Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Read online

  Could we but live, he thought, without our duty to time, life would move left and right but never forward… or maybe time won’t go forward if life is still… what a strange brain I woke up with today, with fools in front of me and Miou sweet as vinegar… I’ll try not to kill anyone before breakfast…

  “Yoshi,” commanded Mori, “go in and get someone to bring out water and tea.”

  “Maybe a little sake,” added Takezo.

  Yoshi just looked at him.

  “For breakfast?” he asked.

  Takezo shrugged.

  “Time goes only left and right, today,” he said.

  He sat there, tall, fine-featured and handsome as the famous Noh theater actor, Seki, with his slightly arched, long nose and perfect lips to contrast his usual disarray of dress and careless manner.

  “Left and right,” repeated Yoshi. “You are always drunk?”

  “Or, I am always sober. Who can tell which, if time cannot go forward?”

  Without standing, he drew his short sword in a glittering blur and held it up near the round-featured man’s face. That face lost complexion for a moment because there was a single bee impaled on the blade’s tip.

  Yoshi went across towards the inn and onto the porch. Mori bowed.

  “Sensei,” he said, meaning master.

  “Ha, ha,” was the response. “Who can master his heart?”

  “Who knows? Must we try, Takezo-san?”

  “Ha,” grunted the other. “Keep it from falling in love.” He stood up, blinking but without a significant wobble, sword at his side. “What does Izu want of me?”

  Yoshi was now coming back, followed by a serving girl with a tray and a bucket of water. Another woman was standing in the open doorway, just a silhouette in the shadow beyond the polished wood porch. Her form was obscure but not her voice:

  “No drunkards on this property!” she called out.

  “He may be sober,” laughed Yoshi, with scorn. “No one can tell.”

  “Hmn,” Takezo said, looking at the bee impaled on the tip of his sword, “if time went sideways this insect would still live.”

  “Always talk,” she called over. “Better to listen to the wind.”

  Flicked the bee away. Sheathed the weapon. Took the bucket from the young woman and poured it over his head, soaking his shoulder-length hair and upper body. Grunted. Drank a little and spat. He didn’t turn to look at Miou in the doorway. Didn’t have to.

  “Well?” he pointedly asked Mori.

  “I do not know the lord’s mind,” Mori said. “He asks you please come with us.”

  “Why are you still here?” Miou wondered. “No more to drink here.”

  “Pay no attention,” he murmured.

  “You like women’s insults?” wondered Yoshi.

  “You talk to her, then,” he suggested. “See how you fare.” To Mori: “I’ll join you.” Walked a few steps and stood in the hot sun, squinting at her outline in the doorway. “I will replace it,” he called over to her.

  “That’s nothing. That’s why you’re stupid. The trinket is nothing.”

  “Then what?” He opened his arms, symbolically helpless.

  She banged the sliding door shut and was gone.

  “No woman dares insult me so,” said Yoshi.

  “Yes,” said Takezo, starting for the gate, brooding, then shrugging. “I’m sure you are feared by women.”

  “Even by whores,” Yoshi remarked.

  Takezo looked at him; let it hang.

  As they reached the road the yellowish dust was bright and puffed up around their feet as they headed down towards the central section of Edo.

  “I know a bathhouse on the way,” the ronin said.

  “Yes,” said Captain Mori, conciliatory, “but it would be a kindness to not leave our lord waiting in uncertainty, Takezo-san.”

  “I’ll smell a little longer, captain.”

  “Most gracious of you, Takezo-san.”

  *

  They all paused as they passed an open space which stood just inside a gated checkpoint between a long, low log and brick jail and a canal where poled long boats were carrying people and goods to and from the suburbs.

  In the unenclosed yard three samurai in red and white were standing around a man in a loincloth who was staked down, outstretched, on a low mound of sand. One held an unsheathed sword.

  “Blade test,” said Yoshi, with a certain relish, taking a few steps closer.

  Condemned criminals often were used for testing the edge of a new blade. Crucified men were commonly slashed to shreds in outlying execution grounds.

  Takezo looked, dully at the scene, remembering the story of a famous outlaw who, as they tied him to a pole, said to the samurai executioner: “If I’d known you were going to test your precious sword on me, you dogshit, I’d have swallowed a few rocks to chip the edge.”

  The bright sun glittered as the blade went up. The target twisted his face away and stared blankly across the dusty space towards the three watchers. Takezo thought how the entire world for each person existed only because he or she looked, heard, felt, even imagined it… and the entire world was now coming to an end, right there… he unconsciously said a kind of prayer for the man.

  Whatever’s left that a sword can’t cut, he said to himself, will not be in the world… The world was always ending with every death of everything alive, he didn’t quite put into mental words. Time rolls over us like a stone…

  The bright blade came down, the samurai shouting a kiai to amplify his power as he struck and the dense, sharp, slightly curved, perfect steel edge sliced completely through the belly into the sand that protected it from nicking.

  The man’s expression, maybe 100 feet away, didn’t appear to change as his body separated into two parts – gouts of blood and intestines spilling out, soaking into the sand and dust. The eyes kept staring, head twisted to the side. Takezo, troubled, headachy, turned away in disgust as the swordsman was wiping the blade and studying it and Yoshi said, with a curt nod of approval:

  “Good cut.”

  Walking on, the ronin remembered how he used to sit alone and examine a good sword, feeling the weight, admiring the mirrored length, the subtle wavy patterns near the super-tempered edge produced by heating and cooling, the fine lines that resulted from the endless folding of the red-hot steel… all the secrets, art and magic that went into creating a matchless weapon.

  They like to say it mirrors the soul of the user, he thought, with a slight snort. Souls like mine with plenty of blood to reflect… or this Yoshi, maybe, without a thought in his head that wasn’t put there by somebody else…

  “Izu’s castle is much changed,” commented Takezo as they turned off the street into a stable. The hostler was watering several horses in the muddy, dung-reeking yard. Steam rose from the standing pools as the sun’s angle increased. “Smells more like Hideo’s place.”

  Hideo was a rival lord whose wife, Issa, once had Takezo temporarily declared an outlaw after he protected a peasant boy accused of killing and robbing wounded samurai. The insanely bloody civil wars were then at their full fury, the country in chaos, and Hideo looked like he might take control of Edo, still a castle town, and the surrounding area at the time. Eventually he submitted to the dominant lord Nobunaga. Takezo defended his actions by killing a few of Hideo’s best samurai in a series of duels. Issa held a grudge, it had been said, like a jug holds water and kept the stopper tight. Takezo, the ronin, was a borderline social outcast, anyway, worked for lords, merchants, local ippuki police, even commoners. He was independent, had ninja skills and was a natural detective.

  “Were you ever in service?” Mori wondered as they entered the barn.

  “Don’t like so many rules,” he grunted in reply.

  Inside was a sweet, strong odor of horses, hay and grain. Streaks, threads and slashes of sunlight worked through warped, uneven boards into the dim coolness.

  Is this an ambush? He asked himself. Doubted it.
/>   “Think you can always do what you want?” Mori asked.

  “Depends on what I want.”

  He was thinking about Miou. She always told him he should join a clan where his sword would gain him a good living.

  She’s annoying, he said to himself. She weakens me… Smiled at himself, knowing she pleased him well and that he often needed her prodding. They crossed stray shafts of golden light, passing empty stalls heading into the surprisingly deep interior. Kept remembering her touch and scent, delicate mouth open in easy surrender… discovering the surprise lush wetness as his softly questing fingers worked between her sleek, sweet legs… Grunted and cut the memory short.

  They stopped at the far wall and were facing a stocky man in full lacquered wood and steel-link armor with a closed, silver mask of a face snarling in demonic fury. His helmet, displaying a quarter moon and star of worked gold, proclaimed high rank. He sat on a low, backless stool, hands on thighs, just behind the fine spray of light.

  Both retainers knelt, then sat back on their heels in the musty straw. The leader seemed relaxed and completely confident, Takezo noted. He also noted this wasn’t Izu. He knew Izu. The samurai wore his colors but they might not even be his men. That was curious.

  Takezo just bowed since he didn’t have to kneel. Oh, he knew he really should have knelt but, lacking so many things, his pride, some said, was his gold. And he was a miser with it. Without the power of a great clan at his back, respect was life and death to him.

  “My lord, Mask,” he said, quietly, “what do you ask of me?”

  “Insolence,” softly hissed Yoshi.

  “Your views are not needed,” said the shadow-blurred lord. His metal-muffled voice had a kind of purr in it.

  “He requests insolence, my lord?” the ronin asked and noted the man on the stool seemed amused. Yoshi prostrated himself, face down. This delighted Takezo as being the price of a secure place in life. “If I have any left I’ll share it with him.”

  Face in the stink… secure until you offend or fail, he pointed out to himself. Or just die, as all do, in any case…

  He blinked and winced slightly as a fanning of sunlight touched his cheekbone and eye. He moved his head slightly but the bright patch was too wide. He resisted moving further out of stoic pride. None of them would have shifted even though he, again, was free to. He wanted to maintain his manners.

  “I have met Lord Izu,” he said, to move things along.

  “This is not a masquerade. He is a good friend. He needs your assistance, Sir Jiro.”

  “You compliment me, my lord… ”

  The brightness hurt and he had to close his right eye – which annoyed him.

  “Are you comfortable?” the man asked. A slight, amused jibe.

  Well, whoever he was he had a sense of humor, which the ronin appreciated.

  He opened his eye again and refused to wince. His hangover headache wasn’t helping, either. At least his mind was off Miou, for the moment.

  “Quite, my lord,” he lied.

  “You are a samurai, after all,” said the seated man.

  I should have knelt and then I’d be better off… he’s letting me know it… “I kill well,” he agreed. “But no man orders me to do it.”

  Irrepressible Yoshi, back on his knees, growled low in his throat.

  “You are not being asked to kill, Sir Jiro,” said the armored lord. He hadn’t stirred since the conversation began. “It is not killing that makes a knight.”

  “True, lord. There is rape, theft, pillage. War, greed, revenge. The torment of peasants for sport.” He knew he was doing it again. He always did. He blamed the headache and Miou. “Maybe sir is an insult.”

  This was too many for Yoshi who sprang to his feet and drew his sword.

  “Intolerable insolence!” he cried.

  Captain Mori jumped up to intervene despite his own cold fury. Takezo had an unconnected, abstract idea that the light beam was like a shaft of love or intelligence cutting into the darkness of life; too bright to be comfortable. He’d closed the tortured eye, again.

  Why can I not control my tongue, he was thinking, or my heart?

  “Hold!” said Mori, watching his lord who hadn’t budged.

  “Intolerable!” repeated the roundish man and struck at the tall, aquiline-featured warrior who hadn’t moved. That should have been warning enough. That and the bee.

  The stroke that might have cleaved the head off a bull flash-ripped down through the sunbeams, the ronin leaned back a few inches and felt the air whipcrack as it missed his nose and his body seemed to flow sidewise as if jerked by an invisible string so that he was instantly behind his attacker whom he seemed to dance with, spun, tilted, disarmed and hurled, staggering, maybe thirty feet back across the length of the barn; then he just stood there, holding Yoshi’s sword and looking at the still unstirred lord.

  “Your views are your views, Sir Jiro,” the lord said, as if nothing had happened. “There is some truth in them. There are many, like me, who work to bring order to our land. Izu is another.”

  “I apologize, sir,” said the tall ronin, nodding a martial bow of respect for the older man’s tolerant poise. “I am often unruly. How may I serve?”

  Am I so corrupted by my work, he wondered, that I assume all men lie?

  Captain Mori had gone back and stood near Yoshi who was on his feet, again. The lord tilted his head, slightly.

  “Something troubles you,” he said – almost a question.

  “Of no importance. But you are most observant, sir. A matter of the heart.”

  The man nodded and laughed, softly. Then went still, again.

  “I know your reputation,” he said. “And your poetry. You have a wide understanding and I think you will be able to communicate well with the strangers from the ship.” A slight pause to confirm that Takezo knew what he was talking about – further credit to his intelligence and tact. The ronin nodded. “Lord Izu took in the first three of them found.”

  “Yes.”

  “A difficulty has arisen.”

  Takezo now stood in shadow while stray shifting sunbeams penetrating the big, cool space softly illuminated the seated lord, the light diffused by the clouds of dust motes and fine straw stirred by the brief struggle. He thrust the sword he’d taken into a bale of hay.

  Who is this lord? Takezo asked himself, staring at the snarling facemask and dully gleaming red lacquer armor.

  “The three foreigners,” the masked man was saying, “were found on the beach. They were fortunate to come in where the slope is so gentle.” He shrugged. His tone told the ronin he regretted their good fortune. “Izu sheltered them. Fishermen found their strange ship and towed it to shore. It is said more foreigners were alive on board.”

  “Interesting. Where is this craft?”

  The other may have shrugged, almost imperceptibly.

  “Not known. Perhaps the seamen found a way to sail on.”

  Why don’t I believe this? Takezo thought. The poking finger… It would poke at his mind when something didn’t fit, was missing or subtly false.

  “One man is black as moonless darkness and comes from some savage land. Another is pale as milk with hair the color of dull coals. The last is less pale and a scholar in his country. His wisdom interests Izu, who has offered him a temporary place in the clan.”

  “Ah. And the ‘difficulty’ you mentioned, lord?”

  He thought he heard Yoshi mutter something in the background.

  “The pale one with eyes the color of the sky,” was the reply.

  “He is the difficulty?”

  “One. There is a second: Lord Hideo’s daughter.”

  “Ah.”

  “You understand?”

  “The clever one more beautiful than stars reflected in still water,” said Takezo.

  “The one who speaks her mind so freely.”

  Admirable, brave and dangerous, he mentally commented.

  “They ran away together,” the lord sai
d, neutrally.

  Takezo appreciated romance. He also appreciated the fact that the shame of this rested with Izu, in the end.

  “And Izu wishes me to find them? Others could do as well.”

  “Not to find her. Unnecessary. To find him.”

  “If he looks as you say, sir… ” Takezo began but the seated man gestured. “How can he conceal himself? So Osan has been found?”

  The other hesitated.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And… ?” Takezo pressed.

  A softened sunbeam now lit half the man’s helmet and scowling, demonic mask.

  “We will direct you where to begin your search,” he said. “You will be well-paid.” Held out a small, gold tablet, then lobbed it to Takezo. It glittered through the bright lines. “Take this. Authority from Lord Nobunaga. Most will respect it.”

  So he’s in it, thought Takezo. Interesting…

  He’d seen him once in Kyoto, recalled the heavy-featured, stolid face, the thick mustache.

  At this point Nobunaga was the most powerful and maybe ruthless lord in a country of ruthless lords. He’d imposed a shaky peace on most of the madly warring clans that had kept the nation in bloody turmoil for so long. His clear objective was to take Kyoto and set up a strong shogunate central government.

  “You are leaving things out,” he said.

  “You will learn what you need to know,” came through the face mask, as if the metal mouth spoke. “No reason to overburden yourself at the beginning of a journey.”

  He just sat there, hands on thighs, like a warrior in a painting, the demon-frowning mask half in shadow.

  Or an actor, Takezo thought.

  Two

  Two days before

  At dawn, gray light rain was blowing up the beach from where the surf crumped and softly boomed, invisible behind a wall of warm, whitish mist. The inn stood on a rocky rise above the coastline, surrounded by wind-twisted scrub pines and brush at the end of a seaside village maybe 60 miles from Edo on the seacoast side of the great bay.