Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [61]
They had some tea and rested for a while. Then, as Osugi laid down the money for the bill, she said, “Takano’s too far to reach by nightfall. We’ll have to make do with sleeping on those smelly mats at the packhorse driver’s inn in Shingū, although not sleeping at all might be better than that.”
“We need our sleep now more than ever. Let’s get going,” said Gonroku, rising to his feet and clutching the new straw hat he had just bought. “But wait just a minute.”
“Why? “I want to fill this bamboo tube with drinking water.”
Going around behind the building, he submerged his tube in a clear running brook till the bubbles stopped rising to the surface. Walking back toward the road in front, he glanced through a side window into the dim interior of the teahouse. Suddenly he came to a halt, surprised to see a figure lying on the floor, covered with straw matting. The smell of medicine permeated the air. Gonroku couldn’t see the face, but he could discern long black hair strewn every which way on the pillow.
“Uncle Gon, hurry up!” Osugi cried impatiently.
“Coming.”
“What kept you?”
“There seems to be a sick person inside,” he said, walking behind her like a chastened dog.
“What’s so unusual about that? You’re as easy to distract as a child.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized hastily. He was as intimidated by Osugi as anyone else but knew better than most how to manage her.
They set off down the fairly steep hill leading to the Harima road. The road, used daily by packhorses from the silver mines, was pitted with potholes. “Don’t fall down, Granny,” Gon advised.
“How dare you patronize me! I can walk on this road with my eyes closed. Be careful yourself, you old fool.”
Just then a voice greeted them from behind. “You two are pretty spry, aren’t you?”
They turned to see the owner of the teahouse on horseback.
“Oh, yes; we just had a rest at your place, thank you. And where are you off to?”
“Tatsuno.”
“At this hour?”
“There’s no doctor between here and there. Even on horseback, it’ll take me at least till midnight.”
“Is it your wife who’s sick?”
“Oh, no.” His brows knitted. “If it were my wife, or one of the children, I wouldn’t mind. But it’s a lot of trouble to go to for a stranger, someone who just stopped in to take a rest.”
“Oh,” said Uncle Gon, “is it the girl in your back room? I happened to glance in and see her.”
Osugi’s brows now knitted as well.
“Yes,” the shopkeeper said. “While she was resting, she started shivering, so I offered her the back room to lie down in. I felt I had to do something. Well, she didn’t get any better. In fact, she seems much worse. She’s burning up with fever. Looks pretty bad.”
Osugi stopped in her tracks. “Is the girl about sixteen and very slender?” “Yes, about sixteen, I’d say. Says she comes from Miyamoto.”
Osugi, winking at Gonroku, began poking around in her obi. A look of distress came over her face as she exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve left them back at the teahouse!”
“Left what?”
“My prayer beads. I remember now—I put them down on a stool.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” said the shopkeeper, turning his horse around. “I’ll go back for them.”
“Oh, no! You’ve got to fetch the doctor. That sick girl’s more important than my beads. We’ll just go back and pick them up ourselves.”
Uncle Gon was already on his way, striding rapidly back up the hill. As soon as Osugi disposed of the solicitous teahouse owner, she hurried to catch up. Before long they were both puffing and panting. Neither spoke.
It had to be Otsū!
Otsū had never really shaken off the fever she caught the night they dragged her in out of the storm. Somehow she forgot about feeling sick during the few hours she was with Takezō, but after he left her she’d walked only a short way before beginning to give in to pain and fatigue. By the time she got to the teahouse, she felt miserable.
She did not know how long she had been lying in the back room, deliriously begging for water time and time again. Before leaving, the shopkeeper had looked in on her and urged