Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [377]
For the life of him, Musashi had no idea who might have kidnapped Otsū or why. Matahachi’s name never entered his mind. He imagined it might be a good-for-nothing rōnin, like the ones he had encountered in Nara. Or perhaps one of the freebooters reputed to be hanging out in the woods hereabouts. He only hoped it was a petty crook, rather than one of the hoodlums who made a business of abducting and selling women and were known to be vicious on occasion.
He ran on and on in his search for Nobu Pond. After the sun went down, he could hardly see a foot ahead, though the stars were bright above. The road began to slope upward; he assumed he was entering the foothills of Mount Koma.
Having seen nothing resembling a pond and fearing he was on the wrong road, he stopped and looked around. In the vast sea of blackness, he was able to make out a lone farmhouse, a windbreak of trees, and looming darkly above these, the mountain.
When he got closer, he saw that the house was large and sturdily built, though moss grew on the thatched roof and the thatch itself was rotting. There was a light outside—whether torch or fire, he couldn’t tell—and near the kitchen, a spotted cow. He was sure it was the animal Otsū had been riding.
He approached stealthily, keeping to the shadows. When he was close enough to see into the kitchen, he heard a loud male voice coming from a shed on the other side of some piles of straw and firewood.
“Put up your work, Mother,” the man was saying. “You’re always complaining about your eyes being bad, but you go on working practically in the dark.”
There was a fire in the hearth room next to the kitchen, and Musashi thought he heard the whir of a spinning wheel. After a moment or two, the sound stopped, and he heard someone moving about.
The man came out of the shed and closed the door behind him. “I’ll be in as soon as I’ve washed my feet,” he called. “You can go ahead and put dinner on.”
He placed his sandals on a rock by a stream flowing behind the kitchen. As he sat wiggling his feet in the water, the cow put her head close to his shoulder. He rubbed her nose.
“Mother,” he called, “come here a minute. I made a real find today. What do you think it is? … It’s a cow; a really fine one too.”
Musashi made his way quietly past the front door of the house. Crouching on a stone beneath a side window, he looked into what turned out to be a hearth room. The first object he saw was a lance hanging from a blackened rack near the top of the wall, a fine weapon that had been polished and lovingly cared for. Bits of gold shone dully on the leather of its scabbard. Musashi did not know what to make of it; it was not the sort of thing usually found in a farmer’s house. Farmers were forbidden to have weapons, even if they could afford them.
The man appeared for a moment in the light of the outside fire. At a glance, Musashi knew he was no ordinary peasant. His eyes were too bright, too alert. He wore a knee-length work kimono and mud-spattered leggings. His face was round, and his bushy hair was tied in back with two or three lengths of straw. Though he was short—no more than five feet six—he was thick-chested and solidly built. He walked with firm, decisive steps.
Smoke began to escape from the window. Musashi raised his sleeve to cover his face, but too late; he inhaled a lungful of smoke and couldn’t stop himself from coughing.
“Who’s there?” the old woman called from the kitchen. She came into the hearth room and said, “Gonnosuke, did you shut the shed? There seems to be a millet thief around. I heard him cough.”
Musashi slipped away from the window and hid himself among the trees of the windbreak.
“Where?” shouted Gonnosuke, striding rapidly from behind the house. The old woman appeared at the little window. “He must be right around here. I heard him cough.”
“Are you sure it’s not just your ears?”
“My hearing’s all right. And I’m sure I saw a face at the window. The smoke from the fire must have made him cough.”
Slowly, suspiciously, Gonnosuke