The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (17 page)

Cat looked quickly over at Musui, who continued to smile as though he hadn’t heard the question. “I am feeling well, Your Reverence,” Cat said.

“ ‘In travel, a companion. In life, sympathy.’ “ The abbot intoned the old proverb as though he had just invented it.

He said everything as if it were valuable information his listeners should note and remember. He was big enough to be one of the fierce warrior-priests who had defended the huge temple complex on Mount Hiei in the old days. But muscle had given way to fat.

He waited while they sat on the raised floor of the reception area and removed their footwear. Then he led them through cool cherry wood corridors to his inner room and to the tea and smoking accessories laid out on the
tatami.
The door to the inner courtyard was open, and a tiny waterfall splashed in the garden there. Three fat ducks snoozed at the edge of the carp pond. The sound of distant chanting of the Lotus
sutra
soothed Cat. She felt as though she were being ushered into Paradise.

MAKE EMPTINESS YOUR PATH

“Musui, my old and tender friend, you said your companion had become ill, but you didn’t tell us he was so handsome.” For all his pompousness, the abbot was a bluff, good-natured fellow. He appraised Cat by the soft light of the floor lanterns. “Paint black eyebrows on him and blacken his teeth and he could be Lord Yoshitsune’s lover Shizuka in her disguise as a pageboy.”

Ready to refill and relight her new master’s tiny pipe every few puffs, Cat was kneeling on the
tatami
behind him. She bowed low, acknowledging her unworthiness of the abbot’s compliment. She was also trying to hide the fact that she could be a woman in disguise more easily than the abbot imagined.

At least she felt scrubbed and fed and civilized for the first time in days. The clothes she wore had been handed down through generations of boys serving at the temple. The cotton cloth was softened by long wear, the collar of the loose coat frayed. But the clothes were clean, and they harbored no fleas or lice.

Over her loincloth Cat wore full gray breeches tied and bloused at her knees. Over that she had put on the quilted, black-and-yellow-striped cotton robe. She had pulled the wide black
hakama
over both and tied it low on her hips. The breeches and the robe showed through the long slits down the
hakama’s
sides. Its stiffened rear panel stood up jauntily against the small of her back. She wore white
tabi.
Her hair was dressed in the tea whisk style but tied now with a scarlet paper cord.

“He’s handsome enough to be a
gohodoshi,
a messenger of the gods and retriever of lost souls.” The man who spoke had large overlapping front teeth that looked like the yellowed ivory vanes of a fan. He was one of five monks of higher rank who had come to spend an evening with the famous poet. The sullen acolyte attending him glared at Cat. He didn’t like the presence of a good-looking rival in the abbey.

“If I were to stray into the spirit world,” the monk leaned over and whispered at Cat, “I would want you to escort me home,
Gohodoshi-san.”

Cat ignored him and the acolyte’s jealous glower and the abbot’s look of disapproval. She stared instead at the bit of paper glued by a spot of blood to the back of Musui’s pale, smooth skull. Cat had been charged with shaving her master’s head. She’d never shaved a head before or anything else, for that matter, and her hand had slipped. Now she was afraid that someone would notice the bloody scrap and embarrass Musui, but she dared not call attention to it by picking it off.

A wrestler named Arashi, Mountain Wind, filled one corner of the twenty-four-
tatami
-mat room. The broad shaven strip from his forehead to his crown bulged between the oiled banks of his hair. His clubbed topknot rested on his bare pate like a lizard sunning. He wore a quilted cotton robe big enough to cover a double mattress. He sat cross-legged with his feet tucked under his massive, lumpy thighs like small, well-fed creatures sheltering there. He leaned on an ironwood elbow stand that creaked under the pressure.

He was still fuming about his dousing in the river that afternoon when the larcenous river porters had tried to extort more money from him. And he was irritated that the poet was sitting in the place of honor and receiving all the attention. The poet wasn’t going to wrestle the local strongmen in a charity performance for the temple the next day. Mountain Wind was.

One of the monks had just asked Musui why
haiku
poems were composed of seventeen syllables when the door slid open and an initiate spoke from a kneeling position on the corridor floor.

“Your Reverence, a gentleman wishes an audience with you.” The youth moved out of the way.

Hanshiro knelt in the doorway and bowed. He entered without rising, gliding along by putting his left foot out, drawing himself forward on it, lowering that knee to the floor, extending the right foot, and repeating the process. When he reached the humblest location in the room, nearest the door, he slapped his
hakama
hems out of the way, knelt again, knees slightly apart, hands on his thighs, and settled back on his heels.

“Tosa no Hanshiro.” He bowed as he introduced himself. “ Your Reverence, forgive the discourteous intrusion while you ‘re entertaining such an honored guest.”

Hanshiro absentmindedly reached inside the neck of his ancient jacket to scratch a
moxa
scar on his shoulder. Those sitting nearest him assumed he had fleas and edged away. He had bathed in the river and had relied his topknot, but he still seemed a scruffy thistle among the pruned and cultivated monks, all of whom came from noble families.

Cat stiffened. She might not know the price of a rice cake or a ferry ride, but she recognized danger, even if it had left its long-sword politely at the door.

“You’re quite welcome here,” the abbot said. “We amateurs were only chatting about poetry. But we are indeed honored to have among us
Musui-sensei,
a disciple of the master, Basho himself.”

“Maybe you can answer our question.” Musui smiled innocently at Hanshiro. “Why does a
haiku
poem usually consist of seventeen syllables?”

It was a test, of course, but Musui had no intention of embarrassing Hanshiro. He was sure the newcomer knew the answer. He was arranging for Hanshiro to earn a respected place in the gathering, although he also was sure Hanshiro of Tosa didn’t care if he were respected or not.

“My knowledge of the arts is trifling.” Hanshiro looked at Musui, but he surveyed the room from the corners of his eyes.

Cat felt the cold, hard edge of his gaze brush her. She shivered inside her big jacket and
hakama.
That the clothes were borrowed must be obvious. Cat could almost hear them crying out, “Imposter!”

“I would say that
Basho-sensei
composed poems of seventeen syllables because they can be read in one breath.” Hanshiro bowed gravely in thanks when an acolyte set down a tray of smoking utensils. “The poet’s thought can be grasped in an instant. The expression of his enlightenment approaches the point of no-time. Of no-mind. Of no-being.”

Musui beamed. He had been right about the unkempt stranger.

“What of poets like Ihara, who create dozens of poems a day?” The monk who spoke was sitting next to the wrestler.

His voice startled Mountain Wind, who had settled his chins onto the overstuffed cushion of his chest for a snooze. Mountain Wind dutifully sat up straighter, ready to regale them all with a listing of the forty-eight falls. When he realized they were still discussing poetry, he went back to sleep.

“Sensei
said that he who creates five
haiku
during a lifetime is a poet,” Musui said. “He who completes ten is a master.”

“And which of the master’s poems is your favorite, Hanshiro?” the abbot asked.

Hanshiro cleared his throat and stared straight ahead. He looked beyond the gathered monks and beyond the abbey walls to Tosa, the wild, remote land of his birth. He stood at the end of the world, on the high black promontory of Cape Muroto. He heard the roar of the surf, felt the cold salt wind on his face.

A winter moon’s light

Silver-crested waves rising

To knock at my gate

His reciting voice was deep and resonant and sent a chill through Cat. Everyone sat silent, appreciating Basho’s genius. The waterfall in the garden seemed loud in the stillness of the room.

The poem was well chosen. It was in keeping with the coming of cold weather and expressive of longings for a distant homeland. Cat was grudgingly impressed.

“And what brings you so far from the coast, where waves knock at your gate?” The abbot had finally gotten to the business of Hanshiro’s visit.

“I’m looking for a fugitive who wounded four men,” Hanshiro said. “That one may be dressed as a wandering priest. That one was seen headed this way.” The language’s pronouns didn’t distinguish male from female, so Hanshiro didn’t have to reveal that the fugitive was a woman.

Cat feared she would faint. All that stood between her and destruction at the hands of this coarse ruffian was the affable shield of her master’s smile.

“
A-so.
The unfortunate affair at the ferry.” The abbot already had dispatched underlings to find out as much as possible about the fight, just as Hanshiro knew he would.

Hanshiro also knew the abbot was appointed by the emperor, one of the few official functions left to him. He had little loyalty and less love for the
shMgun’s
upstart government in Edo. Locally the abbot had power and information, without the legal obligation to ask Hanshiro the kinds of questions the authorities would have asked. That was why Hanshiro had come here.

“We have not seen him. Have any of his opponents died?” The abbot’s question wasn’t an idle one.

To save themselves the bother of dealing with nosy officials, the local folk were in the habit of depositing the corpses of unidentified travelers on the temple steps. Since the unauthorized burial of persons who had died under unusual circumstances was a punishable offense, the abbot was stuck with each decaying body until the matter could be straightened out. A proportion of the
sake
donated to the temple by wealthy patrons went toward preserving the malodorous evidence in such cases.

“No, they didn’t die.”
Although they probably wish they had died,
Hanshiro thought.

At least the shame of being beaten by one small woman would keep Kira’s men from making much of a fuss about it. They were like men who stepped in dog dung in the dark. They would be quiet about the entire affair.

The abbot ran a hand over his satiny skull. This brawl at the ferry would surely bring him problems.

“A thick-livered fellow, that priest,” said Musui. “Four to one, you say.”

“His opponents were small-livered, cowardly, and unskilled.”

Unskilled! With her head still bowed Cat sent a smoldering sideways glance Hanshiro’s way. She looked down quickly when her eyes met his. Unskilled!

She was outraged. Didn’t the filthy hired killer have a high nose. Didn’t he have a good opinion of himself, though. Unskilled, indeed.

“Might this be connected with the AkM-Asano affair?” In the dim light Musui didn’t seem to notice Cat’s hands shake as she poured his tea. “I’ve heard many stories about it lately.”

“They say a lone warrior is gathering an army to avenge the death of Lord Asano,” said the man sitting next to Mountain Wind.

“The fugitive is only a wandering lunatic,” said Hanshiro. “But there are those in Edo who want this nonsense cropped while it’s a tender shoot, before it grows into something requiring an ax.”

“And you are certainly the shears to prune it,” murmured Musui.

“In the village, the well-side talk is that Lord Asano had a daughter who has fled the capital. She’s now in hiding, and this warrior-priest is her champion,” said the abbot.

“I was there,” Mountain Wind said.

They all turned to stare at him.

“I was in the House of the Perfumed Lotus the night the wench disappeared, the one they say might be Asano’s child.”

Cat was sure they could hear her heart, loud as storm surf in her head. Except for Musui’s bamboo flute, there was nothing close at hand to serve as a weapon. If only she had her scissors with her. She could at least have driven them into her heart before the hired killer took her. She vowed that if she lived through this night, she would keep the scissors honed and would always carry them with her.

Make emptiness your path.
The words from Musashi’s
Book of Emptiness
calmed her.
Make emptiness your path and your path is emptiness.