The Harsh Cry of the Heron (7 page)

Takeo was aware of
this desire: his sister-in-law revealed more of herself than she thought, and
besides, like everyone, the Arai often forgot how acute his hearing was. It was
no longer as sharp as when he was seventeen, but still good enough to overhear
conversations that others thought secret, to be aware of everything around him,
of where each person of the household was, of the activities of the men in the
guardroom and stables, of who visited whom at night and for what purpose. He
had also acquired a watchfulness that enabled him to read the intentions of
others in their stance and the movements of their body, to the extent that
people said he could see clearly into men’s hidden hearts.

Now he studied Hana
as she bowed deeply before him, her hair spilling to the floor, parting
slightly to reveal the perfect white of her nape. She moved with an easy grace,
despite being the mother of three children: you would not think her more than
eighteen years, but she was the same age as Zenko’s younger brother, Taku:
twenty-six.

Her husband, at
twenty-eight, looked very like his father: large, powerfully built, with great
strength, an expert with both the bow and the sword. At twelve he had seen his
father die, shot by a firearm before his eyes, only the third person in the
Three Countries to die in that manner. The other two had been bandits, and
Zenko had witnessed their death too. Arai had died in the same moment when he
had broken his oath of alliance with Takeo. Takeo knew these things taken
together had produced a deep resentment in the young boy, which had turned over
the years to hatred.

Neither husband nor
wife gave any sign of their malevolence. Indeed, their welcomes and inquiries
after his health and that of his family were effusive. Takeo replied equally
cordially, masking the fact that he was in more pain than usual from the damp weather
and repressing the desire to remove the silk glove that covered his right hand
to massage the scar where his fingers used to be.

‘You should not have
gone to so much trouble,’ he said. T will only be in Hofu for a day or two.’

‘Oh, but Lord Takeo
must stay longer.’ Hana spoke, as she often did, before her husband. ‘You must
stay until the rains are over. You cannot travel in this weather.’

‘I have travelled in
worse,’ Takeo said, smiling.

‘It is no trouble at
all,’ Zenko said. ‘It is our greatest pleasure to be able to spend time with
our brother-in-law.’

‘Well, there are one
or two things we need to discuss,’ Takeo replied, deciding to take the blunt
approach. ‘There can be no need, surely, of increased numbers of men under
arms, and I’d like to know more about what you are forging.’

His directness,
coming as it did right after the courtesies, startled them. He smiled again.
They must surely know little escaped his notice throughout the Three Countries.

‘There is always a
need for weapons,’ Zenko said. ‘Glaives, spears and so on.’

‘How many men can you
muster? Five thousand at the most. Our records show them all fully equipped. If
their weapons have been lost or damaged, it is their responsibility to replace
them at their own expense. The domain’s finances can be better employed.’

‘From Kumamoto and
the southern districts, yes, five thousand. But there are many untrained men of
fighting age in other Seishuu domains. It seemed an ideal opportunity to give
them training and weapons, even if they return to their fields for the harvest.’

‘The Seishuu families
answer to Maruyama now,’ Takeo replied mildly. ‘What does Sugita Hiroshi think
of your plans?’

Hiroshi and Zenko
disliked each other. Takeo knew Hiroshi had harboured a boyish desire to marry
Hana himself, had formed an illusory picture of her based on his devotion to
Kaede, and had been disappointed when the Arai marriage was arranged, though he
never spoke of it. But the two young men had never liked one another since they
first met so many years ago in the turbulent period of civil war. Hiroshi and
Taku, Zenko’s younger brother, were close friends despite their differences,
far closer than the two Arai brothers, who had grown cold to each other over
the years, though again they never spoke of it, masking the distance between
them with a feigned and mutually beneficial conviviality usually fuelled by
wine.

‘I have not had the
opportunity to speak to Sugita,’ Zenko admitted.

‘Well, we will
discuss it with him. We will all meet in Maruyama in the tenth month and review
military requirements in the West then.’

‘We face threats from
the barbarians,’ Zenko said. ‘The West lies open to them: the Seishuu have
never had to face attack from the sea before. We are totally unprepared.’

‘The foreigners seek
trade above all,’ Takeo replied. ‘They are far from home, their vessels are
small. They learned their lesson in the attack on Mijima; they will deal with
us through diplomacy now. Our best defence against them is to trade peacefully
with them.’

‘Yet they boast when
they talk of their king’s great armies,’ Hana said. ‘One hundred thousand men
at arms. Fifty thousand horses. One of their horses is bigger than two of ours,
they say, and all their foot soldiers carry firearms.’

‘These are, as you
say, boasts,’ Takeo observed. ‘I daresay Terada Fumio makes similar claims
about our superiority in the islands of the South and ports of Tenjiku and
Shin.’ He saw Zenko’s expression darken at the mention of Fumio’s name, and
recalled that it had been Fumio who had killed Zenko’s father, shooting him in
the chest at the moment the earth shook and Arai’s army was destroyed. He
sighed inwardly, wondering if it was ever possible to wipe the desire for
revenge from a man’s heart, knowing that Fumio might have held the weapon but
Zenko put the blame on him.

Zenko said, ‘There
too the barbarians use trade as an excuse to get a foothold in a country. Then
they weaken it from within with their religion, and attack from without with
superior weapons. They will turn us all into their slaves.’

Zenko could be right,
Takeo thought. The foreigners were mainly confined to Hofu, and Zenko saw more
of them than any other of his warriors. Which in itself was dangerous: even
though he called them barbarians, Zenko was impressed by their weapons and ships.
If they should join together in the West. . .

‘You know I respect
your opinions on these matters,’ he replied. ‘We will increase our surveillance
of the foreigners. If there is any need to conscript more men, I will inform
you. And nitre must only be bought directly by the clan.’

He gazed at Zenko as
the younger man bowed reluctantly, a line of colour at his neck the only sign
of his resentment at the rebuke. Takeo was thinking of the time when he had
held Zenko across his horse’s neck, the knife at his throat. If he had used it
then, he would have no doubt saved himself many troubles. But Zenko had been a
child of twelve years; Takeo had never killed a child and prayed he never
would. Zenko is part of my fate, he thought. I must handle him carefully. What
more can I do to flatter him and tame him?

Hana spoke in her
gentle honeyed voice. ‘We would do nothing without consulting Lord Otori. We
have only the interests of you and your family and the welfare of the Three
Countries at heart. Your family are all well, I trust? My eldest sister, your
beautiful daughters?’

‘I thank you: they
are all well.’

‘It is a great sorrow
to me to have no daughters,’ Hana went on, her eyes demurely lowered. ‘We have
only sons, as Lord Otori knows.’

Where is she going
with this? Takeo wondered.

Zenko had less
subtlety than his wife and spoke more bluntly.

‘Lord Otori must long
for a son.’

Ah! Takeo thought,
and said, ‘Since a third of our country is already inherited through the female
line, it does not present a problem to me. Our eldest daughter will be the
eventual ruler of the Three Countries.’

‘But you should know
the joy of having boys in the household,’ Hana exclaimed. ‘Let us give you one
of ours.’

‘We would like you to
adopt one of our sons,’ Zenko said, direct and affable.

‘It would honour us
and bring us joy beyond words,’ Hana murmured.

‘You are extremely
generous and thoughtful,’ Takeo replied. The truth was: he did not want sons.
He was relieved Kaede had had no more children and hoped she would not conceive
again. The prophecy that he would die at the hands of his own child did not
frighten him, but it saddened him deeply. He prayed at that moment, as he often
did, that his death would be like that of Shigeru, not like that of the other
Otori lord, Masahiro, whose throat had been cut with a fishing knife by his
illegitimate son; and that he would be spared until his work was finished and
his daughter old enough to rule his country. He wondered what truly lay behind
Zenko and Hana’s offer. He did not want to insult them by rejecting it
outright. Indeed, it had much to recommend it. It would be entirely appropriate
to adopt his wife’s nephew: he could even perhaps betroth the child to one of
his daughters one day.

‘Please do us the
honour of receiving our two eldest boys,’ Hana said, and when he nodded in
assent she rose and moved towards the door, with her gliding walk so like Kaede’s.
She returned with the children: they were aged eight and six, dressed in formal
robes, silenced by the solemnity of the gathering. They both wore their hair
long in front.

‘The oldest is
Sunaomi, the younger Chikara,’ Hana said as the boys bowed to the ground before
their uncle.

‘Yes, I remember,’
Takeo said. He had not seen them for at least three years, and had never seen
Hana’s youngest child, born the previous year and presumably now in the care of
his nurse. They were fine-looking children: the older one resembled the
Shirakawa sisters, with the same long limbs and slender bone structure. The
younger one was rounder and stockier, more like his father. He wondered if
either of them had inherited any of the Muto Tribe skills from their
grandmother, Shizuka. He would ask Taku, or Shizuka. It would be pleasant, he
mused, for Shizuka too to have a grandson to bring up along with his own daughters,
to whom she was like a second mother, both companion and teacher.

‘Sit up, boys,’ he
said. ‘Let your uncle see your faces.’

He was taken with the
older boy, who looked so like Kaede. He was only seven years younger than
Shigeko, five years younger than Maya and Miki: not an impossible age
difference in marriage. He questioned them about their studies, their progress
with sword and bow, their ponies, and was pleased with the intelligence and
clarity of their replies. Whatever their parents’ secret ambitions and hidden
motives might be, the boys had been well brought up.

‘You are very
generous,’ he said again. ‘I will discuss it with my wife.’

‘The children will
join us for the evening meal,’ Hana said. ‘You may get to know them better
then. Of course, though he is nothing out of the ordinary, Sunaomi is already a
great favourite with my older sister.’

Takeo remembered now
that he had heard Kaede praise the boy for his intelligence and quickness. He
knew that she envied Hana and regretted never having a son. Adopting her nephew
might be a compensation, but if Sunaomi became his son . . .

He put this line of
thought from him. He must follow what seemed the best policy: he must not allow
himself to be influenced by a prophecy that might never come true.

Hana left with the
children, and Zenko said, ‘I can only repeat what an honour it would be if you
were to adopt Sunaomi - or Chikara: you must choose.’

‘We will discuss it
again in the tenth month.’

‘May I make one more
request?’

When Takeo nodded,
Zenko went on. ‘I don’t want to cause offence by bringing up the past, but -
you remember Lord Fujiwara?’

‘Of course,’ Takeo
replied, holding down his surprise and anger. Lord Fujiwara was the nobleman
who had abducted his wife, and had brought about his heaviest defeat. He had
died in the Great Earthquake but Takeo had never forgiven him, hating even to
hear his name spoken. Kaede had sworn to him that this spurious husband had
never lain with her, yet there had been some strange bond between them;
Fujiwara had intrigued and nattered her; she had entered into a pact with him
and had told him the most intimate secrets of Takeo’s love for her. He had
supported her household with money and food and given her many gifts. He had
married her with the permission of the Emperor himself. Fujiwara had tried to
take Kaede into death with him: she had narrowly escaped being burned alive
when her hair burst into flames, causing the scars, the loss of her beauty.

‘His son is in Hofu
and seeks an audience with you.’

Takeo said nothing,
reluctant to admit that he did not know it.

‘He goes under his
mother’s name, Kono. He came by boat a few days ago, hoping to meet you. We
have been in correspondence over his father’s estate. My father was, as you
know, on very good terms with his father - forgive me for reminding you of
those unpleasant times - and Lord Kono approached me about matters of rent and
taxes.’

‘I was under the
impression the estate had been joined to Shirakawa.’