The Dragon Scroll (49 page)

There was a long silence. Akitada reached out and put his hand on the sleeve of his friends rough robe. The arm beneath the poor fabric felt thin. “I am sorry,” he said softly. “It must have been terrible. That night of our farewell party . . . you carried her fan, didn’t you?”

The shaven head was bowed and nodded slightly. “She forgot it. It was all I had of her, for I never saw her again. Weeks passed. I assumed she had returned to the palace. Then I heard the first rumor that she had disappeared. I was beside myself with uncertainty, not knowing what had happened to her. That was the state of my mind the night you saw me.”

“How can you bear to hear what happened?”

The monk raised his face. “I watched her murderer die.”

“What?”

“The man died horribly. His was the death I should have died. I was the one who had offended. I was the one who put temptation in his way. But I was spared. Spared in spite of the fact that they knew. Spared because I had become a monk.” He paused to look up at the starry sky. “But not spared all. The emperor’s personal secretary paid me a visit in the monastery. He informed me that the murderer of Lady Asagao had been sentenced and that he had requested a priest prior to his execution. I was to be that priest.”

Akitada said, “Tasuku, I did not tell them about you.”

His friend smiled. “I know, but they found out. I think she kept some poems of mine. And the man whose summerhouse I rented for our meetings identified me. In any case, I refused the killer’s request, claiming my lack of experience, but I was told that the condemned man had insisted on me by name. That was when I realized they knew. The emperor’s secretary told me when and where Asagao had died and then left me to the agony of my guilt.”

“It was cruel.”

“Cruel? No. I told you I watched the poor wretch die. It took a very long time. No one touched me.”

Akitada said angrily, “They may not have touched you, but it was a terrible vengeance nevertheless. And don’t waste your sympathy on that animal. He killed two poor women after using and abusing them and might have continued his bloody career if I had not guessed that he had murdered Lady Asagao.”

“You guessed?” The luminous eyes probed Akitada’s.

“Perhaps the Lady Asagao had a hand in it.” Akitada shivered again. “The blue flower fragment came into my possession in Kazusa.”

His friend opened his hand and looked at the tiny ornament in his palm. “It was part of her hair ornament. A gift from the emperor.”

“Her murderer gave it to the woman he later killed. She sold it to a peddler, who sold it to me. At the same time, a strange ghost story was traveling around the city, a story of a demon with a flaming face who killed a noble lady in an abandoned temple in the capital. He robbed her of her jewelry, then slashed her throat and threw her down a well.”

Tasuku shuddered.

“Somehow the mystery of her disappearance and the flower fragment became fused in my feverish dreams with the strange ghost story. Later, I noticed similarities between the ghost story and a local murder. I reported my suspicions to the emperor and brought the prisoner back with me. But at no time did I think they would involve you. I am sorry.” Akitada searched his friend’s face anxiously for some reassurance.

To his relief, the other had regained his calm and smiled his sweet smile again. He said, “Thank you, my dear Akitada.” Tucking his hands into his sleeves and looking up at the moon, he murmured, “Like snowflakes melting in the moonlight, like the call of the owl fading at dawn, so ends this dream we live.” Then, with a sigh, he rose, bowed to Akitada, and slipped soundlessly from the veranda.

Akitada remained where he was. Tasuku had unknowingly reopened the wound. He closed his eyes, and the wintry scene shifted to the veranda of the Temple of the Merciful Goddess. Somewhere in the winter night an owl cried with a lonely, mournful sound. In the garden below a woman stepped into a man’s embrace. Then night passed into day, a gray and misty day when snow swirled, danced, and settled on her hair like an ornament of crystal beads. Or drops of dew.

“There you are! All alone in the dark?” Kosehira put his hand on Akitada’s shoulder. “Has Tasuku gone? Poor fellow.”

“Yes, Kosehira.” Akitada rose slowly, feeling like an old man with his cold-stiffened limbs and his thoughts of death. “I must be on my way, too. It has been a long day.”

“Nonsense, my friend.” Kosehira looked at him anxiously. “You mustn’t let Tasuku’s decision get you down. He was tired of the world and chose another life. You, on the other hand, have a great future ahead. Everybody says so. You will do great things someday. I feel it in my bones.” He firmly grasped Akitada’s arm and pulled him back toward the voices and the laughter, the sounds of zither and flute, and the world of men.

* * * *

HISTORICAL NOTE

uring the Heian period (794-1185), the Japanese government still loosely resembled the centralized empire of Tang China. Japan was ruled from the capital, Heian Kyo (Kyoto), by an emperor and an elaborate bureaucracy of court nobles. Outlying provinces were administered by governors who were dispatched from the capital every four years with their own staff to oversee law and order, as well as tax collection. At the end of their tenure, an inspector
(kageyushi)
would make sure that their accounts were in order. But the distances were great and transportation still in its infancy. Bandits and pirates roamed the land and the seas. Provincial landowners, including the great monasteries, set up their own armies to defend their property. Toward the end of the Heian period the military power of these private interests became a danger to the governors and to the empire.

The events in this novel are fictional, but they play out against the politics and culture of the eleventh century. Akitada is a member of the ruling class and serves in the central government in the capital, but he is on the very fringes of their slowly eroding power. He is well born, university educated, fluent in the Chinese language of government, imbued with Confucian ideals, and struggling to climb the administrative ladder of rank, power, and privilege. Unlike most of his peers, he consorts with the common people, is inept at poetry, and dislikes the Buddhist faith.

Early Japanese culture was based on that of ancient China. Thus, the calendar followed the sexagenary cycle, and era names were periodically designated by the court. To simplify greatly, there were twelve months and four seasons as in the West, but the year began about a month later. In the eleventh century, a workweek lasted six days, starting at dawn, and was followed by a day of leisure. As in the Chinese system, the day was divided into twelve two-hour segments. Time was kept by water clock and announced by guardsmen, watchmen, and temple bells. Generally only the upper class and some of the clergy could read and write. For the government official that meant being able to read and write Chinese in addition to Japanese. Upper-class women and others read and wrote in their native language. These women particularly were responsible for the rich and beautiful literature of the time. Lady Murasaki, a lady-in-waiting to one of the empresses, wrote the first novel in the world,
The Tale of Genji.

By the eleventh century, Japan had two religions, Shinto and Buddhism. They coexisted peaceably. Shinto, the native faith, venerates the
kami,
divine forces in nature that assure good harvests. Buddhism, imported from China via Korea, became extremely powerful through the court aristocracy. Shinto is responsible for many taboos. Buddhism stipulates a hereafter involving both hell and paradise. There were many well-endowed Buddhist temples, monasteries, and nunneries throughout the country.

Much of life during these times was restricted by innumerable superstitions, ranging from belief in ghosts and supernatural monsters to directional taboos that forbade certain directions on certain days of the year. Medicine was primitive in many ways and practiced both by university-trained physicians and monks or pharmacists. It involved herbal medicines, acupuncture, and moxabustion (the burning of herbal cones on the skin), as well as yin-yang correspondences and the sexagenary cycle.

Buddhism dictated a meat-free diet consisting mostly of rice, other grains, fruit, vegetables, and fish. People still drank rice wine in preference to tea. Men did not shave the top of their heads and wore their hair long and twisted into a topknot; women wore theirs loose, trailing to the floor, or tied with a ribbon. Upper-class women blackened their teeth. Depending on class, clothes were made from either silk or hemp. The upper classes layered their simple kimono-style garments lavishly, while peasants made do with short pants and shirt, or even just a loincloth. This was not yet the time of the samurai, but martial arts of all sorts were gradually becoming important. Nobles were certainly taught to ride, use a bow and a sword, and engage in battle, but most preferred writing poetry and participating in court ceremonial. Fighting with wooden swords
(kendo)
was known, but for the common man the weapon of choice was the staff or pole
(bo),
which was readily available and less expensive, hence Tora’s stick-fighting skills
(bo-jutsu).

The role of women in early Japanese society was restricted. Upper-class women spent most of their lives in the inner apartments of their parents’ or husband’s home, while the middle class and poor worked alongside their men. Upper-class women in the eleventh century could own property, but they were under the control of the men in their family. Lower-class women had more freedom but little leisure to enjoy it. Ayako is, of course, not typical of the women of her time, though sexual favors were freely given and taken in all classes, and noblemen not only practiced polygamy but conducted affairs on the side.

The issue of law and order is important for crime and detective fiction. In some ways, eleventh-century Japan was quite modern in this respect. It had a police force, judges, prisons, and a set of laws pertaining to crime and punishment. However, since Buddhism forbade killing, the worst that could happen to a murderer was that he would be condemned to exile at hard labor and his property and that of his family be confiscated. Interrogation permitted torture, since confession was necessary for conviction. Prisons were generally full but emptied periodically through general amnesties. As a result, crime of all sorts tended to flourish, to the great frustration of law-abiding citizens.

Kazusa province was part of what became modern Chiba prefecture, and the famous Tokaido highway, linking the eastern provinces to the capital, already existed, but much of the detail for Akitada’s journey and for life in Kazusa is fictional.

Some of the plots in
The Dragon Scroll
are loosely based on ancient Japanese tales. The pirate plot and the case of the missing lady-in-waiting were suggested by episodes in
Uji Shui Monogatari,
and the story of the three monks has its source in
Sannin Hoshi.