Cloud of Sparrows (37 page)

When she had called out Genji’s name, the bandits had instantly ceased their attack and withdrawn a short distance.

They stood together arguing. Occasionally, they looked in Genji’s direction. Shigeru’s name came up several times. Once, four of them made as if to leave, but their leader pointed at Genji and said a few words. He must have been convincing, for the men stayed.

“Perhaps they repent of their actions,” she said, “and will assist us to make amends.”

Genji breathed but did not speak.

“We are in Christ’s hands, all of us.”

Their discussion over, the men approached. She thought they were coming to help. The ceasing of the attack and the mention of Shigeru’s name gave her that hope. Then she saw their knives.

Emily hugged Genji close, shielding his body with her own. The bandits shouted loudly, whether at each other or at her she didn’t know. One of them grabbed her arms. The others wrenched Genji from her grasp. Her assailant pushed her down on her back and began pulling her skirt up. The leader shouted something at him, and he turned, shouting back.

She remembered Matthew’s gun.

While the man holding her was distracted, she took the revolver from her coat pocket, cocked the hammer as Matthew had shown her, held it under the man’s chin, and pulled the trigger.

Blood, bone, and flesh exploded into the air and showered the men holding Genji.

She cocked the hammer, placed the end of the barrel against the next closest man’s chest, and pulled the trigger again. By the time he fell backward, his companions were already running away downhill as fast as they could go. She fired twice more at their retreating backs but missed each time.

What should she do now?

She had a badly wounded man in her arms, a gun with two bullets, and two horses. There were bandits nearby who might return to resume their murderous assault. She didn’t know where she was or in which direction the hermitage lay. She couldn’t find her way back to the crossroads where Hidé waited, or forward to Akaoka. Even if she could, Genji couldn’t travel. If she did nothing, they would both freeze to death during the night.

She pulled Genji beneath the trees. There were too few of them to provide the protection she had hoped for against the rising wind or from the snow that once again had begun to fall. They needed a better place.

She found a suitable hollow in the nearby ravine. It took all her strength to drag Genji there. She couldn’t move him a second time. The shelter would have to be built around him.

Their first night out of Edo, Hidé and Heiko had used branches to make them. Now she would have to do the same.

One Christmas, when she had complained about the cold, her mother had told her about the Eskimos who lived in the far north, in the land of endless winter. Their houses were made of ice, yet were warm inside. Those cold walls kept the colder air outside and retained within the air warmed by human life. So her mother had told her, and drew a picture of a round ice house on a plain of ice, with happy, round-faced Eskimo children building snowmen outside. Was it true or a fairy tale? Soon she would know.

She leaned the branches at an angle as she had seen Hidé do. He easily cut what he needed. She tried, and failed. There was an art to wielding the sword that she didn’t possess. She took the best branches from among those already on the ground. With her shawl spread over them like an awning, and a layer of snow upon that, she built a roof. She filled in the gaps at the base of the lean-to with more snow. It wasn’t round like the one her mother had drawn. It was more of a rough wedge. But it was a serviceable ice house.

She went inside and closed the entrance with yet more snow, leaving just a small opening so they wouldn’t suffocate. Was it warmer? She thought it was. If it wasn’t exactly cozy, at least it shielded them from the wind.

Emily knew nothing about wounds. Genji’s certainly looked grievous. The one in his chest exposed the bones of his rib cage. The two in his back went deep. Blood pulsated from them with every beat of his heart. She took off her petticoat, tore it into strips, and wrapped his damaged torso as quickly as she could. When she picked up his clothing to redress him, the cloth crackled with frozen blood. There were blankets in the packs the horses carried. She covered Genji with her coat and went outside to get them.

The horses were nowhere in sight. She saw marks in the snow that might have been their hoofprints. It was hard to tell for sure. Falling snow obscured the tracks. Saying a silent prayer, she followed them anyway. Yes. There was one. She was relieved to see it was the mild-tempered mare she had ridden, and not Genji’s unruly stallion.

“Here, Cinnamon.” Cinnamon was the name of her horse in Apple Valley. It had a reddish hue, like this one. She clicked her tongue and held out her hand, palm up. Horses liked that.

The horse snorted and shied away. Did it smell the blood on her clothing?

“Don’t be afraid. Everything is fine and dandy.” She spoke in her most soothing tones and walked toward the horse as it continued to back away. She talked and walked and the distance between them slowly shrank. “That’s a good girl, Cinnamon. Good, good girl.”

She was a hand span away from her mare’s bridle when she heard a strange growl behind her. She reached for the gun that wasn’t there. It was in her coat, and her coat was on Genji. She turned, expecting to see a wolf. It was Genji’s stallion, head lowered, pawing the snow with his forefeet. Her mare pranced away out of reach.

Emily stepped slowly backward. She didn’t want to do anything that would make the stallion charge. She didn’t try to talk to it. She doubted it would respond to sweet words. She was only ten yards away when it leaped suddenly into a gallop, but not in her direction. Her mare sauntered over the hill. Genji’s stallion pursued it.

Emily’s relief didn’t last long. She hadn’t paid enough attention to where she was going as she followed the mare. Though she looked in every direction, she couldn’t see the shelter. She couldn’t even see the ravine. She was lost.

The snowfall steadily grew thicker, as if the snow clouds themselves were dropping to earth in a single body.

Melting snow was beginning to soak through her clothes. Her hands and feet were already numb. She and Genji would soon die. Tears froze on her cheeks. She was not afraid of death for herself. It was Genji’s fate that tore at her heart. He would perish alone in this wilderness so far from his home, with no one to hold him, no one to say words of comfort as his soul went down to Purgatory, the inevitable doom of all who died unbaptized. She had promised God she would save his soul, and she had failed.

She sank down in the snow and wept.

No, no, this wouldn’t do.

She choked back her sobs. She had promised God. As long as the life He had given her was in her body, she would do her best to fulfill her vow. What she felt was not genuine sorrow; it was self-pity, the darkest aspect of the sin of pride.

Think.

The snow obscured everything more than a few feet away in every direction. Since she recognized no landmark anyway, that was of small importance. Her feet showed her the incline of the mountain. If she could remember whether she had gone downhill or uphill after the mare, she might be able to find her way back.

Downhill.

She thought the mare had gone downhill. That meant the shelter was somewhere above her present position. It couldn’t be too far away. She had walked very slowly. She took a careful step into the deepening snow, then another, and another. She followed her feet up the mountainside. With her fourth step, her foot went into the snow and found no ground beneath it. She toppled over the hidden precipice headfirst. Her momentum threw her downhill, head over heels. She didn’t stop until she slammed into something hard.

It was the lean-to.

She had been going in the wrong direction. If she hadn’t fallen into the ravine, she would have wandered in the storm until the cold sent her to her eternal rest. New snow covering the shelter rounded its edges. Now it looked more like the Eskimo ice house her mother had drawn. She scraped away the snow and went inside.

Genji was alive, barely. His breath was shallow and infrequent. His skin was cold and nearly blue. Without more heat, he would be dead in minutes. She had no blankets with which to cover him. She didn’t know how to make a fire. Her mother had told her Indians did it by rubbing two sticks together. She was sure it wasn’t quite that simple. No, the only heat she had to offer was the warmth of her own body.

Which was the greater sin? To lie with a man not her husband, or to sit idly by while he died? The first commandment was not to kill. Surely that had precedence. And she wouldn’t be lying with him in the strictest biblical sense. This was an attempt at rescue, not an act of fornication, lust, carnality, or adultery.

Emily lay down next to Genji on his left side, away from the wound in his rib cage. Her coat covered him, and she herself was fully clothed. She wasn’t “lying” with him at all. Nor was she doing much good. The heat of her body was being dissipated by the clothing between them.

She closed her eyes in prayer. She asked God to look into her heart and see the purity of her motives. She asked Him to forgive her if her judgment was wrong. If He could save only one life, she asked Him to save Genji’s, for she was baptized and he was not.

She quickly stripped off her clothing, everything but her pantaloons. She removed his also, with the exception of his loincloth. She was careful not to notice anything she should not. She used his bloodstained robe as a sheet over the pine needles, and her coat as a mattress over that, then placed Genji upon it. She covered his body with hers as fully as she could without putting too much weight on him. The bleeding had stopped, but pressure could tear the wounds open. She used their remaining clothing to make a snug cocoon around them.

There was no warmth, no softness in Genji’s skin. He wasn’t even shivering anymore. Hugging him was like hugging a block of ice. Rather than her thawing him, it seemed he would freeze her instead. But the heat from the core of her body, pressed so tightly against his, was stronger than the cold.

A single bead of sweat appeared on his upper lip.

His breathing deepened.

She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.

Genji woke blind, feverish, pain tearing his body. He was bound in such a way that he could barely move. Someone pressed down on him, holding him against the ground.

“Eeeyyy!”

He bucked and twisted and reversed positions on his assailant. Now he was on top.

“Where are we?” He was a prisoner. That much he knew. But whose?

The reply came in a strange voice speaking garbled words that made no sense. It was a woman’s voice. He had heard it before. It had been in a dream. Or a vision.

“Lady Shizuka?” Was she here, a prisoner, too?

She spoke again. Again he understood nothing. She tried to free herself from his grasp. He tightened his hold on her wrists and she stopped struggling immediately. Her voice had a soothing tone. She was explaining something to him.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Genji said.

Lady Shizuka, if it was her, continued murmuring in her secret language.

Why was he blind? Had his eyes been put out? Or was he in a dungeon, sealed away below the ground, far from sunlight? Was this woman a tool of his torturers? Kawakami. The Shogun’s Sticky Eye. It was something he would do. Use a woman. He thought of Heiko. The woman beneath him wasn’t Heiko. Was she? No. He would understand Heiko. Wouldn’t he?

“Heiko?”

The familiar voice spoke again, more excited this time, and just as incomprehensible. Except for two words. “Genji” and “Heiko.” Whoever she was, she knew him. The voice was familiar, but the body wasn’t. It was larger than Heiko’s. Or so it seemed. He wasn’t sure of anything.

He faded in and out of consciousness. Each time he awoke, he could see a little better. The walls glowed, emanating light. Instead of hair, gold filaments sprouted from the woman’s head. Her eyes were a blue void, like the sky. Something sparkled at her neck. It was something he had seen before in another vision.

The young man drives his sword deep in Genji’s torso. . . .

He feels blood pulsating from his chest. . . .

An extraordinarily beautiful woman says, “You will always be my Shining Prince.”

Her beauty is not entirely Japanese. He doesn’t recognize her, but her face brings a longing to his heart. He knows her. Or will. She is Lady Shizuka.

Smiling through her tears, she says, “I finished the translation this morning. I wonder whether we should use the Japanese name, or translate the title into English as well. What do you think?”

“English,” Genji says, meaning to ask what she has translated.

Lady Shizuka misunderstands him. “English it is, then. . . . She would be so proud of us.”

Who would be so proud? He has no voice to ask. Something sparkles at her long, smooth throat.

It was what he saw now at this woman’s throat.

A small silver locket no larger than his thumb, marked with a cross upon which was emblazoned a stylized flower, perhaps a lily.

“Lord Genji?”

He had fallen unconscious again.