The Golden Naginata (49 page)

“He would be younger than you,” said the bikuni. “He was small when I knew him.”

“No such man,” the head guard reiterated. He looked at her sternly. Though her own face was hidden beneath her amigasa, it yet seemed as though he looked her straight in the eyes, daring her to doubt his information.

“If you say it is so,” she replied, “there is no need for me to seek audience at the castle.”

“I say it is so,” he answered.

“Then I won't bother Lord Sato or his minister about it,” she said evenly, for if it turned out the guard was incorrect, he would lose face and be embarrassed. By his tone, she suspected any error was willful; but she must not prove him false in front of his men, even if they knew he lied. Also there was the matter of the other eight men's current position. They had her surrounded. A misstatement, and she could be forced to fight.

The guard said nothing more. He did not move. The nun spoke quietly:

“If you hear of such a fellow, perhaps you can tell him to visit a strolling nun at White Beast Shinto Shrine.”

She turned to start back along the road through the samurai estates. The men surrounding her on that side let her pass. She did not look back at the men guarding the bridge, but was aware they watched her until she was out of their sight.

Bundori rarely came into the village, for he was ascetically minded and tended exclusively to his duties—exhausting duties, since he was the sole caretaker of an ancient mountain shrine. Usually he was welcomed heartily whenever he did decide to come into town; in fact, his visits used to be an event. In recent months, for the most part, he went ignored on his rare trips, except where children were concerned. Children were too innocently disreputable to understand or obey decrees that forbade catering to the needs of any priest. As they seemed disrespectful in their actions toward the priest, any spy for Lord Sato or Kuro the Darkness would not complain about the children's attention to Bundori.

It was a bleak-spirited village and Bundori was like a patch of light hurrying up the street. Children flocked to that light the way moths gather around a paper lantern in the night. Their dirty faces grew smiles. Their little voices rose up in laughter. Their tiny, calloused hands fluttered about, trying to touch the green-gray garments of the Shinto priest. All the while they teased him about living with birds, and being like a bird himself, or half bird, the other half monkey. He didn't mind them at all, although he pretended to be annoyed, since that was the response they were seeking. He looked like some sort of mother duck, chased about by her rambunctious youngsters. The merry sound of their silly parade was the first evidence of happiness the emotionally repressed village had experienced since the last time Bundori had paid a visit.

Yet all this happy noise came to a sudden halt when a mounted samurai appeared at the low end of the street. He was a huge man, made monstrous on his big horse, a wide wicker hat upon his head, and a longbow sticking up high at his back. He rode into the village slowly, and had a second horse tethered to the first. Strapped upon the second horse were three dead men. They were twisted, hideous corpses. One had his head completely severed, tied to a saddle, jostling from side to side. The staring eyes of the dead men were white as porcelain.

The mounted warrior passed slowly through the village, as though wishing everyone to see that three samurai had somehow been slain. He did not stop anywhere, but continued right up to the bridge leading to the samurai estates. There could be trouble about the dead men, unless someone confessed right away.

The terrible sight sent the children fleeing into their dark houses, and mothers sealed the doors. Shop-owners closed their businesses. Priest Bundori stepped into a teashop just as the maid there was closing up. Perhaps the shops would reopen in a while. More likely, fear would keep the village silent for the rest of the day.

It had not been necessary for the samurai to come through the village. There was a larger, straighter road, which bypassed the village, a more direct route to the castle, if that were where he was heading. But the samurai had wanted the villagers to fret, to wonder what would happen, to wait in gloomy anticipation for Lord Sato or his religious instructor Kuro the Darkness to propose some scheme of retribution. Then again, there might be no repercussions at all. Such uncertainty only increased everybody's tendency toward discouragement.

When the mounted samurai and the second horse burdened with corpses had vanished over the bridge, Priest Bundori came out of the inn to find he was the only one to brave the cold light of day. Even his visit could not cheer the town now.

The green-clad Shintoist scurried bowlegged along the street and came to the establishment of the artisan who repaired musical instruments. The door had been closed only a few moments before, along with the rest of the shops in the village. Bundori found it wasn't locked and opened it without calling for permission. He stood inside the door for a couple of seconds, bowing like a pecking duck, and made a loud greeting. The artisan was in a bad enough mood because of the passing samurai, and was twice-irritated by the priest's uninvited entry. Thus the artisan continued working nimbly and quietly on a certain instrument, as though nobody stood in his door.

Bundori slipped off his sandals and leapt onto the raised part of the floor, oblivious to the artisan's attitude. He burst into a string of queries: “Did a strolling nun by the name of Tomoe Gozen stop by here by any chance? Ah! That's her flute-bag over there! Where did she go from here? I must find her right away! How soon will you have her shakuhachi repaired? I've got to keep her at my shrine for a while before she gets mixed up in any trouble!” He tossed his hands about as he talked, the very epitome of an hysterical fellow. He hovered over the artisan, who sat working busily on the floor. The artisan managed to get a reply in edgewise:

“I can't answer everything at once!”

“You should be working on her shakuhachi right this minute! She has to be on her way before the windstorms start up! What if it snows? She'll be stuck here through the winter! Why are you bothering with that silly koto?”

“This koto belongs to Lord Sato's daughter, who broke it in a fit of unhappiness,” said the artisan. “One of her personal guards brought it to me and paid me in advance to repair it. Even if I had not been paid already, it does no good to put things off where the castle is concerned.”

“I've heard about her ladyship's sadness,” said Bundori, “so I'll forgive you wasting your time like this. But what about that shakuhachi?”

“The nun hasn't any means of paying me at all, but I agreed to do it somehow when there's time. Did you say her name was Tomoe Gozen? I've heard of her before!”

“Well, she didn't exactly say that was her name, but she said it was all right if I go ahead and think that's who she is. Don't tell anybody! I think she's had some trouble in other provinces and doesn't want people to know which way she goes. I've heard of a Lord Wada, favored by the Shogun, who collects warrior-wives like they were rare swords. He would like to add Tomoe Gozen to his collection, though she might not willingly return to the world from her retirement.”

The artisan was interested in this gossip, and, much as the children of the village, he was glad of the warm-hearted glow Priest Bundori brought with him everywhere. The artisan said, “But it could be that she's just an ordinary wandering nun. She has two swords, it's true, but not all retired women warriors were once famous. Why would she come to a backwoods fief like this one if she were Tomoe Gozen?”

“Maybe she doesn't require a reason. Maybe I'm wrong about who she is. But that is not what I'm here to talk to you about. You must fix her shakuhachi in two or three days at the most. Without fail! She wants to make a stone lantern before she is willing to leave this place. If she lets me help her, it won't take more than three days. I've already arranged to have a soft piece of stone delivered to White Beast Shrine, after dark so that Lord Sato's spies won't see the stonecutter make his overdue offering to me. You haven't made an offering to the shrine in a long time either! What will it cost to fix the flute? One zeni? Two?”

“Ordinarily it would cost five!” said the artisan, suddenly indignant, though only half as upset as he acted, since indignation was a better feeling than the gloom he had felt before Priest Bundori had started being typically a nuisance. “I told her she should try to raise at least three!”

“Well, raise your price to ten zeni and I'll write that in my ledger as your contribution to the shrine. Erase your sin!”

“Don't write me in your ledger!” the artisan argued. “What if Lord Sato's spies steal it? Can't give anything to any shrines or temples because it insults the Lotus sect! A sin to disobey one's Lord!”

“I'll write in that you gave one hundred zeni unless the shakuhachi is done in a couple of days!” the Shinto priest threatened. “Where did the nun go when she left here?”

“I didn't ask her!” the blackmailed artisan said testily. “She asked about Lord Sato's castle. Probably she went up there, but nobody will let a vagrant like her inside unless she is a Lotus mendicant. She looked like an esoteric nun to me. Some hair showed under her hat. She doesn't shave her head.”

Bundori looked upset. “She shouldn't have gone there. Well, maybe they'll treat her like they do me. Send her away without letting her talk to anyone! I hope she doesn't tell them what she did.”

“What did she do?” asked the artisan.

“Nothing.”

“You said she did something! If I'm giving you a hundred zeni, I should get something for it! Tell me something else about her! It's interesting!”

“Nothing to tell. She's not even who I said she was, so don't tell anyone about it. Anyway, it's only two zeni, you said so, not worth even as much attention as I've given you already.”

“Three zeni!”

“I'll write it in my ledger.”

“No need to do that.”

“All right, I won't.” He jumped off the raised wooden floor into his sandals sitting on the packed ground, and was out the door before the argument could be continued. He scurried up the street again. He did not go so far as the bridge, for the two samurai guards would never let him cross. He stood outside a small saké den in view of the bridge, rocking on his heels, looking agitated. Suddenly he spun about and slapped a hand on the door of the saké den, shouting rudely, “I'm coming in for something to drink!”

The maid who unlocked the door was pretty. She looked around to see if the samurai with the corpses was gone and, seeing the way clear, left the door open and invited Bundori inside. There were a couple of customers within, sitting at rustic tables and benches on a dirt floor. Not a comfortable place at all. The owner had been a friend of Bundori's until Kuro the Darkness started influencing Lord Sato's decrees. The maid was the daughter of Bundori's friend, and she was aware of her father's obedience to the awful decree against donations to temples and shrines. She could see how skinny the priest had gotten since the last time she saw him. Her eyes were sad because of this.

“Old priests shouldn't drink,” she said, and smiled at the funny fellow. He brought good feelings with him, even into such a poor little den. “Sit in a nice place and I will make you something good to eat.”

“That's all right with me, but bring saké too. The best you have! Not that it will be very good. I'm not paying for anything, mind you. Erase your sin!”

The maid laughed at that, and the sadness vanished from her eyes. She went into a back room to get the priest some noodles. Bundori sat on a splintery bench and the humor that usually marked his face was weakened. He craned his neck so that he could see out the den's entryway, wishing the wandering nun would appear at any minute.

The nun, in charcoal and cream, moved like a specter midst the shadows of the evergreen-shaded lane. When she came around one of the many turns along the way, there stood the overgrown boy she had seen before. He was directly in her path. At close quarters, he was even larger than she had supposed. He held his gardener's shears at his side, but there was nothing threatening about him. The nun bowed respectfully. Quite likely, no one had ever bowed to the big fellow before, and he was inordinately pleased to be treated with courtesy. His grin could not have gotten any larger without touching his ears.

“Are you the gardener's son?” she asked, watching him through the loosely woven window-section of her bamboo hat. “Or are you the son of some low-ranking samurai?” The boy's eyes gleamed, but he did not reply. There was a family crest on his kimono, by which the bikuni deduced his
buké
or warrior-class lineage. He opened his mouth as if to try to say something, but his mouth was full of saliva. He had to wipe his mouth on his sleeve, looking somewhat embarrassed. The bikuni asked, “Can't you speak?”

“Muh. Muh.”

The fellow had some deformity of the palate. He was clearly a child in mind, though physically he outmatched most men.

“Whu-
rhens!
” he exclaimed loudly. He used his gardener shears to point down a narrow, little-used path. He said again, practically shouting, “Hur-RENDS!”

“Friends,” the bikuni said softly. “Friends of mine?” The fellow became excited because she had understood him. He pointed more exaggeratedly. The bikuni nodded curtly and started to walk the direction indicated by the big, stupid fellow. He ran to get in front of her on the weedy path, leading the way.

They went by a back path to the smallest of samurai estates, the very one she had earlier passed in front of and had thought was better cared for than the rest. The rear gate was locked from within, so the big fellow shouted, “Tah-neh!” and a moment later, “Tah-neh!” in his deep, awkward voice. Already there was someone rushing to unlock the gate.