“I’ll do my best, Excellency.”
Kosehira glanced around the room. “And the others?”
“The others should do well enough.” Kimura paused. “Judging by the bodies of your enemies outside, they must all be good men.”
Kosehira smiled. “Yes. They are! They are all very good men! How lucky I am!”
Akitada did not see much luck in the event, but he said nothing. He felt depressed and discouraged.
∞
A strange thing happened that day. When he returned to his room at Kosehira’s villa many hours later, he saw that the servants had tidied it, rolled up his bedding and taken away his wet clothes. But on his desk lay something new, a letter folded many times around a flowering branch. The blooms were azaleas, but sadly crushed and wilted.
He picked it up. The letter had been crumpled as if someone had trodden on it. His stomach lurched when he realized it was from Yukiko.
How had it got here? Had she brought it while he was gone?
No, surely not. She would not have left such a thing in open sight for the servants to find. No, she must have brought it during the night and pushed it under the door, and neither he nor the servant who had come to wake him had noticed it. In the dark, they had stepped on it, and later a servant had found it and placed it on the desk.
Slowly, fearfully, he untied the letter and unfolded it. It was a poem.
“The drops of pattering rain did not wet my sleeves;
It was my loneliness … and yours.”
He swallowed hard, then raised the paper to his lips. Dear heaven, what was he to do? He could not answer, must not acknowledge this. He must not do anything to make things worse.
The pain of that restraint would be with him from now on, and every day would remind him how close she was, how easy it would be to go to her.
Her words told him she was lonely … no, that she was lonely for him. In vain, he tried to comprehend the astonishing fact that she loved him.
What could so young a girl know of love? Love brought with it pain, the fear of loss. He had lost the son he had loved more than his life and nearly gone mad with the grief. And then he had lost Tamako and had wanted to die. He knew the price of love.
He refolded the letter carefully and inserted it in the thin notebook he carried with him. It would be safer to destroy it, but that he could not do.
∞
Over the coming days, his despair did not exactly lift, but it moderated somewhat. The attack on the provincial headquarters by a large group of Enryaku-ji sohei had a number of major repercussions that were mostly desirable. At any rate, they kept both Akitada and Kosehira far too busy to spend much time at home.
Item: Both Kosehira and Akitada dispatched reports to the emperor. These resulted in numerous visits from senior officials to the governor as well as to Abbot Gyomei of Enryaku-ji.
Item: Abbot Gyomei for once left his mountain and visited Kosehira and Akitada to deliver his personal regrets. He told them that neither the attackers nor the prisoner had returned to the temple.
Item: Bands of sohei and other warriors left the mountain temple and departed to other provinces.
Item: As a result, a similar exodus took place from Onjo-ji, presumably because it no longer felt the need for an army to defend itself against Enryaku-ji’s troops.
Item: After due investigation, the court issued several strongly-worded proclamations against the raising of troops by temples or shrines.
This last item had merely symbolic significance; private estates could still hire men to protect themselves. In fact, the largest landowners maintained standing armies. And since many of the estates existed under the protection of temples in order to avoid taxes, it was merely a matter of calling up support when needed.
But there was no sign of the escaped sohei.
Still, Kosehira regained his sunny mood and congratulated Akitada on having struck a major blow against that pesky Enryaku-ji. It helped that the wounded tribunal guards made excellent progress. Even Lieutenant Okura was out of danger. This greatly pleased Tora who had spent most of his time by his bedside.
Throughout this time, more delegations from Enryaku-ji arrived, often led by the prior himself. Their intention was to declare their peacefulness and their complete support for the emperor and his representative, the governor. They also renewed apologies to Akitada, making him a present of a very fine horse. Akitada refused the gift, which struck him as close to being a bribe.
In this manner, nearly two weeks passed. During the entire time, both Akitada and Kosehira were so busy that they only spent the nights at the villa. Akitada slept the sleep of the exhausted and was relieved that his dreams did not involve Lady Yukiko. He saw her a few times from a distance. Once or twice she was standing on the veranda as they arrived or departed. He avoided the garden for fear of surprising her there.
Only one other thing troubled Akitada from time to time. He worried that, for all his bravado and cheerfulness, Tora had suffered some lingering physical damage. His movements had become slower and there were times when he grimaced at some exertion, such as getting on his horse or rising up from the floor. After nearly a week, he and Tora took up their sword practice again, but Tora seemed listless uncomfortable. They practiced behind the kitchen building where no one saw them except the cook and his staff.
After their second bout since Tora’s stay on the mountain, Akitada asked, “Are you sure you are feeling all right? Should you be checked out by Kimura?”
“I’m fine, sir,” Tora said, turning away. “Forget it. I’m just getting old and useless.”
Sorry that he had spoken, Akitada said, “Nonsense,” and did not mention it again. But he sent Tora home for a while to look after things and rest.
He saw Takechi several times. The prisoner had been identified by temple authorities as Kojo and said to be an ex-soldier who had taken vows. On the governor’s orders, wanted posters were put up all over Otsu and along the highways east and west. So far there had been no results.
Among the gestures of apology extended by Enryaku-ji was also the promise to help in the conviction of the criminal sohei and mercenaries. The temple wished to disassociate itself completely from the incident. A delegation of monks paid a visit to Kosehira to inform him that Kojo had been officially dismissed and would be unwelcome on Enryaku-ji if he should seek assistance there..
Kinzaburo had been returned to his small farm. Reunited with his family, he still faced a legal battle for his freedom. The noble lord who held sway over Kinzaburo’s farm had turned over his authority to the temple to avoid taxes. Kinzaburo’s small portion of land had somehow become part of the great estate.
But on the whole, Tora’s adventure with the sohei had ended well.
Chief Takechi said as much to Akitada, adding, “I wish I could report progress for the two murders. However, a strange story’s just come to my ears.”
Akitada, who had not given Takechi’s murders much attention, said, “Really? Something to do with the judge?”
“Not the judge. Or the jailer for that matter. No, it’s about that Jizo figurine. Something happened in the Echi district east of here. They had two unexplained, and so far unsolved, deaths. Two elderly peasants, best friends, were found dead within days of each other. They interrogated the families but found no motive, though in the first case, which was clearly a murder, they briefly arrested the man’s daughter-in-law. In the end they couldn’t prove anything. But when they were searching the area where it happened—the old-timer was drunk and on his way home when someone struck him from behind—they found one of those carvings among the weeds beside the road.”
Akitada sat up and stared at the chief. “You don’t say? The same carving? The same sort of figurine as the one in the judge’s room and on the body of the jailer? And both men were old, you say?”