CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

THE ULTIMATE OF SWORDSMANSHIP

As in all of Edo, gates shut off most of Honj’s narrow side streets. The gatekeepers slept inside the small gate houses. Those of the main street, a thoroughfare that ran north from the Rygoku Bridge, were open to facilitate movement in case of fire. Hanshiro and Cat strode down the center of it. A light snow earlier in the evening had covered the layer dirtied by the day’s traffic. It silenced the tread of their sandals, but they made no special effort to be quiet.

They had no need to skulk. They were going about their duties as part of Honj’s latest innovation, a merchants’ fire brigade. Of course, paired swords, a naginata, a seven-foot bow, and a quiver full of arrows weren’t standard fire-fighting equipment, but Chubei had assured Hanshiro that no one would interfere with him and Lady Asano.

They entered Honj’s commercial district. The streets were lined with the dark wooden shutters of shops and tenements. Hanshiro led the way past fire buckets stacked against a large house. Like the others here, the house fronted directly on the roadway. The ladder to the fire watch’s rooftop lookout leaned against the first-floor overhang.

Cat started up it. She climbed past the first- and second-story eaves to the small platform built above the roof peak. This was Chubei’s house. Between it and the open workshop behind it was a small garden, exquisitely designed and ethereally beautiful in the moonlight. Cat was astonished to find it attached to a carpenter’s house.

Edo was built on low land that was fairly level. For as far as Cat could see stretched the jumble of snow-covered roofs, none more than two stories high. Except for a distant five-storied pagoda, only rooftop drying racks and spindly fire towers rose above the undulating expanse of white.

When Cat turned around, her naginata hit the bronze bell hanging from the center of the platform’s roof. In the stillness it set up a metallic rumble that seemed loud enough to wake the whole district or at least the household sleeping below her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as Hanshiro’s head appeared. Her breath formed a cloud in the cold air, and she shivered.

“Don’t worry,” Hanshiro said. “It could hardly be heard from below.”

The full moon seemed inordinately large and almost close enough to touch. It was beginning to descend in the southern sky, but it lit everything with a silvery clarity. The snow reflected and intensified the light. From the platform, Cat and Hanshiro could see the Sumida River and the Rygoku Bridge to the west.

To the north and east were the mansions of the lords. Their walled compounds of gardens and outbuildings, servants’ quarters, family shrines, and rambling mansions were scattered among the pines. In Edo’s crowded center near the walls of the shgun’s castle, the lords’ “upper” mansions were set one against each other. That was why so many of the government’s retired officials had chosen to build their “middle” mansions here.

The middle mansions were where the lords’ families lived and where they had room to quarter their retainers in barracks along the inner side of the wall facing the street. Kira’s middle mansion only had two small rooms next to the armory near the gate. His guards were crowded into them.

“Which is Kira’s?” Cat asked.

Hanshiro pointed with his fan. “Where the branches of the pine hang over the wall.”

Cat found the gate of Kira’s compound. She studied the barracks roofs and the inner courtyard where the palanquins and carriages of guests were received. Beyond the courtyard’s low wall lay Kira’s garden and private quarters.

Cat followed the angular meandering of the mansion’s rooflines. She memorized the wings and ells, the verandas and covered corridors, connecting the main part of the house with the family’s rooms at the rear of it. Somewhere under those roofs Lord Kira was sleeping.

“The men should pass by here,” Hanshiro said. “Yogoro’s rice shop is past the brewery, three blocks down and across the street.”

The brewery was easy to distinguish from the other shops. Its symbol, a huge brown globe of dried cypress needles, hung from the second-story gable. Nothing stirred in the streets except the occasional cat and a rat that scuttled along the white plaster walls of a warehouse. But Cat stared as though she could have looked through the roof of the rice shop and seen the men inside. She tried to imagine what they were doing, what they were saying. What they were feeling.

Cat and Hanshiro stood with their hands on the railing and their sleeves touching and surveyed the moonlit, snow-shrouded walls and houses and trees below. The streets and rooftops seemed empty, but they weren’t.

Cat walked around the platform looking for signs of Viper and his friends. She knew they must be hiding behind the big tubs of water on the roofs or behind fences or in the narrow side streets, but she could see no one.

“They’re very good,” she whispered. Perhaps some of the stories she had heard about the machi yakko hadn’t been exaggerated after all.

“There.” Hanshiro pointed with his iron fan to a roof several blocks away.

Moon shadow faintly outlined footprints leading up the roof’s slope to the huge wooden barrel of water, stored there in case of fire. Cat realized that what few traces of the machi yakko she could detect were in the area around Kira’s mansion.

“Chubei swore his men wouldn’t interfere.” Hanshiro answered Cat’s unspoken doubt. He expected Chubei to keep his word, but he wasn’t surprised to see the machi yakko keeping watch. They wouldn’t miss the chance to see this night’s battle.

Cat and Hanshiro looked down the street toward the bridge and canal that separated Honj from Fukagawa, the next ward to the south. If Lord Uesugi sent reinforcements, they would most likely approach from that direction.

“We’re to ring the fire bell once if we see them coming,” Hanshiro said.

A temple bell began tolling the seventh watch, the hour of the Tiger. Its notes hung, expectant, on the air. Cat gripped Hanshiro’s arm to keep her own hands from trembling. The hairs on the back of her neck stirred, and her heart pounded. She felt transcendently aware, as though through the walls of Yogoro’s rice shop she could hear the forty-seven men breathe. As though she could smell the incense with which they had perfumed their helmets.

The last note had faded when Cat heard the faint rasp of a wooden shutter being slid back. The Ak rnin began fanning out from the front door of the shop. Cat strained to distinguish individuals as they formed into a double line. When they moved out from under the eaves, they and their weapons threw a bristling shadow, like a long, spiked dragon, onto the snow.

For more freedom of movement, they had wrapped leggings around the bottoms of their hakama. As a disguise they wore the heavy canvas hooded capes of a warriors’ fire brigade. Their sleeves were tied back to reveal mail gauntlets under matching black broadcloth coats with large white triangles around the cuffs and hems. The white design would be easier to see in the dark corridors of Kira’s mansion and would identify the men to each other.

Some men had on helmets. Others had tied cloth bands around their heads. They carried paired swords in their sashes, of course, but they were also armed with spears and naginata, bows, arrows, and staffs. Rust on a man’s weapon indicated corrosion of his spirit, and every blade had been polished until the moonlight glinted off it.

Some of the men had stuck thin poles into the backs of their sashes so that the small cloth banners attached to them waved above their heads. They had written their death names on the banners.

A few men carried bamboo ladders and heavy, long-handled mallets. Several held large, truncated cones of blackened cypress veneer with handles at the narrow ends. The cones were lanterns with gimballed candles that could direct a beam of light at the enemy while leaving the bearer in shadow.

Kanzaki Yogoro led the procession. He was followed by a man holding up a pole with a small box on the end of it. Cat knew the box must contain the Ak rnin’s statement of purpose.

Oishi walked behind the box bearer. He carried a battle drum by a cord loop. The drum’s head was painted with the twin red yin and yang symbols, the crest of the Yamaga school of strategy. His expression was calm.

As Cat watched him approach she murmured the ancient poem.

Yamato is a land
Where the word-spirit aids us.
Be happy. Fare you well!

When she saw Oishi look around she started, even though she knew that spoken words possessed a spirit of their own. They could carry out the speaker’s wishes, and perhaps Cat’s words had made themselves felt.

The moonlight was so bright that the men had no need of lanterns. No one spoke. Their presence was announced only by the crunch of their straw sandals in the fresh snow and by the muted rattle of metal and wood. It was an archaic noise, an echo from the centuries of warfare that had preceded this one. It was a sound not often heard in the streets of Edo.

Hanshiro had been raised as a warrior, but he had never seen men march into battle. He had thought the warrior spirit extinguished by the corrupting influence of money and the decadence of his generation. He knew the Edo had never seen the equal of this procession, nor would it be likely to again.

Cat and Hanshiro watched the double column move down the empty street. Then it turned a corner and was lost to sight. Cat stared, rapt, at the buildings hiding her father’s men until they reappeared at the head of Matsuzaka Street. When the procession reached the corner of Kira’s wall, it divided, like a stream flowing around a boulder. Chikara and his men separated and headed for the rear of the compound.

Oishi and the rest walked to the front gate. The warriors crouched in the snow while those with the ladders leaned them against the eaves of the gate’s wide roof. Men climbed the ladders and eased up the slope of the gate roof until they could look over the peak into the compound beyond. As Cat watched them, the silence of their movements gave the scene the quality of a dream.

A few of Oishi’s men scrambled up over the gate roof and dropped into the courtyard below. Cat couldn’t see them there, but they must have overpowered the night watch huddled around their brazier in the gate house, because soon the heavy doors swung slowly open. Those with the gimballed lanterns lit them.

Oishi raised the war drum and held it poised and silent until Cat wanted to shout to him to give the signal. Finally he hit the drum sharply with the drumstick. A heartbeat later Cat heard the hollow report. It was followed by the faint crash of huge wooden mallets against the smaller back gate. Oishi’s men crowded through the front gate. Oishi and two of his older lieutenants, Hara Soyemon and Mase Kyudaiyu, stationed themselves outside to repel reinforcements and to stop those inside from escaping.

Cat leaned out from the railing, as though she could fly to join her father’s men. She heard shouting and saw Kira’s guards burst from their tiny rooms along the front wall. They were barefoot and half-dressed. Their uncombed hair hung down around their shoulders, but most of them had their swords drawn. The clash of blades rang out over the men’s shouts.

Long beams from the lanterns flashed and swooped. Their light caught parts of the combatants—a leg, an arm, a face contorted with rage—and froze them for an instant like some artist’s depiction of war. Some of the Ak rnin held off the guards in the courtyard while the rest charged up the steps onto the veranda. They battered down the door of the entrance hall, and women began screaming from inside the house.

“They’re getting away.” Cat pointed to two men running across the garden. The men threw a gardener’s ladder against the wall on the far side and climbed over. They dropped to the street below and raced for the Sumida River. “We should warn Oishi.” Cat started for the ladder, but Hanshiro held her arm.

“Remember the words of one wiser than we,” he said. “‘Do not fight with another’s bow. Do not ride another’s horse. Do not discuss another’s faults … .’” He paused to let her finish.

“‘Do not interfere with another’s work.’” Her voice was low and bitter. But this is my work, she thought.

She strained to make sense of the confusion in Kira’s compound, of bodies in motion, of light and shadow, flashing steel, and the high whine of bowstrings discharging their arrows. The sounds of shrieking and crashing and ripping rose and fell inside the house as Oishi’s men searched for Kira. The fight spilled over the courtyard wall and into the garden beyond.

Lights came on in the nearby compounds, and soon people appeared on the roofs. Most of them were afraid a fire had broken out. Men slipped out the smaller doors set in the main gates and ran to see what was happening.

Oishi had unfolded a stool and sat calmly in front of the gate while his two gray-haired companions, Hara and Mase, paced. When a small crowd gathered, Hara and Mase conferred with the men sent by neighboring lords. The messengers dispersed, scattering back to their masters’ compounds and disappearing through the side doors.

Mase unfolded a stool and sat next to Oishi. Hara went back to pacing. Cat and Hanshiro waited for Kira’s neighbors to send men to aid him, but the gates of the surrounding mansions stayed discreetly shut.

About halfway through the hour of the Tiger the noise of fighting finally quieted. Cat could see bodies scattered about the courtyard and the garden. They sprawled across the steps and the verandas. She could hear the sound of women wailing and the noise of destruction. In their search for their lord’s enemy the Ak men were breaking open chests, pulling down ceiling panels, and slashing bedding. Kira’s mansion was modest, but even in a modest mansion there were lots of places for a man to hide.

The moon had almost set. In the east a band of pale light lay along the horizon, but no whistle signaled that Kira had been found. Cat thought she would go mad with the waiting. To reassure her Hanshiro allowed his sleeve to brush hers. He moved his hand so that it rested lightly against hers on the railing.

After a long discussion Hara and Mase finally persuaded Oishi to let them go inside. They left him sitting alone on the stool in the trampled snow outside the gate. He seemed as calm as a buddha, but he looked forlorn, abandoned, left out of the vengeance he had planned. Cat wondered what he was thinking. Had Kira escaped? Had all Oishi’s effort and suffering been for nothing?

“They’re coming,” Hanshiro said.

Cat turned to look. A bristle of bows moved across the bridge into Honj from Fukagawa. The thirteen archers were a token force, but they were reputed to be the best in the country. And the Ak rnin must be exhausted by now.

Cat reached for the iron rod that hung near the big bell, but Hanshiro put a hand on her arm.

“If we ring the bell, Uesugi’s men and Oishi’s will clash,” he said. “The master of the New Shadow school wrote that if your mind reaches the ultimate of swordsmanship, the sword will have no place.”

“What do you propose?”

“Persuasion. It would be best if you stay here while I go down and talk to them.”

Cat just looked at him, and he smiled ruefully. He hadn’t really thought she would agree to stay behind. “If they kill us, we will at least have delayed them,” he said.

Chubei’s machi yakko appeared suddenly, as if on cue, on the rooftops lining the bowmen’s route.

“You said Chubei promised that his men wouldn’t interfere.”

“They’re not there to fight.” Hanshiro started down the ladder. “We’ll use them as go stones, surrounding the enemy and ending the game in a draw.”

He led Cat at a run through back alleys reeking of garbage and sewage. They came out on the main street a few blocks in front of Uesugi’s bowmen. With their faces hidden in the shadows of their hoods, they waited.

Hanshiro’s bow was unstrung and slung across his back. His swords were in their scabbards. Cat’s naginata blade was sheathed, and she held it vertically, with the butt resting in the snow.

“Comrades,” Hanshiro said when the archers drew close, “this quarrel is not with you or your master.”

“We have our orders.” The captain was in his middle years and obviously very well trained. He was from Yonezawa to the north, and he had little regard for city warriors. In Hanshiro he recognized an equal, something he hadn’t found often in Edo.

Hanshiro approached close enough to speak softly. He nodded toward the rooftops, where almost a hundred men were clearly outlined against the pale gray sky. They stood so that their mattocks and adzes and scythes were silhouetted, too. From side streets came the creak of gates closing.

The captain knew his men could be trapped here between the unbroken facade of the buildings, with no room to maneuver while they were attacked from above. He realized his choices would be to engage in a brawl with commoners or retreat from them. He didn’t relish either alternative.

“Your orders were to come to the aid of a certain lord,” Hanshiro said. “Surely your master didn’t mean for you to sully your weapons with the likes of them.”

“True.” The captain had been instructed, in fact, not to cause a disturbance in the streets.

“The ignorant rabble of Honj are an impulsive and irrational lot. And they’ve taken an insolent interest in this case. If you continue, I fear they’ll attack.”

Hanshiro knew the captain wasn’t afraid of a gang of commoners, and the captain knew Hanshiro knew it. They both also knew that the government forbade interference in private disputes. And then there was the edict about the chastisement of an enemy not being attended by riot. The machi yakko excelled at riot.

“I …” The captain stopped. He sighed. He bowed.

Cat and Hanshiro bowed lower to lend dignity to his retreat as he spun on his heel and strode off the way he had come. His men wheeled and followed him.

Cat turned and ran north, toward Kira’s mansion. She was only a block away when she heard the shrill call of a whistle, then another. A shout went up. Oishi’s men had found Lord Kira.