more. After perhaps twenty more breaths his eyes lost their lustre and he died.

The captain rose to his feet, his purpose and resolve reaffirmed. Wordlessly he nominated the first man his eyes met as his new adjutant, and commanded him: ‘Fetch me a messenger and scour
out the three finest archers from amongst the men. Bring them to me at the garrison. Go! Go!’

Chapter Thirty-six

It was some time after dawn, with the cries of the rivermen outside casting their boats off the shore, when Musashi realized how few farewells he had actually said in his life.
To his father, a promise to uphold a dogma he now rejected and reviled. To his uncle, the words too awkward to say aloud. To Akiyama, to Jiro, to all the others now dead, he hadn’t even got
the chance.

The finest he thought, or perhaps even the only example, was to the Lord Hayato Nakata, right before he beheaded him.

The thought of this sat pulsing within him through the morning as he tried to muster words. He gathered his few belongings together and placed them in the rice-straw sack he used for travel. He
set the sack on his back and then stood there facing the door of his room as though he were off immediately for a long time. Then he sat down with it still on his back for at least another
hour.

He thought about simply leaving without a final word, simply drifting out of her life as erratically as they had come together. But he knew that he would not permit this of himself. That was
simply fleeing. A definite farewell, a definite ending, that demarcated it as a firm decision, and that was worthy, what he wanted. Yae, Yae would be easy. Or hard. Perhaps she would cry. He did
not know which, nor which he would prefer.

He remained in his room fretting, restless and yet not wanting to move. The longer this went on, the more he started to feel foolish.

Why was it so hard to tell someone that you were heeding their advice?

Eventually, he simply decided to commit. The day was passing by and he needed to be out upon the roads. Just throw himself in, and let it happen. He took a breath, opened the door, stepped out
of his room. There was a tightness in his chest, beneath his purpled ribs. Before the doorway to the hearth room where Ameku worked the loom again he hesitated. He hung there inertly, debating
whether to stride in with purpose or simply watch in silence for a while.

It was the sound of a door opening down the corridor behind him that spurred him into movement. He quickly stepped inside, hoped his first words would not waver, and found instead the room
entirely empty.

Musashi looked around. The ashes in the hearth pit were cold. The tatami mat Ameku had been weaving hung suspended on the levers of the mechanism, all but finished. But where were the hands to
weave those last few reeds?

He called out for her, for Yae. He went to their room and knocked on the door. There was no answer.

They were nowhere to be found.

He went and sought out the owner of the lodgings, the coarse ageing man beating the dust out of a futon mat with an iron poker down by the banks of the river.

‘Where’s Ameku?’ Musashi asked him.

‘Who?’

‘The blinded woman.’

‘Is she not on the loom?’

‘No.’

The owner shrugged.

‘What about the girl, the young girl with her?’

Again, the same nonplussed gesture. ‘Neither of them I haven’t seen all day.’

‘They haven’t departed, have they?’ he asked.

‘They best not have,’ said the owner. ‘That tatami she is weaving is due tomorrow.’

Musashi gave a low grunt of puzzlement. He stood scratching at the hairs upon his cheeks as he thought, sucked the inside of his lower lip. In truth he did not know their usual routine, he
having been focused on his sword these past weeks. He knew they bathed together. Perhaps they were off to the river to find a measure of privacy.

This felt wrong. He felt denied. Yet perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps even fated to be so – had she not told him of the futility of such gestures, that what was known and what was
right and what was ultimately good did not need to be said?

The owner stood there with his poker in his hand as Musashi deliberated, wanting to return to his work. He saw the sack that was slung over the swordsman’s shoulder. ‘Are you on your
way, sir?’ he prodded politely.

Roused, Musashi grunted affirmation. He paid what was owed to the man, and then, after a moment’s consideration, he also gave him half of the coins he had left over. ‘You see that
the blind woman gets this.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The man had agreed too eagerly. Musashi looked down at him, adjusted the swords at his hips. ‘I’ll be coming back through here in a month or so,’ he lied. ‘I’ll
check with her then that she received it.’

The owner understood what was implicit there, and this time he bowed a more compliant, respectful bow. ‘Have you a message for her along with the coin?’

Musashi thought about it again for a final longing moment. Then he simply shook his head and went.

He left Maruta and headed north-east on the Nakasendo road. His swords were at his sides. His hair was matted with salt. His bare arms sweated and the threads of his cutaway
sleeves curled like the marks of tattoos.

He did not stride. There was no confidence in his steps. The road ahead ran all the way to Edo, but that was not his destination. He had none – he was simply going. Could not face his
uncle, not yet. Merely leaving Kyoto and the Yoshioka behind, as Ameku had told him.

Better to live.

He repeated this to himself as he walked.

Live.

Live.

Repetition robbed it of its status as a word.

He tried to hum one of the songs Ameku had sung. His voice was crude and it made a mockery of the melody as it was in his mind, as he knew and felt it, and he did not find the solace he wanted
to find in it, and eventually he admitted this and resigned himself to silence, and longed for inner emptiness.

But such a thing was impossible. All the while he tried not to look back at the city he could no longer see. His fingers wrung at the rope lashes of his pack. He told himself that it was done,
that he had proven all he could, and yet for all this at his most inner place something still rebelled against this notion. He saw in his mind the duel, remembered both his arms in their perfect
unison, and the rightness of this . . .

He was west of Mount Hiei when he stopped of no particular spur.

He turned and looked back down the road. He was caught in indecision. Surely there had to be something he could do. He had been so certain these prior weeks. Certain in himself, in his course.
What if felling Denshichiro was not quite enough? What if he admitted to himself that some part of him was not entirely honest? What if there was a further gesture, a gesture of complete and utter
honesty that none could fail to recognize as such? If only he had dug further, fought harder; if only he had rejected the black and formless waters of the night.

It had to be there.

Somewhere

But then Akiyama was dead, and all was chaos, and what Ameku said made sense, and there was no clarity. He had no conception of the meaning of all this any more, and yet he stubbornly persisted
that either he did, or he did not need to. Did he heed her words because they were sound, or did he heed them purely because
she
said them? And he stood there on the road with pilgrims and
merchants passing him, rejecting those words, accepting them, rejecting them, on and on and on and if only there was some conviction either way, and he thought all this, and he was so tired, just
then.

It was as though some damming wall within gave out, vanished in an instant, and suddenly he was unavoidably aware of just how exhausted he truly was. The travail of the past weeks weighed down
upon him. Eyes so heavy that holding them open was like chiselling away at stone. Sutured leg and all his other wounds oozing and aching in their various ways, beseeching him to rest.

Musashi became aware that he was standing before the stone gates of a temple. The wooden sign hung from the crossbeam gave its name as Ichijo. Musashi had not heard of it. It was of no
particular holy renown, and in such proximity to the vast halls within the city the modest shrine he could see nestled in a grove of trees was diminished.

Just inside the gates, he saw a pond that shimmered green, reflected light where it played between the leaves of trees. Musashi limped over to its banks. He set his pack and his swords down, and
then dropped to his knees and brought handfuls of water to his face. The water was cool and felt fine upon his brow, his lips, and yet it bought no decision forth.

Cicadas howled and marked the crawl of time.

Within the grounds there was also a great spreading pine tree, centuries old, needles the length of his hand and its bark ridged and mossed. Beneath its boughs was shade. Face glistening, he
went and sat on one of its roots, and stared at nothing.

If only he had said farewell.

He thought of this, thought of everything, and the heat persisted warm as his body, as his blood. He placed his elbows on his thighs, and he found that perhaps the heat was sharing his blood,
his body, for his pain was receding, growing distant, and on the insects sang.

A hand shook him roughly awake. Musashi started. He had slept sitting and almost tipped backwards off the root.

‘Up, you,’ an old man was saying. ‘Up.’

It was daylight still, but the shadows had grown long. The old man had on the sombre dragonfly-green robes of a Shinto priest, and he persisted in his shaking.

‘What do you want?’ said Musashi, pushing the priest’s hand from his shoulder. ‘I’ve no coin to throw in prayer, if that’s what you desire, you covetous old
wretch.’

The priest blew air from his cheeks and stood up, affronted. ‘Got a temper on you, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Ungrateful shit of a pup.’

Musashi grunted an inchoate retort, rubbed the doze from his eyes.

‘If you’ve a mind for it,’ said the priest, ‘that fellow bade me wake you. Said he wished to speak with you.’

The priest pointed over to the gates. Standing beneath the double beams beyond the holy threshold was a samurai, and he wore a jacket the colour of tea.

Musashi rose immediately. He drew both his swords and strode over, blades held ready for ambush. The samurai though was perfectly level, mockingly level. He did not even go for his own sword. He
simply stepped backwards again and again, keeping a clear ten paces between them. The road was wide around him, and no other seemed to be with him. Musashi’s aggression seemed to amuse him
blackly.

‘Leaving Kyoto, Miyamoto?’ he called. ‘You think it finished?’

Musashi moved cautiously to stand just outside the gate, looked along either wall. He held his longsword out in guard before him and had the short above his head readied to strike. Yet no
swarming attack revealed itself.

‘I felled your master,’ Musashi called eventually, ‘and your subsequent master proved himself a coward. What more is there for me to do?’

‘Matashichiro reigns now.’

A moment of confusion, wondering what it was that had happened to Denshichiro. Then Musashi said, ‘The third one is just a child. If he has umbrage with the manner I dealt with his
brothers, tell him to find me later in his life – he and himself alone.’

The man tilted his head to one side. ‘You’re leaving with less than you came with, no?’ His smile widened. ‘The master Kozei bids you farewell.’

Then the samurai turned and ran back down the road towards Kyoto.

The oddness of his flight masked the meaning of his words for but a moment.