Autumn Bridge (12 page)

“It is cut in the current style,” Hanako said, which was somewhat surprising if the scrolls were as old as they seemed. Not shockingly so, however, since they might have been rewrapped in recent times.

Emily held it up against her own body. “Anything else?”

“Well, it is very fancy,” Hanako said. “It would most likely be worn only on a special occasion. A celebration, a festival, something like that.”

“Or a wedding?” Emily said.

“Yes, it would be suitable for a wedding. Not for a guest, of course. It is too splendid. Only the bride could wear it.” She looked at the profusion of intricately embroidered roses. The bride would have to be very beautiful as well, or the kimono itself would attract all the attention. “And it would need a special
obi
.”

Emily reached into the trunk once again. “Like this one?” She held up a ceremonial sash as elaborate as the kimono, in complementary colors, generously embroidered with gold and silver thread.

“Yes,” Hanako said, “that is perfect.” What were a wedding kimono and sash doing in a trunk filled with ancient scrolls? She felt herself growing cold.

Emily said, “This trunk was sent to me.” Her voice was very faint, as if she had spoken against her will.

Hanako didn’t understand her concern. Everyone knew Lord Genji had asked Emily to make an English translation of the secret history. He had ordered all scrolls to be delivered to her. Naturally, if a trunk such as this was found, it would go to Emily, as had similarly found trunks over the years since her task began. Thirty generations of Okumichi lords had read the scrolls. Across such a span of time and personalities, it was inevitable that portions of the history were occasionally misplaced. Cloud of Sparrows was a very large castle, with hidden compartments and secret passageways. There were many places where things could be concealed and forgotten. Since only the lord or those he allowed could see the scrolls, whoever found them would not dare to read them, and so could not know that these scrolls were not part of the history. (Some lords had not taken either the history or the prohibition seriously, and so there had been times when many outside the direct lineage had been given access — lovers, drinking companions, geisha, and monks among them. Thus, much of the history was common knowledge, or, perhaps more accurately, common gossip.) There was nothing mysterious about the delivery of the trunk to her. Yet Emily was clearly very disturbed.

“It was found and sent to you because Lord Genji has so ordered,” Hanako said.

“No,” Emily said. “That’s not what I mean. It’s impossible; it borders on blasphemy to even consider, yet—” Emily crumpled to the floor and sat heavily, the kimono and sash in her lap. “I must go to the castle. It’s the only way to disprove it. And I must disprove it, I must.”

“Disprove what?” Hanako said.

“That this trunk was sent to
me
,” Emily said.

Lady Shizuka smiled at Ayamé, her chief lady-in-waiting, and marveled that women as young as they, barely out of childhood, should bear such weighty titles as “lady” and “lady-in-waiting.” Lady Shizuka was nineteen, and she would grow no older. Ayamé was only seventeen, though her serious expression made her seem more mature.

“I beg you to reconsider, my lady,” Ayamé said. She sat with her legs neatly folded under her in normal courtly fashion. She seemed very delicate despite the armor she wore, her roughly shorn hair, and the long-bladed naginata halberd at her side. “I have scouted the enemy positions myself, and it is as Fumi says: Their sentries are poorly posted, their lines are porous, and half their troops are stupefied with sake. If I create a diversion, you can easily slip through to safety.”

“I cannot go,” Shizuka said. Her hand was on her swollen belly, as it often was in recent days. Her flowing robes concealed her condition from the casual observer, and her face, as slender as always, did its part in hiding the truth.

“You are not due for another month and a half,” Ayamé said, “and the child does not seem to be in a hurry to appear early. There will be little hardship once you have escaped the encirclement. Lord Chiaki would have received word by now, and is surely on his way back with many of our samurai. You will probably meet up with him even before you reach the cape.”

“That is not why I cannot go,” Shizuka said. “This is where I am meant to be.”

Ayamé leaned forward, placed both her hands on the floor in front of her, and bowed low. “Lady Shizuka, forgive me, for I must speak too frankly.”

“There is no such thing between us, Ayamé. You are always free to speak your thoughts to me.”

“I hope you will continue to think so. Many say it is not the future you see, or spirits that you meet, but your own delusions. Lucky guesses, they say, make you seem prescient. From the day I entered your service, I have never doubted you. Whatever you say, I know you have your reasons for saying it. You are wise beyond your years and experience. It is not important whether you know what is to come or not. But, my lady, if you do not leave this place tonight, you will die here.”

Shizuka placed her hands on the floor and bowed low in her turn.

“You have been steadfast and loyal, and as courageous as the samurai of legend. For this, I thank you. Now you must be braver still. You will live through this night, Ayamé, and through the darkest hours of the morning, and for many, many years thereafter. This is your future, and in time, you will know I have seen it truly. You will marry a man of much virtue and merit, and will have much joy, as well as your fair portion of sorrow. You will have five children. The eldest will marry Lord Hironobu’s heir, whom I carry within me, and will rule this domain as Great Lord.”

“My lady,” Ayamé said, shocked. It was treasonous to even think that a son of anyone other than Hironobu would succeed him. The mere suspicion of such thoughts had led to deaths among the retainers of many clans. And here the lord’s own wife was saying it.

“My daughter’s name is Sen. Your son you will name—” Shizuka stopped herself. Let Ayamé decide for herself, though in the completeness of time, she had already decided to call him Danjuro. Those whose pasts were separate from their futures did not see it that way. To speak the name now would be to rob her of joy yet to come. “—you will name nobly, as he deserves. In Lord Hironobu’s stead, I hereby adopt him into the clan. From the moment of his birth, he will be an Okumichi.”

“Lady Shizuka, if what you say is true, and you can see what is to come, then use your vision to save yourself. It is a sin to needlessly throw away your life.”

Shizuka said, “Go to that window and look to the east.”

After an almost impalpable hesitation, Ayamé obeyed.

“What do you see?”

“Waves, my lady, breaking upon the shore.”

“Still the waters,” Shizuka said.

“My lady?”

“Stop the waves, Ayamé. Calm the ocean.”

“I cannot.”

“Go to the western window. Look into the farthest possible distance. What is there?”

“Clear night air,” Ayamé said, “a bright moon, and in the far distance, Mount Tosa.”

“Bring Mount Tosa to me.”

Ayamé stared at Shizuka. Had fear and sorrow driven her mad? An expression of deep concern furrowed her brow.

“My lady, not even the greatest sorceress could move such a mountain.”

“You see the waves, but you cannot stop them. You see Mount Tosa, but you cannot move it. In the same way, I can see what is to come but can neither deflect nor change it in the slightest way.” Shizuka smiled. “You will live through the night, and so will I. You will live through the morning, and I will not. I speak of this as I would speak of waves turning into foam on the rocks, and Mount Tosa in moonlight. It is a description of the world, not something to be done.”

“To know, yet be unable to act. What use is such a gift?”

You will never know, Shizuka thought, nor will Danjuro. But Sen will. Beneath her hand, she felt her daughter stir.

“Have the scrolls been placed as I asked?” Shizuka said.

“Yes, my lady, and as you ordered, nothing was left to mark the spot, no map drawn.”

“You seem doubtful, Ayamé.”

“I was careful that no one saw me,” she said, “but since it is far outside our walls, the enemy may find it even if they withdraw without attacking the castle.”

“They will not find it,” Shizuka said.

“There is yet another problem,” Ayamé said. “If the castle should fall to the enemy—”

It would fall, and within hours.

“—and none of us returns—”

None now living would return. Danjuro and Sen would recover the castle in the twelfth year of the Emperor Go-Murakami. By then Ayamé and Chiaki would both be dead.

“—how will the scrolls ever be found?”

“They will be found,” Shizuka said, “when they should, and in a manner befitting their purpose.” She could see that Ayamé wanted to ask the purpose, and did not. It was just as well. Shizuka trusted her and would tell her whatever she asked, but she would not have understood the answer.

Ayamé bowed and took up her weapon. “With your permission, I will return to my post, my lady.”

“Good night, Ayamé.”

Shizuka’s visitor would not arrive until the latter half of the hour. She closed her eyes and visualized nothing. The absence was very restful.

Sentimental and foolish though he knew it was, Lord Kiyori had ordered delicacies for a farewell dinner with Lady Shizuka. He had not touched the food. Neither had she, but then, she never did. It was placed before her in the same way offerings were made at the ancestral altar. In one sense, this was quite fitting, since Shizuka was an ancestor. In another, it was entirely inappropriate, because this specter who appeared as Shizuka was more likely only a figment of his own diseased imagination.

“You are quiet,” Shizuka said, “because you are thinking I cannot possibly be who I say I am. I must be a hallucination, or a malevolent spirit. Since you do not believe in ghosts, you tend toward the conclusion that I am, as I have always been, a sign of your impending insanity. Yet you feel you are not yet so afflicted that you are compelled to speak to your own delusion. At the same time, you have already spent many years speaking to me, so what harm is there to do so again, one last time, tonight, whether I am real or not? It would not be so very different from simply thinking out loud, would it? However, since we will not meet again, this is your last chance to treat me as the figment that I am. You cannot do so by engaging me in conversation. Such are your present thoughts. What a dilemma, my lord.”

“You want me to think you are reading my mind,” Kiyori said, “but I am not so easily fooled. A hallucination naturally contains thoughts of the mind from which it comes.”

Shizuka smiled. “Why, my lord, you have spoken to me.”

Exasperated, Kiyori slapped his thigh. He had never been a sophisticated thinker, and he could not hope to match her skill in argument. Of course, even to think that was itself quite confusing. “Habit compels me, nothing else. And as you say — or, rather, as I say — it’s no different from thinking out loud.”

Shizuka bowed very formally, her hands triangulated on the floor before her, her head slowly lowered to touch them.

“Since I am you,” she said, “I can do nothing other than agree.” An expression of seriousness appeared on her face momentarily, but she could not suppress her amusement for long. At the deepest point of her bow, she began to smile, and as she came up, she covered her mouth with her sleeve. “Please do not glare so angrily at me. Remember, I am only you.”

“I wish you would stop saying that,” Kiyori said, growing irritated with her despite his awareness that doing so made him feel very silly indeed since, as she said, she was he and he himself was therefore to blame for anything she did or said, since it was all his own saying and doing. Oh, what was the use of such tortured mental gyrations? Let them speak together as they always had, madman and hallucination, for one last time.

“You said you would leave tonight and never return,” Kiyori said. “Is it really so?”

“Have I ever told you a lie, lord?”

“No, you have not.”

“Truly remarkable, is it not? In sixty-four years, speaking through me, you have never lied to yourself. Few men can say as much. Oh, excuse me. You cannot say it either, can you, since I have said it. But wait, I am you, so indeed you can, and have.”

“Please.” Kiyori bowed low. “Let us say our phenomenon is a ghostly one. It is so much easier that way.”

“I will agree,” Shizuka said, “with one small adjustment.”

“Done,” Kiyori said without a pause, so eager was he to escape from his conundrum. Seeing the look in her eyes, he immediately regretted giving his consent before he had heard what she would propose.

“Let us say the ghost is you, Lord Kiyori.”

“That is outrageous.”

“Is it?” All merriment was gone from Shizuka. “You have studied the classics of Confucius, Buddha, and the Tao. Yet, for fifty years, you have only contemplated our relationship from one side. You have dismissed Chuang-Tze’s dream, the Flower Ornament Sutra, and the great lesson of Confucius.”

“Chuang-Tze had many dreams,” Kiyori said, “the Flower Ornament Sutra contains seven hundred thousand ideograms, and Confucius taught more than one lesson. It would be helpful if you were more specific.”

“You need go no further than the most obvious instance in each.”

Kiyori waited for her to go on. She stared at him in silence. He waited longer, and she continued to stare. Kiyori was Great Lord of the domain. No one ever dared to hold his gaze, and so he was unused to such a contest. He spoke first.

“Chuang-Tze dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he was no longer sure he was a man who had dreamed, or was now a butterfly dreaming of manhood.” Did she smile in satisfaction at having bested him? If so, the smile was so slight it might have existed only in his imagination. What was he thinking? Of course it was imaginary. All of this was.

She bowed and said, “And the Flower Ornament Sutra?”