Tale of the Warrior Geisha (9 page)

Yamabuki Gozen

M
IYAKO
,
THE
CAPITAL

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Summer 1173

H
ow much could two people argue? Nonstop, her parents fought. They argued over the same things, over and over, until Yamabuki thought both of them would crumble into stale dust. “You have gambled away our family fortunes!” Okāsan shrieked last night. The whole of Miyako must have heard her. “You have ruined us.”

Otōsan, for once in his timid life, shouted back. “I wouldn't have to gamble if you weren't such a shrew! You do nothing but drive me away.”

“Do not blame me for your inadequacies.” Okāsan hissed.

Money had become tight. Otōsan had indeed been demoted after Yamabuki's failing with the Taira leader. And always, Otōsan tried to be loyal to both the Taira and the Minamoto, advising his general to make concessions to the Minamoto, include them in government, suggestions that the Taira leader rejected.

Yamabuki's only solace was Akemi. That morning, while the dew still clung to the grass and before anyone awoke, Yamabuki went out into the garden, under the willow, and settled gingerly underneath. Her ribs still ached from her mother's beating, but at least most of the bruises weren't visible unless she undressed.

From her father's rooms heavy snoring sounds came. After last night's fight, he had gone out and come home shortly before dawn, singing and so drunk Yamabuki could smell the alcohol sitting on the hot air. Now he would sleep the day away. Work missed. He had done the same thing last week, and the week before. On payday. Yamabuki hoped he had thought to tell them he was ill.

Carefully, with paper she stole from Otōsan's office, she readied a poem she'd composed for Akemi. She dipped the brush into the ink pot and slid away the excess, taking stock of the pure-white paper before she began.
Ichi-go, ichi-e.
One chance to put the ink to paper, to get it right. One chance to not make a mistake.

Yamabuki wrote in her best lettering.

Blossoms fell upon my pillow

But when morning came,

They all blew away.

She blew on the ink, careful not to smudge. The calligraphy was beautiful, like a painting itself, the letters black and fat. It could be on display, in a palace. If only no one knew it was for Akemi.

A breeze threatened to knock the paper away, and she put her hand on it, smearing a little of the ink. This saddened her heart, and she considered throwing it away. No, Akemi would abhor the waste.

She looked up. Akemi, to her surprise, stood there. A bloom of bruises still covered the side of her neck and the right side of her jaw, and her right eyelid still swelled. Yamabuki flushed with fresh guilt. “You have found me out. This is for you.”

“You know I cannot read,” Akemi said simply, her eyes blank, and turned away.

She did know that. She remembered now in shame. How could she be so thoughtless? In her excitement about the idea, she had simply not considered it. She reached out and caught her arm. “Akemi-chan! I am sorry. Please forgive me. Let me read it to you.”

Akemi opened her round mouth as if she wished to tell her something, then closed it again. “You are always forgiven, my little white dove.” She moved away.

She reached for Akemi again, but Akemi did not respond. Akemi had not been the same since Okāsan beat her. She'd avoided Yamabuki and the rest of the family as much as possible. Yamabuki couldn't blame her, but only hoped that time would let her heal.

Akemi cleared her throat. “I have something to tell you. I have accepted a proposal from Jiro, the silk-merchant's son. I will be leaving your service.” She bowed formally. “I thank you for the honor of serving your family.”

“Wait!” Her hands and legs felt numb. “You're leaving?” She tried to get up.

“I have already talked with your parents.” She straightened. “I must leave today. My mother, too.”

Tears sprang into Yamabuki's eyes. “How can you be so cold and unfeeling?” She took Akemi by the shoulders. “Akemi-chan. Don't leave me. Please. I'll be all alone.”

Akemi hugged her. “I am sorry, Yamabuki,” she whispered. “I cannot stay here one more minute, or I will stab your mother in her sleep.”

Yamabuki's hands dropped to her sides.

“Besides,” Akemi added, “he is a good man. My best chance. Now that your family . . .”

“Now that my family what?” Her voice sharpened into a knife point. Yamabuki stepped back. “Now that my family is on the decline?”

Akemi wouldn't answer. Her cheeks flushed mottled red. Still, she was too beautiful for words, too beautiful for poetry to capture. Every movement was a grace note.

“Stay,” Yamabuki said to her. “Stay and I will give you everything you need. I promise. I will take care of you. I'll take you with me when I marry.”

Akemi's eyes filled. “I am sorry. Look around you. Open your eyes. There is no other way.” She bowed and left her presence.

Yamabuki sat down on the ground where she was. She looked around, seeing the house and garden through Akemi's eyes. There was a bare spot in the main house roof; it had dripped rain for the past two seasons. No money to fix it. The willow was overgrown and sad. The koi pond was filled with green growth. She realized she had not seen the gardener, old Jinko, for ages.

Perhaps they were worse off than she knew.

—

Later,
she was lying in her room, trying to compose a last poem to Akemi. An original. It was hot, and they had hung cool wet blankets over the walls to take the edge off the warmth. She sipped cold water as her head throbbed. It was too much. Her Akemi leaving.

Footsteps sounded on the
engawa
and Okāsan slid open the door. Yamabuki smelled her before she saw her, a musky smell of sweat and other human dampness. Yamabuki's stomach clenched. “Okāsan. What brings you here?” Now she knew how her mother felt, when she fought with her father. Hopeless. Bitter.

Okāsan hesitated before she knelt. Always Yamabuki had been a good girl, doing what she was told, behaving no matter what. At least, in the ways she and the public could see. What would Okāsan do if she knew about Akemi? She did not want to think of it. Yamabuki mustered a gracious smile.

Okāsan's face glowed, her hair recently redone. She looked happier than she had for ages. “I must talk to you, daughter.”

Yamabuki waited. But the hairs on her neck and arms rose.

Okāsan folded her hands and looked down. “Your father spent your dowry.”

Her stomach flipped about and bile rose into her throat. “I don't believe it.” Why did her mother look so happy, then?

“It is true. But don't worry.” Her lips curled into a cruel smile. “Otōsan has arranged a marriage to a man who doesn't care about a dowry, only status.”

Yamabuki's mouth went dry. “Who?”

Her mother raised her gaze to her daughter's face. “Kiso. In the north.” She watched Yamabuki's face eagerly.

Kiso, the hillbilly Minamoto leader. Tales abounded of him. That he bit off the heads of chickens, never bathed, had chest hair so long he braided it. Yamabuki tried to swallow and failed. She might faint. “The countryside? The mountains? Okāsan, do not send me there.” Her voice rose into a panic. “Please. I won't survive.”

“Survive or die, it will be of no importance to me.” Okāsan stood. “When you leave this house, you are no longer my concern.”

“Okāsan,” she whispered. Her body was broken into a thousand pieces. Obāchan stood in the corner, shaking her head. “Obāchan, help me.”

“Do not try that trick again. You are not a little girl. It was never cute.” Okāsan kicked a piece of Yamabuki's kimono to the side in her haste to leave. Obāchan-obake faded. Okāsan clattered away, closing the door behind her.

Yamabuki waited for Akemi to come. For Otōsan. For the ghost. For anyone.

She sat alone and listened to the approaching twilight.

Tomoe Gozen

M
IYANOKOSHI
F
ORTRESS

S
HINANO
P
ROV
INCE

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Winter 1174

T
omoe added a quilted
tanzen
jacket over the five layers of clothing she already wore. This season's snows had been heavy, starting in early October, and now, in late February, it showed no signs of letting up. She was glad. Heavy snow meant water that would run down to the valleys below, ending this drought.

She got up and walked again to the door, sliding it open to let in what little light there was in the winter-dark sky. This was her house, a small one-room bungalow. Nothing fancy, no silk screens or fine furniture, but it was hers, built by Yoshinaka. Now, though her mother and the others lived only a couple of buildings away, she could feel a bit independent.

Snow flurries blew in, coating her face. She closed her eyes against them.

“Shut that.” Yoshinaka shot her a dark look. She did, but still faced outward, not inward. She was restless. Not unusual for her in this season. She preferred being outdoors, practicing. On days when even Yoshinaka complained it was too cold, she went out in the woods, practicing with her
tachi
, her bow and arrow. If she could fire an arrow accurately through a blizzard, she would be prepared for battle. She had abandoned any ideals of womanhood long ago. No one expected her to show up with the women and tend to food or laundry. At least this single-mindedness had earned her a respect among the men. Even her brother Kanehira no longer teased her. She was, first, Yoshinaka's star captain.

It was quiet for once, everyone else out and busy making preparations for their guest, due to arrive in the afternoon. Yoshinaka was not one who liked to sit in silence. He always had his friends around him in his own house, where they would drink and smoke and talk; outside, they endlessly played out every military maneuver he could think of. But today, he had come here, alone. “We can have a few moments together,” he had told Tomoe this morning. If he was anxious about the events that were to take place later, he did not say so.

Tomoe had nodded, her tears, always hidden from Yoshinaka, long dried up. Today was the day Yamabuki Gozen would arrive. Lady Yamabuki. His official wife, arriving from the city.

And Tomoe's jailer. Because she, Tomoe, was to be Yamabuki's lady-in-waiting.

“Winter would be the best time to fight, as far as I'm concerned,” Yoshinaka said now. He sat at the
kotatsu
, a table with a charcoal heater in the middle, his legs under the quilted tablecloth to capture the warmth. In his hand, he shifted Go pieces, one black and one white, back and forth, back and forth, their soft clatter the only sound in the room, as he always did when he sat. Some part of him always had to be moving, or else he couldn't think. He looked far older than his twenty years, lines already creasing at his eyes from smiling and frowning—Yoshinaka was never at a loss for emotion—but here in the dim light, he appeared youthful once again. Tomoe wanted to caress his face and slap it at the same time. “No one would be expecting such a thing. And only us mountain men can handle being out in the cold.”

She said nothing. She did not want to talk about the battle she privately thought would never happen in their lifetime. She went to the door and opened it again. Still snowing. People scurried about, readying the feast that would greet the new woman this evening. She gazed at the fortress door and wall, made of massive logs. Compared with a palace or a fortress in the capital, this looked rudimentary indeed. She wondered what the new woman, arriving from Miyako and accustomed to fine things, would think of this place. This place where there was no powder for one's face, no screens to hide behind, no musical instruments filling the air. This place of mere survival. Tomoe set her mouth in a grim smile. Perhaps the woman would not last long at all.

Yoshinaka's nostrils flared as he puffed. “Tomoe. Come here. You are making me nervous.”

She leaned her head on the door frame. At last, an admission of truth. “You ought to be nervous. We have no idea what this girl looks like.”

“Come here.” He was behind her now, he coming to her, not the other way around. She did not think she could ever bring herself to come to him again. He looped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.

Her mother walked by in the yard, carrying an earthenware jug of rice. Their eyes met. Tomoe saw her own pain in her mother's face, as though she was transferring it. She shut the door, thoroughly chilled. It was cold everywhere except at the
kotatsu
table, frigid wind blowing in through the cracks of the timbers. At least the cold made her feel alive.

Yoshinaka spun her around and kissed her, his warm tongue comforting her cold one. She embraced him, pulled him into her, letting the heat of his body thaw her. If they did this outside, surely steam would rise off their bodies. Snow would melt. They would make a lake.

They moved to her futon, which she had not put away this morning as she usually did. He pulled her with him under the covers, shrugging off their heavy quilted
tanzen
and kimonos, pushing the pile of clothes to one side. Skin to skin. She faced him, ran her hand over the sinuous landscape of his flesh, the muscularity she knew better than her own.

“Kiss me,” he murmured, his eyes trained on her face. She made herself look at him. The pain there gave her hope. He still loved her.

She thought over the past year. She had spent more time in Yoshinaka's bed than in her own, and he had known no other woman, either. “I can no more do without Tomoe than I can without my right hand,” she had overheard him tell Kanehira.

“Yet if that were cut off, you would learn to use your left,” replied her pragmatic brother.

She kissed Yoshinaka, then pushed him to his back with her hand and climbed on top of him, his hairy body a delightful contrast against her smoothness. “Don't move,” she ordered. She passed her palm over his eyelids to close them, then lay down, feeling every bit of her body pressing against his. She put her mouth on his mouth. His breath was warm on her tongue. His large hands spread over her waist, the fingers nearly meeting in the middle.

“Despite your strength,” he said, with a gentle smile, “I could break you.”

She smiled back, pinning his arms to his sides. It was an unacknowledged fact that Tomoe was nearly as strong as Yoshinaka, female though she was. “You could not,” she said. “And you would not.”

He raised himself up, releasing his arms and embracing her again. “This is true,” he said into her neck, so soft she barely heard him.

Afterward, Tomoe crumpled on top of him. This was the only time she felt her own smallness. How much bigger he was. In training, she never stopped to consider it. She was as tall as most men. But when she lay next to Yoshinaka, her feet came down only to his knees. She put her damp cheek on his shoulder, nestled down to the side of his body, under his arm. He stroked her hair.

She wanted to tell him she was afraid this would be the last time. Yoshinaka kissed her forehead.

It was useless to argue against the fact of Lady Yamabuki. She could not. Perhaps if Tomoe had his child—but no matter how many times they had been together, she continued having her monthly blood.

Besides, Yamabuki was a real noble, a woman from a fine family in the capital, Minamoto sympathizers. Marrying her was a necessary strategic move. Her analytical brain realized this.

It was her silly heart that hurt.

“You will always be my number one,” Yoshinaka said. “You must know that.”

She said nothing. She would not extract a promise. He would tell her only what she wanted to hear.

A sudden wind shuddered the walls, blowing inside, blasting their faces. He covered their heads with the blanket.

“If only we could hide in here forever,” he said. It was the closest he would ever get to poetry. She took a small satisfaction knowing his new wife would never hear a poem of his, either. She opened her mouth to his, biting ferociously in the way he liked best.

—

Yamabuki Gozen arrived
as the light turned bluish in the winter twilight. Her enclosed litter swayed, barely clearing the sides of the fortress opening, carried by four stoic men moving slowly along the path, their toes scuffing deep into the snow with each heavy step. Tomoe stood outside, slightly behind Yoshinaka, next to her mother, the chill like knives on her cheeks. Chizuru stood on tiptoe to whisper, “Remember, it's you who has his heart.”

Tomoe glanced down at her mother, this woman who had been able to marry her love, Kaneto, chosen of her own free will. Her father had never had a mistress, never known any other except her mother. Chizuru stood flatfooted again. Tomoe did not recall seeing her father glance toward another woman. Did Chizuru know how fortunate she was? She couldn't understand what Tomoe was going through.

Tomoe straightened, smoothing out her heavy coat. Yoshinaka's hair, normally a bit wild even when bound back, had been oiled and smoothed. She wrinkled her nose at its smell. He shifted from foot to foot. Nervous. She could tell without seeing his expression.

All of Yoshinaka's supporters were here, waiting, dressed in what passed for their best. Mostly threadbare clothes, mended over and made over for years. All of them wearing layers and layers, their heads tiny above their puffy clothing. What would Yamabuki make of all of them?

Of her?

Yamabuki might want to be rid of Tomoe.

She took a breath so loud and deep it startled Demon, tied to a post on the other side of the courtyard. He neighed anxiously. She whinnied back to calm him.

After what seemed like forever, the men carrying the litter laid it on the ground. Two of Yoshinaka's retainers opened the door and held out their hands for Yamabuki to step out.

Tomoe braced herself to see a powdered white plump face, her eyebrows shaved, then drawn in by hand close to the shaved hairline. A face used to poetry and music and leisure. Tomoe could not remember the last time she had heard music. Only when they made one of their infrequent trips into town, stopping at a restaurant, did she catch the refrains of a koto, the floor harp, or someone's voice lifted in song. And certainly there had never been any poetry here. Though Kaneto had taught all the children how to read, there were never any books. Nobody felt the need to write poetry. Tomoe didn't see the point of keeping up her already poor reading skills. Not when she had so many other occupations to concern herself with.

One small foot, clad in a cloth
tabi
and a wooden
geta
, appeared first, to land slowly on the snowy ground. Then another. An ice-blue kimono, beautifully woven—Tomoe could see that even from back here—picturing cranes scooping fish out of ocean waves, worn over heavier robes, swished audibly in the still air.

Those tiny feet. How could she stay balanced? Tomoe heard her mother gasp, and forced herself to look up at Yamabuki's face.

Pale, all right. But not pale from makeup. Her skin was pale as that of one who has never seen the sun, nearly translucent, with blue undertones. One blue-green vein ran down the center of her forehead. Yamabuki kept her eyes firmly on the ground, her reddened lips pressed closely together. A great length of straight hair swept down her back, shiny as lacquer. She was lovely. Lovely and untouchable as a thin sheet of ice in late spring. When the sun shone on her, this Yamabuki apparition might melt.

The retainers helped her forward to Yoshinaka. True to fashion, the kimonos prevented fast movement, so tightly were they bound around her legs. “Yamabuki Gozen,” said one of the retainers, his breath visible on the air.

The last bit of light disappeared behind the mountains, the moon straddling its ridge, casting its spectral glow onto Yamabuki. Somehow she seemed more natural in this light. Yoshinaka bowed. “Welcome.” Tomoe noticed he was trying to keep his voice low and cultured. He didn't do a very good job of it. It still sounded more like a bear growl.

Yamabuki wasn't afraid. She raised her eyes at last. They glittered like black onyx, the darkest eyes Tomoe had ever seen, yet light, too, somehow, lit from within.

Tomoe imagined how Yamabuki saw her new spouse and waited for her to register some astonishment or disgust. Yoshinaka had none of the attributes Yamabuki would have prized in Miyako. His face was not round. He was decidedly hairy. “Thank you,” she said, so high and sweet that Tomoe momentarily forgot this was her rival. Her expression was pleasant, as though no terrible thought could ever pass through a mind so pure.

Yoshinaka's great shoulders sagged in that particular way Tomoe recognized, when he wanted to embrace her. A moment when he let down his guard.

No!
Tomoe wanted to shout. She stepped forward a little bit.

Yoshinaka straightened. “Please show her to her quarters.” Yoshinaka bowed again. “We will see you at dinner.”

Was he not going to introduce her? Tomoe rooted to her spot, cheeks hot in embarrassment.

The retainer stepped in again, cleared his throat. “This is Tomoe Gozen.”

Yamabuki turned her otherworldly gaze to Tomoe. Which world, good or bad, Tomoe couldn't say. “I am pleased to meet you,” she said, still keeping that silvery tone. She bowed.

Tomoe bowed back.

“You must be tired. Would you like to rest after your long journey?” Chizuru said.

Yamabuki stood straight, but Tomoe could see her sway. “I am fine.”

Chizuru pointed to the house where Yamabuki would stay. “Take her inside. We will be there in a moment to help you get more comfortable.” The retainers with the crates of Yamabuki's belongings, the small young bride.

Tomoe cleared her throat. “I hope she will not be too unhappy here,” she said. To her amazement, she kept the bitter note she tasted at the back of her throat out of her words. She felt sick to her stomach.