Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

Ryuichi pushed back the screen to Taniko’s chamber and peered in at them. His face was pale. In the dim corridor he looked like a goldfish trying to see up through the surface of a pond. Taniko, murmuring the homage to Buddha, looked back at him.

“You never went to Yasugi, Uncle.”

“Forgive me, Tanikosan. I remembered how you were when Horigawa brought you here. I couldn’t bear to see you like that again.”

“So, instead of telling me yourself, you mercifully allowed one of Sogamori’s lackeys to give me the news by accident.”

“Do not torment me, Tanikosan.”

“Ah, are you the one who is being tormented? I see. Well, don’t stand there in the doorway like a frightened peasant. Sit down with us.”

Ryuichi snapped his fingers at a maid. “Sake.” Still looking apologetically at Taniko, he sat down.

Taniko said, “Atsue, go to your bedchamber. I have something to discuss with your uncle.”

“Why can’t I hear? I’m the head of our family now.”

The words brought Taniko a renewed realization of her loss. She burst into a storm of weeping, ‘While Ryuichi sat looking sadly at her. Atsue crept into her arms.

The maid brought hot sake. Taniko poured for Ryuichi and herself. “All right,” she said. “You will also have to decide what you want, Atsue-chan.” Atsue did not object to the term of endearment for a child. “Stay and listen.” The boy sat down again, facing his mother and his uncle. She turned to Ryuichi. “Sogamori has asked that I send the boy to him. He wants to take him from me and adopt him, make him a Takashi.”

Ryuichi nodded. “This afternoon I received a summons to the Rokuhara. Of course, it was worded as an invitation. What did you say to Sogamori’s secretary?”

“I refused. I want Atsue to stay with me.”

Ryuichi quickly drained another cup of sake. “You refused?” “Yes. But Atsue must be the one to decide in the end.”

“Children do not decide their futures,” Ryuichi cut in. “Of course he will want to stay with his mother. But he has no idea of what he would lose. What can you give him that would compare with the station in life he would have as Sogamori’s son?”

“Kiyosi gave Sogamori other grandsons, and Kiyosi’s younger brothers still live,” said Taniko. “Why must Sogamori, who has so much, take this child from me?” Tears ran down her cheeks.

Ryuichi shrugged. “Aside from the late Kiyosi, Sogamori’s male descendants are a rather undistinguished lot. This boy, on the other hand, is a paragon. Perhaps it is because you and Kiyosi enjoyed some powerful bond in a former life. You must be aware that Atsue’s musicianship and his knowledge of the classics are remarkable. And his face-” Ryuichi sipped his sake and contemplated the boy. Atsue, his eyes downcast, flushed a deep scarlet. That’s one trait he gets from me, Taniko thought.

Ryuichi went on. “Anyone who knows anything about physiognomy can see Atsue has the face of one destined to hold a high place in the realm. In all respects, even at this young age, Atsue outshines Sogamori’s other descendants. That cannot have escaped you, Taniko. Be sure that Sogamori himself is well aware of it.”

Taniko turned to the boy. “Atsue-chan, what your uncle says is true. You can become an important member of the most powerful clan in the land. If you remain here, you’ll merely be a fatherless boy, part of a rather undistinguished provincial family.”

“I want to stay with you, Mother,” Atsue said instantly. “I love you, and you love me. I am afraid of Lord Sogamori. They say he is cruel and has a terrible temper. I don’t want to live in the Rokuhara. I don’t like the Rokuhara.”

“This is not childish prattle,” said Taniko. “The boy knows perfectly well what he is saying.”

“We dare not defy Lord Sogamori,” Ryuichi muttered.

“If Sogamori can take a child from us, he can take anything and everything from us.”

That thought made Ryuichi frown. “But there is nothing I can do. What can I say to Lord Sogamori at the Rokuhara tomorrow?”

“You are a samurai, Uncle, as much as he is. You can present the case to him and let him make what he will of it. When you go to the Rokuhara, tell Sogamori that the boy does not want to go and his mother does not want to send him.”

“Madness,” said Ryuichi.

“Uncle-san,” said Taniko, the tears coming again, “My champion is dead. You are the only defender I have left. If you won’t protect me, I am lost.”

Shaking his head, Ryuichi rose. “I will do what I can. Drink more sake. It will help you to sleep.”

It was a sweltering morning when Ryuichi went to the Rokuhara. Alone, sweating and trembling in his carriage, he fanned himself incessantly. Six armed, mounted men escorted him, but their presence did nothing to make him feel more secure. He was going, perhaps, to his death. What else could he expect if he disobeyed the command of Lord Sogamori, who could annihilate him as a careless sandal crushes an ant?

The Rokuhara was at once magnificent and frightening. Its three donjon towers, bedecked with proud red Takashi banners, dominated the surrounding district. Ryuichi saw them as soon as his carriage crossed the Gojo Bridge. The stone outer walls with their tile-roofed turrets were taller than those around the Imperial Palace. The walls girdled a spacious park bounded by four avenues. Three streams diverted from the Kamo River fed the moat, itself wide as a river, and ran through the park over beds of carefully chosen pebbles, beneath tiny ornamental bridges. Interior walls divided the grounds into parade fields, gardens and gravelled courts. The main buildings of the Rokuhara were imposing structures in the Chinese style, with red and green tiled roofs. Mixed in among these were a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine and many stables.

The Takashi headquarters was across the Kamo River, east of the original limits of Heian Kyo, outside the city’s walls. The land had been given to Sogamori’s grandfather after a victory over pirates on the Inland Sea. In those days the Takashi estate was out in the countryside. Over the years, with each new acquisition of power and wealth, the stronghold grew, as a coral reef rises out of the sea. At the same time the capital spread eastwards, and now the Rokuhara was surrounded by innumerable lesser buildings, like a black rock in a swiftly moving current.

It was palace, fortress, barracks and prison all in one. Between the samurai quartered within its walls and those who lived near by with families and retainers of their own, the Takashi could call up ten thousand warriors at a moment’s notice.

Even after crossing the moat and passing through the fortified western gate, Ryuichi travelled a long time through a labyrinth of inner walls before he finally came to the hall where Sogamori awaited him. Ryuichi dismounted and dismissed his outriders, who looked thoroughly cowed now that they were in the Takashi stronghold. A group of Sogamori’s red-robed youths eyed Ryuichi’s party with a threatening casualness.

Approached by two Takashi samurai, Ryuichi tried to appear calm and superior, a difficult feat for a sweating, trembling fat man. Despite their deferential manner, the hard-faced warriors frightened him. The Shima were supposedly samurai themselves, but Ryuichi was more at home with ink, brush and account books than with bow and sword. He allowed the guards to lead him to Sogamori.

The chieftain of the Takashi clan, dressed in a billowing white silk robe, sat on a raised platform, a naked sword in his lap. His round skull was completely shaved; he had entered the priesthood several years earlier after a nearly fatal illness. Behind him, brightly lit by oil lamps, hung an enormous gold banner bearing an angry Red Dragon, its eyes blazing, claws extended, wings flapping, the scaly body, coil upon coil, seeming about to leap out of golden silk and destroy all in the room.

Ryuichi was grateful for the excuse to fall on his knees and press his forehead to the cedar floor. He was shaking so violently he felt he could no longer stand. Why did Sogamori have a sword in his lap? Was it for him?

“You are welcome here, Shima no Ryuichi,” said Sogamori in his grating voice. Ryuichi looked up. The lines of Sogamori’s broad face were deep and shadowed. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. The man must have been weeping for days, Ryuichi thought. There were tears glistening on Sogamori’s brown cheeks even now.

Below the platform, to Sogamori’s right and left, sat the men of his family. The place just below and to the left, where Kiyosi had always sat, was occupied by Sogamori’s second son, Notaro, his puffy, white-powdered features drooping with a faint boredom. Beside Notaro sat the third son, Tadanori, a famous dandy and poet, but not known to be good at much else. Sogamori’s other sons by his principal wife and his other wives sat facing each other in two rows leading up to the platform. Dullards, weaklings, and fops, thought Ryuichi. Other nobles, favourites of Sogamori, sat around the room. With surprise, Ryuichi recognized Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, smiling and gently fanning himself.

Sogamori took a sheet of paper from his sleeve. “We have been reading my son’s poems, Ryuichi-san. This is the last one he wrote, aboard ship on his way to Kyushu.

The shadow of the sail is my palace,

These cedar planks my bed,

My host, a seagull.

“Exquisite,” Ryuichi whispered, dry-mouthed. Sogamori sighed and wiped his face with his sleeve. In the silence Ryuichi thought how Taniko would love to have one of Kiyosi’s poems. But it was obvious Taniko had no friends here. Horigawa waved his fan before his face and smiled his secretive smile at Ryuichi.

Sogamori raised the sword, holding it by its gold and silver-mounted hilt. The blade glistened in the lamplight. It was sharply curved and double-edged for more than half its length.

“His sword,” said Sogamori. “Kogarasu. He didn’t want to risk losing it at sea, so he left it behind. If he had worn it, it would have gone down with him to the bottom of Hakata Bay. Kogarasu once belonged to our ancestor, Emperor Kammu, who received it from the priestess of the Grand Isle Shrine. I gave it to my son when he cut his hair and tied it in the topknot.”

Ryuichi bowed his head. “The grief of your house is the grief of my house.”

A silence fell. Sogamori studied Kogarasu, turning the sword this way and that to catch the light on its shadowy temper lines. Wrapping his white silk sleeve around his hand, he polished the blade lovingly. Gently, as if cradling a sleeping baby, he laid the sword in his lap.

“I am told that your own son, Munetoki, is well and is on his way home to you,” said Sogamori softly. “I hear he performed bravely in the battle at Hakata Bay. The joy of your house is the joy of my house.”

Was there irony in Sogamori’s tone? “A thousand years would not be enough time for me to express my gratitude to the chancellor for noticing my son,” said Ryuichi, bowing deeply.

“Can the Shima not control their women?” Sogamori whispered harshly. At the sudden change of tone Ryuichi’s innards froze with terror.

“Your miserable servant begs forgiveness if we have offended,” he mumbled, bowing his head.

“If you have offended?” Sogamori growled. “You should be ashamed to show your face before me, Ryuichi. You should have thrown yourself into the Kamo on the way here.”

“She is overcome with grief,” Ryuichi pleaded. “She does not know what she is saying.”

Horigawa spoke. “I have warned my lord Sogamori that the woman is