Brilliance of the Moon (16 page)

He broke off a piece of fish and gave it to the child. Holding it
in his fist, the boy stared at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and sticky, his
face filthy and streaked with tears. He suddenly gave me a small, wavering
smile.

“As I told you, my wife inherited this domain from Lady Maruyama.
I swear to you we will clear it of all bandits and make it safe for you. I knew
Terada’s son in Hagi and I need to speak to him.”

“There’s one man who may help you. He has no children, and I’ve
heard he’s been to Oshima. I’ll try to find him. Go to the shrine. The priests
ran away, so there’s no one there, but you can use the buildings and leave your
horses and men there. If he’s willing to take you, he’ll come to you tonight.
It’s half a day’s sailing to Oshima, and you’ll need to leave on the high
tide—morning or evening, I’ll leave that to him.”

“You won’t regret helping us,” I said.

For the first time a smile flickered across his face. “Your
Lordship may regret it once you get to Oshima.”

I stood and began to walk away. I’d gone no more than ten paces
when he called to me, “Sir! Lord Otori!”

When I turned he ran to me, the child toddling after him, still
sucking on the fish. He said awkwardly, “You will kill, then?”

“Yes,” I said, “I have killed and I will kill again, even if I am
damned for it.”

“May He have mercy on you,” he whispered.

The sun was setting in a blaze of vermilion, and long shadows lay
across the black shingle. Seabirds called in harsh mournful voices like lost
souls. The waves sucked and dragged at the stones with a heavy sighing.

The shrine buildings were decaying, the timbers coated in lichen,
rotting away beneath the moss-covered trees, which had been twisted into
grotesque shapes by the north winds of winter. Now, though, the night was
windless, oppressive, and still, the sighing of the waves echoed by the shrill
of cicadas and the whine of mosquitoes. We let the horses graze in the unkempt
garden and drink from the ponds. These were empty of fish, which had all been
eaten long since; a solitary frog croaked forlornly and occasionally owls
hooted.

Jiro made a fire, burning green wood to keep the insects away,
and we ate a little of the food we’d brought with us, rationing ourselves since
we obviously would not find anything to eat here. I told the men to sleep
first; we would wake them at midnight. I could hear their voices whispering for
a while and then their breathing became even.

“If this man doesn’t show up tonight, what then?” Makoto asked.

“I believe he will come,” I replied.

Jiro was silent by the fire, his head rolling forward as he
fought sleep.

“Lie down,” Makoto told him, and when the boy had fallen into the
sudden slumber of his age, he said quietly to me, “What did you say to tame the
fisherman?”

“I fed his child,” I replied. “Sometimes that’s enough.”

“It was more than that. He was listening to you as though you
spoke the same language.”

I shrugged. “We’ll see if this other fellow turns up.”

Makoto said, “It is the same with the outcast. He dares approach
you as if he has some claim on you, and speaks to you almost as an equal. I
wanted to kill him for his insolence at the river, but you listened to him and
he to you.“

“Jo-An saved my life on the road to Terayama.”

“You even know his name,” Makoto said. “I have never known an
outcast by name in my entire life.”

My eyes were stinging from the smoky fire. I did not reply. I had
never told Makoto that I’d been born into the Hidden and raised by them. I had
told Kaede but no one else. It was something I’d been brought up never to speak
of and maybe the only teaching I still obeyed.

“You’ve talked about your father,” Makoto said. “I know he was of
mixed Tribe and Otori blood. But you never mention your mother. Who was she?”

“She was a peasant woman from Mino. It’s a tiny village in the
mountains on the other side of Inuyama, almost on the borders of the Three
Countries. No one’s ever heard of it. Perhaps that’s why I have a strong bond
with outcasts and fishermen.”

I tried to speak lightly. I did not want to think about my
mother. I had traveled so far from my life with her, and from the beliefs I had
been raised in, that when I did think of her it made me uneasy. Not only had I
survived when all my people had died, but I no longer believed in what they had
died for. I had other goals now—other, far more pressing concerns.

“Was? She’s no longer alive?”

In the silent, neglected garden, the fire smoking, the sea
sighing, a tension grew between us. He wanted to know my deepest secrets; I
wanted to open my heart to him. Now that everyone else slept and only we were
awake in this eerie place, maybe desire also crept in. I was always aware of
his love for me; it was something I had come to count on, like the loyalty of
the Miyoshi brothers, like my love for Kaede. Makoto was a constant in my
world. I needed him. Our relationship might have changed since the night he had
comforted me at Terayama, but at this moment I remembered how lonely and
vulnerable I had been after Shigeru’s death, how I had felt I could tell him
anything.

The fire had died down so I could barely see his face, but I was
aware of his eyes on me. I wondered what he suspected; it seemed so obvious to
me that I thought at any moment he would come out with it himself. I said, “My
mother was one of the Hidden. I was brought up in their beliefs. She and all my
family, as far as I know, were massacred by the Tohan. Shigeru rescued me.
Jo-An and this fisherman are also from the Hidden. We… recognize each other.”

He said nothing. I went on: “I’m trusting you to tell no one.”

“Did our abbot
know?”

“He never mentioned it to me, but Shigeru may have told him.
Anyway, I am no longer a believer. I’ve broken all the commandments,
particularly the commandment not to kill.”

“Of course I will never repeat it. It would do you irreparable
harm among the warrior class. Most of them thought Iida was justified in his
persecution of them, and not a few emulated him. It explains many things about
you that I did not understand.”

“You, as a warrior and a monk, a follower of the Enlightened One,
must hate the Hidden.”

“Not hate so much as feel baffled by their mysterious beliefs. I
know so little about them, and what I do know is probably distorted. Maybe one
day we’ll discuss it when we are at peace.”

I heard in his voice an effort to be rational, not to hurt me.
“The main thing I learned from my mother was compassion,” I said. “Compassion
and an aversion to cruelty. But my teaching since then has all been to
eradicate compassion and reinforce ruthlessness.”

“These are the requirements of government and war,” he replied.
“That is the path fate leads us along. At the temple we are also taught not to
kill, but only saints at the end of their active life can aspire to that. To
fight to defend yourself, to avenge your lord, or to bring justice and peace is
no sin.“

“So Shigeru taught me.”

There was a moment of silence when I thought he would reach out
to me. To be honest, I would not have recoiled. I felt a sudden longing to lie
down and be held by someone. I might even have made the slightest of movements
toward him. But he was the one who withdrew. Rising to his feet, he said, “Get
some sleep. I’ll watch for a while and wake the men shortly.”

I stayed close to the fire to keep the mosquitoes away, but they
still whined around my head. The sea continued its ceaseless surge and ebb on
the shingle. I was uneasy about what I had revealed, about my own
faithlessness, and about what Makoto would now think of me. Childishly, I would
have liked him to reassure me that it made no difference. I wanted Kaede. I
feared I would disappear into the dragon’s lair at Oshima and never see her
again.

Sleep finally came. For the first time since my mother’s death I
dreamed vividly of her. She stood in front of me, outside our house in Mino. I could smell food cooking and heard the chink of the ax as my stepfather cut
firewood. In the dream I felt a rush of joy and relief that they were after all
still alive. But there was a scrabbling noise at my feet and I could feel
something crawling over me. My mother looked down with empty, surprised eyes. I
wanted to see what she was looking at and followed her gaze. The ground was a
black, heaving mass of crabs, their shells ripped from their backs. Then the
screaming began, the sound I’d heard from another shrine, a lifetime away, as a
man was torn apart by the Tohan.

I knew the crabs were going to tear me apart as I had torn the
shells from them.

I woke up in horror, sweating. Makoto was kneeling beside me. “A
man has come,” he said. “He will speak only to you.”

The feeling of dread was heavy on me. I did not want to go with
this stranger to Oshima. I wanted to return at once to Maruyama, to Kaede. I
wished I could send someone else on what was most likely a fool’s errand. But
anyone else would probably be killed by the pirates before any message could be
delivered. Having come this far, having been sent this man who would take me to
Oshima and the Terada, I could not turn back.

The man was kneeling behind Makoto. I was unable to see much of
him in the dark. He apologized for not coming earlier, but the tide was not
right until the second half of the Hour of the Ox, and with the moon nearly
full he thought I would prefer to go at night rather than wait for the
afternoon tide. He seemed younger than the fisherman who’d sent him to me, and
his speech was more refined and better educated, making him hard to place.

Makoto wanted to send at least one of the men with me, but my
guide refused to take anyone else, saying his boat was too small. I offered to
give him the silver before we left, but he laughed and said there was no point
handing it over to the pirates so easily; he would take it when we returned,
and if we did not return, someone else would come for it.

“If Lord Otori does not return, there will be no payment but the
blade,” Makoto said grimly.

“But if I die, my dependents deserve some compensation,” he
returned. “These are my conditions.”

I agreed to them, overriding Makoto’s misgivings. I wanted to get
moving, to shake off the dread left by the dream. My horse, Shun, whickered to
me as I left with the man. I’d charged Makoto to look after him with his life.
I took Jato with me and, as usual, hidden under my clothes the weapons of the
Tribe.

The boat was pulled up just above the high-water mark. We did not
speak as we went to it. I helped him drag it into the water and jumped in. He
pushed it farther out and then leaped in himself, sculling from the stern with
the single oar. Later I took the oar while he hoisted a small square sail made
of straw. It gleamed yellow in the moonlight, and amulets attached to the mast
jingled in the offshore wind, which, together with the flow of the tide, would
carry us to the island.

It was a brilliant night, the moon almost full throwing a silver
track across the unruffled sea. The boat sang its song of wind and wave, the
same song I remembered from the boats I’d been in with Fu-mio in Hagi.
Something of the freedom and the illicit excitement of those nights came back
to me now, dispelling the net of dread that the dream had caught me in.

Now I could see the young man standing at the end of the boat
quite clearly. His features looked vaguely familiar; yet I did not think we had
ever met before.

“What’s your name?”

“Ryoma, sir.”

“No other name?”

He shook his head and I thought he was not going to say any more.
Well, he was taking me to Oshima; he did not have to talk to me as well. I
yawned and pulled my robe closer round me. I thought I might as well sleep for
a while.

Ryoma said, “If I had another name, it would be the same as
yours.”

My eyes snapped open and my hand went to Jato, for my first
thought was that he meant Kikuta—that he was another of their assassins. But he
did not move from the stern of the boat and went on calmly but with a trace of
bitterness. “By rights I should be able to call myself Otori, but I have never
been recognized by my father.”

His story was a common enough one. His mother had been a maid at Hagi Castle, twenty years or so earlier. She had attracted the attention of the youngest
Otori lord, Masahiro. When her pregnancy had been discovered, he claimed she
was a prostitute and the child could be anyone’s. Her family had no alternative
but to sell her into prostitution; she became what she had been called and lost
all chance of her son ever being recognized. Masahiro had plenty of legitimate
sons and had no interest in any others.

“Yet people say I resemble him,” he said. By now the stars had
faded and the sky had paled. Day was breaking with a fiery sunrise as red as
the previous night’s sunset. I realized, now that I could see him properly, why
he’d looked familiar. He had the Otori stamp on his features just as I did,
marred like his father’s by a slightly receding chin and cowed eyes.

“There is a likeness,” I said. “So we are cousins.”