Autumn Bridge (69 page)

“I like it very much,” Jintoku said. “Thank you.”

“No, no,” the reporter said. “You wrote the book, along with all of these.” He put a stack of a dozen similar books on the table between them. “They were very popular during the Meiji era. Now that the Occupation is over, they have become very popular again. I think they mean the good old days to people.”

“I wrote these books?” She looked at another. This one was about a Turtle Princess. “I didn’t know I could draw so well. How sad. I have lost the talent so completely, I don’t remember ever having had it.”

“You wrote the stories. That is, you wrote the retelling of them. These are all old fairy tales. You didn’t make the illustrations. The caretaker of this temple did.” He turned to the camera operator. “Too bad we can’t talk to him. It would make a great story.”

“Not if he said the same kind of things she does,” the camera operator said.

“Goro illustrated these books?”

The reporter turned to the woman. “Who’s Goro?”

She looked at her notes and shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s not on the list.”

“Find out.” The reporter turned back to Jintoku. “You don’t remember the caretaker of the temple? He was an American, Makoto Stark.”

“Makoto? Makoto is the caretaker?”

“He was, Reverend Abbess. He passed away many years ago.”

“Poor boy.” Tears came to Jintoku’s eyes. Had he never recovered from his wound? He seemed to be doing so well the last time she saw him. As far as she could remember, that had been in the fifteenth year of the Meiji Emperor, seventy-one years ago. If he illustrated these books, as the flashy man said, he must have recovered from the wound and died later, of some other cause. Still, it was sad. She remembered the young man, so in her heart, the young man was the one she mourned.

“Well, we might as well pack up,” the reporter said.

“Total loss?” the camera operator asked.

“No such thing,” the reporter said. “I’m a master of the cut and splice. We’ll put together all the smiling footage, the cute stuff. No direct talk from her. We’ll have Fumi do a voice-over. By the time I’m done, she’ll be positively adorable.” He bowed to Jintoku. “Thank you very much, Reverend Abbess. We’ll be sure to let you know when the show airs so you can see yourself on television.”

“I see myself in person every day,” Jintoku said. “I don’t need television to do it.”

The nun said, “Thank you very much for coming to talk with the Reverend Abbess. She doesn’t mean to be impolite. Her way is the direct way, that’s all. I understand she was very direct even as a child.”

As she watched the television crew leave, Jintoku remembered what she had been thinking of when she woke this morning. In the early autumn of the fourteenth year of the Komei Emperor, when she was perhaps fourteen years old, she had discovered a scroll hidden under an old foundation stone. She had intended to give it to Lady Hanako, but then Lady Hanako had been killed, so she had decided to hold it until she could give it directly to Lord Genji. For reasons she could no longer remember, she had kept the scroll until this very day. Had she opened it and read it? If so, she didn’t remember. But she remembered exactly where she had hidden it. Or had she moved it?

Old Abbess Jintoku rose laboriously to her feet and proceeded toward her bedroom at the back of the temple annex. Halfway there, someone called to her from the front door.

“Granny! Granny! We’re here!”

It was a little boy’s eager voice. He must have slipped right past the departing television crew. Now, who could it be? She should know his voice. Perhaps not. There were so many of them. After the Meiji government decreed that all Buddhist temple keepers must marry or quit the religious life, Jintoku had married. It wasn’t her fondest wish, but if she hadn’t, she would have lost control of the temple, and the temple was her life.

“Granny! Where are you?”

It was yet another voice, a girl’s this time. She couldn’t place this one, either. There were so many of them. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren. Were there even great-great-great-grandchildren? Ah, she couldn’t remember. Her memory wasn’t what it once was. But, then, had it ever been?

“I’m coming,” she said.

Old Abbess Jintoku, who had once been Kimi, the brightest little girl in Yamanaka Village, turned herself around and, with a surprisingly lively step for a centenarian, went to greet her progeny.

What was it that seemed so important a moment ago? Never mind.

Nothing was so important it couldn’t be forgotten.

Shizuka awaited Go’s arrival.

She thought of the way the world was, so full of sorrow, because men were fools, and the worst fools among them were samurai, and samurai would always rule this tragic land of Yamato. The things that were important to them were poison mistaken for treasure.

Power, over man and bird and beast, over wives and children and lovers, over household, castle, domain, and empire.

Wealth, in gold, vassals, concubines, rice fields, pastures, mountain passes, and rivers, trade in rarities from exotic and distant lands, objects and artifacts of no value in themselves beyond their rarity and exoticism.

Fame, among those nearby, so every encounter resulted in demonstrations of respect from those below; among those far away, so stories of their greatness grew ever greater in the telling, and they could imagine the fear and admiration of those they would never see.

Victory in battle.

Courage in death.

A glorious name that lasted beyond one lifetime.

The easy pathos of moonlight and falling blossoms.

The music of swords unsheathing, of arrows flying, of the hooves of charging warhorses tearing the earth in angry attack, of battle cries, of the screams of the maimed and dying, of the weeping of the mothers and wives and daughters of slaughtered foes, of blood, always the music of blood.

And most important, fear.

The fear that inflamed hatred in the hearts of enemies.

The fear that commanded obedience from unruly vassals.

The fear that bred compliance and chastity in women.

Shizuka listened to the fighting in the stairwell. Her ladies-in-waiting were brave and loyal. They were far too young to die, but they would, except one. Giving up their lives, they would delay her assassin almost long enough.

The door opened, not with the burst she expected, but gradually, almost gently. Go stood in the doorway, bloody. His wounds were superficial. The blood on him was the blood of her defenders. He glanced up at the ceiling of the room and laughed.

“Very clever. You had your slave build it high, so you could wield your witch’s spear within the tower. I had forgotten that. No matter. You are outmatched. My sword will take your life.” He continued to push the door open with the tip of his sword and entered the room.

Shizuka watched his eyes directly and, with her peripheral vision, caught the movements of his sword, his feet, his shoulders. She held the blade of her naginata long-bladed spear low, to invite attack. She knew he would not fall for such an easy trick. But perhaps he would feint in an effort to make her think he would. Then there would be an opening. She could not die too quickly or all would be lost.

“What of your famous prescience now, false prophet?” Go said. “Do you see your death approaching?”

“It is the end,” Shizuka said.

“Yes, and the end was born in the beginning. You don’t have to be a prophet to see that.”

“And the beginning will be born in the end,” Shizuka said.

“Don’t comfort yourself with that false hope, witch.” Go pointed the tip of his sword at her swollen belly. “The child dies first.”

He lunged at her stomach. She moved to deflect the blow. That was Go’s first feint, and it was effective. He knew she would have to protect the unborn child. When she moved her spear to do so, he cut upward and caught her in her throat. At the instant before the blade reached her, she managed to tilt her head to the side. Otherwise, her jugular would have been opened instead of just her skin.

Go smiled.

“I will burn your body and scatter the ashes in the offal pit. Your head I will put in an iron casket, smother it with lye, and cast it into the northern marshes of White Stones Lake. You will not return to life this time.”

“Such a fool, from beginning to end,” Shizuka said. She ignored the blood dripping from her neck. “So blind to the truth, unable to see the fate so clearly in store for you.”

Go shifted to the right.

Shizuka moved her blade as if to meet him, then, as he shifted left, she struck him hard in the unprotected back of the knee with the staff end of her spear. Go went down. Shizuka slashed at his thigh, and cut it. But Go had been in motion and her strike was like his — superficial. He was back on his feet in the next instant.

There was a slight sound behind her. She turned and saw one of Go’s men entering through the window. He had climbed the tower. Before she could turn her attention fully back to Go, he struck again. His blade sliced deeply into Shizuka’s left shoulder. She felt the muscles and tendons separate from the bones. Her naginata’s point dropped. It took all the strength of her right arm to raise it up again.

“You didn’t foresee this, did you, witch?”

Shizuka backed away from Go and his man. She could not retreat too far, or the wall would impede the motions of her spear. Yet without the wall, and without the use of her left arm, and with her strength fading with the outflow of her blood, she was vulnerable to one when she defended herself from the other.

Shizuka looked into Go’s eyes as deeply as she could.

She said, “Your granddaughter will pray for the peaceful repose of your soul.”

Her stare froze him for a moment. In that moment, his man, shocked by her words, looked away from Shizuka and to Go. She struck the man under his chin with an upward sweep of her blade and cut his face in two. With a short, last scream, he went down. But her stare had not held Go long enough. Before she could recover from her attack, he attacked her. She felt the blade cut across her back, felt her ribs open up as they should not.

Shizuka went to her knees. She would never rise again. She could hear rain within the room. It was the heavy rain of her blood drops.

Her naginata’s blade rested on the floor. She had no strength to raise something so heavy. The shaft resting against her chest was all that kept her from falling.

Go moved toward her with his sword raised for the beheading stroke.

“No!”

Ayamé’s blade sliced into Go’s right armpit as he turned to meet her attack. Behind Ayamé was Chiaki, his son, bloody sword in hand.

“Father! What are you doing?”

“Stay back!” Go said. He turned once more to Shizuka.

“Die!”

His sword began its sudden descent toward her neck.

And halted just as suddenly.

The blade of Chiaki’s sword entered Go’s back and burst from the center of his chest. An explosion of blood splattered the floor, Shizuka, and the wall behind her.

Chiaki drew his blade from his father’s standing corpse and, in a swift continuation of the same movement, struck off his head.

“Traitor!”

Chiaki picked up the head and flung it violently from the nearest window.

“Traitor!” he screamed again.

“My lady!” Ayamé caught Shizuka as she collapsed. Her blood soaked them both. “My lady!”

Chiaki’s vassals stormed through the door.

“Lord Chiaki, the traitors have retreated. But not for long.”

Chiaki, weeping, fell to his knees beside Shizuka and Ayamé.

“My lady,” he said. “Shizuka.” His words were so enwrapped in sobs, they were barely distinguishable.

“You must do it,” Shizuka said to Ayamé. “I have not the strength left.”

“No,” Ayamé said. “You can do it, my lady. You must.”

“Have courage, Ayamé, as you have always had. If you don’t help me, Sen and I will both die.” Shizuka pulled the knife from her sash and put it into the palm of her friend’s hand.

Ayamé’s shoulders trembled, her eyes lost their focus, her body swayed. But she did not fall.

She said to Chiaki, “You and the others must leave the room. Men cannot be present at the birthing.”

“Under normal conditions, yes, but you cannot do this alone.”

“I can. I will.”

“Do as she says,” Shizuka said. Her lungs were growing heavy. Soon, very soon, she would lack the strength to fill them even once more.

She heard men say, “Yes, Lady Shizuka, we hear and obey.”

Ayamé drew the knife from the scabbard.

Shizuka felt neither the opening of her kimono and her undergowns, nor the entry of the blade, nor the increased flow of her blood, nor the departure of her daughter from her womb into the world. Sight remained to her, dimly, and sound, as from a distance. Every other sense was already gone.

She heard a newborn’s first cry. Even from afar, as she was, the infant’s vigor was obvious. Shizuka smiled.

“Your daughter, my lady.” Ayamé placed something against her chest and held it there. It was warm, it moved, it cried, it was very heavy.

Shizuka felt a rhythm not her own, insistent, faint, reminiscent of the earliest warning tremors of an imminent earthquake.

It was the rapid beating of a new heart.

Shizuka could no longer move her arms. There was no embrace, no first, no last. She thought she could feel the heat coming from the tiny body, but she knew it was her imagination. There was no feeling left in her body at all.

“Sen,” Shizuka said.