The Heike Story (26 page)

Sutoku, who had been listening closely with bent head and closed eyes, looked up, smiling faintly as Asatori ended his narration. "Your flute—do you have it here with you now?"

"It is put away carefully in a case made from a strip of one of the robes your majesty sent me, and has become a keepsake from my father."

"Keepsake? But your father must still be living."

"No, that flute is now a memento. My father is no longer in this world, and, since it was his last wish that I stay with you, I shall remain here until the sources of this spring run dry."

"Ah—" sighed Sutoku heavily as he rose to his feet. His mother, Lady Taikenmon, too, was dead. How fleeting was man and all things of this world, he mused. "One of these nights when the moon is full, you shall play to me on your flute. How cool this air! Asatori, I shall come again soon."

Asatori's eyes followed Sutoku as he vanished among the trees. This chance meeting and the artless moments of talk with one whom he otherwise dared not approach filled him with delight. Through the summer nights Asatori waited for the moon to grow, full, recalling Sutoku's promise to listen to him on his flute.

About this time people who passed the Willow-Spring Palace began to notice with curiosity how numerous litters and carriages arrived at the long-neglected Palace. There were rumors that the young Emperor Konoyй had not long to live, and that the dethroned Sutoku's son, Prince Shigebito, the Cloistered Emperor Toba's grandson, would ascend the throne. Among the many visitors who came to call on the ex-Emperor were Yorinaga and his father, Tadazanй, who until now had ignored Sutoku's existence. They came with repeated assurances that good things were in store for him, that his son was all but crowned. And the prospect of renewed prosperity and the resurrection of his hopes led Sutoku to forget his promise to the caretaker of the Willow Spring.

Asatori gazed forlornly at the full moon and waited for the monarch, who did not come. He watched the coming and going of litters and carriages, and grew anxious, for the Willow Spring lost its sparkle and grew muddy—portent of some upheaval in nature, or the forerunner of calamity.

Popular expectations were disappointed when in October the Cloistered Emperor's fourth son, Sutoku's younger brother, was proclaimed Emperor and invested as Goshirakawa. Sutoku was overwhelmed. His own son, who stood in direct line of succession, had been passed over. Lady Bifukumon, he felt certain, had played no small part in influencing the Cloistered Emperor's choice, and he, Sutoku, had been singled out for her ill will. There was little consolation to be found in Yorinaga's words: "Patience—and yet more patience. Your time will yet come."

The new reign opened in April 1156. By summer of that same year the rule of the Cloister Government, which had lasted uninterrupted for twenty-seven years, was over. Toba died at the Detached Palace of Anrakuju-in Temple on the night of July 2. News of his approaching end reached the capital that same afternoon, and a vast flurry ensued as litters and carriages jostled one another in their haste to reach the hamlet of Takeda, on whose outskirts the temple stood. In the tangled concourse of fast-trotting animals and shouting, sweating men, one carriage forced its way through and rolled swiftly onward. Behind the drawn blinds of his tossing carriage, Sutoku concealed a face drawn with grief.

Carriages were drawn up, inside as well as outside the Palace gates. There was no room to spare even in the wide enclosure fronting the Palace, so crowded was it with men-at-arms, attendants, and litters. A hush hung like a pall over everything. No aides came to meet Sutoku's carriage, and his grooms were obliged to call out loudly to announce his arrival. Sutoku feverishly rolled up a blind, crying sharply to his grooms: "Let me down, let me down, I say!"

Even as his carriage rolled in by the gateway, the solemn booming of temple and pagoda bells had ceased. He caught the sound of intaken breaths and the murmur: "His majesty's eyes are now closing—" Sutoku saw the quick movement of men dropping to their knees, the lifting of hands in prayer, and he was overcome with grief. It was not a monarch who was dying, but his own father! Those long years of bitterness—the estrangement —one last meeting would be enough to wipe away that.

"Let me down, I say! What's this senseless confusion? Pull up at the door—hurry!"

At the sound of that frenzied command, the grooms wrenched the carriage round and forced a way through the welter of vehicles. As the carriage pulled up at the portico, a wheel struck a litter that stood by, crushing it with a harsh rending sound. At this, Akanori of the Genji and several other warriors who stood on guard at the door leaped forward cursing.

Livid, Sutoku cried out in his anger: "Out of my way, insolent ones! Can you not see who I am? How dare you interfere!"

Akanori advanced with a threatening air. "Now that I see who you are, I have even more reason to forbid you to come any farther. I have orders not to admit you. Back! Back!"

Beside himself, Sutoku now leaned out of his carriage. "What, you petty official! I am here to see his majesty, my father, yet no one comes to meet me, and they dare to send mere soldiers to carry out their orders!"

"My orders are from Korekata, Captain of the Right, who serves his majesty. A warrior must do his duty. You shall not go a step farther!"

"I'll have no dealings with you wretches. . . ." Trembling with rage, Sutoku prepared to step down from his carriage when, the Guards charged at the carriage and thrust it back; Sutoku's grooms leaped on the soldiers to grapple with them; at the impact the carriage lurched; Sutoku, clutching for a blind, was thrown to the ground between the carriage shafts. A blind came away in his hand as he fell and crashed heavily across the shafts, lacerating Akanori's cheek, from which the blood suddenly oozed.

Those in the Palace were quickly told that the ex-Emperor Sutoku had gone mad, wounded a Guard, and was now on his way to the inner apartments. Korekata, the Captain of the Right, who was sitting beside Councilor Shinzei when the news of the scuffle was brought to him, started from his seat. A frightened scream from one of the ladies-in-waiting made him fly down the long corridors. As he approached the entrance, a shaft of light from one of the anterooms lit up a pillar in the hall, and there he came face to face with Sutoku. His face was a pale mask; his eyes stared unseeing; his sleeve was torn, and his hair straggled wildly across his forehead.

The captain's hands shot out in a gesture of refusal. "Sir— you may not enter," he cried, blocking the way. "You must not be seen in your present condition. I beg you to leave very quietly."

Sutoku seemed not to understand and brushed Korekata's arms aside roughly. "Out of the way! I must see him now—at once!"

"Sir, can you not understand that you may not see him?"

"I—I don't understand—Korekata! What is wrong in my wanting to see my dying father? You are a fiend to interfere! Out—out of my way!"

Korekata's voice rose to a shout as he restrained the distraught Sutoku. "You are mad, I tell you! Whatever you say, you shall not see him!"

Sutoku suddenly broke into a terrible sobbing as he struggled to shake off the captain's restraining arms, but the latter called some Guards, who soon dragged Sutoku away weeping and struggling and forced him into his carriage.

The luminous interior of the Temple was swallowed up in billows of incense; in mournful unison gongs sounded a dirge; one thousand priests bowed their heads silently as the spirit of Toba departed from this world.

Before the short summer night was over, a rumor swept through the Palace at Takeda like a gathering wave. The whisper went from ear to ear: The ex-Emperor is forming a conspiracy. . . . Incredible? There had been signs of it beforehand—a report from the Guard Office confirmed it. The Tanaka Villa, on the opposite bank of the river from the Detached Palace, where Sutoku was staying, was suspect. Since the Hour of the Boar (ten o'clock) a meeting appeared to have been held there. From another source in the capital came a report that on the previous afternoon, horses and carts piled with weapons were seen making their way at irregular intervals to the Willow-Spring Palace. Eyewitnesses recounted seeing frightened groups of women and children, with household goods, hurrying at midday toward the Northern and Eastern Hills. The avenues of the capital were as deserted as a city of death at midnight. . . .

Yorinaga's disappearance from among the mourners in the death-chamber left no room for doubt. Not only he, but Tsunemunй, Tadazanй, and others known to be in sympathy with Sutoku were missing. It was clear that a plot was under way.

Until the seventh day of strict mourning was over, the gates of the Detached Palace and the Tanaka Villa were closed to all comers, nor was anyone seen to go out. When night came, however, figures in various disguises crept out from either side to reconnoiter.

On the second day of mourning Yorinaga left the courtiers surrounding the bier with the excuse that urgent matters recalled him to Uji. As he settled back in his carriage, he raged: "There they sit at the wake, whispering of plots, shedding tears while their eyes search each other suspiciously, concealing their treachery behind a solemn show of chanting priests! Who can abide drowning in that sea of mock tears?"

Under cover of darkness Yorinaga's carriage made its way from the Detached Palace to the Tanaka Villa, where he stole in to meet the ex-Emperor Sutoku.

"Never has such a thing been heard of—a son forbidden to see his dying father! I know too well how you suffer. Even now I left the new Emperor surrounded by Lady Bifukumon and those evil ones. Never has the throne been the prey of more evil advisers," said Yorinaga, lifting his eyes to Sutoku's,

At Yorinaga's words something flared up in Sutoku's brooding eyes. "Yorinaga—Yorinaga, you are the only man I dare trust!" Sutoku cried. The tears poured down his cheeks unchecked.

"I—my son—we are the rightful heirs to the throne, and yet we have been thrust aside—buried alive. The people expect me to ascend the throne once more. . . . Yorinaga, is this not so?"

Yorinaga's eyes were closed, as though he was meditating. The answer was ready. He had kept it for some time in his own breast. Who was to tell Sutoku that the words issuing from his own lips were no more than the substance of Yorinaga's own ambitions?

Sighing loudly, Yorinaga finally spoke. "It is all a matter of time. When your majesty decides that the time has come, that will be the moment decreed by the gods. To reject that which the gods offer is to anger them. There have been other monarchs who regained the throne, and what reason have you to hesitate?"

Yorinaga was supremely confident. Not only did he have the time-honored Book of Stratagems by heart, but he was certain, too, of his hold over Tameyoshi of the Genji.

That night Yorinaga revealed the plot by which Sutoku was to regain the throne. From the Palace across the river came courtiers and officers who had received their instructions from Yorinaga. The conspirators conferred all night and into the next day, setting the stage for a war, and as the assembling of troops here would excite suspicion and hamper their movements, Yorinaga soon left for Uji to pursue the next step in his plans.

At sunrise the great temple bells boomed. The seven days of mourning were over. All day long until sundown the bells sounded, and the unending chant of sutras mingled oddly with the whinnying of horses. The gates of Tanaka Villa, however, remained closed. Sutoku did not appear even at sundown for the rites marking the end of strict mourning, and Councilor Norinaga heard the murmurs against Sutoku grow louder. Fearing that the rumored plot was true, he quickly took horse to the bedside of his ailing brother, a high-ranking court officer, to ask for advice.

Painfully rousing himself, Norinaga's brother said: "As you can see, I am in no condition to seek an audience with the ex-Emperor and to dissuade him. I doubt even then that there would be any use. It may be too late, but I advise you to return quickly and urge his majesty to take the tonsure at once; that at least will insure his personal safety. We ourselves will not be able to escape this disaster."

On arriving back at Tanaka Villa, Norinaga was alarmed at finding Sutoku and his entourage hurriedly preparing to leave for the Shirakawa Palace, near the capital. At once he sought to dissuade the ex-Emperor.

"Your majesty, it will be unseemly for you to leave before the forty-nine days of lesser mourning are over. Moreover, there are rumors that you are conspiring against the throne, and your departure at this time will only confirm what people are saying. . . ."

But Sutoku, smiling, waved Norinaga aside, saying that he had been warned in secret that his life was in danger. While he was speaking, troops of heavily armed warriors arrived to escort him, and Norinaga was ordered to accompany the suite. Late that starless night of July 9 began the slow march for Shirakawa.

Torches were not lighted as the procession started on its way to the creak and grind of heavy carriage wheels and the clanging of arms in the dark.