The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (54 page)

As the sky darkened Cat realized they still had a long way to go. The crewmen lit fires in the metal baskets that hung out over the long, pointed prow of the boat. Other points of light, the cold luminescence of shrimp, glittered in the black water around them. Cat dozed, and the rocking of the boat carried her back to the evening excursions she had enjoyed with her mother in the waters off AkM.

“Those are the lanterns of the Dragon God.”
Cat heard her mother’s sweet voice. She remembered the feel of her mother’s heavy silk brocade coat sleeve brushing against her cheek as she pointed to the lights on the black water.

“. . . the spirits of the Taira warriors.” Hanshiro’s voice sounded distant, hollow in the darkness. Cat realized she must have fallen asleep.

“Where?” She sat up straighter and took deep gulps of the cold, damp air. The boat was quiet now, except for the creaking of the rigging and of the rudder in its cradle. She could see the dark forms of the sleeping passengers silhouetted against the starlit sky.

“There.” He leaned partly across her to point at the lights moving through the mist in the distance.

“They’re only fishing boats.”

“Are you sure?”

“ ‘Since I am convinced,’ “ Cat recited the poet-priest Saigyo’s poem. “ “That reality is in no way real, how am I to admit that dreams are dreams?’ Or spirits are spirits?” she added.  “Or fishing boats are fishing boats?”

“ ‘A sunset with clouds like the Sea God’s banners.’ ” Hanshiro recited.

Cat was almost asleep. She murmured something, a recognition of the poem, perhaps, that was between a sigh and a sleepy moan. Her head fell back against Hanshiro’s arm until it was cradled in the crook of his shoulder. His hand trembled as he wrapped that side of his cloak around her to keep her warm. He laid his cheek gently on the shiny fragrance of her hair.

At the sunset hour
... As the words echoed in his thoughts, he felt a kinship with the nameless poet who had suffered five hundred years ago as he did now.

At the sunset hour

The clouds are ranged like banners

And I think of this:

Think of what it means to love

One who lives beyond my world.

AN EFFICIENT HAWK

As soon as Hanshiro stepped off the ferry at Kuwano, he spotted the
rMnin.
He looked to be the sort who hired himself out as a bodyguard for rich merchants. He was dressed in shabby gray trousers, a laborer’s short bluejacket with cotton wadding showing from rips, and a faded green-and-black-striped coat. He wore a blue cotton towel draped over his head and tied under his chin. Hanshiro couldn’t read the white lettering on the towel, but it probably advertised some inn or a shop’s specialty.

The bodyguard was sitting on a straw-wrapped
sake
tub and lounging against a stack of boxes. He had crossed one leg over the knee of the other, and his
geta
dangled from the knob between his bare toes. The pairs of slats on the bottom of the
geta
had worn down almost to the nub. The
rMnin
seemed to be absorbed in watching the stars’ reflection on the bay and in cleaning the wax from his ears with a long bamboo pick.

“Someone to be wary of,” Hanshiro said.
A thousand years in the sea and a thousand years in the mountains,
he thought. The bodyguard had the air of a man made cunning by hard experience.

“Uhm.” Cat had noticed him, too. In spite of his ragged clothes he had an air about him. “You said Kira was hiring dregs to track me.”

“Dogs and hawks work for the same master.” Hanshiro reached up a hand for Kasane to hold.

She used it for balance as she shouldered the pole of the travel box and carried it down the board that served as a gangplank. She smiled a shy thanks. Hanshiro was as at ease with Kasane as he was stiff and formal with Cat. Kasane was quite charmed by him.

“Perhaps Kira hired this one as the final fart of a weasel,” Hanshiro said.

“Who?” Alarmed, Kasane looked around.

“Don’t look at him.” Cat pretended to check the baggage.  “Tosa thinks the
rMnin
sitting off to the right is waiting for us.”

“Will he attack us here?” Kasane asked.

“No.” Hanshiro shouldered his bundle. “He’s the type to despise filling out official papers. He’ll ambush us at a crossroad distinguished by an absence of witnesses.”

“How many others do you think there are?” Cat surveyed the crowded beach in an offhand way.

“He’s alone.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I would be if I were him. Too many sailors drive the boat up the mountain.”

“Then let’s sample some of Kuwano’s famous clams.” Cat strode across the littered beach toward the brightly lit shops facing the bay from the other side of the wide floodplain. “I’m hungry.”

Kuwano’s waterfront was busy. The big round lanterns glowed, and banners fluttered in the wind. The shutters of the tea shops and souvenir stands were open, exposing the interiors to view. The occupants were industriously vying for the business of the passengers disembarking from the late ferries. For the nonce, however, most of the passengers were intent on finding a spot to relieve themselves.

“The disciple always follows three steps behind his master.” Hanshiro caught up with Cat.

Cat scowled at him, but she slowed her pace to walk behind him.

“Are you tired, Hachibei?” Cat asked.

“No, young master.” Kasane knew that meant they’d walk a while before they stopped for the night. “I slept on the boat.”

“We can use the lantern to light our way as far as Yokkaichi. The inns will all be full here anyway.”

“As you wish.” Hanshiro understood her eagerness to push on. They were within twenty-six
ri
of KyMto and Oishi Kuranosuke and the vengeance for which she had struggled so valiantly.

Hanshiro read the shops’ signs. “I’ll meet you at the Clam House.”

Cat almost panicked at the thought of his leaving. She had a sudden fear that if left alone with the shabby bodyguard, still picking his teeth, she would be as helpless as a carp on a chopping block. “Where are you going?”

“Nature makes demands that even a student of the New Shadow school can’t ignore.” Hanshiro’s sardonic bow included a gibe at his own dignity.

He angled off toward the privy, where a line of people were waiting. They were mostly women and a few men for whom a short pause by the roadside wouldn’t suffice. Hanshiro stepped into the shadows of a bamboo thicket where he could keep an eye on the Clam House and Lady Asano.

The bodyguard ambled up beside him and arched his back as he too relieved himself. He stared out at the bay and gave a long, satisfied sigh.

“Beaten to the privy,” he recited. “He praises the stars.” The poem was droll, but artful and spare. Hanshiro expected no less.

“Who scattered the stars so carelessly in the sea?” Hanshiro composed a
haiku
using the last word of the bodyguard’s as a pivot. “Now they sparkle there.”

“Traveling far?”

“In this fleeting world one never knows how far one will travel.” Hanshiro bowed politely. “ ‘Rosy cheeks in the morning, white bones at night.’ ” He left the
rMnin
and walked through the flocks of travelers whose inn
geta
made a merry clatter on the stones of the road and the slate entryways of the tea houses.

The Clam House’s customers were clustered around the braziers, watching the clams bake in the hot ashes. Inside the shop, square platforms stood like islands surrounded by earthen passageways where the waitresses passed back and forth.

Hanshiro stepped out of his sandals at the flat boulder that served as a stoop. He drew his long-sword, in its scabbard, from his sash and knelt on the platform. He laid the sword on a silk cloth on his left side, with its cutting edge facing him to show he had no hostile intentions. Then he crossed his legs and sat at the low table across from Cat and Kasane. He unwrapped the bamboo sheath from around a serving of clams, picked up a pair of chopsticks, and selected a plump one that steamed fragrantly.

Cat and Kasane were discussing Yokkaichi. From there a road led south to Ise and the great shrine that had been Kasane’s original destination.

“I prefer to go with you up to the capital, young master,” Kasane was saying.

“What of Traveler? He’s going to Ise.”

“I’ll leave a message in Yokkaichi.” Kasane’s unspoken thought was that if he really cared for her, he would change his plans.

From the corner of her eye Cat saw the bodyguard enter the shop and take a seat on a platform at the rear. He roared jovially for service.

“I’m an ordinary man,” he shouted to the world at large. “I neither burn incense nor fart.”

Cat also saw a smile flicker so quickly across Hanshiro’s face, it could have been mistaken for a tic. Could the impudent wretch from Tosa be happy to see the hired thug?

“What did he say?” Cat spoke in a low voice, but she needn’t have bothered. The waitresses were buzzing around the bodyguard and laughing at his jokes.

“He praised the stars.” Hanshiro’s mood was approaching elation at the prospect of a contest to the death with a worthy adversary. He ate with gusto.

“He looks so harmless,” Kasane said hopefully.

“He’s not,” Cat answered.

Kasane sneaked a look at the bodyguard.

“ ‘Who came along with his auger,’ “ the
rMnin
recited loudly, “ ‘and drilled these nine holes in us?’ ” He grabbed at a passing waitress, who shrieked and laughed and slapped his hand. “ ‘Year after year we fret over taxes,’ ” he continued. “ ‘By the thousands we knock our heads together and yell as we scramble for coppers.’ “

“He’s hiding his talons,” Cat murmured.

“ ‘An efficient hawk hides its talons.’ ” Kasane had learned the saying from Cat.

“Exactly so.” Hanshiro scooped a mound of sticky rice onto the chopsticks and ate it.

Hanshiro guarded the small procession’s rear while Kasane walked ahead, carrying the wicker travel box and the travel lantern. There was always the possibility of a bandit ambush from the front, but Hanshiro knew that tonight an attack from behind was more likely.

“Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor . . .” For probably the hundredth time since leaving Kuwano, Kasane stared into the darkness behind her. “But how could you tell the bodyguard’s dangerous? He seemed so good-natured.”

“Scoundrels know each other.”

“Pardon my contradicting you, sir, but you’re not a scoundrel.”

 “He carries himself a certain way.”

“Oishi-san once told me a story his
sensei
told him.” As Cat spoke she kept watch over her shoulder, too. She expected an attack from the shadows. “A young man who was orphaned and masterless and desperately poor came to the master asking for instruction. The master glanced at him and said, ‘You might as well go your way. There is nothing I can teach you.’ “

“The man was so desperate, he cared not if he lived or died. He was already living as though he were dead. He had attained what students of the warrior’s Way seek. A master of the arts of war can recognize the attitude just by looking at how someone carries himself.”

For a while the three of them walked in silence along the dark road, deserted now and cloaked in a cold, ghostly mist. Kasane continued to look back over her shoulder. Cat was absorbed with thoughts of Oishi and what would happen when she reached KyMto.

Hanshiro too was preoccupied. He wondered if he had lost the transcendence of regard for life and death he had had when he’d left Edo. Had his spirit been dangerously affected by the haughty, willow-hipped beauty who now made life enticing and wretched?

“I’ll wait for him here.” Hanshiro lowered his
furoshiki
to the ground at the crossroad. He folded his towel into a cylinder and tied it around his forehead to catch the sweat of a duel. He tied back his sleeves and made himself comfortable on the stone step of a roadside chapel to JizM.

“The two of you can meet me in Yokkaichi,” he said. “Go to the Nightingale Inn on South Street, across from the distillery. Tell the master there that I sent you. You can trust him.”

“You go ahead, Kasane,” Cat said. “I’ll stay here.”

“You both must go.” Hanshiro took out his tobacco and began filling his pipe.

“This is my fight, not yours. I won’t go.”

“Yes, you shall.”

“ ‘My will is not a mat to be rolled up.’ ” Cat crossed her arms around her
naginata
and glared at Hanshiro. Then she remembered the end of the poem, and her blunder confounded her. The poem finished with “My heart is not a stone to be tumbled about.” Its meaning included much more than Cat had intended. She knew from the heat in her neck and cheeks that she was blushing like a child.

 “My lady ...” Hanshiro bowed low, then looked up into Cat’s face. “I can fight effectively only if I know you’re safe.”

Cat stared into his eyes and into the dark vortices of regret and longing and resolve that swirled there.

“Please, my lady,” he said softly. “If you seek to fool me and hide nearby, I will sense your presence.”
I
will always sense your presence,
he thought.
And if I die tonight, my spirit will cling to you.

Cat picked up her pack, turned, and walked away as though in a trance. Kasane followed, walking backward until Hanshiro was swallowed up in darkness.

“He’ll kill the bodyguard, won’t he?” Kasane whispered. She had to trot to keep up with Cat.