The Ends of the Earth (39 page)

‘You asked why the castle is called Zangai-jo,’ said Junzaburo. ‘It is because Tomura’s ancestors were even more brutal than he is. The most brutal of them all was his grandfather’s father, Tomura Munetada. I heard the story from the old man who told me of this tunnel. Munetada would not allow the family of anyone he punished with death to bury the body. It was left to rot where it lay, beneath the wall of the castle, on the mountainside.
Zangai
is a body that has lost its form.
Zangai
is what his victims became.

‘The fear of ending like that bound men to Tomura Munetada. And the memory of it – never spoken of among us, but known,
always
known – bound men like me to Tomura Iwazu. Fear, Max. Pure fear, distilled like a potion. It is how he governed us. It is how he governs still.

‘There are things I did – so many things – that shame me. If the brother of one of the women I tricked into boarding Tomura’s brothel-ships held a knife to my throat, I would say, “Kill me if you wish; I deserve to die.” I remember the face of one of the women so clearly. She could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen. And so beautiful. So very beautiful. I told her she could earn seven yen a month as a barmaid in Hong Kong – riches to her. I saw trust and hope in her eyes. I loaded her on to a ship at Kagoshima that night. She soon must have realized she wasn’t going to Hong Kong but to one of our …
jinniku no ichi
– whore-markets, as they were called.

‘I am glad it is dark so you cannot see my face as I tell you this. And there is worse I could tell you. If I could force the words from my mouth.’

‘You don’t owe me a confession, Junzaburo,’ said Max, to break the silence that followed.

‘Not you, no. But the girl. I owe it to her. She is dead, probably. One of Tomura’s
zangai
. Out there somewhere. In Korea. Or Manchuria. Forgotten, except by those who loved her.’

‘You walked away from it. You renounced that life.’

‘Yes. But it did not renounce me.’

‘What kind of difficulties am I likely to encounter inside the castle?’ Max asked, eager to lure his companion away from guilt-laden melancholy.

‘Difficulties?’ Junzaburo savoured the word. ‘I would not call them that, exactly. But what are they? They are many, Max. They are many.’

‘Any information you can give me would help.’

‘
Hai, hai.
Information. The tunnel enters the castle at the first floor level below ground.
Uchi-gawa
is on the second level below ground. There is a passage you will have to walk along from the point where you enter. It has one turn in it. Then you will reach the stairs to the lower level. Those stairs may be guarded. At the bottom, there is another passage – no turn – leading to the door into
Uchi-gawa
. I have seen the door once only. It is barred so that no one can come out without knocking for the guard to open. Going
in
is easier, if the guard is not there or can be distracted.

‘The corridor leading to
Uchi-gawa
, to the right from the bottom of the stairs, has a nightingale floor. It was made so that the nails squeak – like a bird calling – when walked on. It can only be defeated by shuffling, so your weight on the boards is always the same. That means you must move very slowly.

‘Within
Uchi-gawa
, where I have never been, I suspect there are false turnings, trap-doors and other snares. The guards will be armed with guns as well as swords. I do not see how you can get past them. If Tomura knows what you intend, they will be more watchful than usual. Of course, Tomura does not know that you know of this tunnel. Approach from this direction will not be expected. Still, for one man – you, a European, with no Ninja training – to enter and leave with the prisoner of Zangai-jo? It is …’

‘Impossible?’

‘Yes. I should say it is impossible. But it is impossible also for a son to abandon his mother. So, you are here. She is there. Closer to you than she has been since the day you were carried from her. You cannot succeed. You know that, of course. But you cannot turn away. You may be able to enter. You will not be able to leave. You understand this?’

‘I understand I have to try.’

‘Then I must help you.’

‘To get into the castle. That’s all. I promised Chiyoko I wouldn’t put your life at risk.’

‘My life is not yours to promise.’

‘I already have too many deaths on my conscience, Junzaburo. I don’t want to add yours.’

‘You are thinking of the friend who should have been with you tonight?’

Max was. Le Singe had saved his life twice and then lost his. His unspoken words – ‘
I have done what I can for you
’ – echoed in Max’s mind. His smile formed anew in the darkness in front of him. ‘Which is more important to you?’ Junzaburo asked. ‘To see your mother? Or to rescue her?’

‘I intend to do both.’

‘But if you can do only one?’

‘I’ll let fortune make the choice.’

‘I cannot kill anyone. I cannot hurt anyone. I am pledged to that. You understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘If I could help you enter
Uchi-gawa
without causing you to break your promise to Chiyoko and without raising my hand against another man? What would you say to that?’

‘I’d say: how?’

‘
Kasai
. That is the answer. Fire.’

SLEEP IN THE
tunnel was a chilly, fitful thing. Max moved between wakefulness and shallow, troubling dreams, of le Singe and his father and Corinne Dombreux. There was neither pattern nor meaning to the dreams, only uneasy familiarity. He was relieved when Junzaburo roused him with the announcement that it was time for them to move.

They walked for a while along the slowly curving, gently descending tunnel, carved out three centuries before to save the Tomuras from their enemies. Eventually, the light from their torches showed the end ahead of them: a solid stone wall.

As they drew closer, Max saw the outline of some form of door in the wall, constructed of the same stone. It was low and arched and fitted with neither handle nor hinges.

‘I hope this is what you were expecting,’ he said.

‘It is what the old man told me to expect,’ said Junzaburo.

He knelt in front of the door and began pressing his hands against it, working his way methodically down and across the surface. Max could do nothing but watch.

A barely audible scraping noise signalled Junzaburo’s success. The door opened by an inch or so, swivelling at the centre, so that one side moved towards them as the other moved away.

Junzaburo sat back on his haunches and looked up at Max. ‘Are you sure you want to go on? It is still possible to turn back.’

‘You know I’m not going to do that.’

‘I do.’

Junzaburo stood up then, took a small wooden hairpin from his pocket and dropped it into Max’s pocket.

‘What’s that for?’ Max asked suspiciously.

‘Invisibility. It was carved during an eclipse. It holds the darkness and makes it hard for your enemies to see you.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’

‘If you do not believe it, they will see you better than if you do not carry it.’

Max felt the force of Junzaburo’s conviction. He could not have explained why, but, in that moment, as they stood together in the torchlight, belief in such a talisman did not seem absurd. ‘I’ll carry it,’ he said.

Junzaburo nodded in acknowledgement. Then he pushed the door further open and Max followed him through.

Beyond lay a cramped, low-ceilinged chamber, boarded and panelled in wood. It appeared to be empty. But Junzaburo cast the light of his torch across the floor, looking for something. And soon enough he found it: a spy-hole into the room below. He slid back the cover and peered down through it.

‘No one is there, I think,’ he announced. ‘Stand here.’ He waved Max forward, then moved to the wall on his left and pressed one of the floorboards.

There was a click and a length of the floor slid downwards, revealing itself as a narrow ramp, ridged to supply footholds. Junzaburo lowered it by a rope to form a stairway.

‘We should move fast now,’ he murmured, leading the way down the stairs. Max scrambled after him.

They were in the passage Junzaburo had described to Max the night before, in the basement of the castle. A distant glimmer of lamplight gave shadowy form to the walls and floor. The lamp itself was out of sight, beyond the turn in the passage Junzaburo had mentioned.

Max helped him push the stairway back up into the ceiling, where it clicked into place. From below, it looked no different from the other stretch of boarding between the supporting beams.

‘You must push it up to open,’ Junzaburo whispered urgently. ‘At this end. See?’

‘Yes.’

‘Direct above this spot. Count your paces from here to the turn. So that you can find your way back when you leave. Now follow me.’

They extinguished their torches and moved cautiously along the passage. Max counted his paces carefully as he went. They stopped where it took a right-angled turn and Junzaburo peered round the corner.

‘The light is from a lantern above the stairs,’ he reported. ‘No guard there. But there will be one guard at least at the door to
Uchi-gawa
. That is certain. Go down and hide under the stairs. Remember the nightingale floor. I will set a fire at the top. Then I will go back to the tunnel. The guard will come when they smell burning. That will be your chance. Kill no one if you can avoid it. It is better always not to be seen.’

‘And I’m invisible, of course.’

‘I see you, Max. You see me. Now we part. That is all.’

‘Shake my hand.’

‘If you wish it.’

Junzaburo followed the handshake with a bow. No other word was spoken between them. Max stepped round the corner and headed for the stairs.

They were wide, with open treads, leading down to the passage that led to the Inside. He was near his goal now. He took each step carefully, keeping close to the wall to avoid causing creaks.

At the bottom, he set his feet down with painful caution. There was no bird-call. He shuffled slowly round the newel-post and into the deep shadow beneath the stairs, avoiding the bars of light from the lantern.

A single squeak betrayed him then, for all his care. He froze. But almost in the same moment he heard a crackle of something tindery above him. The fire had been lit.

The crackle became quickly noisier. There was a flickering shadow of flame cast down the stairs. Suddenly, there was a burst of squeaking and the sound of running feet. A darkly clad figure appeared from the direction of the Inside. He hesitated at the foot of the stairs and looked up, then shouted, ‘
Kaji da!
’, and began bounding up them. Another darkly clad figure appeared from the same direction and raced up after him.

This was Max’s chance. There would surely not be more than two guards on the door. And in the commotion, he did not need to worry about the nightingale floor. He emerged from his hiding-place.

As he did so, a third guard loomed out of the shadows from a different direction. They almost collided. But the man did not seem to see Max. He bounded past him and up the stairs. And only then did Max realize his hand was in his pocket, his fingers closed round the hairpin. He shook his head in wonderment.

Then he started along the passage at a run, the tell-tale bird-calls drowned out by the shouts and thumps above and behind him.

It was not far to the door, illuminated by a lantern. It was in fact more of a gate: a pair of high wooden doors sealed by a stout locking bar.

Max needed all his strength to raise one end of the bar over a retaining bracket. Then it slid across smoothly, clearing one door. Max turned the handle and entered.

Dim lanterns lit the way between gulfs of shadow. There was at once a choice of turnings. Along the one Max took, the level of the floor rose by a step, then fell. Then the passage turned back almost completely on itself. Suddenly, thanks to a lucky sliver of light, Max saw a rectangular hole in the floor directly ahead of him. He edged round it. A draught rose from the hole, whose depth Max could not judge, though the coolness of the air made him wonder if it led to some sheer flank of the castle’s wall. He hurried on.

He came to what seemed a dead end. Switching on his electric torch, he found himself confronted by two doors. Both led to empty cupboard-like spaces. He wondered if he should retrace his steps. ‘
False turnings, trap-doors and other snares.
’ That had been Junzaburo’s best guess about the nature of the Inside.

He took a closer look at the cupboards and tapped the rear wall of one. It was nothing more than a hollow-sounding panel. There was a groove close to the ceiling that could serve as a finger-hold. Using that, he was able to slide the panel open.

Another passage, with light beyond a corner. He switched off his torch and tiptoed towards it.

Beyond the corner was a sliding door and beyond that a large room. It looked like several Japanese rooms Max had seen, with wooden beams and decorated walls, a dais and an alcove at one end, next to a sliding door that led to some other room beyond. There were wall-paintings of herons and pine trees, much glittering metal-work and intricate patterning on the coffered ceiling. But there were also bars, fashioned like the bars of a jail-cell, confining access to a walkway running round two sides of the room. Within was a gilded cage – a prison.

There were no windows, of course. The Inside was below ground. No natural light appeared to reach this part of the castle. Oil lamps, burning low, cast their sallow glow over the elegantly decorated dungeon.

Max took several paces along the walkway towards the door set in the bars. He did not have long. As soon as the guards doused the fire and returned to their post, they would realize someone had entered. He called out softly, ‘Is anyone there?’

There was no response. He called a second time, more loudly. ‘Is anyone there?
Konnichi wa?
’

There was a movement, a shifting of a shadow beyond the paper-panelled sliding door at the rear of the cell.