The Heike Story (12 page)

The Imperial Palace stood in the north center of the city in a rectangular enclosure, about one mile by three quarters, containing various residential apartments, ceremonial halls, and the many departments of state. Immediately outside the enclosure were numerous small palaces and mansions of the nobility, as well as the university, which adjoined the South Gate. There were twelve gates to the enclosure and two additional side-gates—the Northeast Gate and the Northwest Gate, the latter entrance leading to the palace where Kesa-Gozen had once served.

Kiyomori felt there was sufficient reason to investigate this quarter. It was quite possible that both the outlaw and those who sheltered him would consider this spot immune from search. At this thought Kiyomori broke into a run. As he entered the wide, clean avenue flanked with pine trees, he heard shouts and repeated orders to stop. With an air of annoyance, Kiyomori looked back.

"I? . . ."

The Guards here were also on watch, he realized. He walked back deliberately toward a group of them.

"Go back! Get out!" the Guards bawled, blocking Kiyomori's path, not even troubling to ask his name.

Kiyomori stubbornly insisted: "I will pass! I come on urgent business." He raised his eyebrows. "Needless to say, I serve his majesty the ex-Emperor Toba. Why should I wish to disturb her highness?" he blustered, turning an angry red. The Guards thought him a belligerent little fellow, and the situation was fast getting out of hand; it was Kiyomori against some sixteen or seventeen Guards, when an elderly warrior, possibly a senior officer, appeared on his rounds and stood for a moment observing the altercation. Then he approached Kiyomori from the rear, struck him a resounding blow on his corselet, and addressed him as though he were a child:

"So, it's you, Heita? What's this spluttering? What's this all about—this impertinence?"

"Ah. . . ." Memories of that bleak wind in February, that sad, sad day, the gnawing of his empty stomach, and that galling money suddenly flashed across Kiyomori's mind. "Is it you, uncle? Indeed! And this is your force? I thought I recognized some of your retainers among them."

More than at the ridiculous figure he felt he presented, Kiyomori boiled with rage at the thought that these men had deliberately insulted him by pretending not to recognize him. He could never think of this uncle—nor his aunt—without seeing coins in his mind's eye; he had gone countless times to their residence at Horikawa to borrow money; listened to them abuse his parents; endured their criticisms and unending complaints. He reflected sourly how he must always seem like a penniless imp to this uncle. It was his fate to be always treated with contempt and dismissed as a fellow with a warped disposition.

"Come, Heita, what do you mean by 'indeed'? We haven't seen you at Horikawa for some time—not that your visits were ever welcome. . . . Your neglect, I must say, gives me pleasure."

Kiyomori wilted. He had been arrogantly asserting himself in the name of the Palace Guards and now he was ready to crawl into a hole. Putting away his pride and rancor, Kiyomori meekly appealed: "Is it—quite impossible?"

His uncle, meanwhile, obtained from his men a brief account of what had happened and guessed what Kiyomori was after.

"Impossible! Absolutely! What do you mean by resisting? You are exactly like that obstinate father of yours. Why do you have to take after that indigent father of yours? Get on home!" he roared.

Just then Tadamasa noticed a courtier's carriage coming out by the Northwest Gate and loped away in great haste, just in time to deliver a deep bow as the carriage rolled past.

Kiyomori turned and started walking back. This had been unavoidable. He thought he heard the Guards laughing behind his back. Then he began to wonder whose carriage it was that he had just seen. As he looked round, he saw an ox approaching. The setting sun blazed on the lacquered body and shafts of a flamboyant lady's carriage, embellished with patterns in metalwork of silver and gold. The bamboo blinds were half-drawn. It was not the Princess's carriage, nor could the occupant be seen, but a young ox-tender walked beside the carriage, switching at the flies. Kiyomori came to a halt in the shade of a cedar tree and waited for the carriage to pass him. As it rolled by, he boldly stared up into it.

"Oh! . . ."

He thought he heard a voice. A blind was rolled up and the ox-boy ordered to stop. Someone leaned out and called his name.

"Mother!" Kiyomori replied impulsively, and leaped onto one of the shafts. "Was this the carriage that just came out by the Northwest Gate? Was it you, Mother?"

"Why, what do you mean by all these questions? You never seem glad to see me whenever we meet."

Yasuko wore the robes of a court lady and, as usual, was elegantly made up. Decked out in her gay robes, she seemed even younger and lovelier than Kiyomori had ever remembered her to be—at home, at the Kamo races.

"Your uncle, Tadamasa, was at the gate just a moment ago, waiting to greet me as I left. He said nothing about you, but didn't I see you talking together?"

"Has my uncle lately begun to pay his respects to you and shown himself friendlier?"

Yasuko laughed. "How you amuse me! You haven't answered any of my questions, and do nothing but try to cross-examine me. Your uncle has changed considerably. He is most courteous to me."

"He—and my aunt—who used to speak so ill of you?"

"Now, Heita, do you begin to understand why I hated being poor? Her highness has taken a fancy to me, and I go regularly to take part in the dancing at her palace. Your uncle now behaves like a proper retainer toward me, for he knows he must humor me if he expects to come up in the world."

So that was it! Kiyomori spat at the feet of the ox. How like his uncle! As for his mother's visits to the palace at the Northwest Gate—she had probably had the Nakamikado use their influence at Court, and was making good use of her talents as a dancing-girl. Fit counterpart to that uncle! Whenever Kiyomori met his mother, he felt that his father, Tadamori, the man who was not his real father, was more his own flesh and blood than she.

Kiyomori suddenly felt disappointed, bitter, and sad. The sight of his mother made him wretched. The flies buzzing about the ox kept stinging his face and irritating him, so he left her abruptly. But Yasuko called him back in great agitation, and with an arch look said:

"Heita, wasn't there something else you wanted to ask me?"

Kiyomori started violently. He thought he saw a figure hiding in the carriage, looked more closely, and saw Ruriko.

"Heita, have you nothing more to tell me?" Yasuko asked, laughing. "Ruriko," she then said, "won't you give this to Heita?"

Ruriko drew back in confusion, concealing her face behind Yasuko's shoulder. Yasuko drew out a large orchid-chrysanthemum and held it out to Kiyomori: "Her highness, the Princess, gave this to Ruriko, who wishes you to have it, Heita. Go write some verses on this flower and bring them to me at the Nakamikado mansion—some exquisite lines that will win Ruriko's heart."

Kiyomori stood in a daze as he watched the carriage slowly disappear in the distance. So his mother now planned to revenge herself on Tadamori by using Ruriko to lure him from his father! Kiyomori found he had absent-mindedly crushed the flower and stripped it of all its petals. Using the stalk for a switch, he walked back to his post at the crossroads.

Two horses and a man were waiting for him there. Kiyomori felt low in spirits. Mokunosukй, who had anxiously waited for him, seemed dejected.

"Where are all the others? Have they gone home already?"

"We had our orders to discontinue the watches from tonight. What of your search at the Northwest Gate?"

"Useless. I should not have gone. Where is my father?"

"Let us talk on our way back. Come, get on your horse."

Mokunosukй saw Kiyomori mount and next climbed into his own saddle.

"Back to the Palace, Old One?"

"No, home to Imadegawa."

Kiyomori was surprised. The Guards were supposed to assemble tonight at the Guard Office, where his father would speak to them. Tadamori was also to report to his majesty and his aide for further instructions.

"Mokunosukй, has something happened to my father?"

"I understand he has decided to resign from his position at the Palace."

"Is this true? Is it because we have not succeeded in arresting Morito?"

"He is too much a man to let criticism of that sort trouble him. The courtiers are maligning him. He can't endure facing those unjust and ambiguous charges they bring against him. ... I didn't have the heart to ask him anything more."

"Does this mean he goes into seclusion again?" Kiyomori felt like saying: "Poverty again!" His armor suddenly seemed to weigh him down.

Mokunosukй mumbled half to himself: "Oh, why is fate so harsh to him? The times are wrong, the world is evil! . . . Fortune must smile on him some time!"

Kiyomori hardly knew his own voice as it suddenly rang out clear and challenging like a battle cry:

"Here am I, Old One! Was it not you who once said I was child of the heavens and earth, that I was no cripple with these fine limbs? Here he is—that one! What is fate, that we should wait upon it?"

"THE TRODDEN WEED"

His brothers came out to meet him, and Kiyomori saw their shadowy figures under the sagging gateway as he dismounted; Tsunemori, who carried three-year-old Norimori on his back, called out: "Welcome home, brother! Father's back already."

"Hmm. . . . With all of us gone for seven days, the little ones must have missed us."

"Yes, I had trouble with Norimori, who kept crying for Mother," Tsunemori began, but stopped short at the look on Kiyomori's face. "Oh, yes, Father wished to see you the moment you got back."

"Oh? Well, then I'll go in this way. Old One, take my horse," Kiyomori said. Handing the reins to Mokunosukй, he started across the courtyard toward the light that burned in his father's rooms.

Smoke rose briskly from the kitchen fires. The retainers, who had returned earlier in the evening, were still in their armor, preparing the evening meal for the large household—cooking rice, chopping wood, and bringing in potatoes and other vegetables from the kitchen plot. As with most warriors' households where there were few women to help and poverty prevented their hiring under-servants, master and retainers alike did the farming, tended the horses, and worked in the kitchen as well.

"Ah, so you're back, Heita! My thanks for your labors."

"Father, you must be tired after your duties of the past week, and you must feel it the more for our not having captured Morito."

"We've done everything possible and have nothing to regret. Morito is not one to be caught so easily."

"Could he have killed himself, Father?"

"I doubt it. His was no light offense, and I cannot believe that he would take his own life. . . . And, Heita, there's something I want you to do."

"Is it urgent?"

"Yes, take one of the colts to the city and sell him for whatever price you can get; then buy as much wine as you can."

"One of the colts! Do you really mean it?"

"Mmm. . . . See how much wine you can get."

"But, Father, there'd be more than all of us can finish in three days! This is too humiliating—I can't go! What could be more humiliating for a warrior than to be forced to sell his horse?"

"That's why I send you. Go, and live down that shame. Sell him at any price—the sooner, the better."

Kiyomori quickly left his father and went to the stable. Three of the seven colts there were their most prized possessions. He carefully looked over the remaining four. Dumb creatures that they were, there was not one among them that he did not love! Had they not all been with him and his father on that dangerous campaign in the west the year before last and faced death with them? What countless times he had fondled them!

He knew that horse-fairs were sometimes held near the marketplace, so Kiyomori went to the house of a horse-dealer whom he knew, sold the colt, and purchased wine. Three large jars were loaded onto a handcart, and Kiyomori helped the wine-merchant bring the cart back to Imadegawa.

The evening meal was late, but the autumn night was long for such feasting as was rarely seen in a warrior's house. Summoning all his retainers to the spacious room in the main house, Tadamori unsealed the jars of wine, ordered casks of salted fish and pickles to be brought, usually stored for emergencies, and called in all the retainers to drink.