Sword of Honour (33 page)

A sort of ashen amusement took him. The mercy of the damned thus extended.

He let it pass through him, counted thirty heartbeats of stillness in his bearing before he called the Goat. The old samurai, when he appeared in the doorway, found his captain’s manner
inscrutable:

‘Bring him up.’

It was the lowliest of Goemon’s men who had brought Musashi to the cells the night before, this done on instinct before they had considered that their charge had not been
proclaimed officially a prisoner. There they had stood in wordless debate on what to do with him, unwilling either to insult or to trust, these hard men with harder weapons at their side growing
silently flustered, refusing to take an authority they had not been granted. Musashi, exhausted, had eventually crawled through the low door of the wooden cage of his own volition, collapsed upon
the mat there and slept immediately.

The Tokugawa samurai duly reached a compromise: they kept the door of the cage open, but stood guard outside it the night long.

At some point someone had come to tend to Musashi’s wounds with a soldier’s sympathy. He had with him distilled spirits with which he soaked a rag to rub upon the grazes on
Musashi’s face and arm, then peeled open his slashed calf and doused it thoroughly, grinning all the while at Musashi’s hissing and writhing. A needle and a thread closed the wound, a
crude technique that Dorinbo would have scorned, and then Musashi was left to sleep once more until morning.

And now in that morning, marked by scab and bruise and suture, he felt ecstatic.

His body ached whichever way he tried to sit or lie, and this was the spur of his joy. His wounds prodded, his stitches picked at, the pain magnified and pleasing; all of it proof of what he had
achieved, of whom he had beaten, the knowledge of it burning sunlike within him, and heliolatrous to this he sat.

He hoped that through the mortal veil Akiyama’s spirit, wherever it may be, appreciated the achievement also.

Rage had driven everything after he had found the pale-eyed samurai’s body. A day had passed in a blur of pulsing moments. There had been no words, no reasoning. There were only things to
do. He had hacked the sleeves from his jacket and the kimono beneath, both liberating his arms for unhindered movement should any further ambush appear, and more than this because he had simply
wanted to hack, to cut. The sweat sliding down his bared arms had felt as the temperature of blood and the thought of that was invigorating, and, having entered the city anonymously, driving the
shortsword of one of his perished assassins into the wood to pin his challenge up, felt equally fine.

Then came Seijuro’s reply. Had Musashi not been sodden with his fury the language of it would have made him laugh:
Adept of the sword, Seijuro Yoshioka of Kyoto, commands the
masterless Musashi Miyamoto to present himself for a duel.
‘Commands’! Commanding, as though Seijuro had some compulsion or control over Musashi. The pompous Yoshioka scion perhaps
bred to assume so, perhaps never denied or contradicted before in his life.

Perhaps never even had to wait for something, and in that his undoing.

And it had worked! He had laid the smug Lord-King low, made the smug Lord-King lay himself low, and then Musashi had forced his mercy upon Seijuro. Had made the man choke on glorious clemency.
Proved himself better before the eyes of those watching, a humane victor.

How could they, all of them, fail to see the fallibility of the Way now? That morning, the logic of it was flawless. The conjecture immaculate. The worth undoubted.

Fearlessly he met the gaze of the samurai who eventually came to escort him from his cell. Every further man he passed on the way he looked square in the face, trying to gauge the impact of what
he had done. He saw not much of anything, but then here was the source of the scourge. That every face turned to him regardless was enough; his eyes bright as crimson moons above his lesions.

Musashi expected a public hearing, perhaps out beneath the sun in the courtyard. Instead he was commanded to climb a ladder up to the second floor, and from there led to Goemon’s personal
chambers. The Goat was waiting by the door, leaning on his sword. He held his hand out for Musashi’s own longsword. When it was surrendered, the old man cast a grim eye over the shambolic
state of it.

‘A pair indeed,’ he said, and then slid open the heavy door.

Goemon’s eyes had Musashi’s immediately, the captain sitting rigid, cross-legged. The room around him was militant, sparsely lit, large windows being indefensible in case of war or
siege and so only a row of arrow-slits let the sun in. The ceiling a matrix of hard black beams like the intersections of armour, the floor beneath it just as callous. No decoration present, no
vases, no paintings or tapestries, no potted plants, nothing save for the crest of the Tokugawa ensconced paramount on the wall behind the captain. Each of the three inward-facing leaves varnished
proud auburn, inset into the black regal and dominating.

On the floor was a platter of food: a bowl of rice, another of miso broth and two slim fish grilled unto cremation. Goemon gestured to Musashi that it was for him. With neither comment nor
thanks, Musashi strode over, sat down and began to push the food into his mouth. The rice was old, the soup bland and lukewarm.

The captain said nothing at his lack of manners, watched him gorge in silence. At no apparent signal he picked up a black velvet bag from his side and withdrew what lay within: Musashi’s
shortsword.

He leant forward and carefully placed it equidistant between them. The steel of it was murky in the dim light, a leather cord wrapped as crude grip around the weathered wood of the handle in
place of the cultured cloth that had once been there, that long lost to rot.

‘Found in the street,’ said Goemon. ‘Now returned.’

Musashi did not move for the weapon, gave it no more an interested glance than he had the captain, continued eating. He felt Goemon look closer at him, begin to study.

‘You are very young,’ the captain said. ‘I had not heard the name Musashi Miyamoto prior to two nights ago. You possess no renown, neither a house nor a master, and nor are you
the prodigy of a rival school. I have to therefore confess to some degree of surprise that the scion of the Yoshioka bloodline would consent to duelling you.’

Musashi kept his eyes upon his food, said nothing.

‘It is quite an aptitude for chaos you seem to possess. Might you explain your reasons for this debacle, this whole series of the events – the incident on Hiei also?’

A sliver of green onion was stuck to Musashi’s lips; he sucked it in, swallowed, then dug into the rice once more. ‘Not my reasons.’

‘Then you lay the blame of instigation upon the school of Yoshioka?’

Musashi grunted. The fish now held his interest, clutched between his sticks and then its head sucked right off.

Goemon clucked his tongue. ‘Sir Miyamoto, I understand you may be suspicious, but I would take it as a courtesy if you would deign me the gift of a conversation. You in turn understand
that I have the full authority of my most noble Lord Tokugawa within the boundaries of this city. I would likely be commended in Edo for having you tortured to death in the name of quelling unrest
and restoring peace. Instead, I feed you, have your wounds tended, not worsened.’

Musashi’s chewing stopped for a moment. ‘Can’t remember the last time someone called me Sir Miyamoto,’ he said.

‘I wonder why that would be. Rags in the silken city, a brutish temperament in the heart of all culture. You do not belong in Kyoto,’ said the captain, and his fingertips met their
vague reflections upon the varnished floor, eyes down to them and then up to Musashi. ‘In this, I think, we are alike.’

‘Did you not just say it was your city?’

‘I’d raze it flat were I permitted.’

There was conviction in him, gaze distant for a moment as though he were already beholding pillars of smoke bisecting the sky. He found something in it, a sudden inspiration, and he turned to
Musashi and let loose with a long stream of language, a brogue so thick it spewed from his mouth like fog, formless and mystifying, Musashi understanding but one word in three, one word in five,
and seeing this Goemon grinned wider, spoke faster, threw fresh incomprehensible idiom out with the joy of a man mid-congress.

‘There,’ he said, softening, slowing now, but still a world apart from how he had spoken before. ‘That was how I was taught to speak. Them, the true words of my father, and,
oh, how many the moons I’ve yearned to speak as such again. But here, for you, I’ll use the polite form. Culled and clipped for softer ears. Yet even this, here in this city, this
tongue too base. Every word of mine I have to twist. To them that live here, all things that aren’t of Kyoto, they aren’t no thing at all. Improper. Fraudulent. I learnt that but quick
at the time of my arrival. All the people yonder in the streets heard this voice of mine, thought me a farmer. Started calling me the “Rice Humper”. All of them, carpenters and
spinsters and the coolies who lug the shit barrels about. Do they mean I just lug bushels, or do they mean I thrust my cock into them? This I haven’t scried, and like as not I never will. But
these the sorts of minds abundant here, in the beams, the foundations. This, Kyoto.’

‘I’ve never heard men speak as you before,’ said Musashi. ‘From where do you hail?’

‘Province of Mutsu.’

‘Where’s that? Michinoku?’

Goemon laughed blackly: ‘“Michinoku”. Another thing that’s done around here; so too in your southern heart I see. “Michinoku”. Half the country dismissed with
one little word. Hundreds of leagues of land, a dozen realms of storied history and character, but no. Everything north of Edo: Michinoku. Only Michinoku. Where the snow is. Where the Ainu are and
the Yamato blood falters. All truth ignored.’

‘I meant no slight upon you.’

‘No one ever does, ne’er they damn well do,’ said Goemon. ‘But always there it is, just seething away behind the eyes.’

‘If you’re of the north then, of Yutsu—’

‘Mutsu.’

‘—of Mutsu, why is it Tokugawa’s crest you sit before now?’

‘There’s a tale and no mistake,’ said the captain. ‘Clan of my birth: the Date clan. Centuries my family in service to them, and the Lord of my youth was the most noble
Masamune Date. One-Eyed Dragon, as we called him. Pulled his own eye out in his childhood when rot took it – is that not the Way manifest? This I’d kithe to any man round here who
doubted the samurai spirit of the north. Trusted bannermen of the Date, we Inoue, enfeoffed upon the rich plains of Mutsu and the privilege mine of riding in the personal guard of my Lord. This,
how once I was cherished . . . Were you at Sekigahara?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of the west?’

‘Yes. Ukita.’

‘Must have been no more than a child, you, then.’

‘I killed a man in a duel,’ said Musashi. ‘One of theirs, the Yoshioka.’

‘Is that so?’ said the captain, but he was preoccupied with his own circumstance, dismissed the boast. ‘A chance that you and I have met before, then, or at least shared a
horizon once of a morn. The clan Date swore allegiance to my most noble Lord Tokugawa, rode to that valley together. Fine day. Not for you, as like, but for me . . . For our clans, for our cause, a
fine day. Then the aftermath. The reassessment. The Date were allies, but allies only have worth after centuries, do they not? A union born of war is perilously fragile at the war’s end . . .
The north there looming unknown. Untrustworthy. Intolerable to my Lord Tokugawa, so to planning: an exchange of the bannermen between the clans.

‘“A show of unity and strength” were the words spoken most, over and over, “fresh brotherhood fostered” and the like, but the tactic was clear. And respectable.
Take the man you think enemy’s sword away, put your own to his throat. The Lord Date could not refuse. Tokugawa had the numbers on him, and other more enduring allies still. Therefore . . .
Ahh, the thing I’d like to scry most is who was it exact that put forth my name? Was I of such renown and reputation that the Tokugawa demanded me, or did the Date think low enough of me to
consider me expendable? Which truth softer, which truth finer to my ears?

‘It matters not. A score of us went south, made our vows. Scattered quickly, sent to separate posts the length of the country so that we’d not form some little faction canker-like in
the bosom of Edo. Me, the last to be designated duty, and thus’ – and now his brogue vanished, snapped back into the rigidity of the Kyoto tongue – ‘here I am demoted so, a
captain of alien streets that loathe and mock me where once I ruled a swathe of land from the mountains to the sea as I saw fit, using words comfortable to me.’

There was a melancholy mirth on his face. Musashi pulled a fish bone from his teeth and wiped it upon his thighs.

‘In your estimation this makes us alike?’ he said.

‘We are both outsiders here, are we not?’ said Goemon.

‘But you follow what you hate. Why? Do you see any future for yourself here in Kyoto?’

Goemon did not answer.

‘And it will lead to what? Your head on a spike. If you stay here, then, you are complicit in your own annihilation. Why not renounce Tokugawa and return home? You think he cares the
slightest whether you live or die?’

‘I would not expect him to. This is service.’

‘That is the Way, and the Way is a lie forced upon us all,’ said Musashi. ‘Here is what I have learnt: true strength is in independence, not in having men to do things for you.
A babe can summon its mother to tend on its every whim with a single wordless cry – that is what all Lords are, truly, and you must not empower them in their weakness with your
acquiescence.’

‘You are saying that my most noble Lord Tokugawa is a weak man, then?’ said Goemon. ‘A bold thing to do in a stronghold of his men.’

‘Weak, incapable, unworthy,’ said Musashi, ‘all of these things he must be, and all Lords, for anyone who wants to tell others what to do is inherently unfit to be
followed.’

‘And presumably you offer yourself in contrast?’