Shike, Robert J. Shea [ebook reader that looks like a book TXT] 📗
- Author: Robert J. Shea
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“My darling, what have they done to you? How you must have suffered.”
“I never felt most of these wounds,” he whispered. “You have caused me far more pain than any of these cuts and gashes.” “Don’t say that, Jebu.”
“You could not have hurt me if I had not loved you.”
“I will give you pleasure that will more than balance the pain.” “You can give me more than pleasure. You can give me happiness.” “You have known so much pain,” she murmured. “Your body is so scarred, so toughened. Can you still feel my touch?”
“I may look to you like an old oak at the end of winter,” he whis- . pered, laughing softly. “But, miraculous as it may seen, life surges within.”
She pulled him down to the bed beside her. Their movements together were like those of swimmers, graceful and rhythmic. Together they were gliding through a sea of pleasure, a warm sea without a shoreline, rising and falling with the waves. She forgot where she was, she forgot time and age, she forgot that she was the AmaShogun and he was a Zinja warrior monk. She was a woman enjoying the body of a man. Nothing more. But nothing less.
When at last they lay side by side, exhausted in a blissful semi-trance, she patted her old wooden pillow. “I’ll have a good story to tell my pillow book tomorrow.”
“You keep a diary? You never told me tilat.”
“It’s my deepest secret. I’ve never told anyone before this. Perhaps I’ll read to you from it, if you stay with me for always.” The thought brought reality painfully back. “Jebusan. What are we going to do? How are we going to live?”
Jebu pursed his lips. “There was a time when we might just have run off together, not concerning ourselves about what is correct. But we can’t do that now. Your first duty is to the Sunrise Land. To have it openly known what we are to each other would damage your prestige. We must go on meeting in secret.”
“When I sent Moko to bring you to Kamakura, I wanted this. I never thought beyond the moment when we might be united in body and spirit after so long a time apart. I never thought about what it would mean to my position. I never thought about how we could live as lovers.” She took both his hands and stared deep into his eyes. “Jebu, I swear to you-if you wish it, I will give up all this right now. I will go with you wherever you want to go. I will never, never let anything come between us. Let us leave this castle tonight, if you want. I will be your wife or your consort. I will live with you in a temple or a farm or a mountain hermitage. You need only tell me.”
He propped himself up on his elbow and his grey eyes stared into hers for a long time. “I wish-” he said. Then, “No. That is not the way for us.”
“Why not, Jebu? The Sunrise Land can fight this war without us.
Surely we deserve happiness in the years remaining to us.” “That is not the way to insight. That is the way to lose it.” “I don’t understand.”
“You said you would go anywhere with me. Then I ask you to stay here, and we will manage to be together as often as we can, and we will go on with the work we must do.” He smiled. “I imagine countless great ladies and lowly monks have had to surmount this very problem in the past. You remember the story of Empress Koken and Priest Dokyo? She took him for her lover, wanted to marry him and make him Emperor, until the god Hachiman himself intervened, declaring, ‘The usurper is to be rejected,’ and put a stop to that foolishness. We must be discreet, my lady AmaShogun. I will accept no titles or offices. I will be just one of many military advisers attached to the Shogun’s Court. Whenever you send for me, I will come to you. Moko will be very happy that his mission to the Pearl Temple turned out so successfully. We must find a way to tell him without anyone else finding out.”
Taniko laughed. “Everyone will know about you and me, Jebusan. It is impossible to keep secrets in these paper-walled chambers where there is a servant behind every shoji. The best we can hope for is to be discreet, as you said, and not make a public scandal. Everyone in this castle is loyal to me. They may talk about me among themselves, but they will protect my reputation.”
“Good. Then we can tell Moko at once. He’s been very unhappy ever since you and I quarrelled at that audience last night.”
“Not at all,” said Taniko, twining her fingers in Jebu’s white beard. “Moko was always confident that you’d come round. He told me this morning that you loved me. Otherwise, he said, you wouldn’t have been so angry at me.”
“The fellow knows me too well. And reveals my secrets. I should have cut off his head the day I met him. You stopped me from doing that.”
“You wanted me to stop you.”
“Indeed I did. And my instinct was right. Ah, Tanikosan, how sweet to lie here with you and summon up the past. Almost as pleasant as what we were doing a little while ago.”
“I enjoy conversation much more than that other,” she said teasingly.
“Well, then, there’s no need for us to worry about discretion,” said Jebu with a laugh. “Erom now on I’ll come openly to your rooms. You can have your ladies-in-waiting present, and we’ll just talk. In fact, why not dress ourselves and call them in right now?”
“Eor all I know, they’re hiding just beyond my door, laughing at us,” she said.
She turned towards him, her small white hand stroking his scarred chest. She could hardly believe this was happening. One night after he arrived they were in each other’s arms, after being apart for ten years. She could hardly remember at this moment what it was that had separated them for so long. She was not even sure they had ever been separated. Now that they were reunited, though, she wasn’t going to let him go so quickly. She kept him there in her chamber till dawn.
From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:
Our own Great Wall is finished at last. It has taken us nearly five years with many setbacks, including earthquakes and terrible storms. But a message from Jebu tells me it is done, and it is time for me to inspect it. Erom Kamakura to Hakata is a long journey, but I’ve been anticipating this news and have been packed since the last full moon. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Jebu, and at this rate I’ll soon lose interest in life. I just turned forty-nine last month. Next year I will be half a century old. That a woman my age should be carrying on in secret with a warrior monk is absolutely scandalous.
I’ll see dear old Moko, too, while I’m at Hakata Bay. He has helped design and build a fleet of kobaya, fast little war galleys carrying from fifteen to fifty men. They will go out and attack the Mongol ships and try to sink them before they can land any troops. Many of the kobaya will be captained by men who served with Yukio at Shimonoseki.
The new spirit of the Sacred Islands delights me. I’ve never seen our people so enthusiastic, so willing to work together. They even pay taxes cheerfully. They contribute their share of labour on defence works and then do more than is asked. The samurai eagerly volunteer for duty at Hakata, each hoping he will be the first to take a Mongol head. Individual quarrels, even feuds of long standing, are forgotten. It is a shame that it takes the threat of national destruction to draw us together like this.
-Eighth Month, sixth day
YEAR OF THE DRAGON
There had been an autumn rainstorm that morning and the yellow grass on the hillside near the town of Hakata was wet. A hundred officers in plain kimonos stood on the slope with Jebu, looking down at the great stone wall. The Hakata Bay wall formed a vast circle following the shoreline of the huge harbour, one day’s ride in length. It was topped by watchtowers and battlements facing the sea. Its seaward side presented a sheer, smooth face over twice the height of a man.
On the defending side, sloping stone ramps enabled the samurai to ride their horses to the top of the wall.
Near where Jebu and the officers were watching, a group of several hundred samurai with white surcoats over their armour, half of them mounted and the other half on foot, were lined up behind the wall. A long way down the beach, at the water’s edge, an equally large group, all cavalrymen wearing bright scarlet coats, awaited Jebu’s signal. They looked from this distance like a bloodstain on the sand. Standing with Jebu and the samurai officers on the hillside was a man holding a large yellow banner with the characters for “Training Is Endless” painted on it in black. Jebu had chosen the slogan to remind these officers that they did not already know everything about warfare, as most of them thought they did.
He pointed to the bannerman, who waved the yellow standard back and forth slowly. The red-coated cavalrymen charged down the beach with shrill, ululating cries. They sounded exactly like Mongols, as they should, since many of them were samurai who had fought in Mongolia and China and would remember the terrifying sound of Mongol war cries till their dying day. As soon as the charge began, the samurai behind the wall rode up the stone ramps nearest them, followed by the men on foot. Removable wooden ramps on the other side of the wall let the defenders sally out on to the beach.
The samurai in white raced down the beach, waving their swords and shouting. A small band of leaders soon outdistanced the rest. The Reds, the samurai impersonating Mongols, slowed their charge, while the White leaders rode on, challenging them to send out their best fighters for individual combat. The Reds replied with a massive volley of arrows. The challengers fell to the sand, all killed.
The main body of White horsemen, enraged at the unchivalrous slaughter of their leaders, came roaring down the beach. The Reds turned and fled. When they had drawn their pursuers about two hundred paces down the beach, they stood in their stirrups in unison and shot arrows over the backs of their horses. Half the White samurai fell from their saddles. The attackers wheeled and bore down on the remaining samurai with sabres and spears. In moments all the White horsemen were lying dead on the beach and some of the Reds were rounding up their runaway horses. The White foot soldiers, who had been unable to keep up with the horsemen, found themselves halfway between the wall and the Reds, unprotected. They set themselves to meet a cavalry charge, but the attackers kept their distance, showering the foot soldiers with arrows. Archers among the Whites brought a few of the enemy down, but not enough
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