Thousand Shrine Warrior (9 page)

“On the same night as the proclamation of exile, someone made an attempt on Priest Kuro's life. A week or so later it was finally announced officially that young Heinosuke had gone wild and made a foiled attempt on the priest, then ran off. We ladies-in-waiting knew it wasn't exactly like that, for Heinosuke had come to Lady Echiko the very night of the assassination attempt.”

“Do you know if he really tried to kill Priest Kuro?” asked the nun.

“He did!” said Otane in a harsh whisper, her eyes large when she confessed her knowledge. “I remember Lady Echiko was playing her koto, when suddenly a string snapped—a bad omen! She had been singing a sad song because of the news of her betrothed's pending exile. It was a cold, cloudless night and all the doors were shuttered. Yet there was a cold wind from somewhere, which ran through Lady Echiko's chamber. We ladies-in-waiting looked around to see what door had been opened. The oil lantern suddenly went out, as though Fukkeshibaba the fire-extinguishing hag had slipped in and blown it out. We were as frightened as little children by then, until we were relieved to hear Heinosuke's voice in the darkness.

“‘Please don't light that,' Heinosuke said as I was about to fix the lamp. So we sat in the dark and could not help but hear what he said to our Lady. ‘I have failed to kill that fellow and he has had his revenge on me for trying. Now there is no help for me. I will escape tonight, Echiko, and you must forget me.' Our Lady was most upset, as you can imagine. She moved her koto to one side—I heard it slide across the tatami mat—then scooted toward the place in the darkness where Heinosuke's voice could be heard.

“He avoided her and said harshly that she should not come near him. She would not listen, so Heinosuke drew his sword! We heard it slide from the scabbard and we held our breaths. Echiko stopped where she was, shocked beyond belief that her beloved could threaten her! ‘Believe it!' said Heinosuke, his voice devoid of its usual gentleness. ‘There is nothing between us anymore!' I thought I heard a catch in his voice; and Echiko must have known he was lying about it, too, since she knew him better than anyone. ‘I only came to say goodbye,' said Heinosuke, then opened the sliding door to Lady Echiko's garden.

“Lady Echiko ran out into the moonlight to stop him, but something startled her, and she cried out and fainted. We brought her in and put her to bed, fussing over her because she was delirious. Her betrothed never returned and our Lady remained inconsolable. She took ill and only rarely left her bed in the months that followed. There is a rumor that Heinosuke is still somewhere plotting revenge, but surely there is nothing to it, or he would get word to Echiko so that she doesn't pine to death.

“Only two nights later, she had a horrible nightmare and could not be restrained from getting up at the Hour of the Ox, wandering madly around her chamber. She ended up smashing her koto, which reminded her of her last unhappy meeting with Heinosuke. I sympathized, thinking how I would feel if Shinji vanished from my life! The next morning, she had no memory of damaging her koto, and was distraught that she could not play it. She has been irrational like that for a long time now.

“When I left her side yesterday, seeking relief in a secret tryst with Shinji, I could hardly believe Lady Echiko's appearance. She has become like a skeleton of herself, a shadow of the beauty that was. The horrifying part is that Lord Sato has shown a lot of concern, sending Priest Kuro every night to chant the Lotus Sutra for her. It's been too much! I don't care if Shinji and I are caught and crucified. I won't return to the castle.”

The bikuni mused. “A strange, sad story,” she said, then turned away from Otane as though to leave without further word. But she stood in the gate a while longer. When her voice issued again from beneath her hat, she said, “If you and Shinji must try to find a better place, I suggest you go in the direction of Shigeno Valley. It's a long journey for you, but the lord of that valley is a woman named Toshima. You may have heard of her, since women rarely rule a fief alone, and it has made her famous. Under her protection, you can work hard as farmers in her valley. Tell her a strolling nun with two swords said so on her honor! If you are caught before you reach there, you'll be brought back here and killed.”

The nun stepped out onto the path leading to the main road. Otane bowed behind the departing nun, then closed the gate, a barely audible “Thank you” reaching the bikuni's ears. As the nun made her way back to the road and started toward the village, she could not unburden herself of thoughts about Otane. “How sad she is,” the nun said to herself. “I hope people help her and her lover along their way.”

Under the protection of a thatched lean-to that had been propped up by Priest Bundori for the nun's sake, a stone lantern was slowly taking shape. The nun worked diligently, oblivious to the chill, heavy rain outside her tiny cover. The priest had loaned her mallet and chisel, and gotten her started with numerous verbal instructions, for she had not made such a lantern previously. “You must bore the horizontal holes first, while the stone is strongest,” he'd advised. “Then shape the outside of the lantern. The top is made separately. Don't worry if it stands straight or not; the ground where you put it won't be flat in any case.”

Most of the time she was left alone to this labor, though often she could see Priest Bundori working about the shrine compound and grounds. He wore a coat made of grass, which caused him to look like a spiny animal, and a wide hat, these protecting him from the elements. With a long rake, he swept leaves from the surfaces of ponds, and unclogged the various miniature cataracts and tops of tiny waterfalls. Some of the streams were already swollen to their limit and parts of the gardens would surely become flooded, even with Bundori's best efforts to keep the water flowing smoothly.

The leaves he removed from waterways became mulch and compost in other areas of the grounds. Leaves collected in dry weather had been placed in sheds to use as fodder and fuel, but this wet stuff would be saved for next year's gardening.

When the rain became heavier still, Bundori vanished into one of the buildings for a while, performing what chores the nun could not tell. It was comforting to see the fellow scurrying about, but sometimes the nun felt she should be helping him rather than chipping at her stone creation. But Bundori had been most insistent that she adhere to her own labor.

She whacked hammer against chisel against stone. It shook the length of her arm and caused wrists especially to ache. She set the tools aside a bit, reaching inside her pocket-sleeve to withdraw a thin, stoppered bamboo tube. She removed the plug and stuck a finger in the opening of the tube, taking out a helping of salve. It was the medicine Bundori had mixed for her, smelling of knotweed and shepherd's purse and clove. She rubbed it on the backs of her swollen hands and around her wrists. It created a warm sensation and did indeed ease the ache.

Later in the afternoon, rain still falling in sheets, Bundori brought a meal to her from the main shrine-house. She ceased chipping at stone, greeted the priest, and accepted the bowl of coarse millet and some kind of stringy, tough root he had dug up from somewhere. He had brought a bowl for himself, generously keeping her company rather than eating in the comfort of his home. The stuff he was forced to eat out of poverty was not especially tasty, but both Bundori and the nun were grateful for what there was.

“I don't blame your pushing me to get this work done quickly,” said the nun, it not evading her notice that twice the priest had fed her outside so that she would have minimal excuse to interrupt her task. “If I stay too long, I'll eat you out of home.”

This was not Bundori's reasoning at all, and he was chagrined to be misunderstood. “If you don't mind the poverty of our meals, it is no bother to me that you eat a lot,” he said. “But it is true I am trying to be particularly helpful so that you can finish your lantern in a hurry.” He gazed out from under the lean-to, beneath which he crouched alongside the nun. He held the bowl of food in one hand, chopsticks in the other. The sky was dark and foreboding, promising worse rain than what presently fell. “Hard to say when the first high winds will start. Harder still for you to travel if they start up soon! Please don't misunderstand me; I would be glad to have you stay the rest of autumn and the whole of winter. But it would be a long time for you. I think you'd rather continue your thousand-shrine journey. Life is short, after all. Not enough time for you to finish your atonement if you dawdle here and there.”

“You think I travel to atone for something?” asked the feasting nun.

“Isn't it so?” he asked. There was not the least antipathy in his remarks, but he sounded pretty sure of himself. “You killed a lot of people in the past, is that right? Now you're sorry for it. That's why you walk about Naipon the Anchored Empire, too modest even to tell your name to anyone.”

“Maybe it's true I'm, sorry about some things I've done,” the nun allowed. “But I'm not sure I am. You think me humble to live this life, but it may well be that I've become addicted to freedom. Once I was a retainer to a certain lord, then I was wife of another, and always I pursued my duty with utmost vigor, except once or twice when I strayed for the sake of adventure. On reflection, I realize that when I did not stray, it was because duty itself led to adventure. I never did like the ropes which bound me, even the ropes of samurai fame and duty and face and honor. Now I have given up family, masters, even my own name. To whom am I answerable except my inner self? It is supposed to be a tragedy for a samurai to fall as I have fallen, to ‘leave the world' as a nameless wanderer. I haven't yet experienced the fullness of the tragedy. If I atone for something, I do it badly. Life interests me too much.”

Bundori had a capped bamboo container full of tea, and two matching cups. He poured a little for the bikuni. Then she took the container and poured for him. The brew warmed their insides. “The tea is a herbal remedy,” he remarked, smacking his old lips. “It will help your fingers and my knees!” He poured a little more for her. He pondered the things the woman had said to him, then added his own thoughts: “I traveled around a bit myself, when I was young. I suppose I was not doing any particular atonement either. I was looking for someplace better than dear old Seki. Now I've a nostalgia for the place I felt critical about in youth!”

“We're all looking for a better place,” the bikuni mused. “Even those of us who don't go anywhere.”

“That must be true! Therefore I may not have given up, even though I haven't traveled in so long. I'm still looking!”

“Looking for Seki you left behind?” she asked wistfully. “As I, perhaps, seek my native Heida, as though it could exist the way it existed for a child.”

“Seki has grown better in my memory, no doubt. Have your travels taken you there as yet?”

“I was in Seki when very young, visiting a warrior's shrine with my father and younger brother. The shrine faced the sea and was on a windy hillside. That's all I can remember. I was pretty small, but I did learn something important while there.”

“It's so?”

“Yes. Until I went to Seki, the first place I can remember visiting, I had always thought the moon shone only in Heida. I was surprised to see the moon favored Seki as well!”

“The moon favors it very well!” said Bundori, misty-eyed. “The thought of it makes me want to make a poem.” He started to recite something on the spur of the moment, putting it to a rough tune:

“What a splendid place, Seki!

I should go back there someday

Stand upon the hill and smell the sea

Oh, but it's far, and I am old

ha ha! What a splendid place, right here!”

He laughed at himself, a crooked-mouthed and clownish laugh, but his brow knit upward in a sad way. It was hard to say if he was happy or sad. It seemed he was both. He said, “You should go see it for me! See if it isn't even nicer than you recall! Think about me when you go there. That way, Seki will be in my dreams.”

“I will do it,” said the nun. “I'll play my flute before the very shrine my father took me to when I was little. I will play for the warrior buried there, and for the memory of my father and younger brother.”

“Your brother is dead too? Must have been he died of war!”

“Yes, he died of war. He died bravely.” Her expression was vacant for a moment, her mind wandering off into memories of the men in her family. Then she said, “My father died of a mean horse, though. He had a long life.”

“I'm glad,” said Bundori.

Bundori's white stag came into the gardens from a wooded area. The beast drank from a cold, shallow pool, then raised his red eyes to look straight at the two people sitting under the lean-to. He seemed amused by them, but who can say what a stag may think? The rain ran off his pale fur in rivulets. He had already grown his winter coat and didn't mind the chill of autumn.

“As you were a traveler before,” the nun asked, “what convinced you to settle down at last, in such a place as this? I can't imagine giving up the freedom!”

“Ideas change as one grows older,” said Bundori. “Especially with bad knees like mine, which always did make wandering a nuisance. Maybe I had a reason for staying at this particular shrine; maybe it was an accident. I came here as you did, by chance, many years ago, not intending to stay long. Twenty years have passed. Maybe more! I've lost track. There were five old men living here at the time, and the gardens were nicer than nowadays, there being more hands to take care of things. They had lived at this shrine since they were young men, more than sixty cold winters! I was appalled by the very notion. I told them stories about my travels. I was rude enough to suggest they had wasted their own lives by staying put like they did. They didn't mind my saying so. After a few days, they decided to go on a pilgrimage together. That's how much my stories impressed them. I promised to take care of the gardens and the compound for them while they were away. But even then, watching them hobble down the mountainside, holding onto one another's sleeves, going in search of they knew not what, I didn't think they'd live long enough to come back. I hope they had at least one good adventure before they died!”