Kill the Shogun (Samurai Mysteries) Page 14

  The monk stayed frozen, a look of complete befuddlement on his face. After the laughter died down, the maiden finally broke her silence.

  “Ah, gentle hermit, I can see you are not familiar with the ways of the world! I am an onna, a woman, and what you are feeling is my bobo.” The country vulgarity set the audience to howling again.

  When the laughter subsided, the monk stood and said, “This is a most wondrous thing, this woman! But why would the Gods make woman so different from man?”

  The maiden turned her head to look at the monk. From her kneeling position, when she turned she was staring pointedly at the monk’s crotch, her nose just inches away. She waited for the audience’s laughter to build at her close inspection. Finally, when the laughter subsided, she cleared her throat and said, “I may be missing a chinchin, but I see your futomara is large enough for both of us.” At the use of a colloquialism for a large penis, the wave of laughter from the audience, which had subsided temporarily, suddenly reached a new crescendo. When the audience had quieted enough for her to be heard, the maiden said, “With such a futomara, the jade gates of the bobo may provide one with a new and pleasurable way to find enlightenment. It can be a new way to heaven.”

  “Can that be true? Can finding enlightenment be as simple as the difference between man and woman? How can that be done?”

  “Show me to your hermit’s hut and I will demonstrate the process,” the maiden said. “I have been fleeing from an unhappy love affair, but I see now that the Gods have guided me to this remote spot so I can do charity work! It will be a blessing to enlighten this innocent monk in the ways of men and women.”

  The monk helped the maiden up. Taking his hand, the maiden led the befuddled monk off, stopping to give the audience a sly and knowing look before continuing offstage. The laughing audience gave the performers a hearty round of applause.

  Despite his headache, the captain was laughing as hard as the rest of the audience. Pulling himself together, he gruffly shouted to his men, “Come on! We don’t have time for this foolishness!” He turned and stomped out of the theater. Reluctantly, the men followed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Five silent shadows

  cross the flat gray, nighttime street.

  Death blends with blackness.

  Momoko looked at Kaze with bright eyes.

  Kaze was removing the outlandish makeup he had put on to disguise his face. He had decided that the best place to hide was in plain sight, and the best way to do that was to call attention to himself in a way that actually hid his identity. Like many warriors, Kaze had been trained in the classical Noh drama, often taking part in Noh performances. It was the mark of a civilized man. Before he became Shogun, Ieyasu had often danced Noh, even taking roles where his paunch had been put to good use for comic effect, inviting the assembled audience to laugh at him. Of course, this buffoonery had another purpose. By acting the clown on the Noh platform, Ieyasu had put more than one potential enemy at ease, diffusing suspicion and causing foes to underestimate the shrewd man scampering and clowning on the stage.

  He had done this for the Hojos, the clan that Ieyasu and Hideyoshi eventually deposed from Edo and the rich Kanto plain, and he had also done this for Hideyoshi, whose house he eventually defeated. When Ieyasu acted the clown, it sometimes preceded serious business.

  Kaze had acted a scene from the Noh play Dojoji, although the risqué actions and words had been added extemporaneously. Momoko had picked up on Kaze’s intent immediately, playing the scene to great effect. She had been surprised that the ronin had wanted to act in the Kabuki, and even more surprised at his talent for it. She did not know Kaze’s desire to act in Kabuki was motivated by the need to elude the searchers, and that his comic flare came from the same core of icy intelligence he had when he was under pressure.

  As Kaze finished removing his makeup, he looked over at Momoko, who had been looking at him the entire time. “Well?” he said.

  Momoko still had her white makeup on. It emphasized her pug nose and plain face, but Kaze thought her lack of physical beauty was reduced by the force of her sparkling personality. Momoko meant peach and, filled with happiness tonight, she certainly was as sweet and luscious as her namesake.

  “Saburo, this is the best night of my life,” she said.

  Kaze raised an eyebrow, a bit nonplussed by her declaration, especially since she used the false name he had given her. Seeing his surprise, Momoko explained.

  “I’ve always wanted to be someone special; that’s why I wanted to try this Kabuki,” she said. “I know I’m not a beauty, and I don’t have any special skills with musical instruments or the brush. My poetry is embarrassingly bad.” She looked down. With her white makeup on, Kaze couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought she might even be blushing. “Even my cooking and my, ah, my other, ah, womanly skills, aren’t very good. I’ve never even really had a boyfriend. But tonight I did feel special. It was glorious. When I heard those people laughing so loud at you, I decided to see if I could make them laugh, too. And I can! Each of those laughs was like a shower of sakè. It made me drunk with happiness. It was all because of you.” She bowed a deep, formal bow. “Thank you!”

  Kaze was about to say it was nothing, in true Japanese fashion, but he realized that if he said that, it might diminish the importance of the moment for Momoko. So, instead of saying anything, he simply returned the bow, just as deep, and just as formally.

  The ninja was surprised. He thought the search of Ningyo-cho by Yoshida’s men would end the possibility of completing his contract that night. Not that he thought Yoshida’s men would catch the target, of course. He knew Yoshida’s men and he had a good idea of the capabilities of the target, and he was confident that in any game of cat and mouse, it was the target who would be the neko and Yoshida’s men who would be playing the part of the nezumi. It did not surprise him when his spies reported that Yoshida’s search of Ningyo-cho had been a failure.

  Now that Yoshida’s men had gone, the target, this Matsuyama Kaze, had left the theater and was walking about the streets of Ningyo-cho. What surprised the ninja was that Matsuyama was being followed by a young woman. She left the theater moments after Matsuyama and was making a clandestine effort to track him. The ninja signaled to his partner, who was hiding down the street, to gather the rest. The partner, like all of them, was dressed in the black pants, shirt, and hood that allowed him to blend into the night. Then the ninja started following the target and the girl.

  As he followed, he decided that this unusual development could be an advantage. The girl trailing the target would act as an effective shield. The ninja was confident of his ability to follow someone unnoticed, but when there were five of them, it would be impossible for that many men, even ninja, to follow a man of Matsuyama’s capabilities without drawing attention to themselves. With the woman between them, he was sure Matsuyama’s attention would be drawn to her clumsy attempts to stay hidden, and he would not notice the gathering of death forming behind him.

  Matsuyama seemed to be wandering the streets, seeing if the woman would get tired of following him. A hand was placed on his arm, and the ninja knew his four companions had arrived. He placed his fingers into the palm of one of them, and used his fingers in a silent code, instructing his companion to take two others and get ahead of Matsuyama, so they could trap him in a side street. With a scratch and tap of his finger in the palm of the other, he also instructed him to make the call of the tsugumi, the thrush, as a signal they were ready.

  The other ninja touched two of his companions on the arm, and the three of them ran off down a side street to circle around and get ahead of the target.

  He and the other ninja continued following a short distance more, when the target stopped and looked pointedly behind him. Perhaps he was tired of being followed and decided to confront the girl. Regardless, the ninja froze and blended into a shadow, just in case the target realized there were others on his trail. The ninja’s companion, who was rel
atively young and unseasoned, continued moving forward, much to the ninja’s annoyance. His young companion was too distant to touch, and he didn’t dare make a sound, so all he could do was watch his young charge continue to creep forward.

  Suddenly, there was the call of the thrush from ahead. Instantly, the target drew his sword and stood sideways in the street, so he could see both before and behind him, his weapon at the ready. The ninja cursed at the bad position he found himself in, with his companion too far ahead, but at the same time he had to admire the alertness of the target, sensing that the bird’s call in the midst of a city like Edo might be the harbinger of something dangerous.

  All semblance of stealth abandoned, the ninja and his companion drew the short, Chinese-style swords they had strapped to their backs, and started running toward the target. As he reached the woman, she half turned in surprise at the sound of running feet, and the young companion, who was several paces ahead of the ninja, struck her at the base of her neck with his open hand, Okinawan style. The woman immediately collapsed to the street.

  The ninja was about to yell to his companion to slow down, because he wanted the men in front and behind the target to arrive at exactly the same time, but he saw it was too late to curb the impetuousness of youth. He would arrive a split second before the others.

  The target used this timing error to his advantage.

  He parried the young ninja’s blow with his sword. Then, instead of going on the offensive with the young ninja, he pivoted around and caught the lead ninja on the other side of him. This man thought he would have an easy kill while the target was engaged with the young one, but instead he was caught by surprise by the pivoting movement and the target’s sword slashed across his midriff.

  The target didn’t stop his pivoting movement with the success of his attack, however. He spun completely around in time to have his blade parry a second cut from the young one.

  Again, instead of going on the attack, he turned his attention to the other side of him and swung his blade at the other attackers, catching a ninja jumping over the body of his slain companion. Not waiting to see the success of his attack as the mortally wounded ninja fell to the ground, he turned his attention back to the young one in time to parry a third blow.

  “Get back!” the ninja ordered. The young one obeyed orders and the remaining ninja on the other side did, too.

  The ninja took out his knife. Ninja were known to be experts in all types of throwing weapons, and the ninja expected a fighter as good as this samurai to react. The samurai did react, but in an unexpected fashion.

  Normally a samurai fought facing an enemy with both hands on his sword. At the sight of the knife, this samurai simply turned his body to the side, holding his sword in only one hand and presenting the smallest target possible. The ninja smiled. He was an expert and could hit something as small as a plum with a thrown knife. Simply turning to present a smaller target was not a good defense. It was the first mistake this target made in the fight.

  With a quick motion, the ninja brought the knife back and threw it. The samurai stepped back quickly as the knife was thrown, and although it cut the kimono of the samurai, it did not strike home.

  Surprised, the ninja realized that the samurai’s movement was not a mistake, but a brilliant defense. The human body was only as wide as a hand span. An expert knife thrower will aim for the center of the target, so one only has to move a small distance to have the knife miss a vital spot.

  “Give me your knife!” the ninja called to his young companion. The other ninja tossed over his knife.

  The ninja now had to guess which direction the samurai would move, forward or backward. If he guessed wrong, the knife would miss completely. If he guessed right, the samurai would be wounded or dead. The samurai stepped back the last time, so the ninja guessed he would step back again, because that might be the direction he found most comfortable for moving quickly. The ninja brought back the knife and threw it.

  The knife grazed the back of the samurai’s kimono, but didn’t strike flesh. The samurai had not moved. The ninja realized that the samurai perceived that he would understand why his first throw had missed, and that he would compensate with his second. With the thrower expecting a moving target, the samurai had simply stood firm and let the throw’s compensation cause it to miss him.

  It was as if the samurai could read his mind, anticipating his moves. For the first time in his life, the ninja became fearful of another man’s fighting ability.

  Suppressing his emerging doubts, the ninja shouted, “At my signal!” The others knew what he meant, but so, apparently, did the samurai. He stepped back slightly, still standing sideways in the street, so his back was protected by the wall of the building behind him. This meant that the three of them would be approaching him from the front, instead of from both sides.

  The ninja hesitated, to assess this new development, but before the ninja could shout his signal to attack, the samurai abandoned the defensive posture he had just adopted and moved to the offense. He stepped forward quickly to the younger one, using the young one’s body to block the ninja from taking a cut. The younger one took another slice at the samurai. The samurai blocked it, but this time he followed through, and after the parry he twisted his blade to one side and slashed the younger one across the neck.

  Without wasting a moment, the samurai turned and blocked a blow from the ninja behind him. The samurai took a cut at the ninja, then a second and third. The third found its mark, and the man fell to the ground, mortally wounded.

  As if he were moving to the choreographed sweeps of a dance, the samurai spun around and parried the last ninja’s cut, which an instant before had been aimed at the back of the samurai.

  The ninja stood on guard, watching the samurai, waiting for an opportunity. The samurai did the same, his sword at the aimed-at-the-knee position, as if he was inviting an attack from the remaining ninja.

  Suddenly, from behind him, the ninja heard a female voice calling, “Saburo!” The target’s name was Matsuyama Kaze, and the ninja was momentarily confused by the strange name being shouted by the woman, who had obviously recovered from the blow given her. He risked a quick turn of his head to see if this Saburo was coming up behind him. Convinced his back was clear, he turned to the samurai just as the samurai’s sword cut into his flesh. The ninja staggered backward, then fell to his knees as he felt his strength draining from the cut across his side and stomach. Even in his dying state, the ninja couldn’t help but admire his target, who had shown no hesitation between thought and action, between opportunity and conclusion. “Superb!” the ninja managed to gasp before dying.

  CHAPTER 17

  Infatuated

  sighs and sad puppydog eyes.

  Young love. A bother!

  Saburo!” Momoko came running down the dark street, her feet making the characteristic shuffle sound of someone running in a kimono. She stepped around the bodies that littered the ground and threw her arms around Kaze’s neck.

  Surprised, Kaze took one hand off his sword hilt and patted her on the back. “Don’t worry, Momoko. The ninja are all dead now. They can’t hurt you.”

  Momoko pulled back. “I’m not worrying about them hurting me,” she said indignantly. “I knew you’d kill them! I’m just worried that you’re hurt.”

  Kaze smiled. “You have a lot of faith in me. There were five of them.”

  “They hit me and knocked me down, so I didn’t know how many of them there were, but when I regained my senses I could see you had already defeated all but one of them. You were fantastic!”

  Kaze smiled. “Youthful enthusiasm.”

  “I’m not that young,” Momoko said. Then, taking advantage of the fact that her arms were around Kaze’s neck, she kissed him fiercely. It was a clumsy, sloppy kiss, but what Momoko lacked in technique, she made up for with vigor.

  Kaze put a hand on her chest and gently pushed her away. “Five men just died,” he said. “It’s frightening how yo
uth can ignore death to indulge lust.”

  Momoko drew herself up, as dignified as any court lady. “I kissed you because I was happy that you survived,” she said. “It wasn’t lust.”

  “Whatever it was, let’s leave this place before a patrol comes by and discovers us. It would be inconvenient to have to explain five dead bodies.”

  Momoko nodded and started rushing off.

  “Slow down,” Kaze said. “If we run, we’ll attract attention from anyone who sees us. If we stroll, no one will take notice.”

  Momoko slowed down and dutifully started following Kaze a pace behind, just like a wife. Her face was flushed with excitement from the night’s events, but just as if she were onstage, she played the role of the Edokko housewife perfectly.

  “Why were you following me?” Kaze asked when they had left the street with the dead ninja.

  “I just didn’t want the night to end. It was so wonderful for me. When you took off your makeup and abruptly left, I decided to see where you were going. I was curious.”

  “About what?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “I was curious to see, ah, if you were visiting a woman, or maybe even—”

  “Even?”

  “Well, maybe you were visiting a boy. A lot of samurai like that. I wanted to know if that was the case with you.”

  Kaze shook his head. “The young people these days are incredible. Haven’t you been told that a maiden of your age should have some modesty?”

  “I’m not a child,” Momoko said.

  “Then you should feign modesty. You’re not a strumpet.”

  “Remember, until a few weeks ago, the Kabuki dancers at the theater were females doing the most lascivious dances. After the performance, they would entertain patrons, sometimes right backstage. I was always backstage helping them dress or picking up costumes after the performance. I’m not experienced, but I’ve seen plenty.”