CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SEEING THE ESSENCE

Cat crouched in the deep shade of the towering cedars near a small statue hall on the temple grounds across the river from Kawasaki. She began to tremble uncontrollably, and tears streamed, unnoticed, down her cheeks. She had wounded men of samurai rank in daylight, in front of witnesses.

With her father dead and the rights and privileges of his rank stripped away, Cat assumed she would be punished as a commoner instead of as a member of the upper class. There would be no official remonstrance and comfortable seclusion at home for her. The authorities would arrest her, execute her over the blood-pit, and expose her head by the roadside. Cat wasn’t afraid of dying, but she was mortified by the form it would take.

She didn’t remember how she came to be here. She didn’t remember the ride across the river with the boatman watching her warily from the stern as he poled. She didn’t remember walking across the dry floodplain and into the woods. All she remembered was the sword with a hand still clutching its hilt in the sand and a man crawling away, blood unreeling like a crimson satin sash behind him.

Cat gripped her elbows, trying to control the shuddering tremors. She looked around cautiously. No one was in sight. The temple grounds dedicated to the sainted Kb Daishi were extensive and boasted fifty or more buildings. Although Jiz-sama was a very popular bodhisattva, this small hall devoted to him apparently was not.

Cat stared at the bloody naginata leaning against a tree. She had to get rid of it. She carried it to the far side of the weathered wooden building. She leaned it against the wall while she climbed onto the barrel that held water in case of fire. She stood on tiptoe on the lid and laid the blade and the staff into the bamboo rain gutter along the chapel’s eaves.

She put her hands together, bowed, and said a prayer for both of them. They had served her well. Then she walked to the front of the hall. In the depths of the room, in the darkness behind the statue of Jiz, she could see a shadowy jumble of gilt and painted carvings—gods and blue-faced guardian kings, huge lotus flowers, monkeys, and lions—all thrown together and forgotten

Cat reached through the barred window and as an offering to Jizsama left her rosary near one of the lamps. Jiz was clad in the usual red bib and beret. He carried his pilgrim’s staff with iron rings to warn insects of his approach so they wouldn’t be stepped on. His stone smile was reassuring, and his eyes seemed to follow her as she backed away.

Cat was still crying reflexively. Musashi’s admonition that one must always take up the long-sword with the idea of cutting down the opponent was easier to accept in the abstract. The straw dummies she had practiced on as a young girl hadn’t bled. The mutilation of one hadn’t meant sure and terrible punishment.

A small stream flowed from a waterfall splashing down the side of a hill. It had been channeled into a bamboo pipe that diverted it to a big granite basin under the trees. With the bamboo dipper lying on top of it, Cat scooped up the cold water and rinsed her mouth and hands. Only then did she notice that her hands, grown soft over the past year, were red and abraded from the naginata shaft. She drank and splashed water on her face and arms.

Cat’s pack and tall hat were gone. In her distracted state she had left them at the ferry landing. She tried to remember what was in the pack. She couldn’t think of anything that would implicate Shichisaburo or Viper or Cold Rice. The hat wouldn’t do her any good now, anyway. Her enemies would be looking for the priest who wore it. Even so, she felt exposed without it.

She took off the black overrobe and the priest’s baggy trousers and white underrobe. Shivering from cold, she stuffed the white robe into a crevice in the face of the hillside and raked dried cedar needles over it. She put the faded black outer robe back on and belted it. She used her scissors to cut off the hem, turning the robe into a jacket. With fingers still trembling she clawed at the raw edge, raveling the coarse cloth to disguise the freshly cut material. Then she tore the trousers into strips and wrapped them like leggings around her tall tabi. She held them in place with the cloth ties from the trousers.

She turned away the bamboo pipe that splashed water into the basin. When the surface became still she used it as a mirror. She untied her disheveled hair and bent over, throwing it forward and combing it with her fingers. She wrapped the same dirty cord several times around the base of the bundle of hair. She grabbed it above the cord and used her shears to cut it off above her hand. When she let go, it bushed out in a tuft, a boy’s jaunty tea whisk style.

She trimmed the hair around her face into bangs and long sidelocks. When she inspected herself in the water, she was surprised by the handsome urchin who looked back at her. Then she noticed the splatter of blood across the front of her black coat.

She pulled her arms out of the sleeves, leaving the coat belted at her slender waist. Her upper body was bare, except for the haramaki that was still tightly wrapped around her abdomen and chest. She held the coat under the water gushing from the pipe and rubbed the stain, rinsing out the worst of it.

“Washing one’s clothes without undressing. It must save a lot of time. I should have thought of it.”

The quiet voice startled Cat so badly, she almost screamed. She plunged her hands into the sleeves and pulled up the wet coat, adjusting the front opening. She whirled to face the speaker.

Like most Buddhist lay monks, this one had shaved his head entirely, although his hair had grown out into a shadowy fuzz. He carried a staff, and he was dressed for traveling, but he was walking backward. He squinted nearsightedly at her from over his shoulder as he approached her.

The rear tail of his old black robe was tucked up into his sash, exposing bowed calves clad in brown leggings. A bronze pilgrim’s bell and a rosary of heavy black beads and fat red tassels hung around his wrist. His conical sedge hat rode on his back, over a closed paper parasol, a rolled mat, and one cylindrical brocade case for his bamboo flute and another for his pilgrim’s scroll. He wore a small white towel draped on his head, a white prayer stole on his left shoulder, straw sandals, and a smile.

He passed Cat and walked, still backward, up the uneven stone steps of the chapel. He turned, bowed, and muttered a short prayer.

“One hundred,” he said then. He threw a twisted straw into the box on a stand by the window through which Jiz-sama peered out benignly.

He picked up the box and walked down the steps, frontward this time. He nodded at Cat, who bowed deeply.

“These days I call myself Musui, Dream Besotted. I’m visiting old friends and older temples and seeing the historic sites.”

Cat almost blurted out her recognition of him. Of course she had heard of Musui and his poetry, but she remembered, just in time, that she was about to pretend to be ignorant of both.

Musui took a fistful of straws from the box and handed them to her. “You’re so good at saving time, what with washing your clothes while you’re wearing them,” he said amiably. “You can save me time by helping me count these.” He sat on the bottom step, rested the staff across his knees, and began tallying the rest. “Hi, fu, mi, yo … One, two, three, four …”

Famous or not, Cat was infuriated by his complacency. She was about to be beheaded and her corpse gibbeted, hung out like laundry, and he acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

“Please.” He waved the back of his hand at her, encouraging her to start.

She squatted beside the neatly raked path. Now that she was dressed as a boy, behaving like one came easily to her. She rather enjoyed being feckless and common. She would have enjoyed it more under better circumstances.

“Hi, fu, mi, yo.” She laid each straw on the ground between her feet as she counted it. The act was curiously calming.

“Forty-six,” she said finally.

“Fifty-three.” Musui sighed. “Fifty-three and forty-six is ninety-nine. How is that possible? I counted the straws out beforehand. We shall just have to do the Hundred-Times-Worship again.”

“I must be leaving, Your Honor.” Cat bowed and backed away.

But Musui held out his hand, fingers down, and opened and closed them rapidly, the signal for Cat to come with him. “If you’re going to be my page, you’ll need better clothes.” He started down the path as though the matter were settled. “My companion became ill and returned to Edo two days ago,” he called back to her. “Now the Beloved Amida has sent me another.”

Cat started to say that she couldn’t make his journey with him, then stopped. The two stared at each other a moment, shrouded and dwarfed there in the deep shade of the majestic cedars.

Musui had a gentle look, but Cat had the feeling that tatamae, what she showed others, didn’t fool him. He was a man capable of seeing the essence.

His skin was the color of tarnished bronze. One corner of his wide, thin-lipped mouth curled up, the other down. His mouth, jowls, and jaw canted forward from a flat nose and flared nostrils. They gave him a look of simian impishness. In spite of his nearsighted squint he had an air of intelligence and nobility as well as humor. He had wrinkles above and below his large, bright eyes. He had elephant eyes.

Cat knew that people with elephant eyes were popular. They were kind and creative. A person with elephant eyes could be trusted.

Musui could get into trouble for helping her, of course, but he was of noble birth. And famous besides. If he were caught, his punishment would be far lighter than that meted out to a commoner like Viper. Cat had been taught to be protective of subordinates, but superiors didn’t need her protection.

If there is a god who forsakes, she thought, there is another god who helps.

“Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor, but I have no money for clothes worthy of such an exalted position.” Cat gave Musui a chance to extricate himself from the trouble he had blundered into. In spite of Musui’s fame he didn’t look as though he had funds to outfit a servant.

“When one has friends one doesn’t need money. His Reverence the abbot is an old friend of mine.” As he walked, Musui waved in the general direction of the long, low building that housed the monks. “I have trouble making out temple inscriptions and road signs along the way,” he said. “Can you read?”

“I’m the ignorant offspring of a poor widow, Your Honor. I go in search of a teacher.”

“You search for a teacher. A teacher finds you.”

As they left the grove of trees Musui nodded toward the five men gathered at the door of the abbot’s quarters. “And I wonder for whom they search.”

Cat almost shrank back at the sight of them. In their sashes they wore their badges of office, the long forked steel rods that if skillfully used could snap a transgressor’s sword in two.

“Police?” she asked.

“They have the appearance of police.”

Musui gave a shallow nod. The men bowed low and backed down the steps while Musui called on Amida Buddha to bless them.

The abbot stood in the doorway and watched them until they were out of sight among the trees. Then he bowed to his old friend Musui and nodded to his old friend’s new apprentice.

“They’re looking for a brigand who wounded three samurai and an artist at the ferry this afternoon,” the abbot said. “They say he was dressed as a komuso. I don’t wonder one of them is behaving like a mad dog, attacking civilized folk.” The abbot disapproved of the sect’s methods. A komuso had passed through recently selling amulet bags that he said had been made from Kb Daishi’s robes.

“I told the police to search the grounds. We harbor no miscreants here.” The abbot glanced at Cat. “I see that your companion has rejoined you, Musui-sensei. Are you feeling better, lad?”

Cat looked quickly over at Musui, who continued to smile as though he hadn’t heard the question. “I am feeling well, Your Reverence,” Cat said.

“‘In travel, a companion. In life, sympathy.’” The abbot intoned the old proverb as though he had just invented it.

He said everything as if it were valuable information his listeners should note and remember. He was big enough to be one of the fierce warrior-priests who had defended the huge temple complex on Mount Hiei in the old days. But muscle had given way to fat.

He waited while they sat on the raised floor of the reception area and removed their footwear. Then he led them through cool cherrywood corridors to his inner room and to the tea and smoking accessories laid out on the tatami. The door to the inner courtyard was open, and a tiny waterfall splashed in the garden there. Three fat ducks snoozed at the edge of the carp pond. The sound of distant chanting of the Lotus sutra soothed Cat. She felt as though she were being ushered into Paradise.