Whistling Past the Graveyard (42 page)

“Ah,” said Ito, and he took a roll of silk from an inner pocket of his coat and spread it out on the floor. The silk was decorated with the faces of several people, all painted in the ultra-realistic Chinese style. “My wife, my three sons, my two daughters.” The old man’s voice faltered as he caressed the silk portraits.

Ōtoro allowed a moment before he said, “Which of them do you want killed?”

Ito turned back to face him and his eyes looked a thousand years old. “All of them,” he said.

They had shared two bottles of saké and a dish of rice cakes and the sun had set quietly behind a wall of clouds. The servant girl had lit the lanterns, and now brown moths buzzed in the cooling air.

Ito spread a map out on the floor. It showed a small island two hundred miles due south of the port city of Osaka, out in the emptiness of the Philippine Sea. The daimyo tapped the spot with his forefinger. “Keito Island.”

“I’ve not heard of it.”

“It has no military value except that clans like mine send their families there during times of crisis. There are fifty estates there, and their presence has always necessarily been kept secret.”

“This is where your family is now?”

Ito hesitated before nodding agreement. “My wife retired there to be with our eldest daughter during the birth of her first child. A boy…I’ve not yet seen. Six weeks ago one of my sea captains came to me to report that the regular supply ship to Keito had not returned on schedule and had instead been found adrift, almost washed ashore on Shikoku. My captain sent five of his crew aboard and as he watched with a telescope he saw the crew of the supply ship come boiling out of the hold like maggots the moment his men were aboard. They overwhelmed the five men and...”

“The Spanich Disease was aboard the supply ship?”

Ito mopped his face with a cloth. “Forty men, all of them as gray as ghosts, moaning like demons. The five crewmen were torn apart on the main-deck. Torn to pieces and…consumed.”

As hard as he tried to keep a shudder of revulsion from shaking his whole body, Ōtoro felt it pass through him. His forearms pebbled with gooseflesh.

“I had heard accounts of this disease,” continued Ito. “Of how the infected wasted away with a sickness no doctor could cure and then against all logic came back to a kind of half-life in which they do nothing but prey on living men and devour their flesh. It is easy to see why so many people believe that these are jikininki—the returning spirits of gluttons and impious men whose unnatural appetites brought them back to life to feast upon the living.”

Ito paused again. It was clear that he was having to pull each word from his own mouth.

“Listen to me, Ōtoro-san,” he said, “I am Buddhist, but I am also an agnostic. I began losing faith in ghosts and demons long ago, and even this current disaster did not at first ignite sparks of belief in me. Like most of the other samurai I believed that the plague was probably just that: a disease whose symptoms caused strange and violent behavior. I’ve seen victims of rabies and of other disorders. That was sickness, not possession. But then I heard the story of the Spanish ship
Infanta Christa
which had sailed into the island port of Shinjujima bringing a cargo of tapestries from Turkey and spices from the Arab states for some domestic merchant whose name was still unknown. The ship flew the yellow plague flag and was put under quarantine out in the roads, well away from the docks...but witnesses claimed to have seen people jumping off the ship—ostensibly men driven to suicide by fear of the wasting disease—but who were later seen walking out of the surf to attack fishermen. Naturally, when I’d first heard the story I doubted any of it was true because the news criers always exaggerate; but then I started hearing accounts from colleagues—men I trust. Scores of local ronin were suddenly booking passage to Shinjujima to take jobs with town security or to bolster the household protection for the merchants. Within a month the going rate for a week’s employment had quadrupled. Then the stories began circulating that some of these ronin were deserting their new jobs because the enemy was not what they expected. These were neither diseased people who merely had to be contained, nor were they Europeans deliberately spreading a disease. These were the corpses of the people who had died of the Spanich Disease. Do you understand me, Ōtoro-san? The corpses.”

Ōtoro pursed his lips for a moment. “I’ve heard some of those same stories, but not from the lips of trustworthy witnesses. Always second or third-hand.”

Ito nodded. “That was the case with me for many weeks, but then I heard that large numbers of people were booking passage to Keito. Nearly every one of the important families who maintained estates there were sending their women and children to the island for protection.”

“I have not heard that.”

“It was kept very quiet,” explained Ito. “Information was shared only by those of us who owned land there. We did not want to inspire an invasion of the island by everyone who wanted to escape the disease.”

Ōtoro nodded. “Go on.”

“I sent most of my household there, keeping only my brother’s son and a strong detachment of samurai to guard my estates and warehouses. My grand-daughter had just given birth to my first grandson. After nine grand-daughters I finally had a grandson. I thought that my family would be safe there, but after weeks and weeks I had no word from Keito. Then rumors began circulating among my fellow land-owners. Rumors that the Spanish plague was already on the island. Can you imagine my horror, Ōtoro? I had done everything I could to protect my family and my clan, to insure that the family name would continue.” He reached out and placed a trembled hand on Kangyu’s arm. “My nephew may now be the last person to bear our clan name, and that is a terrible responsibility for one so young.”

“Uncle, I…” began Kangyu, but Ito shook his head.

Ōtoro said, “What did you do when you heard the rumors?”

“Last week I sent my fastest war galley with twenty of my most seasoned and trusted samurai to scout the island. Their orders were to protect my family and evacuate them if necessary. Three days ago that galley returned to my dock with only a skeleton crew aboard. The captain of my galley said that when he tied up to the wharf behind my estate and the samurai debarked, a large group of people came rushing out of the compound. They fell upon the samurai. Of twenty seasoned fighters, only two made it back to the ship, and both of them were badly mauled. The captain cast off and narrowly escaped having his ship overrun. The wounded samurai succumbed to the sickness and died, but within minutes they came alive again. If ‘alive’ is a word that has any meaning. They opened their eyes, they rose from where they had fallen, and they attacked the crew. Many men died in the fighting that ensued. The captain ordered all of the dead to be thrown overboard, and by then he had seen the correlation between a bite and the inevitable transformation into one of the hungry dead. He ordered his remaining, uninfected crewmen to kill anyone who had so much as a scratch, and all of the bodies were cast into the sea. With only a few sailors remaining, the galley limped home. I sent them all to their deaths, just as I had sent my own family to…to…”

“Uncle, please…be easy with yourself,” said Kangyu with more gentleness than Ōtoro would have expected. “You did the right thing. How could you have known what would happen?”

Ōtoro decided he liked the boy after all. He was trying very hard to be a man in a family whose men had all died…or were dying. Bravado, in the face of such circumstances, could be forgiven.

Ito nodded and took a deep, steadying breath. “Several of my friends sent boats to the island,” he continued. “But not one has returned. The island must be completely overrun. It has become a place of death.”

“I am sorry for your loss, Ito-sama,” said Ōtoro, bowing.

“There is more,” said the daimyo. “There is one thing that anchors my hope to my sanity and it is why I have come here today and disturbed your retirement.”

“Tell me.”

“After my ship had cast off the captain took the fastest route home, which meant that he passed behind the east end of the island. My estate is there, perched high on a sheer cliff. I chose the spot because there is no beach and it is inaccessible from sea and therefore safe from raiders or pirates. By twilight’s last light, the captain saw a figure running along the cliff. A woman.” Ito took a breath. “My daughter-in-law, Haru, wife of my second son. She was clearly in flight and was likely making her way to the caves below the edge of the cliff. We keep some stores there in case of an emergency. Haru was carrying a bundle with her, clutching desperately to her bosom.”

“Your grandson?” asked Ōtoro.

“I do not know. It could have been my grandson or it could have been another child. Or a pet, or a bundle of food. There is no way for me to know. And, perhaps it doesn’t matter. That was last week and by now my entire family is dead. My grandson…will have been consumed.”

Seconds fell slowly around them, drifting down through the silence likely the blossoms outside, but lacking all beauty.

“I may be a samurai and a killer, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito heavily, “but those are masks I wear. When I take off my swords and my kimono I am only a man. A husband, a father, a grandfather. I am my clan, Ōtoro-san. I love them above all else.”

The tears brimming in the old man’s eyes broke and fell, cutting silver lines through his seamed and weathered cheeks. Even then he sat straight and proud, a man of great character and dignity.

Ōtoro said, “Why do you come to me? You could hire an army to assail the island.”

A ghost of a smile flickered across Ito’s tear-streaked face. “As I said, you are a hero. Even if you do not agree with that assessment.”

Ōtoro said, “I am one man, Ito-sama. If a warship and twenty samurai could not penetrate the island to rescue your family, what do you expect me to accomplish? Even setting aside for the moment that I am dying—as you are dying—and cancer in my bones does not grant me any immunity to a plague.”

“I sent men in force, without secrecy,” said Ito. “It is my belief—supported by the scant reports of the surviving crew—that the plague victims were alerted by the presence of the ship and the sounds of soldiers debarking and marching through the forests. Drawn by such things the infected attacked in force and my men were devoured.” The old man shook his head. “One man, however, could come ashore quietly, avoid being noticed and therefore avoid being infected.”

The girl brought warm saké and Ito drank a full cup.

“There are younger and healthier men who would take this mission…”

“I’ll do it!” cried Kangyu, but Ito shook his head again.

“No, nephew. This is not a mission for the young. This is not a job for anyone with a pocketful of unspent years.”

Ōtoro said nothing, though he agreed with the sentiment.

“What would you think this one man could accomplish? Are you looking for a spy—?”

“No,” said Ito. “I am looking for death.”

“Death?”

“Death’s grace. A sword stroke is a great mercy,” said Ito. “It is a clean death, and if delivered by a samurai of sterling reputation, a true samurai, then honor would be restored. Death would take the infected in truth, and that death would be beautiful because it would be correct. It would be just.”

Ōtoro drank his saké.

Ito said, “There is another thing, my friend. I know your politics, and I believe I understand your idealism. I know that you have gone into battle so many times in defense of the innocent. Even of innocent peasants in towns that would have been overrun by gangs of bandits. I am samurai enough to know why.”

Ōtoro said nothing.

“You believe power without purpose is vain, ugly, unworthy.”

“It is without honor,” said Ōtoro.

“Yes, without honor,” agreed Ito. “My family has been so dishonored by this foreign disease that the grave will not even accept them. No one should have to live with shame they did not earn.”

“Ah,” said Ōtoro softly. “You want me to act as their
kaishakunin,
to provide the death cut that they are unable to take themselves.”

Ito nodded. “Not only will you restore the honor of my samurai sons, but you will be rescuing the helpless from the bondage of this dreadful curse. Including my newborn grandson. All will be freed. No matter which way your sword cuts, it will do heaven’s work.”

“But uncle,” said Kangyu, “no one could escape that island. It must be completely overrun by now. You are sending him to his death.”

“Yes,” said Ito. “To certain death. To a quicker death than that which an unjust fate offers him.”

Ōtoro smiled. “And, as you say, Ito-sama, there are far worse deaths.”

“Now I will tell you one more thing, Ōtoro-san,” added Ito. “Time is very short. I have it on reliable authority that the Emperor is going to have Keito burned next week. They are rounding up infected and even suspected infected and they’ll transport them to the island. Within six days there will be many thousands of them there. You would never be able to find my family. And, when all of the infected are there, the fleet will use cannon and mortars to shell the estates, and fire bombs to reduce everything to ash.”

“Would that not end the misery of your family?” asked Ōtoro.

“Tell me, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito, “could you sit here, safe and comfortable, while rough and rude soldiers burned your suffering family?”

The smile on Ōtoro’s lips became thinner, colder. It was enough of an answer.

“Besides,” said Ito, “I don’t know if fire will do what needs to be done. I know—I have
seen
—that a neck cut will do it. Remove the head and the infected are released into ordinary death. Nothing else seems to work.”

“Why?” asked Ōtoro.

“No one knows. This disease does not kill as we understand it,” said Ito. “Death will not take them and they will have no rest. They are corpses roaming the earth like damned things. When I close my eyes I think of my wife staggering around, dead and rotting, trailing the rags of her fine silks, hungry for fresh meat. And then I think of my grandson. How small a meal he would make…”