The Samurai's Daughter (23 page)

16

Ninth month, year of the rat, the ninth year of the Meiji era (October 1876)

‘
HAI! HAI!
’

Hoarse yells announced the approach of a train of packhorses, snorting and swaying up the hill, snapping branches and trampling leaves as they lumbered along the narrow track. Picking his way between hoof holes overflowing with fetid water, Nobu stubbed his toe on a stone and cursed. His straw sandal had fallen apart. His brother Yasutaro’s broad back was disappearing up the path.

‘Wait!’

Crouching, he flung the broken sandal to the side of the road and untied a fresh one from his pack. He’d lost track of how many he’d worn out.

Yasu leaned against a tree trunk, resting his weight on his good leg, and rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. His face was smeared with mud. ‘Can’t be much further,’ he muttered. They set off again immediately, stepping off the trail to let the line of steaming horses with their huge loads push by.

Autumn had come with a vengeance. The fiery heat of summer had been followed by the torrential rains of the typhoon season.
Back
in Tokyo the trees had just begun to change colour but up here in the north they’d lost nearly all their leaves.

The army had given Nobu and his fellow cadets a few days’ holiday in the ninth month to celebrate the Festival of First Fruits. No one quite knew what was going on down south but everyone suspected that they would soon be called up for active duty and it would be a good chance to receive the blessings of their parents before going into battle. But Nobu had an extra reason for making the long journey north. He had a special task to perform, a last responsibility to Jubei, who had been a loyal friend to them all.

He grimaced and thumped his fist into his hand and groaned aloud as the events of the summer came flooding back. Out in the city on his own, away from his classmates, without the discipline and structure of army life, he’d gone completely mad. It was the only way to explain the terrible things he’d done. He’d forgotten himself, let himself be driven by his feelings. If he’d needed a woman that badly he should have gone to a professional, paid for a night’s pleasure, then left and forgotten all about it, as other men did, he told himself – as any man with half a grain of sense would have done. But instead he’d let himself be led by the nose like a packhorse by shameful desires entirely unsuited to a samurai and ended up chasing after the sort of girl who could only bring disaster. He’d even climbed into an enemy mansion. It had been pure craziness, asking for trouble. It was a dreadful, humiliating episode in his life and he’d done well to put it behind him.

The lasting result of his reckless behaviour had been Jubei’s death. To the end of his days he’d never forget that fearful night. After he’d fled the scene of the fight, he’d pulled himself together and stumbled over to Yasu’s. They’d flagged down a rickshaw and rushed back to the silent road alongside the Kitaoka estate, praying that Jubei’s body hadn’t been ripped to pieces by wild dogs. They’d driven up and down beside the long featureless wall while Nobu tried to remember exactly where the fight had taken
place
. Then he’d seen the blackened ground and trampled grass.

They’d found Jubei’s body, still intact but cold, heavy and stiff, and taken it home and the next day summoned a priest to perform rites and sent letters reporting the death to Jubei’s family in the north. To Nobu’s relief it hadn’t struck his brothers as strange or unlikely that he and Jubei had got into a fight with some Satsuma men; with a couple of hotheads like them, it was not surprising they’d get into trouble. His brothers hadn’t asked many questions and he hadn’t had to tell many lies.

Yasu had told him sternly, as his elder brother and Jubei’s friend and master, that when the opportunity arose he must take a portion of Jubei’s ashes to his parents. It was the proper thing to do. Yasu would go with him. It was out of the question to travel alone and he wanted to see their father and pay his respects at the family grave.

The ashes, in a small urn in Nobu’s pack, weighed heavy on his shoulders, reminding him with every step of what he’d done.

The brothers had been travelling for seven days now. When they’d left Tokyo, the Great North Road had been a splendid avenue lined with cedars and paved with neatly swept flagstones, broad and smooth enough for rickshaws to rattle by, throwing up dust. By the time they reached the mountains it had shrivelled to a muddy track, winding through woods above plunging ravines with pine trees growing out at crazy angles from the banks. Wealthy travellers jogged on stubborn nags beaten and dragged along by sweating grooms, but everyone, whether on foot or on horseback, had no choice but to move at the same slow pace.

Here in the north they were among friends who sympathized with the northern cause and at night they stayed at roadside inns or took shelter with kindly farmers. That day they’d left at dawn, climbing a narrow mountain path that wound endlessly up through curtains of mist, their breath puffing out like steam in the chilly air. They’d tramped through mulch and fallen leaves,
skirting
rocks and puddles and keeping an eye out for packhorse trains. Yellowing leaves drifted from the tangle of branches above them.

Sometimes they caught up with lines of travellers or overtook bent old ladies, hobbling side by side, their voices shrill in the mountain air, and now and then a bow-legged courier, naked except for a loincloth, bounded by with a box of letters on his leathery shoulder, leaping from rock to rock, shouting, ‘Clear the way, clear the way.’ Monkeys squatted on branches over their heads, shrieking, and wild deer sprang away into the woods. The brothers wore bells round their ankles and smacked their staffs against rocks to warn off bears and wild boar when they were on their own.

Even Nobu’s army training had not prepared him for walking from dawn to dusk, day after day. He’d given up on his heavy army boots and replaced them with straw sandals, but his feet were still covered in calluses and there was a fresh blister stinging at the side of his little toe. Nevertheless he was happy to be away from the crowded Tokyo streets, out in the fresh air and open country.

His legs ached so much he was seriously beginning to wonder if he’d ever make it to the top when suddenly the trees thinned and he stepped out of the canopy of leaves into bright sunlight. Yasu had thrown down his pack and was sitting on a rock, catching his breath. He jerked his chin towards the distant view. ‘Those mountains,’ he said, between pants. He shook his head. ‘You don’t even recognize them. It’s Aizu, the mountains of Aizu. Mount Bandai, where the bamboo leaves gleam with gold dust.’

Nobu shaded his eyes with his hand. Far below them was a dry brown plain with cloud shadows moving across it and hummocks like giant molehills, splotched in autumnal shades of yellow, red and orange. In the distance, sparkling against the sky, were rank upon rank of mountains, like the helmets of an advancing army. He’d been ten when they left their homeland. He remembered hobbling through the snow in a long line of refugees in his bare
feet
, dressed in rags, sucking on a stone to try to dull the hunger in his stomach. He’d seen nothing, paid attention to nothing except keeping close to his father.

Yasu looked up. Nobu hadn’t seen him smile since those distant days in Aizu. It made him look younger, handsome. ‘“Passing the barrier, we cross the Abukuma river. To the left the towering mountains of Aizu, to the right the districts of Iwaki, Soma and Miharu,”’ he declaimed. Nobu picked up the archaic language and cadence. He was quoting some ancient literary work.

The further they got from Tokyo, the lighter of step Yasu became. He still limped, he’d never lose that, but he no longer had that drawn, hungry, desperate look about him. He wore a jacket and patched-up leggings, like a peasant, but he’d shaken off his hangdog stoop and carried himself like the proud samurai he would have been if fate and the gods had not stepped in. He was himself again. He should have been an important man in their domain, Nobu thought, a scholar or a poet or a swordsman. But the gods or whoever it was that ruled men’s destinies had had a very different plan for him.

‘Matsuo Basho came this way,’ said Yasu, his eyes gleaming. ‘If you’d grown up in Aizu and had a proper education as you should have, you’d have had his words in your heart. Two hundred years ago, near enough. He was on his way north, like us, with a staff and a bundle and a sedge hat on his back, and as he walked he wrote haiku, on the landscape or some historical event that had happened there, or a flower or a plant or an insect, whatever took his fancy. He even wrote about his thin shanks. He kept a journal of his travels and called it
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
. People came from far away to sit at his feet and make haiku.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘I used to make haiku myself. I spent afternoons with friends, drinking and talking and composing linked verse. Now I’m just a soldier. No, not even that any more.’

He stared at the stony ground as if he expected to find Basho’s words written there, then looked up. The sun cast a fiery glow on
the
snowy peaks, making them shine like armour. ‘That smudge of grey at the end of the valley,’ he said, narrowing his eyes to slits. ‘It might be Aizu, or maybe it’s just my imagination. I’ve read that men in the desert, desperate for water, imagine that they see lakes and trees. Perhaps that happens in the mountains too.’

Peering into the distance, Nobu thought he caught a glimpse of smoke rising on the far side of the valley. He bit his lips, wondering what sort of home this would be that he was going back to. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the towering keep and sweeping roofs of White Crane Castle soaring over the maze of narrow streets, the squat black warehouses of the merchant district and the samurai homes with their sand-coloured walls.

In his mind he was back at the family house with its many rooms, in his child’s hakama with his two swords thrust in his sash, scampering through the tiled and gabled gate and across the courtyard, a servant hurrying behind with his books. He’d run past the front entrance where grandees arrived in palanquins to visit his father and grandfather, then race around to the family quarters and shout, ‘I’m back,’ as he kicked off his clogs in the entrance. His mother, grandmother and sisters would greet him on their hands and knees, bowing. He’d kneel by the fire, very serious, and tell them everything he’d done at school that day.

He remembered climbing trees, throwing snowballs in winter, playing with his friends on streets walled with snow so high it towered over his head and blanketed gardens and temple grounds and lay in a thick white layer on every roof. Then there’d been the ferment as the town prepared for enemy attack – people rushing about building barricades, lugging water barrels and piling up straw mats to douse and throw over cannonballs to stop them exploding, men patrolling the streets, people practising in deadly earnest with swords and muskets and at home his mother and sisters busily sewing uniforms.

But that was long ago. There was nothing of that left now, nothing at all.

A spasm of memory knocked the wind out of him like a punch
in
the stomach and he crumpled, blindly pretending to adjust his sandal to hide the tears that sprang to his eyes. He was ten years old again, standing frozen on the hillside, hearing a roar that seemed to come from the belly of some fire-breathing dragon, seeing the sky bathed crimson and black smoke billowing above the city. He’d seen tongues of flame. He’d wanted to run to his mother but his attendant grabbed his sleeve, shouting, ‘No, young master, no. You can’t go down there.’

Until that moment he’d been such a child he’d barely stopped to wonder why his mother had sent him out of town the previous day. ‘Be off with you,’ she’d said. ‘Go and stay with your auntie for a few days and help with the mushroom hunting.’ The city was in turmoil, none of his friends came out to play any more and his father and brothers had long since set off for the front. He’d happily agreed.

It was then, seeing the red glow filling the sky, feeling the searing heat, hearing the boom of cannon fire and the incessant rattle of guns like peas popping in a pan, that he’d suddenly realized. She’d sent him away to save him, to make sure at least one of the family survived. But in the end his father and brothers had made it through the fighting. It was the women who had perished. It had been more than a month before the cannon fire had stopped and longer still before the occupying troops allowed people into the shattered streets to look for where their houses had been and search the ashes for bones.

The brothers set off at first light the following day, heading for the smudge of grey at the end of the valley, and soon turned off the highway and took the road to Aizu. Gradually the pile of rocks in the lea of the mountains shaped itself into the outlines of buildings, but no matter how hard Nobu looked he couldn’t see White Crane Castle. When he was small he’d always been able to see it, perched above the city. But now there was nothing.

He scuffed at the stones that littered the path. ‘That’s not Aizu. It can’t be. You’ve made a mistake. We’ve taken a wrong turn.’

He secretly hoped that they had. The closer they got, the more he dreaded discovering what had happened to his old home.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Yasutaro, scowling. ‘How could I ever forget? This is the Aizu road. This is the way home.’

Nobu was stumbling along, brooding about his home, his family, about Jubei and his own stupid infatuation with Taka that had led to Jubei’s terrible death, when he saw something glinting in the undergrowth. It was white and smooth, like a stone. An animal bone, he thought. Then he saw another and another. He looked around, startled. There were bones everywhere, poking out of the ground, tangled in clumps of plume grass, hidden in maiden flower bushes, woven around with weeds, scattered in heaps across the plain. They were walking through a killing ground.

Suddenly Yasu threw his bundle down and plunged into the tangle of bushes, kicking and trampling the branches. He dug into the undergrowth and wrenched out something round, ripping off the stems and leaves that clung to it and brushing off the dirt. It was a skull, a human skull, stained black and brown and green but a human skull all the same. There were others lying around, weeds growing out of the eye sockets and shattered crowns. Nobu noticed shards of metal and shreds of fabric and leather and a piece of helmet half buried in the ground. The bones had been picked clean, there were no birds or dogs to be seen. The place was as still as a graveyard.