Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [199]
If this was true, Musashi thought, they would not be difficult to locate. He resolved to do just that, then curled up on a mat by the fire and went to sleep.
In the early morning, the blacksmith’s apprentice got up and opened the outside door to the smithy. Musashi got up too and asked the groom to take him to Yamada, the town nearest Ise Shrine. The groom, satisfied because he’d been paid the day before, agreed at once.
By evening they had reached the long, tree-lined road that led to the shrine. The teashops looked particularly desolate, even for winter. There were few travelers, and the road itself was in poor condition. A number of trees blown down by autumn storms were still lying where they had fallen.
From the inn in Yamada, Musashi sent a servant to inquire at the Arakida house whether Shishido Baiken was staying there. A reply came saying that there must be some mistake; no one of that name was there. In his disappointment, Musashi turned his attention to his injured foot, which had swollen up considerably overnight.
He was exasperated, for only a few days remained before he was due in Kyoto. In the letter of challenge he had sent to the Yoshioka School from Nagoya, he had given them the choice of any day during the first week of the New Year. He couldn’t very well beg off now because of a sore foot. And besides, he had promised to meet Matahachi at the Gojō Avenue bridge.
He spent the whole of the next day applying a remedy he had once heard about. Taking the dregs left after making bean curd, he put them in a cloth sack, squeezed the warm water out, and soaked his foot in it. Nothing happened, and to make matters worse, the smell of the bean curd was nauseating. As he fretted over his foot, he bemoaned his stupidity in making this detour to Ise. He should have gone to Kyoto straight away.
That night, with his foot wrapped up under the quilt, his fever shot higher and the pain became unendurable. The next morning, he desperately tried more prescriptions, including smearing on some oily medicine given him by the innkeeper, who swore his family had used it for generations. Still the swelling did not go down. The foot began to look to Musashi like a large, bloated wad of bean curd and felt as heavy as a block of wood.
The experience set him to thinking. He had never in his life been bedridden for three days. Aside from having a carbuncle on his head as a child, he couldn’t remember ever having been ill.
“Sickness is the worst kind of enemy,” he reflected. “Yet I’m powerless in its grip.” Until now he had assumed his adversaries would be coming at him from without, and the fact of being immobilized by a foe within was both novel and thought-provoking.
“How many more days are there in the year?” he wondered. “I can’t just stay here doing nothing!” As he lay there chafing, his ribs seemed to press in on his heart, and his chest felt constricted. He kicked the quilt off his swollen foot. “If I can’t even beat this, how can I hope to overcome the whole House of Yoshioka?”
Thinking he would pin down and stifle the demon inside him, he forced himself to sit on his haunches in formal style. It was painful, excruciatingly so. He nearly fainted. He faced the window but closed his eyes, and quite some time passed before the violent redness in his face began to subside and his head to cool a bit. He wondered if the demon was yielding to his unflinching tenacity.
Opening his eyes, he saw before him the forest around Ise Shrine. Beyond the trees he could see Mount Mae, and a little to the east Mount Asama. Rising above the mountains between these two was a soaring peak that looked down its nose at its neighbors and stared insolently at Musashi.
“It’s an eagle,” he thought, not knowing its name actually was Eagle Mountain. The peak’s arrogant appearance offended him; its haughty pose taunted him until his fighting spirit was once again stirred. He could not help thinking of Yagyū Sekishūsai, the old swordsman who resembled this proud peak, and as time passed, it began to seem the peak was Sekishūsai, looking down at