Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [543]
After expressing his heartfelt thanks, Takuan said, “Quite without intending to, I see I’ve been here at the castle for more than a month. It’s time to leave now. I’ll go to Koyagyū in Yamato to visit Lord Sekishūsai. Then I’ll return to the Daitokuji, traveling by way of the Senshū district.”
Mention of Sekishūsai seemed to evoke a pleasant memory for Hidetada. “How is old Yagyū’s health?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, I’m told that Lord Munenori thinks the end is near.”
Hidetada recalled a time when he had been at the Shōkokuji encampment and Sekishūsai had been received by Ieyasu. Hidetada had been a child at the time, and Sekishūsai’s manly bearing had made a deep impression on him.
Takuan broke the silence. “There is one other matter,” he said. “In consultation with the Council of Elders and with their permission, Lord Hōjō of Awa and I have recommended a samurai by the name of Miyamoto Musashi to be a tutor in your excellency’s household. I hope that you will look favorably upon this recommendation.”
“I’ve been informed of that. It’s said that the House of Hosokawa is interested in him, which is very much to his favor. I have decided it would be all right to appoint one more tutor.”
It was a day or two before Takuan left the castle, and in the time he acquired a new disciple. Going to the woodshed behind the inspector’s office, he had one of the kitchen helpers open the door for him, letting the light fall on a freshly shaven head.
Temporarily blinded, the novice, who thought himself a condemned man, slowly lifted his downcast eyes and said, “Ah!”
“Come,” said Takuan.
Wearing the priest’s robe Takuan had sent him, Matahachi stood up unsteadily on legs that felt as if they had begun to decay. Takuan gently put his arm around him and helped him out of the shed.
The day of retribution had arrived. Behind his eyelids, closed in resignation, Matahachi could see the reed mat on which he would be forced to kneel before the executioner raised his sword. Apparently he had forgotten that traitors faced an ignominious death by hanging. Tears trickled down his clean-shaven cheeks.
“Can you walk?” asked Takuan.
Matahachi thought he was replying; in fact, no sound came out. He was barely conscious of going through the castle gates and crossing the bridges spanning the inner and outer moats. Trudging along dolefully beside Takuan, he was the perfect image of the proverbial sheep being led to slaughter. “Hail to the Buddha Amida, hail to the Buddha Amida….” Silently he repeated the invocation to the Buddha of Eternal Light.
Matahachi squinted and looked beyond the outer moat at stately daimyō mansions. Farther to the east lay Hibiya Village; beyond, the streets of the downtown district were visible.
The floating world called out to him anew, and along with his yearning for it, fresh tears came to his eyes. He closed them and rapidly repeated, “Hail to the Buddha Amida, hail to the Buddha Amida….” The supplication became first audible, then louder and louder, faster and faster.
“Hurry up,” Takuan said sternly.
From the moat, they turned toward Ōtemachi and cut diagonally across a large vacant lot. Matahachi felt he had walked a thousand miles already. Would the road simply go on like this all the way to hell, daylight gradually giving way to utter darkness?
“Wait here,” commanded Takuan. They were in the middle of a flat open area; to the left, muddy water came down the moat from Tokiwa Bridge.
Directly across the street was an earthen wall, only recently covered with white plaster. Beyond this was the stockade of the new prison and a group of black buildings, which looked like ordinary town houses but was actually the official residence of the Commissioner of Edo.
His legs quaking, Matahachi could no longer support himself. He plopped down on the ground. Somewhere in the grass, the cry of a quail suggested the pathway to the land of the dead.
Run for it? His feet were not bound, nor were his hands. But no, he