Child of Vengeance (29 page)

It would be he who struck Munisai’s head from his shoulders once Munisai had forced the dagger up into his stomach. It was a duty that was an honor in name only. At best you performed the role flawlessly, and no one remembered you. If you made a mistake—failing to cut the head from the body in one swift stroke, or swung too hard so that you overbalanced and staggered like a drunkard—you would be cursed as one who soiled another’s ultimate moment.

Those were worries for the ritual itself, however. The first possible dishonor was being refused by the one who would perform seppuku. Kazuteru kept his head down, awaited Munisai’s judgment. He honestly didn’t know which answer he would prefer.

“You are rather young for this,” said Munisai.

“I am, my lord.”

“But Lord Shinmen selected you?” the samurai said.

“He did, my lord,” said Kazuteru, and strange though it was, it was true. An older samurai from the lord’s personal bodyguard would be expected; one who Munisai knew well. But it was Kazuteru whom Shinmen had summoned, and the young samurai’s protests of age and inexperience that he had ignored.

“You are young, but you are loyal to me, Kazuteru,” the lord had said warmly. “Your loyalty is unquestioned. You will wait for my command to strike. Other samurai, who are closer to Munisai, might take pity upon him and take his head too soon. It is difficult not to. But you—I know you are loyal to me above all others, and will wait for my command to strike so that the ritual can be finished properly. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Of course, my lord,” Kazuteru had said, and bowed.

“Do you believe yourself capable?” asked Munisai now.

“Yes, my lord,” lied Kazuteru.

“Very well, Kazuteru,” said Munisai. “You displayed your skill with the shortsword to me once before. I trust your longsword is equal in ability.”

“I shall not fail you, my lord,” said Kazuteru. He pressed his head as close to the ground as he could go without dirtying his forehead, and offered up a prayer for this to come to be.

“Is all prepared at the dojo?” asked Munisai, once Kazuteru had risen.

“Yes, my lord.” He nodded.

“Then let us go,” said Munisai, and he let the leaf fall from his hand to rest upon the carefully raked sand. The samurai’s wooden sandals left footprints beside it that the servants who tended the gardens would hesitate to erase the next morning.

They walked down side by side toward the dojo. Munisai did not look back. The village was utterly silent, the peasants having been ordered to stay in their hovels for the afternoon. Guards wearing both Shinmen’s blue and Nakata’s burgundy bowed as they passed.

A palisade of white cloth had been erected around the dojo, preventing anyone unworthy from seeing inside. Priests of both Shinto and Buddhism circled the building, chanting low and tossing purifying salt before them. Munisai stopped fifty paces short.

“Give me a moment,” he said.

“Very well, Lord,” said Kazuteru, not knowing if this was to be expected but not wanting to question it. “We shall await you. The north entrance is on our left. I shall enter from the south.”

“Of course,” said Munisai. Kazuteru bowed to him, and then left him alone.

Munisai had never before realized how massive the sky was. He looked up at it, a perfect blue streaked with high white lines of clouds. The sun shone golden on him, so small. Even through his sandals the gravel beneath his feet had texture he would never have imagined. There was the scent of burning herbs upon the breeze, escaping from within the dojo as they sweetened the air there.

He brought his eyes back down to the earth. He found himself close to a barrel, and then he found himself looking down into it. The
water within was deep and dark and still and clear. His face looked back at him clearer than in any copper mirror.

One worry alone remained to be purged. It had grown sharper the closer he had come to the dojo, the closer he drew to the ritual. He had panicked on the ridge when he had seen Bennosuke’s tears. The sudden confrontation with honest emotion had shocked and flustered him, and then the samurai within him had spoken in defense. He had not said what he—the very essence of him, his true, secret self—had wanted to say to the boy, which was:

Live, Bennosuke. Your simple survival would be a better revenge upon the Nakata than any amount of limbs you could lop off. Live, Bennosuke. Even though it goes against everything that I believe in, I cannot deny that the very base of me wants you to live
.

But he had proved a coward for that moment, and his last words to the boy had been harsh and dogmatic. There was nothing he could do to correct that either—the moment was gone, like every other moment he had known, and the boy was in the dojo now alongside men in front of whom he could never admit such feelings.

He wondered if this was what the true measure of a life was—the number of words unsaid and the deeds undone you left behind. But what of the things you said in error, or the things you did and regretted? He had those as well. Finding balance, reason, or meaning was impossible now. Men had spent decades pondering such things and found no answer, and what time did he have left now? The rest of his life, of course, and that was not enough.

Munisai took deep breaths, and forced the anxiety out. He needed emptiness. He could not face the seppuku as he should if he harbored even the smallest doubt in his heart. He told himself that as Shinmen had given him a chance once before, he now had given the boy a chance and nothing more—and if the boy was worthy, as he knew him to be, nothing more was needed.

A final breath as a man.

Just live, Bennosuke
, he prayed.
Hear this, somehow
.

Looking down into the water, Munisai disavowed himself of the notion that what looked back was the entirety of him. He became a vessel for his soul, nothing more. He realized the truth—that he was
a wonderful idea constrained and trapped within a prison of tubes and meat and phlegm.

His hand plunged into the water, shattering the image. The ripples calmed, and Munisai was gone.

B
ennosuke awaited; they all awaited in perfect silence.

Tasumi was to his left, his face solemn. Around the walls of the dojo hall men knelt in ranks. The Nakata had invited them from Ukita’s court in Okayama to come and bear witness, and many had wanted to see the end of a renowned swordsman like Munisai. They were from all across Japan—samurai, courtiers, emissaries, and nobles—all wearing the formal winged overkimonos in many different colors and liveries.

None wore white, though. That color was for the dead alone.

Lord Ukita had not deigned to come, and so Lord Shinmen, Lord Nakata, and Hayato sat upon small stools in the position of honor in the center of the hall, hands upon their knees. They sat with distant eyes and stony faces.

Bennosuke had watched the Nakata suspiciously, but he had seen nothing to suggest that they planned to do anything other than follow the ritual through. There was none of the smug triumph Bennosuke had expected. Hayato had not even looked at Bennosuke, though the boy eyed him warily.

There was little he could do in any case. For the first time since he could remember, he was without his shortsword. Though his head was not yet shaved like a monk, he had been made to cede the weapon, so there was at least some appearance of his punishment. He felt uneasy without it.

Neither did he want to disrupt the ceremony—not because his father had ordered him not to, but because he wanted to understand it. He did not know why Munisai had chosen seppuku instead of fleeing, why he had spoken of it with reverence and the adulation of a lover in his eyes. He could not share the sense of anticipation in
the air now; the men neither lewd nor voyeuristic, but sitting rigid as though they were daring to look upon some holy artifact, bracing themselves to bask in its purity.

Why were they this way? These were men in high positions from across the breadth of the country, not some isolated, sick cult of degenerates, yet they had gathered to watch a man spill his guts. The only way to understand it must be to experience it. If seppuku was the true measure of man—as these men all evidently believed—then Bennosuke wanted to see, to feel, to know what that was.

Even if it meant watching his father die.

His “father” … It was shameful that he had cried before Munisai, childish and embarrassing, but that he had done so told Bennosuke that perhaps he had accepted the man further within himself than he had thought. At the very least the process had begun, but now whatever may have come to pass and whatever peace they may have found in time was being ripped away before it could flourish.

He hated how his life had become. He wished for the simplicity of childhood once again. But childhood was gone, and now a man’s task lay ahead of him. He thought of Munisai’s words of what a samurai ought to do. He thought of vengeance and looked at Hayato once more. Still the young lord was unreadable.

Could he fulfill what Munisai had asked of him? Could he give his own life in the pursuit of that? He did not know.

Perhaps, when Munisai had shown him how to die, he would. All he could do now was wait. All he could do was try to be samurai, like those around him.

They became aware of Munisai’s arrival by the vague shadows of the men standing watch around the outside of the dojo bowing one by one as he silently passed, gray and spectral upon the white of the palisade. Things assumed a measured pacing now, heartbeats carefully counted and actions slow and deliberate.

The north door of the dojo slid open, and Munisai entered. He waited until it was slid closed behind him once more, and then he bowed low to all present. He silently came before Shinmen and the Nakata, where he lowered himself to his knees and pressed his head to the ground. The lords nodded back to him, and he rose to a rigid kneel.

“The most honorable Munisai Shinmen,” intoned a courtier from the side, teeth blackened and his mustache long and drooping, “commander and vassal of the most noble Lord Sokan Shinmen. You are summoned here by the will of the most noble Lord Hideie Ukita to immolate thyself through cutting of the stomach to atone for the crime of the mutilation of the most noble Lord Hayato Nakata committed by your son. Do you question this?”

“No, my lords,” said Munisai. “May my actions today expunge all shame.”

“As they surely shall,” said the courtier. “The ritual proceeds.”

After bowing once more, Munisai surrendered his swords, which were placed upon a rest nearby. From behind a folding screen three small buckets were brought before him. One contained hot water, a second cold. Equal measures were ladled into the empty third, so that the temperature was a median. Munisai dunked his hands into it, and washed them. Then he brought a ladleful to his lips and swirled it around his mouth. A small bowl was held before him, and he let the water dribble out into it.

Purified, he let his hair down from the top knot of living samurai that rested on the shaven pate of his head. Hair was worn in that manner to balance the helmet, but Munisai had no further need for armor now. Instead, out of consideration for those he would leave behind, he pulled the hair back, wound it over upon itself, and then tied it at the base of his skull so that it jutted outward like a curved, black baton. This was the style of those about to die, for it would allow the head to be handled easier.

A length of white hemp was brought out and laid upon the floor. Munisai rose to his feet and slipped out of his overkimono, then knelt at the southern end of the hemp, facing north. A bunch of sacred flowers and herbs arranged carefully in a thin vase was placed opposite him.

“Would the honorable Munisai Shinmen care to write a death poem?” asked the courtier.

“It is proper for it to be so,” said Munisai.

Water was mixed drop by drop with black powder to produce ink. A brush and a length of paper were placed before him. Into a small cup, a careful four measures of sake were poured. It was offered to
Munisai, and he drank half in two sips. The cup was placed down, the brush taken up.

He began to write. There was no deliberation; he had planned his words beforehand. Bennosuke watched—they all watched—his hand dance across the paper, enchanted.

“Would the honorable Munisai care for the poem to be read aloud?” asked the courtier when the samurai had set the brush down.

“It is proper for it to be so,” said Munisai.

The paper was carried to the courtier reverentially. The man held it before him, careful not to let the ink run in ugly rivulets. He read it once silently so that there would be no mistake, thick lips working over his black teeth. Then he took a breath and began to intone somberly:

Eight years hence from there I wandered,

The break of seasons around me squandered.

I am but a leaf, wilting, shrinking, passing on,

Yet the tree beneath me: paragon.

There was a rippling of silent heads as men nodded, thinking they understood the poem. Bennosuke knew otherwise; he knew that these words were meant for him alone. A paragon—one who understood and upheld the sanctity of things.