Across the Nightingale Floor (4 page)

I did not want to spend the night
on the lonely plain. I was afraid of ten thousand ghosts, and of the ogres and
goblins that dwelled in the forest around it. The murmur of a stream sounded to
me like the voice of the water spirit, and every time a fox barked or an owl
hooted I came awake, my pulse racing. At one stage the earth itself shook, in a
slight tremor, making the trees rustle and dislodging stones somewhere in the
distance. I thought I could hear the voices of the dead, calling for revenge,
and I tried to pray, but all I could feel was a vast emptiness. The secret god,
whom the Hidden worship, had been dispersed with my family. Away from them, I
had no contact with him.

Next to me Lord Otori slept as
peacefully as if he had been in the guest room of the inn. Yet, I knew that,
even more than I was, he would have been aware of the demands of the dead. I
thought with trepidation about the world I was entering—a world that I knew
nothing about, the world of the clans, with their strict rules and harsh codes.
I was entering it on the whim of this lord, whose sword had beheaded a man in
front of my eyes, who as good as owned me. I shivered in the damp night air.

We rose before dawn and, as the sky
was turning gray, crossed the river that marked the boundary to the Otori
domain.

After Yaegahara the Otori, who had
formerly ruled the whole of the Middle Country, were pushed back by the Tohan
into a narrow strip of land between the last range of mountains and the
northern sea. On the main post road the barrier was guarded by Iida's men, but
in this wild isolated country there were many places where it was possible to
slip across the border, and most of the peasants and farmers still considered
themselves Otori and had no love for the Tohan. Lord Otori told me all this as
we walked that day, the sea now always on our right-hand side. He also told me
about the countryside, pointed out the farming methods used, the dikes built
for irrigation, the nets the fishermen wove, the way they extracted salt from
the sea. He was interested in everything and knew about everything. Gradually
the path became a road and grew busier. Now there were farmers going to market
at the next village, carrying yams and greens, eggs and dried mushrooms, lotus
root and bamboo. We stopped at the market and bought new straw sandals, for
ours were falling to pieces.

That night, when we came to the
inn, everyone there knew Lord Otori. They ran out to greet him with
exclamations of delight, and flattened themselves to the ground in front of
him. The best rooms were prepared, and at the evening meal course after course
of delicious food appeared. He seemed to change before my eyes. Of course I had
known he was of high birth, of the warrior class, but I still had no idea
exactly who he was or what part he played in the hierarchy of the clan.
However, it was dawning on me that it must be exalted. I became even more shy
in his presence. I felt that everyone was looking at me sideways, wondering
what I was doing, longing to send me packing with a cuff on the ear.

The next morning he was wearing
clothes befitting his station; horses were waiting for us, and four or five retainers.
They grinned at each other a bit when they saw I knew nothing about horses, and
they seemed surprised when Lord Otori told one of them to take me on the back
of his horse, although of course none of them dared say anything. On the
journey they tried to talk to me—they asked me where I'd come from and what my
name was—but when they found I was mute, they decided I was stupid, and deaf
too. They talked loudly to me in simple words, using sign language.

I didn't care much for jogging
along on the back of the horse. The only horse I'd ever been close to was
Iida's, and I thought all horses might bear me a grudge for the pain I'd caused
that one. And I kept wondering what I would do when we got to Hagi. I imagined
I would be some kind of servant, in the garden or the stables. But it turned
out Lord Otori had other plans for me.

On the afternoon of the third day
since the night we had spent on the edge of Yaegahara, we came to the city of
Hagi, the castle town of the Otori. It was built on an island flanked by two
rivers and the sea. From a spit of land to the town itself ran the longest
stone bridge I had ever seen. It had four arches, through which the ebbing tide
raced, and walls of perfectly fitted stone. I thought it must have been made by
sorcery, and when the horses stepped onto it I couldn't help closing my eyes.
The roar of the river was like thunder in my ears, but beneath it I could hear
something else—a kind of low keening that made me shiver.

At the center of the bridge Lord
Otori called to me. I slipped from the horse's back and went to where he had
halted. A large boulder had been set into the parapet. It was engraved with
characters.

“Can you read, Takeo?”

I shook my head.

“Bad luck for you. You will have to
learn!” He laughed. “And I think your teacher will make you suffer! You'll be
sorry you left your wild life in the mountains.”

He read aloud to me: “'The Otori
clan welcomes the just and the loyal. Let the unjust and the disloyal beware.'”
Beneath the characters was the crest of the heron.

I walked alongside his horse to the
end of the bridge. “They buried the stonemason alive beneath the boulder,” Lord
Otori remarked offhandedly, “so he would never build another bridge to rival
this one, and so he could guard his work forever. You can hear his ghost at
night talking to the river.”

Not only at night. It chilled me,
thinking of the sad ghost imprisoned within the beautiful thing he had made,
but then we were in the town itself, and the sounds of the living drowned out
the dead.

Hagi was the first city I had ever
been in, and it seemed vast and overwhelmingly confusing. My head rang with
sounds: cries of street sellers, the clack of looms from within the narrow
houses, the sharp blows of stonemasons, the snarling bite of saws, and many
that I'd never heard before and could not identify. One street was full of
potters, and the smell of the clay and the kiln hit my nostrils. I'd never
heard a potter's wheel before, or the roar of the furnace. And lying beneath
all the other sounds were the chatter, cries, curses, and laughter of human
beings, just as beneath the smells lay the ever-present stench of their waste.

Above the houses loomed the castle,
built with its back to the sea. For a moment I thought that was where we were
heading, and my heart sank, so grim and foreboding did it look, but we turned
to the east, following the Nishigawa river to where it joined the Higashigawa.
To our left lay an area of winding streets and canals where tiled-roofed walls
surrounded many large houses, just visible through the trees.

The sun had disappeared behind dark
clouds, and the air smelled of rain. The horses quickened their step, knowing
they were nearly home. At the end of the street a wide gate stood open. The
guards had come out from the guardhouse next to it and dropped to their knees,
heads bowed, as we went past.

Lord Otori's horse lowered its head
and rubbed it roughly against me. It whinnied and another horse answered from
the stables. I held the bridle, and the lord dismounted. The retainers took the
horses and led them away.

He strode through the garden toward
the house. I stood for a moment, hesitant, not knowing whether to follow him or
go with the men, but he turned and called my name, beckoning to me.

The garden was full of trees and
bushes that grew, not like the wild trees of the mountain, dense and pressed
together, but each in its own place, sedate and well trained. And yet, every
now and then I thought I caught a glimpse of the mountain as if it had been
captured and brought here in miniature.

It was full of sound, too—the sound
of water flowing over rocks, trickling from pipes. We stopped to wash our hands
at the cistern, and the water ran away tinkling like a bell, as though it were
enchanted.

The house servants were already
waiting on the veranda to greet their master. I was surprised there were so
few, but I learned later that Lord Otori lived in great simplicity. There were
three young girls, an older woman, and a man of about fifty years. After the
bows the girls withdrew and the two old people gazed at me in barely disguised
amazement.

“He is so like . . . !” the woman
whispered.

“Uncanny!” the man agreed, shaking
his head.

Lord Otori was smiling as he
stepped out of his sandals and entered the house. “I met him in the dark! I had
no idea till the following morning. It's just a passing likeness.”

“No, far more than that,” the old
woman said, leading me inside. “He is the very image.” The man followed, gazing
at me with lips pressed together as though he had just bitten on a pickled
plum—as though he foresaw nothing but trouble would spring from my introduction
into the house.

“Anyway, I've called him Takeo,”
the lord said over his shoulder. “Heat the bath and find clothes for him.”

The old man grunted in surprise.

“Takeo!” the woman exclaimed. “But
what's your real name?”

When I said nothing, just shrugged
and smiled, the man snapped, “He's a half-wit!”

“No, he can talk perfectly well,”
Lord Otori returned impatiently. “I've heard him talk. But he saw some terrible
things that silenced him. When the shock has faded he'll speak again.”

“Of course he will,” said the old
woman, smiling and nodding at me. “You come with Chiyo. I'll look after you.”

“Forgive me, Lord Shigeru,” the old
man said stubbornly—I guessed these two had known the lord since he was a
child, and had brought him up—“but what are your plans for the boy? Is he to be
found work in the kitchen or the garden? Is he to be apprenticed? Has he any
skills?”

“I intend to adopt him,” Lord Otori
replied. “You can start the procedures tomorrow, Ichiro.”

There was a long moment of silence.
Ichiro looked stunned, but he could not have been more flabbergasted than I
was. Chiyo seemed to be trying not to smile. Then they both spoke together. She
murmured an apology and let the old man speak first.

“It's very unexpected,” he said
huffily. “Did you plan this before you left on your journey?”

“No, it happened by chance. You
know my grief after my brother's death and how I've sought relief in travel. I
found this boy, and since then somehow every day the grief seems more
bearable.”

Chiyo clasped her hands together.
“Fate sent him to you. As soon as I set eyes on you, I knew you were
changed—healed in some way. Of course no one can ever replace Lord Takeshi. . .
.”

Takeshi! So Lord Otori had given me
a name like that of his dead brother. And he would adopt me into the family.
The Hidden speak of being reborn through water. I had been reborn through the
sword.

“Lord Shigeru, you are making a
terrible mistake,” Ichiro said bluntly. “The boy is a nobody, a commoner. . . .
What will the clan think? Your uncles will never allow it. Even to make the
request is an insult.”

“Look at him,” Lord Otori said.
“Whoever his parents were, someone in his past was not a commoner. Anyway, I
rescued him from the Tohan. Iida wanted him killed. Since I saved his life, he
belongs to me, and so I must adopt him. To be safe from the Tohan he must have
the protection of the clan. I killed a man for him, possibly two.”

“A high price. Lets hope it goes no
higher,” Ichiro snapped. “What had he done to attract Iida's attention?”

“He was in the wrong place at the
wrong time, nothing more. There's no need to go into his history. He can be a
distant relative of my mother's. Make something up.”

“The Tohan have been persecuting
the Hidden,” Ichiro said astutely. “Tell me he's not one of them.”

“If he was, he is no longer,” Lord
Otori replied with a sigh. “All that is in the past. It's no use arguing,
Ichiro. I have given my word to protect this boy, and nothing will make me
change my mind. Besides, I have grown fond of him.”

“No good will come of it,” Ichiro
said.

The old man and the younger one
stared at each other for a moment. Lord Otori made an impatient movement with
his hand, and Ichiro lowered his eyes and bowed reluctantly. I thought how
useful it would be to be a lord—to know that you would always get your own way
in the end.

There was a sudden gust of wind,
the shutters creaked, and with the sound the world became unreal for me again.
It was as if a voice spoke inside my head: This is what you are to become. I
wanted desperately to turn back time to the day before I went mushrooming on
the mountain—back to my old life with my mother and my people. But I knew my
childhood lay behind me, done with, out of reach forever. I had to become a man
and endure whatever was sent me.

With these noble thoughts in my
mind I followed Chiyo to the bathhouse. She obviously had no idea of the
decision I'd come to: She treated me like a child, making me take off my
clothes and scrubbing me all over before leaving me to soak in the scalding
water. Later, she came back with a light cotton robe and told me to put it on.
I did exactly as I was told. What else could I do? She rubbed my hair with a
towel, and combed it back, tying it in a topknot.

“We'll get this cut,” she muttered,
and ran her hand over my face. “You don't have much beard yet. I wonder how old
you are? Sixteen?”

I nodded. She shook her head and
sighed. “Lord Shigeru wants you to eat with him,” she said, and then added
quietly, “I hope you will not bring him more grief.”

I guessed Ichiro had been sharing
his misgivings with her.

I followed her back to the house,
trying to take in every aspect of it. It was almost dark by now; lamps in iron
stands shed an orange glow in the corners of the rooms, but did not give enough
light for me to see much. Chiyo led me to a staircase in the corner of the main
living room. I had never seen one before: We had ladders in Mino, but no one
had a proper staircase like this. The wood was dark, with a high polish—oak, I
thought—and each step made its own tiny sound as I trod on it. Again, it seemed
to me to be a work of magic, and I thought I could hear the voice of its
creator within it.