Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [465]
Sekishūsai had not misinterpreted Ieyasu’s wishes; the conquering general had no use for a swordsman to teach his heir only technical skills. Some years before Sekigahara, Ieyasu himself had studied under a master swordsman named Okuyama, his objective being, as he himself frequently expressed it, “to acquire the eye needed to oversee the country.”
Still, Hidetada was now shōgun, and it would not do for the shōgun’s instructor to be a man who lost in actual combat. A samurai in Munenori’s position was expected to excel over all challengers and to demonstrate that Yagyū swordsmanship was second to none. Munenori felt he was constantly being scrutinized and tested, and while others might regard him as lucky to have been singled out for this distinguished appointment, he himself often envied Hyōgo and wished he could live the way his nephew did.
Hyōgo, as it happened, was now walking down the outside passageway leading to his uncle’s room. The house, though large and sprawling, was neither stately in appearance nor lavish in its appointments. Instead of employing carpenters from Kyoto to create an elegant, graceful dwelling, Munenori had deliberately entrusted the work to local builders, men accustomed to the sturdy, spartan warrior style of Kamakura. Though the trees were relatively sparse, and the hills of no great height, Munenori had chosen the solid rustic style of architecture exemplified by the old Main House at Koyagyū.
“Uncle,” called Hyōgo softly and politely, as he knelt on the veranda outside Munenori’s room.
“Is that you, Hyōgo?” asked Munenori without removing his eyes from the garden.
“May I come in?”
Having received permission to enter, Hyōgo made his way into the room on his knees. He had taken quite a few liberties with his grandfather, who was inclined to spoil him, but he knew better than to do that with his uncle. Munenori, though no martinet, was a stickler for etiquette. Now, as always, he was seated in strict formal fashion. At times Hyōgo felt sorry for him.
“Otsū?” asked Munenori, as though reminded of her by Hyōgo’s arrival.
“She’s back. She’d only gone to Hikawa Shrine, the way she often does. On the way back, she let her horse wander around for a while.”
“You went looking for her?”
“Yes, sir.”
Munenori remained silent for a few moments. The lamplight accented his tight-lipped profile. “It worries me to have a young woman living here indefinitely. You never know what might happen. I’ve told Sukekurō to look for an opportunity to suggest she go elsewhere.”
His tone slightly plaintive, Hyōgo said, “I’m told she has no place to go.” His uncle’s change of attitude surprised him, for when Sukekurō had brought Otsū home and introduced her as a woman who had served Sekishūsai well, Munenori had welcomed her cordially and said she was free to stay as long as she wished. “Don’t you feel sorry for her?” he asked.
“Yes, but there’s a limit to what you can do for people.”
“I thought you yourself thought well of her.”
“It has nothing to do with that. When a young woman comes to live in a house full of young men, tongues are apt to wag. And it’s difficult for the men. One of them might do something rash.”
This time Hyōgo was silent, but not because he took his uncle’s remarks personally. He was thirty and, like the other young samurai, single, but he firmly believed his own feelings toward Otsū were too pure to raise doubts about his intentions. He had been careful to allay his uncle’s misgivings by making no secret of his fondness for her, while at the same time not once letting on that his feeling went beyond friendship.
Hyōgo felt that the problem might lie with his uncle. Munenori’s wife came from a highly respected and well-placed family, of the sort whose daughters were delivered to their husbands on their wedding day in curtained palanquins lest they be seen by outsiders. Her chambers, together with those of the other women, were well removed from the more public parts of the house,