The Heike Story (15 page)

"Well, Kiyomori, how are you? Come in, come in," said a voice that Kiyomori recognized as one he had heard many times in his own home. Kiyomori bowed low in the direction of a covered gallery from which the voice came.

When Tokinobu had shown him into a sparsely furnished but immaculately clean room, Kiyomori delivered the letter from his father.

"Ah—thank you," said Tokinobu, taking it with an air of already knowing what the letter contained. "Isn't this the first time you've been here?"

Kiyomori responded punctiliously to Tokinobu's small talk with the sensation of facing an examiner at the academy. It was not so much Tokinobu's rather pedantic air, but his preoccupation with thoughts of his elder daughter that made itself felt in his conversation. Kiyomori regarded Tokinobu's unkempt beard and his high aquiline nose with distaste, but his thoughts were elsewhere, busy with entrancing imaginings. He soon realized that he was being received with a hospitality which a mere messenger hardly deserved. Wine was served and trays of food were brought in. In spite of his unpolished manners, Kiyomori's sensibilities could throb as delicately as harp-strings in a faint movement of air. He was unperceptive neither of what his father had lately had in mind nor of the train of thought that now occupied Tokinobu. Kiyomori, who appeared rather reserved at first, not from any need to be cautious, but because it was his nature to reserve judgment, resettled himself comfortably on the kneeling-cushion, resolving to put off his constraint. He would drink liberally, give his host an opportunity to observe his young guest, while Kiyomori would see for himself whether Tokinobu's daughter was pretty or not. She appeared from time to time and then withdrew tantalizingly; she finally came in and seated herself near her father. She was mature and, though not beautiful, fair-skinned and oval-faced; Kiyomori also noted with relief that her nose was not aquiline like her father's. She was obviously her father's favorite.

"This is Tokiko, the elder of the two you saw in the garden," said Tokinobu, introducing her. "Eh?—the younger, Shigeko, is still a child, and I doubt she will come even if I call her." Though he smiled genially, weariness and age showed in the eyes glowing with the effects of wine. He began to reminisce about Tokiko's mother, whose death left him, like Tadamori, to rear his children alone. As the wine loosened his tongue, Tokinobu tearfully confessed that he had not been able to come to terms with the world, and had failed to give his daughters the usual joys of a carefree girlhood. With an involuntary side-look at Tokiko, he added: "She is nineteen, almost twenty, and yet she can hardly utter a word before guests."

Nineteen! Kiyomori was dismayed. She was old! But he reflected that it was hardly her fault that she was still unmarried, for his father, Tadamori, was in part responsible for this. He thought of his father and the unrelenting hostility of the Palace courtiers. They had plotted for several years to oust Tadamori from his favored position, until his failure to apprehend Morito provided them with the long-sought chance to hound him from the Palace in disgrace.

Kiyomori recalled what his father had recently told him about Tokinobu, and felt impelled to reconsider his opinions about Tokiko. Tokinobu had been indirectly involved in Tadamori's unfortunate relations with the Palace courtiers, and the role that he had played had affected him and his daughters adversely. Their childhood had in many ways resembled Kiyomori's, and he understood now how greatly indebted his father was to Tokinobu.

To understand the circumstances leading to Tadamori's retirement from the Palace, it will be necessary to go back to March 1131, when Kiyomori was fifteen. At that time the great temple of Sanju-Sangen-Do with its one thousand images of Buddha was completed and the entire capital participated in an elaborate dedication ceremony. On that occasion the ex-Emperor Toba not only presented Tadamori with additional manors, but gave him the rank of a courtier, an unprecedented honor to a warrior, which so affronted the court nobles that they agreed to assassinate Tadamori on the night of a Palace banquet at which he was to appear. Fear more than jealousy was at the bottom of this plot.

An anonymous letter tossed into Tadamori's house on the eve of the banquet warned him of an attempt on his life. On receiving the message, Tadamori had smiled coolly, saying that he would meet the challenge as a warrior, and on the night of the banquet he appeared at the Palace carrying his sword. There, in sight of the suspicious courtiers, he drew out his blade to test its edge against his topknot. The steel, glinting like ice in the light of the candles, filled the watchful courtiers with misgivings. A State Minister, who was passing along one of the open galleries of the Palace just then, noticed two suspicious-looking figures, fully armed, crouching in a corner of the inner court, and called out to them; an officer of the Sixth Rank soon arrived to challenge the intruders, and received the reply: "We are trusted housemen of Tadamori of the Heike. We have been warned that harm might come to our master. We shall leave only at the risk of our lives."

The courtiers, who soon heard of this, were dismayed. On the following day, led by a Minister, they demanded that Tadamori be punished for appearing at the Palace armed and accompanied by his soldiers. The ex-Emperor, troubled, summoned Tadamori for an explanation. With suitable expressions of regret, Tadamori calmly produced the sword, unsheathed it, and showed that it was only a blade of bamboo painted silver. His house men, he said, had only acted as all loyal retainers would to their liege lord. The monarch commended Tadamori for his wisdom, but his enemies at Court grew even more uneasy with every token of the ruler's regard for Tadamori, and when they heard that it was Tokinobu who had warned Tadamori of their plot, they hounded him from the Court. Tokinobu, already well along in years, soon found all opportunities to advancement closed.

* * *

"Look out, there's another puddle!" young Tokitada shouted excitedly, waving his flaming torch at Kiyomori's feet as they groped their way past a bamboo grove.

Kiyomori was intoxicated—completely overcome with drink. Though he professed himself able to find his way home, Tokinobu had been dubious, and at Tokiko's insistence sent the boy to accompany Kiyomori as far as the footpath on Seventh Avenue.

By the time Kiyomori was ready to leave, Tokiko had been far from retiring; she had talked and laughed, and Kiyomori thought he perceived a certain warmth in the glances she gave him. But, alas, she was nineteen! This bothered him; she was more like an elder sister. He wondered whether it was because he compared her with Ruriko. None the less, he decided to tell his father that Tokiko's appearance and disposition pleased him perfectly. What had really captured his fancy was Tokiko's sixteen-year-old brother, Tokitada.

"Ho, Lion," Kiyomori teased.

Waving his torch back and forth in glee, Tokitada shot back: "What, you lackey!"

"Oh? No lackey, but a young warrior."

"A young warrior is only an overgrown lackey!"

"So, my young blade, didn't I find you on the street at a cockfight?"

"And you, gambling! Guilty, too! Now what has my father been telling you?"

Kiyomori laughed. "Here's another one just like me, you droll one!"

"Another what?"

"Another young toad."

"A young toad is a tadpole. I'll bring Lion to peck at you."

"I give up, I give up," Kiyomori protested. "Give me your hand—here's the path—pledge a lifelong friendship!"

The wintry gusts from the Northern Hills swept the dead leaves before them unmercifully, hurling them against the miserable huddle of huts Kiyomori had seen that afternoon. Blown and twisted by the wind, Kiyomori vanished into the night, while a small figure on the footpath waved to him with a torch.

It was customary for Tadamori's sons to appear every morning before their father and to salute him formally. Even Norimori, the youngest, was there to receive his father's greetings, delivered with grave courtesy. And it was usual for Tadamori to say a few cheering words to his motherless sons, who welcomed the ritual as they did the daily rising of the sun.

Kiyomori recounted the happenings of the previous day:

"The honorable Tokinobu sent no reply to your letter. I could not find him at the Central Granary, so I went to his home. In fact, I had some difficulty finding my way around that district and barely succeeded in finding him. He was most hospitable, and I didn't get away until quite late, and he sent you his greetings."

Kiyomori then went on to relate how he had met Toba Sojo.

"So the Abbot seems content with drawing. . . . He is of noble birth, and had he wished might have distinguished himself among his peers," Tadamori mused, as though secretly ashamed of his present inactivity.

"That's his nature; a most unusual person," Kiyomori replied curtly, feeling that his father's remark was somewhat beside the point, for he had fully expected his father to inquire at length about Tokinobu and his daughter Tokiko. Contrary to his expectations, Tadamori had nothing to say that even broached the subject of a match. Instead he said: "And, by the way, I hear that his majesty will soon leave on a pilgrimage to Anrakuju-in Temple."

"Yes, his majesty leaves on the morning of October 15 for the dedication of the Great Hall. I hear he will spend two or three nights at the Detached Palace at Takeda," Kiyomori replied.

"You must be busy at the Guard Office. I'm sure you haven't neglected your duties since I resigned, and I hope you are exerting yourself doubly in serving his majesty."

"I do, Father, but the warriors there are dissatisfied. They now have you as an excuse for airing their grievances. They haven't forgotten how the Court treated Yoshiiyй of the Genji, who spent several years quelling uprisings in the northeast. Though he was successful, the supreme council ruled that he had done this entirely on his own and refused to recompense him, so that Yoshiiyй was obliged to sell his house and lands; even then he was barely able to pay off his soldiers. Even you, Father, know that your last campaign in the west—brilliant as it was—was rewarded so meagerly that there was barely enough to share with our men. All that came of it was this—this same poverty of ours."

"That is the warrior's fate."

"And is it right for the aristocrats to withhold all privilege from the warrior and see that he remains forever under their heel? We know that that is their intention, but every warrior is anxious about the future."

"That does not matter, for we do not serve them, but his majesty."

"But they have the power of life or death over us and can act in the name of the throne, which they also serve. We have no direct appeal to his majesty. What, then, are we to do? That's why the warriors have become disheartened. You must after all come back to the Palace."

"The time hasn't come yet. They are better off without me just now."

"And there's talk that Tameyoshi of the Genji, who has been under a cloud for some time, is in favor again at the Palace. There are rumors, too, that Yorinaga, the Minister of the Left, has interceded for him with his majesty. All this gossip has been disquieting."

"Heita, you'll be late. You should arrive at your duties early. And remember, you have the pilgrimage before you."

"Forgive me if I have offended you," Kiyomori said, sensing that he had somehow displeased his father, in whom he perceived a firmness and purposefulness which he lacked before.

The Detached Palace at Takeda, south of the capital, was a favorite retreat of the ex-Emperor Toba, who found the view across the Kamo and Katsura rivers so pleasing that he had ordered the Anrakuju-in Temple to be built here. As the time of the dedication drew near, the sovereign expressed a desire for a three-storied pagoda for the temple group, and invited Nakamikado Iyenari, now retired from the active life of the Court, to join the pilgrimage, directing him to draw up plans for the pagoda and to supervise its construction.

An unending line of noblemen's carriages, processions of priests in their vestments, and crowds of inquisitive sightseers from all over the countryside made their way to the temple, where the destitute swarmed like flies to receive alms. Numberless Guards were posted along the route; and on the banks of the rivers, around the hamlet of Takeda, and wherever they camped, great bonfires lighted up the sky at night.

The ex-Emperor's stay lasted two days. Toward evening of the second day a chill rain fell and the scene, which had been alive with people, became strangely still. The Great Hall loomed through the darkness in all its magnificence, shimmering dreamlike in the reflected light of the many watch-fires.

The Guards were settling at last to a late evening meal in their temporary shelters. An allotment of imperial wine had been distributed among, them on the previous day, but they had all been too busy to taste it. Some Guards were drying their hunting cloaks at the fires; others had already taken off their armor and were passing around wine-cups and attacking their food.