Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [301]
“Hmm, this is it…. Hyōsuke, get away from here.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want you here. You make me nervous.”
“Yes, sir.” Hyōsuke’s tone was obedient, but he did not want to leave and made up his mind not to. After Denshichirō had trampled the fire into the slush and turned with a tremor of excitement toward the courtyard, Hyōsuke ducked under the floor of the temple and squatted in the darkness. Though he had not particularly noticed the wind out in the open, here underneath the building it whipped frigidly. Chilled to the bone, he hugged his knees and tried to deceive himself into thinking that the chattering of his teeth and the painful shiver running up and down his spine came from the cold alone and had nothing to do with his fear.
Denshichirō walked about a hundred paces from the temple and took a solid stance, bracing one foot against the root of a tall pine tree and waiting with palpable impatience. The warmth of the sake had worn off rapidly, and Denshichirō felt the cold biting into his flesh. That his temper was growing shorter was evident even to Hyōsuke, who could see the courtyard as clearly as if it were daylight.
A pile of snow cascaded off the branch of a tree. Denshichirō started nervously.
Still Musashi did not appear.
Finally, unable to sit still any longer, Hyōsuke came out of his hiding place and shouted, “What happened to Musashi?”
“Are you still here?” Denshichirō asked angrily, but he was as irritated as Hyōsuke and did not order him away. By tacit mutual consent, the two walked toward each other. They stood there, looking around in all directions, time and again one or the other saying, “I can’t see him.” Each time the tone grew both angrier and more suspicious.
“That bastard—he’s run away!” exclaimed Denshichirō.
“He couldn’t have,” insisted Hyōsuke, launching into an earnest recapitulation of all he had seen and why he was sure Musashi would eventually come.
Denshichirō interrupted him. “What’s that?” he asked, looking quickly at one end of the temple.
A candle was emerging shakily from the kitchen building behind the long hall. It was in the hands of a priest, that much was clear, but they could not make out the dim figure behind him.
Two shadows and the speck of light, passing through the gate between the kitchen and the main building, ascended the long veranda of the Sanjūsangendō.
The priest was saying in a subdued voice, “Everything here is shut up at night, so I can’t say. This evening there were some samurai warming themselves in the courtyard. They may have been the people you’re asking about, but they’re gone now, as you can see.”
The other man spoke quietly. “I’m sorry to have intruded while you were asleep. Ah, aren’t there two men over there under that tree? They may be the ones who sent word they’d wait for me here.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do any harm to ask them and see.”
“I’ll do that. I can find my way by myself now, so please feel free to go back to your room.”
“Are you joining your friends for a snow-viewing party?”
“Something like that,” said the other man with a slight laugh.
Putting out the candle, the priest said, “I suppose I needn’t say this, but if you build a fire near the temple, as those men did earlier, please be careful and extinguish it when you leave.”
“I’ll do so without fail.”
“Very well, then. Please excuse me.”
The priest went back through the gate and shut it. The man on the veranda stood still for a time, looking intently toward Denshichirō.
“Hyōsuke, who is it?”
“I can’t tell, but he came from the kitchen.”
“He doesn’t seem to belong to the temple.”
The two of them walked about twenty paces nearer the building. The shadowy man moved to a point near the middle of the veranda, stopped and tied up his sleeve. The men in the courtyard unconsciously approached close enough to see this, but then their feet refused to go any nearer.
After an interval of two or three breaths, Denshichirō shouted, “Musashi!