The Harsh Cry of the Heron Page 9

  “Only the earthquake saved us. I have never experienced such terror in my life, though I have faced many dangers—storms at sea, shipwreck, pirates and savages. I had already thrown myself at his feet and begged to be allowed to kill myself. He pretended to consent, playing with my fears. Sometimes I dream about it; it is something I will never recover from—absolute evil in the person of a man.”

  He paused, lost in memories. “My dog was howling,” he said very quietly. “I could hear my dog howling. He always warned me of earthquakes like that. I found myself wondering if anyone would look after him.”

  Ishida took up the bowl and handed it to Takeo. “I am profoundly sorry for the part I played in your wife’s imprisonment.”

  “It is all long past,” Takeo said, taking the bowl and draining it gratefully.

  “But if the son is anything like the father, he will only do you ill. Be on your guard.”

  “You are drugging me and warning me in the same breath,” Takeo said. “Maybe I should put up with the pain—at least it keeps me awake.”

  “I should stay here with you…”

  “No. The kirin needs you. My own men are here to guard me. For the time being I am in no danger.”

  He walked through the garden with Ishida as far as the gate, feeling the deep relief as the pain began to dull. He did not lie awake long—just long enough to tally the amazing events of the day—Kono, the Emperor’s displeasure, the Dog Catcher, the kirin. And his sister—what was he going to do about Madaren, a foreigner’s woman, one of the Hidden, sister to Lord Otori?

  8

  The sight of her older brother, whom she had believed dead, was no less of a shock to the woman who had once been called Madaren, a common name among the Hidden. For many years after the massacre Madaren had been called by the name given to her by the woman to whom the Tohan soldier had sold her. He was one of the men who had taken part in the rape and murder of her mother and sister, but Madaren had no direct memory of that; she remembered only the summer rain, the smell of the horse’s sweat when her cheek pressed against its neck, the weight of the man’s hand holding her still, a hand that seemed larger and heavier than her whole body. Everything smelled of smoke and mud and she knew she would never be clean again. At the start of the fire and the horses and the swords she had screamed out for her father, for Tomasu, as she had called earlier that year when she had fallen into the swollen stream and been trapped on the slippery rocks, and Tomasu had heard her from the fields and come running to pull her out, scolding her and comforting her.

  But Tomasu had not heard her this time; nor had her father, already dead; no one had heard her and no one had ever come to her aid again.

  Many children, not only among the Hidden, suffered in a similar way when Iida Sadamu ruled in his black-walled castle at Inuyama; nor did the situation change after Inuyama fell to Arai. Some lived to grow up, and Madaren was one of them, one of the large number of young women who serviced the needs of the warrior class, becoming maids, kitchen servants, or women of the pleasure houses. They had no families and therefore no protection; Madaren worked for the woman who bought her, the lowest of the servants, the one who rose first in the morning before even the roosters were awake and could not lie down to sleep until the last customers had gone home. She thought exhaustion and hunger had dulled her to everything around her, but when she became a woman and briefly desirable in the way young girls usually do, she realized she had been learning all the time from the older girls, observing them and listening to them, and had become wise without knowing it in their favorite—indeed their only—subject: the men who visited them.

  The pleasure house was possibly the meanest in Inuyama, set far from the castle in one of the narrow streets that ran between the main avenues, where tiny houses rebuilt after the fire clustered together like a wasp’s nest, each clinging onto the next. But all men have their desires, even porters, laborers, and night soil collectors, and among these are as many who can be made fools for love as in any other class. So Madaren learned; at the same time she learned that women who are ruled by love are the least powerful beings in the city, more dominated even than dogs, as easily discarded as unwanted kittens, and she used this knowledge shrewdly. She went with men that the other girls shunned, and took advantage of their gratitude. She extracted gifts from them, or sometimes stole, and finally allowed a failing merchant to take her with him to Hofu, leaving the house in the early morning before dawn and meeting him at the misty dockside. They boarded a ship carrying cedar wood from the forests of the East, and the smell reminded her of Mino, her birthplace, and she suddenly recalled her family and the strange half-wild boy who had been her brother, who infuriated and enchanted their mother. Tears filled her eyes as she crouched beneath the lumber planks, and when her lover turned to embrace her she pushed him away. He was easily cowed, and no more successful in Hofu than he had been in Inuyama. He bored and infuriated her, and eventually she went back to her early life, joining a pleasure house a little higher in class than her first one.

  Then the foreigners came with their beards, their strange smell, and their large frames—and other parts. Madaren saw some power in them that might be exploited and volunteered to sleep with them. She chose the one called Don João, though he always thought he had chosen her—the foreigners were both sentimental and ashamed when it came to matters of the body’s needs. They wanted to feel special to one woman, even when they bought her. They paid well in silver; Madaren was able to explain to the owner of the house that Don João wanted her only, and soon she did not have to sleep with anyone else.

  At first their only language was that of the body—his lust, her ability to satisfy it. The foreigners had an interpreter, a fisherman who had been plucked out of the water by one of their kind after a shipwreck and taken back to their base in the Southern Islands, for they themselves came from a land far away in the west—you could sail for a year with the wind behind you and still not reach it. The fisherman had learned their language. He sometimes accompanied them to the pleasure house; it was obvious from his speech that he was uneducated and low-born, yet his association with the foreigners gave him status and power. They depended on him completely. He was their entry into the complex new world they had discovered and from which they hoped to gain wealth and glory, and they believed everything he told them, even when he was making it up.

  I could have something of that power, for he is no better than I, Madaren thought, and she began to try to understand Don João, and encouraged him to teach her. The language was hard, full of difficult sounds and put together back to front—everything had a gender, she could not imagine the reason, but a door was female, and so was rain; the floor and the sun were male—but it intrigued her; and when she spoke in the new language to Don João she felt as if she were turning into another person.

  As she became more fluent—Don João never mastered more than a few words of her language—they spoke of deeper things. He had a wife and children back in Porutogaru, about whom he wept when he had been drinking. Madaren discounted them, not believing he would ever see them again. They were so remote she could not imagine their life. And he spoke of his faith and his God—Deus—and his words and the cross he wore round his neck awakened childhood memories of her family’s faith and the rituals of the Hidden.

  He was eager to speak of Deus, and told her of priests of his religion who longed to convert other nations to their faith. This surprised Madaren. She remembered little of the beliefs of the Hidden, only the need for utter secrecy and an echo of the prayers and rituals that her family shared with their small community. The new lord of the Three Countries, Otori Takeo, had decreed that people could worship freely and believe whatever they chose to believe, and old prejudices were slowly giving way. Indeed, many were interested in the foreigners’ religion and even willing to try it if it increased trade and wealth for everyone. There were rumors that Lord Otori himself had once been one of the Hidden, and that the former ruler of the Maruya
ma domain, Maruyama Naomi, had also held their beliefs, but Madaren did not think either was very likely—for had not Lord Otori slain his great uncles in revenge? Did not Lady Maruyama throw herself into the river at Inuyama with her daughter? The one thing everyone knew about the Hidden was that their god, the Secret One, forbade them to take life, neither their own nor anyone else’s.

  It was on this point that the Secret One and Deus seemed to differ, for Don João told her that his countrymen were both believers and great warriors—if she understood him properly, for she knew that she often understood every word yet did not quite grasp the meaning. Was it both or neither, always or never, already or not yet? He was always armed, with a long thin blade, its helm curved and guarded, inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, and he boasted that he had had cause to use this sword many times. He was surprised that torture was forbidden in the Three Countries, and told her how it was used in his country and on the natives of the Southern Islands to punish, to extract information, and to save souls. This last she found hard to understand, though it interested her that the soul should be female and she wondered if all souls were like wives to the male Deus.

  “When the priest comes you must be baptized,” Don João told her, and when she understood the concept she remembered what her mother used to say: born by water, and she told him her water name.

  “Madalena!” he repeated, astonished, and made the sign of the cross in the air in front of him. He was fiercely interested in the Hidden, and wanted to meet more of them; she caught this interest and they began to meet with believers in the shared meal of the Hidden. Don João asked many questions and Madaren translated them, and the answers. She met people who had known of her village and heard of the massacre so long ago in Mino; they thought her escape a miracle, and declared she had been spared by the Secret One for some special purpose. Madaren took up the lost faith of her childhood with fervor, and began to wait for her mission to be revealed to her.

  And then Tomasu was sent to her, and she knew it had something to do with him.

  The foreigners understood very little of manners and politeness, and Don João expected Madaren to accompany him everywhere he went, especially as he came to depend on her for translating. With the single-minded determination with which she had escaped from Inuyama and learned the foreign tongue, she studied the unfamiliar surroundings, always kneeling humbly a little behind the foreigners and their interlocutors, speaking quietly and clearly, and embellishing her translation if it did not seem courteous enough. She often found herself in merchants’ houses, aware of the disdainful and suspicious glances from their wives and daughters, and sometimes even in higher places, recently even to Lord Arai’s mansion. It amazed her to see herself, one day in the same room as Lord Arai Zenko, and the next in some inn like the Umedaya. She had been right in her instincts—she had learned the foreigners’ language and it had given her access to some of their power and freedom. And some of that power she used over them—they needed her and began to rely on her.

  She had seen Dr. Ishida several times, and had acted as interpreter in long discussions. Ishida sometimes brought texts and read them for Madaren to translate, for she could not read or write; Don João also read to her from the holy book and she recognized fragments of phrases from childhood prayers and blessings.

  That night Don João had spotted Ishida and called to him, hoping to talk with him, but Ishida had pleaded the demands of a patient. Madaren had guessed he meant his companion and had looked at the other man, noting the crippled hand and the furrows between the eyes. She had not recognized him immediately, but her heart had seemed to stop and then it started hammering, as though her skin had known his and had known at once they had been made by the same mother.

  She had hardly been able to sleep, had found the foreigner’s body next to hers unbearably hot, and had crept away before daybreak to walk by the river beneath the willows. The moon had traversed the sky and now hung in the west, swollen and watery. The tide was low and crabs scuttled on the mudflats, their shadows like clutching hands. Madaren did not want to tell Don João where she was going—she did not want to have to think in his language or have to worry about him. She went through the dark streets to the house where she used to work, woke the maid, washed and dressed there, then sat quietly drinking tea until the morning was fully light.

  As she walked toward Daifukuji she was seized by misgivings—it had not been Tomasu; she had been mistaken, had dreamed the whole thing. He would not come; he had obviously risen in the world; he was a merchant now—albeit not apparently a very successful one—who would want nothing to do with her. He had not come to her help—he had been alive all this time and had not sought her out. She walked slowly, oblivious to the bustle of the river around her as the tide swept in, bringing the beached boats back to life.

  Daifukuji faced the sea—its red gates could be seen from far across the waves, welcoming sailors and traders home and reminding them to give thanks to Ebisu, the sea god, for protecting them on their voyages. Madaren looked at its carvings and statues with dislike, for she had come to believe like Don João that such things were hateful to the Secret God and equal to devil worship. She wondered why her brother should have chosen such a place to meet, feared that he was no longer a believer, slid her hand inside her robe to touch the cross Don João had given her, and realized that this must be her mission—to save Tomasu.

  She hovered just inside the gate, waiting for him, partly uneasy at the sound of chanting and bells from within, partly, despite herself, charmed and lulled by the beauty of the garden. Irises fringed the pools, and the first summer azaleas were bursting into vermilion flower. The sun grew hotter and the shade of the garden drew her in. She walked toward the back of the main hall. On her right stood several ancient cedars, each girdled with gleaming straw ropes, and just beyond them was a white-walled enclosure around a garden of much smaller trees, cherries she thought, though the blossom was long fallen, replaced by green foliage. A small crowd of men, mainly monks with shaved heads and subdued colored robes, stood outside the wall, staring upward. Madaren followed their gaze and saw what they were looking at: another strange carving, she thought at first, a depiction of some avatar or demon—and then it blinked its long-lashed eyes, flapped its patterned ears, and ran its dark gray tongue over its soft fawn nose. It turned its horned head and looked benignly down at its admirers. It was a living creature, yet what creature ever had a neck so long that it could look over a wall higher than the tallest man?

  It was the kirin.

  As she gazed at the extraordinary animal, her tiredness and the confusion of her thoughts suddenly made her feel as if she were in a dream. There was a bustle of activity from the main gate of the temple, and she heard a man’s voice call excitedly, “Lord Otori is here!” She felt the shock of the dream as she sank to her knees and looked at the ruler of the Three Countries as he came into the garden, surrounded by a retinue of warriors. He was dressed in formal summer robes of cream and gold, with a small black hat on his head, but she saw the damaged hand in the silk glove, and recognized the face, and realized it was Tomasu, her brother.

  9

  Takeo was aware of his sister kneeling humbly in the shade at the side of the garden, but he took no notice of her. If she stayed, he would speak to her in private; if she left and disappeared again from his life, whatever his personal feelings of sadness and regret, he would not look for her. It would be better, probably, simpler, if she were to disappear. It would be easy enough to arrange it—he considered the idea briefly but put it from him. He would deal with her justly, as he would Zenko and Kono—by negotiation, according to the law he himself had established.

  As if in confirmation of Heaven’s approval, the gate to the walled garden opened and the kirin appeared. Ishida held it by a red silken cord attached to a collar beaded with pearls. Ishida’s head came barely to its withers, but it followed him in a manner that was both confident and dignified. Its coat was a pale chestnut col
or, broken into cream-outlined patterns the size and shape of a man’s palm.

  It smelled water and stretched its long neck toward the pool. Ishida allowed it to approach, and it spread its legs sideways so it could bend to drink.

  The small crowd of monks and warriors laughed in delight, for it looked as if the marvelous animal had bowed to Lord Otori.

  Takeo was no less delighted with it. When he approached it, it allowed him to stroke its soft and amazingly patterned coat. It seemed quite unafraid, though it preferred to stay close to Ishida.

  “Is it male or female?” he inquired.

  “Female, I believe,” Ishida replied. “It does not have any external male parts, and it is more gentle and trusting than I would expect a male animal of this size to be. But it is still very young. Maybe it will show some changes as it grows older, and then we will be sure.”

  “Wherever did you find it?”

  “In the south of Tenjiku. But it came from another island, farther west still; sailors talk about a huge continent where animals like this graze in vast herds, along with elephants of both land and river, huge golden lions, and rose-pink birds. The men are twice our size and as black as lacquer in color, and can bend iron in their bare hands.”

  “And how did you acquire it? Surely such a creature is beyond price?”

  “It was offered to me, as a sort of payment,” Ishida replied. “I was able to perform some small service for the local prince. I thought immediately of Lady Shigeko, and how much she would like it, so I accepted it and made arrangements for it to accompany us home.”

  Takeo smiled, thinking of his daughter’s skill with horses and love for all animals.

  “Was it not hard to keep it alive? What does it eat?”

  “Luckily the voyage home was calm, and the kirin is placid and easy to please. It eats leaves from the trees in its own land, apparently, but it is happy to accept grass, fresh or dried, and other palatable greenstuff.”