Kaze unfolded himself from his cramped confinement. As he got to his feet, he felt himself swaying slightly, the legacy of his beating and a night spent stuffed into the cage. He closed his eyes briefly, centered himself, and stopped the swaying.
The Magistrate grabbed Kaze’s arm. It wasn’t to support him but to escort him like some small child or prisoner. Kaze shook off the Magistrate’s hand and glared at him.
The jowly cheeks of the Magistrate were set in hard slabs. His small eyes were like two tiny black pearls in a sea of flesh. They radiated unadulterated malevolence toward Kaze.
“Come on, then,” the Magistrate said, walking out of the courtyard.
As Kaze followed he reflected on the danger of taking anyone too lightly. The Magistrate was a buffoon, but buffoons can be especially dangerous because they will kill out of stupidity. Life is so fragile and brief. It can be snuffed out by a misplaced step or a lack of caution or failing to properly assess the measure of a man.
Kaze was taken to the kitchen area of the manor and fed. The manor was set up as a large rectangle, with several open courtyards in the middle. The courtyards were edged by covered verandas with raised wooden floors and tile roofs. This was the typical design of most country manors, and Kaze was familiar with the general layout without ever having been in Manase Manor before.
Kaze was then given a bath in a wooden ofuro bathtub. The bathtub was chest-high and as wide as the armspan of a man. The wet, fragrant wooden slats of the tub were fitted together so cunningly that no caulking was needed to keep it watertight. Along one wall was a bench, where the occupants of the tub could sit while they relaxed in water up to their necks. A small fire in a copper box was stoked by a serving woman. The box protruded into one wall of the ofuro and heated the water to a satisfying degree of scalding pleasure.
Kaze stripped down and allowed the serving woman stoking the fire to help him scrub down before he got into the tub. He used a wooden scraper and a rag to remove the dirt, wincing in pain but not crying out as the cleaning tools were applied to the dark bruises that mottled his skin. Being naked at an ofuro before a strange woman was something that held no erotic connotations for Kaze. Since childhood he had taken baths in this fashion, with servants of one type or another helping him. The woman scrubbing his naked back was as much a fixture of the ofuro as the bench seat or pile of wood to heat it.
When he was fully clean, the woman dipped water out of the ofuro and rinsed the dirt off him with bucket after bucket of steaming water. Then he climbed up on a small stool and stepped into the scalding water, sinking into the tub and sitting on the bench, letting the water lap at his chin. Kaze let the steaming hot water wash away his aches from the beating and night in the cage.
“Ahh, that feels wonderful,” Kaze said.
The woman made no comment but just looked down sullenly.
“This is a fine ofuro,” Kaze tried again.
“Hai. Yes.” The woman murmured it so softly that Kaze almost didn’t hear her reply.
He closed his eyes and put his head back against the edge of the tub. “Your master must enjoy this ofuro.” The woman made no answer, but instead busied herself shoving some more wood into the copper box.
“Doesn’t he enjoy this?” Kaze asked, curious.
Again answering so softly that Kaze had to strain to hear her, the woman said, “The Lord doesn’t use the ofuro much.” The thought of a Japanese not using an available bath was alien to Kaze, and he paused to contemplate what this meant about the District Lord. He speculated that perhaps the Lord was a devotee of Dutch learning, that strange set of beliefs and superstitions brought by the smelly Europeans. Kaze had never met one of these strange creatures, but they were notorious for not bathing like civilized human beings. These large, hairy barbarians brought with them a whole slew of fantastic stories about the customs of their homeland. Most people would be ashamed of the things the barbarians seemed proud of, and the stories about them that Kaze had heard alternatively fascinated and disgusted him. They were notorious liars, and Kaze thought that anyone who would follow their outlandish customs or believe their silly tales must be feeble-minded. Still, Tokugawa Ieyasu kept several around him, and so did Nobunaga and Hideyoshi before him, but Kaze thought they must be kept as pets, the same way one would keep an interesting dog.
He tried to engage the serving woman in more conversation to find out about Lord Manase’s household, but she responded only with a few grunts and bobs of her head. Since becoming a ronin, Kaze had become accustomed to a style of treatment he had not been exposed to previously. Even the peasants treated him with less respect, though he was still a samurai. Yet Kaze wasn’t sure if the servant’s reticence was rudeness or something else.
She did provide Kaze with a copper mirror when he requested one, and Kaze studied the damage to his face. It was puffy and purple in spots, but Kaze dismissed the beating as work done by amateurs. He had been in worse fights, fights where he couldn’t move for a week after the battle was over, and he had been the winner.
The kimono that Kaze was given after the bath was a deep indigo blue with a white crane on the back. The crane pattern was created by protecting areas of the cloth with a thick paste, then putting the cloth in an earthen jar filled with dye. The cloth was left to sit for weeks, staining the fibers a deep blue, as blue as the deepest lakes or the Inland Sea itself. Later the cloth was removed and the paste cleaned off. A white pattern on a blue cloth was the result. This pattern was a very delicate one. The crane, a symbol of long life and prosperity, showed the outline of individual feathers.
Kaze’s own clothes, which were simple utilitarian things, were taken to be cleaned. They would be ripped apart at the seams, washed in a stream, put on special frames, starched, and then resewn when they were dry. The various panels of the kimono would be swapped around to even out wear on the garment.
After the bath, Kaze was fed miso soup, rice, and pickles. Finally, Kaze was taken into Lord Manase’s presence. As he followed the serving girl leading him, Kaze noticed that the manor was in need of repair. A few errant tiles were seen peeking over the edge of the roof, and some of the shoji screens had holes where crude paper patches had been applied. Despite Manase’s fine kimonos and sumptuous Noh outfits, the District did not seem a prosperous one.
Kaze was shown to an eight-mat room that functioned as Lord Manase’s study. The room was dark, and Kaze could see that wooden shutters were used instead of shoji, leaving Manase to sit in a perpetual gloom as light filtered through the shutters in compressed slits. Manase was sitting on a zabuton cushion with a folded paper scroll spread out before him on the floor. Kaze could see that the scroll was an old one and that the writing on it was in hiragana, the fluid cursive script, often used by women, that spelled words phonetically. Kaze sat on the tatami mat a respectful distance from Lord Manase.
Without looking up, Manase asked, “Have you ever read The Tale of Genji?”
“Many years ago.”
“What did you think of it?”
“Lady Murasaki was a genius.”
Manase looked up in surprise and give a tittering laugh. He covered his mouth with his hand, just like a maiden. Kaze noted that Manase had his teeth blackened, like a Court noble in Kyoto. It puzzled and disturbed Kaze to see this rural District Lord adopting the language, clothes, and customs of the Court. It seemed out of place and presumptuous.
“A genius! A woman genius!” Manase gave another high-pitched laugh. “I can’t say I have ever heard of a woman being called a genius before.” Manase’s face had a light dusting of rice powder on it. His eyebrows were shaved, and small false eyebrows were painted high on his forehead.