Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [66]
“I think you can best find that out by asking Tanzaemon directly.” “I’ve already questioned him.”
“Then did you think I would lie to you?”
“Of course not. Tanzaemon has confessed, but I wanted your confirmation. Since he is my direct vassal, his oath to you constitutes one from me. Therefore, even though I am lord of this fief, I have lost my right to penalize Takezō as I see fit. Of course, I will not permit him to go unpunished, but it is up to you what form the punishment is to take.”
“Good. That is exactly what I had in mind.”
“Then I assume you have given it some thought. Well, what shall we do with him?”
“I think it would be best to place the prisoner in—what shall we say?—’straitened circumstances’ for a while.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I believe you have somewhere in this castle a closed room, one long rumored to be haunted?”
“Yes, I do. The servants refused to enter it, and my retainers avoided it consistently, so it went unused. I now leave it as it is, since there is no reason to open it again.”
“But don’t you think it’s beneath the dignity of one of the strongest warriors in the Tokugawa realm, you, Ikeda Terumasa, to have a room in your castle where a light never shines?”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, people think of things like that. It’s a reflection on your authority and prestige. I say we should put a light there.”
“Hmm.”
“If you’ll let me make use of that chamber, I’ll keep Takezō there until I’m ready to pardon him. He’s had enough of living in total darkness. You hear that, don’t you, Takezō?”
There was not a peep from Takezō, but Terumasa began laughing and said, “Fine!”
It was obvious from their excellent rapport that Takuan had been telling Aoki Tanzaemon the truth that night at the temple. He and Terumasa, both followers of Zen, seemed to be on friendly, almost brotherly, terms.
“After you’ve taken him to his new quarters, why don’t you join me in the teahouse?” Terumasa asked the monk as he rose to leave.
“Oh, are you planning to demonstrate once again how inept you are at the tea ceremony?”
“That’s not even fair, Takuan. These days I’ve really started to get the knack of it. Come along later and I’ll prove to you I’m no longer simply an uncouth soldier. I’ll be waiting.” With that, Terumasa retired to the inner part of the mansion. Despite his short stature—he was barely five feet tall—his presence seemed to fill the many-storied castle.
It was always pitch dark high in the donjon, where the haunted room was located. There was no calendar here: no spring, no fall, no sounds of everyday life. There was only one small lamp, lighting a pale and sallow-cheeked Takezō.
The topography section of Sun-tzu’s Art of War lay open on the low table before him.
Sun-tzu said:
“Among topographical features,
There are those that are passable.
There are those that suspend.
There are those that confine.
There are those that are steep.
There are those that are distant.”
Whenever he came to a passage that particularly appealed to him, like this one, he would read it aloud over and over, like a chant.
He who knows the art of the warrior is not confused in his movements. He acts and is not confined.
Therefore Sun-tzu said, “He who knows himself and knows his enemy wins without danger. He who knows the heavens and the earth wins out over all.”
When his eyes blurred from fatigue, he rinsed them with cool water from a small bowl he kept beside him. If the oil ran low and the lamp wick sputtered, he simply put it out. Around the table was a mountain of books, some in Japanese, some in Chinese. Books on Zen, volumes on the history of Japan. Takezō was virtually buried in these scholarly tomes. They had all been borrowed from Lord Ikeda’s collection.
When Takuan had sentenced him to confinement, he had said, “You may read as much as you want. A famous priest of ancient times once said, ‘I become immersed in the sacred scriptures and read thousands of volumes. When I come away, I find that my heart