The Sword That Cut the Burning Grass Page 5

  That was the meaning of the saying Yabuta had referred to. If a samurai failed to overcome his enemy with the long sword that he carried, then it was his duty to use the short one—on himself.

  Seikei had always believed that he would, if necessary, preserve his honor in this manner. He had never seen a samurai actually commit seppuku, although he did witness the actor Tomomi kneel and bare his neck for the sword. Tomomi had been strong-willed and entirely willing to die, for he had accomplished his goal. He did not hesitate to accept death as the price of honor.

  But Seikei had heard stories of other samurai who, when called on to end their own lives, could not bring themselves to do it. Some asked a faithful retainer to cut off their heads. Others tried to stab themselves, but did such a poor job that they lay in agony, waiting to bleed to death.

  Seikei withdrew his short sword from its scabbard and looked at it. It was a fine sword, given to him as a present by the governor of Yamato Province because Seikei had defeated the ninja named Kitsune. The governor had, in turn, won the pair of swords long ago from Seikei’s father Judge Ooka.

  Tears came to Seikei’s eyes as he thought of the man he respected more than any other. What would the judge feel when he learned that Seikei had disgraced himself? Would he approve of Seikei’s decision to commit seppuku? Would seppuku prove that Seikei’s only desire was to honor his foster father?

  A memory floated into Seikei’s mind like a blackbird flying across a gray sky before a storm. He had often discussed with the judge the duties of a samurai. On one occasion, Seikei had been reading one of the many books devoted to the subject. “Those books have fine thoughts in them,” the judge had said. “But a man knows best of all, in his heart, what his duty is and whether he has fulfilled it or not.”

  Seikei turned the sword over in his hand, looking at its gleaming edge, which was sharp enough to cut a falling leaf in two. He thought about what the judge had said.

  There was still another way.

  8

  DRIVING A HARD BARGAIN

  Seikei used his short sword to cut his hair so that he would no longer be recognized as a samurai. Then he made a hachimaki headband, inscribed it with the word honor, and tied it around his forehead. By doing so, he signaled that he had pledged to wear it until he had accomplished his task.

  No one noticed him as he slipped out of the guesthouse and left the grounds of the governor’s residence. Yabuta had not thought it worthwhile to put a guard on him. If Seikei chose to flee rather than kill himself, that was only one more indication of his unworthiness to serve the shogun.

  Seikei knew where he must go first. In the city where he spent his boyhood, there were shops where people in need could obtain loans if they left something valuable behind. It was possible to pay back the loan, plus a fee, within a certain period of time and regain whatever had been left.

  There must be such places in Kyoto, Seikei knew, and he found one not far from the governor’s residence. The owner, an elderly man whose face looked like a piece of ancient porcelain with a network of fine cracks in it, didn’t even seem surprised when Seikei offered his swords.

  “Going into business?” asked the old man as he examined the blades.

  Seikei did not answer. His stomach was churning at the thought of leaving the swords here. When Seikei put aside his old wooden sword and took up these, made by a craftsman from the finest steel, he had truly become a samurai. If he failed to accomplish what he had in mind, then he would never be able to redeem the swords. That would not only bring greater shame on Seikei’s head, but make it impossible for him to die honorably by committing seppuku.

  The old man counted out twenty ryo onto the counter and looked up. Seikei realized that was far less than the swords were worth. But what could he do about it? He recalled that his father the tea merchant had always complained that Seikei had a poor head for business. “Anyone can cheat you!” Father had wailed. “You will lose everything I’ve saved in my entire life.”

  So Seikei forced himself to shake his head no. The old man acted insulted. Seikei had seen his father do that when a customer refused to pay the asking price for tea.

  Seikei reached for the swords as if to take them away.

  The old man put another ten ryo on the counter. Seikei waited, still not saying anything.

  The old man sighed. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If you leave your kosode too, I can give you another five ryo. As long as you’re giving up your swords, you won’t need that jacket. You won’t be in the shogun’s service anymore.”

  Seikei realized he was right. “I’ll need something else to wear,” he muttered. He looked around the shop. “How about that?” he said, pointing to a happu, a plain blue jacket of the kind shopkeepers’ delivery boys used.

  “You looking for a job?” the old man asked.

  “I have one already,” Seikei replied.

  He left the shop feeling slightly dizzy. He kept reaching to his waist, feeling the loss of weight caused by his missing swords. But there was no time for regrets. He knew that before he could accomplish anything else, he had to find out what the Kusanagi scroll contained.

  In a street near the imperial palace, Seikei bought a small basket of pears from a farmer who had brought a cartload into the city. Seikei knew that even though the emperor was missing, there were many other people who lived and worked at the palace—members of the imperial family, officials, clerks, servants. They all had to be fed, and someone carrying food into the grounds would not arouse suspicion.

  By the smell, he found the entrance that led to the kitchen. As he expected, it was large and chaotically busy, with rows of chefs cleaning fish, steam rising from pots of rice in fireplaces, and servants carrying trays out as soon as they were filled. No one gave Seikei a second glance as he put down his pears and picked up one of the trays.

  He assumed that the library would be in that part of the palace close to the hall of the two chief ministers. Neither of them would wish to walk far to obtain a scroll. Luckily, he found his way to the corridor he remembered from the day before. He only hoped that Yabuta had kept the two ministers in custody so that Seikei wouldn’t encounter them.

  A female servant emerged from a doorway and walked toward Seikei. She was young and frowned when she saw him, as if realizing he was out of place. He tried to make himself appear as stupid as possible. “Library? Library?” he asked in a high voice.

  She turned and pointed to a door at the other end of the hallway. Seikei bowed—nearly spilling the tray—and thanked her profusely. When he reached the doorway, he looked over his shoulder and saw that she had waited to see that he entered the right room.

  He slid the door open and stepped inside. Around the walls were shelves holding hundreds of scrolls of all sizes. Some looked too large for one person to lift; others were small enough to fit in the sleeve of a kimono. Each one had a title on the end. In the center of the room were some mats where one could sit, and at the far end, large windows let sunlight in.

  Fortunately, no one else was here. Seikei set the tray down and started to read the titles of the scrolls, looking for the one that read Kusanagi. It seemed like a hopeless task. At any moment someone might come in. The girl who had seen him might have reported it to someone else. . . .

  Then Seikei’s eye fell on a lacquered table that held several scrolls that had not been reshelved. Of course! Yabuta had read the Kusanagi scroll, because the two ministers had shown it to him. Seikei examined the loose scrolls and felt a thrill when he lifted the one titled Kusanagi.

  What to do now? Even though it was one of the smaller scrolls, he had no time to read it here. Taking it was risky too, for someone might search him. He decided that it couldn’t be helped. He must find out what message the scroll contained. Concealing it under his jacket, Seikei slid open the door and peered into the corridor. It was empty. He slipped out and headed for the kitchen.

  On the way, he heard people shouting. He stopped, fearing that some
one had already discovered the missing scroll. But then he realized the noise came from outside the palace. It had nothing to do with him.

  By the time Seikei reached the kitchen, two palace guards were there, questioning the cooks. He tensed, preparing to run if they remembered he had been at the palace yesterday.

  But as he listened, he realized the guards were looking for someone who had broken into a shrine on the palace grounds. Evidently it was a shrine that was used very rarely, and only today had someone discovered that the door to it had been forced open.

  No one in the kitchen reported noticing anything strange. Seikei, in his happu jacket, slipped out the door as if going about his ordinary business. As he approached the castle gate through which he had entered the grounds, however, he slowed his pace. A line of people had formed because guards were searching everyone who passed through.

  “They’re trying to find something that was stolen from the shrine,” Seikei heard someone behind him say. He looked back to see two tradesmen with empty hand-carts. They had delivered their wares to the palace and were now eager to return home.

  “Yes,” the second one said. “Look, there are two Shinto priests with the guards. You don’t often see them away from the shrines.”

  “I heard the shrine that was broken into was the Sacred Purple Hall,” said the first one.

  “Very holy place,” commented the other. “They use it only when a new emperor is enthroned, you know.”

  The first man lowered his voice. Seikei took a step backward to listen. “I heard a rumor about the emperor,” the man said. He went on, but whispering now so that Seikei could no longer make out his words. Probably he was repeating what Seikei already knew—that the emperor was missing and the nation, for now at least, had no link with the goddess Amaterasu.

  Meanwhile, the scroll under Seikei’s jacket felt as uncomfortable as a burning stick. Even though it wasn’t the sacred object the guards were looking for, they would certainly discover it when they searched him. Someone would recognize it as belonging to the palace library, and Seikei had no way to explain what he was doing with it.

  He dropped back farther in the line. Now the two gossiping tradesmen were ahead of him. Clearly they had nothing to fear. The guards’ inspection was merely an annoying delay to them. Each of the men pulled a wooden two-wheeled cart with only a shallow layer of straw in the bottom.

  Desperate, Seikei had a sudden inspiration. He reached over the side of one of the carts and worked the scroll out from his sleeve, dropping it out the end. He rapidly brushed some of the straw over it. Feeling the slight movement of Seikei’s hand, the man pulling the cart half turned and gave Seikei a curious look. Seikei removed a single straw and used it to clean his ear. Satisfied that nothing was amiss, the man returned to the conversation with his friend.

  Seikei followed a few steps behind, preparing to look innocent when he was inspected by the guards—and conscious that he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He was sweating; he felt weak-kneed and almost stumbled because he was dizzy with apprehension. Instinctively he reached for the reassuring touch of his swords to remind himself to act like a samurai, but of course they were gone.

  The tradesmen, as he had hoped, experienced no trouble passing through the gate. They slipped off their kimonos and shook them out, exchanging good-natured banter with the samurai inspecting them. After a glance inside the carts, the guards waved the men through.

  Seikei tried to appear just as calm, removing his jacket and the monohiki he wore around his legs. The guards took their time, inspecting the quilted jacket for any hidden pockets. Seikei, shivering as the cold air puckered his skin, suppressed a desire to tell the guards to hurry, as he would have only yesterday when he was dressed in the shogun’s hollyhock cloth. He hoped that the tradesmen would still be in sight by the time he passed this inspection.

  At last the guards decided Seikei had nothing to hide. He pulled on the monohiki as quickly as possible, and then ran through the gate, slipping into his jacket. With relief he saw the two tradesmen and their carts at the far end of the street. As he hurried toward them, Seikei’s heart jumped. The man whose cart held the scroll had chosen this moment to stop and smooth out the straw in the back. As Seikei watched in dismay, the man picked up the scroll and showed it to his friend.

  9

  SETTLING AN ARGUMENT

  By the time Seikei caught up to the tradesmen, they were arguing. “We should take this straight back to the guards,” the one holding the scroll said. “Otherwise we’ll get into trouble.”

  The second one shook his head. “That’s exactly the way you will get into trouble,” he said. “First off, they’ll ask how you came into possession of what is clearly not your property.”

  “Well, I can answer that I happened to find it in my cart.”

  The second one snorted. “Think they’ll believe that? No, very likely you stole it and when you found you couldn’t sell it, you brought it back to collect a reward.”

  The first man looked worried. “Well, what do you think I should do with it?”

  “Best to leave it at a shrine and let the kami dispose of it as they please.”

  As Seikei knelt a short distance away, pretending to adjust his sandals, he saw the first man unroll the scroll a little. “Look at that,” he said to the other. “Beautiful calligraphy. Probably it’s worth a reward.”

  The second man took a brief glance and then turned his head away. “Too fancy for me,” he commented. “You couldn’t even read it.”

  “Well, reading it’s not the point of calligraphy,” responded his friend. “It’s the beauty that matters.”

  Seikei couldn’t endure listening to this any longer. He went over to the carts. “What’s that you’ve got there?” he asked the man with the scroll.

  The man halfheartedly attempted to hide it behind his back. “Why do you want to know?” he asked, peering suspiciously at Seikei. Seikei hoped the man wouldn’t remember who had been walking behind him at the castle.

  But he did. “Say,” he said with a crafty look, “didn’t I see you earlier?”

  “Just before you slipped through the gate with that scroll hidden in your wagon?” said Seikei. “You fellows were pretty clever to get away with it, I’d say.”

  The second man took a step backward. “Don’t include me in this,” he said. “I never saw this man until today.”

  The man with the scroll looked hurt. “Yoshi,” he said to the other man, “haven’t we sold our goods together at the palace every week for seven years . . . maybe eight?”

  “Oh, was that you? I never noticed.”

  “You know,” Seikei said, “I have a feeling that scroll is just what the guards at the palace were looking for.”

  It now appeared as if the man with the scroll felt as if he’d put his hand into his cart and pulled out a snake.

  “In fact,” Seikei went on, “I would think they’d pay a reward for it.”

  The pain on the man’s face suddenly turned into a smile. “That’s just what I was saying . . . to this strange fellow Yoshi who never saw me before today.”

  “I still think you’re inviting trouble,” muttered Yoshi.

  “I tell you what,” said Seikei, trying his best to look honest and stupid at the same time. “Why don’t you let me take the scroll back to the guards and see if they will pay a reward for it? That way, if there’s any suspicion, it won’t fall on you.”

  “How will you account for having the scroll?” Yoshi asked.

  “I’ll just say I found it in the street,” responded Seikei. “They have to believe that, because they searched me to the skin when I left.”

  “How about that?” the man with the scroll asked his friend Yoshi.

  “What do we get out of this?” Yoshi asked Seikei.

  “We?” said the first man. “I thought you never—”

  “You can wait here,” Seikei said quickly. “Where it’s safe,” he stressed. “Then I’ll come back with
the reward and we’ll split it three ways.”

  “I don’t know if you should get a full equal share,” said Yoshi. “After all, ’twas us who found the scroll.”

  “Us?” said the man holding the scroll.

  “Well,” said Seikei smoothly, reaching his hand out in as reassuring a way as he could, “you can just give me whatever you think is fair.”

  “Right,” the first man said, and he plopped the scroll into Seikei’s outstretched hand. In truth, he seemed glad to be rid of it.

  The second man still wanted to negotiate the precise division of the reward, but now that Seikei actually had the scroll, he didn’t hesitate. “Whatever you think is fair,” Seikei repeated, and he headed off toward the palace gate.

  There was a growing crowd in that part of the street, for the people trying to get inside were slowed by the line waiting to get out. Seikei had no trouble disappearing from sight, and then slipping out the other side of the throng. The street then curved around to the other side of the palace. It was not so heavily traveled here because it was narrower and more difficult for carts to pass through. Probably the two tradesmen had never taken that route and had forgotten it was here.

  Seikei felt relieved when he reached the next intersection and turned right. There were no shouts behind him. He was a little ashamed of himself, and wondered how long the two men would wait for him to return. He told himself that at least they would lose nothing—except maybe their friendship. Seikei had only stolen from them what was rightfully . . . well, what he had earlier stolen from the palace. So who had a better right to it?

  Now he had to find someplace to stop and try to read the scroll. Sooner or later someone would discover it was missing. Seikei remembered that the library had seemed deserted, but what if it were really true that Yabuta could place an eye there? He would have seen Seikei take it, and even now might have sent guards to pursue him.

  Seikei glanced over his shoulder. All he saw was a geisha out for a walk, dressed in a fine kimono and twirling a paper umbrella to protect her skin from the sun. He looked more closely, thinking it might actually be Bunzo, the judge’s faithful samurai. Once, Bunzo had worn a disguise to follow Seikei along the Tokaido Road to ensure he would not get into trouble.