Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [132]
“Crying? I wasn’t crying!”
“Never mind. How long have you been here?”
“Just came the other day.”
“By yourself?”
“No; with my teacher.”
“Oh, that’s right. You did say you were studying swordsmanship, didn’t you? What are you doing with your clothes off?”
“You don’t think I’d jump in the river with my clothes on, do you?” “River? But the water must be freezing. People around here would laugh at the idea of going swimming this time of year.”
“I wasn’t swimming; I was taking a bath. My teacher said I smelled sweaty, so I went to the river.”
Otsū chuckled. “Where are you staying?”
“At the Wataya.”
“Why, I’ve just come from there.”
“Too bad you didn’t come to see us. How about coming back with me now?” “I can’t now. I have an errand to do.”
“Well, bye!” he said, turning to go.
“Jōtarō, come see me at the castle sometime.”
“Could I really?”
The words were barely out before Otsū began to regret them, but she said, “Yes, but make sure you don’t come dressed the way you are now.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it, I don’t want to go. I don’t like places where they make a fuss about things.”
Otsū felt relieved and still had a smile on her face when she rode back through the castle gate. After returning her horse to the stable, she went to report to Sekishūsai.
He laughed and said, “So they were angry! Fine! Let them be angry. There’s nothing they can do about it.” After a moment, he seemed to remember something else. “Did you throw the peony away?” he asked.
She explained that she had given it to the maid at the inn, and he nodded his approval. “Did the Yoshioka boy take the peony in his hand and look at it?” he asked.
“Yes. When he read the letter.”
“And?”
“He just handed it back to me.”
“He didn’t look at the stem?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“He didn’t examine it, or say anything about it?”
“No.”
“It’s just as well that I refused to meet him. He’s not worth meeting. The House of Yoshioka might just as well have ended with Kempō.
The Yagyū dōjō could quite appropriately be described as grand. Situated in the outer grounds of the castle, it had been rebuilt around the time when Sekishūsai was forty, and the sturdy timber used in its construction gave it an air of indestructibility. The gloss of the wood, acquired over the years, seemed to echo the rigors of the men who had undergone training here, and the building was ample enough to have served as samurai barracks during times of war.
“Lightly! Not with your sword point! With your gut, your gut!” Shōda Kizaemon, seated on a slightly elevated platform and clad in under robe and hakama, was roaring angry instructions at two aspiring swordsmen. “Do it again! You don’t have it right at all!”
The target of Kizaemon’s scolding was a pair of Yagyū samurai, who though dazed and bathed in sweat fought doggedly on. Stances were taken, weapons readied, and the two came together again like fire against fire.
“A-o-o-oh!”
“Y-a-a-ah!”
At Yagyū, beginners were not allowed to use wooden swords. Instead they used a staff devised specifically for the Shinkage Style. A long, thin leather bag filled with strips of bamboo, it was, in effect, a leather stick, with no handle or sword guard. Though less dangerous than a wooden sword, it could still remove an ear or turn a nose into a pomegranate. There were no restrictions regarding what part of the body a combatant could attack. Knocking down an opponent by striking him horizontally in the legs was permitted, and there was no rule against hitting a man once he was down.
“Keep it up! Keep at it! Same as last time!” Kizaemon drove the students on.
The custom here was not to let a man quit until he was ready to drop. Beginners were driven especially hard, never praised and treated to no small amount of verbal abuse. Because of this, the average samurai knew that entering into the service of the House of Yagyū was not something to be taken lightly. Newcomers rarely lasted long, and the men now serving under Yagyū were the result