The Harsh Cry of the Heron (13 page)

It was the barest
outline of the extraordinary, turbulent journey that had led him to be the most
powerful man in the Three Countries.

Madaren said with
bitterness, ‘I saw you kneel before the golden statue. And I know from the
tales I hear that you have taken life.’

Takeo made the smallest
movement of assent with his head. He was wondering what she would demand from
him, what he could do for her: what, if anything, would heal her broken life.

‘I suppose our mother
and sister . . .’ he said with pain.

‘Both dead. I do not
even know where their bodies lie.’

‘I am sorry for
everything you must have suffered.’ He realized even as he spoke that his tone
was stilted, the words inadequate. The gulf between them was too huge. There
was no way that they could approach each other. If they had still shared the
same faith they might have prayed together, but now the childhood beliefs which
once united them formed a barrier that could not be overcome. The knowledge
filled him with distress and pity.

‘If you have need of
anything, you may approach the town authorities,’ he said. ‘I will make sure
you are looked after. But I cannot make our relationship public knowledge, and
I must ask you not to speak of it to anyone.’

He saw he had hurt
her, and felt the twist of pity again, yet he knew he could not allow her any
more place in his life than this: to be under his protection.

‘Tomasu,’ she said. ‘You
are my older brother. We have obligations towards each other. You are the only
family I have. I am aunt to your children. And I have a spiritual duty to you
too. I care for your soul. I cannot watch you go to Hell!’

He got to his feet
and walked away from her. ‘There is no Hell,’ he replied over his shoulder. ‘Other
than that which men make on earth. Do not attempt to approach me again.’

And the disciples of
the Enlightened One saw that tigers and their cubs were starving,’ Shigeko said
in her most pious voice, ‘and with no thought for their own lives they threw
themselves over the precipice and were dashed to death on the rocks below.

Then the tigers could
eat them.’

It was a warm
afternoon in early summer, and the girls had been told to study quietly inside
until the heat lessened. For a while they had diligently practised writing,
Shigeko demonstrating her elegant flowing hand, and then the strident drone of
the cicadas and the shimmering air had made them lazy and sleepy. They had been
out early, before sunrise while the day was still cool, and little by little
their limbs relaxed from the formal pose they sat in to write. Shigeko had been
easily persuaded to unroll the scroll of animal pictures and then to tell
stories.

But it seemed even
the best stories had to have a moral. Shigeko said with solemnity, ‘That’s the
example we should follow; we should give our own lives to be used for the
benefit of all sentient beings.’

Maya and Miki
exchanged glances. They loved their older sister unreservedly, but lately she
had become a little too fond of preaching to them.

‘Personally, I would
rather be one of the tigers,’ Maya said.

‘And eat the dead
disciples!’ her twin sister agreed.

‘Someone has to be
the sentient beings,’ Maya argued, seeing Shigeko frown.

Her eyes gleamed with
a secret knowledge, as they often did these days. She had just returned from
several weeks in Kagemura, the hidden Muto village, where her innate Tribe
skills had been trained and honed. Next it would be Miki’s turn. The twin girls
spent little time in each other’s company; they did not fully understand the
reason why, but knew it was connected with their mother’s feelings towards
them. She did not like to see them together. Their identical look repulsed her.
Shigeko, on the other hand, had always been fascinated by them, always took
their side and protected them, even when she could not tell them apart.

They did not like the
separations, but they had become accustomed to them. Shizuka consoled them,
telling them it would make the psychic bond between them strong. And so it did.
If Maya fell sick, Miki came down with a fever. Sometimes they met in dreams;
they were hardly able to discern between what happened in that other world and
what in the real world.

The world of the
Otori had many compensations -Shigeko, the horses, the beautiful surroundings
that their mother created everywhere she lived - but both of them preferred the
mysterious life of the Tribe.

The best times were
when their father came in secret to the Tribe village, sometimes bringing one
of them and taking the other back with him. For a few days they would be
together: they could show him what they had learned and the new skills that had
begun to appear. And he, who in the world of the Otori was usually distant and
formal, in the Muto world became a different person, a teacher like Kenji or
Taku, treating them with the same irresistible blend of strong discipline,
impossibly high expectations and constant affection. They bathed together in
the hot springs and splashed around him, as sleek as otter cubs, tracing the
scars on his skin that mapped his life, never tiring of hearing the story of
each one, starting with the terrible fight in which he had lost two fingers
from his right hand to the Kikuta Master Kotaro.

At the name Kikuta,
both girls unconsciously touched the tips of their fingers to the deep crease
that crossed their palm, marking them like their father, like Taku, as Kikuta.

It was a symbol of
the narrow line they walked between the worlds. Secretive by nature, they had
taken eagerly to deception and pretence. They knew their mother disapproved of
their Tribe skills, and that the warrior class in general believed them to be
sorcery: they had learned early that what might be proudly displayed in the
Muto village was to be kept hidden in the palaces of Hagi or Yamagata, but
sometimes the temptation to outwit their teachers, tease their sister or punish
someone who crossed them was too great.

‘You are like me when
I was a child,’ Shizuka had said when Maya had hidden for half a day without
moving inside a bamboo basket, or when Miki had climbed into the rafters as
lithe and swift as a wild monkey, invisible against the thatch. Shizuka was
rarely angry. ‘Enjoy these games,’ she’d said. ‘Nothing will ever be as
exciting.’

‘You are so lucky,
Shizuka. You were there at the fall of Inuyama! You fought with Father in the
war!’

‘Now Father says
there will be no more war in the Three Countries; we will never get to fight
properly.’

‘We pray there will not
be,’ Shigeko had said. The twins had groaned together.

‘Pray like your
sister that you will never know real war,’ Shizuka had warned them.

Maya returned to this
theme now, for war interested her even more than tigers. ‘If there is to be no
war, why do Father and Mother insist on us learning fighting skills?’ she
asked, for all three girls, like all children of the warrior class, learned the
ways of bow and horse and sword, taught by Shizuka and by Sugita Hiroshi or the
other great warriors of the Three Countries.

‘Lord Hiroshi says
preparing for war is the best defence against it,’ Shigeko replied.

‘Lord Hiroshi,’ Miki
whispered, elbowing Maya. Both twins giggled.

The colour rose in
Shigeko’s face. ‘What?’ she demanded.

‘You are always
telling us what Lord Hiroshi says, and then you blush.’

‘I was not aware of
it,’ Shigeko said, covering her embarrassment with formal speech. ‘Anyway, it
has no particular significance. Hiroshi is one of our instructors -and a very
wise one. It is natural I should have learned his maxims.’

‘Lord Miyoshi Gemba
is one of your instructors,’ Miki said. ‘But you rarely quote what he says.’

‘And he does not make
you turn red!’ Maya added.

‘I think you could do
considerably better at writing, sisters. You obviously need much more practice.
Take up the brush!’ Shigeko unrolled another scroll and began to dictate from
it. It was one of the ancient chronicles of the Three Countries, full of
difficult names and obscure events. Shigeko had had to learn all this history,
and the twins would have to as well. They might as well start now. It would
punish them for teasing her about Hiroshi and, she hoped, dissuade them from
mentioning the subject again. She resolved to be more careful, not to allow
herself the foolish pleasure of saying his name, not to gaze at him all the
time, and above all not to blush. Luckily he was not in Hagi at present, having
returned to Maruyama to oversee the bringing in of the harvest and the
preparations for the coming ceremony in which the domain would become hers.

He wrote often, for
he was the senior retainer and her parents expected her to know every detail
about her land. The letters were of course formal, but she liked looking at his
hand, a warrior’s writing style, bold and well formed, and he included information
that she knew was for her, about people who were special to her for some
reason, and above all about horses. He described each foal born and how they
were developing, and how the colts he and Shigeko had broken in together were
progressing. They discussed bloodlines and breeding, looking always for a
larger, stronger horse: the Maruyama horses were already a hand higher than
they had been twenty years ago, when Hiroshi was a child.

She missed him and
longed to see him again. She could not remember a time when she did not love
him: he had been like a brother to her, living in the Otori household, regarded
as a son of the family. He had taught her to ride, to use the bow and to fight
with the sword: he had also instructed her in the art of war, strategy and
tactics, as well as the art of government. She wished above all that he might
become her husband, but did not think it would ever be possible. He might be
her most valuable adviser, even her most treasured friend, but nothing more.

She had overheard enough
discussions about her marriage to be aware of that, and as she had now turned
fifteen she knew plans would soon be made for a betrothal, some match that
would strengthen her family’s position and underpin her father’s desire for
peace.

All these thoughts
ran through her mind as she read slowly and carefully from the scroll. The
twins’ hands were aching and their eyes itching by the time she had finished.
Neither of them dared make any further comment, and Shigeko relented of her
sternness. She corrected their work with kindness, made them practise the
characters they had misstroked only a few dozen times, and then, since the sun
was descending towards the sea and the air was a little cooler, suggested a
walk before the evening’s training.

The twins, chastened
by the severity of their punishment, agreed docilely.

‘We will go to the
shrine,’ Shigeko announced, cheering her sisters immensely, for the shrine was
sacred to the river god and to horses.

‘Can we go by the
weir?’ Maya pleaded.

‘Certainly not,’
Shigeko replied. ‘The weir is only used by urchins, not by the daughters of
Lord Otori. We will walk to the stone bridge. Call Shizuka and ask her to come
with us. And I suppose we had better take some men.’

‘We don’t need men.’

‘Can we take our
swords?’ Maya and Miki spoke at once.

‘For a visit to the
shrine, in the centre of Hagi? We will not need swords.’

‘Remember the attack
at Inuyama!’ Miki reminded her.

‘A warrior should
always be prepared,’ Maya said in a passable mimicry of Hiroshi.

‘Maybe you need a
little more writing practice,’ Shigeko said, looking as if she would sit down
again.

‘Let it be as you
say, older sister,’ Miki said quickly. ‘Men, no swords.’

Shigeko deliberated
for a few moments over the perennial question of the palanquin: whether to
insist on the girls being carried in obscurity or to allow them to walk. None
of them cared for the palanquin, for its uncomfortable motion and confinement,
but it was more suitable to be so transported, and she knew their mother did
not like the twin girls to be seen together in public. On the other hand, this
was Hagi, their home town, less formal and austere than Inuyama, and her
restless sisters might be calmed and tired after walking. Tomorrow Shizuka
would take Miki to the Muto village, Kagemura, and Shigeko would be left with
Maya, to wonder at the new skills and secret knowledge she had acquired, to
console her in her loneliness, and to help her learn all that Miki had learned
while she was away. Shigeko needed to walk herself, to be distracted for a few
moments by the vibrant life of the city, its narrow streets and tiny shops
filled with a variety of produce and craft: the first of the summer fruit,
apricots and plums, young sweet beans and green vegetables, eels lashing in
buckets, crabs and small silver fish thrown onto hot grills to sizzle, die and
be eaten in an instant. And then the makers of lacquer and pottery, of paper
and silk clothes. Behind the broad main avenue that led from the castle gates
to the stone bridge lay a whole delightful world that the girls were rarely
allowed to visit. Two guards walked ahead of them and two behind; a maidservant
brought a small bamboo basket filled with flasks of wine and other offerings,
including carrots for the shrine horses. Shizuka was beside Maya, and Miki
accompanied Shigeko. They all wore wooden clogs and light cotton summer robes.
Shigeko held a sunshade, for her skin was as white as her mother’s and she
feared the sun, but the twins had the golden-coloured skin of their father, and
anyway could not be bothered with protecting it.