Grass for His Pillow (24 page)

“You did comfort me,” I said, in a low voice.

“For me it went beyond comfort! I didn't realize it would be so powerful. I loved the way I felt and was grateful for experiencing what I'd never felt before, and I loathed it. It made all my spiritual strivings seem like a hollow sham. I went to our abbot and told him I thought I should leave the temple and return to the world. He suggested I go away for a while to think about my decision. I have a boyhood friend in the West, Mamoru, who had been pleading with me to visit him. You know, I play the flute a little. I was invited to join Mamoru and others in presenting a drama,
Atsumori.
”

He fell silent. The wind threw a flurry of sleet against the wall. The lamp guttered so violently, it almost went out. I had no idea what Makoto was going to say next, but my heart had picked up speed and I could feel the pulse quickening in my throat. Not with desire, though the memory of desire was there; it was more a fear of hearing what I did not want to hear.

Makoto said, “My friend lives in the household of Lord Fujiwara.”

I shook my head. I'd never heard of him.

“He is a nobleman living in exile from the capital. His lands run alongside the Shirakawa.”

Just to hear her name spoken was like being hit in the belly. “Did you see Lady Shirakawa?”

He nodded.

“I was told she was dying.” My heart was hammering so hard, I thought it would leap from my throat.

“She was gravely ill but she recovered. Lord Fujiwara's physician saved her life.”

“She's alive?” The dim lamp seemed to brighten until the hut was full of light. “Kaede is alive?”

He studied my face, his own filled with pain. “Yes, and I am profoundly thankful, for if she had died it would have been me who dealt the fatal blow.”

I was frowning, trying to puzzle out his words. “What happened?”

“The Fujiwara household knew her as Lady Otori. It was believed that Lord Shigeru married her secretly at Terayama, on the day he came to his brother's grave, the day we met. I had not expected to see her in Lord Fujiwara's house; I had not been told of her marriage. I was completely taken aback when she was introduced to me. I assumed you had married her—that you were there yourself. I blurted out as much. Not only did I reveal to myself the strength and nature of my obsession with you, which I'd fooled myself I was recovering from, I destroyed her pretense in an instant, in the presence of her father.”

“But why would she claim such a thing?”

“Why does any woman claim to be married when she is not? She nearly died because she miscarried a child.”

I could not speak.

Makoto said, “Her father questioned me about the marriage. I
knew it had not taken place at Terayama. I tried to avoid answering him directly, but he already had his own suspicions and I had said enough to confirm them. I did not know it then, but his mind was very unstable and he had often spoken of taking his own life. He slit his belly in her presence, and the shock must have caused the miscarriage.”

I said, “The child was mine. She should have been my wife. She will be.”

But as I heard my own words, my betrayal of Kaede seemed all the more enormous. Would she ever forgive me?

“So I assumed,” he said. “But when? What were you thinking of? A woman of her rank and family?”

“We were thinking of death. It was the night Shigeru died and Inuyama fell. We did not want to die without . . .” I was unable to continue.

After a few moments Makoto went on, “I could not live with myself. My passion had led me deeply back into the world of suffering I thought I could escape. I felt I had done irreparable harm to another sentient being, even though only a woman, but at the same time some jealous part of me wanted her to die, because I knew that you loved her and that she must have loved you. You see, I am hiding nothing from you. I must tell you the worst about myself.”

“I would be the last to condemn you. My own conduct has been far more cruel in its effects.”

“But you belong to this world, Takeo; you live in the midst of it. I wanted to be different. Even that was revealed to me as the most hideous pride. I returned to Terayama and sought our abbot's permission to retire to this small hut, where I would devote my flute playing and any passion that remained in me to serving the
Enlightened One, though I no longer even hope for his enlightenment, for I am completely unworthy of it.”

“We all live in the midst of the world,” I said. “Where else is there to live?” As I spoke I thought I heard Shigeru's voice:
Just as the river is always at the door, so is the world always outside. And it is in the world that we have to live.

Makoto was staring at me, his face suddenly open, his eyes brighter. “Is that the message I am to hear? Is that why you were sent to me?”

“I hardly know my plans for my own life,” I replied. “How can I fathom yours? But this was one of the first things I learned from Shigeru. It is in the world that we have to live.”

“Then let's take it as a command from him,” Makoto said, and I could see the energy beginning to flow back into him. He seemed to have been resigned to death, but now he was coming back to life before my eyes. “You intend now to carry out his wishes?”

“Ichiro told me I must take revenge on Shigeru's uncles and claim my inheritance, and so I mean to. But as to how I achieve it, I have no idea. And I must marry Lady Shirakawa. That was also Shigeru's desire.”

“Lord Fujiwara wishes to marry her,” Makoto said carefully.

I wanted to brush this aside. I could not believe Kaede would marry anyone else. Her last words to me had been, “I will never love anyone but you.” And before that she had said, “I am only safe with you.” I knew the reputation she had acquired: that any man who touched her died. I had lain with her and lived. I had given her a child. And I had abandoned her, she had nearly died, she had lost our child. . . . Would she ever forgive me?

Makoto went on: “Fujiwara prefers men to women. But he seems to have become obsessed with Lady Shirakawa. He proposes a marriage in name only, to give her his protection. Presumably he is also not indifferent to her inheritance. Shirakawa is pitifully run down, but there is always Maruyama.”

When I made no comment he murmured, “He is a collector. She will become one of his possessions. His collection never sees the light of day. It is shown only to a few privileged friends.”

“That cannot happen to her!”

“What other choices does she have? She is lucky not to be completely disgraced. To have survived the deaths of so many men connected with her is shameful enough. But there is also something unnatural about her. They say she had two of her father's retainers put to death when they would not serve her. She reads and writes like a man. And apparently she is raising an army to claim Maruyama for herself in the spring.”

“Maybe she will be her own protection,” I said.

“A woman?” Makoto replied, scornful. “It's impossible.”

I felt my heart swell with admiration for Kaede. What an ally she would make! If we were to marry, we would hold half the Seishuu territory. Maruyama would give me all the resources I needed to fight the Otori lords. Once they were dealt with, only the former Tohan heartland which was now Arai's, would prevent our lands from stretching from sea to sea as the prophecy promised.

Now that the snows had begun, everything had to wait till spring. I was exhausted; yet, I burned with impatience. I dreaded Kaede making an irrevocable decision before I saw her again.

“You said you would go with me to the temple?”

Makoto nodded. “We'll leave as soon as it's light.”

“But you would have stayed here all winter if I had not stumbled in on you?”

“I have no illusions,” he replied. “I would probably have died here. Maybe you have saved my life.”

We talked until late into the night. Makoto talked as if the presence of another human being had unlocked weeks of silence. He told me something of his background; he was four years older than I was and had been born into a low-ranking warrior family that had served the Otori until Yaegahara and after that defeat had been forced to transfer their allegiance to the Tohan. He had been brought up as a warrior but was the fifth son in a large family that became steadily more impoverished. From an early age his love of learning and his interest in religion had been encouraged, and when the family began its decline, he had been sent to Terayama. He was eleven years old. His brother, then thirteen, had also been intended as a novice, but after the first winter he had run away and had not been heard of since. The oldest brother had been killed at Yaegahara; their father died not long after. His two sisters were married to Tohan warriors, and he had heard nothing from them for years. His mother still lived on the family farm, such as it was, with his two surviving brothers and their families. They hardly considered themselves as part of the warrior class anymore. He saw his mother once or twice a year.

We talked easily, like old friends, and I remembered how I had longed for such a companion when I was on the road with Akio. A little older and much better educated than I was, Makoto had a gravity and thoughtfulness that contrasted with my reckless nature. Yet, as I was to find out later, he was both strong and courageous, still a warrior as well as a monk and a scholar.

He went on to tell me about the horror and outrage that swept through Yamagata and Terayama after Shigeru's death.

“We were armed and prepared for an uprising. Iida had been threatening the destruction of our temple for some time, aware that we were growing richer and more powerful every year. He knew what strong resentment there was about being ceded to the Tohan, and he hoped to nip any rebellion in the bud. You saw how the people regarded Lord Shigeru. Their sense of loss and grief at his death was terrible. I'd never seen anything like it. The riots in the town that the Tohan had feared while he lived erupted with even more violence at the news of his death. There was a spontaneous uprising; former Otori warriors, townspeople armed with stakes, even farmers with scythes and stones, advanced on the castle. We were poised to join the attack when news came of Iida's death and Arai's victory at Inuyama. The Tohan forces fell back, and we began to chase them toward Kushimoto.

“We met you on the road, with Iida's head. By then everyone was beginning to know the story about your rescue of Lord Shigeru. And they began to guess the identity of the one they called the Angel of Yamagata.”

He sighed and blew on the last of the embers. The lamp had long since gone out. “When we returned to Terayama, you did not seem like a hero at all. You were as lost and grief-stricken as anyone I'd ever seen and still faced with heartrending decisions. You interested me when we first met, but I thought you strange—talented maybe but weak; your sense of hearing seemed freakish, like an animal's. Usually I consider myself a good judge of men. I was surprised when you were given an invitation to come back again, and puzzled by Shigeru's confidence in you. I realized you were not
what you seemed, saw what courage you must have had, and glimpsed the strength of your emotions. I fell in love with you. As I said, it had never happened to me before. And I said I wasn't going to tell you why, but now I have.”

After a moment he added, “I won't speak of it again.”

“There's no harm,” I replied. “The opposite, rather. I need friendship more than anything else in the world.”

“Apart from an army?”

“That has to wait till spring.”

“I'll do anything in my power to help you.”

“What about your calling, your search for enlightenment?”

“Your cause is my calling,” he said. “Why else would the Enlightened One bring you here to remind me that we live in the midst of the world? A bond of great strength exists between us. And I see now that I don't have to struggle against it.”

The fire was almost out. I could no longer see Makoto's face. Beneath the thin quilt I was shivering. I wondered if I could sleep, would ever sleep again, would ever stop listening for the assassin's breath. In a world that seemed almost entirely hostile, Makoto's devotion touched me deeply. I could think of nothing to say. I took his hand and clasped it briefly in thanks.

“Will you keep watch while I sleep for a couple of hours?”

“Of course I will.”

“Wake me, and then you can sleep before we go.”

He nodded. I wrapped myself in the second quilt and lay down. The faintest glow came from the fire. I could hear its dying susurration. Outside the wind had dropped a little. The eaves dripped; some small creature was rustling in the thatch. An owl hooted and the mouse went still. I drifted into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of
children drowning. I plunged again and again into icy black water but was unable to save them.

The cold woke me. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the hut. Makoto sat in the position of meditation. His breathing was so slow, I could hardly hear it; yet, I knew he was completely alert. I watched him for a few moments. When he opened his eyes I looked away.