Death at the Crossroads (Samurai Mysteries) Read online

  A housewife expected a polite ritual of greetings and small talk from any village vendor. It was often the high point of her day, and a purchase usually involved a chance to catch up with news and gossip. In this, Jiro felt hopeless and awkward, even though his customers were lifelong neighbors. With Yuko’s patient support and tutoring in the fine art of gossip, Jiro was able to make a modest success of their small business, and Jiro’s periodic trips into the mountains became a natural adjunct to the rhythm of life, like the spring rains and the planting and the harvest and the winter snows.

  Yuko died in childbirth, trying to give life to their first son, who also died. By village custom, Yuko wasn’t really considered Jiro’s wife until she had borne him a child, but this didn’t make his grief any less. Uncharacteristically, Jiro rebelled against all efforts of the village women to get him a second wife. He would not bend like the bamboo to the collective wisdom of the village. He could never articulate the reason for rebuffing the matchmaking efforts of the elder women, even to himself, but in his heart he loved and cherished the memory of Yuko and couldn’t conceive of replacing her.

  So for over thirty years he had remained alone. And although he was never as articulate as when he was under the tutelage of Yuko, he kept the charcoal-selling business in addition to his modest farm. The extra income, usually in the form of rice instead of money, was useful because it allowed him to buy things which would otherwise require the help of a wife and family to make. If it weren’t for the fact that he remained the only charcoal seller in the village, Jiro knew his business would surely suffer because of his lack of conversational skills, but no one else seemed inclined to take on the hard and sometimes dangerous task.

  On this morning he was fretting because to every customer he had to make a speech and they would shower him with abuse and anger. He was raising prices.

  The day before he had gone into the mountains to buy charcoal from one of the solitary charcoal burners. For once, Jiro wished he had the gift of conversation when he was told that the price of charcoal was being doubled because of the danger from Boss Kuemon’s bandits.

  Instead of coherent protest, all Jiro could do was scowl and stare at the charcoal maker in mute rebuke. Finally, he was able to splutter, “That’s too much. I’ll buy from someone else.”

  “There is no one else,” the charcoal burner said blandly. “Kintaro was killed last week, and I’m the only one burning charcoal in these parts.”

  Jiro took this news with surprise. “Killed?”

  “The bandits wanted salt and miso, and I guess Kintaro put up a fuss. He said he was running low on salt the last time I saw him, and I guess he thought if he gave the bandits all he had, he wouldn’t be able to make the offerings of salt and sake to the Stove God when he made the charcoal. Baka! Fool! When they come and tell me to give them things, I just give them. You can always get more salt or miso or sake. There is only one life.” The burner held out his hands in the universal gesture of helplessness. “It’s stupid to fight them.”

  “This place is going to the dogs.”

  “Yes, and we know why,” the burner said, leaving a long pause as an invitation to Jiro to amplify.

  Jiro ignored it. He wouldn’t make idle small talk unless required to by a customer, and he also knew better than to criticize the administration of the District by the new Lord. After thinking of alternate courses of action and finding none, he thrust out a container of homemade sake and said, “Here.”

  The burner was not surprised by the lack of transition between business talk and a gift. In the complicated ballet of Japanese commerce, one usually accompanied the other, although Jiro was not the most skilled practitioner of the art of moving from one to the other.

  “Thanks!” the burner said with a grin. “I know you probably didn’t bring enough money for the new, higher price. I’ll give you credit for it, and you can pay me the next time you come out for charcoal. Come! Warm yourself by the fire. You must be cold after your walk out from the village.”

  Jiro accepted the hospitality and spent the night drinking with the burner. The sake was rich and sweet, with plenty of grains of fermented rice still floating around in the liquid. The burner, after weeks alone in the mountains cutting down trees to make charcoal, was garrulous. Jiro responded with grunts and short phrases, but the burner didn’t mind. The Japanese believe communication involves the whole being, not just words, and Jiro’s grunts and gestures, after a few drinks, seemed as eloquent as the spoken remarks of any companion the burner could want.

  Because of the drink, Jiro woke up later than planned. It was still before the dawn, but he was tardy returning to the village. The sky was still black, and familiar stars made their stately procession across the heavens. Peeking over the top of Mount Fukuto, Jiro could see the stars of the Two Lovers very close to each other. They had already come together for their annual kiss that marked the fall, yet the weather was still teetering on the last edge of summer.

  In haste, Jiro gathered up his basket of charcoal and paid what money he had brought with him to the burner. Now, as he ran along the path back to the crossroads and the village, he racked his brain to figure out the best way to explain the higher prices to his customers in the village. As usual, his lack of skill in using words failed him, and he couldn’t come up with a satisfactory speech that would soften the blow. As the sun rose in the sky, burning off some of the mist loitering at the bottom of the mountain valley and revealing the low-lying hagi, or bush clover, Jiro still wrestled with the problem.

  Jiro was so involved in composing what he was going to say about the higher prices that when he got to the crossroads he almost didn’t see the body exposed by the thinning silver mist until he ran into it.

  The body was lying on its side in the center of the crossroads. The crossroads marked the meeting of four paths. One went east to the village of Suzaka, where Jiro lived. One led north out of the area and into the prefecture of Uzen and the rivers beyond. Another led south to the village of Higashi and the prefecture of Rikuzen, and the last path, the one that Jiro was on, went west, deeper into the mountains toward Mount Fukuto.

  The body was that of a man, perhaps in his early thirties. He was dressed in a brown kimono with gray hakama, or pants. It was the dress of a man intent on traveling. The legs were splayed and one of the man’s sandals was missing. The remaining sandal, precariously clinging to the other foot, was the coarse-rope sandal of a traveler or pilgrim.

  His hair was bound up in the style favored by merchants. The expression on his face was one of pain, and his eyes were squeezed shut, as if he could avoid the darkness of death by eclipsing it with a darkness of his own making.

  In his back was an arrow. A bloodstain spread from the point where the arrow penetrated, running parallel to the ground and up toward the man’s head. The arrow was well made, with a straight shaft of clear, dark wood, and gray feathers, finely trimmed.

  Jiro had seen death many times before. Some of the deaths were violent. It was hard not to see violent death when you lived in a land where over three hundred years of lethal clan warfare had left its legacy. Yet coming across the body so suddenly and unexpectedly unnerved him.

  He skidded to an abrupt halt, the heavy basket of charcoal pushing against his back and shoulders. He dipped backward with a familiar move that simultaneously placed the charcoal basket on the ground and released the shoulder and head lines. He advanced toward the body tentatively, double-checking to make sure the man was not breathing. Jiro squatted next to the body, poked him, and said, “Oi! You!” No movement. He touched the face of the man. The man’s cheek was cold and lifeless.

  Jiro was annoyed. On a morning when mundane problems like being late or explaining a price increase loomed so large, the discovery of this body caused a new level of anxiety. With the increasing breakdown of safety in the District, it wouldn’t surprise him to find bodies in the middle of the village next.

  He had to decide what he would do about his
discovery. He could avoid the most trouble if he just ignored the body and continued into the village, but the next people through the crossroads would report it, and Jiro might somehow be implicated in the murder.

  Of course, when he did report it, he would have to deal with Magistrate Nagato, and that would involve more disruption and unpleasantness. It might even involve a beating if the bullying Magistrate took it into his head to administer one, just on general principle. Jiro sighed. What an annoyance!

  Suddenly, behind him, Jiro heard a sound on the path leading to Uzen. He looked around and saw a man rounding a bend in the path, walking toward him. Like the dead man, he was also dressed in the kimono and hakama of a man traveling. Unlike the dead man, this new stranger was clearly a samurai. Over one shoulder, he negligently had a katana in its scabbard, one hand holding the hilt. The black lacquer of the plain scabbard caught the intense morning sun, and Jiro was mesmerized by the glint of the weapon’s sheath.

  As soon as the man saw Jiro, his thick eyebrows crashed together into a frowning V. “Nani? What?” the man asked, quickening his steps.

  Jiro thought of grabbing his charcoal basket for a brief second, then abandoned the idea. He sprang to his feet and nimbly hopped over the body. Then he ran down the path to the village as fast as his legs could carry him, not once looking behind him.

  The samurai approached the corpse and stopped next to it. He looked at the body for several minutes, then he thoughtfully looked down the path where Jiro had neatly disappeared.

  CHAPTER 2

  Monkeys marching all

  in a row. Fierce martial stance.

  What fine samurai!

  The parade was more like a comic scroll painting than a military procession.

  In the lead was Ichiro, the village headman. He was a loose collection of lanky bones and oversize joints covered by yellowing skin. He carried a naginata, a type of spear with a broad sword blade for a point. He handled the weapon as if it were an alien device rather than something he had been drilled in. Ichiro was naked except for a loincloth and leather cuffs on his wrist, which were supposed to act as armor. Across his forehead he had a plate of metal strapped on by thin leather thongs. It would take a skilled swordsman, consciously trying to hit this headband, for it to provide any protection.

  Behind Ichiro came Nagato Takamasu, the District Magistrate. His corpulent body strained at the cloth of his blue kimono, and the two swords that marked him as a samurai stuck out from his body like the spines of a blowfish. Nagato’s enormous belly jiggled as he waddled along. In an age when food was precious, Nagato’s fat marked him as someone of relative wealth and privilege.

  Following Nagato were two guardsmen. Only one had a metal tipped spear; the other had a locally made spear of sharpened bamboo. One man wore a breastplate of chain mail as armor, but aside from this flimsy shield they both had only loincloths.

  At the tail of the procession was Jiro. Jiro was supposed to lead the party, but he was put at the end as a matter of rank. As a result, every time Nagato wanted to ask how far it was to the body, the message had to be passed up and down the line by the two guardsmen. Jiro silently cursed the stupidity of the military as the conversation turned to farce.

  “How far to the body?” Nagato asked.

  “How far to the body?” the first guardsman repeated.

  “How far to the what?” the second asked.

  “The body, the body, baka!”

  “Magistrate Nagato wants to know something,” the second guardsman said to Jiro.

  Jiro, who couldn’t hear the telegraphed conversation, said, “Hai! Yes!”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “The crossroads,” Jiro answered, bewildered at why Nagato couldn’t remember what Jiro had reported when he first came to the village.

  “It’s at the crossroads,” the second guardsman said.

  “What’s at the crossroads?” the first asked.

  “The body, the body, stupid,” the second said, mimicking the first.

  The first guardsman looked over his shoulder and glared at the second. Then he turned to Nagato and said, “It’s at the crossroads, sir.”

  “Of course it’s at the crossroads,” Nagato snapped. “Ask him how far from here.”

  “How far from here?” the first relayed.

  “How far is the body from the crossroads?” the second relayed.

  Puzzled, Jiro answered, “It’s right at the crossroads.”

  “To the right at the crossroads,” the second said.

  The first said to Nagato, “We go to the right at the crossroads, sir.”

  “To the right?” Nagato said, puzzled. “I thought he said the body was right at the crossroads. Ask him how far to the right.”

  “How far to the right of the crossroads is it?”

  “How far to the right?”

  “How far to the right?” Jiro said perplexed. “How far to the right is what?”

  “The body, stupid!”

  “The body isn’t to the right of the crossroads.”

  “It isn’t right.”

  “He says it isn’t to the right, sir. Perhaps it’s to the left. These stupid farmers can’t tell right from left!”

  “The body’s to the left at the crossroads?” Nagato said. “I thought he said it was right at the crossroads.”

  The scrambled conversation would have continued for some time, except that Ichiro turned a bend and saw the body lying in the middle of the crossroads. Ichiro jerked to a halt, his naginata at the ready, as if the body would spring back to life and attack him.

  Nagato almost walked into the butt of Ichiro’s naginata and came to a sudden halt himself. This unexpected stop echoed down the line as the first guardsman stopped short to avoid running into Magistrate Nagato, and the second guardsmen hit the first, bumping the first into Nagato’s back, despite the best efforts of the first guardsman not to hit the Magistrate.

  At the bump of the first guardsman Nagato turned and roared in anger, “Baka! Fool! What do you think you’re doing!”

  The guardsman fell to his knees in a deep bow of apology. “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me! It’s that stupid fool behind me. He pushed me! It was not my fault!”

  Jiro, who had witnessed the entire sequence from his vantage point at the end of the procession, suppressed a laugh at the discomfort of the Magistrate and the guardsmen.

  Nagato pointed at the body and yelled, “Don’t just sit there banging your miserable head on the ground! Get up and investigate the body!”

  “Yes, sir!” The guardsman got to his feet and ran to the body, with the second guardsman nipping at his heels. When the first guardsman tried to stop as he reached the body, the second guardsman ran into him again. That tumbled both men down on top of the body, knocking over Jiro’s large basket of charcoal for good measure. The guards and body formed a wriggling bundle of hands, legs, and feet. The first guardsman, out of frustration and anger, started punching the second in the face.

  As Nagato and Ichiro ran to sort out the squabbling guardsmen, a deep, ringing laugh came rolling down from the steep hillside by the crossroads. Jiro looked up the slope and was surprised to see the samurai who had startled him.

  He was sitting on the supine trunk of a low-lying, windswept pine. The trunk was growing parallel to the ground, and the samurai was on it in the lotus position, his sword laying across his lap. In his hands he had a small knife and a piece of wood. His laughter was so hearty that he had to drop the wood into the lap of his kimono and place a hand down on the branch to steady himself, lest he fall off.

  Nagato looked up the slope, scowling at the samurai. “What are you laughing at?” he bellowed.

  The samurai’s laughter continued. Nagato, expecting an answer, demanded “Well? Well?”

  The samurai’s laughter gradually died down. When it did, he grinned down at the outraged Magistrate and said, “Snow monkeys are always a source of amusement.”

  The Magistrate was puzzled. “Why do
you …” The meaning became clear. “Who are you to call us monkeys!” he shouted.

  “You’re men who act like monkeys, so I’m just a man confused by what manner of creatures are before me: men or monkeys.”

  The Magistrate, his face red with anger, kicked at the two guardsmen who were still tangled on the ground with the body. “Get up and arrest that man!” he screamed.

  It took several moments for the guards to get themselves back on their feet with their weapons at the ready. They looked up the slope, then at each other. Then, with Nagato’s screams urging them on, they took a few tentative steps up the hillside toward the samurai.

  As they scrambled up the hillside, all semblance of martial readiness disintegrated. Instead of holding their spears as weapons, they used them as hiking sticks. Neither guard seemed willing to lead the other, and both kept a wary eye on the samurai. When they were halfway to the samurai, he put the small piece of wood on the branch. Then he took the small knife, a ko-gatana, and slipped it into its niche in the side of his sword scabbard. He unfolded his legs and put them on the ground, standing up and shoving his sword into his sash. All this was done with an economy of movement and swiftness that mesmerized Jiro. The troops advancing up the hill were not entranced, however. This activity by the samurai was the signal for a pell-mell retreat by the guardsmen, who tumbled and slid down the slope back to the road.

  Seeing his forces in disarray, Nagato’s shouts ended, although his purple face looked like it was about to explode.

  “If you ask me politely, I’ll come down to talk to you,” the samurai said.

  Looking at the cowering Ichiro and the two disheveled guards, Nagato swallowed his anger and stood in the road looking up at the samurai. He bowed slightly and said, “Please come down so we can talk to you.”