CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

THE MUTUAL EMBRACE OF STINKING BONES

“Look at him,” Cat muttered. “Planted like a willow in the road.”

Cat and Kasane stood elbow to elbow with the other travelers crowded under the wide eaves fronting on the Tkaid, which was also Akasaka’s main street. Rain cascaded in a silvery sheet from the edge of the roof. They would have waited out the icy downpour inside the tea house just behind them, but it was filled beyond capacity. The entryway was heaped with tall rain geta and straw and paper raincoats. The mass pilgrimage that Cat had started was still crowding the road to Ise. Akasaka’s famous pleasure district was thriving.

In the middle of the river of mud that was the Tkaid, Hanshiro sat on the wicker box he had tried to give Cat. He had offered to buy the box and its contents from the abbot in Futagawa to whom Cat had donated it. But the abbot had insisted on giving it to him. Like most people who knew about Lord Asano’s tragic fate, the abbot’s sympathies lay with the lord’s daughter and the man who seemed determined to help her.

In spite of the rain, Hanshiro hadn’t bothered to open his umbrella. His feet were planted firmly in the brown water that flowed past his ankles. He stared ahead stolidly as the rain thrummed on his broad-brimmed bamboo hat and splattered his leggings with mud. The hat and the oiled-paper raincape were keeping him neither dry nor warm.

“He looks cold,” Kasane said. She and Cat had been carrying on their conversation sotto voce.

“He looks smug as a snake that’s swallowed a mosquito.”

Over the roar of the rain on the roof, Cat could hear the speculation going on around her. Everyone was curious about the rnin. Most people had concluded he was mad. In any case, he was drawing unwelcome attention.

“He’ll surely catch cold.” Kasane shivered in the wind that whined around the corner of the building and whipped her rain cloak against her legs.

“He doesn’t have to sit there,” Cat said. “He didn’t have to follow us for the past four ri.”

“Couldn’t we let him walk with us?”

Cat exhaled loudly in exasperation. “Tell him I request that he get under shelter. Tell him I said his stubbornness is drawing attention to us and putting us in danger. Tell him I’ll hear his plan.”

Cat watched Kasane wrap her cloak about her, pull down her hat brim, and splash out into the rain. After she spoke to Hanshiro, he turned and bowed to Cat. Then he stood, stuck the carrying pole through the loops on the box, and shouldered it.

Instead of coming to where Cat huddled against the cold, however, he made his way through the press in the tea house. Cat frowned. What was the madman up to now?

In a few moments a maid arrived.

“Follow me, please,” she said.

She managed to find space to wash Cat’s and Kasane’s muddy feet in the cluttered entryway. Then she led them through a side corridor that skirted the rear garden. She slid open a door panel and bowed them into a small room. When she left, Cat could hear her calling out orders.

Soon a procession of waitresses and maids arrived. Two of them carried in a brazier filled with coals. Another delivered a tall-handled tray of pipes, tobacco, and smoking accessories. The rest brought in high-rimmed lacquered trays containing heated towels and soft, wadded cotton robes and jackets. They poured hot tea into narrow winter cups that warmed the hands that held them.

As the heavy robe enveloped Cat in warmth and the chills that had racked her faded, Cat felt a pleasant lassitude settle over her. So far on this trip, whenever she was being discussed out of earshot, trouble followed. The relief of having tobacco and hot tea and dry clothes arrive instead of armed attackers was almost overwhelming.

Cat succumbed to the luxury of being taken care of instead of shifting for herself. She knew it was a pernicious weakness, but she indulged it. She had a feeling it would be as brief as it was glorious. It was glorious enough, in fact, to make her feel a bit more tolerant of the surly rnin from Tosa.

As a grand finale, waitresses carried in a wooden frame that stood almost waist high. It contained matching nested picnic boxes lacquered in black with an allover design of golden cartwheels in a golden stream. The boxes were filled with such delicacies as broiled abalone, raw sea bream and garnishes, roasted gingko nuts, and red bean paste soup with freshly picked mushrooms. There were imperial persimmons, Chinese walnuts, and falling-goose candies.

“Ma!” Kasane stared, wide-eyed, as the waitresses unpacked more varieties of food than she would have seen in a lifetime in her village.

Hanshiro followed the food in and slid the door closed behind the departing waitresses. He had changed into his formal clothes, and Cat caught her breath at the sight of him. He was undeniably handsome, and his eyes were hypnotic in their intensity. That, along with his air of elegant menace and offhand competence with a blade, made her wary.

Enemies might be listening beyond the thin wall panels, so Cat had to lean close to Hanshiro to talk. When she did she could smell the lingering scent of sandalwood and camellia oil and cloves. Her chest felt tight, and heat spread up from her neck. She almost feared to breathe, as if even so slight a movement might break the fragile bonds that kept danger and passion pent up in this man.

“Do you think you can bribe me, Tosa,” she murmured. “Clubs have not caught me, nor will chopsticks.”

“It is I who have been caught, my lady.”

“Tell me, then, this plan of yours.”

“Your companion can dress as our servant, and you will pose as my page … .”

“To serve you.” Cat’s voice plainly showed how little she thought of that idea.

“Unless you have been a retainer, you cannot use a retainer.” There was irony in Hanshiro’s bow as he recited the old proverb. “By obeying we learn to command.”

Cat felt a shy tug at her sleeve. “What is it, Kasane?”

“Remember Benkei-san and Yoshitsune-sama at the barrier?”

Kasane was happy to be in the company of a man who had a strong arm and a sharp sword and who wasn’t trying to kill her. Fear that her mistress’s stubbornness would lose them their champion, their Buddha in hell, made her bold. She struck the pose of the blind minstrel outside of Maisaka. She recited, almost word for word, the part of the story where Benkei struck his lord to prove to the barrier guards that Yoshitsune was only a humble porter.

“Well done!” Cat lit her pipe and drew in a mouthful of warm smoke. It calmed her and slowed her racing heart. “But Benkei had already proved his loyalty.”

Hanshiro threw the die he knew would win the game. “As a White Mouse you can carry two swords openly.” The rain had stopped drumming on the roof overhead, and he lowered his voice further.

“Or a naginata?” Cat whispered.

“Yes.”

Cat lifted the sack of coins Hanshiro had delivered as a gift from Lord Hino’s steward. “I’ll pay for it,” she said. She wanted to keep her debt to the Tosa rnin to a minimum.

“As you wish, my lady.”

“Sword master and pupil are often lovers.” Now that Cat had decided Hanshiro was probably trustworthy, this was the part of his scheme that worried her.

Hanshiro drew from his sleeve a copy of An Evening Waiting for a Pair of Sleeve, a treatise on the love of boys. He unwrapped the oiled paper that had protected it from the rain and tucked it in the front of his jacket so the title could be read by anyone passing by. He had bought it as part of the masquerade, but it had the added effect of placating Cat.

“‘A woman adorns her fair skin with powder,’” Hanshiro recited. “‘Reddens her lips, blackens her eyebrows …’”

“‘Yet carnal pleasure between man and woman is but the mutual embrace of stinking bones.’” Cat finished the old Chinese poem.

“To carry this off we should pretend to be lovers,” Hanshiro said. “But it will be only an act. And you have proven yourself an excellent actor, my lady.”