Tale of the Warrior Geisha (19 page)

Tomoe Gozen

S
HINOWARA
T
OWN

K
A
GA
P
ROVINCE

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Fall 1183

T
omoe awoke to soft sobs coming from Yamabuki's mat. Tomoe crawled over to Yamabuki's sleeping roll and touched Yamabuki's leg. “It's time!” she called to awaken her mother. The baby was a month early, but surely it would be all right.

In the dim light from the fire, Yamabuki looked greenish red. She lay on her back, her legs apart, already pushing. Tomoe touched where the baby's head should be and felt a cold foot sticking out. She withdrew her hand. The birth water smelled foul. Infection and breech. They needed to get this baby out.

Yamabuki gripped Tomoe's forearm. “I cannot. It hurts too much.”

Chizuru ran over with rags and began manipulating Yamabuki's stomach, trying to coax the baby to turn. Tomoe spoke to Yamabuki. “No. It's not in your nature to give up. Your body remembers what to do. Remember the iris blooming in the frozen ground?” She stroked Yamabuki's forehead. “You told me that, remember?”

“True.” Yamabuki shifted and shot Tomoe a bittersweet smile. “Long ago. When I was young.” She shouted as the baby's foot poked farther out, then retracted. Panting, she gripped Tomoe's arm. “Don't leave me.”

“Never.” Tomoe knelt beside Yamabuki's head, pulling it into her lap.

Chizuru's gaze met Tomoe's. Her mother shook her head. Yamabuki screamed as though someone was stabbing her in the throat.

“You must fight,” Tomoe said sharply. “Push him out!” Yamabuki screamed again, but this time it was more of a loud moaning shudder. The baby slid out into Chizuru's waiting hands, the umbilical cord gleaming like an oyster shell in the light.

Chizuru's face fell as she held the bloody infant close to her breast. “A boy,” she said sadly.

She handed him to Tomoe. He weighed no more than a handful of green beans, his limbs scrawny. She swept her finger through his mouth, sucked the liquid out of his nose with her own mouth, spat. He did not take a breath. Tomoe slapped him on the back. Nothing. She put her lips to the boy's and blew, feeling his chest move up and down. Again and again. Her fingertip on the boy's chest waited to feel a pulse. Stillness.

The baby's head was round and perfect, but too big for his tiny body. His nose was squashed and slick, the eyes white and unseeing. Tomoe had thought his skin red, but no, that was the reflection of the fire. His skin was the perfectly pearly blue of an early winter sky. She pushed more air into the tiny lungs.

“What is it?” Yamabuki said. “What has happened? Let me see. Let me see!” Unexpectedly, the woman sat up and clawed at the baby, wresting him from Tomoe's arms. The umbilical cord was still attached to the placenta, which glided out of Yamabuki's body, her uterus convulsing, then fell onto the bedclothes. Chizuru quietly cut the cord away from the baby.

Yamabuki rocked the limp boy. Her mouth moved to make words. She shook her head and sobbed without sound.

“He will be all right.” Yamabuki rocked the baby harder. “Wake up, little one.” She rubbed his chest furiously. The baby lay, wilted, in her arms.

“Yamabuki-chan.” Tomoe knelt. She tried to come up with words. But there was nothing to say. She put her arm around her friend. “I am so sorry.”

Yamabuki stopped moving and held her baby silently, staring at the small face. Her shoulders shook. It looked like a dozen men had died in here, blood running off the bedroll and onto the tatami, leaking through the woven straw. “It is my fault,” Yamabuki said hollowly. “I should have taken better care of myself.”

“Yamabuki-chan. You don't mean that.” Tomoe embraced her hard, stopping her shaking. “It is not for us to say.”

“I did this.” Yamabuki's mouth twisted. “I did it.” She hit her own face with a closed fist, smacking it over and over. Tomoe gasped and tried to catch her arm, but the woman had surprising strength. Yamabuki felt feverish, five times as warm as the night air. “I am bad luck.”

From behind, Tomoe looped her arms under Yamabuki's armpits and grasped her hands together behind Yamabuki's neck. “You did nothing. Stop!” The woman thrashed, but could not move. Chizuru took the baby. Yamabuki collapsed, falling into unconsciousness or sleep; Tomoe could not tell. Still she breathed.

“Let him spend this one night with his mother,” Tomoe said. Chizuru wrapped the baby in a silken blanket and placed him under Yamabuki's arm. Cries rose up in Tomoe's throat, but like Yamabuki, she had no tears. She took the baby from Chizuru and placed him on the mat next to Yamabuki. In the dim light, both were the same color.

Tomoe Gozen

O
N
THE
WAY
TO
M
IYAKO
,
THE
CAPITAL

C
ENTRAL
H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Fall 1183

T
hey left for the capital at daybreak, only two weeks after Yamabuki gave birth, on a mid-December morning when the wind blew bitter snow into their faces. The journey would take at least a week in this wintry weather, through the mountains.

It was her brother Kanehira, to Tomoe's surprise, who took her aside and asked her to accompany them. “Please. He needs you.”

“I thought you supported him without question.” Tomoe looked levelly at her younger brother. He had lost a great deal of weight recently, his skin hanging loosely from his frame.

Kanehira nodded. “I do support him. But I've said yes to all his ideas for too long. He won't believe me anymore. He needs you.”

Tomoe sighed, looking at Yamabuki. “I need to stay here.”

Her brother put his hand on her shoulder. “You cannot do anything for her. Mother will take care of them. Don't you remember your promise to Father?”

Tomoe's mouth contorted. She took a deep breath. “I will never forget it.”

Tomoe forced her mother to stay inside, to not see them off. She kissed Chizuru and three-year-old Aoi, and then knelt next to Yamabuki and picked up her hand. The woman had never fully woken from her twilight sleep. They had managed to get her to drink broths and water, but that was all. “We must wait,” Chizuru said. “But as long as she breathes, she has a chance.”

Yamabuki's hand was stiff and cold. Tomoe put it to her lips. All the words that needed saying had been said long ago. There would be no changing anything in the hard days to come.

Without Yamabuki, Tomoe thought, she would have turned out like Yoshinaka and her brother. Bitter, inflexible, battle-hungry, unable to take pleasure in anything but a fight. It was because of Yamabuki that Tomoe had learned to enjoy the daily humdrum routine of life. To find the poetry hidden in laundry day. To learn how to become a mother. To love somebody better than you loved yourself.

Tomoe stroked the long fountain of hair under Yamabuki's head, so white now it might be snow-pale by the new year. Her skin hung like empty kimonos on a clothesline. Tomoe put her ear gently against the woman's face. She still breathed. “Yamabuki!” she said. “Wake up. Please.”

I cannot go on without you. My sister of heart.

—

The ground was
always frozen solid when they made camp, as Tomoe tried to get to sleep. Yoshinaka had ignored her entirely on this trip, punctuated as it was by snowstorms that bogged their progress. Mostly she lay in a state between dreaming and wakefulness, her muscles paralyzed, her mind never quite making the drop into deep sleep. At each daybreak, she awoke more and more groggy.

On the seventh day, they met up with a small Taira force. The Taira simply gave up and joined them willingly before any fighting occurred, glad to exchange their loyalty for a bit of food. The rest they put down easily. Tomoe felt almost guilty for fighting the Taira, with their skeletal bodies and arms that could barely lift a sword. They did not take care of their soldiers.

Yoshinaka made sure to send a messenger to Cousin Yoritomo. “Kiso approaches,” he said gleefully. “Watch out, Kiso shōgun moves.”

As they got closer to Miyako, Tomoe grew more concerned about the plan. Would the people accept Yoshinaka as the shōgun? Yoritomo would not. Yoritomo would send an army for him, no matter what Yoshinaka's victories had been.

She hoped for a moment alone with Yoshinaka. A moment to embrace each other, for her to tell him her worries. For him to change his mind. Perhaps that was why he avoided her so strenuously. Each night, long after the last embers of the campfire hissed to black, Yoshinaka stayed awake, drinking and talking about all he would do as shōgun. “No more rice taxes,” he said. “We move to Chinese copper. It makes more sense.”

“Yes.” Kanehira saluted him. “You are a man of the people.”

“I am.” Yoshinaka nodded. “That is what the people want.”

And then he would fall asleep, his head on his saddle blanket, never coming into Tomoe's tent at all.

She was truly part of his army. One of the men. She wasn't sure she liked it.

The last day of their journey, the fifteenth day, was the coldest of all. The air was frozen and dry, hurting Tomoe's lungs. But still the sky was a clear window to the heavens. She glanced at Yoshinaka. Sweat beaded and ran down his face.

If only I could go to sleep and awake when this is over,
Tomoe thought.

He glanced over at her and smiled. “It won't be long now, Tomoe.”

“Long until what? Our deaths?” She spurred Cherry Blossom forward. Tomoe was the first to pass through the gates of Miyako.

Tomoe Gozen

M
IYAKO
,
THE
CAPITAL

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

January 1184

T
omoe had dreamed about this city as a girl. It had seemed so glamorous. Sophisticated. Where all the action happened. This was where everything new arrived first, new spices and green tea, treasures from China. This was where Yamabuki was from. Where Wada-san had gone to work.

She never thought she would see it in person.

“Do you think we will see Wada-san?” she asked Yoshinaka, who rode silently on his horse, his face unreadable.

He did not look at her. “No. He fights for my cousin now. In Cousin Yoshitsune's unit.”

Tomoe gaped. “What?”

“The Taira government is falling. Of course Wada wouldn't stay there. He may be weak, but he's not dumb.” He spurred Demon to go faster, leaving Tomoe behind.

The weather was cloudy this afternoon in January, and cold enough that clouds floated in front of their faces each time they exhaled. She shivered. The excitement she felt at entering the city left. She had, she realized, been excited at the prospect of perhaps seeing Wada-chan again.

Tomoe kept her hands inside her sleeves, holding Cherry Blossom lightly, glad her horse would obey with slight touches of her legs. Her face had felt numb this morning when she pushed it out from the heavy coverings, but now the temperature didn't affect it.

They entered a long street of store stalls. She had imagined bustling streets, filled with merchants selling exotic goods. But this city. This city was shuttered today. No one carried litters through the street. No oxen walked through bearing loads. Only a few stands were open, bearing paltry goods. Sellers squinted at them, drawn back into the shadows.

The bustle she had imagined was more a quiet buzz. A few people walked quickly by, barely noticing the presence of the Minamoto standards, the samurai Kiso imposing on his mighty horse.

Yoshinaka deflated visibly. Tomoe thought he must be disappointed at the lack of reaction.

She had expected at least a small phalanx of Taira soldiers waiting to attack, but there was no one. No resistance. Tomoe drew in a breath, raised his hand. “Listen!”

They drew up their horses, listened.

Nothing. Not a sound except the breathing of their horses, their nervous hooves on the earth.

“They heard we are coming,” Kanehira said matter-of-factly. “Of course everyone is hiding. Wouldn't you be?”

“Shush.” Yoshinaka shot him an angry look, then rode ahead, down to where the road opened into the central square, facing the palace gates. “I am Minamoto no Yoshinaka! I am your new ruler. Your new Asahi Shōgun!” The few people going about their business merely looked up at him with vague surprise. They must be used to armies coming in and out by now. One old man stepped forward with a feeble bow. “The Taira have left the city, Kiso, and taken the child Tennō with them. Only Joukou is here now.” The old man trembled a little as he spoke of the emperors. Tennō was the child emperor Antoku, the little boy younger than Yoshinaka's son. Joukou was the name of Go-Shirakawa, the “retired” or cloistered emperor, who had no real power.

The Taira were on the run from the other Minamoto forces, Tomoe realized. Not from Yoshinaka. Cousin Yoritomo had driven them to abandon the city. The Taira had taken Tennō with them as a hostage, trying to use him as a bargaining chip. It would not work. Cousin Yoritomo would win eventually. Yoritomo would be the new shōgun.

Yoshinaka frowned. “No Antoku, eh? They did hear we were coming,” he said. “Go-Shirakawa will have to do.”

Kanehira, Tomoe, and the villagers all gasped in unison. No one was allowed to say aloud these sacred names of the emperors. It was forbidden. You were to call them “Tennō” or “Joukou,” never Antoku or Go-Shirakawa. All of them had been brought up knowing that, because emperors descended from gods. Yoshinaka knew this, too; he knew it as he knew his own language.

Yoshinaka's mouth curled into a smile at the reaction. He knew he had shocked them all, and these people would whisper about his boldness. His temerity.

They got off their horses, leading them through the city streets to the palace. Tomoe could see it down the road, its roof higher than any other building in town. She saw a grouping of city dwellers collect as they approached, whispering and pointing at her. “It's the
onnamusha
!” said one woman, and they all stared.

Yoshinaka frowned. Kanehira ran forward. “It is the mighty Kiso, who has come to be shōgun!”

The people were silent, but they moved closer to one another.

Tomoe knew Yoshinaka fumed that people recognized and were impressed with her, instead of him. He gripped Demon's reins so tight his knuckles went white. “Come on, then, Tomoe. I'm sure Go-Shirakawa wants to meet you more than anyone.”

—

The palace was
no fortress, but a tall building with a peaked dark brown wooden roof higher than Tomoe had ever seen before, higher than she imagined was possible to build, leading to slightly sweeping angles. The sides of the rectangular building were all open, covered near the top in open wooden scrollwork, in an abstract chrysanthemum pattern. Then, below those, shoji screens, then rolled-up bamboo blinds. The grounds surrounding the palace were impressive, with large koi ponds and curved bridges, contemplative rock gardens, intricately trimmed bonsai bushes. Tomoe wondered what the inside would be like.

A page in silken black robes more luxurious than any Tomoe had ever seen on a woman, let alone a man, ran up to them through the open wooden gates. Here even the dust he kicked up seemed more refined, as if it was incapable of dirtying their clothes. “Joukou will see you, Kiso.” He flushed. “Er, Yoshinaka.”

Tomoe started forward. Yoshinaka held up a hand. He cast her an imperious glance. “Tomoe, wait for us outside the palace.”

She wanted to protest, but did not dare shame him by defying him openly here. Tomoe stopped where she was. Yoshinaka and Kanehira walked ahead, following the page. “Be careful,” she said quietly. The gates closed solidly behind them. She hoped Kanehira could keep Yoshinaka's famously bad temper in check, and that Yoshinaka would not call Joukou by his real name in front of him. He was only a cloistered emperor, but he could still have Yoshinaka's head.

They would be hours inside. Tomoe took heart in how Yoshinaka had walked in calmly, instead of with his army ready to battle. Perhaps Kanehira and the emperor could reason with him. They would tell him to wait there, to join his cousin's troops, to help Yoritomo defeat the rest of the Taira for good. That was the best plan.

She decided to walk around the city. Perhaps there was still a stall open where she could buy some silks for Yamabuki. She had a small bag of rice on her she could trade. She would have dried fish for dinner. It would be worth it to see Yamabuki's sickly face light up. What a silly woman she was, to be thinking of silks and kimonos in a time of war. Yet Tomoe couldn't help it. She thought of Yamabuki, sick in Shinowara, and wanted to bring her some small bit of beauty. Yamabuki would have dearly loved to see this place again. Being with Yoshinaka's people, out in the wilderness, escaping from one home or another, was killing her. Plain and simple.

Would she wake up? Tomoe wouldn't think of that. She would force Yamabuki back from the grave, no matter how much she wanted to be in it.

She left the imperial grounds and saw twenty or so of Yoshinaka's men engaged in a betting game, throwing dice on the ground. A die hit her foot, the red one-spot glaring up at her. “Any word?” one asked her.

She withdrew her foot without touching the die. “No.” The men had an air of restlessness. Soon, they thought, they would be ruling this city. Yoshinaka would make all of them lords. They would make luxurious homesteads and have access to the best of everything. “Behave yourselves,” she said.

The men bowed their heads.

She wandered around, Cherry Blossom following, passing more closed places than open, when she came across a stall selling silk and other luxury goods, probably for the nobles in the area. There was a beautiful orange silk with red flowers and fans on it. She stopped there, wondering if her bag of rice would be enough payment.

The woman behind the table squinted at Tomoe. She was perhaps fifteen years older than Tomoe, with jet-black hair streaked with white. She had a large, dark mole on her upper lip. Her face was crosshatched with fine wrinkles. She looked vaguely familiar.

“I'm glad to see at least one person has stayed open,” Tomoe said to the seller.

The woman bowed, revealing her blackened teeth. Tomoe thought this was old-fashioned for someone who lived in the city. “
Konnichiwa
, beautiful one. We heard there were new soldiers in town, so I ran over to open our stall. Business,” she added ruefully, “has been terribly slow since the Taira left.”

“Of course.” Tomoe put her hand above the silk, not wanting her dirty hands to ruin it. “I will take this, please.” She showed the woman her bag of rice.

The woman bowed, but not before she could disguise the greed in her eyes. “My dear, this is worth far more than a single bag of rice. A few coins, too?”

“Were the Taira good to you, Obāsan?” Tomoe asked. Old lady; it was a term of respect.

The woman stiffened. Tomoe thought it was because she had brought up the Taira. “Why do you not call me
oneesan
?” she asked, her voice changing and getting higher.

Tomoe blanched.
Oneesan
was what you called a woman slightly older than you. This woman was indeed vain. Tomoe bowed.
“Sumimasen.”
This woman did look so familiar. Tomoe squinted at her. That face shape, that nose. Recognition flooded her. Could it be?

Tomoe swallowed and handed over a few Chinese coins, plus the bag of rice. The woman reached out her hand as eagerly as a tree roots reach for water. She wrapped the silk in a less fine bolt of cloth and tied it shut with a string.

Tomoe spoke up again. “This is for the woman I serve.”

The woman stared at her blankly.

Tomoe tested her. “The wife of General Yoshinaka. The one who is in Miyako now.”

The woman stiffened. “Yoshinaka?” she said faintly. “You tell me Yoshinaka is here? And you are his concubine?”

Tomoe bowed. “His wife is Yamabuki. She is from this city. Do you know her?” She watched the woman's face closely.

The woman's nostrils flared and the mole twitched. Yes, she was sure this was Yamabuki's mother. Desperate times must have reached her family for her to become a common merchant instead of a noble's wife. “I do not,” the woman said, and began putting away the other bolts of cloth. “
Sumimasen.
It is time for me to close.”

“He's not here for you, you know,” Tomoe said sharply. “You need not think yourself so important.”

The woman stopped moving, her hands on a blue bolt of cloth. “Tell me,” she said, with her bent back to Tomoe, “how is she?”

“Thriving,” Tomoe lied. “Three children. And her husband to be shōgun. Pity you weren't nicer to her.”

She took satisfaction in seeing the stunned look on the awful woman's face. Let her worry and fret. Tomoe turned and left.

She smiled a little bit, fastening her purchase to Cherry Blossom.

Tomoe was almost to the palace again when she smelled smoke. Not the smoke from vendors cooking food or fires to keep warm, but many flames. She began running to the palace.

Outside the palace, the gambling soldiers had abandoned their game. Now an especially burly one had his arms around a young woman's back, holding her up. Two more hoisted up the girl's legs while a third stood between them, tearing apart her kimono and five more stood close around her, leering. “Hey!” Tomoe said sharply, but they ignored her. The man untied his trouser pants and let them fall to the ground.

Tomoe shoved her way through the group to get to the girl. It was like pushing through a wild dog pack tearing apart its prey. How quickly war turned into savagery. Men into beasts. She pushed at the man between the girl's legs. Either they didn't recognize her or they ignored her on purpose. “Stop at once! That is an order.” The soldier didn't stop, so intent was he on shoving his way into the girl. The girl screamed and thrashed, spit flying from her mouth. The other soldiers pawed at the girl's her chest, her mouth.

Tomoe slit the attacker's throat.

He fell to the ground with a burble.

She grabbed another attacker's arm, held his palm firm against her chest, and twisted his wrist with all her body. It snapped and he screeched. She held it for a few seconds longer than necessary, making sure he felt that extra bit of pain, her mouth twisting as he sank to his knees. At last the other soldiers set the girl down and they stumbled away, falling into an empty vendor stall, crashing through the dry and cracked boards.

“You drunkards,” she shouted. “You are released from the Minamoto army. I will behead all of you.” She helped the girl stand up. “Are you all right? You're safe.”

The girl was no more than thirteen. She nodded fearfully, clutching her torn kimono around her.

“Run home.” She glanced at the palace, and her stomach dropped. The magnificent roof was aflame, the fire rising high above the capital. “Tell your family to flee the city,” she said. “Get to safety. Now.” The girl scrambled away.

Tomoe ran through the great wooden gates of the palace, open now, to the once-peaceful courtyard, with its great bronze gong atop a platform, facing the building. Yes, the living wing was on fire. “This cannot be. This cannot be.” Her feet hit the ground hard in a
thump-thump-thump
, fast as a jackrabbit.

She found Yoshinaka in the courtyard with her brother and a half-dozen other men, at the bottom of the steep steps leading up to the gong. All of them stood with their backs to her, firing blazing arrows almost lazily into the palace walls, each melting through the shoji screens, through the beautiful wooden scrollwork. The smoke was deadly thick, and Tomoe lifted her kimono to her nose, trying to filter it out.