Sword of Honour (58 page)

The door of the wooden cage was open, he saw. Outside he found a pile of fresh clothes, and both his swords in their scabbards.

On the drums played. The sound of them was fully revealed to him when he found his way out into the courtyard. The halls of the garrison had been all but empty, and those men that were there had
taken no interest in him. On he had shuffled until he had emerged here. Ahead, standing beneath the frame of the gate and looking out into the street, Musashi saw Goemon.

Beyond the captain there was vivid motion: bright clothes, fans twirling in unison, the brilliant gold leaf upon a shrine being hoisted up on shoulders. The Regent’s festival was well
under way and the parading would not stop until the sun went down. The noise of it, all the different chants, all the different drumbeats, the rattling of chimes and bells, the cheers, the joy, it
checked Musashi for a moment, he the recent inhabitant of a world of numbed senses. He stood, took it in, took in the feel of sunlight, the way his new clothes felt, the cloth of the dark trousers
and jacket tough yet woven finely.

It all felt good.

He gathered his strength that he might walk across the intervening space without stumbling, then forced his way towards Goemon. As he crossed the yard he recognized the obsidian ridged boulder
across which Tadanari had died. A name had been carved into it: Kiyomori Onodera. Sombre characters and this perhaps a capstone for a crypt.

The captain did not turn at Musashi’s coming. In one hand he held a paper windmill, a toy made of folded brightly coloured paper pinned to a length of dowel. He showed it happily to
Musashi when he drew alongside.

‘Do you see this?’ he said. ‘A child who lives just up the street made it for me.’

He seemed truly delighted with it. Musashi said nothing, put a hand out onto the beams of the gateway for support. The wood there was new, set bright against the old beneath it, felt coarse and
recently planed to the touch. The pair of them watched the parade pass slowly before them, a large shrine advancing, borne aloft by at least forty men, they seesawing it back and forth between
them.

‘
Hwaja!
’ went the men on the left as they raised their end.

‘
Hoja!
’ went the men on the right, and on and on it went back and forth.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it,’ said Goemon, ‘when so much planning comes together?’

‘Isn’t it just,’ said Musashi.

‘How heals your wound?’

‘Haven’t looked at it. Doesn’t hurt.’

‘Your nose is crooked now.’

Musashi grunted, sucked air through it to prove it functioned still.

‘You should know that you were very near death. Most of the doctors who tended upon you said you would perish.’

‘I suppose I owe you for their payment?’

‘No.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘My most noble Lord is benevolent. He appreciates bravery, and admires martial feats.’

‘Of course.’

‘And quite a feat it was. How many men did you fell, exactly?’

‘I don’t know. More than twenty. Perhaps.’

‘So casually, he speaks of his great victory.’

Musashi turned his eyes to the captain, looked at him blackly for a moment. There were many things he could have said to him on the subject of victory, but instead he looked back to the parade,
spoke with cold mirth: ‘So rigidly you speak in the Kyoto tongue.’

‘It grows natural.’

‘Am I to be charged with arson?’

‘You already have been.’

‘Yet I walk free of my gaol unchallenged.’

‘You misunderstand – the Shogunate of my most noble Lord lays no accusation against you,’ said Goemon. ‘It is the city itself that has declared you guilty. There is no
doubt in them whatsoever. They, however, possess no gaol, save for their scorn.’

‘And the one they themselves live in.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ said Goemon. ‘What is a city but its people?’

The comment was oblique and Musashi did not understand Goemon’s apparent enjoyment of saying it. ‘Am I free to go, then?’ he said.

‘Yes. I thought today best. No one will notice your departure, not with all this occurring. There will be no outcry, no disturbance. No one will demand me for your head. Though some of
them may soon realize you are gone, in time they will forget, and Kyoto will be as Kyoto ought.’

The shrine had moved on, and now men bearing taiko drums between them on a yoke were cavorting, swinging each other around and around, all but flipping over, banging out their beat synchronous
and unfailing. Their clothes were bright and garish, white zigzags over citric yellow, heads bound in twisted lengths of rope, arms bare save for tasselled bands.

‘If they demanded my head of you,’ said Musashi, ‘would you give it?’

‘It would be injustice. The Yoshioka challenged you. You have committed no crime.’

‘Suppose, then, I said I did set a fire in the school. Suppose I confessed. Would you believe that it was my hand that caused the blaze?’

He was looking very closely now at Goemon. The samurai did not turn his face. His eyes appeared to narrow, but lost none of their mirth.

‘I could see why people might think it arson,’ said Musashi. ‘The fire rose quickly. The incident, the fight was not long. A matter of minutes from first to last. And yet by
the end of it buildings at either end of the school were ablaze. As though it had not spread from one point outwards.’

‘The destruction was entire,’ said Goemon.

‘I recall that there were lights in the air that night. I thought them exhaustion, tricks of the eye. But those lights that lie within the eye, they rise upwards on an erratic path, or
have no path at all. Thinking back now, the lights there in the school, they each followed the same direction, unwavering. A downwards arc. Like the path of arrows.’

The crowd was clapping along. The beat was relentless. Only the two of them remained immune to it. Goemon’s expression did not alter.

‘Was I even supposed to survive in this scheme of yours?’ Musashi asked.

Not a flicker upon the captain’s face.

‘And what of Ameku?’

‘Ameku?’

‘The blind woman in the slums,’ said Musashi. ‘I was told that she was dead by the hands of the Yoshioka, saw blood. And yet, Kozei . . . all of them, all of the Yoshioka
there, never once tried to taunt me about it. They hated me. Utterly. But not one mention of her.’

‘Was she a lover of yours?’

‘What does that matter?’ said Musashi. ‘She was innocent. She was blind.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Is she truly dead?’ said Musashi. ‘Did you kill her?’

‘Do you believe that I would have her killed?’ said Goemon, and his face grew serious, turned to face Musashi.

‘Did you kill her, for the sake of an illusion?’

‘Whatever I say is irrelevant here,’ said Goemon. ‘You will believe as you believe. And if you believe that I had her killed, I have returned both your swords to your side, and
there are far fewer than twenty of my men here.’

He held Musashi’s eyes, stood up to the challenge of them. Dignity in his indignation, a proper samurai face. If it was an act, it was flawless. Musashi relented. Goemon smiled once
more.

‘Thank you for your faith,’ he said. ‘It was an agent of mine that spoke to you, smashed her loom. Pig’s blood, I do believe he used. The blind woman is well. She is
headed for Edo now. The little girl too. The Nishijin guild are opening a branch there, looking for hundreds to work their looms. She carries with her a sincere recommendation from the Shogunate
that she be hired.’

‘And she just went?’ said Musashi, and immediately he thought to himself,
Of course she would go
.

The captain saw the change in him: ‘If you like, I could arrange for you to meet her there.’

Musashi thought about it.

‘No,’ he said eventually.

And that was all he would say. He prepared to let go of the beam of the gate, gathered his strength that he might not show weakness before the captain. He was interrupted, however, by sudden
barking from behind him.

Musashi clung on to the frame, turned to look back. Across the yard was a small wooden side gate, a yard within the yard, and it was rattling in its own frame as a dog on the other side of it
attacked it savagely. Barking and barking, the sound of frantic scratching, and the creature would not relent. Goemon left Musashi and went over to the gate and unhooked the latch.

A little mangy mongrel pushed its way out through Goemon’s legs, squeezed its lithe body through the sliver of the opening, so desperate for its victory that it could not wait for it to
open fully. The dog’s hide was rotten and it was missing an ear. It ran a few paces out, looked around, scratched at the earth . . .

And then immediately it went back to where it had come from.

Goemon sighed in fond amusement. He closed the door and reset the latch, and returned to Musashi’s side. ‘I give it all it needs in there. Food. Water. Shade. But still it has to
struggle to escape.’ The captain settled to lean on the frame opposite Musashi. ‘That is the nature of dogs, though, is it not?’ he said. ‘They are creatures of complete
immediacy. Each and every moment, a dog feels as separate and infinite. What it feels then it feels fully. A dog that howls in loneliness has been alone for ever and will always be alone . . .
Until it is not.’

Passing before the pair of them on the street a troupe of women danced, women and girls, elaborate wooden crowns on their heads, paper fans twirling in their hands.

‘Dogs are like this in all things,’ said Goemon. ‘Unending love – ended. Boundless rage – evaporated. Or that dog – it fights and it fights and it scratches
up against the gate with all its heart, white-eyed and slavering at its boards, even though it hasn’t even the slightest conception of what may lie on the other side. All it knows is that it
stands, and that this must not be. And then the gate is opened and it gets there, and . . .

‘I suppose there’s something to admire in that. The totality of it. Honesty, you might call it, or some form of it. But ultimately?’ said the captain, and he looked out across
the festival, across the street, across the city, across it all. ‘This is a dishonest world.’

Goemon turned his eyes to Musashi. Musashi looked back. At his topknots. At his livery. At his swords.

He felt no hatred.

The swordsman sucked in a breath, let go of the gate of the garrison of the Tokugawa. He was done there. He forced himself to stride, headed for the street.

‘Miyamoto,’ Goemon called after him.

He turned. The captain was holding out a folded sheaf of paper towards him.

‘Papers of travel. My most noble Lord is erecting checkpoints upon the roads. These will see you through upon his authority.’

Musashi thought of ignoring him, of walking away, but what would one more empty gesture atop of all the others achieve? He reached out to take them, and as his fingers closed upon them Goemon
held on for a moment:

‘You should not be dispirited,’ the captain said. ‘In truth, you did enact change here: you took Kyoto from the Yoshioka, and awarded it to us.’

He grinned, and Musashi could not tell if the smile was mocking or whether it was simply joyous. The captain released the papers. Musashi slipped them into the breast of his kimono. Without
another word he turned and stepped onto the streets, slid amongst the crowd and did not look back.

Goemon watched Musashi go, the back of his head visible above the crowd, and the captain could not remove the smile upon his face. The parade, the festival went on before him,
and he saw the crowds, saw the faces of all the people of Kyoto, old and young and men and women, all together here, all in order.

He remembered the paper windmill in his hand, looked at the bright blue spokes unmoving. He suddenly wanted to see it in motion, raised the toy above his head, above the crowd, sought the
deserved wind that would come to caress the sweat from his body. Up he stared, saw the shade of the paper matched the cloudless sky exact, and wondered if this was perhaps a sign, if this thing he
held somehow was actually a totem of nature perfectly attuned, if it was not summoning now, and he stared and stared, certain it was imminent . . .

Of course it remained still. There was no breeze, weeks of the summer left yet. But that was fine, that was more than fine, for Goemon Inoue no longer needed mercy. He could bear the heat now.
He had learnt to bear it.

He spun the spokes with his finger and smiled as if he were back in Mutsu.

Epilogue

Kyoto, golden Kyoto.

See it thrive, see its beauty, its streets now swept, its buildings cleaned and polished and arrayed in streamers, frail gay paper hung from the web-scoured eaves made of wood enamelled by time.
See the people as they dance, teams of women, scores of them with their fans ever moving, rotating, they sweating and smiling and ever diligent to follow the exact steps their grandmothers danced.
See the men with the shrines upon their shoulders, or see them up balancing upon the beams of the yokes themselves, riding the shaking of those below like mariners in a storm, the glimmering and
impassive faces of Buddhas and Shinto wisps staring outwards beyond them. See the drums in their multitude, hear them.

The right hand beats the rhythm:
bom, a-bom, a-bombombom.

The left hand beats the urgency:
atta-ta-tatta, ta-tatta, tatata-atta-ta-tatta.

The girls all go:
Sore! Sore! Sore sore sore sore sore!

And they were flawless in their rhythm, all of them together, but it was not his rhythm, Musashi knew now.

The narrow streets were crowded. He made his way along squeezing between the back of the crowd and the walls of buildings. Those that turned to him turned only when he brushed up against them,
and dismissed him just as quickly, captivated by the spectacle of the festival. On he passed unnoticed.

Victory a barren word in his mouth. He had overcome, had triumphed, had passed what he had thought the great trial of his conviction, and yet it was no trial at all. Even the simple thrill of
its accomplishment had been denied him; that great rush of wellbeing that made his soul sing usurped by exhaustion and pain.