Island of Exiles (35 page)

She was kneeling, clutching her robe to herself. “Would you help me with this, please?”

Tora helped her up and took the robe from her. She was so pitifully thin, her small hands fluttering as she tried to cover her nakedness, that his heart contracted with pity. He placed the robe gently around her shoulders, then tucked each small arm into the full sleeve, when she reached up and pulled his face down to hers. “Please don’t go,” she whispered. “I feel quite well now.”

He disentangled himself, flushing with embarrassment because he did not desire her. “Shame on you, Little Flower,” he said lightly, bending for her sash. “You heard the doctor. You have to lie down now and get some rest.” Tears rose to her eyes and spilled over. She looked exactly like a forlorn little girl. He pulled her gown together, then draped the sash loosely about her small waist and tied it in a clumsy bow.

“Will you come back?” she pleaded. “It won’t cost anything.

Just come back, please?”

“I’ll come back,” he said, taking pity, and left quickly.

The wine shop was a few streets away and crowded with poor laborers and small tradesmen. Tora’s military garb got him hostile stares instead of admiring glances. “You hang around with a low crowd,” he told the doctor sourly.

Ogata ignored the comment and sat down near the wine barrels. He ordered a large flask of their best from the waiter who rushed up eagerly.

“Their best probably tastes like dog piss,” grumbled Tora, but he asked the waiter to bring some pickled radish to go with the wine.

Ogata smiled with approval. Wine and radish appeared, and Tora paid, while the doctor poured himself a cup, gulped down the wine, refilled the cup, and emptied that also.

“Bad manners, I know,” he said, pouring the next cup for Tora and passing it over, “but I needed that. That poor, miserable girl. I offered her a job as a maid, but I can’t pay her what she makes as a whore, and she sends all her earnings to her mother and grandparents.” He heaved a sigh. “Ah, well. That’s better. Now, young man,” he asked, “what is it that you want from me?”

Tora stared, then grinned. The shrewd old codger!

“Well,” he said, “I want information about Wada. And about the prisoners you may have seen lately. One called Taketsuna in particular.”

Ogata raised his brows, then nodded. “Oh, Taketsuna. Yes, I remember him. I’ve wondered. He’s disappeared, you know. So that’s why you’re here. And you think Wada is responsible for his disappearance?”

This was almost too easy. Tora leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, I do. I just don’t know the reasons and the means, and what he’s done with him. What can you tell me about Taketsuna?” Ogata looked at him, then lowered his eyes to his empty cup and was silent for a long time. Finally he said, almost sadly, “I don’t think I can help you, Tora. Take my advice and go home.

If you go on with this, you’ll come to harm. Like Taketsuna.” He reached for the wine flask, but Tora clutched his hand hard.

“Ouch. Let go! I need my hands.”

Tora let go, but fear and anger overwhelmed him. The old crook was playing games with him. “Tell me what you know, you old drunk!” he shouted. “We had a deal. I paid up. Now it’s your turn.”

The room fell silent. Then there was a general shuffling as some of the guests got up and joined them.

“You need any help, Doctor?” asked a tall, broad-shouldered man with a scarred face.

“Yes,” piped up a small man, “we’ll teach him about respect, show him what’s what.” He stuck a scrawny fist in Tora’s face.

Ogata raised his hands. “It’s all right, friends. He got some bad news, that’s all. Thanks, but go sit back down. It’s a private conversation.”

Tora watched the men shuffle off, muttering and casting suspicious glances over their shoulders. He was spoiling for a fight, but thought better of it. Turning to Ogata, he said fiercely,

“I came here to find Taketsuna and I will do so or die. And if I find he’s dead, I’ll go after his killer. Neither you nor your friends can frighten me off.”

Ogata refilled his cup and drank. “Better order another flask,” he said. “All right, I saw Taketsuna the day after he arrived. The governor sent me to have a look at him. He was with some other prisoners in the harbor stockade and had a few bruises from the welcome Wada’s constables had given him, but he was otherwise well. I could see he was no commoner, so I convinced the governor to take him on as a scribe. He was put to work in the archives and stayed with the prison superintendent Yamada and his daughter. Then one day he was gone. I know the Yamada family well, and the girl told me he had left with the tax inspector Osawa for an inspection tour. That’s all I know. I never laid eyes on him again.”

Tora was not satisfied. “Why do you think something bad happened to him?” he demanded. He could not bring himself to mention death.

The doctor sighed. “Young man, I do not know who you are, and I did not know who Taketsuna was, except that he was one of the good people and had no idea what he was getting into.

Maybe he was a convict, but there was something about him that made me wonder. Just as I’m wondering about you now.

You both look and act like men bound for trouble, and I think Taketsuna found it. Me, I avoid trouble at all cost.” He started to rise.

“Wait!” Tora put a hand on the doctor’s arm. “I think you told me the truth,” he said. “But you’re wrong. Trouble will find you wherever you are. You’re a learned man and you get to talk to your governor. How can you keep on patching up that poor girl’s back and do nothing about that animal Wada?” Ogata suddenly looked very old. He said, “Because I’m more good to her and to others like her alive than dead. You know, your master asked the same sort of question.” His watery eyes looked in the distance and he shook his head. “We were looking at a corpse. Beaten to death. A good example why a man should keep his nose out of trouble. But did your master heed it? No. Look where it got him. I expect he died for his convictions. And it probably was Wada who killed him. It’s usually Wada who arranges deaths. A very efficient man who seems untroubled by the sort of scruples you and your master labor under.”

Tora clenched his fists. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “I won’t believe it till I see his body.”

Ogata said nothing. He sat hunched, his many chins resting on his chest.

Tora frowned. “And what makes you call him my master?”

The doctor gave him a pitying glance and shook his head.

“You’re not his brother or his son. The only other relationship strong enough to send one man off to risk his life for another is that between a nobleman and his retainer. I think the man who claimed to be Taketsuna was taken to one of the mines. I expect by now his body is in an abandoned mine shaft, covered with a heap of rubble. You’ll never find him. You’re a good fellow, Tora, and I’m truly sorry about your master, but there’s nothing you can do here except die. Go home. And take Little Flower with you. She’s a nice girl who needs someone to look after her and she likes you.”

This time Tora did not stop the physician, and Ogata staggered to his feet and departed, weaving an uncertain course among the guests who waved and called out to him or touched his hand as he passed.

Kita, the mine supervisor, stood above Akitada, studying him with a frown of concentration. The small bright eyes moved from face to body, pausing at the injured knee, and then returned. They locked eyes. Kita’s were cold and beady. The eyes of the predator, thought Akitada, the eyes of the
tengu
in the Minato shrine.

Akitada wondered if Kita also recognized him. Apparently not, for the supervisor grunted and said, “Not much to look at, is he? Thought he’d be younger, in better condition.” It was very unpleasant to be talked about as if one were no more than an animal, but Akitada kept his face stiff and waited for the guard’s response.

The guard said, “He’s been inside the whole time. Sick as a dog. Since the day the boss brought him.” Kita pursed his lips and came to a decision. “Put him to work in the mine.”

Akitada’s eyes flew to the mine entrance, where an exhausted and choking creature dumped his load and crept back in when a guard’s whip was raised. He felt such a violent revulsion against returning to the darkness in the bowels of the earth that he thought he would rather die here and now than go back.

“He can’t walk yet,” said the guard dubiously.

“Then put him to work over there till he can,” Kita said, pointing to the men who were pulverizing rock near the sluice.

And that was where they dragged him. He was given a small mallet and told to break up the chunks of rock someone dumped in front of him. In his relief that he had been spared the mine, Akitada worked away at this chore with goodwill. He was far from strong, but the activity required little strength, just patience and mindless repetition. When he finished one batch, a worker would remove the dust and gravel and replace them with more rock chunks. He saw no silver veins in any of the chunks he broke up. There were some small yellow spots from time to time, but he was too preoccupied with his body to wonder much at this.

He ate and slept where he worked. His legs were hobbled at the ankles even though he was unable to walk. When he wished to relieve himself, he dragged himself behind some bushes and then crawled back. On the next day, a guard forced him to stand. To Akitada’s surprise, he could put a little weight on his right leg again and, when poked painfully in the small of his back, he took the couple of staggering steps to the shrubs without screaming. All that was left from his injury was a stiff, slightly swollen, and bruised knee and an ache whenever he attempted to bend it.

They allowed him another day in the sunlight and fresh air before they sent him into the mountain. It was not a good moment for heroics. He was surrounded by hard-eyed guards, variously armed with whips, swords, and bows, and marched to the cave entrance, where they slung an empty basket over his shoulders by its rope and pushed him forward. In front of him and behind him shuffled other miserable creatures, each with a basket on his back. A break from the line was impossible.

The darkness received him eagerly. Air currents pushed and pulled as he shuffled in near-blindness in a line of about ten men following a guard with a lantern. They went down a steep incline, past gaping side passages, turning this way and that until he lost all sense of direction or distance. The rock walls closed in on him, and the tunnels became so narrow that he brushed the stone with his shoulders, and so low that he had to bend.

Panic curled in his belly like a live snake, swelling and choking the breath out of him until he wanted to turn and run screaming out of that place, fighting his way past the men behind him, climbing over their bodies if need be, clawing his way back to the surface, because any sort of death was better than this.

But he did not. And after a while, he could hear the hammering again, and then the tunnel opened to a small room where by the light of small oil lamps other miners chipped pieces of rock from the walls with hammers and chisels. He stood there staring around blankly, his body shaking as if in a fever. The empty basket was jerked from his back, and a full one put in its place. Its weight pulled him backward so sharply that his legs buckled and he sat down hard. A guard muttered a curse and kicked him in the side. Someone gave him a hand, and he scrambled to his feet. His bad knee almost buckled again. He sucked in his breath at the sudden pain. One of the other prisoners turned him about, and he started the return journey.

They carried the broken chunks of ore to the surface, where others dealt with them while they plunged back into the bowels of the mountain for another load. Kumo, for whatever reason, had spared his life to condemn him to a more ignominious and much slower end. As he trudged back and forth, he thought that he, Sugawara Akitada, descendant of the great Michizane and

an imperial official, would finish his life as a human beast of burden, performing mindlessly the lowest form of labor, the dangerous and unhealthy work the drunken doctor had tried to spare him, and he knew now he would not survive it for long.

Two facts eased his panic. The smoke from the earlier fire had cleared and the air was relatively wholesome. The mine also seemed a great deal cooler than he remembered from the weeks he had spent in his grave. The other fact concerned his right leg. He still limped and felt pain in his knee, especially when he put strain on it carrying his load uphill, but the swelling was gone and he had almost normal movement in it again. In fact, activity seemed to be good for it.

But he was still very weak and the rocks in the basket were abysmally heavy. The rag-wrapped rope, which passed in front of his neck and over his shoulders, cut into his flesh, and he had to walk bent forward to balance the load. This, added to the steep climb back out, strained his weakened muscles to the utmost. The first trip was not too bad, because he was desperate to get back to the surface, but on the second one he fell. To his surprise, the man in front of him turned back to help him up, telling him brusquely to grab hold of his basket. In this manner, the other man half dragged him up the rest of the way into the daylight.

When Akitada had unloaded and looked to see who his benefactor was, he was startled to recognize him. The man’s name escaped him for the moment, but he knew he was one of the prisoners from the stockade in Mano, the silent man with the scarred back. Their eyes met, and Akitada thanked him. The other man shook his head with a warning glance at the guards and started back into the tunnel. Akitada followed him.

He would not have lasted the first day if the man with the scarred back had not pulled him up on every trip to the surface.

Even so, Akitada sank to the ground after his last trip. He was too exhausted to notice that the sun had set and it was dusk. His companion pulled him up, saying gruffly, “Come on. It’s over.