Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [430]
The students were despondent. Kojirō had outwitted and defeated them; then he’d gloated, leaving them frightened and humiliated.
The silence was broken by a student running up and asking in a bewildered tone, “Did we order coffins?” When no one replied, he said, “The coffin-maker’s just arrived with five coffins. He’s waiting.”
Finally, one of the group answered dispiritedly, “The bodies have been sent for. They haven’t arrived yet. I’m not sure, but I think we’ll need one more coffin. Ask him to make it, and put the ones he brought in the storehouse.”
That night a wake was held in the lecture hall. Though everything was done quietly, in the hope that Kagenori would not hear, he was able to guess more or less what had occurred. He refrained from asking questions, nor did Shinzō make any comment.
From that day, the stigma of defeat hung over the school. Only Shinzō, who had urged restraint and been accused of cowardice, kept alive the desire for revenge. His eyes harbored a glint that none of the others could fathom.
In early fall, Kagenori’s illness worsened. Visible from his bedside was an owl perched on a limb of a large zelkova tree, staring, never moving, hooting at the moon in the daytime. Shinzō now heard in the owl’s hoot the message that his master’s end was near.
Then a letter arrived from Yogorō, saying he had heard about Kojirō and was on his way home. For the next few days, Shinzō wondered which would come first, the arrival of the son or the death of the father. In either case, the day for which he was waiting, the day of his release from his obligations, was at hand.
On the evening before Yogorō was expected, Shinzō left a farewell letter on his desk and took his leave of the Obata School. From the woods near the shrine, he faced Kagenori’s sickroom and said softly, “Forgive me for leaving without your permission. Rest at ease, good master. Yogorō will be home tomorrow. I don’t know if I can present Kojirō’s head to you before you die, but I must try. If I should die trying, I shall await you in the land of the dead.”
A Plate of Loaches
Musashi had been roaming the countryside, devoting himself to ascetic practices, punishing his body to perfect his soul. He was more resolved than ever to go it alone: if that meant being hungry, sleeping out in the open in cold and rain and walking about in filthy rags, then so be it. In his heart was a dream that would never be satisfied by taking a position in Lord Date’s employ, even if his lordship were to offer him his entire three-million-bushel fief.
After the long trip up the Nakasendō, he had spent only a few nights in Edo before taking to the road again, this time north to Sendai. The money given him by Ishimoda Geki had been a burden on his conscience; from the moment he’d discovered it, he’d known he’d find no peace until it was returned.
Now, a year and a half later, he found himself on Hōtengahara, a plain in Shimōsa Province, east of Edo, little changed since the rebellious Taira no Masakado and his troops had rampaged through the area in the tenth century. The plain was a dismal place still, sparsely settled and growing nothing of value, only weeds, a few trees and some scrubby bamboo and rushes. The sun, low on the horizon, reddened the pools of stagnant water but left the grass and brush colorless and indistinct.
“What now?” Musashi mumbled, resting his weary legs at a crossroads. His body felt listless and still waterlogged from the cloudburst he’d been caught in a few days earlier at Tochigi Pass. The raw evening damp made him eager to find human habitation. For the past two nights he’d slept under the stars, but now he longed for the warmth of a hearth and some real food, even simple peasant fare such as millet boiled with rice.
A touch of saltiness in the breeze suggested that the sea was near. If he headed toward it, he reasoned, he just might find a house, perhaps even a fishing village or small port. If not, then