Sword of Honour (25 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Could you wait here a few moments?’

The monk bowed his head in acquiescence. Musashi set off up the stairs. Echoed upwards, he heard the distant voices of the circumambulators once more, following him softly:

‘
PraisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida, praisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida, praisebetotheinfinitelightofAmida . . .’

The stones of the stairway were so old their surface had turned moss green, trembled in the loose earth as he climbed. It was a steep ascent, yet short, no more than fifty steps. The temple he
found at the top was also small, perhaps ten paces around either side and set upon a squared dais of stone. The wood of it was almost the same colour as the forest around it, set with scabs of
bright moss and fungus. Evidently ancient. Yet when Musashi stepped inside he found new things there – a chest set for coins, a swathe of red cloth draped over an altar, the remnants of
recently burnt incense standing in a clay cauldron of sand.

The scent of the smoke could not ward away the underlying stench of the place entirely, the odour like a ditch. The interior was dominated, he was surprised to find, by two large wooden statues
of Raijin and Fujin. They were Shinto gods of thunder and wind, ogreish beings that cavorted in chaos, and here they stood in the frozen throes of their dance with their robes blowing around them
and panels of smoke and fire rising behind them. They were placed either side of a smaller statue, one of bronze and equally as old, he guessed, showing the Bodhisattva of wisdom Monju sitting
cross-legged atop a lotus, this in turn borne on the back of a snarling lion.

Musashi had no coin to offer up to the chest; all he had was the fullness of his heart. He looked around and ensured that the monk had not followed him, that none could see him. Then he dropped
to the knees he had sworn he would never bend for any man, pressed his brow to the ground and rose with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in prayer:

‘Raijin. Fujin. Monju. Amaterasu. Enlightened Buddha. Both heavens, please hear me. I ask that you grant my uncle Dorinbo health and life and fortune. He is the best of men, and I ask that
you watch over him in my stead.’

He repeated the prayer inwardly a dozen times, more, until the prayer had become wordless, no more than a fervent feeling, and he thought that this was wrong and so he began to speak aloud. He
sang the prayer-songs of Shinto that Dorinbo had taught him, warbling in a low resonant monotone, not caring that here was Buddhist ground. His motive was honest,
he
was honest, and the
heavens would understand that. And in the singing of it he remembered how his uncle had sung it – how melodies seemed to haunt him now – and he thought deeper of the man, and he was
twisted with a profound longing. Wondered what it was Dorinbo was doing at that precise moment. Thought of how he would be standing. Imagined the look in his eyes at the exact moment he would
recognize Musashi on the day of his return. That day to come when he was permitted home, that day which had no date, and yet Musashi both vowed and knew was near. Had to be near. Perhaps even
before the snows this year. The day when he had attained that nebulous thing he sought, achieved a thing of worth. When all was done in Kyoto, and all was achieved, and all saw and recognized this,
and all was right.

Live until that day, Uncle.

Live.

Musashi prayed until his words were spent and he was satisfied that some higher entity could not have failed to hear him. Then he placed his hands upon his thighs, took a steadying breath, bowed
a final time, and opened his eyes.

He found himself looking up into the faces of Raijin and Fujin.

The statues were unchanged.

He looked and he saw that the wood they were carved from must have been as old as the temple itself. They had been painted once, but with the rotting of the timber the paint had peeled away and
so they were left marred, garish colours outlining dark abscesses of wood-flesh, growths of moss mottled in pallid green; they looked a pair of plague-bearers. They grinned and snarled down at him,
delighted in their disease, whilst Monju sat placid, content to be amongst the filthy.

How long had they stood here? How many prayers like this had the three of them heard? How many lives had inadvertently intersected here? How many people were beneath Musashi in the wave he now
stood on the cusp of, and would be in time sucked down into just as those before him had been?

Musashi looked up at the pair of statues and something began to formulate within him, somewhere between anger and fear and loneliness at the inkling that perhaps he had mistaken the nature of
the forest that surrounded this altar for the nature of existence itself.

It was only the sound of voices from outside that broke his bleak reverie. Men’s voices, many of them, distant, growing closer.

Angry.

Demanding him by name.

Chapter Fifteen

Denshichiro Yoshioka rose with the dawn. At the washing trough of the barracks he splashed tepid water over his body, cleaned himself of the sweat of night. He was a man of
broad shoulders, forearms coiled with muscle, a square head heavy with bone and lacking neck. To look at him was to see that his ancestors were likely those men who chased and wrestled wild horses
to force bridles upon them.

Naked, he went through his exercises. He brought his chin up to a beam thirty times. He clutched a boulder to his chest and dropped into a squat fifty times. He took up a broad training sword
weighted to be five times heavier than a true blade and ran through the motions of striking from either side of his body two hundred times.

When he was done, Denshichiro washed himself again. He dressed. He made sure he was alone. Then he went and he brought forth a length of silk from where he kept it in a chest in his chambers. It
was one of the standards of the Tokugawa that had fallen in the explosion at the garrison. A member of the school who had fought the fires had recovered it and presented it to him. Yards of it,
immaculate and white.

With great care Denshichiro folded it so that the black crest of the Tokugawa was framed in a neat square. He placed this on the ground outside. Then he took out his penis and pissed upon it.
Swung his cock back and forth, blighted the emblem with great yellow slashes, grinned to himself.

His duty that morning was to pay a cordial visit to the school of the Kiichi. They were an older school than the Yoshioka, having held a modest compound up by the Ichijo canal
for centuries, but their prestige had never risen anywhere near as high. Neither school contested this and their relationship was amiable and well defined as superior–inferior; this was why
Denshichiro had come in place of his elder brother Seijuro, who was head of the school, and this was why the master of the Kiichi was not offended by the coming of the second in line.

The master of the Kiichi presented Denshichiro with the quaint antique guard of a cavalry sword. Denshichiro in turn gifted him a cask of fine shochu spirits. They drank a measure each as they
ate a plate of satsumas. They spoke platitudes of no real import, commented upon the Shogun’s castle and the beheadings there, agreed that next month’s arrival of a famed wrestler from
distant Kyushu was something to look forward to.

Before midmorning Denshichiro bade his farewells and was on his way out of the school when one of the adepts called out to him. He introduced himself politely as Eijun Yamanaka.

‘Sir Yamanaka.’ Denshichiro nodded. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I am sorry to intrude upon your time, Sir Yoshioka, but I happened to witness something strange yesterday. Something in which I think you would have interest. That odd-looking fellow, the
Foreigner – does he still serve your most honourable school?’

‘I believe so. Though I do not recall seeing him of late.’

‘Indeed. I encountered him yesterday before the gates of the city. He looked ragged and worn, and he was not wearing the colour of tea.’

‘You are certain it was him?’

‘He has a very particular appearance.’

Denshichiro could not argue with this. ‘What was he doing?’

‘That was the queer thing. He was in strange company. Some kind of witch or devil-woman, and a masterless. A real brute, a dog who tried to cut me down.’

‘I am glad to see you remain unharmed,’ said Denshichiro, the sentiment entirely perfunctory. ‘Have you a name for this masterless?’

‘I do: Musashi Miyamoto. I have not heard of him.’

‘Neither have I.’

‘With good reason I would imagine,’ said Eijun. ‘He was the definition of indignity. Held my attention with his repugnance – it was only when they were leaving did I
recognize your man. Seeing him only compounded the oddity of the whole thing.’

‘Indeed,’ said Denshichiro. His body settled into a slow contemplative nod.

‘The Foreigner,’ said Eijun, matching the nod.

‘The Foreigner.’

There came an awkward little pause. Denshichiro’s expression revealed nothing, and it was Eijun who brought it upon himself to speak first.

‘In truth I am not surprised,’ the samurai said. ‘He came here once, the Foreigner. I looked into his eyes and there was something aberrant about them. It was like looking into
a fox’s. Made my skin crawl when he smiled, as though he were planning some cruelty for me of which I was unaware.’

‘Indeed.’

‘In any case,’ said Eijun, ‘I recalled that your most honourable self would be visiting our school this morn. I thought that you would care to know of a man shirking your
colours, and so I sent my squire to follow the pair. The boy said they spent the night upon Mount Hiei, what with those Edo interlopers deciding to bar the gates of the city. I myself had to take
lodgings in a room with ten other men, if you can believe that, and, a fine thing, the Edoites relented and opened the gates this morning or I—’

‘Where are the pair now?’ interrupted Denshichiro. It was easy for a man of his appearance to impose himself, even to his elders.

Eijun recovered his poise adeptly: ‘Still upon Hiei. My squire waits there now at the foot of the trails with a few friends of his, either to track them if they move on from there or to
point them out to you should you so desire it.’

‘This is a great service you have rendered us, Sir Yamanaka,’ said Denshichiro, already turning for the door. ‘You have my gratitude.’

‘It is nothing, Sir Yoshioka,’ said Eijun, and he bowed humbly at his departing back. ‘A simple matter of respect between our two schools.’

The Foreigner.

He was like a ghost to Denshichiro. Seijuro, five years his elder, had told him with the dark relish that only elder brothers could muster that the man had that reddish skin of his because he
bathed in the blood of children. Though Denshichiro eventually realized this to be nonsense, he had been told it at a young enough age that the sentiment of it was inexorably ingrained in him.
Denshichiro remembered nights before he had been awarded the longsword of adulthood when he would stalk the dark halls of the school, placing his feet on their edges to see if he could walk
entirely silently like an assassin, and always there would be the light of a solitary candle in the library to spoil his imagined stealth. He would peer in and see the Foreigner there sitting
reading, back entirely rigid, eyes shimmering gold.

Denshichiro had wanted to throw salt at him each and every time, as though he himself were some exorcizing priest. That was the Foreigner’s realm, darkness and silence. Unsettling, and now
rumours of desertion. The thought of desertion in itself unsettling – he could recall no man who had willingly forsaken the colour of tea. He thought it over as the crowded streets parted for
him.

He went straight to Ujinari, whom he found working the school’s accounts, flicking the beads of an abacus and filling in the waiting columns of a ledger. Ujinari was his closest friend,
had been since childhood. They were of an age, born only months apart, and perhaps their fathers had planned this. Ujinari was Tadanari’s son, after all, and Tadanari had been as close to
Denshichiro’s father as a brother. The Kozei and the Yoshioka all but blood, so why not have their two progeny grow up as fraternal kin?

Denshichiro thus sought his counsel above all others. He innately felt that Ujinari understood both his own nature and the world in general better than he himself did – though he would
admit this to no one – and he told Ujinari what he had learnt that morning. Ujinari listened and nodded along.

‘This Musashi Miyamoto – have you heard any of him?’ said Denshichiro.

‘No.’

‘Then why would he be consorting with the Foreigner? Or the Foreigner with him?’

Ujinari thought about it for a moment, knelt there scratching at the shaven pate of his head out of habit. Both of them wore their topknots in the fashion of the samurai youth of Kyoto, the
bared skin no more than the width of two fingers, a mere line cut through the hair instead of the tradition of the full crown and pate bared. Then an idea occurred to him, and he led Denshichiro to
the archives room.

At his waist he wore the longsword that Tadanari had bestowed upon him those years past. Walking behind him, Denshichiro cast an unseen envious eye over the weapon as he did every time he saw
it. Even the scabbard was a gorgeous thing, misted lacquer capped in burnished copper and set with studs along its length, each one a carved and varnished blonde-wood image of the fierce face of
Saint Fudo.

Seijuro, the head, the scion, got the fine things in the Yoshioka family, the cherished heirlooms and the gold-threaded jackets and the ancestral blades.

When they arrived Ujinari set his beautiful sword casually on a waiting stand, and then he quickly searched through the chests of drawers that lined the wall of the archives. He found the scroll
he was after, knelt and unrolled it on the tatami mats. He revealed a long row of names written in black ink, most of which were crossed out in red slashes denoting resolution.

Ujinari glanced through the names, and then pointed at one. ‘As I thought. Here. Miyamoto is upon the list.’