CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

SHE LIES IN THE DARKENING WIND

“My lady,” Hanshiro answered, “if I have offended you that deeply, I shall take my own life and save you the inconvenience.”

Cat was grateful to the night. It hid the tears she couldn’t keep back. “Don’t laugh at me.” She scowled down at him.

“No one ever suffered loss because of laughter,” he said.

“I saw the towel.” Cat surreptitiously wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she slid down the rocky hillside. “I thought you were the bodyguard.”

“There was no sense in sullying my own towel when he wouldn’t be needing his any longer.”

“He cut you.” When Cat came closer she could see the wound that the rnin’s blade had laid open in Hanshiro’s cheek.

“He was very good.”

“But you were better, Hanshiro-san.” Kasane followed Cat down the hillside.

“My fate was not to leave this burning house today.” With a slight wave of his hand Hanshiro indicated the world at large, starlit and silent.

The three of them resumed their journey. Kasane led the way with the lantern. She still looked back over her shoulder, but now she feared that the bodyguard’s vengeful spirit would pursue her. Cat trailed at Hanshiro’s right elbow, just far enough behind to be considered following, but not far enough to qualify as respectful.

Hanshiro’s feet moved as though they belonged to someone else. His head rang and his cheek throbbed. He was ashamed of the elation he had felt at the prospect of a duel. It had been childish of him to relish another’s death.

The outcome of the fight had been uncertain until Hanshiro dodged the downswing that would have sliced his head diagonally like a melon had it connected. Instead it opened the cut that reached from the corner of his left eye to his chin. Almost blinded by his own blood, he had feinted with a flower wheel maneuver and driven his sword into the bodyguard’s chest. He and the bodyguard had crossed swords less than ten times, but their duel had seemed to last a lifetime.

“Where is he?” Cat asked.

“I laid him out by Jiz-san with a note saying the priests would come for him. He had war funds. I’ll leave the money at the temple in Yokkaichi.”

Hanshiro hadn’t been surprised to find a small bag with coins and a letter inside. No matter how poor a warrior might be, he always carried “war funds,” money enough to bury him.

The bodyguard’s note read, “If I should die, do not trouble yourself trying to locate my family. I have none. I shall be grateful if my bones are disposed of in the manner customary for a man of no great merit.”

Hanshiro had also found a poem and a cylindrical ivory chop with Kira’s seal carved into the end of it, both of which he kept. The bodyguard probably had written the poem in the Clam House before he’d set out after Cat, for Cat was surely the object of his pursuit.

Hanshiro planned to leave the poem with the priests to inscribe on the nameless rnin’s funerary tablet.

My time here is up.
I will challenge Lord Emma
To a duel in Hell.

“Did you leave his swords?” Cat asked.

Hanshiro nodded over his shoulder, indicating that the swords were in the rolled sleeping mat he carried there. “I’ll give them to the priests.”

Hanshiro walked in silence while he phrased the question that had been on his mind. “My lady,” he said finally, “if I am to be of any use to you, I should know as much as possible about the councilor.”

Cat almost retorted that details about her father’s councilor were none of his concern. But she knew he was right. If she was going to accept his services, she would have to surrender information, some of it personal.

“Please allow me time to consider an answer,” she said.

Cat wondered how she could describe Oishi. He had always been a quiet, solid presence in her life, but she knew less about him personally than she did about the lowliest privy cleaner in her mother’s mansion. Instructing Cat in the naginata and the warrior’s Way had been only a minor function in Oishi’s years of service to Lord Asano.

His skill as Asano’s adviser was already well known, but Cat was not about to tell this surly stranger about Oishi’s other role. For twenty years he had acted as go-between for Lord Asano and his beloved outside-wife, Cat’s mother. As the years passed and Lord Asano’s legal wife bore no children, Oishi’s job became more difficult.

Cat would not speak of the occasions Oishi had taken her and her mother to temple festivals or special outings because her father’s duties, official and conjugal, kept him away. Oishi, not Lord Asano, had accompanied Cat to the ceremony marking the entry of her name on the temple rolls. And more years than not, at the festival of the Weaver Maiden, Oishi was the one who held her up so she could tie brightly colored silk threads and examples of her best calligraphy to the branches of the cherry tree in the garden.

One of Cat’s most vivid childhood memories was the grip of his strong hands on her waist. Of being lifted high into the air as though suddenly weightless as a kite. She remembered being held aloft by that unwavering grip as her small fingers fumbled with the knots tying the threads and the fluttering strips of paper containing her childish poems.

With a rush of awareness that left a hollow, churning sensation in the pit of her stomach, Cat realized that she felt betrayed as well as abandoned by Oishi. She had trusted him as she had trusted her father. She had assumed he would always protect her and guide her along the Way. His feet would always follow the honorable path. If, as rumor asserted, he was carousing in the Shimabara while his lord’s spirit remained unavenged, then he was making a mockery of everything he had taught her about life and honor.

Cat sorted through a lifetime of memories and picked out the two facts most relevant about her sensei. “Oishi Kuranosuke is a master of the Yamaga school of strategy,” she said. “He served my father for twenty years.”

“Did you receive instruction from him?”

“Yes.”

Hanshiro grunted pensively. Actually he didn’t need any more information. He could tell from Cat’s bearing and the disarray of her enemies that the man who had taught her was an exceptional fighter and sensei. One day with a great teacher, he thought, is better than a thousand days of study.

“The councilor has not betrayed you,” he said.

Cat stiffened as though he could read her mind. “How do you know?”

Hanshiro stopped and turned to face Cat. He knew from her long silence that she had traveled into the past. He knew the journey must have been a sorrowful one.

“Consider Oishi’s actions.” As Hanshiro stared into her eyes, he thought how easily he could be hypnotized by them. “Until six months ago he did everything possible to convince the government to reinstate your father’s brother. He would not attack Kira for fear of ruining his chances. Since your uncle was sent to Hiroshima, Oishi has been offered employment by several lords, yet he accepted none. I do not know what his plan is, my lady, but I can assure you that he has one.”

“Dare I hope that?” Cat whispered.

“Yes, my lady.”

 

 

They walked through the sleeping town of Yokkaichi and pounded on the shutters of the Nightingale inn. When the sleepy proprietress showed them to their room, Kasane disappeared behind the screen set up for her. She fell asleep on her hard pallet almost instantly. Cat, however, sat wide awake and restless. She could not, even at risk of starting inquisitive tongues to wagging, lie down next to Hanshiro. She excused herself on the pretext of “going somewhere.”

When she didn’t return Hanshiro became alarmed. He padded in his stockinged feet down the quiet corridors and woke the ancient servant sleeping on a mat in the vestibule. He handed him his wooden chit to retrieve his swords from the rack, tipped the old man to let him out, put on his sandals and went in search of her.

He found her beyond the wind-mauled pines on the beach behind the inn. She was kneeling in the sand near the water’s edge. She held her naginata across her thighs. The starlight that tipped the gentle waves of the bay glowed on her head and shoulders. It outlined her sloping forehead, her high nose, strong chin, and the sensuous curve of her nape. Hanshiro studied her as he would an exquisite painting or a statue of Kannon-sama, the lovely goddess of mercy.

“How I waste away …” He thought of the old poem. “I who thought myself so strong, now feeble with love.”

Cat was obviously deep in reflection, but she glanced up at the shadows of the pine grove where Hanshiro thought himself hidden. She too was developing the sight beyond sight, the sense that transcended hearing, touch, and smell. In her case, the ability had been sharpened by the fact that she was pursued night and day by enemies. And perhaps because Hanshiro’s spirit called to hers.

For more freedom of movement, Cat ignored the cold and pulled her right arm out of her robes, exposing her breast. She tied back her left sleeve with a long cord. She crossed it in the middle of her back and knotted the ends. She folded her towel diagonally into a strip and tied it around her head. Then she rose in a whisper of russet-colored hakima skirts.

She stood facing Hanshiro. Her expression was remote, haughty. She held the naginata over her head with the curved blade behind her. The stance was an invitation to join her in performing kata, the warrior’s ritualized series of thrusts and cuts, evasions and parries.

Hanshiro took off his cloak and pulled his arms out of his sleeves, letting the top half of his robe fall down around his waist. He drew his long-sword, held it with both hands in front of him, and stepped out of the shadows to share the chilly starlight with her.

They began with the simplest forms and increased the pace slightly with each succeeding set of motions. Cat knew that Hanshiro wasn’t expending himself fully, but she was keeping him on the defensive a respectable part of the time. She closed in with small, fast steps, spinning the naginata in its powerful, deadly circles as she came. Hanshiro parried and leapt and barely avoided a slash to his shins.

Cat moved a fraction too slowly in the follow-through, and Hanshiro’s sword swooped down in a blur. It stopped with the blade resting on the nexus of Cat’s neck and shoulder. She neither flinched nor changed the imperious look in her dark eyes.

In the next form she used her front hand as a fulcrum and pivoted the blade upward, forcing Hanshiro to release his right hand from his sword to keep his forearm from being severed. Cat whirled again. She stamped for momentum, and the blade flashed through an overhand arc and came to rest against his inner thigh.

They advanced and retreated and circled, Cat hissing now and then with the effort and the concentration. Their movements were reciprocal and restrained and palpable with danger. The slightest error in reflex or judgment would have killed or maimed one or the other of them.

As they fell into the rhythm of the kata, their dance became an affirmation of trust that went far beyond the words of an oath, even one written in blood. Surrounded by the aura of eternal present, they moved to the pulse of life and death and rebirth. They were invulnerable. Time slowed for them until each could clearly see, even in midstroke, the temper marks on the other’s blade.

When they finished they were panting from the exertion. Hanshiro sheathed his sword, and Cat held her naginata off to one side. They stood so close that Hanshiro could feel Cat’s breath stirring the dark hairs on his bare chest. She looked up into the shadows and lights of his face, ravaged in defense of her. She could hear his harsh breathing over the sigh of the spent waves brushing the sand nearby. Nothing held Cat there except Hanshiro’s tiger’s eyes and the sea mist that wound around the two of them.

Hanshiro lightly touched her mouth with the tips of his fingers. He cradled her pale face in his scarred hands, leaned down, and gently brushed her temples with his lips. Cat trembled under his touch. A plover cried mournfully from the river shoals.

“The bridge, my lady,” Hanshiro murmured.

Cat walked with him to the massive stone pylon supporting the arch of the wooden bridge nearby. Hanshiro spread his cloak on the sand. The air was cold, but that wasn’t why Cat trembled.

“‘For her straw mat bedding …’” As he recited the ancient poem, Hanshiro untied the cords of Cat’s hakama so that it fell around her feet.

“‘The Lady of the Bridge spreads the starlight out …’” He unwound her sash.

“‘And in the waiting night …’” With the palms of his hands he pushed back the front edges of her robe and undershirt. As he did so he caressed her breasts, taut and satiny as the buds of cherry blossoms. He bent his head and touched each nipple with the tip of his tongue.

“‘She lies in the darkening wind.’” He knelt with her on the cloak and laid her gently back.