“I have not forgotten either. There has been nothing in my marriage to replace the memory of that night. I have known nothing but horror and sorrow and ugliness since we parted.”

Jebu felt as if a hand were crushing his heart. “How sorry I am to hear that. It would be like death to know that you had forgotten me, but I would accept it if it meant you had found happiness. We should have run away together instead of letting you go to that man. Tell me about the prince.”

“He is cold and ugly and cruel. Let us not speak of him. Why are you travelling under a false name? Are you really working for the Muratomo?”

“Yes. The cause of the White Dragon is collapsing, but the Order has commanded me to stay with it.”

“It is unfortunate that you said you were going to Sogamori,” Taniko said. “He is well known in this house. For you to claim a connection with him raises suspicion. Horigawa is with Sogamori now.”

At that moment Jebu heard bare feet on the wooden floor behind him. He whirled.

“Shiké!” It was Moko, scuttling towards them and bowing from across the room.

“You do not know him, Moko!” Taniko snapped from behind her screen. “He is dead if they find out who he really is.”

Moko stopped where he was, his face pale. He threw himself down on his knees.

“Forgive me, mistress. Forgive me, shiké. Moko is so stupid—” Jebu smiled and patted him on the back.

“You can speak to him, but try to seem as if you are speaking to me,” said Taniko. “Supposedly I am giving you instructions about the new guard tower.”

Moko said, “I am so happy to see you, shiké. I have missed you so much. But if you want to do the sensible thing you will run out of this room, through the garden and over the wall and across the rice paddies and not stop until you reach the woods. These guards will not rest until they kill you.”

“They have no reason to kill me.”

“These are men who need no reason to kill.”

“I will not leave here—not yet.”

“I understand, shiké.” Moko nodded towards Taniko, behind her screen. “She is the reason I stay in this hellhole with Horigawa and his bandits.”

“We can safely talk no longer,” said Taniko. “Go now, Moko.” Moko bowed first to Taniko, then to Jebu. “My lady. Shiké.” He hurried away.

Taniko said, “You will have to leave me now. But I hope you can remember the way to my bedchamber. You will come here tonight.” The words were more a demand than a request. Through a small opening at the top of the screen Jebu could see brown eyes looking into his.

“You must be silent as only a Zinja can be. I am watched constantly.”

Smiling, Jebu stood and bowed. “As my lady commands.” He turned and left the room, once again imprinting on his mind a picture of the corridors through which he passed.

Outside the women’s quarters, Jebu found himself in the garden. He wished for brush and ink so that he might bring a poem to her tonight. The thought of the night to come filled him with a powerful yearning. Men whose constant companion was death needed women in a way most men couldn’t understand, he thought. He wondered what Prince Horigawa had been doing to her. The thought that Horigawa might have hurt her filled him with rage. He hoped he could be tender enough with Taniko to wash away all the anguish she might have suffered.

The winter sky was empty and grey. The garden seemed bare and sad. How could a man such as Horigawa have a garden that would look anything but sad? Jebu stood awhile, letting pebbles drop through his fingers into the brook, then turned to leave.

The unseen sun was setting and the early winter evening was coming on, the empty grey sky turning to a cold black. Jebu walked through the main yard of the estate just as the gate was being shut for the night. He went into the building that housed the manor’s guards.

The men lounging in the guard room eyed him closely. He saw his bow and arrows and his two swords—his own Zinja sword and the sword he had taken from the samurai who tried to kill him—hanging on the wall where all the other weapons had been gathered. He asked one of the men where he could get something to eat, and provisions for his departure in the morning.

“Just go to the kitchen and tell them you’re a guest of the manor. There are so many people here, they’re always cooking. If you have any trouble, just tell them you’re a friend of Lady Taniko.”

“Thank you.” Jebu smiled at the man and left. In the kitchen a cook served him a meal of bean paste, rice, soup, cucumbers and slices of fish. The man seemed used to cooking for military men and transients, Jebu noted. With practised swiftness the cook packed a box with enough provisions for a two-day journey.

“That’s more than enough to get you to Heian Kyo, even if you travel slowly,” he said.

Back in the barracks, Jebu settled down in a corner to meditate. He wanted very much to take his weapons from the wall, but knowing the guards probably had orders to stop him, he resisted the urge. He looked around for Goshin, but did not see him.

“Hey, monk!” It was the man who had directed him to the kitchen. “Want to share some of our warmth with us?” He pointed to a jar of sake being heated over a brazier.

“Monks don’t drink sake, fool,” one of the other men said.

“Thank you,” said Jebu. “I’m not used to sake. I’m afraid it would go to my head.”

The men talking around the brazier smiled and nodded to Jebu and went back to talking among themselves. Jebu sat cross-legged against the wall and closed his eyes. With Goshin gone, the atmosphere seemed much more friendly. One could even walk into this room and be unable to tell whether the samurai here fought for the Takashi or the Muratomo.

“All right,” said Goshin. “There he is, my lady. Do you recognize him?”

Jebu turned from the guard tower to the veranda of the manor house. Through the blinds he could just make out a shadowy figure.

Then he heard a light voice, like the chiming of temple bells. “I have seen this monk visit my father. Who could forget that hideous red hair?”

Jebu felt himself go cold and then hot. He wanted to laugh and call out to Taniko, run up the steps, push his way into the manor house and put his arms around her. He forced himself to look coldly in the direction of her voice as if he had never seen her before. He reminded himself that he was a monk named Yoshizo.

She went on, “Of course, he could know my father and still be working for the Muratomo. It is my father’s custom to give his messengers a password to identify themselves to any members of the Shima family they might meet. Did Lord Bokuden give you such a word, monk?”

Jebu played along. “He did, my lady, but it is for your ears alone. I must take the liberty of whispering it to you.”

“Come up, close to these blinds, then,” came the icy voice.

“Careful, my lady,” said the frog-faced Goshin. “He might just be trying to get close enough to you to seize you as a hostage.”

“Goshin, I command you now, if he takes me hostage you are to kill both of us immediately.” She paused significantly. “I’m quite sure Prince Horigawa would want it that way.”

Jebu slowly and carefully laid his bow and arrows and his two swords on the raked earth of the courtyard.

“It would be rude of me to approach you armed, my lady,” he said. Then he looked coldly at the guards. “But let no one touch my weapons.”

“A Zinja is armed even when empty-handed,” a guard muttered.

Jebu strode forward, climbed the steps and stood beside the screen that hid Taniko. A faint scent of lilac came to him, and his head reeled. He feared the pounding of his heart must be visible to all. Goshin stood close to him, and Jebu gave him the same hard stare he had given the guards.

“This man is not authorized to hear the word,” he said.

“Goshin?” said Taniko.

Grunting angrily, Goshin took a few steps away from Jebu. He drew his sword and stood poised to spring.

Leaning towards the screen until his lips were almost touching it, and looking into the bright eyes he glimpsed in the shadows beyond the screen, Jebu whispered, “The waterfowl is still snared in the lilac branch.” He heard a faint sigh from within.

“Goshin,” Taniko called, “this monk has given the correct password. He is a genuine messenger from my father. Since he is travelling to Minister Sogamori, he will see my husband. I have a message for my husband which I will give this monk.”

Goshin glowered. “My lady, I still don’t trust him. There are many ways he could have learned this password. And there is the business of the samurai equipment he was carrying.”

Jebu turned to Goshin. “You are quite correct. Now that I have been identified as, I hope, a friend of this house, I can admit that I did steal the horse. Not far from here a party of Muratomo samurai was riding through the forest. I was with a Takashi band waiting in ambush. One of the enemy tried to escape on his horse. I jumped from a tree, and took his horse away from him. He seemed so unhappy about losing his horse that I killed him to spare him further grief.”

Taniko greeted this story with her tinkling laughter, and soon all the servants and guards near by joined in. Only Goshin stood unsmiling, his bulging eyes filled with anger.

“Did you not already have a horse?” he demanded.

Jebu laughed. “Clearly you do not know Lord Shima no Bokuden, or you would not have asked that question. Lord Bokuden is not the most generous of employers. He felt my legs were strong enough to take me to Heian Kyo.”

Behind the screen Taniko laughed again.

Goshin broke in. “You do not behave as Prince Horigawa would want you to, my lady. You are too familiar with this monk.”

“Be silent, Goshin!” Taniko snapped. “My husband did not appoint you to teach me manners. I am mistress of this house, and in my husband’s absence I rule here. You are dismissed. Monk, wait there. A maid will take you to my chamber when I am ready to receive you.”

“May I collect my weapons, my lady?” Jebu asked.

Goshin said, “I will keep them for you, monk. You don’t need weapons here, since you are such a great friend of this house. Ask for them when you are ready to leave.”

Reluctant to entrust his bow and arrows and his swords to this man, Jebu saw that he had no choice. He bowed. “Thank you.”

Shortly afterwards, a maid led Jebu to the women’s quarters and down a series of twisting corridors. As he had long ago been taught to do on entering a strange house, Jebu constructed and committed to memory a mental map of everything he could see.

At last he entered a large, dim room with a sleeping platform in the centre. On the platform was a screen of state whose curtains were painted to depict snow-covered mountains. Overcome with excitement, Jebu strode straight for the screen, meaning to step around it and see Taniko.

“Stop,” she called from behind the curtain in a warning tone. Of course, Jebu thought, they must be under surveillance. He had allowed himself to be carried away by emotion, just the thing a Zinja was not supposed to do.

In a low voice Taniko went on, “We can be watched, but if we speak softly enough we cannot be heard. Sit down and talk to me. I am so happy to see you, my heart is like a butterfly just burst from its cocoon.”

“When we parted I told myself I must never expect to meet you again,” said Jebu. “Yet I knew I would think of you for the rest of my life. Not a day has gone by that I have not remembered that night on Mount Higashi overlooking the lights of Heian Kyo.”

“I have not forgotten either. There has been nothing in my marriage to replace the memory of that night. I have known nothing but horror and sorrow and ugliness since we parted.”

Jebu felt as if a hand were crushing his heart. “How sorry I am to hear that. It would be like death to know that you had forgotten me, but I would accept it if it meant you had found happiness. We should have run away together instead of letting you go to that man. Tell me about the prince.”

Now it hardly mattered where he was. The Takashi controlled everywhere. Any place he went for food and a night’s shelter would be the home of Takashi adherents or people who now claimed to be. He would have to say he was a Takashi man as well. A good thing about being a Zinja was that you could present yourself as serving one side or the other as you chose, or else you could pretend to be a simple monk minding his own business. Unless, of course, someone recognized you, as the now-dead Takashi samurai had.

But he had not eaten in over seven days. His Zinja training had inured him to going without food and even water for long stretches of time, but he could feel himself growing weaker. At this rate, soon he would no longer be able to draw his bow. He would have to stop somewhere. If we did not have to eat, he thought, all of us would be safe and free. It is when the bird lands on the ground to peck at seeds that the cat pounces.

Riding south towards the hills he caught sight of a manor house overlooking the rice paddies. Whoever owns that house is undoubtedly lord of this land, he thought. An important landowner would have to take one side or another. But this close to Heian Kyo and undamaged, it must be a Red Dragon house. The huts of peasants were clustered around the base of the hill on which the manor stood, and more huts climbed the hill behind it, where a high waterfall turned a mill wheel three times the height of a man.

He decided against asking the peasants for their hospitality. It would endanger them, and they had little enough to share. No, the thing to do was ride boldly in through the gate, present himself as a Takashi messenger on an important mission, and demand shelter, food and provisions. While he was at it, he might get some news of the Muratomo and find out where he could rejoin them.

He rode through the rice fields and up to the gate of the mansion. A group of guards stood by it.

“I am Yoshizo, a monk of the Order of Zinja,” said Jebu, using the name of a brother he knew was working for the Takashi. “I am on my way to Heian Kyo with a message for His Excellency, the Minister of the Left from—” Jebu said the first name that came to him “—his kinsman, Lord Shima no Bokuden of Kamakura. I require a night’s lodging and food.”

The guards didn’t move. “That’s a samurai sword and a samurai saddle,” one said, gesturing with the naginata. “I didn’t think Zinja monks used such fancy equipment.”

“Quiet,” said another guard. “He can kill you so quickly you’d be dead a minute ago. We’ll find out soon enough if he’s from Lord Bokuden. Come on in, monk.”

The first guard brightened up. “Yes! Come in, monk.” He grinned, stepped aside and waved the long-handled naginata towards the open gateway.

The manor house was old, Jebu saw, perhaps a hundred years old, built at a time when there was no need for fortifications. Both the stone wall around it, twice the height of a man, and the gate were new. A gang of workmen was putting up a wooden guard tower at one corner of the wall.

Jebu dismounted. One of the guards said, “I’ll take your horse down to the stables, monk.”

“Very good,” said Jebu. There would be no easy escape now. He was angry with himself for the vanity of his sword-collecting project and for not getting rid of the saddle, or disguising it. If the samurai he killed were a local personage, the sword, the saddle and the horse might be recognized. But it was now too late to do anything but keep walking onwards.

The other guard took him into the courtyard and slammed and barred the gate. “Chief of guards!” he called. An armoured man wearing a sword immediately stepped from a building to the right of the manor house, trailed by a group of men carrying naginatas. This household had its own little army, Jebu thought.

“Chief Goshin,” the guard said, “this monk claims to be from Lord Bokuden on a mission to the Minister of the Left in Heian Kyo. But he has a samurai’s horse and equipment. I thought to myself, we’ve got a way of testing whether he’s really from Lord Bokuden.”

“Of course,” said Goshin. He was a squat man with a frog-like face, huge eyes, flat nose, and wide mouth. “I’ll go see her.” He turned to his men. “Keep this monk at the ends of your naginatas. If he makes a move, skewer him at once. Don’t hesitate, or you’ll be dead. I’ve run up against these Zinja before.” He spat out “Zinja” as if it were a foul word. Goshin turned and strode into the manor house.

Jebu stood in the centre of a ring of levelled naginatas. He looked at the guards calmly and kept his hands away from his swords and his bow. What kind of test did they have in mind, he wondered.

The sound of hammering distracted him. He looked over at the men building the guard tower. One of the carpenters, a short man who gestured and shouted orders to the others, looked familiar, but he was too far away for Jebu to see his face.

“All right,” said Goshin. “There he is, my lady. Do you recognize him?”

Jebu turned from the guard tower to the veranda of the manor house. Through the blinds he could just make out a shadowy figure.

Then he heard a light voice, like the chiming of temple bells. “I have seen this monk visit my father. Who could forget that hideous red hair?”

Jebu felt himself go cold and then hot. He wanted to laugh and call out to Taniko, run up the steps, push his way into the manor house and put his arms around her. He forced himself to look coldly in the direction of her voice as if he had never seen her before. He reminded himself that he was a monk named Yoshizo.

Oh, merciful Buddha, no, thought Taniko. He takes from me the only thing that makes life bearable. To leave the capital, to go into exile, no. If I can’t be here at the centre of things he might as well kill me. I’ll die there at Daidoji, of grief and boredom.

She knew it was useless to plead with him. Any sign that she was suffering would please him and confirm him in his decision. Two women had virtually thrown their lives away to save Akimi’s son, Yukio. She could only hope he would grow up to be worth it.

Chapter Fifteen

The Muratomo were finished, thought Jebu. Almost all the leaders of the clan were dead. Hideyori was as much Lord Bokuden’s prisoner as his ward. Jebu himself could do no more for Domei’s family. He worked his way southward towards the capital, still serving the Muratomo as the Order commanded. But the wings of the White Dragon had been clipped. Any lives lost now were being lost for nothing.

He was trudging over terraces of harvested rice. Behind him was another lost battle, if it deserved to be called a battle. The Takashi had ambushed a dozen hungry Muratomo samurai with whom Jebu had been riding. Jebu had warned them it might happen, but the Muratomo warriors had insisted that no true samurai would attack another samurai without proper warning and challenge. Whoever was leading the Takashi apparently didn’t care about such niceties.

Outnumbered many times over, the Muratomo samurai had thrown away their lives. What good had their sacrifice done the dead Domei?

Jebu reminded himself to think as a Zinja. To a Zinja there was no good or evil, failure or success, life or death. The Zinja simply threw his energy into the task at hand and did not concern himself about the outcome. From that point of view, his Muratomo comrades, alive a few hours ago, now dead, had lost nothing. At the very least, they no longer suffered the pangs of hunger.

A rider emerged from the woods behind Jebu, galloping directly across the rice stubble. There was no point in trying to outrun him, and no place to hide. Jebu quickly slipped off his bow and arrows and laid them at his feet. He nocked one arrow and laid it across the bow. He drew his sword and waited.

The samurai approached to within ten feet of Jebu and stopped. He looked sleek, strong and prosperous, like a well-cared-for war-horse. Quite different from the ragged, half-starved Muratomo samurai Jebu had been riding with. The laces holding together the many small plates of his armour were dyed a deep magenta.

“I saw you riding with that pack of Muratomo dogs we jumped, and I saw you sneak away when the battle went against you. I will not tell you my name and lineage because you do not deserve the courtesy. You are merely to be exterminated, like vermin.” He unslung his huge bow and positioned an arrow.

Jebu stood silently. The instant he saw the samurai’s fingers twitch to release the bowstring he threw himself to the ground. The ordinary warrior always gives a warning—a movement of the hand or fingers, a tensing of the arm muscles—when he is about to move. He consciously commands his movements, unlike the Zinja, who acts as the Self directs.

As the thirteen-hand-span samurai arrow whistled overhead, Jebu had his own ready. He stood up and fired. The point of his willow-leaf arrow struck the samurai in the left eye and buried itself deep in his head. Jebu felt no pleasure as he watched the samurai slide out of his saddle. It was a bit too much like killing a duck sitting in the water.

Jebu seized the horse’s reins. Holding the horse with one hand and speaking gently to it, he set his foot on the dead man’s forehead and pulled the arrow from the crushed eye. He wiped the arrow and returned it to its quiver. He took the man’s sword and scabbard and strapped them to the saddle. Then he asked forgiveness of the samurai he had killed and looked around, trying to decide which way to ride.

From horseback he could see further. Behind him was the forest where they had been ambushed. All around him were rice fields. Before him were the hills and mountains, and beyond the mountains was Heian Kyo. It was the first time he had been this close to the capital since last winter when he had ridden out of it with the defeated Muratomo army.

Now it hardly mattered where he was. The Takashi controlled everywhere. Any place he went for food and a night’s shelter would be the home of Takashi adherents or people who now claimed to be. He would have to say he was a Takashi man as well. A good thing about being a Zinja was that you could present yourself as serving one side or the other as you chose, or else you could pretend to be a simple monk minding his own business. Unless, of course, someone recognized you, as the now-dead Takashi samurai had.

Taniko offered Sogamori an orange slice skewered on a sliver of wood. The heavyset Takashi chieftain smiled broadly at her. Taniko could see he must have been a very handsome man twenty years ago.

Smacking his lips after the orange slice, Sogamori said, “What have those executions to do with this question?”

“The Takashi are already called butchers,” Kiyosi said. “It is your advice that has got us that name, Prince Horigawa.” The young man’s dark eyes blazed at the prince. “Do you want us to be known as child murderers, too?”

“Nits make lice,” Horigawa repeated. “Let Hideyori and Yukio live, and they will trouble the Takashi for years to come. Kill them now, and they will be forgotten tomorrow. To kill a grown man sometimes takes a war. To snuff out the life of a child is quite easy.” He snapped his fingers.

Her heart pounding, Taniko chose that moment, when Kiyosi and Horigawa were glaring at each other, to reach out, squeeze Sogamori’s hand and place in it a slip of green-tinted paper, folded, with twisted ends. On it Akimi had written:

All must surrender
To the Red Dragon’s power
And none disobey.
In the forest he may work
His will on her whom he meets.

The meaning should be plain enough, Taniko thought.

When he noticed the paper in his hand, Sogamori turned to look at her, startled. Then his round face beamed knowingly.

Taniko hid behind her fan, letting him see the painting on it. It was unmistakably a representation of the shrine of the Beautiful Island Princess on Itsukushima, built and maintained by the Takashi family. Sogamori and Kiyosi had been on pilgrimage to that shrine when Domei raised his insurrection. Taniko stood, bowed to the three men and withdrew into the shadows. She hoped Horigawa was too intent on his argument to notice her departure.

When she was among the trees on the edge of the garden a hand caught her arm. It was Akimi. Taniko looked back over her shoulder. Sogamori was reading the poem, holding it so Horigawa and Kiyosi could not see it. He slipped it into his sleeve and stood up. Squinting into the shadows, he tried to see Taniko.

Taniko handed her fan to Akimi and withdrew behind a tall stand of bamboo. Sogamori said something to Horigawa and Kiyosi that made them both laugh. He stretched and strolled towards the trees with an elaborate show of casualness.

Holding the fan before her face, Akimi stepped into Sogamori’s path. As he approached her, she drew him deeper into the darkness.

“The painting on your fan shows exquisite taste, dear lady,” he said, reaching out for her.

“Thank you, my lord,” said Akimi with a light laugh.

“You do not sound like—I must see you,” said Sogamori, taking Akimi’s wrist and pulling the fan away from her face. He gasped when he recognized her.

“Is this some trick?”

“You may call it so if you wish, my lord. It was my poem that my friend Lady Taniko gave you. It was I who wished to meet you here.”

Still holding Akimi’s wrist, Sogamori looked down at her. “I was struck by your radiant beauty the first time I saw you at Court. I have never dared hope. You were always his. How can you come to me now, when it was I who destroyed him?”

“A woman can admire more than one man, my lord. The enmities of men do not mean so much to women. Because of him, I could never approach you. Now he is gone, and nothing stands between us, if you still deign to look upon me.”

“You will be mine, then?” Sogamori was fairly panting.

Taniko felt tears burn her eyes as she thought of what her friend was sacrificing.

“My lord, I fear his angry ghost. But there is a way that we can set his spirit at rest. Then I can give myself to you fully.”

“What is that?”

“That you promise to spare his children.”

A few days later Horigawa came to the Shima mansion in a rage. Alone with Taniko, he seized her arm and twisted it violently until she pulled away from him.

“I have done nothing to deserve this treatment, Your Highness.”

“Lord Sogamori has announced that he will spare the lives of the two Muratomo brats. An example of samurai benevolence, he calls it. The tenderness of a warrior. As if the samurai could know anything of ethics. It is like dressing a monkey in a courtier’s robes. It is his lust for Lady Akimi that drives him to this foolishness. She beds with him now. This is your doing. Akimi came to visit you before my banquet. She met Sogamori at the banquet, even though she was not invited. I detect your hand in all this, my clever young lady of Kamakura.” He advanced on her, his eyes narrowed to slits, his nostrils flaring, his face pale.

Taniko bowed her head. “As Your Highness says, I am just a child from the provinces. How could I possibly have any influence in these high matters?”

Horigawa turned from her, pacing the room. “That young dog who came to kill me at Daidoji—he is to live. In the care of your father. Your father! After Domei was defeated he disappeared, and when he reappears it is in Kamakura, at your father’s house.”

“Do you think I sent him to my father, Your Highness? There is no way I could have done that. Doubtless, the young Muratomo was passing through Kamakura, and my father, being a loyal supporter of the Takashi, stopped him and held him.”

“Oh, doubtless, doubtless. How do I know what passed between the two of you while I lay buried alive? When I think of the hours I spent under all that weight of dirt-well, you shall see what it is like to be buried alive.” He stared at her with such hatred that Taniko, despite her contempt for him, was terrified.

“What do you mean?”

“You will not remain in Heian Kyo to thwart me again. As your husband I command you to move to my house at Daidoji. You will live there. I am not free to deal with you as I truly wish, because I need the support of your family. But I will keep you from tampering with my affairs. Prepare yourself. I expect you to be ready to move by tomorrow morning.”

Oh, merciful Buddha, no, thought Taniko. He takes from me the only thing that makes life bearable. To leave the capital, to go into exile, no. If I can’t be here at the centre of things he might as well kill me. I’ll die there at Daidoji, of grief and boredom.

She knew it was useless to plead with him. Any sign that she was suffering would please him and confirm him in his decision. Two women had virtually thrown their lives away to save Akimi’s son, Yukio. She could only hope he would grow up to be worth it.