Daughter of the Sword (32 page)

AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA ERA,
THE YEAR 20

(1587 CE)

46

My name is Ōda Yoshitomo,” the challenger said when Daigoro and Ichirō greeted him at the gate. “I come to test the skill of the Okumas.”

His entourage was just four horsemen: two retainers and an older samurai with thick eyebrows that made him look vaguely owl-like. The older man, Daigoro soon learned, was Ōda Tomonosuke, head of the Ōda clan. Yoshitomo, champion of the Ōdas, had eyes that flicked to and fro like startled minnows. He was lanky, a bit shorter than Ichirō, and thus almost a head taller than Daigoro. He wore faded gray with black
hakama
, and his sword grip was well-worn.

“What will you fight with,” Ichirō asked, “wood or steel?”

Lord Ōda’s forehead furrowed, and his champion said, “Lord Toyotomi has decreed that duels should be fought using
bokken
.”

“Ah, that he has,” said Ichirō. “If the house of Ōda has no will of its own, I suppose we can follow the will of a greater house.”

All of the Ōdas immediately tensed, and Yoshitomo was out of the saddle with his hand on his sword before Daigoro could get a word in. “Lord Ōda,” Daigoro said, inserting himself in front of his brother, “please, let us take some tea and discuss the terms of the duel.”

“No,” said Yoshitomo. “He has insulted me! I demand satisfaction.”

The elder Ōda looked at his champion, then at Ichirō, then at Daigoro. At last he said, “First we will have tea.”

Negotiations lasted as long as it took the sun to set. First Daigoro introduced his mother. They spoke about the weather and conditions on the road and news of the war in the west. Daigoro complimented Lord Ōda on his horses, and on the fitness and fiery zeal of his challenger. Ōda revealed that Yoshitomo was his son—his fourth of six—and complimented Daigoro and his mother on the beauty of the family compound. At last they came to the matter at hand. Daigoro argued for a battle of
bokken
, and his terms were granted at last—on the condition that he be the one to fight.

Daigoro and Ōda Tomonosuke emerged from the tea house, paid their respects to the shrine of Daigoro’s father, and found their respective champions glowering at each other, kneeling in ready positions just two paces apart. “You shall duel with
bokken
,” Lord Ōda announced, “and you shall face young Master Daigoro.”

Lord Ōda’s son tightened his fists, ground his knuckles in the sand, and bowed stiffly to Ichirō. Then he stood, his body tense as if Ichirō were a venomous snake whose reach he was unsure of, and bowed to Daigoro. Daigoro noticed the bow to him was deeper than that to his brother. He was thankful that Ichirō failed to notice the fact, but Ichirō could not have seen it, for he had shifted his glare to Daigoro. “Coward,” he muttered.

Ōda Yoshitomo whirled, unsheathing his
katana
. He came within a hand’s breadth of cutting Ichirō’s head from his shoulders when his father bellowed, “Stop!”

“He called me a coward!” said Yoshitomo. “You heard him!”

Daigoro tried to intervene, tried to explain the true target of the insult, but his leg was too slow to carry him into the courtyard and Ichirō’s voice drowned out his own. “It seems our rival would prefer a battle of steel on steel,” said Ichirō. “Give me the sword, Daigoro.”

“I won’t,” Daigoro said. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m only giving him what he wants. Now give me Glorious Victory.”

Daigoro now stood between his brother and the armed Yoshitomo,
who had sunk into a combative stance and trained the tip of his sword on Ichirō’s throat. “You know I won’t,” said Daigoro.

“You would deny the will of Toyotomi himself, the man who may well become shogun?” There was no need for Daigoro to answer. “Then get out of my way, little brother.” Ichirō drew his own sword. “The duel begins now.”

Daigoro stood his ground, and Yoshitomo circled around to his left. Ichirō shot Daigoro a final glare, then shifted to match Yoshitomo’s movement. Daigoro hobbled backward toward Ōda Tomonosuke, preparing his abject apologies.

Before he reached him, the duel was over. There was the ring of clashing steel, then a garbled cry from Ichirō. Yoshitomo stood back as Ichirō fell to his knees. His back was drenched with blood, torrents of it cascading from the base of his neck. His head hung forward, unattached on one side. He fell face-first to the sand.

Yoshitomo whipped his sword in a gory arc, cleaning it of blood before resheathing it. He bowed to Ichirō’s bleeding form, then to Daigoro, then to their mother, who stood aghast beside Lord Ōda. As servants and healers flocked to Ichirō’s side, the Ōdas took their leave.

47

The wound was as grave as any Daigoro had heard of. According to the family’s chief healer, who had once exchanged medical techniques with a southern barbarian doctor and had even spent some years learning his trade in China, Ōda’s sword had cut one of Ichirō’s neck bones. The spine was still intact, but only barely. Had healers not been standing mere paces away from the fight, Ichirō surely would have died where he lay.

But they had managed to stitch his neck back together, and then the question became how to get tissue and bone to mend. Old Yagyū, House Okuma’s chief healer, called for timber, a carpenter, and as much rice as could be found.

While the carpenter followed old Yagyū’s instructions, three servants dug a pit in the courtyard deeper than Daigoro was tall. Yagyū and the carpenter tied a rope around Ichirō’s head and bound it to a beam. Under Yagyū’s supervision, the healers lowered Ichirō into the pit, holding him erect, trying at the same time to shoo away the flies congregating on the jagged, bloody black line of stitches on his neck. Then the healers filled the pit with rice and affixed the beam on Ichirō’s head to bamboo poles thrust vertically into the rice. When the work was finished, Ichirō was buried up to his chin, his head fixed so that he could not move it at all. Yagyū rubbed a mixture of oil and
pine resin over the stitched wound just before the last layer of rice was shoveled on. Ichirō could not move, but he might live.

A month later Ichirō was still alive and no more duels had been fought. At times Ichirō’s stagnant muscles would pain him so badly that he would cry out, moaning through his lips since his jaws were tied tightly shut. Other times he was beset by madness; the itching was so bad. Servants sat with him constantly, fanning the horse flies away by day and the mosquitoes by night. Drinking was a laborious chore; eating was even harder. More than once Ichirō asked his attending servants to kill him. He never asked Daigoro, for Daigoro made the asking impossible. A lowly servant could not dispatch a man of Ichirō’s station, but Daigoro knew he would have to honor the request, so he made sure never to approach within earshot while Ichirō could see him.

But he sat with Ichirō as soon as Ichirō fell asleep, or when he passed out from the pain or the heat. Sometimes Daigoro would creep up behind him, taking a servant’s fan himself, and spend wordless hours cooling the back of Ichirō’s head.

He did not know what else to do. Every day he knelt at the shrine to his father, asking for advice. All I have ever done, he thought, is adhere to your will, Father. All I have ever done is try to follow your path, and now that path has led to something you never would have willed. Your eldest son suffers worse than any animal under heaven. Would Glorious Victory have saved him? Its length, the strength of its steel—were they the advantages he needed? What should I have done differently? What am I to do now?

There was no answer to his questions within the family stronghold, so Daigoro took his thoughts, his
wakizashi
, and his father’s
ōdachi
up into the mountains. He rode aimlessly for an hour, distantly hoping that some wind spirit would blow an answer past his ears. The
mountains were lush and green, punctuated by the purple flowers of kudzu in full bloom. The flowers smelled of grapes, and their scent came to him on a warm zephyr that also carried tidings of an evening rain. Far below, the sea beat its susurrating rhythm against the stones of the shore. Izu was at its most beautiful, but it held no answers for Daigoro.

Looking up, he found himself suddenly at Kattō-ji, though he had no idea how he’d come there. He’d intended to ride in the opposite direction but then got lost in his ruminations. He wondered whether his mare preferred the temple. Perhaps some ancient buddha had been reborn into her. Daigoro did not care. A vine-covered hilltop was as good a place as any to fail to find the insight he sought.

“Young Master Okuma,” called a voice near the temple’s ash-gray surrounding wall, and Daigoro looked up to see the abbot standing there. “Are you still practicing your swordsmanship?”

“Every day.”

“But not up here. Have you come to show me your masterpiece again?”

“No. I was just…wandering.”

“Ah. Then perhaps your masterpiece has come to see ours. Come inside, won’t you?”

Not knowing what else to do, Daigoro lowered himself off his horse, tethered her to a post beside the gate, and followed the abbot into the temple grounds. The old abbot was spry; he walked as quickly as a man half his age. “You presume a great deal,” Daigoro said.

“Do I?”

“You do and you know it. You walk too fast for me to keep up. I could cut you down where you stand if I were to take offense to it.”

“That you could,” said the abbot. “But then, had I slowed to match your pace, you could have cut me down for taking note of your weakness and accommodating it. In truth, it’s your prerogative to cut me down whenever you like. Better for me to go on as I’m accustomed, and for you to do the same.”

They stood on the flagstones of a walkway surrounding a rock
garden of gray pebbles. Large stones stood out among the pebbles like lichen-flecked islands, like turtles surfacing out of a pond. In the center of the garden stood a living contradiction: an enormous dwarf pine. Its gnarled branches twisted like plumes of smoke in a crosswind, and its moss-covered roots crawled through the rock garden like snakes. It was tall by any standards, colossal by the standards of its own species. Daigoro realized he must have seen it countless times before, for its crown would be easily visible even from the Okuma stronghold. Until now he’d mistaken it for an ordinary pine.

“Our masterpiece,” the abbot said as Daigoro gaped at the tree. “This temple was built a hundred years ago, in celebration of the three hundredth birthday of this tree. On the day this tree first took root, that sword of yours was already an old man. Today the two old grandfathers finally meet,
neh
?”

Daigoro gave a slow nod. The sunlight hit the uppermost needles just so, shooting a white light through the treetop. The sight of it took his breath away. For the first time he understood how a man could give up everything he had to spend his life in a building like this one. If he were going to pursue enlightenment, this would be the perfect setting.

“Why is this place called Temple of the Twining Vines?” Daigoro asked. “Why not Temple of the Ancient Pine?”

“Everything is entwined by vines, young lord. This temple, this tree—to exist is to be entwined. The vines that entangle you are so heavy I can see the lines they leave on your face. You are too young to wear such lines, Okuma-san. What troubles you?”

Before he knew it, Daigoro was sharing everything. His frustrated desire to obey his father’s will, his inability to find the path, his care for his brother, for their mother, for his family’s honor: he laid it all bare. “I am so conflicted,” he said, “that I no longer have any idea where to go. Maybe I should stay here and send this cursed sword back home with a messenger. Maybe I should shave my topknot and spend the rest of my life in your temple.”

The abbot shrugged. “Why don’t you?”

“I cannot. My sense of Bushido tells me I cannot. So does the ghost of my father.”

“Then don’t,” said the abbot. “Just walk with me instead. Let the old grandfathers visit for a spell.”

Daigoro followed the old abbot along the flagstones leading around the garden of the great tree. They climbed the shaded steps of the main meditation hall, a low, broad building of deep brown wood and red banners. Daigoro removed his gold silk overrobe, laid it on the floorboards of the porch surrounding the temple, then removed Glorious Victory from his belt and nestled it in the silk. He laid his
wakizashi
beside it. It was strange being unarmed in public. He knew he should have felt vulnerable, but in truth he was strangely liberated.

Daigoro and the abbot ambled around the perimeter of the rock garden. An eastern breeze heavily laden with the smells of copper and steam made Daigoro guess the temple’s bathhouse was nearby. “How do you know so much about me?” he asked.

“I was a young samurai myself once.” The abbot turned and smiled at him. “Do you think your experience is so unique? All of us have turmoil. We are all entwined.”

“But how do you know so much about my sword? The last time I saw you, you identified it as an Inazuma on sight.”

“That is a very famous sword,” the abbot said with a chuckle. “Those of us who dedicate ourselves to the sword as I once did…well, we make it our business to know such things,
neh
? Yours is known as Glorious Victory, I think.”

That gave Daigoro pause. “How did you know that?”

“Have you ever dismantled that sword, boy?”

Daigoro didn’t need to answer; he could tell the abbot already knew he hadn’t. They wandered along the flagstone path, passing between the south end of the meditation hall and a small tea house behind a short fence of bamboo. Soon they reached what Daigoro guessed to be the abbey, judging from the many pairs of sandals arrayed along one wall of the entryway.

The abbot shed his own sandals, left Daigoro there for a moment, and when he returned, he carried a small oblong box of white oak. Daigoro immediately recognized it for what it was: a sword cleaning kit. The two of them returned to the meditation hall, where, as he’d expected, Daigoro found his swords lying just as he’d left them. At last he identified his earlier feeling of liberation. It wasn’t that no one here would dare to steal the swords, though of course no one would. It was that no one here
wanted
a sword. Even an Inazuma blade was no temptation at all.