The Harsh Cry of the Heron (57 page)

He gave her a
chilling look, followed by an impatient shake of the head. She did not want to
press him, for she was afraid he would detain her there, using force if
necessary. She bowed submissively, feeling fury burn impotently in her gut. As
she left, she heard voices at the far end of the main veranda: she turned her
head and saw Don Joao with his interpreter, Madaren, coming towards her. They were
dressed in new, splendid clothes, even Madaren, and they walked with a new
confidence.

Shizuka greeted Don
Joao coldly and then spoke to Madaren, using no courtesies, voicing the anger
it had cost her so much to contain. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

Madaren flushed at
her tone, but collected herself and replied, ‘I am doing God’s will, as are we
all.’

Shizuka did not
answer, but stepped into the palanquin. As it was borne away at a sharp trot
followed by six of Zenko’s men, she cursed the foreigners for intruding with
their weapons and their God. She hardly knew what the words were that came
pouring from her mouth: rage and grief made her incoherent; she could feel them
tug her towards madness.

When the palanquin
stopped and was lowered to the ground outside the inn she did not descend
immediately, wishing she could remain inside this tiny space, so like a coffin,
and never engage with the living again. Finally the thought of Miki drove her
to emerge into the bronze glare.

Bunta squatted on his
heels on the veranda, just as when she had left him, but the room was empty.

‘Where’s Miki?’ she
demanded.

‘She’s inside,’ he
replied, surprised. ‘No one’s come past me, in or out.’

‘Who’s taken her?’
Shizuka’s heart was beginning to stammer in dread.

‘No one, I swear to
you.’

‘You had better not
be lying,’ she said, going back into the room again, searching vainly for the
thin body that could fold itself up and hide in the tiniest of places. The room
was empty, but in one corner she found a new scratching in the wooden beam. Two
half circles facing away from each other, and below them a full circle.

‘She has gone to find
Maya.’

Shizuka knelt on the
floor, trying to still her heart. Miki had gone: taken on invisibility, slipped
past Bunta and out into the city - it was what her years spent in the Tribe had
trained her for. There was nothing Shizuka could do for her now.

She sat for a long
time, feeling the heat of the day build around her and the sweat form between
her breasts and in her armpits. She heard the guards call impatiently to each
other, and realized her choices were dwindling. She could not vanish away and
leave Taku unmourned, but was she to stay in Hofu until either her son or the
Kikuta arranged her death? There was no time to reach the Muto family and call
them to her aid - and anyway, would they respond to her, now Zenko had claimed
the headship of the family?

She called to the
dead to counsel her: to Shigeru, Kenji, Kondo and Taku. Grief and sleeplessness
began to exact their toll. She felt their cold breath on her as they sighed to
her, Pray for us. Oh, pray for us.

Her exhausted mind
fastened on this. She would go to the temple and mourn the dead, until either
she became one of them, or they told her what to do.

‘Bunta,’ she called. ‘There
is one last task I must ask of you. Go and find me sharp scissors and a white
robe.’

He appeared on the
threshold, his face ashen with shock.

‘What has happened?
Don’t tell me you are to kill yourself.’

‘Just do as I say. I
must go to the temple and arrange for Taku’s headstone and funeral rites. After
you have brought me what I request, do as you please. I release you from my
service.’

When he returned,
Shizuka told him to wait outside. She unwrapped the bundles and took out the
scissors. She untied her hair, divided it into two strands and cut through each
strand, laying the long tresses carefully on the matting, noticing with
detached surprise how many threads were white. Then she clipped the rest of her
hair short, feeling the pieces fall around her like dust. She brushed them away
and dressed herself in the white robe. She took her weapons - sword, knife,
garrotte and throwing knives - and placed them on the floor, between the two
strands of her hair. She bowed her head to the ground, giving thanks for the
weapons and for all her life till this point; then she called for a bowl of
tea, drank it and broke the empty cup in two with a quick movement of her
strong hands.

‘I will not drink
again,’ she said aloud.

‘Shizuka!’ Bunta
protested from the threshold, but she ignored him.

‘Have her senses
deserted her?’ she heard his son whisper. ‘Poor woman!’

Moving slowly and
deliberately, she went to the front of the inn. News of her visit to Zenko had
spread and a small crowd had gathered outside. When she stepped into the
palanquin they followed it down the road along the riverbank to Daifukuji.
Zenko’s guards were made uneasy by this procession, and several times tried to
beat the crowd back, but it grew in size, and became more unruly and more
hostile; many ran down to the river, for it was low tide, and, prising stones
from the silt, began to throw them at the guards, managing to draw them back
from the temple gates. The porters set Shizuka down outside the gates, and she
went slowly into the main courtyard, moving as if floating. The crowd milled in
the entrance. She sat down on the ground, her legs folded like a divine being
on a lotus flower, and finally she allowed herself to weep for one son’s death
and the other son’s treachery.

The funeral rites
were held while she sat there, and the stones carved and erected. The days
passed and she did not move, neither eating nor drinking. On the third night it
rained gently, and people said Heaven was nourishing her. It rained every night
after that; during the day birds were often seen fluttering around her head.

‘They are feeding her
with grains of millet and honey,’ the monks reported.

The townspeople said
Heaven itself wept for the bereaved mother, and they gave thanks that the
danger of drought was averted. Zenko’s popularity waned as the moon of the
fifth month began to grow towards fullness.

For many days and
nights, Maya mourned the loss of the horses, unable to look at the greater
loss. Shigeko had told her to look after them, and she had let them go. She
relived the moment when she had dropped the reins and the mares had run away,
and regretted it bitterly, as she regretted her inexplicable inability to move
or to defend herself. It was only the third time she had faced real danger -
after the attack at Inuyama and the encounter with her father - and she felt
that in the extreme moment she had failed, despite her years of Tribe training.

She had plenty of
time to reflect on her failure. When she regained consciousness, her throat
raw, her stomach queasy, she found herself in a small, dimly lit room, which
she recognized as one of the concealed chambers of a Tribe house. Takeo had
often told his daughters stories of the times the Tribe had held him in such
rooms, and now the memory comforted and calmed her. She had thought Akio would
kill her at once, but he had not - he was keeping her for some purpose. She
knew she could escape at any time, for the cat was not confined by doors or
walls, but she did not want to run away yet. She wanted to stay close to Akio
and Hisao: she would never let them kill her father; she would kill them
herself first. So she curbed first her anger and then her fear, and set herself
to learn all she could about them.

At first she saw Akio
only when he brought her food and water; the food was sparse but she was not
bothered by hunger. She had always found that the less she ate the easier it
was to take on invisibility and use the second self. She practised this when
she was alone, sometimes even deceiving herself and seeing Miki leaning against
the opposite wall. She did not speak to Akio but studied him, as he studied
her. She knew he did not have invisibility or the Kikuta gaze that induces
sleep, but he could perceive the one and evade the other. He had fast reflexes
- her father had often said the fastest he had ever known - was immensely
strong and completely lacking in pity or any of the other gentler human
emotions.

Two or three times a
day, one of the household maids came to take her to the privy: otherwise she
saw no one. Akio in his turn hardly spoke to her. But after she had been
imprisoned for about a week, he came late one evening, knelt in front of her
and took her hands, turning them palm upward. She could smell the wine on his
breath, and his speech was unnaturally deliberate.

‘I expect you to
answer me truthfully, since I am the head of your family: do you have any of
your father’s skills?’

She shook her head,
and before the movement was finished felt her head snap back and her sight
darken as he slapped her. She had not seen his hand move.

‘You tried to trap my
eyes before: you must have the Kikuta sleep. And I saw you use invisibility in
the inn. Do you have far-hearing?’

She nodded because
she did not want him to kill her then, but she did not tell him about the cat.

‘And where’s your
sister?’

‘I don’t know.’

Even though she was
expecting it this time, she could not move quickly enough to avoid the second
blow. Akio was grinning, as if it were a game he was enjoying.

‘She is in Kagemura,
with the Muto family.’

‘Is she? But she is
not Muto; she is Kikuta. I think she should be here with us too.’

‘The Muto family will
never give her to you,’ Maya said.

‘There’ve been some
changes in the Muto family; I thought you’d have realized. The Tribe always
stick together in the long run,’ Akio said. ‘That’s how we survive.’

He tapped his teeth
with his fingernails. The back of his right hand was scarred from an old wound,
running from the wrist to the base of the first finger.

‘You saw me kill that
Muto witch Sada. I won’t hesitate to do the same to you.’

She did not make any
response to this; she was more interested in her own reaction, surprised that
she was not afraid of him. She had not realized till that moment that, like her
father, she possessed the Kikuta gift of fearlessness.

‘This is what I’ve
heard,’ he said. ‘That your mother would do nothing to save you, but your
father loves you.’

‘It’s not true,’ Maya
lied. ‘My father does not care deeply for my sister and me. The warrior class
hate twins and see them as shameful. My father has a kind nature, that is all.’

‘He always was
soft-hearted,’ Akio said, and she saw the weakness in him, the deep-seated
hatred and envy of Takeo. ‘Perhaps you will bring him to me.’

‘Only if it is to
kill you,’ she replied.

Akio laughed and got
to his feet. ‘But he will never kill Hisao!’

She found herself
thinking about Hisao. For the last half year, she had had to face the fact that
this was her father’s son, her half-brother, about whom no one spoke, of whose
existence, she was sure, her mother had never been told. And she was equally
sure Hisao did not know who his true father was. He had called Akio Father; he
had looked at her in incomprehension when she had told him she was his sister.
She heard in her mind over and again Sada’s voice, So the boy truly is Takeo’s
son? And Taku’s reply, Yes, and according to the prophecy is the only person
who can bring death to him.

Her half-grown
character had an implacability all its own, some Kikuta legacy that made her
ruthlessly single-minded. The balance for her had become simple: if Hisao died
then Takeo would live for ever.

Apart from the
training exercises, which she carried out assiduously, she had nothing to
occupy her, and she often drifted between waking and sleep, dreaming vividly.
She dreamed of Miki, dreams that were so clear she could not believe Miki was
not in the room with her, and from which she woke feeling renewed; she dreamed
of Hisao. She knelt beside him while he slept and whispered in his ear, ‘I am
your sister,’ and once she dreamed that the cat lay down next to him, and felt
the warmth of his body through its fur.

She became obsessed
with Hisao, as though she needed to know everything about him. She began to experiment
with assuming the cat form at night while the household slept, tentatively at
first, for it was something she wanted to keep hidden from Akio, and then with
increasing confidence. By day she was a prisoner, but at night she roamed
freely through the house, observed its occupants, and entered their dreams. She
saw with contempt their fears and hopes. The maids complained of ghosts, of
feeling a breath on their face or warm fur lying beside them, of hearing some
large creature padding softly over the floor. Strange things were happening
throughout the city, signs and apparitions.

Akio and Hisao slept
apart from the other men, in a room at the back of the house. Maya went in the
darkest, quietest time of night, just before dawn, to watch Hisao sleep,
sometimes in Akio’s embrace, sometimes alone. He slept restlessly, tossing and
muttering. His dreams were vicious and jagged, but they interested her.
Sometimes he woke and could not get back to sleep again; then he went to a
small outbuilding at the back of the house, on the other side of the yard,
where there was a workshop for forging and repairing household utensils and
weapons. Maya followed him and watched him, noting his careful, meticulous
movements, his hands, precise and dexterous, his absorption in the processes of
invention and experimentation.