Death at the Crossroads (Samurai Mysteries) Read online

  “No one has money here but the bandits. They take what they want, not buy. No one here has servants, except the Magistrate and the Lord.”

  “How long has the bandit problem been so severe here?”

  “There’ve always been a few, but the last two years have been terrible.”

  “Why has it gotten so terrible in the last two years?”

  “No reason,” Jiro said warily.

  “No reason at all?”

  “No. It’s just gotten bad in two years.”

  “Several bands of bandits, or just one?”

  “One. They killed off the others, or made them join. Boss Kuemon is in charge.”

  Kaze put down his empty bowl of gruel. Jiro pointed toward the pot with his chin, to see if Kaze wanted more. The samurai shook his head no. He found a clear spot and seemed to be settling down for the night, sleeping, Jiro noted, with his sword tucked in his arms. Jiro banked the fire and settled down himself.

  “Want a futon?” Jiro asked, digging out one of the sleeping mats for himself.

  “No. I’m used to sleeping on the ground.”

  “All right. I have to wake up early to sell charcoal.”

  “I wake up early, too. By the way, how many years has the new Lord been in charge of this District?”

  “Two.” As soon as he spoke, Jiro knew the reason for the question. This was why he didn’t trust words. It was too easy to say more than you wanted to, even with a single one of them.

  Jiro awoke very early the next morning, long before the sun was up. He lay still, listening to the breathing of the still-sleeping samurai. When he was sure that the stranger was sound asleep, Jiro quietly got up and crept to the door of his farmhouse. It was so dark he couldn’t see his guest, but he had lived his entire life in the house and knew its every cranny. At the door he paused once again to listen for the slow, rhythmic breathing of the ronin and heard it. Reassured, Jiro took the stick out of the sliding wooden door that jammed it shut at night. Then, with painstaking care to assure he wasn’t making a sound, he slid open the door.

  Once outside, Jiro slid the door shut with equal care. Then he stealthily made his way from the farmhouse and the village.

  Kaze continued his slow breathing as he listened to Jiro’s receding footsteps. He expected Jiro to make his way to the privy. That would almost always be to the south of a farmhouse. Kaze had noticed a nanten bush growing south of the farmhouse, something usually planted next to a privy as a symbol of ritual purification, so he was sure that’s where the facilities were. But the charcoal seller was walking west, not south. That meant he was walking into the surrounding woods.

  Kaze lay still, slowly listening to his breathing, and tried not to be curious about the strange nocturnal journey of the charcoal seller. He counted over a thousand breaths before Jiro painstakingly slid the farmhouse door open again and crept inside. In the dark, Jiro made his way back to his spot on the farmhouse’s platform floor and settled back to sleep, congratulating himself on making his nightly trip without the samurai noticing.

  The next morning, Kaze shared a breakfast of hot miso soup and cold porridge from the night before with Jiro without complaint. The breakfast passed without any comment on the charcoal seller’s peculiar behavior. Kaze finished his food, then he put on his tabi socks and started strapping on his hemp sandals.

  “Looking around the village again?” Jiro said, frankly curious.

  “I’ve seen the village. I’m moving to the next village.”

  “You’re leaving?” Jiro said, alarmed.

  “Yes. There’s no reason for me to stay.”

  “But the Lord hasn’t decided what to do about the murder.” Fear made words tumble from Jiro’s mouth.

  “The murder has nothing to do with me.”

  “But the Magistrate told you to stay here.”

  “Your Magistrate is nothing to me. He’s too stupid to even understand what happened. He will never find the murderer. Domo. Thank you for your hospitality. Good luck.”

  “But the Magistrate will be mad if you leave!”

  Kaze shrugged.

  “You may meet bandits on the road.”

  “Then that is my karma. Domo.”

  Kaze stuck his sword in his sash and strode out of Jiro’s hut. Jiro rushed to the door, watching the samurai walk down the path that led through the village using the economical gait of a man used to covering long distances. Jiro was fearful of the samurai’s leaving, yet not quite sure what he should do about it.

  Once out of the village, Kaze enjoyed the sweet air of the mountains, scented with pine and the memory of summer grass. The sky was sunny, and although he had gained no news of the girl, he was not discouraged. He would not quit. This last village meant one less place to look. If she was alive, sooner or later he would find her.

  To demonstrate his powers of concentration, Daruma, the Indian monk who founded Zen Buddhism, sat in a cave and meditated for nine years while staring at a wall. Kaze’s Sensei would often relate that story when Kaze grew too restless with a lesson or exercise, but Kaze could never see the example applying to him. He could be still, but he could not be idle.

  He had searched for the girl for two years. During the search he had wandered the cities and back roads of Japan, constantly moving. Inactivity, not a lack of patience, was why the lesson of Daruma was never incorporated into his heart. It was two years since he saw her, and at that age girls grow quickly. He wondered if he would recognize her. Would there be some spark of her parents shining in her face as she matured, or could he walk past her on a village street and not recognize that he had found the object of his search?

  Just as swordsmanship was a matter of a hair’s width, luck in life could be a matter of brief seconds. A man could turn and an arrow or musket ball fired at him could miss. If he turned a fraction of a second later, he would be dead. Even if she did look like her parents, perhaps Kaze would be turning a corner just as she was stepping out a door and miss her. Perhaps she would be moved to a village just as Kaze had left it. There were so many possibilities, but Kaze knew he could not just sit idle and wait for luck. He believed in the Japanese proverb that said waiting for luck is like waiting for death.

  As he walked along the path, Kaze looked at the splashes of blue sky peeking through the woven branches of the trees. It was a constantly changing mosaic that recalled the intricately painted patterns on the expensive Satsuma porcelains he knew from his youth. His quest weighed on his soul, but he reflected that his life was not without its pleasures, especially as he walked along an empty road, smelling the coming autumn and listening to the sound of his sandals crunching the pine needles that had drifted across the path. He was about to start humming an old folk song when he stopped abruptly and stared into the trees lining the road. Something caught his eye.

  CHAPTER 5

  A butterfly roosts.

  Unexpected elegance

  on a bobbing leaf.

  It was a subtle thing, but he was a man used to living off subtleties. The trees along this patch of road were thick and overgrown with brush, yet deep in the woods, through the tangle of branches, Kaze had seen a flash of red, then gold. He stared intently, seeing if he could spot the colors again, but saw nothing except the dark tree trunks.

  Leaving the road, he started making his way into the trees. Silent as any hunter, he carefully stepped over brush and glided from point to point, penetrating the woods with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of sound.

  A short distance from the road, he stopped. There the woods opened up into a large clearing. The grass in the clearing was trampled down, forming a space roughly the size of eight tatami mats. In this space, standing alone, was a Noh dancer.

  The dancer wore a rich kimono of red and gold. The crimson silk was embroidered with a pattern of golden maple leaves, tumbling from one shoulder and fluttering their way to the kimono’s hem. Stepping through this dry autumn shower, a brown embroidered doe gently peeked from the back of the k
imono to the flank of the dancer, looking about warily with wide eyes. The lushness of the kimono’s color was what Kaze had spotted through the trees.

  On the face of the dancer was a ko-omote, the traditional mask of a maiden: oval, serene, painted white with red lips and high, expressive eyebrows. The mask was surmounted by a black wig with long, lustrous human hair pulled back into a bun, adding to the illusion that the Noh dancer, who was a man, was really a woman.

  The dancer moved with slow grace, his movements controlled and stylized. Kaze, who had not seen Noh for many years, was entranced. Noh was part dance, part drama, and part music. In the silent performance being pantomimed before him, the music and stylized singing and speech of the Noh ensemble were missing, but the grace of the dancer remained.

  He was moving in a precise, measured triangle, and Kaze realized that it was Dojoji, a Noh play about a dedication ceremony for a large bronze bell at Dojoji temple. An enchanting female shirabyoshi dancer climbs the mountain to the temple, only to be revealed as a vengeful spirit who turns herself into a frightening serpent when trapped under the bell by the priests of the temple. It’s a spectacular performance, with a costume change for the principal dancer when hidden in the bell, metamorphosing from the robes and mask of the maiden to the glittering costume and fearsome mask of the serpent.

  The dancer walked through the small triangle again and again, varying the walk by small degrees. It was the part of the play where the dancer makes the long climb up the mountain to the temple, a part that extends for many minutes in the actual performance. Here the precision and skill of the dancer was taxed to keep the action interesting to the audience, and Kaze was delighted by the finesse shown as the dancer made small variations in these apparently repetitious movements.

  When the dancer was done, he straightened up, and Kaze realized that this was just a practice and that the complete Noh would not be danced. Still, the skill shown was extraordinary, and Kaze stepped into the clearing and said, “Superb! I have never seen Dojoji danced better.”

  The dancer stiffened and turned in Kaze’s direction. “Excuse me,” Kaze said. “I do not wish to disturb your privacy, but I couldn’t stop myself from praising your skill at Noh.” Kaze made a deep, formal bow to the dancer.

  Without responding with words, the dancer gave Kaze an equally formal bow, but it was done with a grace that made Kaze feel thick and awkward.

  “Thank you for the pleasure of your dancing,” Kaze said. He turned around and made his way back to the path. Without looking back, Kaze started down the road again.

  Kaze had seen many strange sights in his lifetime, but the silent Noh in a hidden mountain clearing had a dreamlike quality to it. Behind the mask, Kaze could not tell what the man was like, but perhaps that was the best way to be these days: silent and wearing a mask.

  The world was changing, and not for the better as far as Kaze was concerned. After three hundred years of constant warfare, Japan had known a brief period of peace under Hideyoshi, the Taiko. But even Hideyoshi couldn’t stand a period of warriors dying of old age in bed, and he had attacked Korea with an eye toward eventually conquering China. After some initial successes, the entire Korean war had turned into a disaster, with many of Hideyoshi’s closest allies perishing in his foreign adventure. Hideyoshi himself remained in Japan, and he died of old age in his bed. Yet Hideyoshi’s death marked a dangerous time for his heir and his allies, for Tokugawa Ieyasu was sitting patiently in Japan’s richest region, the Kanto, waiting.

  Ieyasu waited as Hideyoshi’s allies drained themselves of young blood in the ill-fated Korean adventure, while Ieyasu himself adroitly avoided getting deeply involved. Ieyasu waited while Hideyoshi declined in health with only a very young son as heir. Ieyasu waited while the Council of Regents, of which he was a member, decayed into bickering and dissension instead of helping Hideyoshi’s young heir rule Japan. And finally, after a lifetime of waiting, Ieyasu took action and risked it all in a battle involving over two hundred thousand men. He defeated the forces loyal to Hideyoshi’s heir at the battle of Sekigahara, setting himself up to become the undisputed ruler of Japan.

  Now Hideyoshi’s heir and widow were holed up in Osaka Castle, like badgers retreating into a lair, and the rest of the country was embroiled in chaos as the Tokugawas inexorably extended their control over the country, casting numerous samurai, who had been loyal to the losers at Sekigahara, free to wander the countryside as ronin in search of new employment. Kaze had no idea how many samurai were now masterless, but it could easily be fifty thousand or more. These men must find employment with some lord or they would lose their hereditary status as samurai—literally, “those who serve.”

  Kaze found the large number of ronin wandering the country a convenience in some ways. It allowed him to blend into the crowd because the sight of a ronin anyplace in Japan was not at all unusual now. Normally Kaze’s instincts would be to go to Osaka to fight for Hideyoshi’s heir or to commit seppuku and follow his Lord into death. But he was not free to follow his instincts. In fact, he was not free at all.

  When Kaze had been walking for an hour, a pair of eyes watched him much as Kaze had watched the Noh dancer, hidden in the woods and unseen. As soon as the watcher was sure of what he was seeing, he pulled away from his observation post and scrambled down a slope. At the bottom of the slope two men were sitting on the ground, playing dice. They were dressed in a colorful assortment of clothes and had two spears and a sword stuck into the earth next to them.

  One slammed down a scruffy wooden dice cup and lifted it quickly. “Damn!” he said as he stared down at the dice.

  His companion gave an evil, yellow-toothed grin. “This isn’t a lucky day for you.” He scooped up a few coppers that were on the ground between them.

  The first man glowered. “If I find out you’ve been cheating, I’ll slice your guts open.”

  “They’re your dice and you’ve been throwing them. Look,” he said, pointing up the slope, “maybe the pup is coming to tell us that your luck is changing. Maybe a nice rich merchant, or maybe a succulent virgin!”

  “Someone is coming!” the young lookout reported to the two bandits as he slid to a stop at the bottom of the slope.

  “Of course, baka! But who’s coming?”

  The young man, Hachiro, scratched his head. “I think a merchant. Or maybe a samurai. I’m not sure.”

  “Fool!”

  “If it’s a samurai, let’s let him pass,” the man with the yellow teeth said.

  “No. Samurai or not, I’m going to recover my loses. Coming?”

  “All right. But let’s give the youngster a chance to kill his first man.” He looked at the young lookout, who now had an expression of confusion and fear on his face. “Take one of the spears. We’ll keep him occupied. All you have to do is sneak up behind him and stick him in the back. Shove hard. Sometimes you hit a bone. Got that?”

  “Are you sure … ?” the young man said.

  The bandit with the yellow teeth hit the youngster on the side of the head, knocking him to his knees. “Do you want to be a bandit or not?”

  Looking up with tears in his eyes, the young man nodded yes.

  “Good! If this is the life you’ve chosen, you might as well do it right! Understand?”

  Once again the youth nodded.

  The man yanked one of the spears out of the ground, and his companion took the sword. They started scrambling up the slope to the road, setting up an ambush. The youth, rubbing the side of his head, picked up the second spear and made his way to a position where he could circle around and come up behind the man on the road.

  As Kaze walked uphill on a long straight part of the road, he realized he could be easily seen from the rise ahead. Around him, the air was still and heavy, and the songbirds were not singing. That, by itself, was not proof that there were others ahead of him, but it served to heighten his senses. Although he didn’t change his stride or slow down, out of habit he listened intently and scanned th
e side of the road ahead. His alertness was rewarded with the sound of small rocks rolling down the hillside that formed the down-slope portion of the dirt road.

  He walked past the location of the sound. Suddenly, ahead of him, two men stepped out of the forest holding weapons. One had a spear and the other held a sword. So he was surrounded, although he wasn’t supposed to know it yet.

  “Oi! Hey, you!” one of the men ahead yelled gruffly.

  Kaze stopped, watching the two men closely, but not making any aggressive moves. When Kaze said nothing, the man seemed to grow agitated. “Do you hear me?” the man demanded.

  “Yes, I hear you,” Kaze replied. “It’s hard not to hear such a sweet voice as yours. And so polite, too.”

  The man frowned. He looked at his companion for guidance. His friend said, “Are you being smart with us?” He showed large yellow teeth when he talked.

  “I wouldn’t care to be smart with men such as you. In fact, being smart with you would be dumb.”

  “What’s that mean?” the one with yellow teeth asked.

  “As I’ve said,” Kaze replied.

  The two men looked at each other again, puzzled. Then the first to speak said, “Do you know who we are?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “We’re part of Boss Kuemon’s gang. We control the roads around here, and you’ll have to pay us a toll to walk on them.”

  “What toll?”

  “All your money, of course!”

  Behind him, Kaze could hear a shower of pebbles as someone scrambled up the hillside and onto the road.

  “Is that all?”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Aren’t you going to try to take my life, too? The one standing behind me is shaking so much that I can hear his bones rattle. Surely he must be thinking about something like killing me to make him shake so.” Kaze heard a gasp behind him. Then he heard the person behind him step back. Good.