Gai-Jin (123 page)

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” the guard growled, taking his time, and wished he hadn’t. Abeh was out of his saddle in an instant. The blow smashed him senseless.

“Get this barrier open!” Abeh said, voice grating. Two riders had dismounted beside him, one of them Yoshi, a scarf around his face, the other Wataki, whom Yoshi had rewarded for helping to save his life. An officer stormed out of the guard house, gaping at his prone, unconscious man. “What’s going on? You’re under arrest.”

“Get this barrier open!”

“You are under arrest.”

Abeh strode around the barrier, no mistaking the danger. “Open the barrier. Hurry up.” Guards rushed to obey but the officer blustered, “You will all show identity papers an—”

“Listen, monkey,” Captain Abeh shoved his face at the officer, who froze, “important guests require important manners and no delays on a cold night and it is not yet sundown.” With that he bashed him on the side of his head, the officer reeled, and a second savage blow collapsed him in a heap. To the stupefied sentries Abeh rapped, “Tell this fool to report to me at dawn or I will find him and use him for sword practice, and the rest of you!” He waved his party through then mounted and cantered after them.

Within minutes he had arranged the best quarters in the best Inn. Those who had reserved them bowed as they fled, grateful for the privilege
of vacating them—rich merchants, other samurai, none of whom were prepared for a fight to the death that would have surely erupted.

Yoshi took off his hat and scarf when the shoji doors were closed. The rotund patron of this, the Inn of Pleasant Dreams, was on his knees beside the door, head bowed, waiting for orders. His mind was ringing with curses that he had not been forewarned about these late arrivals, cursing them for disrupting his tranquility as they would surely continue to disrupt it—whoever they were. He recognized none of them and found it extraordinary they flew no banners, wore simple Bakufu uniforms and symbols, used no names, noticing that even this samurai, now treated with so much respect in private by the vile Captain and given his most expensive rooms, was not addressed by name or rank. And who are the two women? A daimyo’s wife and maid? Or just two high-class whores? The news of their arrival had sped around the Inn. At once he had offered a reward to the maid who discovered their identity.

“Your name, landlord?” Yoshi asked.

“Ichi-jo, Sire.” He thought “sire” the safest title.

“First a bath, then massage, then food.”

“Instantly, Sire. May I have the honor of showing you the way myself?”

“Just a bath maid. I will eat here. Thank you, you may go.”

The man bowed unctuously, heaved himself to his feet, and waddled away.

Captain Abeh confirmed security arrangements: sentries would surround this eight-room bungalow. Koiko’s rooms were down the veranda, which would be guarded at all times. Between her quarters and Yoshi’s would be a room with two more guards.

“Good, Captain. Now get some sleep.”

“Thank you, but I am not tired, sir.”

Yoshi had ordered that he was to be treated as an ordinary goshi, except in private, when the only honorific they would use was “sir.” “You will get some sleep. I need you alert. We’ve many more days yet.” Yoshi saw a flicker behind the young man’s eyes, bloodshot from fatigue. “Yes?”

Uneasily Abeh said, “Please excuse me but if it is urgent for you to reach Yedo, it would be safer for you to be escorted ahead of the Lady.”

“Get some sleep,” Yoshi said. “Tired men make mistakes. It was also a mistake to crush the officer. The sentry was enough.” Silently he dismissed him. Abeh bowed and left, cursing himself for his stupidity in volunteering something so obvious. Three times they had made unnecessary stops today, twice yesterday. He checked all the sentries and stretched out in his room. In moments he was fast asleep.

After the bath and massage and food eaten slowly though he was very hungry, Yoshi strolled down the corridor. The decision to bring Koiko had been easy. It had occurred to him that she would be a perfect decoy and had
told Akeda to see that everyone knew he was just sending her under escort to Yedo, while he went separately.

“Perfect,” Akeda had said.

He went into her outer room. It was empty, the inner shoji closed. “Koiko?” he called out and settled himself on one of the two cushions. The shoji slid open. Sumomo was kneeling, holding it for Koiko, eyes on the tatami. Her hair was up in Kyōto style, her eyebrows plucked and a little makeup on her lips. A welcome improvement, he thought.

The moment Koiko saw him she knelt and both women bowed in unison. He noticed that Sumomo bowed perfectly, a pattern of Koiko’s grace, and this pleased him too, no sign that the hard riding had affected Sumomo in any way. He returned the salutation. The beds of down futons were already made up.

As Koiko came smiling into this room and Sumomo closed the shoji behind her, she said, “So, Tora-chan, how are you?” Her voice was sweet as usual, her coiffure perfect as usual, but, as never before, the same kimono as the previous night.

Uneasily he noticed a flicker of discomfort as she settled herself. “The riding is too much for you?”

“Oh, no, the first few days are bound to be a little difficult but soon I will be as tough as …” Her eyes were merry. “As tough as Domu-Gozen.”

He smiled, but knew he had made an error of judgment. Yesterday three way stations were covered, the same today, but on neither day had he made the distance he wanted. The riding was exhausting her. I made a mistake I should not have made. She will never complain and will go beyond her limit, may even do herself harm.

Do I need to hurry? Yes. Will she be safe in a palanquin with a ten-man escort? Yes. Would it be wise to reduce my bodyguard by that many? No. I could send for more men from Yedo tonight but that would cost me five or six days. My instinct tells me to hurry, the gai-jin are unpredictable, so is Anjo, so is Ogama—did he not threaten: “If
you
don’t deal with them,
I will.”

“Koiko-chan. Let us go to bed. Tomorrow is tomorrow.”

In the night Sumomo lay on warm futons and under coverlets in their outer room, one arm under her head, sleepy but not tired, and tranquil. From the inner room she could hear Yoshi’s regular breathing, Koiko’s hardly perceptible. Outside were night sounds. A dog barking somewhere, night insects, wind in the foliage, occasionally a guard muttering to another, pots and pans clattering from the early kitchen detail.

Her first sleep had been fine. The two days of exercise and vigorous massage and freedom had made her feel vibrant. And, too, the compliments
from Koiko about the way she had arranged her hair tonight as Teko had taught her—and how to add color to her lips—had also pleased her.

Everything was succeeding better than she had dreamed. Her immediate objective had been achieved. She had been accepted. They were on the way to Yedo. To Hiraga. She was an innermost part of Yoshi’s entourage, poised. Katsumata had said, “Do not be impetuous. Under no circumstance put yourself at risk unless there is a chance of escape. Close to him you are of enormous value, do not ruin that or involve Koiko.”

“She will not know about me?”

“Only what I told her, the same that you know.”

“Then she is already involved, no? So sorry, I mean, because of her Yoshi may accept me.”

“He will make that decision, not her. No, Sumomo, she is not your accomplice. If she was to discover your real connection, particularly about Hiraga, and your possible purpose, she would stop it—she would have to stop it.”

“Possible purpose? Please, what is my prime duty?”

“To be ready. Better a waiting sword than a corpse.”

I have no sword, she thought. Perhaps I could grab one from a guard if I could surprise him. I have three shuriken, poison-tipped, hidden in my bundle beside me, and of course my obi knife always on my person. More than enough, with surprise. Eeee, life is very strange. Strange that I should prefer being on my own with my own mission—so alien to our normal way of life, always being part of a unit, thinking as one, agreeing as one in our culture of consensus. I enjoyed being with the unit of shishi, and yet …

And yet to be honest—“Always be honest to yourself, Sumomochan,” her father had said, over and over, “that is your way to the future, for a leader.” To be honest I found it difficult to curb my urge to lead them, even shishi, and to bend them to the correct path and thinking.

Is that my karma, to lead? Or is it to die unfulfilled because it is truly stupid for a woman to wish to be a leader in the world of Nippon. Strange to want the impossible. Why am I like that, not like other women? Is it because father had no sons and treated us, his daughters, as sons, telling us to be strong and to stand up and never to be afraid, even allowing me, over Mother’s advice, to follow Hiraga and his equally impossible star … ?

She sat up in the futons a moment, tousling her hair to try to clear her head and prevent her mind from so many new and untrammeled thoughts, then lay back again. But sleep would not arrive, only permutations of Hiraga and Koiko and Yoshi and Katsumata, and her.

Strange about Yoshi: “We must kill him and the Shōgun,” Katsumata had said, over the years, so many times, and Hiraga, “not for themselves but because of what they represent. Power will never return to the Emperor
while they remain alive. So they must go, chiefly Yoshi—he is the glue that binds the Shōgunate.
Sonno-joi
is our beacon, any sacrifice must be made to achieve it!”

A pity to kill Lord Toranaga. Another pity that he is a good man and not vile, not vile like Anjo, not that I have ever seen him. Perhaps Anjo is also a kind man and everything said about him merely lies of jealous fools.

In this short time I have seen Yoshi for what he is: Dynamic, kind, strong, wise and impassioned. And Koiko? How wonderful she is, though how sad, so sad to be so doomed.

Remember what she said: “The curse of our World is that as much as you bind and train yourself with all manner of defenses and resolves to treat a client as just a client, from time to time one appears who turns your head into jelly, your resolve into froth and your loins into a fireball. When it happens it is frighteningly, gloriously terrible. You are lost, Sumomo. If the gods favor you, you die together. Or you die when he leaves, or you allow yourself to stay alive but you are dead even so.”

“I’m not going to allow that to happen when I’m grown,” Teko had piped up, overhearing them. “Not me. Have you been turned to jelly, Mistress?”

Koiko had laughed. “Many times, child, and you have forgotten one of your most important lessons: to close your ears when others are talking. Off to bed with you.”

Has Koiko’s head really been turned to jelly? Yes.

As a woman I know she considers Lord Yoshi more than a client, however much she tries to hide it. Where will it end? Sadly, so very sad. He will never make her consort.

And me? Will it be the same with me? Yes, I think so—what I told Lord Yoshi was the truth: I will have no other husband but Hiraga. “It’s the truth …” she muttered aloud, and that brought her out of the downward spiral. “Stop it,” she murmured, following the method of her childhood, of her mother crooning: “Think only good thoughts, little one, for this is the World of Tears soon enough, think bad thoughts and in a blink of the eye you are in the black pit of despair. Think good thoughts …”

She made the effort and turned her mind: only Hiraga makes life worthwhile.

A shiver went through her body as a new concept sprang at her with a shocking strength of reality: Foolish this
sonno-joi!
It is just a slogan. As if it will change anything. A few leaders will change, that is all. Will the new ones be any better? No, except yes, if Hiraga is one, perhaps yes, if Katsumata is one but, ah, so sorry, they will not live that long.

Then why follow them?

A tear slid down her cheek. Because Hiraga turns my head to jelly, my loins …

* * *

In the dawn Yoshi slid out of bed and padded through to the outer room, his sleeping yukata tucked up, breath visible in the cold air. Koiko stirred, saw that he was all right, and dozed off again. In the outer room Sumomo’s futons and bedclothes were already packed away in the side cupboard, the low table already set for their breakfast, their two cushions neatly in place.

Outside the cold was sharper. He stepped into straw sandals and went along the veranda to the outhouse, nodded to the waiting manservant and chose an unoccupied bucket in the line of buckets and began to relieve himself. His flow was strong and that pleased him. Other men stood beside him. He paid no attention to them, or they to him. Idly he directed the stream at the swarming, ever present flies, not expecting to drown one of them.

When he had finished he moved to the other part and squatted over a vacant hole in the bench, men and some women either side, Sumomo one of them. In his mind he was alone, his ears and eyes and nostrils shut tight against their presence as theirs were against everyone else.

This imperative ability was painstakingly cultivated from infancy: “You must work at this like nothing else, little one, you must, or your life will be unbearable” was drummed into him, as it was every child. “Here where we live cheek by cheek, children and parents and grandparents and maids and more in each tiny house, where all walls are made of paper, privacy has to be cultivated in your head and can only exist there, your own and also as the essential politeness to others. Only this way can you be tranquil, only this way can you be civilized, only this way can you remain sane.”

Absently, he waved at the flies. Once when he was young he had lost his temper at two or three that were plaguing him and had tried to smash them to pieces. It had earned him an immediate smack around the face, his cheeks burning with hurt, but more with shame that he had caused his mother grief, and her need to administer the punishment.

“So sorry, my son,” she said softly. “Flies are like sunrise and sunset, inevitable, except they can be a torment—if you allow them to be. You must learn to dismiss them. Every day, for part of each day for as many days as necessary, please, stand there and let them crawl on your face and hands without moving. Until they become nothing. Flies must become nothing-use your will, that is what you are given it for. They must become nothing to you, then they’ll not cause you to ruin your harmony or, worse, ruin the harmony of others …”