Across the Nightingale Floor (20 page)

“No, Lord Abe,” I replied. He
laughed. I could sense the bully in him, close to the surface. I did not want
to provoke him.

“How about you, old man?” He turned
towards Kenji, who in his role of insignificant teacher had been drinking wine
with delight. He seemed half intoxicated, but in fact was far less drunk than
Abe.

“Although the sages teach us that
the noble man may—indeed, should—avenge death,” he said in a high-pitched,
pious voice, “I have never had cause to take such extreme action. On the other
hand, the Enlightened One teaches his followers to refrain from taking the life
of any sentient being, which is why I partake only of vegetables.” He drank
with appreciation and refilled his bowl. “Luckily wine, brewed from rice, is
included in that category.”

“Don't you have any warriors in
Hagi, that you travel with such companions?” Abe scoffed.

“I am supposed to be going to my
wedding,” Shigeru returned mildly. “Should I be more prepared for battle?”

“A man should always be prepared
for battle,” Abe replied, “especially when his bride has the reputation yours
has. You're aware of it, I suppose?” He shook his massive head. “It would be
like eating puffer fish. One bite might kill you. Doesn't it alarm you?”

“Should it?” Shigeru poured more
wine and drank.

“Well, she's exquisite, I admit. It
would be worth it!”

“Lady Shirakawa will be no danger
to me,” Shigeru said, and led Abe on to speak of his exploits during Iida's
campaigns in the East. I listened to his boasting and tried to discern his
weaknesses. I had already decided I was going to kill him.

———«»———«»———«»———

The next day we came to Yamagata.
It had been badly hit by the storm, with many dead and a huge loss of crops.
Nearly as big as Hagi, it had been the second city in the Otori fief, until it
had been handed over to the Tohan. The castle had been rebuilt and given to one
of Iida's vassals. But most of the townspeople still considered themselves
Otori, and Lord Shigeru's presence was one more reason for unrest. Abe had
hoped to be in Inuyama before the Festival of the Dead began, and was angry at
being stuck in Yamagata. It was considered inauspicious to travel, except to
temples and shrines, until the Festival was over.

Shigeru was plunged into sadness,
being for the first time at the place of Takeshi's death. “Every Tohan man I
see, I ask myself. Were you one of them?” he confided in me late that night.
“And I imagine they ask themselves why they are still unpunished, and despise
me for letting them live. I feel like cutting them all down!”

I had never heard him express
anything other than patience. “Then we would never get to Iida,” I replied.
“Every insult the Tohan heap on us will be avenged then.”

“Your scholarly self is becoming
very wise, Takeo,” he said, his voice a little lighter. “Wise and
self-controlled.”

The next day he went with Abe to
the castle to be received by the local lord. He came back sadder and more
disturbed than ever. “The Tohan seek to avert unrest by blaming the Hidden for
the disasters of the storms,” he told me briefly. “A handful of wretched
merchants and farmers were denounced and arrested. Some died under torture.
Four are suspended from the castle walls. They've been there for three days.”

“They're still alive?” I whispered,
my skin crawling.

“They may last a week or more,”
Shigeru said. “In the meantime, the crows eat their living flesh.”

Once I knew they were there, I
could not stop hearing them: at times a quiet groaning, at other times a thin
screaming, accompanied in daylight by the constant cawing and flapping of the
crows. I heard it all that night and the following day, and then it was the
first night of the Festival of the Dead.

The Tohan imposed a curfew on their
towns, but the festival followed older traditions, and the curfew was lifted
until midnight. As night fell we left the inn and joined the crowds of people
going first to the temples and then to the river. All the stone lanterns that
lined the approaches to the shrines were lit, and candles were set on the
tombstones, the flickering lights throwing strange shadows that made bodies
gaunt and faces skull-like. The throng moved steadily and silently as though
the dead themselves had emerged from the earth. It was easy to get lost in it,
easy to slip away from our watchful guards.

It was a warm, still night. I went
with Shigeru to the riverbank, and we set lighted candles adrift in fragile
little boats laden with offerings for the dead. The temple bells were tolling,
and chanting and singing drifted across the slow, brown water. We watched the
lights float away on the current, hoping the dead would be comforted and would
leave the living in peace.

Except that I had no peace in my
heart. I thought of my mother, my stepfather and my sisters, my long-dead
father, the people of Mino. Lord Shigeru no doubt thought of his father, his
brother. It seemed their ghosts would not leave us until they were avenged. All
around us, people were setting their lit boats afloat, weeping and crying, and
making my heart twist with useless sorrow that the world was how it was. The
teaching of the Hidden, such as I remembered, came into my mind, but then I
remembered that all those who had taught it to me were dead.

The candle flames burned for a long
time, growing smaller and smaller, until they looked like fireflies, and then
like sparks, and then like the phantom lights you see when you gaze too long on
flames. The moon was full, with the orange tinge of late summer. I dreaded
going back to the inn, to the stuffy room where I would toss and turn all night
and listen to the Hidden dying against the castle wall.

Bonfires had been lit along the
riverbank, and now people began to dance, the haunting dance that welcomes the
dead, lets them depart, and comforts the living. Drums were beating and music
playing. It lifted my spirits a little and I got to my feet to watch. In the
shadows of the willow trees I saw Kaede.

She was standing with Lady
Maruyama, Sachie, and Shizuka. Shigeru stood up and strolled towards them. Lady
Maruyama approached him, and they greeted each other in cool, formal language,
exchanging sympathy for the dead and commenting on the journey. They turned, as
was perfectly natural, to stand side by side and watch the dancing. But I felt
I could hear the longing beneath their tone, and see it in their stance, and I
was afraid for them. I knew they could dissemble—they had done so for years—but
now they were entering a desperate endgame, and I feared they would throw away
caution before the final move.

Kaede was now alone on the bank,
apart from Shizuka. I seemed to arrive at her side without volition, as though
I had been picked up by spirits and put down next to her. I managed to greet
her politely but diffidently, thinking that if Abe spotted me, he would simply
think I was suffering from calf-love for Shigeru's betrothed. I said something
about the heat, but Kaede was trembling as though she were cold. We stood in
silence for a few moments, then she asked in a low voice, “Who are you
mourning, Lord Takeo?”

“My mother, my father.” After a
pause I went on, “There are so many dead.”

“My mother is dying,” she said. “I
hoped I would see her again, but we have been so delayed on this journey, I
fear I will be too late. I was seven years old when I was sent as a hostage. I
have not seen my mother or my sisters for over half my life.”

“And your father?”

“He is also a stranger to me.”

“Will he be at your . . . ?” To my
surprise my throat dried up, and I found I could not speak the word.

“My marriage?” she said, bitterly.
“No, he will not be there.” Her eyes had been fixed on the light-filled river.
Now she looked past me at the dancers, at the crowd watching them.

“They love each other,” she said,
as though speaking to herself. “That's why she hates me.”

I knew I should not be there, I
should not be talking to her, but I could not make myself move away. I tried to
maintain my gentle, diffident, well-behaved character. “Marriages are made for
reasons of duty and alliance. That does not mean they have to be unhappy. Lord
Otori is a good man.”

“I am tired of hearing that. I know
he is a good man. I am only saying, he will never love me.” I knew her eyes
were on my face. “But I know,” she went on, “that love is not for our class.”

I was the one who was trembling
now. I raised my head, and my eyes met hers.

“So why do I feel it?” she whispered.

I did not dare say anything. The
words I wanted to say swelled up huge in my mouth. I could taste their
sweetness and their power. Again I thought I would die if I did not possess
her.

The drums pounded. The bonfires
blazed. Shizuka spoke out of the darkness. “It's growing late, Lady Shirakawa.”

“I am coming,” Kaede said. “Good
night, Lord Takeo.”

I allowed myself one thing, to
speak her name, as she had spoken mine. “Lady Kaede.”

In the moment before she turned
away, I saw her face come alight, brighter than the flames, brighter than the
moon on the water.

We followed the women slowly back
to the town, and then went to our separate lodging houses. Somewhere on the way
the Tohan guards caught up with us, and we had their escort to the inn door.
They stayed outside and one of our own Otori men kept watch in the passageway.

“Tomorrow we will ride to
Terayama,” Shigeru said as we prepared for bed. “I must visit Takeshi's grave
and pay my respects to the abbot, who was an old friend of my father's. I have
some gifts for him from Hagi.”

We had brought with us many gifts.
The packhorses had been laden with them, along with our own baggage, clothes
for the wedding, food for the journey. I did not think anything more of the
wooden box that we would carry to Terayama, or what it might contain. I was
restless with other longings, other concerns.

The room was as stuffy as I'd
feared. I could not sleep. I heard the temple bells toll at midnight, and then
all sounds faded away under the curfew, apart from the pitiful groans of the
dying from the castle walls.

In the end I got up. I had no real
plan in my head. I was just driven into action by sleeplessness. Both Kenji and
Shigeru were asleep, and I could tell that the guard outside was dozing. I took
the watertight box in which Kenji kept capsules of poison, and tied it inside
my undergarment. I dressed in dark traveling clothes and took the short sword,
thin garrotes, a pair of grapples, and a rope from their hiding place within
the wooden chests. Each of these movements took a long time, as I had to
execute them in complete silence, but time is different for the Tribe, slowing
down or speeding up as we will it to. I was in no hurry, and I knew the two men
in the room would not wake.

The guard stirred as I stepped past
him. I went to the privy to relieve myself, and sent my second self back past
him into the room. I waited in the shadows until he dozed again, then went
invisible, scaled the roof from the inner courtyard, and dropped down into the
street.

I could hear the Tohan guards at
the gate of the inn, and I knew there would be patrols in the streets. With one
part of my mind I was aware that what I was doing was dangerous to the point of
madness, but I could not help myself. Partly I wanted to test the skills Kenji
had taught me before we got to Inuyama, but mostly I just wanted to silence the
groans from the castle so that I could go to sleep.

I worked my way through the narrow
streets, zigzagging towards the castle. A few houses still had lights behind
the shutters, but most were already in darkness. I caught snatches of
conversation as I went past: a man comforting a weeping woman, a child babbling
as if in fever, a lullaby, a drunken argument. I came out onto the main road
that led straight to the moat and the bridge. A canal ran alongside it, stocked
against siege with carp. Mostly they slept, their scales shining faintly in the
moonlight. Every now and then one would wake with a sudden flip and splash. I
wondered if they dreamed.

I went from doorway to doorway,
ears alert all the time for the tread of feet, the clink of steel. I was not
particularly worried about the patrols: I knew I would hear them long before
they heard me, and above that, I had the skills of invisibility and the second
self. By the time I reached the end of the street and saw the waters of the
moat under the moonlight, I had stopped thinking much at all, beyond a
satisfaction deep within me that I was Kikuta and doing what I was born to do.
Only the Tribe know this feeling.

On the town side of the moat there
was a clump of willow trees, their heavy summer foliage falling right to the
water. For defensive purposes they should have been cleared: Maybe some
resident of the castle, the lord's wife or mother, loved their beauty. Under
the moonlight their branches looked frozen. There was no wind at all. I slipped
between them, crouched down, and looked at the castle for a long time.

It was bigger than the castles at
either Tsuwano or Hagi, but the construction was similar. I could see the faint
outline of the baskets against the white walls of the keep behind the second
south gate. I had to swim the moat, scale the stone wall, get over the first
gate and across the south bailey, climb the second gate and the keep, and climb
down to the baskets from above.

I heard footsteps and shrank into
the earth. A troop of guards was approaching the bridge. Another patrol came
from the castle, and they exchanged a few words.

“Any problems?”

“Just the usual curfew breakers.”

“Terrible stink!”

“It'll be worse tomorrow. Hotter.”

One group went into the town; the
other walked over the bridge and up the steps to the gate. I heard the shout
that challenged them, and their reply. The gate creaked as it was unbarred and
opened. I heard it slam shut and the footsteps fade away.