CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE THICKNESS OF A PLANK

After Cat and Kasane turned the corner and threw off the lion costume, Cat led the way through the back streets of Fujisawa until she was sure neither the police nor Hanshiro nor Kira’s men were following her.

Cat stopped at the intersection marked by a large red torii gate. From there a road branched off to the beach, where hundreds of people were preparing to wade across to the island of Enoshima. The worshipers intended to pay their respects to Benten-sama, the Shinto goddess of art and music and eloquence; but they were also heading for the collection of souvenir shops and brothels, inns and sake shops, clinging to Enoshima’s steep hillsides.

“We part company here,” Cat said.

“It’s as you say, master.”

Kasane helped heave the furoshiki onto Cat’s back. It was heavy, but not as heavy as the bundle Cat had carried for Musui. Of course, Musui had walked slowly and stopped often. Cat, on the other hand, was in a hurry.

Cat gave Kasane a small towel with two strings of a hundred coppers each wrapped inside. They weren’t much, but she didn’t have much money left herself. She was alarmed at how quickly the procurer’s coins had dwindled, consumed by the necessities of the trip. She also begrudged Kasane the money because she had a feeling the simpleton wouldn’t be able to hold on to it long. As far as Cat was concerned, the child had no more sense than a gnat.

“Go to Benten-sama’s shrine and ask to see a priest,” Cat said.”He’ll help you.” But she knew the advice wasn’t much good.

Enoshima’s shrine to Benten was among the richest and busiest in the country. The priests there would be much too busy selling fortunes and amulets and special litanies to pay attention to one lost peasant woman. Still, Cat might have been able to walk away from the dirt-eater if she hadn’t glanced back.

Cat turned and saw Kasane standing where she had left her. She seemed oblivious to the throng of noisy, happy people brushing past her. She clutched the towel and the coppers to her breast and stared fixedly at Cat. Her narrow, upslanted eyes glittered with unshed tears. Her face was impassive, set in the stoic hopelessness of the victims of life’s cruelty and indifference. She had the look of a waif who had fallen overboard in a stormy sea and was watching the boat sail off without her.

Even as Cat watched, a man approached her and tugged at her sleeve. Kasane shrank away from him, her eyes still pleading with Cat.

Cat blew out her breath in exasperation. She had just learned another of life’s lessons: the master was also the servant of those he would rule.

Brandishing her staff, she strode through the crowd, scattering everyone between her and Kasane. She was two-thirds the weight, height, and age of the man, but the ferocity and suddenness of her charge discouraged his suit. He melted into the crowd.

“Oiso!” Cat ground the word out between clenched teeth. “I’ll take you to Oiso and no farther. We can hire a place in a boat that will carry you to Kazusa province.”

Cat dumped her furoshiki at Kasane’s feet. Kasane hoisted it onto her shoulder, balancing it with her pack and the rolled mats.

“You’re as hard to get rid of as head lice,” Cat muttered as she stalked off.

Cat was in a hurry to leave Fujisawa. She imagined she saw Hanshiro’s glower at every turn. Finding him in the same tea house with Kira’s men had confirmed her suspicion that he was one of them, hired by Lord Kira or his son to catch her or kill her.

She remembered the rnin’s tiger eyes, his golden irises and unwavering gaze. A person with tiger eyes had power over people. The Chinese physiognomists said that those with tiger eyes led difficult, lonely lives; but that wasn’t much consolation.

Cut off by mountains and water from the rest of the country, the men of Tosa were reputed to be exceptionally proud, tough, and skilled at swordplay. Cat had no doubt that the rnin called Hanshiro was all of that. He was a man of considerable arm, as the saying went. He was the only one Cat really feared.

With her hat brim hiding her face, Cat sauntered by the Fujisawa transport office where the kago bearers and postboys lounged with their palanquins and horses. “I’m on my way back home, young gentleman,” they shouted at her. “I’ll take you cheap for this stage.”

The prospect of riding was tempting. Cat was rehearsing how she would ask the price and how she would haggle when she noticed the man sitting on a box under the willow in the middle of the trampled yard. He was obviously the retainer who had lost the draw and had been assigned this duty instead of drinking sake with Kira’s other three men.

He was checking the identity of everyone who engaged a kago or a horse. Lord Kira’s men assumed Lady Asano would not walk if she could ride.

They think I’m stupid. For some reason, that angered Cat as much as their dogged pursuit of her.

Cat struck out for Hiratsuka, but she didn’t take long to realize she was being led from behind. Kasane followed meekly the usual three paces back, but she was walking so fast that Cat was obliged to increase her own speed, in spite of her aching feet. Cat knew Kasane was hurrying so she couldn’t be accused of slowing her master down. She was determined to give no excuse for Cat to abandon her.

Cat studied the guidebook as she walked. She could arrive in Oiso by early afternoon, hire a boat, and launch the peasant woman. Once rid of her she could walk to Odawara, almost four ri farther, and arrive well before sunset. She would find an inexpensive but respectable inn. She would bathe, eat, and rest up for the arduous climb through the Hakone mountains. She would prepare to face the barrier at the high pass there.

Her heart thumped faster when she thought of the Hakone barrier. The officials there were said to be able to identify a person’s village by the nuances of dialect. If Cat carried the travel permit of Hachibei, the peasant woman’s younger brother, she would have to speak with his accent. She had almost discarded the one person who could instruct her in it.

So far Cat’s companion had spoken as little as possible. That was commendable in a peasant, but Cat realized she had to hear Kasane speak so she could imitate her. She wondered what she could possibly talk about with a commoner. Certainly not art or drama or literature. Cat slowed and took up a position just ahead of Kasane’s right elbow.

“How did you come to have your younger brother’s papers?” she asked.

“He put most of his things in my pack so he wouldn’t have to carry so much.”

“Where is he now?”

“Gone.” Kasane stared at her feet as she plodded doggedly along under her burden.

“Tell me what happened to him.” To ask such a direct and personal question was rude, but Cat was desperate.

“I should not bore your estimable person with my insignificant troubles, master.”

“It doesn’t matter if you bore me …” You gourd, Cat thought. She resisted the desire to beat conversation out of Kasane with her staff.”To fool the guards at the barrier I have to speak like your brother, Hachibei, from Pine village. Tell me everything that happened, in great detail, so I can study your accent. Do you understand?”

“Yes, master.” Kasane took a deep breath. “Several days ago nine of us left our village—my only brother and I, the president of the Ise club, and the six people who won the lottery.”

“The lottery?”

“Yes. Each month members of the Ise club pay a few bu into the club fund. Each year those who win the lottery use the money to pay for their trip. When we left, there was a great celebration with speeches and gifts.”

In fact, at the time, the leavetaking had been the most exciting event of Kasane’s life.

“The president chose to travel at this time of year because the inns’ rates are lower. And the geomancer promised unusually warm weather. We spent the first night at a poor inn, and someone …” Kasane hesitated again. She blushed a deep pink.

“Go on.” Cat tried to be patient.

“In the dark, on the way back from the convenience, someone thought my bed was his own. When I told him he was mistaken, he hurried off.”

In spite of herself Cat had to smile. Pilgrims were supposed to put aside all carnal thoughts. But away from the watchful eyes of family and neighbors, pious journeys often turned into frolics.

“Some rough-looking men were staying at the inn, too, and I was frightened. I took my pack and slept in the empty closet where they store bedding. When I crawled out the next morning I discovered that the president of the club had run away and taken the treasury with him.”

Cat almost laughed out loud. So far it was a tale worthy of a stage farce. “Why didn’t you all turn around and go home?”

“The others had a few coins set aside, and they decided to beg along the way to eke them out. Then a boatman offered us a ride across the water to Oiso. He said it was his pious gift to pilgrims. He even left a seat for Funadama-sama in his boat.”

Like everyone else in the fishing village where Kasane was born, she had heard the faint tinkling sound that came occasionally from the beached boats at night. She knew then that Funadama-sama, the lovely goddess of fishermen, was moving around in them.

“And the boatman turned out to be a pirate.” Already Cat was adopting the peculiar rhythm and pronunciation of Kasane’s speech.

“Yes.”

Kasane’s voice sounded strained. Cat glanced around and was surprised by the anguish on her face. Cat was embarrassed that she had caused such a public display of emotion. She moved farther ahead of Kasane and asked no more questions.

Behind her, Kasane walked as if in a trance. She was remembering that terrible boat ride. “One thickness of a plank …” went the fishermen’s proverb about boats. “Below, hell.”

Once again Kasane cowered in the bow as the captain stood at the huge sweep in the stern. His hair had come loose from its queue, and long tendrils of it whipped like eels around his head. His face was contorted, as though the storm raged in him as well as in the the waters of the bay.

The men of Pine village knelt in the center of the open boat and held on to the boom. They fell against each other as they tried to follow orders and undress in the pitching vessel. With his long knife the pirate made a sweeping gesture toward the leeward gunwale. Brandishing knives and staves, his crew rushed the naked pilgrims. Kasane’s brother cried out as he was pushed overboard with the others.

“Pray for me, elder sister,” he shouted. “Do not let my soul become a homeless ghost.”

Kasane watched, helpless, as he sank below the side of the boat until only his hand was visible on the gunwale. Then someone smashed it with a stave. The fingers became shorter as they slipped, then disappeared. Kasane continued staring at the splintery wood where they had been.

One pirate held up a stained, waterlogged pilgrim’s robe. “Country people. They wear cheap goods.”

The others laughed as they rifled the men’s packs. Kasane tried to listen for her brother’s voice, but over the flapping of the sail, the roar of the storm, and the pirates’ laughter she couldn’t hear the cries of the drowning men.

She pressed as deeply into the angle of the bow as she could and stared down at the black bilge water in which she sat. She didn’t look up when the captain’s bare feet filled her view. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. She went rigid and mute with shame and terror as he knelt on one knee, reached up under her robe, and probed her with his finger. “This one’s homely, but unspoiled,” he shouted. “We can sell her. Tie her up.”

As a crewman pulled Kasane’s hands behind her and the rough straw rope cut into her wrists, Kasane heard a faint tinkling sound. It wasn’t lovely Funadama-sama, the goddess of fishermen. One of the pilgrim’s brass bells was rolling back and forth on the pitching floor.

Now, as Kasane walked behind Cat’s straight, indifferent back, she wiped her eyes with the thin towel Cat had given her and blew her nose into it. In the days since her brother’s death Kasane hadn’t even been able to pray properly for his soul, and the tinkling of the bell on a passing pilgrim sent a shudder of grief through her.