Sword of Honour (23 page)

‘No,’ said Tokugawa, and it was clear that he had expected that most obvious of answers. ‘I forbid that – Kyoto must not burn on my account. Listen once more: Kyoto is a
symbol. Repeat that.’

‘Kyoto is a symbol,’ said every man there.

‘Good,’ said Tokugawa. ‘Understand this. It has its verification in history: a hundred and thirty-five years ago the Ashikaga Shogunate let the city be razed to the ground.
Their inability to protect the capital lost them the respect of the entire country, and the war that followed did not stop until Sekigahara. Go find the Ashikaga dynasty now, I challenge you
– rake through the pebbles and the ashes and see what you can summon.

‘Now, I ask you to imagine how much worse that would be if, instead of simply being unable to prevent the capital from burning, the clan Tokugawa was seen to be the one that actively
started the blaze? “Unite against the arsonist that dares to bring down the walls of heaven” is a strong rallying cry, is it not?’

‘My most noble Lord,’ ventured one of the men, ‘how many enemies are left to rally? All are slain or humbled or enthralled.’

‘You think only of the present. It is impossible for a man to kill all his enemies, and given time they will recover, or secret ones shall emerge. In the reign of my son, or in the reign
of my grandson, if the beacon still shines will these dogs not hearken to it?

‘You also think only of warriors. Know that Kyoto is a symbol to all, not just to those with swords. Temples pervade its streets, monasteries in the hills around it. Should I send spearmen
to march through the city, inevitable obstinacy and outcry, and then inevitable damage and death. And, should these inevitably sullied things wear saffron robes or be carved with images of the
Buddha, then we shall see true bedlam in every vale the length of the country. Angered monks rousing armies of peasants.

‘You are all of you young men, and you do not remember it as it was. You perhaps think a renunciant is a samurai who reneges his courage, his will to fight, his ability with arms. You are
wrong. A renunciant is a samurai who retains all that, and gains religious zeal. Throughout my youth I fought rebellions by these heaven-maddened men, and never do I wish to do so again. The
Warlord Oda scoured Mount Hiei clean thirty years ago, ended the last major uprising, but even though he – foremost of all tacticians – led thirty thousand samurai he lost half of them,
taking no more than ten thousand ordained warriors.

‘Consider that. Take that as proof. Do we have the force to do this, here, today? Once, of course. Twice, yes. Ten times? Twenty times, with the daggers of the “enthralled” at
our backs? Understand that this clan is at a very precarious moment. We have clambered at last to sit atop a mountain’s peak only to find that the sky is full of spears. Wounds and grievances
against the clan Tokugawa run deep already. We do not wish to deepen them. The truth is we are stretched thin, very thin.’

Dark, darkening further the black paint that was woven between the blue and gold of the peacock’s feathers on the walls. Odd how something so beautiful could suddenly seem so throttling,
for Goemon and every man in the antechamber knew where this was heading.

‘Kyoto must not be free and it must not be shackled,’ said their Lord, laying it clear before them. ‘Bloodlessly, it must be brought into line. One of you is to receive the
honour of this task. It is vital to the clan. I leave it up to you to decide who amongst you shall have the privilege, for you are all deeply, deeply trusted by this clan. Is the meaning of my
words understood?’

‘Yes, Lord!’

‘Hail the Shogun Tokugawa!’ came the cry from all of the inner guards.

‘Hail the Shogun Tokugawa!’ responded those in the antechamber, and then they bowed a final time. The hand of the great Lord Ieyasu Tokugawa gave a slight gesture, and the door slid
closed without anything further.

Sealed away, the twenty men rose to kneel in silence. They were not the sons of clerks or diplomats: they were soldiers all. Bloodless was alien to them, and from the desperate battlefield they
knew the feeling of doom well. It lingered heavy now. A fruitless venture that would likely yield at best their head displayed in shame on a spike, and at worst the ruination of the entire
clan.

Yet they were irrevocably commanded to do so.

Duty was duty, and samurai obeyed. Who, then, to bestow this gift upon? There were divisions between them all, old rivalries and grudges between families started in their grandfathers’
time, but none so big and encompassing as nineteen men against one. Slowly heads turned towards that individual, and in silence the sacrifice was chosen.

‘Gratefully I accept this venerable charge,’ said Goemon, and cast his brow to the floor.

Proper words, expected words.

And here he was now, Captain Goemon Inoue, reading auguries in his vomit.

Captain.

How it stuck like a bone in his throat, that he had not even been awarded the position of minister so that at least his terminal plummet might be gilded with a comet’s tail of ice and
diamond. That title hoisted off on some cousin of a cousin within the clan who ruled in name only. The fop stayed in the splendour of the estates around the famed Silver Pavilion out in the hills
west of the city where he larked about the many gardens like some addled young buck stag, all directionless and lustful, fucking whomsoever he should come across.

Goemon knew this because the gardening workforce harangued him every time he visited to make his reports. They demanded coin in return for secrecy, and this he reluctantly had to pay them.
Though the minister was of noble blood and was within his right to do as he pleased to lowerborn, if the story of this had escaped how easy and vivid a metaphor it would make as it spread and
exaggerated across the city – the Insatiably Rapacious Tokugawa.

This, the duty of a captain.

So far below what he once had. He put it from his mind. He had lingered here in the alley too long. He straightened and then limped back towards the light of the Goat’s lantern, wiping
bile from his chin.

‘You are well, sir?’ his adjutant asked.

‘I am fine,’ said Goemon, and struggled for an excuse. ‘My stomach has not set well since the explosion.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The captain took the lantern once more, and on they walked. The Goat’s sword rattled in its scabbard as he pressed it into the earth again and again. The old samurai spat and then said,
‘I saw that fire, sir, it spread far too quickly to be caused solely by the detonation. Then all those tea-coloured Yoshioka dogs arrive so quickly, so prepared? Saboteurs, my bet. Where did
those swordless men get the black powder from to begin with? They couldn’t have smuggled it in themselves. If you wish to root out sedition . . .’

‘Any definite proof of that is nought but ash now,’ said Goemon, and a smile crept across his face, almost of the kind that he had worn when the swordmaster of his youth had pierced
his defence. Pain from the blow and yet a simultaneous envious admiration at the ability. ‘That sly knave.’

Chapter Fourteen

Ameku sang that night on Hiei.

Ostensibly it was for Yae, who lay verging upon sleep after a meal of warm rice for the first time in months, but Musashi sat close to the hearth also. The blind woman knew that he was there and
did not protest his presence. If she had not forgiven him for his outburst before the gates of the city, she did not continue to persecute him for it. Perhaps she held no grudges, or perhaps she
held such a fundamentally large one that she had no room to bear the petty also.

Thus she sang with her alien beauty and ability, and the smoke of fading coals was in the air, and as always he became captivated by the song. He could not explain his enchantment fully. When he
listened, an ache formed within him that he never felt at other times. And yet it was a good ache, an ache like prodding a hard-won bruise. A deep satisfaction.

There were moments, a few fleeting moments, when he had experienced something akin to this before. Moments that were not remembered coherently with logical memory as much as felt. Known. To try
to describe them was like trying to examine the darkness by a holding a torch to it. Moments invariably that came in that somnolent interval where the body kicks at the first images of dreams. The
period of hovering consciousness, the mind unneeding of the flesh, yet the escape from it not quite completed.

Caught in the depths of night, say, insects singing as they sang in the forest outside now. Lying nestled in some soft cleft in the earth surrounded by noise so loud, life in the fullest
splendour of the year, and he fading into slumber, becoming no more than another aspect of that life enveloped in the grand darkness that stole all sense of shape and barrier. Lay there listening
to the insects that thrived in the trees and the grasses. Listening to the smallest crickets tick, to the hum of the larger suzumushi, to the howls of cicadas that fervently beseeched in unerring
dedication. Listening to it all come together, each disparate sound unified by the unfettered mind, the egoless thing that defined itself by seeking order and recognition in all it objectively
imbibed.

The crickets became the percussion keeping time, the suzumushi insects the chorus holding all in tune, and the cicadas loudest of all the melody, the thing around which the others arranged
themselves. When their final rising-falling-rising vibrato trilled itself out the entire thing looped around and began again, a loop as long as the night, as long as the summer.

There was rhythm there, the pulse of creation that all things unwittingly shared. The unwitting mind absorbed into it, perhaps the beat of his heart changing without his consent, and how
wonderful to be carried so, to feel without any hint of doubt or higher reason that things had meaning and purpose, that at some fundamental point all connected.

Listening to her sing, it was like an observance of this. It was humbling. The beauty of the song revealed to him in contrast what a low thing he himself was, a skull atop a spine atop a pelvis
and no more, and yet despite this – because of this – it was exalting at the same time. A joy felt vibrating within the bones each and every time her voice slid between notes so
fluidly, a joy at the fact that there was something higher in the world, a joy that, even though they were low and crude things, here was proof that they were capable of raising themselves.

The ache, sweet ache. An indescribable, lonely longing. He sat enthralled, watching, listening in his strange piety, and it came to him then that no man could hold this power. This was a thing
of women and women alone. He watched the moving of her lips and the movement of her throat, and for the first time he became aware on a deeper level that she was a woman. Saw her such.

Ameku’s song trailed out, the last note held until it was no more than a sigh. Yae stirred in her sleep. All was peaceful.

He had to speak to her. He could not bear the silence. But all he could think to say was, ‘What do the words mean?’

Part of him was surprised that she obliged him. The slight tilt of her head as she considered the translation. ‘Many words,’ she said eventually. ‘But this is the main words:
Storm comes. Flowers fall. Sadness again over sea waves. Storm comes. Men all drown. Women find new love at spring.’

‘It sounded happier.’

‘Ryukyu song,’ she said. ‘True, no?’

‘Nnn.’

A mirth of gentle cruelty upon her lips: ‘You like it more or less, knowing?’

The needle stung him, and he was glad that she was unable to see him as he sat there embarrassed at his inability to summon a riposte. But any words eluded him and so Ameku presumed him
satisfied for the night. The woman made as if she were about to sleep herself, hands searching for the pillow of dried beans the monks had provided for them.

This could not be.

‘Would you comb my hair for me?’ he blurted.

‘What?’ she said.

‘My hair.’

Before she had a chance to answer or refuse he rose and crossed the small room to sit with his back to her. She adjusted herself for a long time, perhaps caught in indecision. He held himself
tense, drew a breath in, and then he felt her fingers reach out to touch him between the shoulder blades, searching.

They were harder than he would have thought.

Up those fingers went to the nape of his neck. She began to run them tentatively through his hair from the roots to the tips. Unbound, his hair hung to below his clavicle. He had shaved his head
entirely after Sekigahara to tend to the wound on his scalp, and had simply let it grow back fully after that; never would he wear a topknot again. The tresses were coarse and Ameku’s fingers
found many knots. She parted these before she brought out her whalebone comb, and then the woman began to brush its fine teeth through the hair.

There was a lot of resistance, and yet somehow it felt smooth and soothing. The teeth grazed his scalp, caressed it, and he felt a hot flash of prickling sensation run down from the crown of his
head all the way to the hairs of his arms.

Suddenly he was embarrassed, ultra-conscious of himself.

‘Thank you,’ he said as she continued to work, trying to muster some excuse. ‘I must look fine. Tomorrow I face the Yoshioka.’

She said nothing for a while, brought the comb through a matted patch. Then she said, ‘Do you like to kill?’

‘What?’ he asked, surprised. ‘No.’

Ameku took the answer evenly and continued to comb as though it made no difference to her.

‘Why would you think that?’ he asked her.

‘A man that wants to look good, have fine hair as he kills . . . Killing must be a thing he likes.’

‘It’s not . . .’ said Musashi, and he tried to turn to face her. ‘I did not mean it in that manner.’

‘Today, you wanted to kill.’

‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘No, I wanted to fight that samurai. To cast him down. Humble him, not cut him down. Different entirely.’

She gave a little gesture of ambivalence and took another lock of hair in her hands. She did not seem invested in the conversation, not as he was, and he wanted her attention. Her agreement.
‘Don’t you understand the difference?’ he pressed.