The Golden Naginata (54 page)

She brooded about the promise she had made the dying man on the night past. She was afraid she would find out there was no lie involved, no occult imposition on the samurai's last words. In that case, she had indeed bound herself to fighting a friend unseen in years. The nuisance of the thing was that she had spoken so swiftly and boldly, without thinking first, and had no one to blame but herself. Her samurai spirit had been outraged by the unclean nature of the nine killings. She had spoken as a samurai would speak, though she was no longer a samurai. Was her promise then binding? It could be argued that, as a nun, she was unqualified to make an oath of samurai vengeance. But such excuses did not sit well with her.

Late in the morning, a mounted samurai appeared on the high road. He had two more horses tethered to the one he rode. The short parade moved slowly, dreamily, along the route. The samurai carefully made his horses step down the staircase toward the torii gate. The horses took each step almost daintily. Bundori saw the man doing this and was immediately annoyed. “No horses here! Only sacred animals allowed! If your impure animals excrete, it's trouble for me to repair the desecration! Go back! Go back!”

The samurai stopped at the first landing beneath the torii. He raised the front of his wide hat and said, “I promise my horses won't excrete.”

“You can't promise that!” said Bundori, standing in the way. “I know horses can't control themselves!”

“I know these horses better than anyone,” the deep voice of the big samurai calmly asserted. “They are old and useless girls, but my friends for many years.” He urged his steeds onward in spite of the priest who stood in the path. By this time, the nun had crossed a small drum-bridge and hurried along the path, in case the samurai meant harm to Bundori. She was wearing only her shortsword, the long one being kept indoors while she worked about the gardens or on her lantern. She did not wear her hakama either, but only a nun's kimono, and overall did not look like a warrior-widow. It was just as well. Now that the samurai was within the shrine grounds, it was not feasible to fight with swords. But she would protect Bundori somehow, if the trespasser meant ill.

“What do you seek?” she asked, standing beside the priest.

The big samurai studied her a moment, then let his hat slip from his thumb to cover his face again. It was not as deep a hat as the one the bikuni often wore, but it was almost as good at shadowing his features. He said, “My master says there are nine men for me to take to a private cemetery.”

Bundori was aghast at the very thought. “No dead men at my shrine!” he exclaimed. “I'd know if such defilement occurred!”

“How does your master know about the men?” the nun inquired, causing Bundori to look at her with sharp amazement.

“My master is aware of many things,” the booming voice replied.

“Your master is not Lord Sato, then, who pays little attention to what his men may do,” said the bikuni. “Do you owe open allegiance to Kuro the Darkness?”

“For the time being, that is true,” said the mounted man.

“Corpse-collecting is a job for outcastes,” she said. “What outcaste has two swords?”

“This outcaste does,” he said.”

She said, “The corpses you seek are beyond the back gate, bound to trees grotesquely. Pass through these gardens carefully if you must, but don't try to come back into the shrine with the dead.” The mounted samurai nodded acquiescence.

The nun followed along behind the slow horses, to make sure they did not soil Bundori's shrine, and to be sure the samurai did not try anything unwarranted. Bundori hopped alongside the nun, whispering excited questions at her: “Who was killed? What's going on? Who is that samurai? I saw him bringing corpses through the village the day before yesterday. Funny job for a warrior! Why are you trusting him this way? Aren't you worried about this? Pardon me, I should let you answer. Nothing to say? Well, that's all right. A bother all the same.”

She did not try to edge in a reply to any of his myriad queries, and was uncertain she had answers even if he calmed down enough to listen to her. “That way!” she shouted to the horseman, indicating the gate he should pass through with his horses. She didn't go out with him, but heard him cutting ropes, piling the bodies on his three horses. He would have to walk alongside the steeds to wherever he wanted the heavy loads taken. His third horse had looked decrepit as with old age, and might have trouble hauling more than two dead men at once; but one of the others might be able to handle four, the bikuni reasoned. In whichever case, the samurai would be left afoot.

In a few moments, he appeared inside the gate, leaving his horses outside. He had removed his hat, so the bikuni saw his face clearly now. He had a dour look, which made him unappealing, but a vulnerability in his expression made her think he was an honest man. He seemed unperturbed by the dreadful manner of the nine slayings outside the gate.

Though built hugely at waist and shoulders, his face was almost gaunt, cheeks high-boned and rough-hewn. She oughtn't trust him, considering his professed alliance with Kuro. But she had known too many warriors in her life not to be able to judge one fairly.

He had come back into the shrine-grounds to say something to the nun, but looked at her a long time before doing so. She saw in his gaze an unaccountable nostalgia and melancholy, as though he were a man who chanced to sight a lover from his youth standing far away.

“I remember you,” he said at last.

She could not say the same, so did not speak.

“I fought with Kiso Yoshinake's armies at Heian-kyo a number of years ago.”

There were thousands upon thousands involved in that terrible war. She still could not recall him.

“Since that time,” he said, “I have been unemployable, stigmatized as a supporter of a fallen general. Not that I blame anyone. It was a chance worth taking at the time. There are few wars nowadays, and sometimes it is hard for me to eat. I see you've become a mendicant nun, but I'm too proud to get my meals in that way. I trained warhorses for Yoshinake, but recently I was barely able to live by selling my services to carry goods through these mountain passes on some horses which were my last treasures. One of them died recently, and one of my remaining three isn't strong. I was resigned to a quick death by my own shortsword rather than live another year in such poverty.” He punctuated this last remark by running his little finger across the front of his stomach. “Priest Kuro discovered me as I prepared to die. He berated me for my weakness. I don't like him in the least, but he offered me a chance to be a retainer once again, to regain my samurai dignity. It is said, ‘Who serves a cruel master well is the best retainer in Naipon.' I am obedient in my humble station. I'm Kuro's only direct retainer, though somehow he gets Lord Sato's men to obey him and trusts them more than me. He trusts no one really, but I don't mind that he thinks I could turn against him. It's enough that I know in my own heart that I'm a samurai capable of fealty under severest conditions, not a beggar or a packhorse driver.”

“I understand,” said the nun.

“You think you do?” He sounded as though he doubted it were so. “He tests me with repulsive labor, but I don't complain. He pays me well enough. I save what I can and may one day be freed of Kuro, with enough funds to purchase a better retainership in some city. It galls me, but gifts, not skills, pave a man's way in this corrupt world. Don't look down on me for it!”

“I don't,” she said.

“I admired you a lot in those days,” he said, the source of his nostalgia finally understandable. “Now you are nobody, like myself. Maybe from now on, you'll remember me. My name is Ittosai Kumasaku.”

“I will remember,” she promised.

The man turned to go. Soon, she heard his horses trotting at a slow pace into the deeper woods, going along back routes. Bundori, who had listened to their cryptic dialogue, was somewhat subdued from his previous overexcitement. Still he could not stand long in one place. “He knew you at the Battle of Awazu and other places like that, is it so? You are Tomoe Gozen, like I thought you were!”

“Don't be too certain,” she said, passing him and starting back toward the compound. She added, “Everybody changes a lot. If I was such a famous warrior as that, it doesn't mean that's who I am today.”

Bundori clapped his hands and hopped happily, feeling adulation for his famous visitor. But she stopped on the path and wheeled to face him so swiftly that he was frightened of her for that moment, and he stopped in his tracks as well. She said, “I must see a pawnbroker in the village and sell my vest. Can you recommend someone? It'll be a hard winter, but I must give up my vest for the sake of a little money to get my shakuhachi. An old, dying samurai of low rank promised me he would live two or three more days until I could play for him. The artisan must be finished now.”

“That's been taken care of!” said Bundori, waving a hand. “He decided to fix your shakuhachi as an offering to this shrine.”

She looked at him evenly. “How did he decide that?”

“It was only his idea,” said the priest innocently.

“Since you've meddled about that,” said the nun, “I needn't feel guilty where I meddle from now on.”

Bundori knew her meaning at once. She had promised him not to meddle where Kuro the Darkness was concerned. Her retraction caused him to look distraught. “How was I meddling to help you out?” he said defensively. “You won't have to sell your vest!”

“My meddling will help you out, too. But that's not the point, is it? It was rude of you to interfere without permission. Now I will do as I please, just like you. Don't think it's for your sake! Those men who died outside your shrine—I didn't kill them, though you may have thought I did. Somehow Kuro learned of my presence here; someone with a loose tongue must have said he thought I was someone famous while he was in the village, and Kuro's spies overheard the gossip, so he sent nine men to kill me.” Bundori looked at the ground when the nun made her speculation. She continued, “But someone else killed them before the nine men could try to use my blood to despoil your shrine. I promised them revenge, and I can't evade it. I will find out what is going on in this mountain fief, so that I will know how best to avenge those men, or if indeed I was misled about the need for vengeance.”

When she walked on, the priest stood crookedly, turning his head sideways and saying to himself, “
Shikata-ga-nai
,” it's too late to be helped now.

No one greeted her at the back entrance to Kahei Todawa's house. It was so quiet that the nun feared death had proceeded her, that she was too late to play her newly repaired shakuhachi for the household's patriarch. Then she realized the family might well be shy two members, presuming Otane and Shinji had acted on their plan to flee the fief. They might have had a good chance of getting away undetected during the previous night's bad weather. If they did happen to make their way to another part of the country, and settled somewhere without anyone betraying them, then it could be rumored in Kanno that Otane must have fallen into the gorge or met with some similar mishap. As for Shinji, it would take longer for any authority to miss a farmer's son; by the time it was investigated, some excuse could be invented to infer a pitiable fate separate from Otane's. If some evidence were uncovered to prove they had actually left Kanno illegally, it would mean trouble for their families, and possible pursuit of the couple themselves.

There was no wooden bell at the back entry, and no watchful daughter to see the bikuni's arrival. Yet it would be rude to enter unbidden, and uncouth to shout. For this reason the nun stood at the open gate a long while, fretting about things. At length the kitchen door slid open and an old, withered face peered out. It was the Todawa matriarch, whose widowhood approached swiftly, if her husband were not already dead.

The old face was like crinkled parchment on which nothing had been written. She turned away as though unconcerned with a nun at the gate. But in a few moments, Kahei Todawa came personally, for his impoverished house could afford no servant.

Formal greetings were exchanged. Then Kahei Todawa led the nun along an inner garden wall, until she saw the opened sidedoors to a certain room. From that room wafted the scent of old man's flesh, hair, nail clippings, urine, and nearness to death.

The doors had been opened in spite of the chill, for the old man wished to view the world from his bed. As Kahei Todawa and the nun approached, she could not be certain that the patriarch in his bedding really did look worse than he had looked before; but each step rendered the situation more certain. With his sallow complexion, bony cheeks, pain-creased expression, and the palsied hand clinging to a rosary, he looked as close to death as any living man may come.

His eyes were open and glistened black. He watched the nun weakly. She came to the step leading from the garden to his private chamber. She left her wooden footgear on the stone step as she placed one foot, then the other, upon the deck outside his door. Then, upon her knees on the platform, she bowed fully.

With her hat and longsword to one side of the doorway, where they could not be seen from the inside, she seemed a common nun and not a warrior. But it was an uncommon instrument she bore, the shakuhachi being considered a somewhat masculine instrument, and the side-blown flute more appropriate for women. Her shoulder-length hair framed an ageless face, so that she seemed a boyish apparition, a ghost-page come for an old man's spirit.

Kahei entered the room, leaving the bowing nun upon the deck, framed in the doorway, the garden behind her. About the same time, the elderly wife of the dying man came into the room by a different entry. She led foolish Iyo by the hand, sitting him near the bed and bidding him be very still. He lacked solemnity, but was an obedient boy, and did not move. His anile grandmother knelt beside him.