The most surprised of all were the cooks and the maidservants. Here was a short samurai—clearly a general—in a persimmon-colored armor coat, walking nonchalantly into the kitchen and calling out as if he were a member of the lord's family.
“Hey! Is Lady Maeda here? Where is she?"
No one knew who he was. Everyone looked puzzled, but upon seeing his golden baton of command and formal sword, they all quickly knelt and bowed. He had to be a general of high rank, but no one had seen him among the Maeda before.
“Hey, Lady Maeda, where are you? It's me, Hideyoshi. Come on, show your face!"
Inuchiyo's wife was preparing food with some of the servants when she heard all the commotion. She came out wearing an apron and with her sleeves tied back. For a moment she simply stood and stared. "I must be dreaming," she murmured.
“It's been a long time, my lady. I'm glad to see you're well as always."
When Hideyoshi started to step forward, she roused herself and, quickly loosening the cord at her sleeves, prostrated herself on the wooden floor.
Hideyoshi artlessly sat down. "The first thing I want to tell you, my lady, is that your daughter and the ladies in Himeji have become good friends. Please set your mind at ease about that. Also, although your husband saw some trying moments in this last campaign, he showed no confusion about whether to advance or retreat, and you could say that the Maeda camp came away from the battle undefeated."
Inuchiyo's wife placed the palms of her hands together beneath her bowed forehead.
At that point Inuchiyo came in looking for his wife and saw Hideyoshi. '
“This is no place to receive you properly. Before anything else, at least please remove your sandals and come up off the dirt floor."
Husband and wife did everything they could to persuade him to step up onto the wooden floor, but Hideyoshi declined, speaking to them as informally as before. "I'm in a hurry to get to Kitanosho and really can't spare the time right now. But may I take advantage of your kindness and ask for a bowl of rice?"
"That's an easy request to fill. But won't you come in just for a moment?"
Hideyoshi made no move to untie his straw sandals and relax. "We'll do that on another day. Today I have to move fast."
Both husband and wife knew the good and bad points of Hideyoshi's character. Theirs had never been a friendship that placed great value on obligations or pretense. Inuchiyo's wife retied the cord holding up her sleeves, and she herself stood in front of the cutting board in the kitchen. It was the kitchen for the entire castle, and a great number of maidservants, cooks,and even officials were working there. But Lady Maeda was not a woman who did not know how to prepare a savory meal on short notice.
Both on that day and the day before, she herself had looked after the wounded and helped with the preparation of their food. But even on uneventful days, she would come to the kitchen to prepare something for her husband. Now the Maeda clan governed a large province. But in the poverty of their days in Kiyosu, when their neighbor Tokichiro was no better off than they, the two families would often go to each other to borrow a measure of rice, a handful of salt, or even an evening's worth of oil for the lamp. In those days they could see how well off the neighbors were by the light shining in their windows at night.
This woman is no less a good wife than my own Nene, Hideyoshi thought. In that short interlude of reflection, however, Inuchiyo's wife had finished preparing two or three dishes. She led the way from the kitchen, carrying the tray herself.
In the hilly area that stretched toward the western citadel, a small pavilion stood in a copse of pines. The attendants spread a rug out over the grass next to it and set down two trays of food and flasks of sake.
"Can't I at least serve you something better, even if you're in a hurry?" Inuchiyo's wife asked.
"No, no. Won't your husband and son join me?"
Inuchiyo sat down facing Hideyoshi, and Toshinaga held up the sake flask. There was a building here, but the guest and his hosts did not use it. A wind blew through the pines, but they hardly heard it.
Hideyoshi did not drink more than one cup of sake but hurriedly ate up the two bowls of rice that Inuchiyo's wife had prepared for him.
"Ah, I'm full. I'm sorry to impose, but might I ask for a bowl of tea?"
Preparations had already been made in the pavilion. Inuchiyo's wife quickly went inside and served Hideyoshi a bowl of tea.
"Well, my lady," Hideyoshi said as he drank, looking at her as though he were about to ask her advice. "I've given you a lot of trouble, but now, on top of that, I'd like to borrow your husband for a little while."
Inuchiyo's wife laughed cheerfully. "'To borrow my husband?' It's been a long time since you've used that phrase."
Hideyoshi and Inuchiyo both laughed, and Hideyoshi said, "Listen to that, Inuchiyo. It appears that women don't easily forget old grudges. She's still talking today about how I used to 'borrow' you to go drinking." Returning the tea bowl, he laughed again. "But today it's just a little different from the past, and if my lady doesn't disagree, I'm sure your husband won't either. I would definitely like him to go with me to Kitanosho. It would be fine if your son stays here to take care of you."
Seeing that the question had already been settled between the talking and the laughing, Hideyoshi quickly made the decision on his own. "What I would like, then, is for your son to stay here and your husband to ride with me. Inuchiyo has no equal as a man skilled in battle. Then, on the happy day when we return from the campaign, I'd like to stop here again and impose on you for a few days. We'll depart tomorrow morning. I'll take my leave for today."The entire family saw him as far as the entrance to the kitchen. On the way Inuchiyo's wife said, "Lord Hideyoshi, you said that Toshinaga should stay here to take care of his mother, but I don't think I'm that old or that lonely yet. There will be enough warriors keft guarding the castle, and no one will need to feel anxious about its defense."
Inuchiyo was of the same mind. As they walked hurriedly toward the entrance, Hidyoshi and the Maeda family finalized the hour of departure for the following day and settled other details.
“I’ll be waiting for the next time you drop by," Inuchiyo's wife said as she bade him farewell at the entrance to the kitchen; her husband and son took him as far as the front gate of the castle.
The very night Hideyoshi took leave of the Maeda family and returned to his own camp, two very important men from the Shibata side were brought in as prisoners. One of them was Sakuma Genba. The other was Katsuie's foster son, Katsutoshi. Both had been captured during their flight through the mountains to Kitanosho. Genba had been wouned. With the heat of the summer, the wound had become infected and quickly began to fester. The emergency treatment often used by warriors was moxibustion, and Genba had stopped at a farmhouse in the mountains, asked for moxa, and applied it around the opening of the wound.
Wile Genba was busy applying the moxa, the farmers held a secret conclave in which they decided that they would probably receive a handsome reward for turning Katsutoshi and Genba over to Hideyoshi. That night they surrounded the hut where the two were sleeping, trussed them up like pigs, and carried them to Hideyoshi's camp.
When Hideyoshi heard about that, he did not look very happy. Contrary to the farmers’ expectations, he punished them severely.
The following day Hideyoshi, accompanied by Inuchiyo and his son, spurred his horse toward Katsuie's castle at Kitanosho. By afternoon, Echizen's capital was filled with Hideyoshi's troops.
Along the way, the Tokuyama and Fuwa clans had already seen what was in the wind, and many men surrendered at the gate of Hideyoshi's camp.
Hideyoshi camped on Mount Ashiba and had the castle at Kitanosho surrounded so tightly that a drop of water could not have trickled through. As soon as that was done, Kyutaro's corps was given the work of breaking through a section of the palisade. Then Genba and Katsutoshi were led up close to the castle walls.
Beating the attack drum, the soldiers assailed the ears of Katsuie, who was inside the castle. "If you have any last words for your foster son and Genba, you'd better come out and say them now!"
That message was given two or three times, but the castle remained silent. Katsuie did not appear, perhaps thinking that to see the two men would be unbearable. And of course it was clear that Hideyoshi's strategy was to destroy the morale of the men in the castle.
Stragglers from Katsuie's army had arrived during the night, and now the castle was sheltering about three thousand souls, including noncombatants.
In addition, Genba and Katsutoshi had been taken alive by the enemy, and even Katsuie could not help thinking that his end had come. The attack drums of the enemy were unceasing. By nightfall, the surrounding palisades had all been broken through, andthe entire area was filled with Hideyoshi's forces to within thirty or forty yards of the castle walls themselves.
Nevertheless, inside the castle the situation remained peaceful. After a while the enemy's drums ceased; night was approaching, and generals who seemed to be envoys were going back and forth from the castle to the outside. Maybe there was a move afoot to spare Katsuie's life, or perhaps the generals were envoys for capitulation. Such rumors spread, but the atmosphere inside the castle did not seem to corroborate those theories.
As the evening passed, the main citadel—which had been as black as ink—was cheerfully lit with lanterns. The northern enclosure and the western citadel were also lit up. Bright lamps shone at intervals even in the keep, where desperate soldiers were on watch, waiting to do battle.
The attacking troops wondered what was going on. But the mystery was soon solved. They could hear the beating of drums now along with the flowing sound of flutes. Folk songs heavy with the accent of the northern provinces drifted to within earshot.
"The people in the castle know this is their last night and are probably enjoying a farewell banquet. How sad."
The attacking troops outside the castle felt sympathy for its inhabitants. Both the men inside the castle and those outside had been soldiers under the command of the Oda, and there was not a person there who did not know Katsuie's past. For that reason alone, the situation was a deeply emotional one.
A final banquet was held in the castle of Kitanosho. It was attended by more than eighty people—the entire clan and the senior retainers. Katsuie's wife and her daughters sat under the bright lamps in the middle of the group while the enemy army waited outside, only a short distance away.
"We didn't even get together like this to celebrate the first day of the new year!" someone said, and the entire family laughed. "With the dawn, the first day of our life in the next world will begin. Tonight will be our New Year's Eve in this world."
With the numerous lamps and the many laughing voices, the gathering seemed no different from an ordinary banquet. Only the presence of armed warriors caused a bleak cloud to float through the hall.
The makeup and dress of Oichi and her three daughters lent an unbelievably fresh and even elegant air to the event. The youngest of the three sisters was only ten years old, and when they saw the child making merry among the trays of food and the noisy people, gulping her food and playing pranks on her older sisters, even the old warriors who thought nothing of their imminent deaths had to look off in another direction.