Death at the Crossroads

CHAPTER 23

He sat in a thicket, just as he had been sitting for several days. The last days of summer were gone, and it was starting to chill. He lived off the land, cooking rabbits caught in snare traps and roots and edible plants he gathered. At night he would sneak to Jiro’s hut, stopping to get a pinch of salt or some miso to flavor his food. He still had the senbei he had received at the inn but decided to save it for a special occasion.

Kaze, by temperament and training, had more than his share of patience in a world filled with patient men. So he was not disappointed as the days passed and he didn’t see what he expected to see. His long talks with the Sensei had convinced him that he had finally placed the mountain in the right spot. He was determined to be that mountain and not to budge from the spot until he saw what he expected to see.

Finally, after eight days, his patience was rewarded.

Instead of coming with his usual paraphernalia, he showed up dressed as a warrior. He jumped off his horse and unloaded his gear. He went to the trees and hung marumono, round targets, from low hanging branches spaced many paces apart. The targets were round coils of braided straw, whitewashed with a large black dot in the center. They hung from pieces of hemp twine.

After he finished hanging the targets, he shrugged both his outer kimono and white inner kimono off his left shoulder. He walked over to a quiver sitting on the ground and took out three arrows: brown arrows with goose-feather fletching, all of them of unusual quality.

He walked back to the targets and set them swinging back and forth in a smooth arc. Then he returned to his horse and swung easily up to the saddle. One arrow was fitted to the bowstring and the other two were held in the middle by his teeth. He swung around the meadow and urged his horse into a gallop, swinging by the first target at a distance of ten paces. He drew back the bow and let the arrow fly at the swinging target, hitting it near the edge. In a flash, he had a second arrow removed from his mouth and in the bowstring. He let fly at the second target, missing it, but not by much. Before he galloped past the second target, the third arrow was already fitted to the bow. As he approached the last target you could see the intense concentration in his face. Coolly drawing back his bow, he released his third arrow.

It flew in a path that intersected the swinging target, hitting it squarely in the black dot. The heavy straw target shuddered under the impact of the arrow. Kaze decided it was time for the mountain to move.

Lord Manase slowed his horse and briskly trotted back to his gear. He jumped off the horse and picked up a bottle of water. He was bringing the bottle to his lips when Kaze made his mistake.

“The last arrow was an excellent example of kyujutsu,” Kaze said.

Manase dropped the water bottle and bent down to pick up his bow and a fresh arrow from his quiver, all in one smooth motion. Kaze anticipated that Lord Manase would have an interest in kyujutsu, the art of archery, but he didn’t anticipate Manase reacting like a warrior. Kaze stopped his advance as Manase swung the bow around.

“The ronin!” Manase said, giving his irritating, tittering laugh. Kaze expected Manase to drop his guard, but instead the bow remained at the ready. Kaze had spoken too quickly. With Lord Manase at the alert, one, and perhaps two, arrows could be let loose before Kaze could cross the distance between him and the District Lord. Kaze put a smile on his face and took a step forward to shorten that distance. Manase raised his bow and drew back the string.

“No,” he said. Manase’s powdered face was as stiff and expressionless as a Noh mask.

“Is something wrong?” Kaze said, taking another half step before he stopped.

“You came back for a reason,” Manase said. “I want to know what that reason is.”

Kaze thought for a moment about the various answers he could give, and he decided that the simplest and best answer was the truth. “I actually never left. I’ve been spending most of my time here in the district.”

Manase’s mask-like face now showed a flicker of surprise. “You’ve been here ever since the day you disappeared?”

“Hai, yes,” Kaze said. “In fact I’ve been by the edge of this meadow during most of the days. I saw you come several times to practice your Noh dancing. You really are a superb dancer, perhaps the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Why have you been spending the entire time here spying on me?” Manase said.

“I haven’t spent the entire time here,” Kaze answered. “In the evenings I would sneak into your home.”

Now Manase was very surprised. “Did you feel the need to spy on me at home, too?” he demanded.

“I wasn’t spying on you. I was there to talk to Nagahara Sensei.”

“That crazy old man? Why did you waste your time with him? He finally became totally useless. It was almost a blessing he died.”

“He did slip in and out of reality,” Kaze agreed. “But even when he was not aware of where he was, he wanted to talk about Heian Japan. He was a great teacher, and all great teachers deserve our respect. Even when he imagined he was in past days, he still said many interesting things.”

“Such as?” Manase said.

Kaze shifted his weight to a more comfortable posture. As he did so, he advanced another half step. “Such as the customs that our ancestors followed six hundred years ago. These are the kinds of customs that you try to follow, although I’m sure it’s difficult to do so in the current times.”

“I’ve told you I want to restore the customs of our ancestors,” Manase said, “but that doesn’t explain why you’re still here and spying on me.”

Kaze knew that he couldn’t completely close the distance between them without Manase releasing the arrow, but he also knew that Manase’s right arm must be tiring and that soon he would either have to release the arrow or relax the tension on the bowstring. If he could get him to relax the tension on the bowstring, that would buy more time to cross a few more feet, perhaps just the distance Kaze would need to get Manase to within a sword blade’s length. Kaze assumed that he was going to die in that effort. Ever since he was a youth, bushido had taught him that death is a natural part of life. Through reincarnation, he would live again, so the thought of dying did not scare him. He was more disturbed by the thought of failure, of not killing Manase as part of his dying and failing to find the Lady’s daughter.

“So what did that crazy old man say?” Manase demanded.

“I said he was a great Sensei and he still deserves our respect,” Kaze said sharply.

Manase gave his high tittering laugh. “You come up with the strangest ideas,” he said. “Did that old man say something that would cause you to engage in spying on me?”

“Actually it’s something you said.”

Once again Manase seemed surprised. “What did I say?”

Kaze smiled, shifting his weight and advancing another half pace. He could see Manase’s bow arm had relaxed the tension on the string by a noticeable degree. “You said that when the Ise Shrine is dismantled every twenty years, they break up the hinoki wood and hand out pieces to the pilgrims who have gathered to see the ceremony.”

Manase relaxed the bowstring even more, cocking his head in a questioning manner. While watching Manase acutely, Kaze was also thinking about the target practice he had witnessed a few minutes before. From the practice, he knew Manase was an excellent shot with the bow. Hitting a moving target from a moving horse was an extremely difficult task, requiring frequent practice and great concentration. There was something about that task, something important, that gnawed at Kaze’s thoughts. It was something that his old Sensei could have told him immediately, and Kaze felt frustrated that such an important thing didn’t pop into his head instantly.

“Why would that information about the Ise Shrine cause you to spy on me?” Manase demanded.

“It’s very simple,” Kaze said nonchalantly. “That first murdered man, the samurai, had a piece of wood on his money pouch instead of a proper netsuke. He was certainly prosperous enough to have a netsuke, so that piece of wood must have meant something to him. I think it was a piece of the Ise Shrine and it not only reminded him of home, but it was supposed to bring him good luck.”

“Even if the man was from Ise, why would he have any connection to me?”

Kaze reached up and scratched his head, smiling. He saw Manase tracking the movements of his arm with the bow, and he knew what it was about Manase’s archery that he was trying to remember. “That was harder,” Kaze said, “but once I thought the man might be somehow connected to you and Ise, then I looked at things in a slightly different manner. For instance, those arrows you use are extremely high quality, much better quality than most people would typically use for hunting or even war. It’s like many of the things you have: only the best. The arrows are much too good for some bandit to have, and I suppose Boss Kuemon got some of them by robbing a shipment that was meant for you.”

“He did rob a shipment,” Manase acknowledged, “and I’m sure he used those arrows to kill that unknown samurai.”

“But he couldn’t have killed that young boy,” Kaze said. “You see, I found the boy’s body at the crossroads, too, and sticking from his body was the same kind of arrow that killed that samurai.”

“That boy is of no consequence,” Manase said. “He was not of the samurai class and therefore his death should have no meaning for you.”

Kaze shrugged. “Perhaps you’re right. But you see, I gave that boy his life back twice and it’s very annoying that you took it.”

Manase looked at him, puzzled, trying to fathom why the death of a peasant would concern Kaze. Kaze shifted his weight from one foot to the other and watched closely as Manase’s bow followed his body movements. Manase’s target practice was done while sitting on a moving horse and shooting at a swinging target. He was aiming at where the target would be, not where the target was. He had to anticipate the movements of the horse and the target and had to shoot the arrow to the position where the target would be when the arrow arrived. Kaze would use that knowledge.

“Of course, the most difficult part,” Kaze said, “was trying to understand why you dumped the bodies at the crossroads. I was especially curious about why you took such a roundabout route to drop the first body off. I imagine the samurai was killed someplace near your manor, yet instead of going directly from your manor to the crossroads, you loaded him onto your horse, rode southwest to Higashi village and then northwest to the crossroads. To hide your identity, you put on a Noh mask of a demon and wore a demon’s costume to frighten the peasants in Higashi village. The peasants didn’t describe it fully, but I imagine it was the hannya demon’s mask used in Dojoji. I know that’s one Noh play you practice.”

Manase made no response, but Kaze could see his lips tightening. Kaze knew that he would soon have to attack or die where he stood. “That’s where my conversations with Nagahara Sensei proved interesting. Even though he slipped in and out of reality, he still loved to talk about the Heian era. I’m sure you know that in ancient days a gentleman was proud of his skill at archery but would often hide the fact that he had skill with a sword. Very different from today, where the sword is the soul of a warrior.

“In those days they had many interesting customs that we don’t follow today,” Kaze continued. “For instance, I’m sure you know that in many tales there are times when a noble wants to visit a friend or lover, but instead of going there directly, he first goes to another friend’s, stops there briefly, then goes to the person he really wanted to visit. That’s because people then believed that on certain days, certain directions were unlucky. If the noble was trying to visit someone to the west on a day when traveling west was unlucky, he first traveled southwest to another person, stopped, then traveled northwest to his eventual destination. He never went directly west, so he was able to get where he wanted to go without breaking the prohibition against traveling west. That’s exactly what you did.

“Nagahara Sensei said there are ancient texts that tell which directions are unlucky on which day, and I’m sure you have one of these books in your collection. On the day you killed the samurai, it was unlucky for you to travel directly west, so you went southwest to Higashi village and then northwest to the crossroads. On the day you killed the boy, it wasn’t unlucky to travel west so you skirted Suzaka village and went directly to the crossroads.

“Why you wanted to leave the bodies at the crossroads puzzled me until Nagahara Sensei told me that in ancient days, people believed that obakes would get confused by roads. I know from personal experience that obakes inhabit roads. A crossroads would be confusing to an obake, because the roads branch off in all directions. To confuse the ghosts of the samurai and the boy, you left their bodies at a crossroads where many paths converge. Their ghosts couldn’t find their way back to you, their killer.”

Kaze decided that now was the time to act. Without warning, he quickly lunged to the left, pulling out his sword. Manase reacted immediately, pulling back his bow and letting loose his arrow. But before Manase did that, Kaze had already shifted direction. His move to the left was a feint designed to get Manase to shoot where he thought Kaze would be when the arrow reached its target. Instead of continuing left, Kaze simply leaned in that direction and then immediately shifted his weight to the right. Kaze’s sword was out of its scabbard by the time the arrow neatly grazed the left sleeve of his kimono.

He closed the distance between him and Manase, expecting Manase to bend down to the quiver to grab another arrow or at least to pull out his sword. Instead, Manase, seeing his arrow had missed, dropped his bow and put up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. Kaze’s sword was already moving in a deadly arc, and it took effort on Kaze’s part to stop the swing of his sword so it didn’t cut down the helpless Manase.

“Take out your sword!” Kaze demanded. Manase backed up a step, his hands still up in the air. Kaze advanced, his sword at the ready and threatening. “Take out your sword and fight!”

Manase shook his head. “You killed five men by yourself with your sword. I’m no match for you. You’re too strong for me.”

“You killed General Iwaki at Sekigahara,” Kaze said. “He was a good swordsman. There’s no reason for you not to fight.”

Manase shook his head. “I didn’t kill him. During the confusion of the battle, my friend and I found the General and his bodyguard. They had all committed seppuku. They were dead when we found them. We dragged the General’s body away from his bodyguards and cut it up so people wouldn’t know he had committed suicide on the battlefield after his defeat. My friend lost courage, but I saw that this was my opportunity. I took the General’s head to Tokugawa Ieyasu to get a reward. I think Tokugawa-sama was too wily not to be suspicious, and that’s why he gave me this miserable little district as a reward instead of something grander. The samurai I killed was my friend from that battle. He returned to Ise and eventually heard about the reward I got for taking the head of General Iwaki. He came here demanding money, but I have no money. I’ve spent it all. I was even borrowing money from Boss Kuemon. That’s why Kuemon started robbing shipments to me, to get his money back. My friend said he would tell Ieyasu what I had done and get his reward from the Tokugawa government for turning in a fraud. I had no choice but to kill him.”

“And the young boy?” Kaze shouted.

Manase flinched, but, looking at Kaze’s blade still glistening in the sun, he said, “My friend was stopped by Boss Kuemon. He told Kuemon that he was a friend of mine from Ise. Kuemon, thinking that my friend could get money from Ise to help pay off the loans I owed him, had my friend brought to me. That young boy was the person who led him to me. After you killed Kuemon, the boy showed up at my manor asking to be taken into my service. He could link me to my dead friend, and I decided it was better if he died, too. After all, although my friend was a samurai, that boy was just a peasant. His death was meaningless.”

Kaze scowled. “We’ve had too many meaningless deaths over the last few years.”

Manase shrugged. “Are you going to take me to the next district to present your case?”

“No,” Kaze said softly.

Manase looked puzzled. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to execute you.”

Manase sputtered, “How dare you! You’re a miserable ronin and I’m a District Lord. I demand that I be given a proper hearing.”

Kaze shook his head. “No. As you point out, I am a ronin and you are a District Lord. If I bring a case against you, it’s impossible to know the results. I am sure that you won’t tell the authorities in the next district the same story about General Iwaki that you told me. That fraud alone would carry the death penalty for you. You are a very clever man, Lord Manase, and by the time we got to the next district, I’m sure you would have developed an equally clever story that will put me in the wrong and you in the right.”

“So you’re going to kill me?” Manase said incredulously.

“Yes.”

“I found a great deal of money at the bandit camp,” Manase said hastily. “It’s yours, all yours.”

“This is not about money,” Kaze said. “No amount of money can bring the dead back to life.”

“This is ridiculous,” Manase spluttered. “You can’t murder a District Lord.”

“No,” Kaze agreed, “but I can execute one.”

Manase stopped cowering and stood up straight. “All right,” he said. “But I insist that I be allowed to commit seppuku-that is my right as a District Lord and samurai.”

Kaze considered a moment, then said, “Remove your swords from your sash, and drop them on the ground.” Manase did as ordered.

“Now step away from them,” Kaze said. Manase walked four paces away from his swords with Kaze following him.

“All right,” Kaze said. “You can commit seppuku, but you’re going to do it right here and right now.”

“Here, without preparation?”

Kaze gave a short bow. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to insult you, but the truth is I don’t trust you. I think given enough time, you will find a way to get out of this situation. Therefore, if you want to commit seppuku, I’m asking you to please do it now. Otherwise I will have to execute you.”

Manase gave his high laugh. “That’s almost a compliment. You don’t trust me.”

Kaze gave another bow. “I’ve learned that your love of delicate and refined things does not make you any less a killer. I should not confuse a love of refinement with a lack of bushido.”

“Fine,” Manase said. “Right here and right now.” He sat down on the soft green grass of the meadow, his legs tucked under him. He looked up at Kaze and said, “Will you be my second?”

Kaze nodded.

Manase looked about him. “I don’t have paper to write a death poem.”

“If you recite a poem, I will remember it,” Kaze said. “When I have a chance, I’ll write it down and send it wherever you want.”

“To the shrine at Ise?”

“Yes, if that’s where you want the poem sent.”

“About the handwriting …”

Kaze understood. “I have a good hand, but if you’re worried about that, I know a priest who is a master at calligraphy. I will have him write your death poem to send to Ise.”

“Good,” Manase said.

Kaze took Manase’s short sword from the ground and handed it to him. Then he stood at the ready, his sword still and poised.

Manase paused, looking around at the fresh green trees swaying in the wind and then upward at the blue sky. He sighed. “It’s a fine day to die, isn’t it?”

Kaze made a noncommittal grunt.

“It’s a shame I don’t have ink, brush, and paper.”

“You will not be embarrassed by the quality of the hand that writes it.”

“It’s good of you to be sensitive to my concerns. I mean no disrespect to you. I simply don’t want the slightest possibility that someone may think that my death poem doesn’t reflect the most delicate refinement.”

Kaze nodded his understanding.

Manase sat for several moments, contemplating his final poetic statement in this life.

When he was done reciting, he looked up at Kaze. “Can you remember that?”

Kaze nodded, “Yes, I’ll remember every word. It’s a fine death poem.”

Manase gave a curt bow of thanks. He shrugged his kimono and white inner kimono off his other shoulder, leaving his torso bare. He took the wakizashi Kaze had given him and put it in front of him. He did a quick bow, picked up the sword, and slid it out of its scabbard.

“I don’t have any paper to wrap around this blade,” Manase remarked.

Kaze looked around but saw no paper, so he took the sleeve from his kimono and ripped off a strip. He handed it to Manase. Manase took the strip of torn kimono and wryly said to Kaze, “You should have taken the new kimono I gave you.”

He wrapped the strip of cloth around the blade of the short sword, right beneath the sword’s tsuba, or guard. This allowed him to grip the short sword on the blade, so that the blade of the sword was more like a dagger. Kaze walked over and picked up the water bottle that Manase had dropped. He shook it to make sure there was some water left in the bottle. Then he took his sword, the blade facing upward, and poured a tiny amount of water on the blade down its whole length in a ritual purification. The water slid off the oiled blade in a silver curtain that spattered on the ground.

Kaze walked over to Manase, gave another bow, and handed him the water jug. Taking the jug wordlessly, Manase bowed back to Kaze and poured some water on the blade of his short sword, then he put the bottle to his side and grabbed the blade with two hands, holding tightly to the cloth wrapped around the highly polished metal. Kaze got in position to the left and slightly behind Manase, raising his sword blade at the ready.

“It’s a shame all must end like this,” Manase remarked. “Do you know I never once got to give a real Noh performance? If I have any regrets or harbor any animosity toward you, it’s the fact that your disappearance robbed me of the opportunity to give a performance before an audience that would recognize and respect my talent.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaze said.

Manase made no reply but took a deep breath, holding the short sword at the ready. “All right?” he asked.

“I’m in position,” Kaze answered from behind him.

Manase nodded once, closed his eyes, and plunged the sword into his stomach with all his strength. He gave a short groan of pain and surprise as the silver blade entered his flesh, but before he cried in agony or even drew the blade across his stomach, Kaze’s own sword flashed down, neatly striking Manase’s neck and severing his head from his body.

A red spray of blood gushed from Manase’s severed neck, and his head hit the ground and rolled for a short distance as his body swayed and then collapsed to the earth. The eyes of Manase’s head opened and the lids fluttered violently for a few seconds before they were finally stilled.

Kaze stood surveying the scene before him, breathing heavily, waiting for the tension to drain from his body, just as the blood drained from Manase’s headless corpse. Kaze looked down at Manase’s robes and decided not to wipe his sword on them, so he tore another piece of his kimono sleeve and used that to clean his blade before he returned it to its scabbard.

He walked over and picked up Manase’s severed head by the hair and brought it back to his body. He took the body and rolled it over on its back, straightening its legs and putting its hands peacefully across its chest. He picked up the water bottle that Manase had placed on the ground and used the few remaining drops of water in the bottle to clean the dirt off Manase’s head and to pat his hair back into place. Then he placed the head next to Manase’s body. He got on his knees in the meadow and bowed deeply to the corpse of the District Lord, touching his forehead to the ground.

He sat up and looked at the lifeless face. The chalk-white makeup on the face didn’t hide the newly gray pallor of the flesh underneath. The eyes were looking back at him with the ridiculous painted eyebrows high on the forehead. Kaze reached over with his two fingers and closed the eyelids. Then he bowed once again.

“I’m sorry to bring trouble to your house and to end your life like this,” Kaze said to the corpse of Manase. “But I want your spirit to know some things that I didn’t care to discuss while you were still alive and there was a possibility that you could still escape.

“I was also a District Lord, just like you, except my district was several thousand times larger and I had every anticipation that, as my master prospered, I would prosper, too. My master, however, was loyal to the Taiko, Hideyoshi. When the war to decide who would succeed the Taiko occurred, he backed the Toyotomi forces and not Tokugawa Ieyasu. The battle that raised your fortunes, Sekigahara, is the battle that ruined mine. My Lord was defeated at Sekigahara, and I wasn’t even there to die with him. Instead, I was leading an expedition back to his home castle that was under attack by an ally of the Tokugawas. I got there too late, and my Lord’s castle was sacked.

“My Lord’s wife and child were captured during the siege. I managed to rescue his wife, but not his child. As she was tortured, she was told that their daughter would be sold into slavery. The sorrowful fate of her child would eat at her like some tiny animal living in her heart. Because of the torture she lived only a short time after I rescued her, but she made me promise to find her child and free her.”

Kaze bowed once again, touching his forehead to the ground. He sat up and said, “So you see, I’m sorry I brought misfortune to your house and caused you to commit seppuku. But the Tokugawa government, the government that now rules Japan, is not one that I can go to for justice. And I’m very sorry to have to say this, Lord Manase, but you were not a good ruler.

“Our beliefs tell us that harmony and balance must be kept if a Lord is to rule according to the natural order of things. Then peasants, merchants, priests, and other people can understand that there is a natural hierarchy to society and that the ruler is in place at the top of this hierarchy because of the benefits he brings to all, not just to himself. I’m sorry, but you forgot that principle and devoted your life to your own pleasure and interests, abandoning the people who depend on you to incompetent magistrates, bandits, and their own resources.

“That is why I decided to take action in this case, even though it involved only the death of one samurai and one peasant in a land where hundreds of thousands have died through wars and other types of injustices. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Kaze bowed once more, then he stood up. He took Lord Manase’s horse and tied him to a bush on the road. When they came to look for the District Lord, they would find the horse and thus find the body in the meadow in the woods.

Kaze made sure his sword was secure in the sash of his kimono, then he turned and started walking down the road, starting his often-interrupted journey out of the District. He felt no elation over the outcome with the strange District Lord, but as he walked, breathing in the clean air, looking at the blue sky filled with small white tufts of clouds, he soon shrugged off his concerns.

He started humming an old Japanese folk song under his breath and stopped to examine the tattered sleeves of his kimono. As he did so, he found the bit of cloth with the senbei that the youth had given him at the inn and finally decided to eat it. He unwrapped the cloth and took a bite from the toasted rice cake he found inside. After all this time, it was a bit stale but still tasty. He was about to toss aside the scrap of cloth it was wrapped in when he froze, dropping the rice cake and holding the cloth in both hands.

There, on the inside of the cloth, was a mon with three plum blossoms. It was the mon of his Lord and Lady. It was the mon on the clothing of the girl he was seeking. Perhaps the cloth came from someone else in Kaze’s scattered clan and perhaps it was simply a rag that had somehow come into the possession of the motley trio intent on revenge. And perhaps, just perhaps, it was a tangible link between that trio and the girl Kaze had been seeking for over two years.

The strange trio had a head start of many days on Kaze, but he knew where they were headed: the great Tokaido road.