Across the Nightingale Floor (17 page)

Most of the boys accepted me, for
Shigeru's sake, and I realized what a high regard they and their fathers had
for him. But the sons of Masahiro and Shoichi gave me a hard time, especially
Masahiro's oldest son, Yoshitomi. I grew to hate them as much as I hated their
fathers, and I despised them, too, for their arrogance and blindness. We often
fought with the poles. I knew their intentions towards me were murderous. Once
Yoshitomi would have killed me if I had not in an instant used my second self
to distract him. He never forgave me for it and often whispered insults to me:
Sorcerer. Cheat. I was actually less afraid of him killing me than of having to
kill him in self-defense or by accident. No doubt it improved my swordsmanship,
but I was relieved when the time for our departure came and no blood had been
shed.

It was not a good time for
traveling, being in the hottest days of summer, but we had to be in Inuyama
before the Festival of the Dead began. We did not take the direct highway
through Yamagata, but went south to Tsuwano, now the outpost town of the Otori
fief, on the road to the West, where we would meet the bridal party and where
the betrothal would take place. From there we would cross into Tohan territory
and pick up the post road at Yamagata.

Our journey to Tsuwano was
uneventful and enjoyable despite the heat. I was away from Ichiro's teaching
and from the pressures of training. It was like a holiday, riding in Shigeru
and Kenji's company, and for a few days we all seemed to put aside our
misgivings of what lay ahead. The rain held off, though lightning flickered
round the ranges all night, turning the clouds indigo, and the full summer
foliage of the forests surrounded us in a sea of green.

We rode into Tsuwano at midday,
having risen at sunrise for the last leg of the journey. I was sorry to arrive,
knowing it meant the end of the innocent pleasures of our lighthearted travel.
I could not have imagined what was going to take their place. Tsuwano sang of
water, its streets lined with canals teeming with fat golden and red carp. We
were not far from the inn when suddenly, above the water and the sounds of the
bustling town, I clearly heard my own name spoken by a woman. The voice came
from a long, low building with white walls and lattice windows, some kind of
fighting hall. I knew there were two women inside but I could not see them, and
I wondered briefly why they were there, and why one of them should have said my
name.

When we came to the inn I heard the
same woman talking in the courtyard. I realized she was Lady Shirakawa's maid,
and we learned the lady was unwell. Kenji went to her and came back wanting to
describe her beauty at length, but the storm broke, and I was afraid the
thunder would make the horses restive, so I hurried off to the stables without
listening to him. I did not want to hear of her beauty. If I thought about her
at all, it was with dislike, for the part she was to play in the trap set for
Shigeru.

After a while Kenji caught up with
me in the stables, and brought the maid with him. She looked like a pretty,
good-natured, scatterbrained girl, but even before she grinned at me in a less
than respectful way and addressed me as “Cousin!” I'd picked her as a member of
the Tribe.

She held her hands up against mine.
“I am also Kikuta, on my mother's side. But Muto on my father's. Kenji is my
uncle.”

Our hands had the same
long-fingered shape and the same line straight across the palm. “That's the
only trait I inherited,” she said ruefully. “The rest of me is pure Muto.”

Like Kenji, she had the power to
change her appearance so that you were never sure you recognized her. At first
I thought she was very young; in fact she was almost thirty and had two sons.

“Lady Kaede is a little better,”
she told Kenji. “Your tea made her sleep, and now she insists on getting up.”

“You worked her too hard,” Kenji
said, grinning. “What were you thinking of, in this heat?” To me he added,
“Shizuka is teaching Lady Shirakawa the sword. She can teach you too. We'll be
here for days in this rain.”

He turned back to her. “Maybe you
can teach him ruthlessness,” he said. “It's all he lacks.”

“It's hard to teach,” Shizuka
replied. “You either have it, or not.”

“She has it,” Kenji told me. “Stay
on her right side!”

I didn't reply. I was a little
irritated that Kenji should point out my weakness to Shizuka as soon as we met
her. We stood under the eaves of the stable yard, the rain drumming on the
cobbles before us, the horses stamping behind.

“Are these fevers a common thing?”
Kenji asked.

“Not really. This is the first of
its kind. But she is not strong. She hardly eats; she sleeps badly. She frets
over the marriage and over her family. Her mother is dying, and she has not
seen her since she was seven.”

“You have become fond of her,”
Kenji said, smiling.

“Yes, I have, although I only came
to her because Arai asked me to.”

“I've never seen a more beautiful
girl,” Kenji admitted.

“Uncle! You are really smitten by her!”

“I must be getting old,” he said.
“I find myself moved by her plight. However things work out, she will be the
loser.”

A huge clap of thunder broke over
our heads. The horses bucked and plunged on their lines. I ran to quiet them.
Shizuka returned to the inn and Kenji went in search of the bathhouse. I did
not see them again until evening.

Later, bathed and dressed in formal
robes, I attended on Lord Shigeru for the first meeting with his future wife.
We had brought gifts, and I unpacked them from the boxes, together with the
lacquerware that we carried with us. A betrothal should be a happy occasion, I
suppose, although I had never been to one before. Maybe for the bride it is
always a time of apprehension. This one seemed to me to be fraught with tension
and full of bad omens.

Lady Maruyama greeted us as if we
were no more than slight acquaintances, but her eyes hardly left Shigeru's
face. I thought she had aged since I'd met her in Chigawa. She was no less
beautiful, but suffering had etched her face with its fine lines. Both she and
Shigeru seemed cold, to each other and to everyone else, especially to Lady
Shirakawa.

Her beauty silenced us. Despite
Kenji's enthusiasm earlier, I was quite unprepared for it. I thought then that
I understood Lady Maruyama's suffering: At least part of it had to be jealousy.
How could any man refuse the possession of such beauty? No one could blame
Shigeru if he accepted it: He would be fulfilling his duty to his uncles and
the demands of the alliance. But the marriage would deprive Lady Maruyama of
not only the man she had loved for years but also her strongest ally.

The undercurrents in the room made
me uncomfortable and awkward. I saw the pain Lady Maruyama's coldness caused
Kaede, saw the flush rise in her cheeks making her skin lovelier than ever. I
could hear her heartbeat and her rapid breath. She did not look at any of us,
but kept her eyes cast down. I thought, She is so young, and terrified. Then
she raised her eyes and looked at me for a moment. I felt she was like a person
drowning in the river, and if I reached out my hand I would save her.

———«»———«»———«»———

“So, Shigeru, you have to choose
between the most powerful woman in the Three Countries and the most beautiful,”
Kenji said later while we were sitting up talking, and after many flasks of
wine had been shared. Since the rain seemed likely to keep us in Tsuwano for
some days, there was no need to go to bed early in order to rise before dawn.
“I should have been born a lord.”

“You have a wife, if only you stayed
with her,” Shigeru replied.

“My wife is a good cook, but she
has a wicked tongue, she's fat, and she hates traveling,” Kenji grumbled. I
said nothing, but laughed to myself, already knowing how Kenji profited from
his wife's absence: in the pleasure quarter.

Kenji continued to joke, with, I
thought, some deeper purpose of sounding Shigeru out, but the lord replied to
him in the same vein, as if he truly were celebrating his betrothal. I went to
sleep, fuddled by the wine, to the sound of rain pelting on the roof, cascading
down the gutters and over the cobbles. The canals ran to the brim; in the
distance I could hear the song of the river grow to a shout as it tumbled down
the mountain.

I woke in the middle of the night
and was immediately aware that Shigeru was no longer in the room. When I
listened I could hear his voice, talking to Lady Maruyama, so low that no one
could hear it but me. I had heard them speak like that nearly a year before, in
another inn room. I was both appalled at the risk they were taking and amazed
at the strength of the love that sustained them through such infrequent
meetings.

He will never marry Shirakawa Kaede
, I thought, but did not know if this realization delighted me or alarmed me.

I was filled with unease and lay
awake till dawn. It was a gray, wet dawn, too, with no sign of any break in the
weather. A typhoon, earlier than usual, had swept across the western part of
the country, bringing downpours, floods, broken bridges, impassable roads.
Everything was damp and smelled of mold. Two of the horses had hot, swollen
hocks, and a groom had been kicked in the chest. I ordered poultices for the
horses and arranged for an apothecary to see the man. I was eating a late
breakfast when Kenji came to remind me about sword practice. It was the last
thing I felt like doing.

“What else do you plan to do all
day,” he demanded, “sit around and drink tea? Shizuka can teach you a lot. We
might as well make the most of being stuck here.”

So I obediently finished eating and
followed my teacher, running through the rain to the fighting school. I could
hear the thump and clash of the sticks from outside. Inside, two young men were
fighting. After a moment I realized one was not a boy but Shizuka: She was more
skillful than her opponent, but the other, taller and with greater
determination, was making it quite a good match. At our appearance, though,
Shizuka easily got beneath the guard. It wasn't until the other took off the
mask that I realized it was Kaede.

“Oh,” she said angrily, wiping her
face on her sleeve, “they distracted me.”

“Nothing must distract you, lady,”
Shizuka said. “It's your main weakness. You lack concentration. There must be
nothing but you, your foe, and the swords.”

She turned to greet us. “Good
morning, Uncle! Good morning, Cousin!”

We returned the greeting and bowed
more respectfully to Kaede. Then there was a short silence. I was feeling
awkward: I had never seen women in a fighting hall before—never seen them
dressed in practice clothes. Their presence unnerved me. I thought there was
probably something unseemly about it. I should not be here with Shigeru's
betrothed wife.

“We should come back another time,”
I said, “when you have finished.”

“No, I want you to fight with
Shizuka,” Kenji said. “Lady Shirakawa can hardly return to the inn alone. It
will profit her to watch.”

“It would be good for the lady to
practice against a man,” Shizuka said, “since if it comes to battle, she will
not be able to choose her opponents.”

I glanced at Kaede and saw her eyes
widen slightly, but she said nothing.

“Well, she should be able to beat
Takeo,” Kenji said sourly. I thought he must have a headache from the wine, and
indeed, I myself felt a little the worse for wear.

Kaede sat on the floor,
cross-legged like a man. She untied the ties that held back her hair and it
fell around her, reaching the ground. I tried not to look at her.

Shizuka gave me a pole and took up
her first stance.

We sparred a bit, neither of us
giving anything away. I'd never fought with a woman before, and I was reluctant
to go all-out in case I hurt her. Then, to my surprise, when I feinted one way
she was already there, and a twisting upwards blow sent the pole out of my
hands. If I'd been fighting Masahiro's son, I'd have been dead.

“Cousin,” she said reprovingly. “Don't
insult me, please.”

I tried harder after that, but she
was skillful and amazingly strong. It was only after the second bout that I
began to get the upper hand, and then only after her instruction. She conceded
the fourth bout, saying, “I have already fought all morning with Lady Kaede.
You are fresh, Cousin, as well as being half my age.”

“A little more than half, I think!”
I panted. Sweat was pouring off me. I took a towel from Kenji and wiped myself
down.

Kaede said, “Why do you call Lord
Takeo 'Cousin'?”

“Believe it or not, we are related,
on my mother's side,” Shizuka said. “Lord Takeo was not born an Otori, but
adopted.”

Kaede looked seriously at the three
of us. “There is a likeness between you. It's hard to place exactly. But there
is something mysterious, as though none of you is what you seem to be.”

“The world being what it is, that
is wisdom, lady,” Kenji said, rather piously, I thought. I imagined he did not
want Kaede to know the true nature of our relationship: that we were all from
the Tribe. I did not want her to know either. I much preferred her to think of
me as one of the Otori.

Shizuka took up the cords and tied
back Kaede's hair. “Now you should try against Takeo.”

“No,” I said immediately. “I should
go now. I have to see to the horses. I must see if Lord Otori needs me.”

Kaede stood. I was aware of her
trembling slightly, and acutely aware of her scent, a flowery fragrance with
her sweat beneath it.

“Just one bout,” Kenji said. “It
can't do any harm.”

Shizuka went to put on Kaede's
mask, but she waved her away.

“If I am to fight men, I must fight
without a mask,” she said.

I took up the pole reluctantly. The
rain was pouring down even more heavily. The room was dim, the light greenish.
We seemed to be in a world within a world, isolated from the real one,
bewitched.