Across the Nightingale Floor (18 page)

It started like an ordinary
practice bout, both of us trying to unsettle the other, but I was afraid of
hitting her face, and her eyes never left mine. We were both tentative,
embarking on something utterly strange to us whose rules we did not know. Then,
at some point I was hardly aware of, the fight turned into a kind of dance.
Step, strike, parry, step. Kaede's breath came more strongly, echoed by mine,
until we were breathing in unison, and her eyes became brighter and her face
more glowing, each blow became stronger, and the rhythm of our steps fiercer.
For a while I would dominate, then she, but neither of us could get the upper
hand. Did either of us want to?

Finally, almost by mistake, I got
around her guard and, to avoid hitting her face, let the pole fall to the
ground. Immediately, Kaede lowered her own pole and said, “I concede.”

“You did well,” Shizuka said, “but
I think Takeo could have tried a little harder.”

I stood and stared at Kaede,
open-mouthed like an idiot. I thought, If I don't hold her in my arms now, I
will die.

Kenji handed me a towel and gave me
a rough push in the chest. “Takeo . . .” he started to say.

“What?” I said stupidly.

“Just don't complicate things!”

Shizuka said, as sharply as if she
were warning, of danger, “Lady Kaede!”

“What?” Kaede said, her eyes still
fixed on my face.

“I think we've done enough for one
day,” Shizuka said. “Let's return to your room.”

Kaede smiled at me, suddenly
unguarded. “Lord Takeo,” she said.

“Lady Shirakawa.” I bowed to her,
trying to be formal, but utterly unable to keep myself from smiling back at
her.

“Well, that's torn it,” Kenji
muttered.

“What do you expect, it's their
age!” Shizuka replied. “They'll get over it.”

As Shizuka led Kaede from the hall,
calling to the servants who were waiting outside to bring umbrellas, it dawned
on me what they were talking about. They were right in one thing, and wrong in
another. Kaede and I had been scorched by desire for each other, more than
desire, love, but we would never get over it.

For a week the torrents of rain
kept us penned up in the mountain town. Kaede and I did not train together
again. I wished we had never done so: It had been a moment of madness, I had
never wanted it, and now I was tormented by the results. I listened for her all
day long, I could hear her voice, her step, and at night—when only a thin wall
separated us—her breathing. I could tell how she slept (restlessly) and when
she woke (often). We spent time together—we were forced to by the smallness of
the inn, by being in the same traveling party, by being expected to be with
Lord Shigeru and Lady Maruyama—but we had no opportunity to speak to each
other. We were both, I think, equally terrified of giving our feelings away. We
hardly dared look at each other, but occasionally our eyes would meet, and the
fire leaped between us again.

I went lean and hollow-eyed with
desire, made worse by lack of sleep, for I reverted to my old Hagi ways and
went exploring at night. Shigeru did not know, for I left while he was with
Lady Maruyama, and Kenji either did not or pretended not to notice. I felt I
was becoming as insubstantial as a ghost. By day I studied and drew; by night I
went in search of other people's lives, moving through the small town like a shadow.
Often the thought came to me that I would never have a life of my own, but
would always belong to the Otori or to the Tribe.

I watched merchants calculating the
loss the water damage would bring them. I watched the townspeople drink and
gamble in bars and let prostitutes lead them away by the arm. I watched parents
sleep, their children between them. I climbed walls and drainpipes, walked over
roofs and along fences. Once I swam the moat, climbed the castle walls and
gate, and watched the guards, so close I could smell them. It amazed me that
they did not see or hear me. I listened to people talking, awake and in their
sleep, heard their protestations, their curses and their prayers.

I went back to the inn before dawn,
drenched to the skin, took off my wet clothes, and slipped naked and shivering
beneath the quilts. I dozed and listened to the place waking around me. First
the cocks crowed, then the crows began cawing; servants woke and fetched water;
clogs clattered over the wooden bridges; Raku and the other horses whinnied
from the stables. I waited for the moment when I would hear Kaede's voice.

The rain poured down for three days
and then began to lessen. Many people came to the inn to speak to Shigeru. I
listened to the careful conversations and tried to discern who was loyal to him
and who would be only too eager to join in his betrayal. We went to the castle
to present gifts to Lord Kitano, and I saw in daylight the walls and gate I had
climbed at night.

He greeted us with courtesy and
expressed his sympathy for Takeshi's death. It seemed to be on his conscience,
for he returned to the subject more than once. He was of an age with the Otori
lords and had sons the same age as Shigeru. They did not attend the meeting.
One was said to be away, the other unwell. Apologies were expressed, which I
knew were lies.

“They lived in Hagi when they were
boys,” Shigeru told me later. “We trained and studied together. They came many
times to my parents' house and were as close as brothers to Takeshi and
myself.” He was silent for a moment, then went on: “Well, that was many years
ago. Times change and we must all change with them.”

But I could not be so resigned. I
felt bitterly that the closer we came to Tohan territory, the more isolated he
was becoming.

It was early evening. We had bathed
and were waiting for the meal. Kenji had gone to the public bathhouse, where a
girl had taken his fancy, he said. The room gave on to a small garden. The rain
had lessened to a drizzle and the doors were wide-open. There was a strong
smell of sodden earth and wet leaves.

“It will clear tomorrow,” Shigeru
said. “We will be able to ride on, but we will not get to Inuyama before the
festival. We will be forced to stay in Yamagata, I think.” He smiled entirely
mirthlessly and said, “I shall be able to commemorate my brother's death in the
place where he died. But I cannot let anyone know my feelings. I must pretend
to have put aside all thought of revenge.”

“Why go into Tohan territory?” I
asked. “It's not too late to turn back. If it's my adoption that binds you to
the marriage, I could go away with Kenji. It's what he wants.”

“Certainly not!” he replied. “I've
given my word to these arrangements and set my seal on them. I have plunged
into the river now and must go where the current takes me. I would sooner Iida
killed me than despised me.” He looked around the room, listening. “Are we
completely alone? Can you hear anyone?”

I could hear the usual evening
sounds of the inn: the soft tread of maids as they carried food and water; from
the kitchen, the sound of the cook's knife chopping; water boiling; the
muttered conversation of the guards in the passageway and the courtyard. I
could hear no other breath but our own.

“We are alone.”

“Come closer. Once we are among the
Tohan, we will have no chance to talk. There are many things I need to tell you
before . . .” He grinned at me, a real smile this time. “. . . before whatever
happens in Inuyama!”

“I've thought about sending you
away. Kenji desires it for your safety, and of course his fears are justified.
I must go to Inuyama, come what may. However, I am asking an almost impossible
service from you, far beyond any obligation you may have to me, and I feel I
must give you a choice. Before we ride into Tohan territory, after you have
heard what I have to say, if you wish to leave with Kenji and join the Tribe,
you are free to do so.”

I was saved from answering by a
faint sound from the passageway. “Someone is coming to the door.” We were both
silent.

A few moments later the maids
entered with trays of food. When they had left again, we began to eat. The food
was sparse, because of the rain—some sort of soused fish, rice, devil's tongue
and pickled cucumbers—but I don't think either of us tasted it.

“You may wonder what my hatred of
Iida is based on,” Shigeru said. “I have always had a personal dislike for him,
for his cruelty and double-dealing. After Yaegahara and my father's death, when
my uncles took over the leadership of the clan, many people thought I should
have taken my own life. That would have been the honorable thing to do—and, for
them, a convenient solution to my irritating presence. But as the Tohan moved
into what had been Otori land, and I saw the devastating effect of their rule
on the common people, I decided a more worthwhile response would be to live and
seek revenge. I believe the test of government is the contentment of the
people. If the ruler is just, the land receives the blessings of Heaven. In
Tohan lands the people are starving, debt-ridden, harassed all the time by Iida's
officials. The Hidden are tortured and murdered—crucified, suspended upside
down over pits of waste, hung in baskets for the crows to feed on. Farmers have
to expose their newborn children and sell their daughters because they have
nothing to feed them with.”

He took a piece of fish and ate it
fastidiously, his face impassive.

“Iida became the most powerful
ruler in the Three Countries. Power brings its own legitimacy. Most people
believe any lord has the right to do as he pleases in his own clan and his own
country. It's what I, too, was brought up to believe in. But he threatened my
land, my father's land, and I was not going see it handed over to him without a
fight.”

“This had been in my mind for many
years. I took on a personality for myself that is only partly my own. They call
me Shigeru the Farmer. I devoted myself to improving my land and talked of
nothing but the seasons, crops, and irrigation. These matters interest me
anyway, but they also gave me the excuse to travel widely through the fief and
learn many things I would not otherwise have known.”

“I avoided Tohan lands, apart from
yearly visits to Terayama, where my father and many of my ancestors are buried.
The temple was ceded to the Tohan, along with the city of Yamagata after
Yaegahara. But then the Tohan cruelty touched me personally, and my patience
began to wear thin.”

“Last year, just after the Festival
of the Weaver Star, my mother fell ill with a fever. It was particularly
virulent: She was dead within a week. Three other members of the household
died, including her maid. I also became sick. For four weeks I hovered between
life and death, delirious, knowing nothing. I was not expected to recover, and
when I did, I wished I had died, for it was then that I learned my brother had
been killed in the first week of my illness.”

“It was high summer. He was already
buried. No one could tell me what had happened. There seemed to be no
witnesses. He had recently taken a new lover, but the girl had disappeared too.
We heard only that a Tsuwano merchant had recognized his body in the streets of
Yamagata and had arranged burial at Terayama. In desperation I wrote to Muto
Kenji, whom I had known since Yaegahara, thinking the Tribe might have some
information. Two weeks later a man came to my house late at night, bearing a
letter of introduction with Kenji's seal. I would have taken him for a groom or
a foot soldier; he confided in me that his name was Kuroda, which I knew can be
a Tribe name.”

“The girl Takeshi had fallen for
was a singer, and they had gone together to Tsuwano for the Star Festival. That
much I knew already, for as soon as my mother fell sick, I'd sent word to him
not to return to Hagi. I'd meant for him to stay in Tsuwano, but it seems the
girl wished to go on to Yamagata, where she had relatives, and Takeshi went
with her. Kuroda told me that there were comments made in an inn—insults to the
Otori, to myself. A fight broke out. Takeshi was an excellent swordsman. He
killed two men and wounded several others, who ran away. He went back to the
girl's relatives' house. Tohan men returned in the middle of the night and set
fire to the house. Everyone in it burned to death or was stabbed as they tried
to escape the flames.”

I closed my eyes briefly, thinking
I could hear their screams.

“Yes, it was like Mino,” Shigeru
said bitterly. “The Tohan claimed the family were Hidden, though it seems
almost certain they were not. My brother was in traveling clothes. No one knew
his identity. His body lay in the street for two days.”

He sighed deeply. “There should
have been outrage. Clans have gone to war over less. At the very least, Iida
should have apologized, punished his men, and made some restitution. But Kuroda
reported to me that when Iida heard the news, his words were 'One less of those
Otori upstarts to worry about. Too bad it wasn't the brother.' Even the men who
committed the act were astonished, Kuroda said. They had not known who Takeshi
was. When they found out, they expected their lives to be forfeit.”

“But Iida did nothing, nor did my
uncles. I told them in private what Kuroda had told me. They chose not to
believe me. They reminded me of the rashness of Takeshi's behavior in the past,
the fights he had been involved in, the risks he took. They forbade me from
speaking publicly about the matter, reminding me that I was still far from well
and suggesting I should go away for a while, make a trip to the eastern
mountains, try the hot springs, pray at the shrines.”

“I decided I would go away, but not
for the purposes they suggested.”

“You came to find me in Mino,” I
whispered.

He did not answer me at once. It
was dark outside now, but there was a faint glow from the sky. The clouds were
breaking up, and between them the moon appeared and disappeared. For the first
time I could make out the outline of the mountains and the pine trees, black
against the night sky.