Across the Nightingale Floor (13 page)

The rains began. One night the air
was so hot and humid, I could not sleep. I went to get a drink from the cistern
and then stood in the doorway, looking at the floor stretching away from me. I
knew I was going to cross it without waking anyone.

I moved swiftly, my feet knowing where
to step and with how much pressure. The birds remained silent. I felt the deep
pleasure, no kin to elation, that acquiring the skills of the Tribe brings,
until I heard the sound of breathing, and turned to see Lord Shigeru watching
me.

“You heard me,” I said,
disappointed.

“No, I was already awake. Can you
do it again?”

I stayed crouched where I was for a
moment, retreating into myself in the way of the Tribe, letting everything
drain from me except my awareness of the noises of the night. Then I ran back
across the nightingale floor. The birds slept on.

I thought about Iida lying awake in
Inuyama, listening for the singing birds. I imagined myself creeping across the
floor towards him, completely silent, completely undetected.

If Lord Shigeru was thinking the
same thing, he did not mention it. All he said now was, “I'm disappointed in
Shiro. I thought his floor would outwit you.”

Neither of us said, But will
Iida's? Nevertheless the question lay between us, in the heavy night air of the
sixth month.

———«»———«»———«»———

The teahouse was also finished, and
we often shared tea there in the evenings, reminding me of the first time I had
tasted the expensive green brew prepared by Lady Maruyama. I felt Lord Shigeru
had built it with her in mind, but he never mentioned it. At the door of the
tea room grew a twin-trunked camellia; maybe it was this symbol of married love
that started everyone talking about the desirability of marriage. Ichiro in
particular urged the lord to set about finding another wife. “Your mother's
death, and Takeshi's, have been an excuse for some time. But you have been
unmarried for nearly ten years now, and have no children. It's unheard of!”

The servants gossiped about it,
forgetting that I could hear them clearly from every part of the house. The
general opinion among them was in fact close to the truth, although they did
not really believe it themselves. They decided Lord Shigeru must be in love
with some unsuitable or unobtainable woman. They must have sworn fidelity to
each other, the girls sighed, since to their regret he had never invited any of
them to share his bed. The older women, more realistic, pointed out that these
things might occur in songs but had no bearing on the everyday life of the
warrior class. “Maybe he prefers boys,” Haruka, the boldest of the girls,
replied, adding in a fit of giggles. “Ask Takeo!” Whereupon Chiyo said
preferring boys was one thing, and marriage was another. The two had nothing to
do with each other.

Lord Shigeru evaded all these
questions of marriage, saying he was more concerned with the process of my
adoption. For months nothing had been heard from the clan, except that the
subject was still under deliberation. The Otori had more pressing concerns to
attend to. Iida had started his summer campaign in the East, and fief after
fief had either joined the Tohan or been conquered and annihilated. Soon he
would turn his attention again to the Middle Country. The Otori had grown used
to peace. Lord Shigeru's uncles were disinclined to confront Iida and plunge
the fief into war again. Yet, the idea of submitting to the Tohan rankled with
most of the clan.

Hagi was rife with rumors, and
tense. Kenji was uneasy. He watched me all the time, and the constant
supervision made me irritable.

“There are more Tohan spies in town
every week,” he said. “Sooner or later one of them is going to recognize Takeo.
Let me take him away.”

“Once he is legally adopted and
under the protection of the clan, Iida will think twice about touching him,”
Lord Shigeru replied.

“I think you underestimate him. He
will dare anything.”

“Maybe in the East. But not in the
Middle Country.”

They often argued about it, Kenji
pressing the lord to let me go away with him, Lord Shigeru evading him,
refusing to take the danger seriously, holding that once I was adopted I would
be safer in Hagi than anywhere.

I caught Kenji's mood. I was on
guard all the time, always alert, always watching. The only time I found peace
was when I was absorbed in learning new skills. I became obsessive about honing
my talents.

Finally the message came at the end
of the seventh month: Lord Shigeru was to bring me to the castle the next day,
where his uncles would receive me and a decision would be given.

Chiyo scrubbed me, washed and
trimmed my hair, and brought out clothes that were new but subdued in color.
Ichiro went over and over all the etiquette and the courtesies, the language I
should use, how low I should bow. “Don't let us down,” he hissed at me as we
left. “After all he has done for you, don't let Lord Shigeru down.”

Kenji did not come with us but said
he would follow us as far as the castle gate. “Just keep your ears open,” he
told me—as if it were possible for me to do anything else.

I was on Raku, the pale gray horse
with the black mane and tail. Lord Shigeru rode ahead of me on his black horse,
Kyu, with five or six retainers. As we approached the castle I was seized by
panic. Its power as it loomed ahead of us, its complete dominance over the
town, unnerved me. What was I doing, pretending to be a lord, a warrior? The
Otori lords would take one look at me and see me for what I was: the son of a
peasant woman and an assassin. Worse, I felt horribly exposed, riding through
the crowded street. I imagined that everyone was looking at me.

Raku felt the panic and tensed. A
sudden movement in the crowd made him shy slightly. Without thinking, I let my
breathing slow and softened my body. He quieted immediately. But his action had
spun us around, and as I turned his head back I caught sight of a man in the
street. I only saw his face for a moment, but I knew him at once. I saw the
empty sleeve on his right-hand side. I had drawn his likeness for Lord Shigeru
and Kenji. It was the man who had pursued me up the mountain path, whose right
arm Jato had sliced through.

He did not appear to be watching
me, and I had no way of knowing if he had recognized me. I drew the horse back
and rode on. I don't believe I gave the slightest sign I had noticed him. The
entire episode lasted no more than a minute.

Strangely, it calmed me. This is
real, I thought. Not a game, Maybe I am pretending to be something I'm not, but
if I fail in it, it means death. And then I thought, I am Kikuta. I am of the
Tribe. I am a match for anyone.

As we crossed the moat I spotted
Kenji in the crowd, an old man in a faded robe. Then the main gates were opened
to us, and we rode through into the first courtyard.

Here we dismounted. The men stayed
with the horses, and Lord Shigeru and I were met by an elderly man, the
steward, who took us to the residence.

It was an imposing and gracious
building on the seaward side of the castle, protected by a smaller bailey. A
moat surrounded it all the way to the seawall, and inside the moat was a large,
beautifully designed garden. A small, densely wooded hill rose behind the
castle; above the trees rose the curved roof of a shrine.

The sun had come out briefly, and
the stones steamed in the heat. I could feel the sweat forming on my forehead
and in my armpits. I could hear the sea hissing at the rocks below the wall. I
wished I were swimming in it.

We took off our sandals, and maids
came with cool water to wash our feet. The steward led us into the house. It
seemed to go on forever, room after room stretching away, each one lavishly and
expensively decorated. Finally we came to an antechamber where he asked us to
wait for a little while. We sat on the floor for what seemed like an hour at
least. At first I was outraged—at the insult to Lord Shigeru, at the
extravagant luxury of the house, which I knew came from the taxes imposed on
the farmers. I wanted to tell Lord Shigeru about my sighting of Iida's man in
Hagi, but I did not dare speak. He seemed engrossed in the painting on the
doors: a gray heron stood in a teal-green river, gazing at a pink-and-gold
mountain.

Finally I remembered Kenji's advice
and spent the rest of the time listening to the house. It did not sing of the
river, like Lord Shigeru's, but had a deeper and graver note, underpinned by
the constant surge of the sea. I counted how many different footsteps I could
hear, and decided there were fifty-three people in the household. I could hear
three children in the garden, playing with two puppies. I heard the ladies
talking about a boat trip they were hoping to make if the weather held.

Then from deep inside the house I
heard two men talking quietly. I heard Shigeru's name mentioned. I realized I
was listening to his uncles uttering things they would let no one but each
other hear.

“The main thing is to get Shigeru
to agree to the marriage,” said one. His was the older voice, I thought,
stronger and more opinionated. I frowned, wondering what he meant. Hadn't we
come to discuss adoption?

“He's always resisted marrying
again,” said the other, slightly deferential, presumably younger. “And to marry
to seal the Tohan alliance, when he has always opposed it . . . It may simply
bring him out in the open.”

“We are at a very dangerous time,”
the older man said. “News came yesterday about the situation in the West. It
seems the Seishuu are preparing to challenge Iida. Arai, the lord of Kumamoto,
considers himself offended by the Noguchi, and is raising an army to fight them
and the Tohan before winter.”

“Is Shigeru in contact with him? It
could give him the opportunity he needs. . . .”

“You don't need to spell it out,” his
brother replied. “I'm only too aware of Shigeru's popularity with the clan. If
he is in alliance with Arai, together they could take on Iida.”

“Unless we . . . shall we say,
disarm him.”

“The marriage would answer very
well. It would take Shigeru to Inuyama, where he'll be under Iida's eye for a
while. And the lady in question, Shirakawa Kaede, has a certain very useful
reputation.”

“You're not suggesting . . . ?”

“Two men have already died in
connection with her. It would be regrettable if Shigeru were the third, but
hardly our fault.”

The younger man laughed quietly in
a way that made me want to kill him. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my fury.

“What if he continues to refuse to
marry?” he asked.

“We make it a condition of this
adoption whim of his. I can't see how it will do us any harm.”

“I've been trying to trace the
boy,” the younger man said, his voice taking on the pedantic tone of an
archivist. “I don't see how he can be related to Shigeru's late mother. There
is no sign of him in the genealogies.”

“I suppose he is illegitimate,” the
older man said. “I've heard he looks like Takeshi.”

“Yes, his looks make it hard to
argue against any Otori blood, but if we were to adopt all our illegitimate
children . . .”

“Ordinarily of course it would be
out of the question. But just now . . .”

“I agree.”

I heard the floor creak slightly as
they stood.

“One last thing,” the older brother
said. “You assured me Shintaro would not fail. What went wrong?”

“I've been trying to find out.
Apparently this boy heard him and woke Shigeru. Shintaro took poison.”

“He heard him? Is he also from the
Tribe?”

“It's possible. A Muto Kenji turned
up at Shigeru's last year: Some kind of tutor is the official story, but I
don't think he is giving the usual kind of instruction.” Again the younger
brother laughed, making my flesh crawl. But I also felt a deep scorn for them.
They had been told of my acute hearing, yet they did not imagine it could apply
to them, here in their own house.

The slight tremor of their
footsteps moved from the inner room, where this secret conversation had been
taking place, into the room behind the painted doors.

A few moments later the elderly man
came back, slid the doors open gently, and indicated that we should enter the
audience chamber. The two lords sat side by side on low chairs. Several men
knelt along each side of the room. Lord Shigeru immediately bowed to the
ground, and I did the same, but not before I had taken a quick look at these
two brothers, against whom my heart was already bitter in the extreme.

The older one, Lord Otori Shoichi,
was tall but not particularly muscular. His face was lean and gaunt; he wore a
small mustache and beard, and his hair was already going gray. The younger one,
Masahiro, was shorter and squatter. He held himself very erect, as small men
do. He had no beard; his face was sallow in color, and spotted with several
large black moles. His hair was still black, but thin. In both of them, the
distinctive Otori features, the prominent cheekbones and curved nose, were marred
by the defects of character that made them both cruel and weak.

“Lord Shigeru—nephew—you are very
welcome,” Shoichi said graciously.

Lord Shigeru sat up, but I remained
with my forehead on the floor.

“You have been much in our
thoughts,” Masahiro said. “We have been very concerned for you. Your brother's
passing away, coming so soon after your mother's death and your own illness,
has been a heavy burden to you.”

The words sounded kindly, but I
knew they were spoken by the second tongue.

“I thank you for your concern,”
Shigeru replied, “but you must allow me to correct you in one thing. My brother
did not pass away. He was murdered.”

He said it without emotion, as if
simply stating a fact. No one in the room made any reaction. A deep silence
followed.