Shike by Robert J. Shea (classic children's novels txt) 📖

elder brothers, driven to rebellion by Sogamori’s excesses, which you encouraged. I owe you the years of oppression and shame suffered by the Muratomo after my father’s uprising was put down. If I am under any obligation to you, Prince Horigawa, it has been washed away by blood.”

Horigawa’s lips drew back, baring teeth that gleamed like tiny black pearls in the lamplight. “Samurai.” He spat the word as if it were a curse. “A servant who steals his master’s place. Apes, pretending to be human beings. I did my best to use your bloody-mindedness to destroy you. I failed because, like lice, you grow fat and multiply on blood. You destroyed the world I loved, and the world you have made holds no delight for me. If you end my life, Muratomo no Hideyori, you could do me no greater service. My only regret is that I will not live to see Kublai Khan sweep you all away like so much chaff before the wind.”

He means it, Taniko thought. Where such a man is concerned, revenge is impossible. He will even turn his own execution into a triumph of sorts.

Hideyori smiled at Horigawa. “Twenty-four years ago my father sent me to kill you. Now at last I can carry out his order. I have searched my mind for a death that would be as long and horrible as your life has been, but no such thing is possible. You are an old man and will go quickly, no matter how careful we are. Yet, beheading is a samurai’s death, and you do not deserve it. So, I have decided that tomorrow you will be taken to the place of public execution and drowned in the sea. Your body will be left there. Your bones will be nibbled by fish and crabs when the tide covers them, and they will bleach in the sun when they lie exposed. It is too merciful by far for you, but I can think of no way to punish you properly.” He laughed without humour. “I am not cruel enough.”

Taniko thought, it is more appropriate than you realize, Hideyori. He will drown, as my little Shikibu did. Why am I not more delighted? Why, instead of joy, do I feel only this sad emptiness? Because his death will not bring my lost loved ones back.

Horigawa thrust his head forward like a striking snake. He spat at Hideyori’s feet. Munetoki roared with rage. Without turning, Hideyori held out his hand in a restraining gesture.

“Do not stain your sword, Munetokisan,” Taniko called from behind her screen. Hideyori motioned to the guards, and Horigawa was led from the hall.

The pale, moon-faced Heian Kyo aristocrats who had come with the embassy cowered as Hideyori’s dark gaze turned next towards them. “As for you officials of the Court,” he said, “you are also guilty of trying to surrender your country to the Mongols, but I will assume that you acted out of ignorance and cowardice, rather than, as Horigawa did, out of deliberate malevolence. Therefore, I merely sentence you to return to the capital.” The powdered faces brightened with relief. After a pause Hideyori added, “On foot.”

A howl of anguish went up from the noblemen and a shout of laughter from the samurai. One fat aristocrat fell to his knees. “My lord, such a journey will kill us.”

“Nonsense,” said Hideyori. “It will make you stronger and wiser. See something of the country you were so eager to give away to Kublai Khan.” Again he paused, while the courtiers stared at him, appalled. “Of course, I shall respectfully point out to His Imperial Majesty that you are not fit to hold the ranks and offices you now enjoy. You and all others at the capital who had a hand in this decision to surrender will be sent into honourable retirement.” Hideyori waved away the stout men in their subtly shaded robes.

Now he addressed his clansmen and allies: “We have already sent out two armies, one to the land of Oshu to punish Yerubutsu for killing my brother Yukio against my wishes. The other pursues the Mongols under the tarkhan, Arghun, now lurking in Echizen province and threatening the capital. All Mongols are our enemies now. We must prepare the nation for war.”

The samurai cheered until they were hoarse, shouting the old battle cry, “Muratomo-o!” over and over again. Tears ran down Taniko’s cheeks. She wept for these samurai and for all the people of the Sunrise Land. They did not know, as she did, the enormity of the disaster that threatened them. Even to Hideyori, this crisis with the Mongols was more an opportunity than a danger. He had used the occasion to assert the supremacy of the Shogun and had put down an attempt by the Court to decide a question of war and peace. Now he would destroy the independent lord of Oshu and Arghun’s army. Then there would be no one in all the Sacred Islands not subject to his will.

Hideyori turned away from the cheering assembly. A moment later he was behind Taniko’s screen, looking down at her with a smile. “Of all who advised me, your advice was the soundest. Together we will face the worst the Great Khan can send. After tomorrow, you will be free to marry me.”

Taniko was unable to speak. Vengeance, she had found, was empty. All victories were hollow. Whether she looked to the past or to the future, all she could see before her or behind her was destruction and death. Only with an enormous effort of the will could she hold down a sob. Eor some reason she found herself remembering Eisen’s story of the Zen abbot who had died screaming.

Taniko lay awake all that night, thinking of the men somewhere else in the Shogun’s castle, waiting to die. They, too, must be awake, she thought. How could anyone spend the last night of his life sleeping? She did not want to be near by when they-especially Horigawawere led out to the beach to be executed. Some time during the hour of the ox, with dawn two hours away, she called on her maids to help her dress for a journey into the hills, to see Eisen. Sametono refused to wake up. She had him wrapped in a quilt and carried down to the courtyard where her horses waited. With a maidservant and a samurai guard, who held the sleeping Sametono propped before him on his saddle, she rode up the familiar path into the pine-covered hills north of Kamakura. The sky over the great ocean to the east was already growing noticeably lighter. By the time she had arrived at the monastery, there were great ribbons of crimson unfurling like Takashi banners in the eastern sky.

“Why are you crying?” Eisen wanted to know. “Are you mourning Horigawa and the Mongol envoys?”

“I am crying because I am partly responsible for their deaths through my advice to Hideyori.”

“A samurai should never feel regret at causing death,” said Eisen firmly. “Killing is what a samurai does.”

“There is no end to it,” said Taniko, wiping her face with her sleeve. “What have we human beings done to deserve so much pain, sensei?”

“If a man is shot with a poisoned arrow, he does not bother to ask whether he deserved it. He pulls out the arrow and applies the antidote as quickly as possible.”

“What is the antidote to all this suffering?”

“Show me the face you had before you were born,” said Eisen fiercely.

Her mind a blank, Taniko shrugged helplessly. She still had not solved the kung-an. Their talk turned to her coming marriage to Hideyori. As the wife of the Shogun, she would be the most powerful woman in the land.

“You will be able to accomplish much,” said Eisen.

“Yes, through Hideyori.” She shook her head angrily. “Sensei, I want to do things in my own right, not just because some powerful man like Kiyosi or Kublai Khan or Hideyori has decided he wants to go to bed with me.” Eisen laughed softly.

She and Sametono took their midday meal with the monks. By now, she thought, feeling the tension drain out of her, the condemned men must all be gone. This evening she could return to Kamakura and it would be behind her. The past, said Eisen, did not exist. In the after noon, at the hour of the sheep, she and Eisen walked in the temple’s garden.

Their conversation was interrupted by a messenger from Hideyori, a breathless young samurai who bowed to the monk and the lady in the temple garden. “The heads of the Great Khan’s ambassadors are on their way back to him. As for Horigawa, he has survived the morning high tide. When I left the Shogun’s castle he still lived. Lord Hideyori thought you would be pleased to know that he is still suffering.”

“What are they doing to him?” Taniko asked, horrified.

“There is a cliff that drops down to the sea near the execution ground,” said the samurai. “The executioners have hung Prince Horigawa from that cliff by a rope tied around his chest. As the tide goes in and out, they raise and lower him so that his head is always just above the water. The waves dash continuously into his face, the cold is intense, and his body is bloody from being repeatedly thrown against the rocks. At times they allow him to be submerged for a moment and he comes close to drowning.” Taniko fell to the ground and put her face in her hands. The young samurai stared at her, puzzled. Eisen sent him away.

After he was gone Taniko said, “Hideyori thinks it may please me to know that Horigawa is still alive and in pain. In the name of Amida Buddha, what does he think I am?”

“There is a part of you that wants Horigawa to be tormented. That is why you are feeling so much pain.”

In the evening Hideyori’s samurai messenger returned to tell her that Horigawa yet lived. He was raving and babbling now in three languages, the young man said. The exquisitely educated mind was unravelling.

Taniko stayed at the monastery that night. She did not want to go back to Kamakura as long as Horigawa was still being tortured. Long before daylight she rose and put on a hooded cloak and went to the meditation hall to sit in zazen with the monks.

At the hour of the dragon that morning, Hideyori himself arrived at the monastery and sent for her. He was waiting with a small group of horsemen just outside the gate, sitting astride a skittish, pure white stallion that had been a present from Bokuden when he assumed the title of Shogun. A retainer held the horse’s head and stroked its nose to keep it calm. When he saw Taniko, Hideyori dismounted. He took a gleaming black box from a servant. Taniko knew what she was going to see and she wanted to run away, but she forced herself to look as Hideyori opened the box with a self-satisfied smile.

The white stallion screamed and reared at the sight, almost kicking the man holding him. Horigawa’s dead lower lip hung open, showing his blackened teeth. His face was even more wrinkled than it had been in life, and there were bruises on his cheeks and forehead. She felt an enormous relief that it was all over. She turned away and put her hand over her eyes. Hideyori closed the box lid with a bang and handed it back to his servant. In just such a box as that Jebu’s head lay, she thought.

“That man was harder to kill than a centipede,” Hideyori said with a smile. “He survived until just before dawn this morning. He screamed all through the night. I went out to listen