Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [210]
The old man cooking snails looked up. “The ferryman’s calling you. Weren’t you planning to cross over to Ōminato?”
“Yes. I think there’s a regular boat from there to Tsu.”
“There is, and there are also boats for Yokkaichi and Kuwana.”
“How many days to the end of the year?”
The old man laughed. “I envy you,” he said. “It’s plain you don’t have any year-end debts to pay. Today’s the twenty-fourth.”
“Is that all? I thought it was later.”
“How nice to be young!”
As he trotted to the ferry landing, Musashi felt an urge to keep running, farther and farther, faster and faster. The change from invalid to healthy man had lifted his spirits, but what made him far happier was the spiritual experience he’d had that morning.
The ferry was already full, but he managed to make room for himself. Directly across the bay, at Ōminato, he changed to a bigger boat, bound for Owari. The sails filled and the boat glided over the glasslike surface of the Bay of Ise. Musashi stood huddled with the other passengers and gazed quietly across the water to his left—at the old market, Yamada and the Matsuzaka highroad. If he went to Matsuzaka, he might have a chance to meet the prodigious swordsman Mikogami Tenzen, but no, it was too soon for that. He disembarked at Tsu as planned.
No sooner was he off the boat than he noticed a man walking ahead of him with a short bar at his waist. Wrapped around the bar was a chain, and at the end of the chain was a ball. The man also wore a short field sword in a leather sheath. He looked to be forty-two or forty-three; his face, as dark as Musashi’s, was pockmarked, and his reddish hair was pulled back in a knot.
He might have been taken for a freebooter were it not for the young boy following him. Soot blackened both cheeks, and he carried a sledgehammer; he was obviously a blacksmith’s apprentice.
“Wait for me, master!”
“Get a move on!”
“I left the hammer on the boat.”
“Leaving behind the tools you make your living with, huh?”
“I went back and got it.”
“And I suppose that makes you proud of yourself. The next time you forget anything, I’ll crack your skull open for you!”
“Master …” the boy pleaded.
“Quiet!”
“Can’t we spend the night at Tsu?”
“There’s still plenty of daylight. We can make it home by nightfall.”
“I’d like to stop somewhere anyway. As long as we’re on a trip, we might as well enjoy it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
The street into the town was lined with souvenir shops and infested with inn touts, just as in other port towns. The apprentice again lost sight of his master and searched the crowd worriedly until the man emerged from a toy shop with a small, colorful pinwheel.
“Iwa!” he called to the boy.
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry this. And be careful it doesn’t get broken! Stick it in your collar.” “Souvenir for the baby?”
“Mm,” grunted the man. After being away on a job for a few days, he was looking forward to seeing the child’s grin of delight when he handed it over.
It almost seemed that the pair were leading Musashi. Every time he planned to turn, they turned ahead of him. It occurred to Musashi that this blacksmith was probably Shishido Baiken, but he could not be sure, so he improvised a simple strategy to make certain. Feigning not to notice them, he went ahead for a time, then dropped back again, eavesdropping all the while. They went through the castle town and then toward the mountain road to Suzuka, presumably the route Baiken would take to his house. Putting this together with snatches of overheard conversation, Musashi concluded that this was indeed Baiken.
He had intended to go straight to Kyoto, but this chance meeting proved too tempting. He approached and said in a friendly manner, “Going back to Umehata?”
The man’s reply was curt. “Yes, I’m going to Umehata. Why?”
“I was