Jade Palace Vendetta

CHAPTER 17

Melons! Juicy, sweet melons!” the peasant called out. The old servant, thin as a skeleton, walked up to him and picked up a melon. He sniffed the stem to test its ripeness and hefted it to judge its weight. Satisfied with the quality of the merchandise, he then set to bargaining in earnest with the melon seller to effect the purchase of two of the melons. In the servant’s hands were several bundles from other purchases in Kamakura’s open-air market.

It only took a few exchanges before the two men were intently talking price. In the heat of bargaining, neither man saw the four ronin circling the marketplace. The ronin fancied that they had the look of wolves, but in fact they looked more like stray dogs. They were used to making mischief and converged on the two men because they looked weak and vulnerable.

“That’s still too much for such inferior merchandise,” the old servant said.

“But sir, these are superior melons! The finest in Kamakura. Juicy, sweet, and at the peak of ripeness. Just ask anyone. They know the quality of my melons.” The peasant was quite enjoying the intense debate over price. Modern wives these days didn’t seem to have time for a good argument over price. This servant knew how to bargain! He must have been trained by a master.

“They seem overripe to me. If I don’t take two off your hands now, at half the price you want, then you’ll just throw them away tomorrow.”

“Overripe! Why sir, these melons …” The peasant’s voice trailed off. He noticed that they were now surrounded by the four ronin. He licked his lips in apprehension and gave a polite bow of greeting.

“Good morning, Samurai-sama!” the peasant said with a forced heartiness. “Would you like some sweet melons today?”

The leader of the pack smiled. “Of course. I’m glad you’re giving them to us.”

“But Samurai-sama,” the peasant said hastily, “I didn’t-”

The leader gave the peasant a violent shove, pushing him away from his fruit. Then he put his hand on his sword, loosening it in the scabbard with an ominous click. “Are you taking back your offer to give us the melons?” the samurai said angrily.

The peasant regained his balance and looked at the four hard faces staring back at him. He licked his lips again. A tight knot of fear grew in his belly and moved up to constrict his throat. “Please excuse my stupidity,” the peasant said hastily. “Of course you may take anything you wish. It was my fault entirely that I did not make myself clear. Please help yourself. Dozo! Please!”

The smile returned to the samurai’s lips, and he motioned to the rest of the pack to pick up some fruit. Half the melons disappeared into their hands. Helplessly, the peasant looked at the depleted stock of melons left to him. He was depending on the money from selling the melons to feed his nine children. Still, better to have hungry children than a large family without a father. “I hope you enjoy them,” the peasant said with forced pleasantry, while thinking he hoped the melons gave the thieves cramps.

“And what do you have to give us?” the leader of the pack said to the servant.

“Excuse me, Samurai-sama?”

“Are you deaf? I said, ‘What do you have to give us?’ This peasant has been generous with his melons. Surely you can be equally generous with some of your purchases.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t, Samurai-sama. I am Sadakatsu, a servant of the cadet branch of the Noguchi family. My mistress would be very distressed if I did not return with all the supplies she sent me to get.”

The leader looked at his three companions and snickered. “The cadet branch of the Noguchis. He’s not even a servant to the main branch of the family!” He turned his attention back to the servant. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.” He gave the servant a hard shove, and the old man staggered back into the arms of one of the other ronin. This ronin pushed the servant away from him and sent the old man sprawling in the dirt, his packages scattering about him. Looking down at him, the leader said, “Now have we made ourselves clear, or do we have to administer a few good kicks to further explain things to you?”

“I’m sorry, Samurai-sama, but my mistress would never approve of me giving away the food she has sent me to fetch.” The old man looked up, defenseless but not frightened.

“This fellow is very dense,” the leader said. “I think we’ll have to administer a good beating to help clear his mind, so he’ll know to be generous when given the opportunity.”

“Melons,” a voice said.

Startled, the ronin leader looked up to see another samurai standing next to him. He was in his early thirties and muscular in the shoulders and arms. From his looks, the newcomer was a ronin, too.

The newcomer reached over and took a melon out of the hands of the leader. “Hey!” the leader said, but the newcomer ignored him. He took his sword out of the scabbard in a smooth motion and the four ronin stepped back in surprise.

The newcomer took his sword and held it, cutting-edge down. He tossed the melon lightly onto the back of his sword. He caught the melon there and balanced it on the thin edge of steel. He tilted his sword up slightly and the melon rolled toward the tsuba. Then he tilted the sword downward and rolled the melon the other way. Finally, he leveled his sword and held the melon motionless on the back of his katana. He said, “Catch your half.”

“What?” the leader said, still mesmerized by the display of control exhibited by the newcomer in balancing the melon on his sword.

The newcomer gave his sword a quick flick and sent the melon high into the air. In one smooth motion, he brought his sword around and sliced the fruit neatly in two while it was still in the air. With his other hand, he reached out and caught half of the fruit. The other half fell to the dirt because the ronin leader was too startled to make a grab for it.

“You let your half fall to the ground,” Kaze observed. “That’s too bad. It’s a shame to waste good fruit.” He looked at the other three. “Have you paid for your melons yet?”

“He, ah, the peasant, ah, gave them to us,” one of the ronin said slowly, his eyes still glued on the half of the melon on the ground.

“He doesn’t look like a rich man,” Kaze said. “So we can’t let him be foolish in his generosity. I know you’ll put back what you can’t pay for.”

The four men looked at one another, and Kaze took a quick cut with his sword, slicing air and making the four ronin jump. Hastily, they put the stolen melons back on the pile in front of the peasant. Kaze smiled, and the four ronin started backing away as a group. They turned and hurriedly walked out of the marketplace, looking over their shoulders to make sure the man with the quick sword was not following them.

“Thank you, Samurai-sama!” the peasant said.

Kaze held up the half melon in his hand. “How much for this melon?”

“Nothing, Samurai-sama! This time it truly is a gift. I want you to have it!”

Kaze gave a small nod of his head to acknowledge the gift and reached down to help Sadakatsu up. When he got to his feet, the old man gave a low bow. “Thank you, Samurai-san. That was very kind of you. You saved me from a beating.”

“Tell Elder Grandma that food shopping can be an adventure. Do you need help picking up your packages?”

The idea of a samurai helping a servant was so novel and strange that Sadakatsu could barely stammer a refusal.

“All right, then,” Kaze said. He replaced his sword in its scabbard and took out the ko-gatana knife, slicing off a piece of melon and eating it with relish. He looked at the peasant and said, “Oishi! It’s very tasty!”

“See,” the peasant said triumphantly to Sadakatsu. “I told you my melons were good!”

Kaze left the two men to resume their bargaining. He was glad he didn’t have to fight the four ronin over something as silly as stolen melons. Well, he thought, he supposed it would actually be a fight about something besides stolen melons.

There was a time when Kaze would have gladly fought over melons, or almost anything else. In fact, dueling just for the sake of fighting seemed to be a growing trend. But Kaze remembered what his Sensei had told him about fighting.

The Sensei had just finished a lesson on military strategy, and Kaze, full of youthful enthusiasm, had said, “I can’t wait to go fighting. My father has taken me on some military campaigns, but I was left to guard the camp with the other boys while the men went off to fight. When I get done with this training, I’ll be big enough to fight, too. Then I’ll know the glory and beauty of war.”

The Sensei fixed two steady eyes on him and said very softly, “Listen to me. There is no glory or beauty in war. There’s beauty in the weapons of war and the brightly colored armor and helmets that we wear. There’s beauty in columns of men marching off to war with banners flying and the tramp of hundreds or thousands of feet upon the road. There’s even beauty as the first wave of men charges against the enemy, their swords and spears flashing in the sunlight.

“But once the men clash and the killing starts, there is no beauty-only death and destruction. The best swords are kept in their scabbards, and the best armies do not have to fight. Hideyoshi showed that time and time again when he was able to conquer and defeat enemies with his words or the threat of his army instead of actually spilling blood.

“As for glory, the only glory in war is doing your duty as a samurai. And that same glory can be found by diligently performing your work when you are doing something like inspecting a castle.”

“But Sensei,” Kaze blurted out, “if there is no glory or beauty in war, why do we fight?”

The Sensei sighed. “I was once crossing a bridge near Nara,” he said, “and I looked down at the stream and saw a woman there. She had a huge pile of clothes to wash and she was scrubbing each piece of clothing in the river, beating it against a rock. She had already washed so many clothes that she was actually having trouble doing the washing, because her fingers were bleeding and she had to use great care not to get blood on the clothes she was washing. I looked at her, surprised to see the blood, and asked her, ‘Obasan, lady, why are you washing clothes when your fingers are bleeding?’ The woman stopped washing for a moment and looked up at me silently, and then I felt foolish and ashamed.”

The thought of the Sensei feeling foolish and ashamed was something outside the realm of Kaze’s imagination, and he stood there speechless for several moments. Kaze did not understand the Sensei’s story or why it should develop feelings that seemed alien to the Sensei’s character. Finally, Kaze worked up his courage and said, “Sensei, I know I’m stupid, but I don’t understand the story.”

The Sensei looked at Kaze and said evenly, “It is never stupid to ask when you do not understand. The woman was washing the clothes because she had to. She may have been the servant of a cruel master. She may have had an unreasonable mother-in-law. Perhaps she made money by washing the clothes and had children to feed. But whatever the reason, she was washing the clothes until her fingers bled because she had to. And that is the same reason we study war and fight as samurai. It is our karma to fight, just as it is our karma to die. I sometimes think that all samurai must have been especially wicked in a former life to be brought back as warriors. No matter how haughty we are or how we try to dress up the trappings of war with talk of beauty and nobility, the fact is that we deal in death. There is nothing wrong with that, because all things must die, and that includes samurai. But you must not confuse the necessity of doing something with the joy of doing something. When the humblest potter creates a cup, he is doing more than what we accomplish, even if we kill a hundred men. The potter deals in the art of creation. We deal in the art of destruction.”

Now Kaze was dealing with something that was neither creation nor destruction. He was supposed to find out what happened to Noguchi Mototane, a man he knew neither by appearance nor by character.

Elder Grandma was convinced that Mototane was dead because he had not killed Hishigawa and he wasn’t in Kamakura. Yet, he was a man and therefore he could be diverted from his duty by drink or women. For all her fierceness, would Elder Grandma have the objective knowledge to see these flaws in her own blood?

Mototane’s absence could also be explained by something as simple as a slip or fall. Perhaps he was laid up in some roadside teahouse waiting for a broken bone to heal. Perhaps he was dead. But also, perhaps his death had nothing to do with Hishigawa, and he was a victim of the countless brigands, bandits, and thieves who now inhabited Japan.

Enomoto had denied that Hishigawa had been attacked at the villa. Was that a lie? If Enomoto had killed Mototane under orders from Hishigawa, that would be a serious offense-a merchant ordering the death of a samurai. Yet Enomoto could also claim he had simply killed Mototane in a duel, and the authorities would think nothing of the event, except to record it officially. Kaze did not think it wise for him to deal with the Tokugawa officials. To check on this possibility, he would have Elder Grandma inquire with the Kamakura authorities.

Kaze had an interesting spot to look at in the villa grounds, but what if Hishigawa had had Mototane killed and buried somewhere outside the villa? The hills of Kamakura were full of secluded spots and caves, and it would be easy enough to hide a body. How could Kaze find such a spot? He had wandered Japan for almost three years looking for the Lady’s daughter. Would he now have to wander the hills of Kamakura looking for the hidden grave of a man he did not know?