Thousand Shrine Warrior (6 page)

Beyond the gorge was another inhabited area, still well within Lord Sato's fief. The bikuni saw farmhouses scattered at intervals, smoke rising from roof-holes, going straight up into the clouds. Fine mist made the picture look flat, more like a painted screen than reality. Between the poor, thatched homes, every bit of arable land had been cleared for agricultural use, leaving the farmers vulnerable to highland storms. They must have replaced their roofs very often! Most of the fields, staggered up and down that further mountainside, already lay fallow. A few fanners were still busy on the land, preparing it for its winter's rest. From the bikuni's vantage point on the knoll, the industrious farmers looked like ants.

She imagined that the view from the castle was even more extraordinary. A full third of Sato's fief would be visible from that high place.

The mountainous regions of Kanno were harsh areas to live, it was true, but that gloominess that confronted her time and again was not explained by common hardship; for there was beauty all around, and enough arable land that peasants oughtn't suffer to excess. She was hard put to understand the source of the emotional shadows she sensed reaching out from the castle, affecting samurai estates, townsmen, temples, and farmers.

She looked again at the tiled roofs of temples, which stuck out from the forest where samurai homes were interspersed. Were they all abandoned or impoverished by Lord Sato's late decrees? If that were the case, it might explain everyone's reticence, having only lately been denied their usual avenues of worship. Nobody would elaborate the situation for her, not even Priest Bundori. She could not shake the feeling that something evaded her understanding, something that did not fit the most obvious explanation.

As she went down from the knoll toward the river, she saw beyond the bridge, where the hunters had come out from the woods. Servants afoot carried the downed hind by means of a pole cast through its bound legs. The creature's limp head bobbed from side to side. The fellow who was almost certainly Lord Sato rode to the fore of his entourage, his posture that of a conqueror home from wars. The bikuni was not impressed.

The guardhouse at the long bridge was capable of housing a lot of men if such were required, but presently there appeared to be only about a half-dozen lounging within. They were drinking saké from small cups, but didn't talk to one another very much. They shouldn't have been drinking while on guard, but they didn't seem to mind that Lord Sato had passed by, close enough to catch them in the act, had he been less absorbed in his hunt.

The guards saw the bikuni approaching and pointed at her. Two of the men looked annoyed, then put down their cups and came out of the building to bar her from the bridge.

“None pass without Lord Sato's invitation!” one of the men shouted. The other added, “Monks and nuns are especially unwelcome!”

The former rule was common enough, but the latter surprised the bikuni. It would be too audacious of her to question Lord Sato's policy, however. Instead, she spoke to the two guards in a courteous manner, though they were samurai of low status and red-faced from what they had been drinking.

“I have come to Kanno province,” said the bikuni, “in search of a young samurai of Omi province. He was rumored to have been adopted into the service of Lord Sato. That samurai's name was Yabushi when I knew him before, but no doubt he has changed it by now.”

As she spoke, the four samurai inside the large guardhouse slowly put aside their cups and came out to join the first two. Three additional men, who had not previously been visible when they were sitting within the open-fronted building, took up long spears and came out with the rest. All of them looked edgy, none was completely sober, and they watched the bikuni closely.

The two men she had been addressing did not reply. One of the other men, who seemed to be in charge, despite his youth, stepped in front of the others to say,

“Lots of samurai work for our Lord.” His implication was that the nun's query was too vague and stupid to be answerable.

“Still,” she said evenly, “not many from Omi province.” She watched the nine men carefully, for they were moving apart from one another, trying not to be obvious, though it was rather too clear that they were fanning out to surround her. She tried to clarify her query: “The friend I mentioned was of the Rooster Clan, an impoverished family despite a noble history. He had been able to maintain a ‘sympathy' allowance of less than fifty rice-shares of land only by continuous bribes to certain officials. You can imagine it was hard on his dignity. It was his good fortune, I was told, to make the acquaintance of one of Lord Sato's ministers who was on a mission to Omi. The minister was impressed by the young fellow's intelligence and swordsmanship, and hired him as a retainer in some high post almost immediately. That's the story I was told.”

“No man of Omi across the bridge,” said the leader among the nine.

“He would be younger than you,” said the bikuni. “He was small when I knew him.”

“No such man,” the head guard reiterated. He looked at her sternly. Though her own face was hidden beneath her amigasa, it yet seemed as though he looked her straight in the eyes, daring her to doubt his information.

“If you say it is so,” she replied, “there is no need for me to seek audience at the castle.”

“I say it is so,” he answered.

“Then I won't bother Lord Sato or his minister about it,” she said evenly, for if it turned out the guard was incorrect, he would lose face and be embarrassed. By his tone, she suspected any error was willful; but she must not prove him false in front of his men, even if they knew he lied. Also there was the matter of the other eight men's current position. They had her surrounded. A misstatement, and she could be forced to fight.

The guard said nothing more. He did not move. The nun spoke quietly:

“If you hear of such a fellow, perhaps you can tell him to visit a strolling nun at White Beast Shinto Shrine.”

She turned to start back along the road through the samurai estates. The men surrounding her on that side let her pass. She did not look back at the men guarding the bridge, but was aware they watched her until she was out of their sight.

Bundori rarely came into the village, for he was ascetically minded and tended exclusively to his duties—exhausting duties, since he was the sole caretaker of an ancient mountain shrine. Usually he was welcomed heartily whenever he did decide to come into town; in fact, his visits used to be an event. In recent months, for the most part, he went ignored on his rare trips, except where children were concerned. Children were too innocently disreputable to understand or obey decrees that forbade catering to the needs of any priest. As they seemed disrespectful in their actions toward the priest, any spy for Lord Sato or Kuro the Darkness would not complain about the children's attention to Bundori.

It was a bleak-spirited village and Bundori was like a patch of light hurrying up the street. Children flocked to that light the way moths gather around a paper lantern in the night. Their dirty faces grew smiles. Their little voices rose up in laughter. Their tiny, calloused hands fluttered about, trying to touch the green-gray garments of the Shinto priest. All the while they teased him about living with birds, and being like a bird himself, or half bird, the other half monkey. He didn't mind them at all, although he pretended to be annoyed, since that was the response they were seeking. He looked like some sort of mother duck, chased about by her rambunctious youngsters. The merry sound of their silly parade was the first evidence of happiness the emotionally repressed village had experienced since the last time Bundori had paid a visit.

Yet all this happy noise came to a sudden halt when a mounted samurai appeared at the low end of the street. He was a huge man, made monstrous on his big horse, a wide wicker hat upon his head, and a longbow sticking up high at his back. He rode into the village slowly, and had a second horse tethered to the first. Strapped upon the second horse were three dead men. They were twisted, hideous corpses. One had his head completely severed, tied to a saddle, jostling from side to side. The staring eyes of the dead men were white as porcelain.

The mounted warrior passed slowly through the village, as though wishing everyone to see that three samurai had somehow been slain. He did not stop anywhere, but continued right up to the bridge leading to the samurai estates. There could be trouble about the dead men, unless someone confessed right away.

The terrible sight sent the children fleeing into their dark houses, and mothers sealed the doors. Shop-owners closed their businesses. Priest Bundori stepped into a teashop just as the maid there was closing up. Perhaps the shops would reopen in a while. More likely, fear would keep the village silent for the rest of the day.

It had not been necessary for the samurai to come through the village. There was a larger, straighter road, which bypassed the village, a more direct route to the castle, if that were where he was heading. But the samurai had wanted the villagers to fret, to wonder what would happen, to wait in gloomy anticipation for Lord Sato or his religious instructor Kuro the Darkness to propose some scheme of retribution. Then again, there might be no repercussions at all. Such uncertainty only increased everybody's tendency toward discouragement.

When the mounted samurai and the second horse burdened with corpses had vanished over the bridge, Priest Bundori came out of the inn to find he was the only one to brave the cold light of day. Even his visit could not cheer the town now.

The green-clad Shintoist scurried bowlegged along the street and came to the establishment of the artisan who repaired musical instruments. The door had been closed only a few moments before, along with the rest of the shops in the village. Bundori found it wasn't locked and opened it without calling for permission. He stood inside the door for a couple of seconds, bowing like a pecking duck, and made a loud greeting. The artisan was in a bad enough mood because of the passing samurai, and was twice-irritated by the priest's uninvited entry. Thus the artisan continued working nimbly and quietly on a certain instrument, as though nobody stood in his door.

Bundori slipped off his sandals and leapt onto the raised part of the floor, oblivious to the artisan's attitude. He burst into a string of queries: “Did a strolling nun by the name of Tomoe Gozen stop by here by any chance? Ah! That's her flute-bag over there! Where did she go from here? I must find her right away! How soon will you have her shakuhachi repaired? I've got to keep her at my shrine for a while before she gets mixed up in any trouble!” He tossed his hands about as he talked, the very epitome of an hysterical fellow. He hovered over the artisan, who sat working busily on the floor. The artisan managed to get a reply in edgewise:

“I can't answer everything at once!”

“You should be working on her shakuhachi right this minute! She has to be on her way before the windstorms start up! What if it snows? She'll be stuck here through the winter! Why are you bothering with that silly koto?”

“This koto belongs to Lord Sato's daughter, who broke it in a fit of unhappiness,” said the artisan. “One of her personal guards brought it to me and paid me in advance to repair it. Even if I had not been paid already, it does no good to put things off where the castle is concerned.”

“I've heard about her ladyship's sadness,” said Bundori, “so I'll forgive you wasting your time like this. But what about that shakuhachi?”

“The nun hasn't any means of paying me at all, but I agreed to do it somehow when there's time. Did you say her name was Tomoe Gozen? I've heard of her before!”

“Well, she didn't exactly say that was her name, but she said it was all right if I go ahead and think that's who she is. Don't tell anybody! I think she's had some trouble in other provinces and doesn't want people to know which way she goes. I've heard of a Lord Wada, favored by the Shogun, who collects warrior-wives like they were rare swords. He would like to add Tomoe Gozen to his collection, though she might not willingly return to the world from her retirement.”

The artisan was interested in this gossip, and, much as the children of the village, he was glad of the warm-hearted glow Priest Bundori brought with him everywhere. The artisan said, “But it could be that she's just an ordinary wandering nun. She has two swords, it's true, but not all retired women warriors were once famous. Why would she come to a backwoods fief like this one if she were Tomoe Gozen?”

“Maybe she doesn't require a reason. Maybe I'm wrong about who she is. But that is not what I'm here to talk to you about. You must fix her shakuhachi in two or three days at the most. Without fail! She wants to make a stone lantern before she is willing to leave this place. If she lets me help her, it won't take more than three days. I've already arranged to have a soft piece of stone delivered to White Beast Shrine, after dark so that Lord Sato's spies won't see the stonecutter make his overdue offering to me. You haven't made an offering to the shrine in a long time either! What will it cost to fix the flute? One zeni? Two?”

“Ordinarily it would cost five!” said the artisan, suddenly indignant, though only half as upset as he acted, since indignation was a better feeling than the gloom he had felt before Priest Bundori had started being typically a nuisance. “I told her she should try to raise at least three!”

“Well, raise your price to ten zeni and I'll write that in my ledger as your contribution to the shrine. Erase your sin!”

“Don't write me in your ledger!” the artisan argued. “What if Lord Sato's spies steal it? Can't give anything to any shrines or temples because it insults the Lotus sect! A sin to disobey one's Lord!”

“I'll write in that you gave one hundred zeni unless the shakuhachi is done in a couple of days!” the Shinto priest threatened. “Where did the nun go when she left here?”