CHAPTER SEVEN

THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND RI

A tall pole stood near the fence leading to the barrier in Shinagawa. One short crosspiece was lashed near the bottom of the pole and a longer one farther up. A naked man hung with feet braced on the bottom crosspiece and arms outstretched and tied to the top one.

All his blood had drained from the ragged gashes torn in his sides by a spear blade. The ground under the pole was black with it. The executioner had been clumsy or careless or cruel. He had stabbed the man several times before puncturing enough organs to finish the business.

The dead man had been caught trying to sneak around the barrier. His body had been hanging here for three days as a lesson to anyone with similar plans. Men of the eta, the outcasts, leaned on their shovels and puffed on their tiny pipes and joked around the open hole where the body would be thrown. The soil of the mass grave was studded with bones, hair, and teeth.

In spite of the stench, only Cat seemed to notice. While they waited their turn, pilgrims and travelers and porters sat on their luggage near the corpse. They chatted as they munched on the rice cakes and pickles and sweet potatoes they had retrieved from their packs and big cloth bundles. Whether they considered themselves too worldly to notice another public execution or whether they were really afraid, Cat couldn’t say.

The Tkaid Road wove through Shinagawa like a river meandering through a low wooden canyon. Here the highway followed the line of hills on one side and the bay on the other. Shinagawa’s role as a way station for people headed somewhere else was clear. It was famous for its restaurants and its audacious “rice servers,” women who, for a fee, delivered more than rice.

At the end of the commercial district stretched a forbidding wall. It funneled all the foot traffic, for no wheeled vehicles were allowed on the Tkaid, through one narrow gate. Government officials checked the travel papers of everyone passing through it.

Cat’s nerve almost failed her when she saw the early-morning crowd of travelers bunched at the barrier. A group of samurai, each with a pair of swords stuck through his sash, guarded the gate. They were separating out the women and escorting them into a nearby building.

To keep the restive daimy under control, the first Tokugawa shgun, Ieyasu, had devised a form of loyalty-by-hostage called “alternate attendance.” The lords were allowed to spend time on their fiefs scattered about the country; but they had to leave their wives and children in Edo as a guarantee of their good behavior.

If a daimy could smuggle his family out of Edo, he could foment rebellion without fear that their heads would decorate Edo’s execution grounds. So women, especially women of the nobility, were watched very closely. Cat knew the women were being stripped and inspected by female examiners. If they didn’t match the detailed descriptions on their permits, they would be detained or sent back to Edo or punished.

Cat wished she could stop at one of the busy, open-fronted tea houses and spend an hour or so over a steaming cup and a bowl of rice and vegetables. It would give her time to observe the barrier and the procedures there. But to drink tea and eat rice she would have to take off the basket covering her face.

Beyond the narrow alleyways between some of the buildings, Cat could see the quartz-and-sapphire glitter of the bay. Boats bobbed on its surface. Gulls dipped and swooped overhead, unaffected by man-made barriers. Cat envied them.

Shichisaburo had said that priests and nuns and holy men didn’t need travel permits. But what if he were wrong?

Cat read the notices painted on strips of wood and hung on the big, roofed-over board standing outside the gate. She found only the usual admonitions to the lower classes to work hard, avoid frivolous pastimes and showy clothing, and honor one’s superiors. There was no mention of a murder or two in the Yoshiwara. No word of a runaway courtesan.

For the first time since her escape from the House of the Perfumed Lotus, Cat would have to face government officials. She would have to speak to them. And if they discovered she was in disguise, they would arrest her.

In situations like this Musashi advised seizing the initiative. Cat jangled the iron rings on her staff. Those at the rear of the crowd jumped. They were less indifferent to the specter of death by crucifixion than they seemed.

“Namu Amida Butsu,” Cat droned.

People glanced up in annoyance and moved away. A few pressed their hands to their sashes or the fronts of their jackets where they kept their purses. Cat approached the roughest men she saw.

“Buy a talisman of the Thousandfold Blessing!” She draped the mendicant’s cloth over her hand and held out her begging bowl to a group of kago bearers. They were sprawled in a patch of morning sun, drinking warm sake and swapping lies.

“Try this talisman’s virtues,” Cat said. “It will cancel out the danger years. It will banish warts. It will make you fertile.”

One of the men had a dragon tattooed the length of his arm. With his round, woven-bamboo fan he scooped up a pile of dog excrement and dropped it into the bowl. His friends doubled over with laughter.

Cat bowed low. “The Buddha will remember your gift, kind sir,” she said. And I will remember your face, she thought. And if we meet under different circumstances, I will separate your head from your shoulders.

Ignoring their laughter, she moved on through the crowd, begging her way toward the head of the line. By the time she reached the gate she had emptied the bowl of the kago bearer’s contribution, but nothing else had taken its place. The people of Edo seemed to have no time for charity or religion.

With heart pounding she passed between the guards and walked to the open-fronted building where the government’s officials sat. White bunting decorated with the three hollyhock leaves of the Tokugawa crest hung from the eaves of the porch.

The magistrate hardly glanced at Cat when she stood before him. He sat cross-legged on a cushion on a tatami-covered dais and leaned on an elbow cushion. His assistant sat at a low writing table covered with sheafs of paper and ink pads and stamps. Behind him, on a lower level, the captain of the guard and three of his men sat back on their heels.

Cat had rehearsed her story, but the magistrate didn’t even question her. His assistant waved her past.

Cat’s knees felt weak as she walked through the opposite gate. Beyond it was the broad Tkaid, the great road called the Eastern Seaway. While Cat leaned on her staff to calm her racing heart, a pack train passed. The bells on the horses’ bridles jingled merrily. Just ahead of Cat walked a group of pilgrims who also wore bells. They were singing and clapping time and improvising dance steps as they went. Their straw sandals kicked up little explosions of dust.

“Holy man.”

Cat jumped when the old man tugged at her sleeve.

“Holy man, please accept this unworthy donation for your temple.” The man was bent and worn, and his clothes hung about him in tatters. The ten-mon piece he held out must have been most of what he had.

“You need this more than I, grandfather,” Cat said.

“Excuse my rudeness, but you would honor me by taking it. It will bring me the blessing of Buddha.” The old man bowed low and hobbled off before Cat could say anything else.

Cat stood in the center of the busy traffic and looked down the wide road. Its raised, hard-packed earthen surface was unmarred by ruts. Wheeled vehicles weren’t allowed on it. Rebel armies could be fed and armed with the contents of wheeled vehicles.

On both sides of the Tkaid, huge pine trees provided shade. The brown mosaic of rice paddies and irrigation ditches of the plain of Musashi came right to its verges. At the other end of the Tkaid, one hundred and twenty-five ri away, lay Kyto, the Western Capital of Peace and Tranquillity. According to Shichisaburo, Oishi spent his nights in Shimabara, Kyoto’s pleasure district. Cat’s hopes and all her prospects of avenging her father resided there.

Musashi wrote that the journey of a thousand ri began with the first step. A stranger in her native country, Cat drew a deep breath of chill winter air and took the first step.