Musashi: Bushido Code (88 page)

Book V • SKY

The Abduction

Beyond the pass, the snow on Mount Koma glistened in lancelike streaks, while on Mount Ontake, visible through the faintly reddish tree buds, it lay in scattered patches. The light green heralding the growing season seemed to shimmer along the highroad and in the fields.

Otsū daydreamed. Jōtarō was like a new plant—stubborn and hardy. It would take an awful lot to trample him, to keep him down for long. He was growing fast these days; occasionally she thought she caught a glimpse of the man he would one day be.

The line between rambunctiousness and insolence was a fine one, however, and even making allowances for his unorthodox upbringing, Otsū was growing more and more dismayed with Jōtarō's behavior. His demands, particularly for food, were unending. Every time they came to a food shop, he stopped dead and wouldn't budge until she'd bought him something.

After buying rice crackers at Suhara, she vowed, "This is the very last time." But before they'd gone a mile farther, the crackers were gone, and he was claiming to be half starved. The next crisis was only just averted by stopping at a tea shop in Nezame for an early lunch; by the time they'd crossed another pass, he was famished again.

"Look, Otsū! That shop has dried persimmons. Shouldn't we get some, just to carry with us?"

Pretending not to hear, Otsū rode on.

When they arrived at Fukushima, in Shinano Province, a place famous for the variety and abundance of its food products, it was midafternoon, about the time they were in the habit of having a snack.

"Let's rest awhile," he whined. "Please."

She paid no attention.

"Come on, Otsū! Let's have some of those rice cakes coated with soybean flour. The ones they make here are famous. Don't you want any?" Since he now had hold of the cow's rope, Otsū saw it was going to be difficult to get past the shop.

"Haven't you had enough?" she said with annoyance.

The cow, as if in secret alliance with Jōtarō, stopped and began munching grass by the roadside.

"All right!" snapped Otsū. "If that's the way you're going to act, I'll go on ahead and tell Musashi." When she made as if to dismount, Jōtarō burst into laughter, knowing perfectly well she wouldn't carry out her threat.

Her bluff called, Otsū resignedly got off the cow, and together they went into the open-sided lean-to in front of the shop. Jōtarō shouted an order for two servings, then went out to tether the cow.

When he returned, Otsū said, "You shouldn't have ordered any for me. I'm not hungry."

"You don't want anything to eat?"

"No. People who eat too much turn into stupid pigs."

"Ah, I guess I'll have to eat yours too."

"You are shameless!"

His mouth was too full for his ears to hear. Presently, however, he paused long enough to shift his wooden sword to his back, where it wouldn't interfere with his expanding ribs. He began eating again, but all at once stuffed the last rice cake in his mouth and bolted for the exit.

"Through already?" Otsū called after him. She laid some money on the table and started to follow him, but he returned and roughly shoved her back inside.

"Wait!" he said excitedly. "I just saw Matahachi."

"You couldn't have." She turned pale. "What would he be doing around here?"

"I have no idea. Didn't you see him? He had on a basket hat, and he was staring straight at us."

"I don't believe it."

"Want me to bring him in here and prove it?"

"You'll do no such thing!"

"Oh, don't worry. If anything happens, I'll go get Musashi."

Otsū’s pulse was beating wildly, but realizing that the longer they stood there, the farther ahead Musashi would have gone, she got back on the cow.

As they started off, Jōtarō said, "I can't figure it out. Until we got to the waterfall at Magome, we were all as friendly as could be. Since then, Musashi's hardly said a word, and you haven't been talking to him either. What's the matter?"

When she said nothing, he went on: "Why is he walking on ahead of us? Why do we sleep in different rooms now? Did you have a fight or something?"

Otsū couldn't bring herself to give him an honest answer, for she hadn't been able to give herself one. Did all men treat women the way Musashi had treated her, openly trying to force his love on her? And why had she rejected him so vehemently? Her distress and confusion now were, in a way, more painful than the illness from which she had but recently recovered. The fountain of love that had comforted her for years had suddenly turned into a raging waterfall.

The memory of that other waterfall resounded in her ears, along with her own cry of distress and Musashi's angry protest.

She could ask herself whether they would go on like this forever, never understanding each other, but why she was now trailing along behind him, trying not to lose sight of him, struck even her as illogical. Though, out of embarrassment, they kept apart and spoke rarely, Musashi showed no signs of breaking his promise to go with her to Edo.

At the Kōzenji they turned onto another road. There was a barrier at the top of the first hill. Otsū had heard that ever since the Battle of Sekigahara, government officials had been examining travelers, particularly women, on this road with great thoroughness. But Lord Karasumaru's letter of introduction worked like a charm, and they passed the checkpoint without difficulty.

As they reached the last of the tea shops on the far side of the barrier, Jōtarō asked, "Otsū, what does 'Fugen' mean?"

"Fugen?"

"Yeah. Back there, in front of a tea shop, a priest pointed at you and said you 'looked like Fugen on a cow.' What does that mean?"

"I suppose he was referring to the Bodhisattva Fugen."

"That's the bodhisattva that rides on an elephant, isn't it? In that case, I must be the Bodhisattva Monju. They're always together."

"A very gluttonous Monju, I should say."

"Good enough for a crybaby Fugen!"

"Oh, you would say that!"

"Why are Fugen and Monju always together? They're not a man and a woman."

Intentionally or not, he was striking close again. Having heard much about these things while she was living at the Shippōji, Otsū could have answered the question in some detail, but she replied simply, "Monju represents wisdom, Fugen, devoted conduct."

"Stop!" The voice was Matahachi's and it came from behind them.

Sick with revulsion, Otsū thought: "The coward!" She turned and stared frigidly at him.

Matahachi glared back, his feelings more muddled than ever. At Nakatsugawa, it had been pure jealousy, but he'd continued to spy on Musashi and Otsū. When he saw that they were keeping apart, he interpreted this as an attempt to deceive people and imagined all sorts of scandalous goings-on when they were alone.

"Get down!" he commanded.

Otsū stared at the cow's head, unable to speak. Her feeling toward him had settled once and for all into hatred and contempt.

"Come on, woman, get down!"

Though she burned with indignation, she spoke coldly. "Why? I have no business with you."

"Is that so?" he growled menacingly, taking hold of her sleeve. "You may not have any business with me, but I have business with you. Get down!"

Jōtarō let go of the rope and shouted, "Leave her alone! If she doesn't want to get off, why should she?" Holding his arms straight out, he butted Matahachi's chest.

"What do you think you're doing, you little bastard?" Thrown off balance, Matahachi readjusted his feet in his sandals and raised his shoulders threateningly. "I thought I'd seen your ugly face somewhere. You're the tramp from the sake shop in Kitano."

"Yeah, and now I know why you were drinking yourself silly. You were living with some old bitch and you didn't have the guts to stand up to her. Isn't that the truth?"

Jōtarō couldn't have touched a more tender spot.

"You snot-nosed runt!" Matahachi snatched at his collar, but Jōtarō ducked and came up on the other side of the cow.

"If I'm a snot-nosed runt, what does that make you? Snot-nosed oaf! Scared of a woman!"

Matahachi darted around the cow, but again Jōtarō slipped under the animal's belly and came up on the other side. This happened three or four times before Matahachi finally managed to latch on to the boy's collar.

"All right, just say that one more time."

"Snot-nosed oaf! Scared of a woman!"

Jōtarō's wooden sword was only half drawn when Matahachi got a good grip and sent him sailing well away from the road into a clump of bamboo. He landed on his back in a small stream, stunned and only barely conscious.

By the time he recovered enough to crawl like an eel back to the road, it was too late. The cow was loping heavily along the road, Otsū still on her back, Matahachi running ahead with the rope in his hand.

"Bastard!" moaned Jōtarō, stung by his own helplessness. Too dazed to get to his feet, he lay there fuming and cursing.

On a hill a mile or so ahead, Musashi was resting his feet and idly wondering whether the clouds were moving or, as they seemed, were permanently suspended between Mount Koma and the broad foothills below.

He started, as though at some wordless communication, shook himself and straightened up.

His thoughts were really on Otsū, and the more he thought, the angrier he became. Both his shame and his resentment had been washed away in the swirling basin under the falls, but as the days passed the doubts kept coming back. Had it been wicked of him to reveal himself to her? Why had she rebuffed him, shrunk from him as though she despised him?

"Leave her behind," he said out loud. Yet he knew he was only deceiving himself. He had told her that when they reached Edo, she could study what was best for her, while he followed his own path. Implicit in this was a promise for the more distant future. He had left Kyoto with her. He had a responsibility to stay with her.

"What will happen to me? With two of us, what will happen to my sword?" He raised his eyes to the mountain and bit his tongue, ashamed of his pettiness. To look at the great peak was humbling.

He wondered what could be keeping them and stood up. He could see the forest a mile back, but no people.

"Could they have been held up at the barrier?"

The sun would be setting soon; they should have caught up long ago.

Suddenly, he felt alarmed. Something must have happened. Before he knew it, he was tearing down the hill so fast that the animals in the fields scurried off in all directions.

The Warrior of Kiso

Musashi had not run very far when a traveler called to him, "Hey, weren't you with a young woman and a boy before?"

Musashi stopped abruptly. "Yes," he said with sinking heart. "Has something happened to them?"

Apparently he was about the only person who had not heard the story that was fast becoming common gossip along the highroad. A young man had approached the girl ... kidnapped her. He had been seen whipping the cow .. . driving her down a side road near the barrier. The traveler had barely finished repeating the tale before Musashi was on his way.

Racing at top speed, he still took an hour to reach the barrier, which had closed at six, and with it the tea shops on either side. Looking rather frantic, Musashi approached an old man who was piling up stools in front of his shop.

"What's the matter, sir? Forget something?"

"No. I'm looking for a young woman and a boy who passed here a few hours ago."

"Would that be the girl who looked like Fugen on a cow?"

"That's the one!" Musashi answered without thinking. "I'm told a rōnin took her off somewhere. Do you know which way they went?"

"I didn't actually see the incident myself, but I heard they left the main road at the head-burying mound. That'd take them toward Nobu Pond."

For the life of him, Musashi had no idea who might have kidnapped Otsū or why. Matahachi's name never entered his mind. He imagined it might be a good-for-nothing rōnin, like the ones he had encountered in Nara. Or perhaps one of the freebooters reputed to be hanging out in the woods hereabouts. He only hoped it was a petty crook, rather than one of the hoodlums who made a business of abducting and selling women and were known to be vicious on occasion.

He ran on and on in his search for Nobu Pond. After the sun went down, he could hardly see a foot ahead, though the stars were bright above. The road began to slope upward; he assumed he was entering the foothills of Mount Koma.

Having seen nothing resembling a pond and fearing he was on the wrong road, he stopped and looked around. In the vast sea of blackness, he was able to make out a lone farmhouse, a windbreak of trees, and looming darkly above these, the mountain.

When he got closer, he saw that the house was large and sturdily built, though moss grew on the thatched roof and the thatch itself was rotting. There was a light outside—whether torch or fire, he couldn't tell—and near the kitchen, a spotted cow. He was sure it was the animal Otsū had been riding.

He approached stealthily, keeping to the shadows. When he was close enough to see into the kitchen, he heard a loud male voice coming from a shed on the other side of some piles of straw and firewood.

"Put up your work, Mother," the man was saying. "You're always complaining about your eyes being bad, but you go on working practically in the dark."

There was a fire in the hearth room next to the kitchen, and Musashi thought he heard the whir of a spinning wheel. After a moment or two, the sound stopped, and he heard someone moving about.

The man came out of the shed and closed the door behind him. "I'll be in as soon as I've washed my feet," he called. "You can go ahead and put dinner on."

He placed his sandals on a rock by a stream flowing behind the kitchen. As he sat wiggling his feet in the water, the cow put her head close to his shoulder. He rubbed her nose.

"Mother," he called, "come here a minute. I made a real find today. What do you think it is? ... It's a cow; a really fine one too."

Musashi made his way quietly past the front door of the house. Crouching on a stone beneath a side window, he looked into what turned out to be a hearth room. The first object he saw was a lance hanging from a blackened rack near the top of the wall, a fine weapon that had been polished and lovingly cared for. Bits of gold shone dully on the leather of its scabbard. Musashi did not know what to make of it; it was not the sort of thing usually found in a farmer's house. Farmers were forbidden to have weapons, even if they could afford them.

The man appeared for a moment in the light of the outside fire. At a glance, Musashi knew he was no ordinary peasant. His eyes were too bright, too alert. He wore a knee-length work kimono and mud-spattered leggings. His face was round, and his bushy hair was tied in back with two or three lengths of straw. Though he was short—no more than five feet six—he was thick-chested and solidly built. He walked with firm, decisive steps.

Smoke began to escape from the window. Musashi raised his sleeve to cover his face, but too late; he inhaled a lungful of smoke and couldn't stop himself from coughing.

"Who's there?" the old woman called from the kitchen. She came into the hearth room and said, "Gonnosuke, did you shut the shed? There seems to be a millet thief around. I heard him cough."

Musashi slipped away from the window and hid himself among the trees of the windbreak.

"Where?" shouted Gonnosuke, striding rapidly from behind the house. The old woman appeared at the little window. "He must be right around here. I heard him cough."

"Are you sure it's not just your ears?"

"My hearing's all right. And I'm sure I saw a face at the window. The smoke from the fire must have made him cough."

Slowly, suspiciously, Gonnosuke advanced fifteen or twenty paces, looking carefully to right and left, as though he were a sentinel guarding a fortress. "You may be right," he said. "I seem to smell a human being."

Taking his cue from the look in Gonnosuke's eyes, Musashi bided his time. There was something about the man's posture, something that said it was best to be cautious. He seemed to be leaning slightly forward from the waist. Musashi could not make out what sort of weapon he was carrying, but when he turned, Musashi saw he had a four-foot staff behind his back. No ordinary pole, it had the sheen of a much-used weapon and seemed to be an integral part of the man's body. There was no question in Musashi's mind but that he lived with it day in and day out and knew exactly how to use it.

Moving into view, Musashi shouted, "You—whoever you are! I've come for my companions!"

Gonnosuke glared silently at him.

"Give me back the woman and boy you kidnapped on the highroad. If they're unharmed, we'll let it go at that. But if they've been injured, you're in for it."

The snowmelt feeding the streams in this area gave the breeze a sharp edge, which somehow emphasized the silence.

"Turn them over to me. Now!" Musashi's voice bit more sharply than the wind.

Gonnosuke had what was called a reverse hold on his staff. His hair standing up like a hedgehog's, he straightened to his full height and shouted, "You horse's turd! Who are you calling a kidnapper?"

"You! You must have seen the boy and woman were unprotected, so you kidnapped them and took them here. Bring them out!"

The staff came away from Gonnosuke's side in a movement so rapid Musashi could not tell where the man's arm ended and the weapon began.

Musashi jumped aside. "Don't do anything you'll regret," he warned, then withdrew several paces.

"Who do you think you are, you crazy bastard!" As Gonnosuke spat out his reply, he moved swiftly into action again, determined not to give- Musashi a moment's rest. When the latter shifted ten paces, he covered the same distance simultaneously.

Twice Musashi started to move his right hand to the hilt of his sword, but both times he stopped. During the instant when he grasped his sword, his elbow would be exposed. Musashi had seen the swiftness of Gonnosuke's staff and knew he wouldn't have time to complete the movement. He saw, too, that if he allowed himself to make light of his stocky opponent, he'd be in trouble. And if he didn't remain calm, even taking a breath could endanger him.

Musashi had yet to size up this enemy, who at the moment had his legs and torso in a splendid stance of the Indestructible-Perfect type. Musashi was already beginning to feel that this farmer had a technique superior to that of any expert swordsman he had encountered so far, and a look in his eyes suggested he had mastered that Way which Musashi was forever seeking.

But he had little time for assessment. Strike followed strike, almost by the second, as one curse after another poured from Gonnosuke's mouth. Sometimes he used both hands, sometimes only one, executing with flowing dexterity the overhead strike, the lateral strike, the thrust and the shift. A sword, being distinctly divided into blade and hilt, has only one point, but either end of a staff can be applied lethally. Gonnosuke was wielding the staff with the same agility as a candy-maker handling taffy: now it was long, now short, now invisible, now high, now low—seemingly everywhere at once.

From the window, the old woman urged her son to be careful. "Gonnosuke! He doesn't look like an ordinary samurai!" She seemed to be as involved in the fight as he was.

"Don't worry!" The knowledge that she was watching appeared to raise Gonnosuke's fighting spirit to an even higher pitch.

At this point, Musashi ducked a blow to his shoulder, and in the same movement slid in close to Gonnosuke and seized his wrist. The next instant, the farmer was flat on his back, his feet kicking at the stars.

"Wait!" shouted the mother, breaking the lattice of the window in her excitement. Her hair stood on end; she seemed thunderstruck to see her son downed.

The wild look on her face kept Musashi from taking the next logical step, which would have been to whip out his sword and finish Gonnosuke off. "All right, I'll wait," he shouted, straddling Gonnosuke's chest and pinning him to the ground.

Gonnosuke was struggling valiantly to free himself. His legs, over which Musashi had no control, flew in the air, then crashed into the earth as he arched his back. It was all Musashi could do to keep him down.

The mother came rushing out the kitchen door, screaming viperously, "Look at you! How did you get into a mess like that?" But she added, "Don't give up. I'm here to help you."

Since she had asked Musashi to wait, he expected her to fall down on her knees and beg him not to kill her son. But a glance told him that he was sadly mistaken. She held the lance, now unsheathed, behind her, but he caught the glint of the blade. And he felt her eyes burning into his back.

"Filthy rōnin!" she cried. "Use a tricky throw, will you? You think we're nothing but dumb farmers, don't you?"

Musashi couldn't turn to ward off an attack from behind, because of the way Gonnosuke was squirming about, trying to put Musashi in a position advantageous to his mother.

"Don't worry, Mother!" he said. "I'll make it. Don't get too close."

"Keep calm," she cautioned. "You mustn't lose to the likes of him. Remember your ancestors! What's happened to the blood you inherited from the great Kakumyō, who fought side by side with the General of Kiso."

"I won't forget!" yelled Gonnosuke. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he managed to raise his head and sink his teeth into Musashi's thigh, at the same time letting go of his staff and striking Musashi with both hands. The old woman chose this moment to level the lance at Musashi's back.

"Wait!" shouted Musashi.

They had reached a stage where settlement seemed possible only through the death of one of them. If Musashi had been absolutely sure that by winning he could free Otsū and Jōtarō, he would have pressed on. Now it seemed the better part of valor to call a halt and talk things over. He turned his shoulders toward the old woman and told her to put down the lance.

"What should I do, son?"

Gonnosuke was still pinned to the ground, but he was also having second thoughts. Perhaps this rōnin had some reason to think his companions were here. There was no sense in risking death over a misunderstanding.

Once they had disentangled themselves, it took only a few minutes to make it clear that it was all a mistake.

The three of them repaired to the house and the blazing fire. Kneeling by the hearth, the mother said, "Very dangerous! To think that there was no cause for a fight to begin with."

As Gonnosuke prepared to take his place beside her, she shook her head. "Before you sit down," she said, "take the samurai all through the house, so that he can be satisfied that his friends aren't here." Then, to Musashi: "I want you to look carefully and see for yourself."

"That's a good idea," agreed Gonnosuke. "Come with me, sir. Examine the house from top to bottom. I dislike being suspected of kidnapping."

Already seated, Musashi declined. "It's not necessary. From what you've told me, I'm sure you had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Forgive me for accusing you."

"I was partly to blame," Gonnosuke said apologetically. "I should have found out what you were talking about before I lost my temper."

Musashi then asked, somewhat hesitantly, about the cow, explaining that he was quite sure it was the one he had rented in Seta.

"I just happened to find her," replied Gonnosuke. "This evening, I was down at Nobu Pond netting loaches, and on my way home I saw the cow with one leg sunk in the mud. It's swampy down there. The more she struggled, the deeper she sank. She was raising an awful rumpus, so I pulled her free. When I asked around the neighborhood, she didn't seem to belong to anybody, so I thought a thief must have stolen her and later abandoned her.

"A cow's worth about half a man on a farm, and this is a good one, with a young udder." Gonnosuke laughed. "I sort of decided that heaven must have sent the cow to me because I'm poor and can't do anything for my mother without a little supernatural help. I don't mind giving the animal back to her owner, but I don't know who that is."

Musashi noted that Gonnosuke told his story with the simple straightforward honesty of a person born and brought up in the country.

His mother became sympathetic. "I'm sure this rōnin's worried about his friends," she said. "Eat your dinner and take him to look for them. I only hope they're somewhere near the pond. The hills are no place for strangers. They're full of bandits who'll steal anything—horses, vegetables, anything! This whole business sounds like some of their work."