CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE DIVINE FAVOR OF THE THOUSAND-HANDED KANNON

The tiny house sat by itself next to the forest at the outskirts of Mishima. The latticework showing under its cracked mud plaster and its crooked window bars of peeled branches reminded Cat of a cricket cage. She and Kasane stood on the hard-packed earth of the narrow entryway.

“Fifteen coppers each.” The proprietress wore a hempen robe, made mostly of patches, that reached the middle of her bare shins. It was held shut by a straw cord wrapped around her waist. Her graying hair was tied in a rag knotted above her forehead. “Bath and food and fuel for cooking are extra, of course.” She spoke loudly to be heard above the wailing of the baby inside and the shrill quarreling of his parents.

Cat peered around the woman and into the single, smoky room. The knee-high wooden platform that formed the bare floor was crowded with people and their belongings. The only light came from a rush wick burning in a pottery bowl on a shelf and the flames in the firewell in the center of the room. The unpleasant smell of whale oil permeated everything.

Cat leaned back to see the wooden plaque nailed to the outside of the door sill. “Pilgrims’ Inn,” it read. “Inexpensive rates.”

“Enter or leave,” the innkeeper snapped. “You’re letting in the weather.”

Cat was so cold that she could hardly move, and she heard Kasane’s teeth chattering. She turned and slid the plank door closed behind her. She regretted the decision immediately. A foul stench overpowered the smell of the whale oil. It came from an aged nun whose bald head was covered with festering sores.

“We were robbed.” Cat was too weary to go elsewhere. She was disheartened by her search through Mishima for lodging she could afford. And she couldn’t bear to force Kasane to walk any farther. “We have only twenty mon.” She jingled the coins she and Kasane had gleaned from their sleeves, small change the cutpurse had missed.

“Anything to barter?”

“We carry only necessities.”

The woman studied them through narrowed eyes. She obviously considered twenty coppers preferable to the nothing she would get if she turned them away. “All right.” She gestured toward a heap of filthy quilts in the corner. The pile seemed to quiver with the six-legged life infesting it. “The bedding is extra.”

“We’ll do without.” Cat set down the furoshiki, then sat on the edge of the platform herself. She untied her sandals and took off her muddy tabi. Her wet feet were blue and numb with cold.

The woman brought a basin of cold, murky water. Kasane scooped out the cockroach floating in it. Then she and Cat dipped their towels and washed their feet. They stood up and picked their way among the pilgrims and their goods. The baby had not stopped shrieking. His parents were still bickering.

Cat’s plan was to get as far from the nun as possible. She made her way past the couple with the unhappy baby and an old man and a young woman, probably his daughter, whose back was curved like a fern shoot. She must have been struck by the mysterious illness that deformed the spines of its victims. The two were probably on their way to Ise to ask the Sun Goddess to cure her.

The master of the house sat near the fire. He seemed oblivious to the noise and the smell. He had anchored two loops of rice straw cords over the long, callused toes of his right foot, and he was plaiting a sandal around them. Without even asking his pardon, Cat stepped rudely over his sprawled leg.

She wasn’t just annoyed that she hadn’t found a better place to stay. She was furious with herself for allowing her sack of coins to be stolen. Only nightfall had stopped her from turning back to hunt down the thief. The woman who had pretended to be attacked must have pinched it when she’d clung to Cat.

Baka! Fool! It was a vulgar word that Cat never would have used, but Kasane’s brother would have. As she had stalked through the silent, muddy streets of Mishima, past the shuttered houses, she had muttered it over and over, savoring the small explosion it made as it left her lips. “Baka!” she muttered to herself now.

The only clear space was in a rear corner, near an old woman who was sleeping curled on her side on a scrap of matting. The corner had the added advantage of being next to the back door. Cat and Kasane set their loads against the wall. The fleas launched an immediate attack on their ankles, and Cat regretted the loss of Shichisaburo’s flea powder at the Kawasaki ferry.

“The roaches are big enough to pull an ox cart.” Cat swatted one with a spare sandal.

The insects swarmed on the strings of dried fish hanging from the log rafters. They crawled across the floor. Their droppings littered the basket of millet on a shelf nearby.

Kasane stamped her feet to scatter them and unrolled the mats. “Maybe we should bargain with Locked Fist for her bedding,” Kasane said in a low voice as she rubbed Cat’s feet with her towel to warm them.

Cat stared at her as though she had gone mad.

“Then we would be blessed with the divine favor of the Thousand-Handed Kannon.” Kasane’s expression was solemn with only a hint of a twinkle in her dark eyes.

Cat had to chuckle. She looked warily toward the bedding. “We would need a thousand hands to scratch the holy Kannon’s blessings.”

When the baby stopped wailing to draw breath, Cat heard a tearing noise outside. It sounded as though someone were ripping the low-hanging thatch from the roof.

“Chikusho! Beast!” The innkeeper opened the front door and shrieked out into the night. “Take your filthy animal away and feed it!” She picked up rocks from the pile she had stacked by the door and flung them at the hungry horse and the postboy who was allowing it to eat the inn’s roof.

“‘Fleas, lice,’” Cat recited in a murmur for Kasane’s benefit. “‘Horse pishing by the pillow.’”

“Did you write that poem, younger brother?”

“No. Master Bash wrote it.” Actually, Cat was cheered by the poem from Bash’s famous travel journal. The master himself had stayed in an inn as bad as this one.

“I have to go somewhere,” Cat told Kasane. “Watch our things.”

Cat wouldn’t feel at ease until she had checked out the back exit. She lit her night lantern, and the landlady eyed it greedily. Cat knew she would demand it in the morning as partial payment for the lodging.

Cat stood on the rotting back porch and snuffed the lantern. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness and studied the tiny, cluttered backyard. It was a morass of mud from the recent rains. It sloped toward a ravine, a ribbon of black at the edge of the mud. Cat found a short, stout stick and set it next to the heavy wooden storm shutters. Then she put on the worn-down privy geta. Even with her eyes closed, the privy would have been easy to find.

When Cat returned she found that the rice gruel bubbling over the firewell belonged to the couple with the child. It had finished cooking, and the mother was feeding it to the boy. He had fallen blessedly quiet while he ate.

Kasane had hung her small pot on the iron hook over the flames. The handful of rice she had begged that morning was cooking inside it. Thick slabs of mushroom were grilling on bamboo skewers. They had appeared in the mountains as if by magic, a result of the rains and the warmer weather they brought. Kasane had gathered them, washed them in a clear stream, and wrapped them in a bamboo sheath. Now she dabbed them with soy sauce she had bought in Odawara. The aroma canceled out the other smells and made Cat’s stomach grumble.

Even so, Cat stared morosely at the turmoil around her, trying to ignore the hunger in the faces of the other pilgrims. She soon realized why this corner had been vacant. An icy wind blew steadily through the wide cracks between the warped boards in the door. It carried the privy’s scent with it. Also, people would be passing constantly on their way outside. Every time they opened the door the steady breeze would turn into a blast of cold air.

The woven bamboo ceiling that was the floor of the loft overhead creaked as some unseen member of the household walked on it. Grit sifted down onto Cat from the straw mats up there. She wrapped her travel cloak around her and shivered.

“How did you get old Locked Fist to part with the charcoal to cook the food?” Cat muttered when Kasane knelt and set two small bowls of rice topped with the dark slices of mushroom on the mat in front of her.

“I gave her the book.” Kasane sat back on her haunches, waiting for Cat to finish before she started eating.

Cat held the bowl a long moment, savoring the warmth and the solid curve of it in her hand and the aromatic steam issuing from it.

“You gave away your spring pictures?” she said between mouthfuls. The mushrooms and hot rice were delicious.

“It won’t be needed.” Kasane spoke to the floor. “No one will ever have this miserable person as a wife.”

“Don’t be so sure.” With her chopsticks, Cat motioned for Kasane to eat. She knew she must be ravenous. “I’ve thought of a poem to send to the pilgrim.”

“You’re too kind.” Kasane blushed and bowed low over her bowl.

“I’ll write it down when I finish eating.”

The old woman lying next to them suddenly rose up on one scaly elbow. Shadows pooled in the hollows of her cheeks and eyes and her toothless mouth. Kasane jumped as though she had seen a corpse rising from the grave, which was understandable. The old woman did resemble someone long dead.

“You know how to write.” It wasn’t really a question. “Write me a letter.” She rose to a sitting position and reached for her pipe and tobacco. “This is what you must say.”

Without waiting for Cat to answer, she launched into her dictation. “‘Beloved Nephew. Send me money immediately or I will curse you and your offspring for eternity. Praise Buddha.’ Sign it ‘the saintly pilgrim, Springtime.’”

A knock at the door interrupted anything else she might have had to say. Even as the innkeeper made her way across the room to open it, Cat knew that the knock was about her. It had the ring of a sword hilt to it.

Cat prepared for flight. No purpose would be served by fighting here, in this confined space with so many people about. With so many witnesses. With luck she and Kasane could flee out the back and escape in the darkness.

“We might have to run.” Cat gulped the last of the rice and stuck the bowl and chopsticks into the furoshiki. She quietly put her staff within easy reach. “Take your pack outside and wait for me,” she whispered. “Be careful! There’s a steep drop-off just beyond the porch, and the ground is slippery.”

Kasane disappeared out the back door just as the innkeeper slid open the front. Two men stood framed in the opening. They closed the door behind them and wrinkled their noses at the smell in the room. Distaste replaced boredom on their faces.

They didn’t expect to find Lady Asano here, but their leader insisted on a house-to-house search through Mishima. Besides, the latest couriers, direct from Lord Kira’s mansion in Edo, bore letters promising a large reward for the ones who found her.

“We’re looking for a thief,” said the tallest of the two. “He stole money from his master and ran away from the place of his employ. Anyone found harboring him will be punished.”

“Anyone who turns him in will be rewarded.” The shorter man glowered around the dim, smoky room that, except for the crackling of the small fire, was absolutely quiet for the first time that evening.

“Stop!” the taller man shouted at Cat’s retreating back. The young mother screamed, and people scattered as the two samurai drew their swords and leaped from the stone step up onto the floor. They arrived at the back door in time to hear the rumble of the heavy wooden storm shutter closing outside.

“Get her!” the tall one shouted through the matting over the outside of the barred window.

“Run!” Cat wedged the stout pole between the door frame and the edge of the shutter. It would give her and Kasane a few extra seconds.

Kasane grunted, and Cat turned to see a man grappling with her in the dark. Someone else crashed into a pile of empty tubs, cursed, and fell with a splash into the mud. One or two or maybe three of Kira’s men must have been hidden in the junk near the back door. The first two were undoubtedly on their way around to join them.

The area behind the inn was filled with tools and stacks of firewood, broken baskets, and millstones in a slimy morass. Cat slid perilously close to the edge of the ravine as she tried to reach Kasane. The sticky mud clung to her bare feet, weighing them down. The moon had just risen, and it came out from behind the clouds, shedding a pale light on the yard.

Cat braced herself against a barrel and squinted into the shadow cast by the privy. She managed to pick out which figure was Kasane and slam the other one in the small of the back with her staff. As he fell Kasane shoved him. He staggered backward, into Kasane’s pack. Both he and the pack toppled into the ravine.

Cat felt the staff wrenched from her hand. An arm circled her neck from behind. She reacted with the reflexes of her training. She gripped the forearm with both hands, dropped to one knee, and shoved the arm around and up. She used it as a lever to force its owner to his knees, then facedown in the mud. She bore down with her knee between his shoulder blades and threw her weight into the arm. When it broke with a loud crack, the man screamed in pain. Cat pulled her staff from his other hand as he tried to struggle to his feet and hit him with it.

Even as Kasane was being dragged away, she called out softly, so as not to attract more attention: “Help me.”

When Cat stumbled toward her, two dank forms closed in on her. She dodged, but she felt their hands clutching at her. She elbowed one in the stomach and heard him grunt, but the one behind locked her arms and her staff at her sides. She kicked at the second one who was trying to maneuver a sack over her head.

She heard another loud thwack, the sound of wood on bone. A third assailant must have mistakenly hit the man holding her. His grip loosened, and he slid down Cat’s back. His weight knocked her off balance in the slippery footing, sending her into the one with the sack. By this time her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she saw the third figure loom up, his arms raised and a staff poised to strike.

She fell to the ground and crawled behind a woodpile. From the hollow thump and the grunt, Cat knew the man with the staff had hit his comrade in the chest.

Baka! she thought. Kira had hired a pack of fools who were knocking each other out. She crept around the woodpile, ready to finish off the last man. He had disappeared. “Coward!” she muttered.

The innkeeper poked a pole through the bars and pushed up the matting hung over the outside of the window. She was shrieking at full volume.

“Be quiet!” Cat barked. The woman fell abruptly silent, and the matting fell back over the window.

With her staff Cat pushed the man curled up and gasping for breath into the ravine. His two unconscious companions followed. Cat was incensed. Kira’s retainers had driven her back out into the night and gotten her covered with cold, slimy mud besides. She regretted pushing them over the side before she had hit them a few more times, just to make herself feel better.

“Hachibei!” Kasane was wrestling with the last attacker, who had her pinned against the wall of the privy.

Cat drew the yawara stick from the folds of her sash. She held it loosely in her palm, settling her fingers into the grooves of the shaft between the two knobbed ends. She rapped one of the knobs lightly on the nerve just behind the knuckles of the hand grasping Kasane’s wrists. The hand’s owner yelped in agony. His fingers flew open. Cat pressed his thumb against the grooves of the stick and applied pressure, increasing it until the man stopped struggling.

“It hurts.” The pain raised his voice to a whine. All the pain ever created was concentrated in the thumb. It wiped out memory and ambition, all thoughts of past and future, all other feelings.

Cat led him by the thumb to the edge of the yard. “Jump,” she said.

“Please,” he quavered. She squeezed his thumb harder against the stick.

For all he or Cat could see, the ravine might have been a few feet deep or it might have been bottomless. He shrieked and leaped into the black wedge. Cat listened for the thud. It came fairly quickly. The ravine wasn’t very deep.

Cat was feeling around for her furoshiki when she heard shouts and footsteps running toward her. The noise of the fight and the landlady’s shrieks had roused the neighbors. Cat left the furoshiki. With only their staffs and cloaks, she and Kasane darted, barefoot and muddy, into the dark forested foothills beyond the inn.

They ran blindly through the rain-soaked bushes. As the terrain tilted upward, they clawed at roots and rocks. They blundered into boulders, waded icy brooks, and crashed into trees. They pulled brambles from their clothes and flesh and pushed on desperately until they reached a ridge where the underbrush became too dense for them to go any farther.

Hemmed in, panting, they crouched on a patch of sodden moss, in blackness that was almost total. A wild dog howled in the distance. Several more took up the chorus. A monkey shrieked.

They had lost everything except the staffs, their travel permits, the guidebook stuck in the front of Cat’s jacket, the twenty coppers they were to have given the innkeeper in the morning, and a few other small items stowed in their clothes. Twenty coppers wouldn’t even pay the ferryman to take them across the next river. Tears of despair welled up inside Cat. She took deep, shuddering breaths to fight them back.

Kasane brushed against her, and Cat felt her quaking. Then she realized Kasane wasn’t just shivering. She was crying, silently, desperately.

“Little Kasane …” Cat spread half her travel cloak around Kasane, put an arm around her shoulder, and pulled her closer. “What do you think of this poem for your young man?”