Heart of the Ronin (20 page)

“What is it like to have wealth and privilege?” he asked.

She paused, as if trying to decide whether she should be offended.

He added, “It must be quite different from how I was raised.”

His earnest tone must have convinced her that he meant no insult, so she thought before she answered. “I admit that it is difficult for me to imagine not having food to eat, or living in a hovel that does not even keep off the rain. All I have known is discipline and etiquette and boredom. Discipline from the endless hours of studying and lessons and naginata training.”

“Discipline I know well. I know little else.”

“There are so many rules of proper etiquette and behavior that my father commissioned a tutor for young ladies to teach me proper manners. Perhaps I could teach you some.”

He smiled. “I would like that.”

She blushed and looked away.

“And the boredom?”

“The boredom comes from all the endless hours in between, trapped in a manor house with no one to talk to except Hatsumi and nothing to see except the same walls day after day. I envy you your travels, Ken’ishi. You have seen so much. I have seen so little. Lord Tsunetomo’s cherry trees were so beautiful. . . .”

“Doesn’t your father have cherry trees?”

“Well, yes, but I see those every year! Lord Tsunetomo’s estate was so much larger, and his gardens so much more beautiful! And he lives in a castle!”

“And I envy
you
the chance to do something as . . . well, as
useless
as looking at cherry trees. I have seen cherry trees in bloom, and they are beautiful, but only the wealthy have the time and money to take special journeys to view them. I spend my days wondering when I will be able to eat next. You do not have to worry about such things, so you are free to view cherry trees.”

She thought about this, then sighed. “It is the nature of the poor to envy the rich, I suppose.”

“But you envy the poor?” Ken’ishi said.

“Sometimes, perhaps, when the pressures and obligations of wealth become troublesome.”

After a few paces of silence, he said, “So what are young ladies taught?”

“Oh, many things! Things like reading and writing, proper manners, literature, poetry, dancing. And womanly things that you wouldn’t understand. I tried to learn how to play the biwa, but I was a terrible musician. Hatsumi can play the biwa! She is quite skilled.”

“It sounds like a lot of learning. It takes a long time?”

“Just like learning how to use a weapon, learning to use one’s mind is a difficult thing. But it is a worthy one. I love to read books!”

“Have you read a lot of books?”

“A few.”

“What is in them?” Even though he understood a few written characters, Ken’ishi imagined that books just held pages and pages of cryptic scribbling.

“Many things. Poetry, history, stories.”

“What kinds of stories?”

“Stories about the gods, and demons, and animals, and lovers.” She said the last word with an almost breathless excitement.

“Do you like that kind best? Stories about love?”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “Oh, yes! Those are the best!”

Then he looked ahead and pointed. “Look, there is the next village, Kazuko.”

“Oh, good!”

When they reached the village, everyone was so obsequious that Ken’ishi was again surprised at the power wielded by those of high station. The villagers brought food and drink and even presented Kazuko with gifts of their local woodcrafts, small carved statues of Jizo and Kannon, beautifully lacquered and gilded.

That night, well fed and weary from the journey, they slept in the inn. Ken’ishi tried not to think about Kazuko as he settled himself for sleep, but he could not help it. So beautiful she was, beautiful enough to drive caution from his mind, to make him forget what had happened the last time he was entranced by a beautiful face. Everything about her entranced him, and there, he sensed his potential downfall.

Fifteen

Now in sad autumn

As I take my darkening path . . .

A solitary bird

—
Basho

When Taro reached the first village the following morning, he knew that he was the farthest he had ever been from home. Every step he took carried him farther away from everything he had ever known, and the thrill of the chase was intoxicating.

He spent the night sleeping in the crook of an oak tree. Before he had grown into a man, he loved climbing trees, and he often whiled away entire afternoons sleeping in the branches while his exasperated mother searched for him. But she was dead now. His father was still alive, but he loved his jars of sake more than his son. Was his father angry that he had gone away? Probably. Taro was the eldest, heir to the house and family plot of land. But he was sure that he would never be a farmer now. The thought of going back with his purpose unfulfilled was as loathsome as anything he could imagine.

He was happy that the wound in his leg did not pain him anymore. Yesterday had been agony. Today, his calf and ankle were suffused with a strange numbness. He did not remove the makeshift bandages. The wound must not be as bad as he first thought. In any case, he had other things to keep his attention, like following the ronin’s trail.

When he reached the village, they told him that the ronin had indeed been there the night before, but he was protecting Nishimuta no Kazuko and her handmaiden. The village headman was alarmed to hear that the ronin had slain a Nishimuta clan constable. If he had known, he would have had the man arrested. The girl did not know of the ronin’s crime. The three of them and their stretcher-bearers had departed early that morning. If Taro hurried, perhaps he could still catch them.

Taro thanked him for the information, and the headman then gave him several rice balls and some pickled plums to sustain him in his pursuit. Taro wasted no time. He mustn’t let his quarry gain on him, so he moved faster now. His leg felt so much better! He could run for stretches, and he imagined how the ronin was slowed down by carrying the wounded woman. Today, he would have his quarry, and he could return home triumphant!

But at midmorning, he came to a fork in the road. Which way had the ronin gone? The ground was too rocky for tracks. And there were no drag marks in the dirt today, because some of the villagers were carrying the stretcher. But he could not waste valuable time with indecision. He simply chose a direction.

As he went, he looked for signs of passage on the road, but there were many sets of footprints. As the day approached noon, he saw a man and a woman seated in the grass in a small clearing, hunched over with their heads close together. A small shrine to Kannon stood nearby, and he smelled fresh incense from the offering.

As he drew nearer, his heart skipped a beat. The man was wearing a sword, and his back was turned. Was he a ronin? He tried to examine the man’s clothes and appearance. He was young and shabbily dressed. The woman’s robes were threadbare and worn, but her face was young and pretty. She pointed toward Taro with her head as he approached them. The man turned and looked at Taro. His eyes narrowed.

Taro stopped on the road and returned the man’s gaze.

The man’s voice was gruff and short of patience. “What are you staring at, boy?”

This man was too old to be the ronin he sought, and this woman was definitely not a noble maiden. Her skin was sun-darkened, and her eyes were hard with a cruel glint. Taro stood straighter and faced them. “I am looking for a ronin criminal. He has a woman with him. . . .”

The man exploded into movement. “Bastard!” he snarled, as he launched himself at Taro.

Taro scrambled backward, reflexively drawing his jitte with his right hand. With his other hand, he pulled Takenaga’s short sword from its scabbard. Before he could think, the other man’s blade was whistling toward his eyes. He brought up the short sword and deflected the blow high. If he had not, he would have lost the top of his head. He scrambled backwards under a rain of powerful blows, barely keeping the deadly edge at bay.
 

Then a strange sensation around his leg distracted him just long enough to miss an opportunity to catch the man’s sword with his jitte. For a moment, he thought that the pain in his wound had suddenly returned, until he tried to take another step backward and found his ankle ensnared in a chain. With a sneer on her lips, the woman hauled on the other end of the chain and jerked his leg out from under him. He fell hard backwards onto the earth. The man’s blade hissed through the space occupied by his belly an instant before. The woman’s fierce eyes and sly smile speared into his mind and awoke something lying hidden within. A strange roaring filled his ears, drowning all other sound.

She hauled on the chain again, spinning his body on the ground like a top and pulling him closer to her partner. Just close enough.

Taro slashed with the short sword at the man’s legs and felt the blade grate against bone. The man grunted in pain and staggered backward. A thin red line crossing both of his shins began to drip crimson. The man fell backward, groaning. Taro dropped the short sword, grabbed the chain, and pulled with all his might. The woman gasped as he pulled her off balance. Her hard, dark eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open. He jerked again, and she flew toward him as if she was light as a feather. As her body tumbled toward him, he savagely thrust his jitte to meet her, and the blunt point speared deep into her belly. A gurgling scream tore from her lips, strangely muffled by the roaring sound in Taro’s ears, and she fell to the earth. Taro scrambled to his feet and pulled his jitte from her body.

The man groaned, clutching his shins with bloody fingers. The roaring in Taro’s ears all but drowned out the man’s agonized curses. They came to him as if from a great distance. He stood over the man, and the man scrambled backwards, trying to get away.

“You fool!” Taro shouted, his voice rising. “I wasn’t looking for you!”

The man just glared at him.

“Did a ronin and a noble woman pass this way? Carrying a wounded woman on a stretcher?”

The man shook his head.
 

“How long have you been on this road? Tell me and I will spare your life.”

“All day. We have seen no one!”

The roaring in Taro’s ears grew louder. He had chosen the wrong path!

His vision blackened for a moment, as if the sun had been snuffed, and all light disappeared. For a moment, he was overcome with dizziness. Then, just as suddenly, the light returned.

He looked down at the man again. The man’s body now lay in two pieces, with a spreading pool of gore and entrails gushing from the cut across the man’s abdomen. Taro shook his head in bewilderment. Had he done this? It was a powerful cut to cleave a man that way. He looked down at the short sword in his hand. The blade was smeared with dripping crimson almost to the guard. He blinked and tried to remember, his head swimming. He staggered back a step and sank to his knees. The stench of the man’s entrails reached his nose, and he retched.

He did not remember how long he sat that way, trying to regain his composure, but when he did, he stood up and looked at the woman. Cold, lifeless eyes stared up at the bright blue sky. Strange how her eyes in death looked much like when she was alive. Then he noticed a cloth satchel lying in the grass where they had been sitting. It was lying untied and open. He approached it and looked inside. At first glance, the contents looked like only a bundle of bloody rags. He upended the satchel and out fell a clinking cascade of bronze and silver coins, and a few rags spattered with blood that was still fresh.

Well, it seemed that his fight was not useless. These two had been robbers, and some unlucky soul had died today to yield up this bit of coin. The bloodied cloth was fine pale silk, perhaps belonging to a merchant or a noble. Was this ronin bandit to be believed? The look in his eyes had told Taro that the man had not been lying. He had not seen Taro’s quarry today. Taro had indeed taken the wrong path.

Time was too short to attend to these bodies. He had already lost half a day’s pursuit in going the wrong direction. He discarded the bloody rags, took the coins and stuffed them in his pouch, and ran back the way he had come.

Sixteen

You ask me what I thought about

Before we were lovers.

The answer is easy.

Before I met you

I didn’t have anything to think about.

—
The Love Poems of Marichiko

Kazuko awoke with a start, heart thumping in her breast like a hare’s warning. When she saw the ceiling of the inn and heard Hatsumi snoring softly nearby, she remembered the village where they had stopped for the night. Hatsumi’s health had improved since yesterday, and she now slept more peacefully.

Just visible through the slats in the windows of her room was the dim gray light of early dawn. Something had awakened her from a wonderful dream, a dream she did not wish to leave. A dream where she was married to a powerful, handsome man, a wealthy man of high rank and great prestige, and they had many fine, healthy children playing in a wonderful garden, with cherry blossoms in the air and plums ready for the plucking. And a large pond filled with golden carp and snowy white cranes, and mandarin ducks and regal plum blossoms. And she and her husband. . . . A warm tingle formed in her belly and whispered up her back as she remembered her dream husband, tall and strong and handsome, playing his flute to the delight of their children.

Now as she awakened, a gossamer silence hung in the darkness, suspended like a mosquito net made of spider silk. It was that elusive time between morning and night when the crickets had fallen silent, and the birds had not yet awakened, and not a breath of breeze stirred the grass. But a quiet sound disturbed the silence, like the quick passage of breath through the teeth and the thump of a foot on the bare ground. The sound came from outside.

She rolled aside her blanket and sat up to listen. When it came again, she stood up and crossed to the window. Peering between the slats, she saw Ken’ishi in the garden behind the inn. His sword flashed in the dim, gray light as he moved from stance to stance. His clothes hung over a nearby fence. She thought for a moment he was naked, until she saw his meager loincloth. As one who had studied a weapon herself, she recognized the incredible precision and grace with which he wielded the steel in his hands. He moved with the fluidity of oil, and his sword was alive like an extension of his own body. With each blow at an imaginary opponent, his bare foot would strike the earth a hard thump, punctuating the hiss of his breath. The lean muscles of his arms and chest and back rippled like coils of sinew. His wild hair flew about his head, except for a few strands plastered to his face with sweat. He was like the heroes in stories. He was so beautiful, so wild, like an untamed stallion. Sitting a few paces away was the dog, Akao, watching his master with an amused expression, tongue lolling. Such loyalty between those two. She wondered what travails they had endured to form such a bond. And she wondered how it would feel if Ken’ishi could feel such loyalty to her. . . .