Across the Nightingale Floor (10 page)

Shortly after that, the maids came
to spread out the beds and put out the lamps. For a long time I lay sleepless,
listening to the sounds of the night. The evening's revelations marched slowly
through my mind, scattered, re-formed, and marched past again. My life no
longer belonged to me. But for Lord Shigeru I would be dead now. If he had not
run into me by accident, as he said, on the mountain path . . .

Was it really by accident?
Everyone, even Kenji, accepted his version: It had all happened on the spur of
the moment, the running boy, the threatening men, the fight . . .

I relived it all in my mind. And I
seemed to recall a moment when the path ahead was clear. There was a huge tree,
a cedar, and someone stepped out from behind it and seized me—not by accident,
but deliberately. I thought of Lord Shigeru and how little I really knew about
him. Everyone took him at face value: impulsive, warmhearted, generous. I
believed him to be all these things, but I couldn't help wondering what lay
beneath. I'm not giving him up, he had said. But why would he want to adopt one
of the Tribe, the son of an assassin? I thought of the heron, and how patiently
it waited before it struck.

The sky was lightening and the
roosters were crowing before I slept.

———«»———«»———«»———

The guards had a lot of fun at my
expense when Muto Kenji was installed as my teacher.

“Watch out for the old man, Takeo!
He's pretty dangerous. He might stab you with the brush!”

It was a joke they never seemed to
tire of. I learned to say nothing. Better they should think me an idiot than
that they should know and spread abroad the old man's real identity. It was an
early lesson for me. The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to
you or in your presence. I began to wonder how many blank-faced, seemingly
dull-witted but trustworthy servants or retainers were really from the Tribe,
carrying out their work of intrigue, subterfuge, and sudden death.

Kenji initiated me into the arts of
the Tribe, but I still had lessons from Ichiro in the ways of the clans. The
warrior class was the complete opposite of the Tribe. They set great store by
the admiration and respect of the world, and their reputation and standing in
it. I had to learn their history and etiquette, courtesies and language. I
studied the archives of the Otori, going back for centuries, all the way to
their half-mythical origins in the Emperor's family, until my head was reeling
with names and genealogies.

The days shortened, the nights grew
colder. The first frosts rimed the garden. Soon the snow would shut off the
mountain passes, winter storms would close the port, and Hagi would be isolated
until spring. The house had a different song now, muffled, soft, and sleeping.

Something had unlocked a mad hunger
in me for learning. Kenji said it was the character of the Tribe surfacing
after years of neglect. It embraced everything, from the most complex
characters in writing to the demands of swordplay. These I learned
wholeheartedly, but I had a more divided response to Kenji's lessons. I did not
find them difficult—they came all too naturally to me—but there was something
about them that repelled me, something within me that resisted becoming what he
wanted me to be.

“It's a game,” he told me many
times. “Play it like a game.” But it was a game whose end was death. Kenji had
been right in his reading of my character. I had been brought up to abhor
murder, and I had a deep reluctance to take life.

He studied that aspect of me. It
made him uneasy. He and Lord Shigeru often talked about ways to make me
tougher.

“He has all the talents, save that
one,” Kenji said one evening in frustration. “And that lack makes all his
talents a danger to him.”

“You never know,” Shigeru replied.
“When the situation arises, it is amazing how the sword leaps in the hand,
almost as though it has a will of its own.”

“You were born that way, Shigeru,
and all your training has reinforced it. My belief is that Takeo will hesitate
in that moment.”

“Unnh,” the lord grunted, moving
closer to the brazier and pulling his coat around him. Snow had been falling
all day. It lay piled in the garden, each tree coated, each lantern wearing a
thick white cap. The sky had cleared and frost made the snow sparkle. Our
breath hung in the air as we spoke.

Nobody else was awake, just the
three of us, huddled round the brazier, warming our hands on cups of hot wine.
It made me bold enough to ask, “Lord Otori must have killed many men?”

“I don't know that I've kept a
count,” he replied. “But apart from Yaegahara, probably not so very many. I
have never killed an unarmed man, or killed for pleasure, as some are corrupted
into. Better you should stay the way you are than come to that.”

I wanted to ask, Would you use an
assassin to get revenge? But I did not dare. It was true that I disliked
cruelty and shrank from the idea of killing. But every day I learned more about
Shigeru's desire for revenge. It seemed to seep from him into me, where it fed
my own desire. That night I slid open the screens in the early hours of the
morning and looked out over the garden. The waning moon and a single star lay
close together in the sky, so low that they looked as if they were
eavesdropping on the sleeping town. The air was knife-cold.

I could kill , I thought. I could
kill Iida. And then: I will kill him. I will learn how.

A few days after that, I surprised
Kenji and myself. His ability to be in two places at once still fooled me. I'd
see the old man in his faded robe, sitting, watching me while I practiced some
sleight of hand or backwards tumble, and then his voice would call me from
outside the building. But this time, I felt or heard his breath, jumped towards
him, caught him round the neck, and had him on the ground before I even
thought, Where is he?

And to my amazement my hands went
of their own accord to the spot on the artery in the neck where pressure brings
death.

I had him there for only a moment. I
let go and we stared at each other.

“Well,” he said. “That's more like
it!”

I looked at my long-fingered,
clever hands as if they belonged to a stranger.

My hands did other things I had not
known they could do. When I was practicing writing with Ichiro, my right hand
would suddenly sketch a few strokes, and there would be one of my mountain
birds about to fly off the paper, or the face of someone I did not know I
remembered. Ichiro, cuffed me round the head for it, but the drawings pleased
him, and he showed them to Lord Shigeru.

He was delighted, and so was Kenji.

“It's a Kikuta trait,” Kenji
boasted, as proud as if he'd invented it himself. “Very useful. It gives Takeo
a role to play, a perfect disguise. He's an artist: He can sketch in all sorts
of places and no one will wonder what he can hear.”

Lord Shigeru was equally practical.
“Draw the one-armed man,” he commanded.

The wolfish face seemed to jump of
its own accord from the brush. Lord Shigeru stared at it. “I'll know him
again,” he muttered.

A drawing master was arranged, and
through the winter days my new character evolved. By the time the snow melted,
Tomasu, the half-wild boy who roamed the mountain and read only its animals and
plants, was gone forever. I had become Takeo, quiet, outwardly gentle, an
artist, somewhat bookish, a disguise that hid the ears and eyes that missed
nothing, and the heart that was learning the lessons of revenge.

I did not know if this Takeo was
real or just a construction created to serve the purposes of the Tribe, and the
Otori.

The bamboo grass had turned
white-edged and the maples had put on their brocade robes. Junko brought Kaede
old garments from Lady Noguchi, carefully unpicking them and resewing them with
the faded parts turned inwards. As the days grew colder she was thankful that
she was no longer in the castle, running through the courtyards and up and down
steps as snow fell on frozen snow. Her work became more leisurely: She spent
her days with the Noguchi women, engaged in sewing and household crafts,
listening to stories and making up poems, learning to write in women's script.
But she was far from happy.

Lady Noguchi found fault with
everything about her: She was repelled by her left-handedness, she compared her
looks unfavorably to her daughters', she deplored her height and her thinness.
She declared herself shocked by Kaede's lack of education in almost everything,
never admitting that this might be her fault.

In private, Junko praised Kaede's
pale skin, delicate limbs, and thick hair, and Kaede, gazing in the mirror
whenever she could, thought that maybe she was beautiful. She knew men looked
at her with desire, even here in the lord's residence, but she feared all men.
Since the guard's assault on her, their nearness made her skin crawl. She
dreaded the idea of marriage. Whenever a guest came to the house, she was
afraid he might be her future husband. If she had to come into his presence
with tea or wine, her heart raced and her hands shook, until Lady Noguchi
decided she was too clumsy to wait on guests and must be confined to the
women's quarters.

She grew bored and anxious. She
quarreled with Lady Noguchi's daughters, scolded the maids over trifles, and
was even irritable with Junko.

“The girl must be married,” Lady
Noguchi declared, and to Kaede's horror a marriage was swiftly arranged with
one of Lord Noguchi's retainers. Betrothal gifts were exchanged, and she
recognized the man from her audience with the lord. Not only was he old—three
times her age, married twice before, and physically repulsive to her—but she
knew her own worth. The marriage was an insult to her and her family. She was
being thrown away. She wept for nights and could not eat.

A week before the wedding,
messengers came in the night, rousing the residence. Lady Noguchi summoned
Kaede in rage.

“You are very unlucky, Lady
Shirakawa. I think you must be cursed. Your betrothed husband is dead.”

The man, celebrating the coming end
to his widowhood, had been drinking with friends, had had a sudden seizure, and
had fallen stone-dead into the wine cups.

Kaede was sick with relief, but the
second mortality was also held to be her fault. Two men had now died on her
account, and the rumor began to spread that whoever desired her courted death.

She hoped it might put everyone off
marrying her, but one evening, when the third month was drawing to a close and
the trees were putting out bright new leaves, Junko whispered to her, “One of
the Otori clan has been offered as my lady's husband.”

They were embroidering, and Kaede
lost the swaying rhythm of the stitching and jabbed herself with the needle, so
hard that she drew blood. Junko quickly pulled the silk away before she stained
it.

“Who is he?” she asked, putting her
finger to her mouth and tasting the salt of her own blood.

“I don't know exactly. But Lord
Iida himself is in favor, and the Tohan keen to seal the alliance with the
Otori. Then they win control the whole of the Middle Country.”

“How old is he?” Kaede forced
herself to ask next.

“It's not clear yet, lady. But age
does not matter in a husband.”

Kaede took up the embroidery again:
white cranes and blue turtles on a deep pink background—a wedding robe. “I wish
it would never be finished!”

“Be happy, Lady Kaede. You will be
leaving here. The Otori live in Hagi, by the sea. It's an honorable match for
you.”

“Marriage frightens me,” Kaede
said.

“Everyone's frightened of what they
don't know! But women come to enjoy it; you'll see.” Junko chuckled to herself.

Kaede remembered the hands of the
guard, his strength, his desire, and felt revulsion rise in her. Her own hands,
usually deft and quick, slowed. Junko scolded her, but not unkindly, and for
the rest of the day treated her with great gentleness.

A few days later she was summoned
to Lord Noguchi. She had heard the tramp of horses' feet and the shouts of
strange men as guests arrived, but had as usual kept out of the way. It was
with trepidation that she entered the audience room, but to her surprise and
joy, her father was seated in a place of honor, at Lord Noguchi's side.

As she bowed to the ground she saw
the delight leap into his face. She was proud that he saw her in a more
honorable position now. She vowed she would never do anything to bring him
sorrow or dishonor.

When she was told to sit up, she
tried to take a discreet look at him. His hair was thinner and grayer, his face
more lined. She longed for news of her mother and sisters; she hoped she would
be granted some time alone with him.

“Lady Shirakawa,” Lord Noguchi
began. “We have received an offer for you in marriage, and your father has come
to give his consent.”

Kaede bowed low again, murmuring,
“Lord Noguchi.”

“It is a great honor for you. It
will seal the alliance between the Tohan and the Otori, and unite three ancient
families. Lord Iida himself will attend your wedding: Indeed, he wants it to
take place in Inuyama. Since your mother is not well, a relative of your
family, Lady Maruyama, is going to escort you to Tsuwano. Your husband is to be
Otori Shigeru, a nephew of the Otori lords. He and his retainers will meet you
in Tsuwano. I don't think any other arrangements need to be made. It's all very
satisfactory.”

Kaede's eyes had flown to her
father's face when she heard her mother was not well. She hardly took in Lord
Noguchi's subsequent words. Later she realized that the whole affair had been
arranged with the least possible inconvenience and expense to himself: some
robes for travel and to be married in, possibly a maid to accompany her. Truly
he had come out of the whole exchange well.