Sword of Honour (46 page)

‘I’m not afraid of death.’

‘Not only do you die, but the school is plunged further into scandal. The name Yoshioka, which your father and your grandfathers bore before you, is sullied. We are already deeper into
this outrage than we ought to be. But it is salvageable, of this I am sure. If it worsens . . . There is nothing to be gained by fighting him, Denshichiro, but everything to lose. The risk is
entirely ours. Why roll a die you know to be weighted?’

‘Because he felled my brother,’ said Denshichiro. ‘Because I am samurai, and I demand even the chance of vengeance.’

‘Miyamoto will find his own end regardless of our intervention.’

‘Dying is not enough!’ said Denshichiro. ‘He has to be killed, by me! And all have to know it! The respect the city holds for us is faltering. In their hearts, their image of
us is tarnishing, rotting away with each step that dog or a bastard Tokugawa samurai takes upon our streets. I can tell. I’m attuned.’

‘What does the inside of their hearts matter?’ said Tadanari. ‘When has a single human heart ever altered anything outside of the confines of the ribcage?’

‘We deserve to be beloved,’ said Denshichiro, and he said it with such conviction, such personal umbrage in the eyes that it galled Tadanari. ‘We are this city!’

‘We deserve to be followed because their fathers followed us. That is the sole logic that we reap the benefit of. The logic you scorn now. Heed me: Miyamoto is a snow in the late spring,
nothing more. He will be remembered here only with a passing curiosity, if at all. Nothing enduring, nothing permanent. Not like we can be. Not like we are.’

‘Have you no trust in the Way of the Yoshioka? In me? How did my father ever tolerate the advice of a man as gelded as you?’

‘Because he was not a boar-headed idiot intent on his family’s destruction.’

‘You call me idiot? Well I call you coward!’ shouted Denshichiro, and he raised a hand to point at Tadanari, jabbed his finger savagely again and again. ‘I will eat shit before
I bow to Miyamoto, and I will eat shit before I take counsel from you again!’

Tadanari found it hard to contain his own fury. Somehow he managed to force the words out levelly: ‘Bear a little shame now and your great-grandchildren will thank you.’

‘I’ll earn a great glory and they will thank me more,’ said Denshichiro, and he turned and made for the door, the frail frame of which nearly shattered as he hauled it open. He
stormed off down the corridor still cursing, feet graceless and heavy.

There in the silence Tadanari stood. Looked around at the walls, at the floor. Wondered why it was they stood.

Some time later Ujinari appeared as lithe and silent as a ghost and asked what it was that had set Denshichiro’s temper ablaze. Tadanari explained.

‘I shall speak to him,’ said Ujinari. ‘You’re in no mood to. Your counsel, your strategy is wise, I’m sure he will see that. He just is as he is. Once the tempest
of his blood has ceased I am certain he too will agree.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Strange times.’ Ujinari smiled. ‘I wish this summer would end, this heat would break. But we are the Yoshioka. We will endure.’

‘We are the Kozei.’

‘One and the same.’

Tadanari looked at his son and saw the confidence there, the loyalty. He wished that he could share in it, that Denshichiro could share in it too.

Later, within the private garden of the school, a pretty cask of lacquered persimmon wood sat upon the dais. It looked like something fine sake would be kept in. On its side
was painted an image of a flowing river, a catfish rearing its head between gourds being carried merrily downstream. Tadanari had unscrewed the lid of the cask, and this lay to one side. On the rim
flies congregated.

Inside was Akiyama’s head, awaiting transport to Mount Hiei in the morning.

The cask had been packed with cloves and mugwort and the ashes of incense, and yet still the smell of rot pervaded. This macabre company was the only kind Tadanari could tolerate that night. Yet
he could not bring himself to bring the head fully out.

He simply sat there. staring at the tip of a peeled nose and the locks of curled red hair that hung over the lip.

‘What was it that caused you to break from us?’ Tadanari asked Akiyama. It was an honest question and he waited some time for an answer. When he received none, he spoke on: ‘It
cannot be the nonsense that masterless spouts. I listened to that. That could not have swayed you. For all your aberrations you were steady. You, of all the adepts, might have been the most loyal.
Up until the moment you weren’t. Much like a murderer, I suppose. What was it, Nagayoshi? Revealed to you in an instant, like a Bodhisattva seeing suddenly the path to the pure lands? A
moment when things you knew to be stone became as liquid? Can all men experience such a thing? An instant when unseen bells are struck and things that were thought jewels resonate fit to
shatter?’

He realized he was speaking aloud to an incomplete corpse.

Tadanari turned his eyes away in embarrassment at his own unrest. He looked to his hands, where between a thumb and a forefinger he was rubbing one of his ivory netsuke pouch-clasps anxiously.
He moved the thumb and saw the image of Saint Fudo looking back.

In the devil-saint’s right hand, the Cutter of Delusions.

At the sight of the purging sword for a moment he wavered, quailed, and he thought that all was dashed, that the celestial edge was passing through him at that instant. He rebelled, dropped the
clasp, covered it with a palm on his thigh and then forced calm upon himself. His eyes found their way to the centremost boulder in the bed of sand. Always cool the surface of obsidian, the
knife-ridge of it enamelled like ice unmelting, beguiling the ego away to nothingness. Formed of millennia and sharp enough to break the span of a mere handful of decades across, to rack a human
life brazen for examination.

Candles burnt. His unseeing eyes did not notice his son’s arrival. Ujinari did not disturb him, waited for his father to become aware of his presence in his own time. There was a
near-startled moment when he did, then informal bows exchanged.

‘Deep in thought,’ the son said.

‘Nnn.’

Ujinari looked at the cask and the sliver of Akiyama’s head that was visible. Tadanari grunted again, waved the flies away and then replaced the lid.

‘Let me ease your mind, Father, turn it away from such morbid things. I have spoken with Denshichiro: he will do it. For the betterment of the school, he will apologize to
Miyamoto.’

‘He agreed?’

‘He is not happy, but he sees the wisdom of it.’

‘How long did it take to convince him?’

‘Not long. You misjudge him. Once he was calm, he was willing to listen.’

‘To you, perhaps. It seems you have the gift of diplomacy. Perhaps we ought to send you out as envoy for the school.’

‘Hold your praise, for regrettably I am not that talented,’ said Ujinari. ‘There was one thing Denshichiro demanded.’

‘His acquiescence not total, then?’

Ujinari chose his words carefully: ‘He is aggrieved by your acting on his behalf without his consent. Greatly. I think it is irrational, but it is how he is. He will only apologize to
Miyamoto if you are not present, and then, the matter settled, you agree to retire from the city until the spring.’

‘Unthinkable,’ said Tadanari. ‘He cannot be left to govern himself, not with the Tokugawa situation so volatile. Look what he did—’

‘Father, I believe I can temper him.’

‘You?’

‘I am his friend. As you were to Naokata. Kozei and Yoshioka, stronger together, no?’

‘Naokata and Denshichiro are not . . .’ said Tadanari, but did not finish. He eyed his son levelly. ‘How sure of this are you?’

‘Relatively,’ said Ujinari. ‘I convinced him to agree to this, did I not?’

‘But he is tempestuous,’ said Tadanari. ‘What of the incident upon Hiei, say? That came out of nothing. Could you have stopped that?’

‘I could have, yes, if I had put it upon myself to act as counsel,’ said Ujinari. ‘I was lax. I beg your forgiveness for my error. But I swear from this moment forth I will be
vigilant.’

‘You would have to be with him as constant as a hawk on the hand.’

‘In your stead, I would do so. For the future of the school.’

Tadanari looked at his son, saw the responsibility in his eyes. Ujinari had worn a longsword for seven years now, but under the shadow of Seijuro Tadanari had always thought of him and of
Denshichiro as latently younger, or perhaps simply young. No truth to the thought, just felt inherent. Now, though, that shadow cast aside and Ujinari raised up into the light, Tadanari saw him
perhaps for the first time as a man proper.

It was both humbling and exalting.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shall make my preparations to leave. It will be good to escape this heat, I suppose.’

‘Thank you for the honour of your trust, Father,’ said Ujinari, pressed his brow to the floor, his voice full of candour and spirit and all the things Tadanari knew to be good.
‘I swear, I vow to you with all that I can vow that Denshichiro and I will make you proud of us.’

Chapter Thirty

‘I did it,’ said Musashi. ‘Akiyama’s head is being taken to Hiei. It will be cremated and interred . . . It will be burnt, and put with the rest of the
body. He is whole again.’

‘Good,’ said Ameku, and nothing more.

She was working on the loom. The mat hung before her was nearly complete, a delicate shade of green as broad either way as a man’s outstretched arms. The wooden levers of the machine
counted instances as faithfully as the beating of a heart.

‘I made arrangements peacefully,’ said Musashi.

She nodded.

She was not moved as he thought she would have been moved. The set of his shoulders lessened. He took his scabbarded swords from out of his belt and sat down upon the two wooden steps that led
down into the room where she worked, wanting to sit closer to her, wanting to provoke something from her.

‘Will you sing for me?’ he tried.

Ameku laughed. ‘You, who cry “too much noise in Kyoto, too much noise!” want a song?’

‘It’s just tonight. The silence here now is . . .’ He could not find the words to explain.

‘I do not want to sing tonight,’ she said. ‘So, no song. A song that you are made to sing, it is no true song.’

He accepted this. Ameku pinched a reed into a noose, hooked it upon the loom, and her fingers were calloused and worn and yet he saw them as lithe and delicate.

This mood had hung over him since he had spoken to Tadanari at the cockfight. He felt achievement, and no achievement at all. He felt as though someone had stolen words from his throat and left
him mouthing like a carp in silence. The method he had envisioned in the drums fated to be witnessed only by his imagination.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘Denshichiro Yoshioka bows to me before the whole city.’

‘What?’ she said, and he explained himself further. She stopped working, and he could see the confusion in her in the tilting of her head. ‘Why, you want this?’

‘Because it needs to be . . .’ he said.

‘Akiyama’s head is safe. It is done. So do not go there. You trust him? You think he will do this, bow in peace?’

‘I have the word of his master.’

‘You do not trust this man,’ she said, all but laughing in scorn. ‘I know you do not. So why do you go?’

‘What else am I to do? This has to be done.’

‘You need to . . . to win?’

He did not answer, and in that silence gave her one.

‘If he bows . . . then what? What do you do?’

‘I suppose I shall take my freedom. Go where it dictates.’

‘Freedom is a stupid word,’ she said. ‘It is a stupid word in Ryukyu tongue too. Men on Ryukyu say they got freedom, those who go out on the sea. Feel the wind. Think he can go
anywhere. What does he do? He comes back to land and the town and the house and the wife and the child, or the sea eats him and the sea is not changed. That, freedom?’

‘That is how you think,’ he said entirely neutrally, speaking simply for the sake of filling the void between them.

Outside a drunk vomited away his misery.

‘Go, don’t go,’ she said. ‘It is the same. This hour tomorrow, you have the same future. The only reason to go – hope of sword. The only reason –
revenge.’

‘It is no revenge, said Musashi. ‘Won’t you listen to me? I have told you that I am not killing. Denshichiro is bowing to me. He is the symbol of all that is wrong in this
world, the pompous fools who demand all kneel before them. Those that take all and offer nothing, the unworthy bloated sons of whores that—’

Ameku cut him off before his fury ignited itself inextinguishable. ‘Musashi, stop your . . . raf raf raf like a dog,’ she said. ‘On and on and on so many words you shout. Every
day. Every day. Shout and shout and make for you a nice little wall, build around your heart. Armour.’

Effortlessly, she cast him down. He sat with his elbows on his thighs, looking up at her. The loom clacked and clacked, a dolorous rhythm. He looked at his swords where they lay before him. He
took a breath.

‘I cannot return home without having attained a thing of worth,’ he said quietly.

‘You think this is such a thing?’

‘It must be,’ he said. ‘It must be. The world is wrong and the Way is obscene, and all this must be fought. Someone must fight it. Someone must humble them. Even if I cannot
express it fully, if I feel it, if I know it to be right – is it not worthy?’

‘Why do
you
need to speak? Why do
you
need to tell? If it is good, it is good. Nothing to be said, nothing you say changes it.’

‘Because
you
think me false.’

He had let more emotion into his voice than he had meant to, and he was embarrassed for this slip, and yet even so she did not answer. Her silence maddened him. He did not know whether he would
have preferred her to agree or disagree, only that she would speak. Acknowledge him. She that created so enviously easy with her voice. She with her voice that seemed to him to breach the heavens,
that brought beads of dew to the embers and made all as smoke. If only she would sing for him now, perhaps he might be able to pull an answer from the mire.