The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (61 page)

Cat kept her anger in check. She knew that Hino could not understand how determined she was. When he looked at her he saw a girl, and girls were by nature weak and irresolute. But that was due to his lack of perception, not hers.

She also knew that if he decided to hold her here behind the walls and moat of his castle, neither she nor Hanshiro could escape. She bent gracefully, like a willow in the winds of circumstance. And like a willow, she would not break.

“You are right, of course, my lord,” she murmured. “Time is short, and my arm is weak. The spirit, however, is invincible. And a soul can travel a thousand
ri
in a day.”

Hino bowed in gracious defeat. Her unspoken threat was plain. If he held her against her will, she would kill herself. Hino didn’t believe that her resentful ghost would haunt his corridors, alarming the chambermaids and disturbing sleep, but the scandal would linger for a long time.

“Judging by your past accomplishments, my lady, your endurance is admirable. But you might find it difficult to stay in the saddle for so many days and nights. I will arrange for a relay of
kagos
to take you to Edo.”
Besides,
Hino thought,
I
can also arrange for the
kago
bearers to arrive after the fourteenth.

A page arrived with a message, which Hino gave to Cat.

“Most honorable mistress,” Kasane wrote:

There is talk in the servants’ quarters. For the safety of your exalted person and the success of your most worthy cause, blessed by Buddha and approved by all the gods, you should know of it.

Your humblest, but most devoted servant,

Kasane of Pine village

Hino sent for Kasane, who came at a run and entered on her knees. She touched the floor three times with her head and on the third time left her forehead resting there. She was trembling. She was sure Lord Hino would be angered by her news.

“Speak up, girl,” Hino said. “No one will harm you.”

“A certain scullery maid. . .”Kasane searched for the words that would minimize Hino’s wrath at the intrigue in his house. “Grants her favors to an apprentice stable groom whose cousin is a courier married to the sister of the third assistant clerk in the armory at Lord Kira’s estate in Mikawa.”

Hino scowled because it wouldn’t do for him to appear to condone such goings-on. He was chagrined that a stranger in his house, and a servant at that, had learned so much in a day’s time. But he was secretly amused, too. A courier! No wonder secrets passed so quickly.  “And what did the scullery maid tell you?”

“She heard that Kira’s chief councilor in Mikawa knows of Her Ladyship’s arrival in KyMto. He knows she was coming here. The third assistant armory clerk says an unusually large number of weapons have been withdrawn from the inventory. He heard that Kira’s councilor plans to ask his lord’s son’s allies to ambush Her Ladyship should she try to reach Edo. Her life is in peril if she leaves the shelter of your castle walls.”

Hino considered the information. Kira had few friends and almost no influence, but his third son, the powerful Lord Uesugi, could call in favors. Hino suspected that Uesugi’s steward, a man noted for his cunning, was behind any plans to stop Asano’s daughter.

Hino couldn’t imagine one young woman being worth so much trouble, but he didn’t know about the litter of dead bodies Lady Asano had left behind her. He did know that if Lord Asano’s daughter reached Edo, she would certainly be an embarrassment and possibly a threat to Uesugi’s father. However, if Asano’s illegitimate offspring disappeared on the road, no one would be likely to come looking for her. The most widely believed rumor was that she was dead already.

Kasane’s news didn’t surprise Hino, but it did complicate matters. One of the lords who might help Uesugi lived nearby.

 “We could divert them,” Hanshiro said.

Cat felt a shy tug at the trailing end of her long sleeve. Kasane leaned close to whisper in her ear.

“She says she would be honored to commit suicide in my stead so you could claim I was dead.” Cat’s calm face showed no trace of what she was feeling. “Then I could escape in disguise.”

“We must regretfully decline your generous offer.” Hino graced Kasane with a nod. “Only a head inspection would satisfy Lady Asano’s enemies that she is truly dead. But your idea of falsifying her death is a good one. Perhaps a lingering illness.”

‘We haven’t time for a lingering illness.” Cat’s face was still impassive, but she was almost mad with impatience. Each beat of her heart marked that much less time left to reach Edo and the league of loyal AkM men.

“When in a hurry, make a detour,” Hino said. “I have an idea that’s a bit
kabuki,
outlandish, but it should work.” He looked pleased with himself. “Lady Asano, you don’t fear heights, do you?”

A STRANGER LIKE A CLOUD OF HEAVEN

As Cat lay in the darkness beyond the night lantern’s pale sway she thought about Lord Hino’s plan. Only six days were left before Oishi would carry out his revenge. She had lost another day while Hino made arrangements with the captain of his guard and a few of his most trusted men.

It was a preposterous plan, but if it worked, it would be worth the delay. And it might work. By the time couriers circulated among Lord Uesugi’s allies and they figured out that none of them had sent attackers to Hino’s castle, Cat and Hanshiro would be in Edo. Kira would be ashes and smoke and a bitter memory. Cat’s father’s spirit would rest peacefully in the Western Paradise.

From the gate house, the nightwatchman’s wooden blocks clapped out the hour of the Rat. The time had come. Cat sensed the stealthy forms moving down the castle’s corridors. Even though she knew they were Hino’s own men, her heart fluttered with fear. To calm herself she went over again in her mind the escape route she was to take.

She wished Hanshiro were with her instead of in the room next to this one. But under Hino’s roof Hanshiro and Cat had to pretend to be no more than mistress and bodyguard. In fact, Hanshiro had to affect cynicism and disregard for the noblewoman who paid him. That way, when she was declared dead, he could leave without arousing suspicion.

For this ruse to work, he also had to pretend to be drugged. The guards at Cat’s door really had been slipped a sleeping draft in their tea, and Cat felt exposed and defenseless. For comfort, she slid her hand under the edge of the mattress and touched the short oaken staff Hanshiro had provided.

As he had been instructed, the captain of the guard allowed the door to the outer room of Cat’s chambers to squeak when he slid it open. By the time the disguised captain and his two men crowded through the door separating the dressing room from the one where Cat slept, she had grabbed her staff and disappeared through the sliding panel of the room’s back wall.

Barefoot, and with the hems of her voluminous pale blue silk sleeping robes tucked up into her sash, she hurried down the narrow, secret maze of passageways connecting Lord Hino’s mansion with the castle’s enormous keep and with the battlements and walls that surrounded it. Hino had seen to it that candles burned in sconces set far apart. They barely lit Cat’s way along the twists and turns of the route, and she blew out each one as she passed it, leaving Hino’s phony
ninja
in the dark.

A young guardsman dressed in robes like Cat’s was supposed to be waiting at the foot of the series of ladders that rose through square openings in each ceiling and into the upper reaches of the five-storied keep. He was to lead the attackers on a chase across the curved tile roofs of the castle’s bastions and battlements. Cat called softly, but he wasn’t there. She would have to carry out the ruse herself.

Cat could hear grunts and scuffling and the muted scurry of cloth-swathed feet behind her. “Idiots!” she muttered. Even for fake
ninja
they were unusually noisy.

With her heavy staff in one hand she started up the steep pitch of the first ladder. As she climbed she had to duck under cobwebs draped from the great dusty diagonals of the massive beams supporting the ceilings and the thick, white-plastered outer walls. She braced her shoulder against the heavy wooden trapdoor at the top of the last ladder and heaved it open. Bats fluttered about her head. And in the rush of their wings she could imagine the murmur of cloth-covered shoulders brushing the beams below her.

Panting, she crawled out onto a narrow ledge scoured by a cold, wailing wind that blew her robes about her. The tiers of blue-tiled, upswept roofs of the towers and battlements were arranged in zigzag fashion so that an object thrown from the barred windows and arrow slits at any corner would have an unobstructed path to the ground. Clinging to the ornate eaves and guided only by starlight, she made her way along the ledge and dropped onto a lower roof.

Cat fell and slid on the steep angle. As she bumped over the rough corrugations of the tiles, she grasped at the dirt and moss that had taken hold in the troughs between the tile courses. She saved herself from plummeting over the edge by grabbing on to a bronze dolphin ornamenting the end of the ridge pole. She climbed back up and sat on the ridge to catch her breath. She saw the silhouette of a man pass on the spine of the roof above and to the left of her. She was sure he could hear her heart pounding as she ducked under the wide eaves of a battlement.

“Idiot!” she muttered to herself. She was a fool to let her imagination run wild. She had no cause to be frightened. Through some mix-up, the guardsman who was supposed to take her place hadn’t been at his post; but the men following her were Hino’s.

Cat figured that as long as she was here she might as well make the act more believable. She stood up so her pale, flapping robes were visible from the ground, and she screamed. Soon she could hear excited voices in the courtyard far below. Hino was rousing his soldiers and household staff for the climax of his scheme. She screamed again, and her cry was answered by a satisfying increase in the tumult in the courtyard.

She backed out of sight of those below and turned to face the first of the
ninja.
He wore a gray towel draped over his head and tied under his mouth. The shadow it threw made him seem to have no face at all. He was supposed to have the dummy, also clad in pale blue robes, that was to be pitched off the roof into a deserted part of the garden. Hino’s steward and a few loyal servants were waiting there to whisk it away in the darkness and confusion before anyone realized it wasn’t Lord Hino’s guest.

Instead of producing the dummy, the man lunged at Cat. Instinctively she turned sideways to him and with all her strength brought the staff down across the top of his shoulders. He hadn’t been expecting her to move as fast as any well-trained warrior. He certainly hadn’t been expecting the staff. He toppled and slid, his fingernails grating across the tiles as he went. He managed to stop his fall as he hung half over the edge, and he began heaving himself back up.

Cat crouched so as not to hit her head on overhanging eaves. Going mainly by feel, she ducked into the tiered jumble of blue-tiled roofs. Another slender shadow dropped from the roof behind her and grabbed for her foot as she scrambled up onto a level above him. Something was terribly wrong. These men were trying to kill her.

“Help me!” Cat reached a windswept ledge at the top of the keep and screamed like a woman in panic. When she screamed, she could sense the change in her attacker’s stance.

Expecting to find a weak, frightened victim, he came straight at her. She let him grab her and shove her toward the rim of the roof before she dropped to her knee. Instead of resisting, she clung to one of the iron bars in the window for balance and with her other arm used the force of his own attack to pull him onto his back. He clawed futilely for a handhold as with her staff she hit him on the head and pushed him over the edge.

Cat was now backed up against the side of the keep with only a black emptiness at the corner of the wall and a wind moaning around it. She could hear Hino’s soldiers pounding on the trapdoor leading into the keep’s attic. The
ninja
must have closed and barred it.

Cat could see them rising like lithe scraps of darkness over the roof ridges or sliding around corners. She tried to count them but couldn’t. They appeared as silently as if shreds of a shadow had separated from the rest. They vanished just as effortlessly.

Cat soon realized, though, that they were no longer heading toward her. They were converging on a roof separated from her by a deep, rectangular well of blackness, enclosed by bastions and turrets, bulwarks and battlements. With his wooden practice sword drawn, Hanshiro stood silhouetted there against the starlit sky. His
tabi-
clad
feet gripped the arced line of ridge tiles as he ran lightly along the roof peak.

He leaped from that roof down onto another. He teetered for just an instant before he regained his balance, and Cat’s breath caught in her chest. Using their hands to steady themselves, the attackers climbed up the slope toward him. Steel rang against the wood of Hanshiro’s sword. One man plummeted over the edge, two rolled down the roofs to lie crumpled on a lower level.

“Above you!” Cat screamed.

Hanshiro whirled and ducked under the spidery form that dropped down on him. He stood and, using the man’s own weight and momentum, threw his attacker over the side. As Cat scrambled toward him, she ripped her robes, tore her fingers, and scraped her knees and elbows on the rough tiles. Suddenly a man loomed up in front of her. Cat and her staff had lost the advantage of surprise, but she raised it anyway. She had little room to swing here under the wide eaves.

Before she could strike, a curved, sword-shaped length of loquat wood hit the man at the base of his neck and shoulder. Hanshiro caught him as he fell and eased him down so he wouldn’t slip over the edge.

Hanshiro was spattered with blood. “Help me undress him. Then take off your robes.”

“How did you get here?” Cat untied the man’s dark gray leggings and cotton trousers. The
ninja
was dressed in the nondescript clothes of a farmer.

“I felt uneasy about Hino’s plan. I left a rolled-up quilt under the covers and waited in the attic of the keep. When I saw the men fasten down the trapdoor, I suspected something was wrong. But you led us all on quite a chase.”

Hanshiro smiled to himself. How fortunate Cat was to be a woman. All her enemies automatically underestimated her. She went into every fight with an advantage.

“Hino’s trying to kill me.” Cat shivered as the icy wind washed around her bare body.

“Perhaps.” Hanshiro hastily pulled Cat’s torn blue robes over the unconscious man’s arms. He rolled him over to wrap the long sash around his waist. “Scream,” he said.

Cat obliged while she dressed in the
ninja’s
clothes. The man’s disguise was good. Cat could even smell the field manure and the dust of rice chaff in them.

Together they hauled him to the agreed-on corner. They laid him on the sloping roof far enough back so they weren’t visible from the ground and pushed him. Cat screamed again as he rolled to the edge and over, the blue robes flapping like a loosened sail in the wind. They heard the shrieks of the maids and the female attendants in the courtyard below while the figure fell, tumbling with a peculiar grace.

With the cold wind blowing and the stars so close Cat felt as though she could reach out and gather a handful, Hanshiro encircled her with his arms. They felt their hearts pounding in unison as they held each other. They stood among the bronze fish and the blue, upswept eaves, as though in a stormy sea frozen in time.

“ ‘I saw you on the road,’ “ Hanshiro murmured into her ear as long strands of her hair whipped across his face. He didn’t have to finish the thousand-year-old words. She already knew them by heart.

I saw you on the road,

A stranger to me like a cloud of heaven:

And the words I could not speak to you,

Quite choked my heart.

Yet we two, by the mercy of the gods,

Are now united in love and trust.

“Now, my beautiful ghost,” Hanshiro said, “hide where

Hino told you to.”

“But what if he’s the one who’s trying to kill me?”

“I won’t be far. I will never be far. Not in this world or the next.”