CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

CAN THEY SLEEP PEACEFULLY?

Night filled Cat’s palanquin as though it had seeped out from the black peaks surrounding her, had flowed inside and solidified. She could feel the sides of the box closing in, pressing the darkness into a denser and denser block. She drew her elbows close to her body in anticipation of being crushed. The darkness was forcing the air out through the barred and curtained windows, and Cat began gasping, desperately drawing breath into her lungs.

Cat always got sick in kagos and palanquins, but never this sick. Cold, hunger, exhaustion, nausea, and the spikes of pain in her skull begot hallucinations. The long night became death itself. The palanquin turned into a coffin. The hissing, grunting bearers were paired demons carrying her to Yomi, the Land of the Dead. The white nun’s robes were the shrouds of a corpse.

Maggots. Cat could feel them wriggling under the haramaki wrapped tightly around her abdomen. She bit down on her knuckles to keep from screaming. No purpose would be served by it. She knew she was imagining the maggots. She knew that in the darkness her exhausted mind had tricked her into thinking she was the goddess Izanami traveling to the netherworld. Maggots were part of Izanami’s legend.

The vision of Izanagi, Izanami’s husband and brother, floated, shimmering and transparent, as though trapped like a delicate insect in the amber of night.

“I have eaten of the furnace of hell.” She clearly heard Izanami’s voice pleading with her brother when he followed her into the land of death. “Do not look at me.”

But Izanagi had looked at his beloved sister. He had seen the maggots squirming in her body. And so Cat could feel them now. Bile rose again in her mouth at the thought. She fought the need to claw at the tight wrapping around her stomach. I have eaten of the furnace of hell. Perspiration beaded on her forehead and turned chill in the frigid mountain air.

The narrow road had become steeper and rougher as it led into the rugged mountains north of Nara. Dense stands of cryptomeria blocked the light of the stars, and the moon had already set. Only the flickering lanterns lit the rocky track and reflected back from the arch of trees overhead. They caused the lantern bearers’ shadows to loom over them like dark ghosts, following. In spite of the darkness, the bearers kept up an astonishing pace.

That was probably because when only the peak of the highest roof of Lord Hino’s keep had been visible in the moonlight, Hanshiro had ordered the men to stop. He paced along the line of march and spoke with each pair of them.

He didn’t mention that he suspected Lord Hino of ordering them to set a slower pace. He offered them a bonus if they arrived in Tsuchiyama ahead of time. And he assured them that if they tried to impede Lady Asano’s progress, they would begin their next incarnation as food for the fish in the river at the bottom of the first deep gorge. The bearers knew they would be trotting along the rims of many gorges.

The road wound upward into the remote fastness of the narrow valley of Kizugawa, Scar River. Perhaps it was just as well that night hid the scenery outside the palanquin’s curtained windows. The cliffs that towered over the trail were so precipitous, they seemed about to tumble forward under their own weight. They dwarfed the men and their burdens and their petty concerns with life and death, honor and shame and bonuses.

The bearers’ eagerness to accommodate Hanshiro kept the palanquins bouncing and lurching violently. Cat’s sedan was big enough for her to lie down in if she curled up tightly, but she dared not sleep. All night she rode with her hand wound tightly into the cloth loop tied to the frame of the ceiling, but it wasn’t much use. Her shoulders and knees were bruised from hitting the sides. Her tensed stomach muscles ached from trying to maintain an upright position. Her feet and legs rested like fallen stone columns under her.

And there was the delirium, the visions that came unbidden and unwelcome into her thoughts. Izanami. Izanagi. The maggots.

At first Cat thought the loud panting just outside her window was more of the same. Then a more rational sort of irrationality took over. Lord Hino was a liar. He had planned all along to have her killed. When the rooftop plot failed he’d decided to do away with her in this demon-infested wilderness. Even now his assassins were chasing her.

Cat rested her free hand on the butt of her sheathed dirk and tensed. She concentrated on opening her eyes. She had shut them in an attempt to banish the specters from her mind’s eye. When she finally coaxed them open, she saw that morning had come. The sun hadn’t risen above the mountains yet, but the darkness had receded, had itself drained out the windows. It left exposed the rich green of the palanquin’s silken upholstery. In the pale dawn light the silk gleamed softly like algae under water.

Cat wanted to cry with relief. If she was going to die, she much preferred to do it in daylight.

“A message, Your Ladyship.” A bamboo pole with a letter appeared through the center opening of the curtains. Lord Hino’s factotum trotted alongside the palanquin. He was carrying too much of his own weight, and his was the panting that had alarmed Cat.

Cat took the sheets of paper, one folded inside the other, and the pole disappeared. The man stopped to catch his breath. When he did, the cold wind chilled the sweat on his body. Shivering, he resumed his dogged pace.

Soon the small procession would reach the village that marked the farthest limits of the lands of Lord Hino’s closest neighbor and ally, and he could turn back. The servant thought wistfully of his tiny house backed up against Lord Hino’s castle wall and his bed piled with thick quilts. Before he slept he would have his wife bring him tea and rice and rub balm into his abraded and aching feet.

Cat pressed the folded envelope against her thigh and tried to slide her nail under the wax seal, but the letter slipped back and forth with the motion of the palanquin. Disengaging her other hand from the strap would be useless. It had been wound into the loop long enough for her fingers to have stiffened into claws.

Cat’s fingers trembled with the cold as she patiently unfolded the thick, pliant paper envelope. She pushed back the curtain to let in more of the dawn’s light. The letter contained a poem.

Hanshiro must have written it before leaving Lord Hino’s castle. He must have been waiting until the last quarter of the hour of the Tiger brought enough light to read it. The effort of concentrating on the characters in the violent tossing of the palanquin sent bolts of pain into her eyes.

Travelers shelter
At the pass of Suzuka,
Can they sleep in peace,
Remembering days gone by?

The poem was a thousand years old, composed on the occasion of Prince Karu’s night sojourn to this province. Hanshiro had made one change in it, though. He had substituted “pass of Suzuka” for “plain of Aki.” Cat closed her eyes again to relieve the pain behind them as she tried to follow Hanshiro’s reasoning.

If Hino had wanted to kill them, he could have ordered the bearers to dump them into a gorge. Not many people knew Cat existed. Most of those who did believed she was dead already, so he could have done it with impunity. Yet the dawn had found Cat only wishing she were dead. But Hino had given in too easily to Cat’s demands for transport to Edo. Both she and Hanshiro suspected him of trickery.

If Hino wanted to keep Cat from becoming involved with Oishi’s plot, he would try to delay her. And he would have planned for the delay to happen as soon as possible. The farther Cat traveled from the center of his influence, the more difficulty he would have in arranging a mishap.

Not providing fresh bearers at Tsuchiyama, where Cat would enter the Tkaid, would be one way to do it. However, failure to have men standing by when palanquins arrived with Lord Hino’s crest on them would be a public humiliation. Lord Hino had already invited ridicule by staging a ninja raid. Cat doubted he would subject himself to another such loss of face.

Causing problems at the barrier at Seki was another tactic. But that would mean involving the government, as well as losing face. Lord Hino was too smart for that.

Staging a robbery to frighten off the bearers and leave her stranded was the most likely possibility. The Tkaid was crowded this time of year. Many daimy and their huge retinues would be trying to reach Edo to spend the New Year’s holidays with their families. Bearers and porters would be in short supply.

Cat figured she was safe from a staged attack as long as she was on Hino’s neighbor’s land. Hino wouldn’t risk further criticism that he wasn’t in control of his own estate, nor would he call it down on his friends. Bandits were known to haunt the Tkaid Road at Suzuka Pass, though, and no blame would fall on Hino if the mysterious nun and her companion were waylaid there.

“Bow down. Bow down,” the crier in front shouted. The bearers slowed their headlong pace. The palanquin settled into a rhythmic jouncing that merely made Cat’s teeth ache.

The edge of the sun finally rose above the peaks. It caused the yellow silk gauze curtains to glow the same pale gold as thin barley tea in firelight. Cat lifted the curtain so she could look out.

During the night, snow had dusted the trees and massive outcroppings of rock. The jagged peaks of the Kasuga range, white as monkeys’ teeth, loomed on all sides. The village was a poor one. Very little smoke rose from the roofs of the flimsy hovels tottering up the steep hillside. They seemed about to slide down from their perches, across the narrow trail, and over the cliff to the river far below. If they stayed where they were, they would soon be covered to their eaves in snow. Straw-covered stacks of firewood towered above the rooflines.

The road curved here, and Cat could see her escort’s slow, elaborate dance, alternating one arm out, opposite leg back, body horizontal with the ground as though swimming through the thin mountain air. He entered the forlorn hamlet as though he were passing through the gates of the Imperial Palace. He scattered chickens and brought to their knees the few sleepy inhabitants who happened to be caught outside with nowhere to hide.

He twirled his long pole of office as he tossed it high in the air. As it rose, whirling, the thick ring of horsehair fringe at the top flowed like an eddy around it, then rose and quivered when he caught it. Hino’s factotum hustled forward to greet the hamlet’s headman, who was facedown in the snow, and to arrange a quick meal of cold barley gruel and millet tea.

The bearers set down their burdens in the grove of trees that sheltered a shrine to Inari-sama, the Rice God. Drenched in sweat and shivering in the icy mountain wind, they squatted on their heels and wrapped their arms around themselves. The ropy muscles of their calves trembled. The strain of the night’s run contorted their faces. And they still had two ri to go before reaching the Tkaid and their replacements at Tsuchiyama’s transport office.

“Can you walk, my lady?” Hanshiro bowed as he slid open the palanquin’s door.

“I wouldn’t notice if you carved my legs into chopsticks.” Cat held her sleeve in front of her face and managed to smile with her eyes above it. But she was struggling against the nausea that sent a vile-tasting tide up into her throat.

She put her arm around Hanshiro’s neck. On legs heavy and ungainly as kindling, she hobbled into the bushes. The cold air revived her somewhat, but not enough. Hanshiro laid a gentle hand on her back as she heaved and gagged, vomiting up strings of acid and bile. When she finished he gave her his packet of paper handkerchiefs.

“Can you go on?” he asked softly.

“Yes.” She leaned against a cedar and panted for breath. She gulped the cold air as though it were water from a mountain freshet.

The headman’s wife arrived with the millet tea, which Cat used to rinse out her mouth. Then Hanshiro left Cat to take care of her morning needs in private. He walked to the edge of the gorge, loosened his clothing, and urinated into the abyss.

As Cat crouched, she saw the ice leaves under the nearby clump of bamboo. Rime had formed on the leaves. It had been imprinted with each threadlike vein and then had fallen away. The perfect, fragile copies, translucent and glittering, littered the ground. Cat wept at the intensity and transience of their beauty.