CHAPTER TWENTY

A TRUE WARRIOR

Cat awoke to a washed and sparkling morning. Through the dark green branches of the pines she could see shards of a winter sky pale and lambent as porcelain. Musui stretched, yawned, and wandered off into the bushes to urinate and to scrub his teeth at the waterfall.

Cat rolled her mat. Then she made a small offering of rice cake and prayed for her father’s soul. As always when she thought of her father, she wished she had had a chance to speak with him before he died. But actually Cat spoke more with her father now that he was dead than she ever had when he lived.

When she was growing up he had visited only rarely her mother’s house. As soon as Cat was old enough to understand, her mother had explained that her father’s many duties required him to be elsewhere. When he did visit he often quoted Lao Tsu, who said one should govern people as one would cook fish, poking as little as possible. Lord Asano seemed to have the same attitude toward raising children, as though fatherhood were a government post to which he’d been appointed.

Cat was fiercely proud of him, though. She thought him the handsomest man born. As a child she had wanted his approval more than anything else, which may have been why she trained until the naginata shaft rubbed her palms and fingers raw and glistened with her blood. Her mother said she had inherited her father’s obstinacy, but Cat did it to make up for the shame of being born a girl when she knew he wanted a son. And for the slight nod he would give when she pleased him.

Now Cat laid everything out on the big cloth, the furoshiki, brought the corners up to the middle of the bundle, and tied them. Then she hung the brocade bag around her neck. Inside, wrapped in the waterproof sheath of a bamboo culm, was her new travel permit.

The abbot had seemed pleased to be able to thwart the shgun’s law by issuing illegal papers. He had sorted through a stack of them while Cat knelt with head bowed. They all had been made out for pilgrims, authorizing them to visit the holy places. They had been signed and stamped by the local magistrate and by the abbot himself, as head of the home temple.

Musui had been apologetic about the bother, but the abbot had waved a languid hand. “Don’t worry. Pilgrims arrive here every day with no more notion of permits than seaweed has when it washes up on the shore. Or they have a thousand excuses for losing theirs.”

The abbot had mimicked the terrified grimace of a peasant. “‘Forgive this miserable fool, Your Most Illustrious Grace.’” His voice had quavered as he imitated the exaggerated trembling of a peasant faced with authority. “‘My paper fell down the privy hole while I was squatting.’ Or, ‘The river kappa grabbed it when the ferry sank.’ Or, ‘It burned up in the inn where I was staying.’

“Sometimes the heretics who pose as holy men convince the faithful to boil their permits and drink the broth as an elixir.”

The abbot was feeling particularly vexed with itinerant holy men that day. In the midst of the temple’s festival a gang of them had set up housekeeping in a corner of the temple compound. They had proceeded to ring their bells and chant unceasingly and at full volume.

With brush inked and poised above the heavy rice paper, the abbot had looked at Cat. “Name?”

“Ichiro.” Cat had answered without hesitation. It meant “Firstborn Son,” and it was her father’s pet name for her.

“And are you indeed the firstborn?”

“Yes, Your Reverence.” That at least was true.

After Kanagawa, Musui took a side road into the hills in search of a temple that claimed to have a sample of Daishi-sama’s writing. But the small, run-down building had an abandoned air about it. It was closed up, and Musui could find no one to open it for him. Cat could tell he was disappointed. She herself was annoyed by the useless delay.

By the time they returned to the Tkaid the sun was well on its way to setting behind the mountains that crouched in purple ranks to the horizon. The rain had brought warmer weather, and the road to Hodogaya was crowded with travelers. The bay below reminded Cat of a cloak dyed with mountain indigo. A line of surf undulated like a white thread along the shore. In the distance to the southwest, Mount Fuji towered above them. Its smoke-blue slopes swept heavenward in graceful folds.

When Cat had been much younger she and her mother had accompanied her father on the yearly trips to Ak. A lord’s official wife couldn’t leave Edo with her husband, but an outside-wife, “a noblewoman of the province,” could. While her nurse napped, Cat had hung from the window of the big palanquin. She had watched the sacred mountain grow as the procession of retainers and porters, sandal bearers, servants, maids, and palanquins approached it.

Cat remembered how carefree those journeys had been. Her father’s standard-bearers had cleared the road ahead of them. The staffs of the best inns had been lined up and waiting to make them comfortable. Cat had stepped from the palanquin directly onto the floor of the entryway, and her feet never touched the road. As they traveled Cat had slept or read or listened to her nurse’s songs and stories.

Cat wished she were in that palanquin, napping while the road flowed by, traversed by the efforts of others. And she missed her nurse, who in a way had been more familiar to her than her own mother.

Maybe the group of women who passed reminded her of her nurse. They were rice hullers. They shook the bran dust from their aprons and massaged their stiff shoulders and arms.

When Cat and her mother were forced out of their house and the money set aside for them mysteriously disappeared, Cat’s nurse had gone to an employment agency. The only work available was as a rice huller in a government granary. It was exhausting work. Cat remembered her coming back to the tiny house late in the evening, her clothes covered with bran dust. She had developed a racking cough from the dust. Cat worried that it would ruin the old woman’s health, but she insisted on doing it so she could add her few coppers to the household funds. Her uncomplaining sacrifice had been part of Cat’s decision to seek a contract at the House of the Carp.

As Cat and Musui walked onto the arc of the bridge outside Hodogaya, Musui lifted his staff so it wouldn’t tap on the planking. “We mustn’t disturb the Daishi’s sleep.”

Cat leaned over the railing to look underneath. Bundles of belongings were stacked against the big stone pilings where the bridge spanned dry land. It seemed that someone, if not the Daishi, was sheltering there.

“In his wanderings the Daishi was once refused lodging and had to sleep under a bridge,” Musui said. “He wrote a poem about it.”

“What was the poem, sensei?” She knew the poem already, of course, but was maintaining the pretense of ignorance.

“‘They refuse to help a traveler in trouble,’” Musui recited. “‘One night seems like ten.’”

Musui smiled and bowed and called out greetings to everyone he passed. Musui was a traveler. He had been up this road many times. He could probably answer any question Cat had about the Tkaid. And Cat had lots of questions.

She wanted to know how closely the daimy scrutinized travelers passing through their lands and how quick they were to flog or crucify those who displeased them. Which rivers boiled with rapids, and how did one bargain with river porters? What was the cost of a night in a respectable inn? Of a bowl of rice or a bath? Did bandits really lurk in the mountains? Most important, where was the next government barrier?

“Sensei …” She thought it best not to appear too curious about details. “What is the road like ahead?”

“The Path?” Musui’s expansive embrace included the bay, the hills, Mount Fuji, and the terraced brown paddies following the contours of the slopes. He beamed at the colorful stir of travelers that swirled around them.

“Everyday life is the Path. To ask about it is like the birds asking what is air; or the fish inquiring as to the nature of water.”

Cat sighed. This would be difficult. She tried an oblique approach. “Have you made many pilgrimages, sensei?”

“Ah, yes. Three times I’ve circled Shikoku, visiting the eighty-eight temples associated with the Daishi. I’ve been to his burial place on Mount Koya. I’ve been to the Land of the Eight Clouds Rising.”

Musui bowed to a huge stack of brushwood creeping along on a pair of legs as thin as the iron chopsticks used to transfer live coals. The old woman underneath was bent at a right angle, her chest parallel to the ground. She walked with the aid of a gnarled branch.

“Auntie, let me carry that for you.”

She stared suspiciously up at Musui from under the load. When he tried to lift the frame the wood was tied to, she veered, tugging it out of his hands. She was astonishingly strong, but when Musui let go of the load its weight carried it off in the opposite direction. The old woman had to skip a few steps to get control of it again. “Baka,” she muttered under her breath.

“I have no plans to steal your wood, auntie.”

“A gentleman like you shouldn’t bother with the likes of me, Your Honor.” She continued to stare up at him like a rat cornered in the woodpile. She was trying to analyze this madman’s scheme to trick and rob her.

Cat was appalled. Surely sensei wasn’t considering carrying wood like a peasant. She was even more appalled by the possibility that he would expect her to carry it in his stead.

“Please, auntie.” Musui smiled at her beguilingly. “Allow an unworthy pilgrim the honor of bearing your burden a short way. For the sake of O-Daishi-sama.”

Reluctantly the shoulder-burden-auntie lifted the woven straw carrying strap from across her bony chest. Even more reluctantly Cat helped Musui heave the heavy wooden frame onto his back.

Having her load removed made no difference in the old woman’s posture. She still walked bent double at the waist, as though searching for something dropped. She had to hold her head at an angle that made her chin jut out. With one hand she clung to the staff. She held the other arm straight behind her for balance. Her bare feet left long scuff marks in the damp earth.

Musui slowed his pace to match hers. Cat closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She silently chanted a mantra for serenity. At this rate she would never reach Kyoto.

“Is Your Honor going to Ise?” The old woman peered sideways up at Musui.

“The gods alone can say, auntie. The Path matters. The destination doesn’t.” Musui was off on his favorite subject. “My disciple and I follow the instructions of the Daishi to roam about until exhausted, then drop to the ground, and in this dropping be whole.”

“I could tell you pudgy city priests a thing or two about dropping from exhaustion.” Now that the shoulder-burden-auntie had recovered from her shock, her basic nature was reasserting itself.

She swiveled her knobby head to look up at Musui. Her hair was gray and feathery as lint. Below it her skull looked as though thin leather had been sewn tightly over a collection of edged objects.

“I have advice much more valuable than that.” Her beady eyes glinted with the malice spawned by a lifetime of grievances. “Keep your money in your belt. Don’t pull your knife on a drunkard, and don’t show your daughter to a monk.

“Or in your case, pretty boy …” She shook her walking stick in Cat’s direction. “Don’t turn your back on one. They’ll hop into your drawers faster than a flea.”

“I’ll add that wisdom to the Daishi’s rules of the road.” Musui’s equanimity seemed to disappoint her.

“What are Daishi-sama’s rules, sensei?” Cat asked. Maybe Kb Daishi had some practical advice for travelers. Cat could use any advice she could get.

“‘Do not wish for riches or acclaim or gratification of the flesh,”’ Musui said. “‘Do not kill, steal, fornicate, drink, or talk idly.’”

“Might as well stay home,” the old woman mumbled at her feet.

“‘If you meet a highwayman, give him everything,’” Musui continued. “‘Don’t haggle over the cost of an inn or a ferry. Give alms to beggars. Never ride a horse or kago.’”

“Why is that?” Cat immediately discarded most of the advice, keeping only the part about not haggling with ferrymen and innkeepers.

“One travels the Path humbly, without outside aid. When you feel the desire to break these rules, stop your journey and go home.”

The woman resumed her load when they reached the edge of Hodogaya. Without saying “Thank you” or looking back, she trudged off and was soon lost to sight down a side street.

“Ungrateful,” Cat muttered.

“He who knows kindness is a true warrior.”

Cat’s face burned at the gentle reprimand. Oishi had often said the same thing when as a child, Cat had lost her temper with the household servants.

“Hold out your begging bowl.” Musui drew his own wooden bowl from the front of his robe and extended it. “Homage to the Daishi who impels our earnest pleas,” he chanted to passersby.

Cat clenched her teeth and did likewise. Of the many virtues her parents had taught her, humility was the most difficult.

In Hodogaya the begging bowls served two purposes. The waitresses in their thick white face powder and blue aprons dodged around Cat and Musui. They went in search of wealthier travelers to drag back to their inns and tea houses.

By the time Cat and Musui had passed through the village they had collected forty coppers, a few handfuls of uncooked rice, a dried fish, and an offer of lodging in a hovel that a rat would have avoided. The afternoon was late, and Cat was ready with a refusal, in case Musui were mad enough to accept the offer.

The hut sat on a barren piece of rocky ground at the edge of the village. It was made of panels of woven bamboo lashed between posts, with cast-off mats thrown over for roofing and held down with rocks. The mat that served as a door was thrown back to reveal the furnishings, a heap of bamboo leaves in a corner.

With a bundle of brush a gaunt old woman was sweeping the earthen floor at her doorway. She wore a tattered paper robe and a faded rag over her head with the front corners tied at the nape of her neck.

“Honor our miserable house by staying here, kind pilgrims.” Like the shoulder-burden-auntie, her back was permanently bent, but she bowed lower. “Bring the Daishi’s blessing to us with your presence. I have only gleanings from the millet fields for your supper, but I shall fetch fresh river grass for you to lie on. And I will massage your weary feet.”

“We must journey farther before stopping for the night,” Musui answered her gently. “Perhaps on our way back we can enjoy your generous offer. In the meantime, please do us the honor of accepting this meager trifle for the Daishi’s sake.” He gave her a small wooden tablet with an invocation and a picture of Kb Daishi stamped on it. “It comes from Mount Koya. It will protect you and your loved ones.” He added the rice and the fish they had been given and all the coppers.

Clutching the treasures, the old woman wept and bowed and called her thanks until they rounded a curve in the road. When they were out of sight, Musui sat down abruptly on a rock. His eyes sparkled with tears.

As Cat stood staring down at him, grief and shame overwhelmed her. She saw the old woman curled in the pile of straw with snow drifting in through the gaps in the roof and walls and covering her frail body. Cat shuddered. She crouched next to Musui, buried her face in her sleeves, and began to cry as though her heart would break.

“Here now,” a young woman shouted. “Everyone dies in the end. So while we’re in the world let’s be merry.”

Cat glanced up and saw the group of young women standing in the roadway, but she couldn’t stop crying any more than she could have said why she was doing it. The tears flowed from some dark spring hidden inside her. They stemmed from despair that someone as kind as the old woman should suffer before being released by death and born into a better life. She cried in fear that her own mother would die poor and alone. She wept for her nurse, who no longer had a home or a livelihood worthy of her.

“There, there, Shinobu.” Musui became concerned. “We must have endurance, Endurance.” He handed Cat a towel to wipe her eyes. “I shall ask the abbot to find a simple job for her and a place to live on the temple grounds. In her next life she will certainly be born higher on the wheel.”

Musui handed her a paper handkerchief. As she was blowing her nose Cat felt the playful tap of a fan on her head.

“Such a pretty boy and such a red nose.” The six young women, all dressed in identical pilgrims’ hats and robes, stood in a semicircle around her. Behind them stood a trio of porters, almost invisible under their loads of boxes and bundles.

“Jiz-sama has sent us to cheer you.” The speaker for the group had a round, plain face and a merry smile.

“Ah, the seven sages have left their meditation in the bamboo grove.” Musui helped Cat up under the weight of the furoshiki.

The women laughed. Everyone knew the ancient story of the seven Chinese sages who left the frivolity of court life to meditate and drink and compose poetry among the bamboo. The joke was that the ideogram for “seven sages” was pronounced the same as “seven prostitutes.” In spite of their plain white robes, their pilgrims’ bells, and the pious slogans on their wide bamboo hats, Musui had recognized their profession.

“You flatter us, Your Honor,” said the leader. “We are but simple bathhouse girls, off on a pilgrimage to Ise.”

“Our holy gift to pilgrims is to make their road seem shorter,” one of them said.

And they did. The leader thumped time on her hand drum and Cat sang the “Song of the Tailless Ox” and other, more vulgar ditties. For most of the two ri to Totsuka, the seven sages laughed and clapped time and danced.