CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THIS FIRE OF LOVE

Everyone in Fujisawa seemed to be celebrating, except Hanshiro and his drinking companion, Nameless, the painter of paper lanterns. Hanshiro had to concentrate to keep from wincing every time someone in the boisterous throng jostled him. The pain in his skull throbbed in time with the huge drum. It exploded anew with each beat of the drumsticks, thick as a man’s wrist. Then it pulsed with the reverberations.

His stomach churned, and he belched up bile. Nameless’s face was still bandaged, and he seemed to be sunk at least as deep in misery as Hanshiro. Fujisawa was usually bustling with worshipers on their way to the sacred island of Enoshima across the tidal flat. But this was the annual festival coinciding with the Fowl Market, celebrated on the day of the Cock, of the eleventh month. Today, especially, Fujisawa was no place for two men with hangovers.

Hanshiro could no longer distinguish the boom of the drum from the pounding in his head. The drum was only one of thousands being played in Fujisawa, but it was by far the biggest. And it was much too close.

It sat in a massive wooden cart pulled by a patient ox. At least Hanshiro assumed it was on an ox cart. He could see the great humped curve of the drum, like a diving whale, moving slowly through the sea of people and banners along the waterfront. The ox, however, was invisible. The drum and the drummers seemed to be borne on the shoulders of the noisy worshipers.

The red-and-black crest painted on the drumhead dwarfed the two drummers, who wore only loincloths and headbands. They stood facing each other in the cart and alternated their strokes, keeping up a booming cadence, measured and primal as a heartbeat. The expressions on their spare, angular faces were remote, as though they were hypnotized by the pulse of their own making. Sweat glistened on their naked bodies. The muscles of their backs quivered with each stroke.

The drum was accompanied by the clangor of bells, the keening of flutes, and the piercing, nasal chant of thousands of pilgrims. Most of the faithful were beating on small drumheads stretched across circular frames and held by handles, like round fans. More people lined the second-floor balconies of the houses and shops facing the bay and rained noise down on Hanshiro’s aching head.

The crowd was following the ornate gilt portable shrine as it moved ahead of the ox cart. The shrine’s carrying poles were shouldered by a host of young men. They chanted as they careened from one side of the road to the other. They plowed through the press of people, tilting the shrine precariously and causing the purple silk draperies to wave and flap. Hanshiro could follow its course by the scattering and contracting of the crowd and by the graceful, gilded phoenix on top.

Hanshiro and Nameless slowed their pace, allowing the procession to surge around them. When they had almost reached the rear of it, Hanshiro raised his folded fan above the press and pointed it at a tea house, the Fuji-Viewing shop. He and Nameless began maneuvering toward it through the thinning crowd.

They pushed aside the short curtains that hung from the open front of the shop to just below eye level. They took off their sandals and stepped up onto the raised floor. Hanshiro spread a silk cloth out on the tatami and laid his long-sword and scabbard on it, close to hand.

Nameless leaned his pole of painted lanterns and his travel kit against the side wall. Then he too laid out his sword. The two men moved with great care, so as not to exacerbate the pounding in their heads. They lowered themselves slowly to sit cross-legged at a low table.

From their position on the tatami they had a view of the sparkling blue water of the bay and Enoshima island’s high sheer cliffs with a dense green carpet of trees and bushes spilling over them. In the distance, the soaring, misty serenity of Mount Fuji’s slopes made everything else seem insignificant. A powdering of snow covered its peak. It looked like a white-capped wave, frozen at its crest.

The procession turned a corner, and the clamor became muted. Hanshiro and Nameless could still hear the crowd’s roar rise and fall as the shrine moved through Fujisawa’s back streets. It would spend the day traveling the surrounding countryside with frequent breaks for rest and refreshment for the bearers.

Three samurai occupied a big bench on the hard-packed earth at the front of the shop. They were talking and laughing over cups of tea. They did not wear Lord Kira’s crest embroidered on the sleeves and on the backs of their jackets, but Hanshiro knew they were Kira’s or Uesugi’s men. He could tell by their Edo accents and by their bearing and the cut of their clothes.

Hanshiro hadn’t come to this shop by accident. He had managed to leave Nameless long enough to ask where he might find Edo samurai. He hadn’t had much trouble learning where they were. Even in a town as crowded as this one, the Edo warriors and their purpose here were the subject of gossip and speculation.

“Irasshaimasu! Welcome!” The waitress appeared as if conjured from the air. She kneeled and bowed.

“Tea, if you would be so kind,” Hanshiro said. “And noodle soup.”

“The same,” mumbled Nameless. Now that the effects of last night’s sake had worn off, his broken nose was throbbing again under the bandages. He closed his eyes at the approaching sound of a drum.

This one had a high, insistent beat, like some large, angry insect. It was being played by one of a pair of dancers under a green hempen cloth painted with an elaborate, stylized orange-and-red flame design. The cloth was attached to a ferocious lion mask of red-lacquered papier-mâché. The man in the rear played the drum while the one in front sang and worked the mask’s hinged jaw. As he and his partner danced he raised and lowered it and shook it from side to side to set the stringy rope mane tossing wildly. All that could be seen of the men were their sandals, their gaiters, and their baggy green pantaloons as they cavorted.

They stopped a few doors down and lifted the costume over their heads. They set it on a bench in front of a tightly shuttered building. The black characters on the vertical white banner out front said it was a bathhouse and that, like most bathhouses, it would open two hours later, at the hour of the Monkey. That didn’t discourage the dancers.

With the confidence of longtime customers, they pushed open the small side door and called inside. “Auntie, we’ve come to drink your sake and climb two of your prettiest mountains.”

Hanshiro and Nameless could hear the muffled voice of the proprietress shouting from the rear of the house. “Go away, you drunken ne’erdo-wells. We’re closed. The girls are sleeping.”

The two men disappeared inside anyway and didn’t come back out. Their costume lay on the bench like the skinned trophy of a fanciful hunt.

“Where will you go from here?” asked Nameless.

“To my home country.”

Hanshiro’s casual questions about the artist’s broken nose had elicited only evasions. The westcountryman seemed preoccupied, but he claimed to know nothing about the monk he had fought at the ferry, except to admit, grudgingly, that he was skilled. Hanshiro would have thought him an Asano retainer, except that if he were, Lady Asano would have had no reason to break his nose.

Hanshiro had told Nameless nothing of his own commission. He wasn’t about to divulge that he planned to capture the naginata-wielding priest before he reached the Hakone barrier. If Lady Asano passed it, bringing her back through would be a great deal of trouble. If she didn’t fool the guards, she would be arrested, and since Hanshiro couldn’t deliver her to Old Jug Face, he would lose the final installment of his pay.

Hanshiro didn’t expect Kira’s men to take Lady Asano. She had evaded them handily so far. In fact, Hanshiro’s annoyance with her was giving way to admiration and a certain sense of anticipation.

“Is there work in Tosa?” Nameless interrupted Hanshiro’s thoughts about the elusive Lady Asano.

“No. But I would rather starve in Tosa than feast in Edo.”

The artist grimaced morosely. He suspected the Tosa rnin was lying about the purpose of his trip, just as he himself was. But he recognized the sentiment as sincere.

“I too am weary of the soft, false ways of the Eastern Capital,” he said. “The townsmen have raised vulgarity to a high level. And the cowardly rascals who call themselves bushi …”

Nameless glanced at Kira’s men and fell silent. To even speak of the swaggering Edo samurai sullied his tongue. He sipped his tea as though to wash away the taste of them. The two men settled into a pensive, cautious silence.

“Tosa.” One of Kira’s men recognized Hanshiro’s accent. He leaned over and hissed in an attempt to get Hanshiro’s attention. “Hsst. Tosa.”

Hanshiro didn’t glance his way. He sipped his tea and stared across the water, past the island of Enoshima to the mountains on the curve of the mainland beyond the bay and to Fuji, rising like a prayer in mist like a cloud of incense.

“Hsst, Tosa.” The man was as persistent as he was foolish. His eyes were red-rimmed. When he laughed he exposed a wide gap where his front teeth used to be. He had not been a samurai for long. He still had the odor of rice paddy manure about him. Killing him would not be worth filling out all the official papers his death would require of Hanshiro.

“Is is true that travelers to your country are so glad to leave it that they make a special offering when they pass the barrier?” The other two laughed uproariously, encouraging him to dangle one foot over hell. They were acorns comparing their statures. “Is it true they squat and add to the Dung Monument at Pine Tree Ascent?” The man waited a bit for a reaction. “Hsst. Tosa,” he said when he got none.

The word Tosa began a resonance inside Hanshiro, not in his head, but in the center of his spirit behind his navel. It spread outward in a shudder of longing for his homeland. He remembered the stunning view from the barrier at Pine Tree Ascent. Green mountains, azure sea, waves washing among the roots of the gnarled pines along the shore far below. He remembered surrendering his exit permit there. He remembered the intense ache of being set adrift from the country of his birth and upbringing, the home of his ancestors.

Hanshiro seemed as unaware of Kira’s loutish young retainer as the retainer was of the sudden and messy death he had almost called down on himself. But to have to suffer nausea and regret and fools, all in one morning, made Hanshiro melancholy. Maybe the time had come to stop doing battle with the world and face his fiercest opponent. Himself.

When he finished this job maybe it would be time to withdraw into a life of seclusion and contemplation. To return to his homeland and play out his days meditating in one of the plangent seaside grottoes of the tumultuous Cape of Murato. Perhaps the sea’s steady roar, which Hanshiro thought of as the voice of the universe, would soothe the insistent whine of his own petty thoughts.

Hanshiro picked up the soup bowl in his right hand and hooked his thumb and forefinger over the rim. It was a warrior’s gesture, used whether an attack seemed probable or not. Nameless ate the same way. The simple ploy was designed to protect against an enemy who might try to slam the rim of the porcelain bowl into the bridge of his nose while he drank.

The bland broth and noodles settled Hanshiro’s stomach. The agony in his head subsided to a throbbing ache, although the regret at his fall from moderation the night before lingered. He sucked at his teeth to dislodge any seaweed garnish that might have clung there.

He was sucking and running his tongue over each tooth and staring fixedly at Mount Fuji when Cat saw him and Kira’s men. Kira’s men were too engrossed in their jokes to notice the peasant lad under the big sedge hat, but Cat was a savant of Edo dress and manners. She knew immediately who they were.

She also realized Hanshiro must have sensed her presence even though he was looking the other way. She only hoped he didn’t know her in the shabby clothes she wore. The artist’s face was hidden beneath his wrapping of bandages. Cat didn’t recognize him from the fight at the Kawasaki ferry.

She whirled to find a pair of policemen lounging on the corner of the almost deserted street. She turned back again, her heart pounding. She could fight Kira’s men, but not Hanshiro and the policemen, too. She took several deep breaths to calm herself.

“What is it, master?” Kasane whispered.

“Follow me.” Keeping her chin down so the brim of her hat hid her face, Cat walked to the bench where the lion costume lay. She slowed as she approached it.

“When I say to, slip under the cloth,” she muttered. “You have to work the mask so I can sing.”

Kasane had several objections to that plan, but she dared not voice them. When Cat was alongside the costume she turned casually so she faced away from the tea house. She took the furoshiki from Kasane and slung it on her own back. She loosened the cords across her chin and slid the hat down over the furoshiki.

“Now!” She lifted the cloth up over her head. She watched Kasane settle into the mask ahead of her and tuck her skirt up into her sash so her legs were bare. “Are you ready?” Cat asked.

“I don’t know what to do, master.”

“You must have seen a lion dance before, you radish. Grip the bar with your hands and clack the mouth open and shut. Shake the head around while you dance up the street.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I shall turn you over to the police and tell them of the money you stole.” Cat counted on the peasant’s being too simple or too timid to point out that Cat seemed to fear the police, too. She also counted on the costume’s owners not returning and on the rnin from Tosa being too uninterested in the pecadillos of peasants to involve himself in this particular theft.

Kasane clicked the jaws gingerly.

“Harder.” Cat ground her teeth in fury at Kasane’s timidity.

Kasane pulled hard on the bar and slammed the jaws shut with a loud clack. Cat began the lion song, stamping her feet in time and pushing Kasane forward with the butt of her staff. The mask’s eyeholes were a hand’s length away from Kasane’s eyes, and she moved forward cautiously, using the exaggerated kicks and leaps of the dance to cover her uncertainty. But by the time she drew alongside the tea house she was shaking the heavy mask with vigor, if not enthusiasm. Cat chanted the lion dance song lustily.

Hanshiro and Nameless watched them pass. When they had disappeared around a corner, Nameless tugged on the cord around his neck to retrieve his flat square purse on the end of it. He pulled the purse up from the depths of his jacket as though he were landing a squid on a jig line.

“I must be on my way.” He counted out twenty coppers for the soup and the tea, then dropped the purse back down the neck opening and pushed it under his sash.

Hanshiro grunted.

“May the seven gods of good fortune smile on you,” Nameless added.

“And on you.” Hanshiro bowed. He was relieved that the west-country rnin had chosen to go his own way. That saved Hanshiro the necessity of making up a story to rid himself of him.

Nameless complimented the waitress on the soup and bowed again. He stuck his long-sword back into his sash, put on his sandals, shouldered his pole of lanterns, and sauntered casually off in the wake of the lion dancers.

As Hanshiro resumed his contemplation of the mountain, a poem lingered in his mind. It had been written long ago, when Mount Fuji rumbled and spouted smoke and fire.

No ways are left me now to meet my beloved;
Must I, like the lofty peak of Fuji in Suruga
Burn on forever
With this fire of love?