CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

WOLVES OF PRETEXT

The yard of Yokkaichi’s transport agency was stacked with bales and crates to be loaded. The patient pack mares stamped and flicked their tails. Postboys and bearers and drivers dickered with prospective customers over fares to the next post station. Children circulated with tea and snacks for sale. The few women travelers were admiring the wares of a traveling seller of dildos.

The wooden shutters of the transport office had been slid back in their wooden tracks, exposing the high platform where the officials knelt at their writing stands. The wall behind them was papered with work rosters for the maintenance of their section of the Tkaid and the labor requisitions of traveling daimy. A disheveled line had formed, but even the richest rice broker moved quickly out of Hanshiro’s way. Cat wasn’t surprised. People respected those born in the year of the Tiger. The tiger had the power to chase away thieves, fire, and ghosts. And merchants, Cat thought.

From the yard Cat watched Hanshiro talk to the official in charge. Her love formed an aura around him that blurred and muted everything else. She hardly heard the hubbub in the yard. A cryptic smile flickered across her face.

“I suppose Traveler will turn off here for Ise.” Kasane broke into Cat’s reverie.

Traveler hadn’t shown up at the Nightingale Inn at the appointed hour that morning. Kasane had had to entrust the old servant with delivering her letter to the man she thought was her suitor’s messenger. She didn’t know that in the alley across the way Traveler had lost his nerve and had watched her go. Now she was preoccupied with the thought that her pilgrim would disappear without her ever seeing him again.

“You told him you had to go up to the capital.” Cat had read the letter and the poem, of course. Poetry was meant to be recited aloud; and Kasane wouldn’t send it without asking her to correct any errors in form or vulgarity in style. The tanka had been charming. Unpretentious but heartfelt.

Tossing and turning
Morning comes, hair in tangles.
Part it with fingers
As though plaiting a straw rope.
Wondering, will I see you?

“You could go on a secret pilgrimage to Ise with him,” Cat said. “Traveling alone together, you would become fast friends. You could spend every night with your hearts murmuring to each other.”

“I couldn’t leave you, young master!” Kasane was horrified at the thought of such disloyalty. That Cat might prefer to be alone with Hanshiro didn’t occur to her. “He’ll do the sleeve. He’ll jilt me.” Kasane had picked up some of the courtesan’s slang from Cat. “It’s said that the women of Ise are pretty and agreeable and plentiful.” Kasane kept her voice low. It wouldn’t do to be overheard speaking as women.

“Added to all your other virtues, elder sister, you have one that every woman at Ise lacks where the pilgrim is concerned.”

“What is that, mistress?”

“Propinquity.”

Kasane laughed behind her sleeve. Then she drew from it a small packet formed by folding a bamboo leaf into a tetrahedron and tucking in the ends.

“Hanshiro-san gave me money. He ordered me to spend it on myself.” Kasane was ashamed of her self-indulgence but pleased with her purchase. “I bought this in the market this morning.”

“What is it?”

“The ashes of a lizard.” Kasane lowered her voice even further. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi forbade the killing of even a mosquito. There was no telling what the punishment would be for trafficking in lizard remains. “The holy woman who sold them to me said that if I sprinkle them into the hair of the person I love, he’ll love me in return.”

“‘Lust will not keep …’” Cat laughed as she recited one of Kasane’s aphorisms. “‘Something must be done about it.’”

Cat had more to say on that subject, but she didn’t get a chance. Two guards bustled from the side door of the agency. They held the old courtier, the purveyor of elephant urine philters, by the arms. Activity in the yard ceased as people turned to stare.

The old cloud dweller wasn’t going quietly. He flailed and shrieked as the guards stuffed him into a waiting palanquin. Before the sliding door slammed closed, he managed to land a mortal insult. He hit one of the guards on the head with his run-down geta.

“We aren’t rubes.” The guard rubbed the shaved strip up the center of his skull where a lump was already forming. He opened the door just wide enough to poke an errant corner of the old man’s travel cloak inside. For good measure, he borrowed a bearer’s stick and thumped the top of the palanquin with it. “Your tricks won’t work here.”

The four bearers had been standing by, grinning broadly and holding a long rope. They had been in this situation before. They passed the rope around the basket, lashing the doors shut.

“When I report this outrage, my august lord, the emperor, the son of heaven, will have your heads!” the old man shouted. “Your entrails will be food for the crows of the river bank.”

With a grunt and a shout the bearers heaved the palanquin onto their shoulders and began marking time in rhythm to their chant. A mother whispered to her child, then shoved him forward. The boy darted toward the palanquin, dropped to his knees, and scuttled under it and out the other side. Assured of long life by proximity to one who had served his august majesty, the boy threw a clod of dirt at the palanquin.

Through the thin bars in the palanquin’s window, Cat could see the veins, purple as eggplants, standing out on the cloud dweller’s temples. His beak of a nose jutted from between the bars. When he screamed he sprayed spittle.

Hanshiro looked amused by it all when he joined Cat and Kasane. “If they aren’t careful,” he said, “they’ll have a worse problem than the one they’re trying to avoid.”

“What crime did he commit?” Kasane asked.

“The magistrate here heard that all along the road he’s been pretending to fall from the palanquins provided by the government and demanding compensation.” Hanshiro actually chuckled. “But if the old man has apoplexy and dies in a government-supplied palanquin, the transport officials will be filling out papers until their retirement.”

With his fan Hanshiro beckoned to the hostlers who were bringing three horses from the stable next door. Then he led the way to the mounting block. Hanshiro was pleased to see how well Cat sat her shaggy little mount. Since the saddle was raised more than a foot from the horse’s back, staying on it required skill and balance. Kasane rode in a pannier, balanced on the other side by their baggage and by stones dangling as ballast. The postboy walked ahead of her, leading the pack horse by a rope.

Kasane opened the white paper wrapping from the present Cat had given her. Kasane had found it on her bed when she’d returned to the Nightingale that morning. The book was called An Illustrated Manual of Eroticism, and it was much more informative than the pillow book Kasane had traded for firewood at the pilgrim’s inn in Mishima. This book had text in hiragana script as well as pictures.

It was divided into four sections—“Heaven and Earth,” “Animals,” “Human Beings,” and “Instruments.” Kasane turned to “Human Beings” and the essay called “Sensuous Women.”

If you possess one of the following characteristics, you are a sensuous woman. Kasane ran her finger down the page, and her lips moved as she silently formed the words. You have a gentle voice. You cough softly when you speak to a man. This means you have an adventurous heart. Kasane practiced coughing softly behind her sleeve.

“Are you pursuing your studies by the light of fireflies and snow, Hachibei?” Hanshiro called over his shoulder.

“Yes, master.” Kasane blushed and shielded the book with her sleeve. Your eyes are very narrow, but you open them wide when you look at a man. She read on silently. This is extremely seductive.

Hanshiro pulled farther ahead of the pack horse and guided his mount up close to Cat’s. With his knee touching hers he spoke in a low voice so the hostler wouldn’t overhear. “I left the notice with the transport officer. He agreed to post it right away.”

“Do you think it will throw off the dogs?”

“It should. It says that a certain retired official no longer wishes the capture of the clerk who stole from him. I signed it with the seal I took from the bodyguard. I stamped extra sheets and paid a clerk to make copies. He’ll send them off with the next government courier. We should find them posted on bulletin boards between here and the capital. By the time Kira finds out about it we’ll be in Kyto.”

“I want to keep going until we reach there.”

Hanshiro looked up at the gray clouds rolling over the mountains to the west. A chill gust shivered the pines and whispered of rain.

“There may be a delay at the Seki barrier,” he said. “And Suzuka Pass lies ahead. It’s a treacherous climb. The peasants say the demons who live there crush the bones of evildoers. But I think the demons have an interest in people’s purses and not their sins.”

“Even so …”

Cat didn’t have to elaborate. Hanshiro understood her anxiety. If Oishi refused to help her, her arduous, dangerous journey would have been for nothing.

“All of Edo sympathizes with your father’s case,” Hanshiro said. “Everyone’s waiting for his retainers to take a just revenge. The rumor is that even Kira’s wife has advised him to commit suicide. They say she wants to avoid the shame of seeing him fall into his enemies’ hands.”

“He mustn’t!” Cat was horrified that Kira might kill himself and deprive her of the satisfaction of arranging his death herself.

“You needn’t fear, my lady.” He smiled at her. “In Kira’s house his wife is the only one with the fortitude to end her life by her own hand. And as you know, Kira’s son hasn’t moved his father to the safety of his villa, much less to his estate in the north country. I would guess that even he’s reluctant to become too involved in the affair.

“The shgun has shown his displeasure with Kira by forcing him to move out of his house behind the castle walls. All in all, I would say that if Oishi chooses to attack, he’ll meet with little opposition.”

“But no vendetta has been registered for my father.” Cat rode in silence for several long moments. Then she recited the words of Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shgun. “‘Persons who neglect to give notice of their intended revenge are like wolves of pretext.’”

“But there’s more, my lady.”

“‘And their punishment or pardon,’” she went on, “‘should depend upon the circumstances of the case.’”

“Whether registered or not,” Hanshino said softly, “a vendetta is still possible.”