The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn (10 page)

“Aha!” Tomomi said, seeing the
gesture. “You will fight, then? A trained samurai, are you? Raised
from birth to follow the way of the warrior?” He sat up, lazily,
like a cat, and reached for one of his own swords, the long one.
“Let us test each other, then.”

“His sword isn’t real,” Kazuo
murmured softly to Seikei. “Just a prop for the stage.”

“Not real?” Tomomi said. “Real
enough, for in a samurai’s hand it can deliver a blow and draw
blood.” He stood up now, sword in hand, bracing his feet for
combat. The three women around him gasped and drew away, looking at
each other. One moved forward and put her hand on Tomomi’s arm, but
he shook her off.

Tomomi’s eyes were taunting
Seikei. “Are you willing to defend your honor?”

Seikei nodded grimly, though his
hands were shaking with fear. It would be a disgrace to decline
such a challenge. He drew his sword from his obi, knowing that when
a samurai unsheathed his sword he must use it.

Seikei bowed, remembering the
proper way of accepting a challenge to combat. “I am Seikei, the
son of Konoike Toda, and a retainer of the samurai Ooka. Come take
my head if you can.”

Tomomi’s eyes shone. “So
honorable! So beautifully innocent! I feel compelled to imitate
you.” Then he too bowed. “I am Genji, the son of the daimyo
Takezaki Kita. Descendant of a noble house, I am reduced to a
homeless actor who calls himself Tomomi.”

Tomomi looked around the room and
his voice rose almost as if he felt himself on stage. “Yes, that is
my true origin,” he declared to the three women, who were cowering
in a comer. Tears began to fall from Tomomi’s eyes. “See me now!
Disgraced, but pledged to avenge my honor.” He touched his face and
rubbed off the white makeup he had worn on stage.

Seikei saw the scar. Tomomi was
indeed the man he had seen on the Tokaido Road, taunting Lord
Hakuseki.

Tomomi traced the scar’s outline
on his cheek. “To avenge this, I have pledged my life. And see—they
send a boy to fight me!” Suddenly, with a loud cry, he raised his
sword above his head and lunged forward.

The actor’s sword whistled through
the air, aimed at Seikei’s head. Without thinking, Seikei raised
his wooden sword to ward off the blow. The metal sword struck
his—and shattered. Pieces of it flew around the room. The women
shrieked and ran for the doorway.

Seikei still stood with his sword
raised, not quite realizing what had happened. Tomomi looked at the
shattered stump in his hand. He threw it aside and grabbed Seikei’s
sword with both hands. Seikei was thrown backward, but he held onto
the sword with all his strength.

Yet Tomomi was much stronger. As
Seikei struggled with him, he felt the man’s power. He was like a
demon! Tomomi wrenched the sword out of Seikei’s hand, and Seikei
leaped forward to take it back. As Tomomi turned aside, Seikei
grabbed at the actor’s robe, tearing it open.

Next to Tomomi’s chest, on a
silver chain around his neck, were two crossed sticks with the body
of a man nailed to them, arms outspread. Seikei blinked. He knew
what this magic charm meant. “You are a Kirishitan!” he
exclaimed.

Tomomi hastily pulled his robe
together. Just then, two burly men came through the door. “No
fighting!” they shouted. One of them pointed at Seikei. ‘You! Out!”
He picked Seikei up and slung him over his shoulder. Seikei saw
Tomomi strike the other man with the wooden sword, but the blow
only enraged him. He grabbed Tomomi by the scruff of his neck and
shoved him out of the room.

In a few moments, the men had
tossed them onto the street outside. Kazuo followed, hustling out
the door on his own feet. “You’re an idiot!” he shouted at Tomomi.
“You broke your sword, and now I’ll get blamed.”

Tomomi brushed himself off. He
swayed slightly, and Seikei saw that he must be drunk from the
wine. “But I have another sword now. This one.” He held up the
wooden sword.

“That’s mine,” cried Seikei. “Give
it back.” Tomomi grinned. “I took it from you in combat. Now it’s
mine. And must I remind you of the proper action for a samurai who
loses his sword?”

Seikei felt his knees weaken. He
knew what a disgraced samurai must do—kill himself in the ceremony
known as seppuku.

He swallowed hard. “I have no
sword with which to kill myself,” he said. “Will you give me
one?”

Tomomi laughed again, sending
echoes down the dark street. He clapped Seikei on the back. “Hai!
You do indeed have honor in your bones. A lesser man, not to
mention a boy, would shrivel and whine that he was not a samurai at
all. And you are not, are you?”

Seikei shook his head. Everyone
could tell he was merely a merchant’s son. “All the same, I must
return my sword to my master. He entrusted it to me.”

“He did well,” said Tomomi. He
shot a sly look at Seikei. “But before I give it to you, you must
serve me. Are you willing?”

Seikei hesitated. What would the
judge think when he did not return to the inn? “I will not do
anything dishonorable,” he said.

Tomomi nodded. “I can see you
won’t.”

“What is it you want me to do?”
asked Seikei.

“I’ll let you know in the morning.
Come with me now, and let us get some rest,” said Tomomi. Seikei
followed him and Kazuo down the street. Somewhere in the darkness
behind them, he could hear the eerie sound of a flute
playing.

12: An Offering to
Amaterasu

Seikei opened his eyes and saw a
man juggling swords. As they flashed through the air, he counted...
three, four, five of them! The juggler’s hands hardly seemed to
move, yet he kept the swords whirling around his head in an endless
circle. He glanced down at Seikei. “Awake at last, sleepyhead? I
hear you were out all night with Tomomi.”

Tomomi! Seikei remembered
everything that had happened the night before. Tomomi had brought
him back to the common hall, where pilgrims were allowed to sleep
for free.

Seikei wondered what the judge
must have thought when he did not return. And worse...Seikei felt
the empty place at his side, remembering the lost sword.

He got up and looked around the
large room, which consisted of little more than a roof and a floor
covered by thin straw mats. A monk was distributing bowls of rice,
and a few dozen men and boys were eating the simple breakfast.
Seikei recognized some of them as actors who had been in the
play.

The scent of the steaming rice
reminded Seikei that he was hungry. But that could wait. Where was
Tomomi? Where was his sword? Tomomi had promised to return it, but
if he did not, Seikei could never face the judge. He was starting
to compose a poem to express his misery, when someone tapped him on
the shoulder.

It was Kazuo, holding out a bowl
of rice and a pair of chopsticks. “I saved this for you. These
greedy pigs would let their mothers go hungry if it means a full
belly for them.”

Seikei bowed. “I am grateful,” he
said. “But I must find Tomomi.”

“Eat first,” said Kazuo. ‘Tomomi
went to the shrine to make an offering. But you’ll never find him
in the crowd. What’s the rush anyway? He’ll come back. We have to
get on the road again. In two days, we’ll be in Edo.”

Seikei wanted to pursue Tomomi,
but his growling stomach got the better of him. He took the bowl of
rice and began to eat. Then he thought of something. “Why would
Tomomi make an offering at the shrine?”

Kazuo shrugged. “The same reason
as anybody, I guess. He wants Amaterasu’s blessing.”

“But he is a Kirishitan. You
saw—”

“I know,” said Kazuo. “He wears
those crossed sticks with the man nailed onto them. That’s supposed
to be the Kirishitan god. I ask you, why would anyone worship a god
who let himself be nailed to a cross? You know what I
think?”

“What?” Seikei said between
mouthfuls of rice.

“Tomomi probably wears that just
because he wants to be different. The other actors are uneasy with
him, even though they know he’s the best actor and he writes most
of our plays. He’s very strange, always putting on airs. He goes
off by himself to meet people in the middle of the night. But
before he fought you, I never heard him say he was the son of a
daimyo.”

“Why would the son of a daimyo—”
Seikei started to say, but then caught himself.

Kazuo nodded. “Don’t worry. I know
what you’re thinking. What’s he doing with a bunch of kabuki
actors? Everybody looks down on actors, don’t they?”

Seikei shook his head. “I am the
son of a merchant, and everybody regards us with
contempt.”

“A merchant?” Kazuo looked at
Seikei with interest. “In that case, why were you carrying a sword
like a samurai?”

Seikei took a deep breath. He was
afraid of seeming foolish, but Kazuo was so frank and open that
Seikei felt he would not laugh. “My greatest dream is to be a
samurai,” Seikei said.

Kazuo opened his eyes wide. “Ah!
That can never be. You must know that. Everyone is born into his
proper place. Think of what might happen if people tried to become
something they were not meant to be. There would be fighting and
disorder, and everyone would suffer.”

“That is what my
father says,” Seikei said glumly.

“If I had a father who was a
merchant,” said Kazuo, “I would try to please him by becoming the
best merchant I could be.”

Seikei remembered the judge
pointing out the twisted tree on the road. The tree that grew where
it could not become a proper tree. Was it meant to be a lesson for
Seikei?

Seikei put down his empty bowl. “I
must try to find Tomomi,” he said.

“He’ll return soon enough,” said
Kazuo. “Why go looking for trouble, when trouble will come to
you?”

“Because I must recover my sword,”
replied Seikei.

No one stopped him as he left the
hall. Outside, he found himself in the midst of a great throng of
people. He saw pilgrims of every age and station in life. Some were
clearly afflicted by illness, coming here to seek a cure. Mothers
carried babies on their backs to present before the goddess. Old
men and women were helped along by their children and
grandchildren. Wealthy or poor, noble or common—it seemed as if
everyone in Japan had come to beg the goddess Amaterasu for her
blessing.

Kazuo was right.
Seikei could not hope to find Tomomi in this mass of people. Yet he
let himself be carried along as the crowed surged toward the wooden
building where the spirit of Amaterasu dwelled. He could hear the
sound of hundreds of hands clapping together. As the pilgrims
passed through the
torii
,
the
great gate at the entrance to the temple area, they clapped to
attract the goddess’s attention.

Under the torii,
Seikei clapped his hands like everyone else.
Amaterasu
, he prayed,
help me to save my honor. Let me recover my
sword.

He strained to see above the
crowd. On the wooden porch of the shrine stood a group of
white-robed Shinto priests. No one but them could actually go
inside the shrine.

As the people passed by, the
priests waved smoking sticks of incense at them. The pilgrims
reached out to catch the perfumed smoke in their hands and wave it
over their bodies, for it was said to cure illness. Seikei saw a
mother carrying a child with no legs, trying to get close to the
smoke. He could hear people in the crowd crying out with joy or
weeping softly as the smoke wafted over them.

Finally his part of the crowd
reached the steps of the shrine. Seikei saw large bowls there,
overflowing with coins and countless other offerings that people
had left. Many families had brought food that they had grown. A
little girl left an onion; an aged farmer set down a gourd that
grew in such an unusual shape he was convinced a kami lived within.
Craftsmen offered examples of their finest work—statues of the
goddess, beautifully woven mats and cloth, paper fans and
umbrellas. Among the offerings was a little doll that a child must
have given.

Seikei thought of Michiko, and was
glad she could not see him now. Disgraced by the loss of his sword!
If he could not recover it, the only honorable thing to do was kill
himself. That was what a samurai would do.

Suddenly, he felt someone grasp
his elbow. As he turned, he saw Tomomi’s face glaring down at him.
“I thought you would be here sooner,” Tomomi said. “Laziness is a
bad habit in one who would pretend to be a samurai.”

“So is deceit,”
Seikei replied hotly. He pointed to his sword, hanging from
Tomomi’s belt. “And theft.”

“No theft,” said Tomomi, “I won it
from you in combat.”

“What about the jewel that belongs
to Lord Hakuseki?” Seikei replied.

Tomomi raised his eyebrows and
opened his eyes wide. “How do you know about that?” he asked in a
low voice.

Seikei knew he
should not have spoken of the jewel.
“I...
I was in the inn on the night
it was stolen,” Seikei said. “But it was found,” he added hastily.
“In the room of a paper-maker.”