Brilliance of the Moon (8 page)

“Well, a lot seems to have changed in your life,” he replied. “I
believe I am in your debt; news on the wind is that you killed Jin-emon and his
bandits.”

“It is true that Jin-emon and all his men are dead,” I said. “We
have brought back the warriors’ heads for proper burial. I wish I had come
earlier to spare you your grief.”

He nodded, his lips compressed into a line so thm that it looked
black, but he did not speak of his sons. “You must be my guests,” he said,
trying to infuse some energy into his tired voice. “You are very welcome. The
clan hall is open to your men: It’s been damaged, but the roof still stands.
The rest may camp outside the town. We will provide such food as we can. Please
bring your wife to my house; my women will look after her. You and your guard
will of course also stay with me.” He paused and then said bitterly, abandoning
the formal words of courtesy, “I am aware that I am only offering you what you
would otherwise take. Lord Arai’s orders have always been to detain you. But I
could not protect this district against a gang of bandits. What hope would I
have against an army the size of yours?”

“I am grateful to you.” I decided to ignore his tone, attributing
it to grief. But I wondered at the scarcity of troops and supplies, the obvious
weakness of the town, the impudence of the bandits. Arai must barely hold this
country; the task of subduing the remnants of the Tohan must be taking up all
his resources.

Niwa provided us with sacks of millet and rice, dried fish, and
soybean paste, and these were distributed to the men along with the farmers’
offerings. In their gratitude the townspeople welcomed the army and gave what
food and shelter they could. Tents were erected, fires lit, horses fed and
watered. I rode around the lines with Makoto, Amano, and Jiro, half-appalled at
my own lack of knowledge and experience, half-amazed that in spite of it my men
were settled down for the first night of our march. I spoke to the guards Kahei
had set and then to Jo-An and the outcasts who had camped near them. An uneasy
alliance seemed to have grown up between them.

I was inclined to watch all night too—I would hear an approaching
army long before anyone else—but Makoto persuaded me to go back and rest for at
least part of the night. Jiro led Shun and the chestnut away to Niwa’s stables,
and we went to the living quarters.

Kaede had already been escorted there and had been given a room
with Niwa’s wife and the other women of the household. I was longing to be
alone with her, but I realized there would be little chance of it. She would be
expected to sleep in the women’s room, and I would be with Makoto and Kahei,
several guards, and probably next door to Niwa and his guards too.

An old woman, who told us she had been Niwa’s wife’s wet nurse,
led us to the guest room. It was spacious and well proportioned, but the mats
were old and stained and the walls spotted with mildew. The screens were still
open: On the evening breeze came the scent of blossom and freshly wet earth,
but the garden was wild and untended.

“A bath is ready, lord,” she said to me, and led me to the wooden
bathhouse at the farther end of the veranda. I asked Makoto to keep guard and
told the old woman to leave me alone. No one could have looked more harmless,
but I was not taking any risks. I had absconded from the Tribe; I was under
their sentence of death; I knew only too well how their assassins could appear
under any guise.

She apologized that the water would not be very hot, and grumbled
about the lack of firewood and food. It was in fact barely lukewarm, but the
night was not cold, and just to scrub the mud and blood off my body was
pleasure enough. I eased myself into the tub, checking out the day’s damage. I
was not wounded, but I had bruises I had not noticed getting. My upper arms
were marked by Jin-emons steel hands—I remembered that all right—but there was
a huge bruise on my thigh already turning black; I had no idea what had caused
it. The wrist that Akio had bent backward so long ago at Inuyama and that I’d
thought had healed was aching again, probably from the contact with Jin-emon’s
stone bones. I thought I would strap a leather band around it the following
day. I let myself drift for a few moments and was on the point of falling
asleep when I heard a woman’s tread outside; the door slid open and Kaede
stepped in.

I knew it was Kaede, by her walk, by her scent. She said, “I’ve
brought lamps. The old woman said you must have sent her away because she was
too ugly. She persuaded me to come instead.”

The light in the bathhouse changed as she set the lamps on the
floor. Then her hands were at the back of my neck, massaging away the
stiffness.

“I apologized for your rudeness, but she said that where she grew
up, the wife always looked after the husband in the bath, and that I should do
the same for you.”

“An excellent old custom,” I said, trying not to groan aloud. Her
hands moved to my shoulders. The overwhelming desire I’d felt for her came
flooding back through me. Her hands left me for a moment and I heard the sigh
of silk as she untied her sash and let it fall to the ground. She leaned
forward to run her fingers across my temples and I felt her breasts brush the
back of my neck.

I leaped from the bath and took her in my arms. She was as
aroused as I was. I did not want to lay her down on the floor of the bathhouse.
I lifted her and she wrapped her legs around me. As I moved into her I felt the
rippling beginnings of her climax. Our bodies merged into one being, imitating
our hearts. Afterward we did lie down, though the floor was wet and rough,
clinging to each other for a long time.

When I spoke it was to apologize. I was ashamed again of the
strength of my desire. She was my wife; I’d treated her like a prostitute.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I wanted it so badly,” Kaede said in a low voice. “I was afraid
we would not be together tonight. I should ask your forgiveness. I seem to be
shameless.“

I pulled her close to me, burying my face in her hair. What I
felt for her was like an enchantment. I was afraid of its power, but I could
not resist it and it delighted me more than anything else in life.

“It’s like a spell,” Kaede said, as though she read my mind.
“It’s so strong I can’t fight it. Is love always like this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never loved anyone but you.”

“I am the same.”
When she stood her robe was soaked. She scooped water from the bath and washed
herself. “Manami will have to find me a dry robe from somewhere.” She sighed.
“Now I suppose I have to go back to the women. I must try to talk to poor Lady
Niwa, who is eaten up by grief. What will you talk about with her husband?”

“I’ll find out what I can about Arai’s movements and how many men
and domains he controls.”

“It’s pitiful here,” Kaede said. “Anyone could take over this
place.”

“Do you think we
should?” The thought had already occurred to me when I’d heard Niwa’s words at
the gate. I also scooped water from the tub, washed myself, and dressed.

“Can we afford to leave a garrison here?”

“Not really. I think part of Arai’s problem may be that he took
too much land too fast. He has spread himself very thin.”

“I agree,” Kaede said, pulling her robe round her body and tying
the sash. “We must consolidate our position at Maruyama and build up our
supplies. If the land there is as neglected as it is here, and was at my home,
we’ll have trouble feeding our men once we get there. We need to be farmers
before we can be warriors.“

I gazed at her. Her hair was damp, her face soft from lovemaking.
I had never seen a being as beautiful as she was, but beneath all that she had
a mind like a sword. I found the combination and the fact that she was my wife
unbearably erotic.

She slid the door open and stepped into her sandals. She dropped
to her knees. “Good night, LordTakeo,” she said in a sweet, coy voice, quite
unlike her own, rose lithely, and walked away, her hips swaying beneath the
thin, wet robe.

Makoto sat outside, watching her, a strange look on his face,
maybe disapproving, maybe jealous.

“Take a bath,” I told him, “though the water’s half-cold. Then we
must join Niwa.”

Kahei returned to eat with us. The old woman helped Niwa serve
the food; I thought I caught a smirk on her face as she placed the tray before
me, but I kept my eyes lowered. By now I was so hungry, it was hard not to fall
on the food and cram it in fistfuls into my mouth. There was little enough of
it. Later the women came back with tea and wine and then left us. I envied
them, for they would be sleeping close to Kaede.

The wine loosened Niwa’s tongue, though it did not improve his
mood; rather, it made him more melancholy and tearful. He had accepted the town
from Arai, thinking it would make a home for his sons and grandsons. Now he had
lost the first and would never see the second. His sons had not even, in his
mind, died with honor on the battlefield, but had been murdered shamefully by a
creature who was barely human.

“I don’t understand how you overcame him,” he said, sizing me up with
a look that verged on scornful. “No offense, but both my sons were twice your
size, older, more experienced.” He drank deeply, then went on: “But then, I
could never understand how you killed Iida, either. There was that rumor about
you after you disappeared, of some strange blood in you that gave you special powers.
Is it a sort of sorcery?”

I was aware of Kahei tensing beside me. Like any warrior he took
immediate offense at the suggestion of sorcery. I did not think Niwa was being
deliberately insulting; I thought he was too dulled by grief to know what he
was saying. I made no reply. He continued to study me, but I did not meet his
gaze. I was starting to long for sleep; my eyelids were quivering, my teeth
aching.

“There were a lot of rumors,” Niwa went on. “Your disappearance
was a considerable blow to Arai. He took it very personally. He thought there
was some conspiracy against him. He had a long-term mistress: Muto Shizuka. You
know her?”

“She was a maid to my wife,” I replied, not mentioning that she
was also my cousin. “Lord Arai himself sent her.”

“She turned out to be from the Tribe. Well, he’d known that all
along, but he hadn’t realized what it meant. When you went off, apparently to
join the Tribe—or so everyone was saying—it brought a lot of things to a head.“

He broke off, his gaze becoming more suspicious. “But you
presumably know all this already.”

“I heard that Lord Arai intended to move against the Tribe,” I
said carefully. “But I have not heard of the outcome.”

“Not very successful. Some of his retainers—I was not among
them—advised him to work with the Tribe as Iida did. Their opinion was that the
best way to control them was to pay them. Arai didn’t like that: He couldn’t
afford
it
for a start, and it’s not in his
nature. He wants things to be cut-and-dried and he can’t stand to be made a
fool of. He thought Muto Shizuka, the Tribe, even you, had hoodwinked him in
some way.“

“That was never my intention,” I said. “But I can see how my
actions must have looked to him. I owe him an apology. As soon as we are
settled at Maruyama I will go to him. Is he at Inuyama now?”

“He spent the winter there. He intended to return to Kumamoto and mop up the last remnants of resistance there, move eastward to consolidate
the former Noguchi lands, and then pursue his campaign against the Tribe,
starting in Inuyama.” He poured more wine for us all and gulped a cupful down.
“But it’s like trying to dig up a sweet potato: There’s far more underground
than you think, and no matter how carefully you try to lift it, pieces break
off and begin to put out shoots again. I flushed out some members here; one of
them ran the brewery, the other was a small-scale merchant and moneylender. But
all I got were a couple of old men, figureheads, no more. They took poison
before I could get anything out of them. The rest disappeared.”

He lifted the wine cup and stared morosely at it. “It’s going to
split Arai in two,” he‘ said finally. “He can handle the Tohan; they’re a
simple enemy, straightforward, and the heart mostly went out of them with
Iida’s death. But trying to eradicate this hidden enemy at the same time—he’s
set himself an impossible task, and he’s running out of money and resources.”
He seemed to catch what he was saying and went on quickly: “Not that I’m
disloyal to him. I gave him my allegiance and I’ll stand by that. It’s cost me
my sons, though.”

We all bowed our heads and murmured our sympathy.

Kahei said, “It’s getting late. We should sleep a little if we
are to march again at dawn.”

“Of course.” Niwa got clumsily to his feet and clapped his hands.
After a few moments the old woman, lamp in hand, came to show us back to our
room. The beds were already laid out on the floor. I went to the privy and then
walked in the garden for a while to clear my head from the wine. The town was
silent. It seemed I could hear my men breathing deeply in sleep. An owl hooted
from the trees around the temple, and in the distance a dog barked. The gibbous
moon of the fourth month was low in the sky; a few wisps of cloud drifted
across it. The sky was misty, with only the brightest stars visible. I thought
about all Niwa had told me. He was right: It was almost impossible to identify
the network that the Tribe had set up across the Three Countries. But Shigeru
had done so, and I had his records.