Musashi: Bushido Code (106 page)

Pausing to suck in the spit, he raised his thin shoulders even higher and with a gleam in his eyes declared, "We already have all the good swords there'll ever be. During the civil wars, the swordsmiths got careless—no, downright sloppy! They forgot their techniques, and swords have been deteriorating ever since.

"The only thing to do is to take better care of the swords from the earlier periods. The craftsmen today may try to imitate the older swords, but they'll never turn out anything as good. Doesn't it make you angry to think about it?"

Abruptly he stood up and said, "Just look at this." Bringing out a sword of awesome length, he laid it down for his guest to inspect. "It's a splendid weapon, but it's covered with the worst kind of rust."

Musashi's heart skipped a beat. The sword was without doubt Sasaki Kojirō's Drying Pole. A flood of memories came rushing back.

Controlling his emotions, he said calmly, "That's really a long one, isn't it? Must take quite a samurai to handle it."

"I imagine so," agreed Kōsuke. "There aren't many like it." Taking the blade out, he turned the back toward Musashi and handed it to him by the hilt. "See," he said. "It's rusted badly—here and here and here. But he's used it anyway."

"I see."

"This is a rare piece of workmanship, probably forged in the Kamakura period. It'll take a lot of work, but I can probably fix it up. On these ancient swords, the rust is only a relatively thin film. If this were a new blade, I'd never be able to get the stains off. On new swords, rust spots are like malignant sores; they eat right into the heart of the metal."

Reversing the sword's position so that the back of the blade was toward Kōsuke, Musashi said, "Tell me, did the owner of this sword bring it in himself?"

"No. I was at Lord Hosokawa's on business, and one of the older retainers, Iwama Kakubei, asked me to drop in at his house on the way back. I did, and he gave it to me to work on. Said it belonged to a guest of his."

"The fittings are good too," remarked Musashi, his eyes still focused on the weapon.

"It's a battle sword. The man's been carrying it on his back up till now, but he wants to carry it at his side, so I've been asked to refit the scabbard. He must be a very large man. Either that or he has a very practiced arm."

Kōsuke had begun to feel his sake. His tongue was becoming a little thick. Musashi concluded it was time to take his leave, which he did with a minimum of ceremony.

It was much later than he thought. There were no lights in the neighborhood.

Once inside the inn, he groped through the darkness to the stairway and up to the second floor. Two pallets had been spread, but both were empty. Iori's absence made him uncomfortable, for he suspected the boy was wandering about lost on the streets of this great unfamiliar city.

Going back downstairs, he shook the night watchman awake. "Isn't he back yet?" asked the man, who seemed more surprised than Musashi. "I thought he was with you."

Knowing he would only stare at the ceiling until Iori came back, Musashi went out into the black-lacquer night again and stood with arms crossed under the eaves.

The Fox

"Is this Kobikichō?"

In spite of repeated assurances that it was, Iori still had his doubts. The only lights visible on the broad expanse of land belonged to the makeshift huts of woodworkers and stonemasons, and these were few and far between. Beyond them, in the distance, he could just make out the foaming white waves of the bay.

Near the river were piles of rocks and stacks of lumber, and although Iori knew that buildings were going up at a furious pace all over Edo, it struck him as unlikely that Lord Yagyū would build his residence in an area like this.

"Where to next?" he thought dejectedly as he sat down on some lumber. His feet were tired and burning. To cool them he wiggled his toes in the dewy grass. Soon his tension ebbed away and the sweat dried, but his spirits remained decidedly damp.

"It's all the fault of that old woman at the inn," he muttered to himself. "She didn't know what she was talking about." The time he himself had spent gawking at the sights in the theater district at Sakaichō conveniently slipped his mind.

The hour was late, and there was no one around from whom he could ask directions. Yet the idea of spending the night in these unfamiliar surroundings made him uneasy. He had to complete his errand and return to the inn before daybreak, even if it meant waking up one of the workers.

As he approached the nearest shack where a light showed, he saw a woman with a strip of matting tied over her head like a shawl.

"Good evening, auntie," he said innocently.

Mistaking him for the helper at a nearby sake shop, the woman glared and sniffed, "You, is it? You threw a rock at me and ran away, didn't you, you little brat?"

"Not me," protested Iori. "I've never seen you before!"

The woman came hesitantly toward him, then burst out laughing. "No," she said, "you're not the one. What's a cute little boy like you doing wandering around here at this time of night?"

"I was sent on an errand, but I can't find the house I'm looking for." "Whose house is it?"

"Lord Yagyū of Tajima's."

"Are you joking?" She laughed. "Lord Yagyū is a daimyō, and a teacher to the shōgun. Do you think he'd open his gate to
you?"
She laughed again. "You know somebody in the servants' quarters perhaps?"

"I've brought a letter."

"Who to?"

"A samurai named Kimura Sukekurō."

"Must be one of his retainers. But you, you're so funny—throwing Lord Yagyū's name around like you knew him."

"I just want to deliver this letter. If you know where the house is, tell me."

"It's on the other side of the moat. If you cross that bridge over there, you'll be in front of Lord Kii's house. The next one is Lord Kyōgoku, then Lord Katō, then Lord Matsudaira of Suō." Holding up her fingers, she counted off the sturdy storehouses on the opposite bank. "I'm sure the one after that is the one you want."

"If I cross the moat, will I still be in Kobikichō?"

"Of course."

"Of all the stupid—"

"Here now, that's no way to talk. Hmm, you seem such a nice boy, I'll come along and show you Lord Yagyū's place."

Walking in front of him with the matting on her head, she looked to Iori rather like a ghost.

They were in the middle of the bridge when a man coming toward them brushed against her sleeve and whistled. He reeked of sake. Before Iori knew what was going on, the woman turned and made for the drunk. "I know you," she warbled. "Don't just pass me by like that. It isn't nice." She grabbed his sleeve and started toward a place from which they could go below the bridge.

"Let go," he said.

"Wouldn't you like to go with me?"

"No money."

"Oh, I don't care." Latching on to him like a leech, she looked back at Iori's startled face and said, "Run along now. I've got business with this gentleman."

Iori watched in bewilderment as the two of them tugged back and forth. After a few moments, the woman appeared to get the upper hand, and they disappeared below the bridge. Still puzzled, Iori went to the railing and looked over at the grassy riverbank.

Glancing up, the woman shouted, "Nitwit!" and picked up a rock.

Swallowing hard, Iori dodged the missile and made for, the far end of the bridge. In all his years on the barren plain of Hōtengahara, he had never seen anything so frightening as the woman's angry white face in the dark.

On the other side of the river, he found himself before a storehouse. Next to that was a fence, then another storehouse, then another fence, and so on down the street. "This must be it," he said when he came to the fifth building. On the gleaming white plaster wall was a crest in the form of a two-tiered woman's hat. This, Iori knew from the words of a popular song, was the Yagyū family crest.

"Who's there?" demanded a voice from inside the gate.

Speaking as loudly as he dared, Iori announced, "I'm the pupil of Miyamoto Musashi. I've brought a letter."

The sentry said a few words Iori could not catch. In the gate was a small door, through which people could be let in and out without opening the great gate itself. After a few seconds, the door slowly opened, and the man asked suspiciously, "What are you doing here at this hour?"

Iori thrust the letter at the guard's face. "Please deliver this for me. If there's an answer, I'll take it back."

"Hmm," mused the man, taking the letter. "This is for Kimura Sukekurō, is it?"

"Yes, sir."

"He's not here."

"Where is he?"

"He's at the house in Higakubo."

"Huh? Everybody told me Lord Yagyū's house was in Kobikichō."

"People say that, but there're only storehouses here—rice, lumber and a few other things."

"Lord Yagyū doesn't live here?"

"That's right."

"How far is it to the other place—Higakubo?"

"Pretty far."

"Just where is it?"

"In the hills outside the city, in Azabu Village."

"Never heard of it." Iori sighed disappointedly, but his sense of responsibility prevented him from giving up. "Sir, would you draw me a map?"

"Don't be silly. Even if you knew the way, it'd take you all night to get there."

"I don't mind."

"Lot of foxes in Azabu. You don't want to be bewitched by a fox, do you?"

"No."

"Do you know Sukekurō well?"

"My teacher does."

"I'll tell you what. Since it's so late, why don't you catch some sleep over there in the granary, and go in the morning?"

"Where am I?" exclaimed Iori, rubbing his eyes. He jumped up and ran outside. The afternoon sun made him dizzy. Squinting his eyes against the glare, he went to the gatehouse, where the guard was eating his lunch.

"So you're finally up."

"Yes, sir. Could you draw me that map now?"

"You in a hurry, Sleepyhead? Here, you'd better have something to eat first. There's enough for both of us."

While the boy chewed and gulped, the guard sketched a rough map and explained how to get to Higakubo. They finished simultaneously, and Iori, fired up with the importance of his mission, set off at a run, never thinking that Musashi might be worried about his failure to return to the inn.

He made good time through the busy thoroughfares until he reached the vicinity of Edo Castle, where the imposing houses of the leading daimyō stood on the land built up between the crisscross system of moats. As he looked around, his pace slowed. The waterways were jammed with cargo boats. The stone ramparts of the castle itself were half covered with log scaffolding, which from a distance resembled the bamboo trellises used for growing morning glories.

He dawdled again in a broad, flat area called Hibiya, where the scraping of chisels and the thud of axes raised a dissonant hymn to the power of the new shogunate.

Iori stopped. He was mesmerized by the spectacle of the construction work: the laborers hauling huge rocks, the carpenters with their planes and saws and the samurai, the dashing samurai, who stood proudly supervising it all. How he wanted to grow up and be like them!

A lusty song rose from the throats of the men hauling rocks:

We'll pluck the flowers

In the fields of Musashi—

The gentians, the bellflowers,

Wild blossoms splashed

In confusing disarray.

And that lovely girl,

The flower unpluckable,

Moistened by the dew—

'Twill only dampen your sleeve, like falling tears.

He stood enchanted. Before he realized it, the water in the moats was taking on a reddish cast and the evening voices of crows reached his ears.

"Oh, no, it's nearly sundown," he chastised himself. He sped away and for a time moved along at full speed, paying attention to nothing save the map the guard had drawn for him. Before he knew it, he was climbing the path up Azabu Hill, which was so thickly overhung with trees it might as well have been midnight. Once he reached the top, however, he could see the sun was still in the sky, though low on the horizon.

There were almost no houses on the hill itself, Azabu Village being a mere scattering of fields and farm dwellings in the valley below. Standing in a sea of grass and ancient trees, listening to the brooks gurgling down the hillside, Iori felt his fatigue give way to a strange refreshment. He was vaguely aware that the spot where he was standing was historic, although he didn't know why. In fact it was the very place that had given birth to the great warrior clans of the past, both the Taira and the Minamoto.

He heard the loud booming of a drum being beaten, the kind often used at Shinto festivals. Down the hill, visible in the forest, were the sturdy cross-logs atop the ridgepole of a religious sanctuary. Had Iori but known, it was the Great Shrine of Iigura he'd studied about, the famous edifice sacred to the sun goddess of Ise.

The shrine was a far cry from the enormous castle he had just seen, even from the stately gates of the daimyō. In its simplicity it was almost indistinguishable from the farmhouses around it, and Iori thought it puzzling that people talked more reverently about the Tokugawa family than they did about the most sacred of deities. Did that mean the Tokugawas were greater than the sun goddess? he wondered. "I'll have to ask Musashi about that when I get back."

Taking out his map, he pored over it, looked about him and stared at it again. Still there was no sign of the Yagyū mansion.

The evening mist spreading over the ground gave him an eerie feeling. He'd felt something similar before, when in a room with the shoji shut the setting sun's light played on the rice paper so that the interior seemed to grow lighter as the outside darkened. Of course, such a twilight illusion is just that, but he felt it so strongly, in several flashes, that he rubbed his eyes as if to erase his light-headedness. He knew he wasn't dreaming and looked around suspiciously.

"Why, you sneaky bastard," he cried, jumping forward and whipping out his sword. In the same motion he cut through a clump of tall grass in front of him.

With a yelp of pain, a fox leapt from its hiding place and streaked off, its tail glistening with blood from a cut on its hindquarters.

"Devilish beast!" Iori set off in hot pursuit, and though the fox was fast, Iori was too. When the limping creature stumbled, Iori lunged, confident of victory. The fox, however, slipped nimbly away, to surge ahead several yards, and no matter how fast Iori attacked, the animal managed to get away each time.

On his mother's knee, Iori had heard countless tales proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that foxes had the power to bewitch and possess human beings. He was fond of most other animals, even wild boar and noisome possums, but foxes he hated. He was also afraid of them. To his way of thinking, coming across this wily creature lurking in the grass could mean only one thing—it was to blame for his not finding his way. He was convinced it was a treacherous and evil being that had been following him since the night before and had, just moments before, cast its malevolent spell over him. If he didn't slay it now, it was sure to hex him again. Iori was prepared to pursue his quarry to the end of the earth, but the fox, bounding over the edge of a drop, was lost to sight in a thicket.

Dew glistened on the flowers of the dog nettle and spiderwort. Exhausted and parched, Iori sank down and licked the moisture from a mint leaf. Shoulders heaving, he finally caught his breath, whereupon sweat poured copiously from his forehead. His heart thumped violently. "Where did it go?" he asked, his voice halfway between a scream and a choke.

If the fox had really gone, so much the better, but Iori didn't know what to believe. Since he had injured the animal, he felt it was certain to take revenge, one way or another. Resigning himself, he sat still and waited.

Just as he was beginning to feel calmer, an eerie sound floated to his ears. Wide-eyed, he looked around. "It's the fox, for sure," he said, steeling himself against being bewitched. Rising quickly, he moistened his eyebrows with saliva—a trick thought to ward off the influence of foxes.

A short distance away, a woman came floating through the evening mist, her face half hidden by a veil of silk gauze. She was riding a horse sidesaddle, the reins lying loosely across the low pommel. The saddle was made of lacquered wood with mother-of-pearl inlay.

"It's changed into a woman," thought Iori. This vision in a veil, playing a flute and silhouetted against the thin rays of the evening sun, could by no stretch of the imagination be a creature of this world.