Shike, Robert J. Shea [ebook reader that looks like a book TXT] 📗

the layers of her clothing. In the flickering candlelight she caught a glimpse of his aroused body. It sickened her. She squeezed her eyes shut.

She reminded herself that she should not resist him. Custom demanded that she let the prince have his way. Keeping her eyes shut, she tried to relax. She remembered how, during their night together, Jebu had told her many things about the Zinja and the arts they practised. He said they could take their minds out of their bodies and go on long mental journeys, leaving their physical selves behind. She made herself think of the great white mountain, Fuji-san, that she had passed with Jebu at the beginning of their journey from Kamakura. This ugly little prince had doubtless never seen Mount Fuji.

He was hurting her. He had no consideration for her feelings, no tenderness for her virginity. From his grunting and his hard, sharp movements she sensed that he was aware only of his own need for relief.

There was a searing pain. She gritted her teeth, but she could not stop herself from screaming aloud. It felt as though she had been stabbed in the bowels with a samurai dagger.

Horigawa opened his eyes and grinned at her, showing his blackened teeth again. “Your scream gives me pleasure,” he whispered. He threw back his head, the cords in his scrawny neck stood out and his body convulsed momentarily. Then panting heavily, he stopped moving. He pressed his brow, covered with cold sweat, against her cheek, then pulled away from her. She felt wet and soiled. She pulled her skirts down to cover herself. Would she have to spend the rest of the night with this man?

And there was worse. She was expected to spend the rest of her life with him. There would be countless nights like this one. Despair overwhelmed her, and she wanted to cry, but with the little man still lying beside her, duty to her family forbade any show of her real feelings.

“That was very pleasant, my dear,” Horigawa said with a small, false smile. “It has been some time since I have lain with a woman. I have simply been too busy. My work at the Court, in these difficult times, has allowed me no leisure. But it is not healthy for a man to abstain for too long. It puts the forces of yin and yang out of balance in the male body. You have made it possible for me to return to my work with renewed vigour.”

Taniko felt a flicker of curiosity. “I am pleased to have been of help to you, Your Highness. Your work must, indeed, be very demanding.” She added what good manners required her to say. “I cannot imagine that such a vigorous man would wish to abstain for very long.”

“Quite right,” said Horigawa smugly. He began to draw his dark robes together. “And for that reason I came to you tonight, even though, as you say, my work is very demanding. Although it pains me not to spend the night with you, I must leave you now.”

“Will the streets be safe for you tonight, Your Highness? I saw the fighting last night and the burning of houses, and I was frightened.” Actually, she had not been that frightened, but she hoped Horigawa would shed some light on what was happening in the capital.

“I appreciate your concern, my dear, but I am quite safe. My friend Sogamori, the Minister of the Left, has provided me with a samurai guard, both for my house and for my person when I go abroad. These disturbances are the work of rebellious elements who refuse to yield to the will of the Emperor. But they will soon be crushed, and you will have no further need for fear.”

Taniko knew how meaningless was Horigawa’s accusation that his opponents were rebels against the Emperor. All sides in any major political dispute claimed to be doing the will of the Emperor and charged their enemies with treason. Actually the Emperor had no power of his own, and his will was the will of whichever faction controlled him at the moment.

“These rebels, Your Highness, are they the Muratomo?” Taniko asked. “You must forgive my country ignorance, but I do not know.”

“Women are not expected to know anything, my dear,” said Horigawa.

Taniko resisted an urge to throw her candle at him. Instead she said, “But I find you so fascinating, Your Highness, that I cannot help but be interested in the world in which you move.” The fact was that it was only his connection with high places and great political matters that made the thought of marriage to him at all bearable.

“Very nicely put,” said Horigawa, rising to his feet. “On future visits I shall explain as much of matters of state as your female intelligence seems capable of grasping. Meanwhile, be assured that we are doing everything necessary to maintain the safety of the realm. More blood will have to be shed. We must deal mercilessly with rebels. We must be as fierce as were our ancestors of old Yamato. Many, many heads will fall.”

A chill went through Taniko. She sensed that this pompous creature’s feeble frame harboured a thirst for blood almost unnatural in its intensity. As a daughter of samurai she had known many professional fighting men, and none of them had spoken as lovingly of mass slaughter as did this scholarly government official.

She placed her hands on the floor and bowed. “It is an honour to be courted by a man of such greatness.”

Tying his tall black hat under his chin, Horigawa turned and let Taniko raise the blinds for him so he could step out on the veranda and thence into the Shima garden, thus preserving the ritual secrecy of his visit.

When he was gone, Taniko turned to find her aunt was already back in the room with towels and a pot of hot water. Taniko sank to her knees and put her face in her hands. Her body shook with racking sobs. Aunt Chogao knelt beside her and put her arms around her.

“Was it that bad for you, my dear?”

“Aunt, I can’t go through with it. I can’t.”

Chogao patted her shoulder. “You have to. Your father commands it. Your family needs this marriage.” She stroked Taniko’s hair. “I know it’s hard. What you have to do is harder than anything I’ve had to do. I was married to a man with whom it is very easy for me to live. But you, because you must do the more difficult thing, will be the nobler person.”

“I can’t. I don’t want to.”

Chogao moved so that she was facing Taniko, her normally cheerful features suffused by burning seriousness. “You are samurai. What you feel does not matter. If you were a man, you would go to war and die. It would not matter that you were terrified of death, that you wanted to live. It would be your duty to your family. Do not women have as much courage as men? We give our lives, too, by marrying as we are required and bearing the children that are needed. Didn’t your mother teach you these things?”

“Yes,” said Taniko in a small voice.

“Then never forget them. If you do not live your life as a samurai, it is not worth living. Now lie back, my dear, and let me wash you. That miserable man. He should have spent the whole night with you and left at dawn. What sort of lover does he think he is? Oh, well, I suppose, considering his age and all the work he does, that’s the most you can expect. He certainly doesn’t have much fire left over for women, does he?”

Closing her eyes, grateful that Horigawa had left her as quickly as he did, Taniko said, “I want nothing more from him.”

“Good, my dear. Be content with your lot. That, too, is the way of a true samurai.”

From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:

My future husband’s next-morning letter was cliched and perfunctory, and his love poem was copied straight out of the Kokinshu. The prince must think we have no books in Kamakura. Even my aunt, who keeps trying to persuade me to accept this marriage, made a sour face when she read his effort. But the letter and the poem mean he intend to continue courting me, and that is what the family wants.

In the bleakness of these days my greatest pleasure is my conversations with Moko. I have convinced my aunt and uncle that Moko is an expert carpenter whom I brought with me from Kamakura at my father’s suggestion. My father will never know the difference. Fortunately, there are plenty of repairs needed around this house, and every day, pretending to give Moko instructions, I learn the news he has picked up in the street.

Samurai crowd the streets of Heian Kyo, swaggering about with their long swords. They accost people and demand to know if one is a supporter of the Takashi or the Muratomo. Such encounters lead to blows and sometimes to bloodshed, though both the Takashi clan chieftain, Sogamori, and the Muratomo clan chieftain, Domei, claim to deplore all disorder. There has not been any rioting as bad as that of the night I arrived here.

It was as though the riot in my soul that night was reflected in the streets of the city.

There was a full moon, too. That may have had something to do with it.

Moko reports that Domei has been heard to repeat the old Confucian saying, “A warrior may not remain under the same heaven with the slayer of his father.” Since Prince Horigawa appears to be chief among those responsible for the execution of Domei’s father, it is possible that I may find myself a widow soon after I am married.

The grounds of the Imperial palace are kept bare, but in winter certain herbs flourish in concealment under the snow.

-Eighth Month, twenty-first day

YEAR OF THE DRAGON

Ten days after Taniko’s first night with the prince, her aunt warned her to be ready for his second-night visit.

It was all she could do to restrain herself from laughing as the spidery little man carried out the ritual pretence of slipping into her bedchamber. The blinds knocked his tall hat off his head, leaving it dangling from his neck.

But there was nothing laughable in the way he fell upon her, first blowing out the candle to thwart spying members of the Shima family. This night his lust was tainted with cruelty. Taniko discovered that there is a kind of man who is aroused by inflicting pain on others. None of the small torments to which Horigawa subjected her left any mark, but she was frightened and revolted. He must know, she thought, that my family will insist on my marrying him. Otherwise he wouldn’t treat me this way.

After he had worn himself out on her body, Horigawa ordered her to relight the candle so he could dress himself. Embarrassed by the ugliness to which she had just submitted, Taniko kept her face turned away as the room filled with yellow light and flickering shadow.

Horigawa laughed and said, ” ‘She lifts the lute, and I can see but half her face.’ ” He spoke in Chinese.

Recognizing the poem, Taniko replied in the same language. ” ‘The music stops, but the player will not speak her name.’ ” The line seemed a subtle way to express the shame she felt at what she had undergone. Like the woman in Po Chu-i’s poem, she felt she had known better days and had now sunk to a low status.

But Horigawa reacted, not to her line of verse, but to the language in which it was uttered. “Do