Ieyasu's wife was a woman who thought of nothing but herself. She was completely indifferent both to affairs of state and to her husband's situation. Nothing entered her head other than her own daily life and the attentions of her husband. The old lady-in-waiting understood this well, and when she saw that he was still talking with his retainer, she waited uneasily and silently, until another maid came in and whispered in her ear. There was nothing else the old lady-in-waiting could do. She interrupted them again, saying, "Excuse me, my lord…I'm terribly sorry, but Her Ladyship is very fretful." Bowing to Ieyasu, she timidly urged him once more to hurry.
Ieyasu knew that his wife's servants were troubled more than anyone else by this situation, and he himself was a patient man. "Ah, yes," he said, turning, and then, to Heishichi: "Well, make the necessary arrangements, and come and tell me when it's time." He stood up. The women ran in front of him with small steps, looking as though they had been saved.
The inner part of the house was some way off, so it was not unreasonable that his wife often longed to see him. Passing through the many turns of the central and bridged corridors, he finally got to his wife's private apartments.
On their wedding day, the clothes of the poor hostage husband from Mikawa could not compare with the luxury and brilliance of the dress of Lady Tsukiyama, an adopted daughter of Imagawa Yoshimoto. "The man from Mikawa"—known by this epithet, he was an object of contempt for the Imagawa clan. And living with such pride in her secluded quarters, she despised the retainers from Mikawa but showered her husband with all the devotion of her selfish, blind love. She was also older than Ieyasu. Considered within the limits of their shallow married life, Lady Tsukiyama saw Ieyasu as little more than a submissive youth who owed his existence to the Imagawa.
After giving birth in the spring following their wedding, she had become even more selfish and unreasonable. His wife taught him perseverance every day.
"Oh, you're up. Are you feeling a little better?" Ieyasu looked at his wife and, as he spoke, was about to open the sliding doors. He thought that if his sick wife could see the beauty of the autumn colors and the autumn sky, her mood might brighten.
Lady Tsukiyama had left the sickroom and was sitting in the middle of the reception room with a frigid look on her livid face. She narrowed her eyebrows as she spoke. "Leave them closed."
She was not exactly a beauty, but, as might be expected of a woman brought up the privileged environment of a wealthy family, her complexion had a fine sheen. Beyond that, both her face and her fingertips were almost translucently white, perhaps because her first delivery. She held her hands neady folded on her lap.
"Sit down, my lord. There is something I'd like to ask you." As she spoke, her words and eyes were as cold as ashes. But Ieyasu did not act at all as a young husband would be expected to behave—such mellow-spirited handling of one's spouse was more appropriate for a mature man. Or perhaps he held a certain opinion of women, and he was looking objectively at the person whom he should have loved the most.
"What is it?" he asked, sitting down in front of her as she had requested. But the more obedient her husband was, the more unreasonable she became.
"There's something I'd like to ask you. Did you go out somewhere a moment ago? Alone, without attendants?" Her eyes filled with tears. The blood was rising to her face, still thin from childbirth. Ieyasu knew both the state of her health and her character, and he smiled at her as if he were humoring a baby.
"Just now? I was tired of reading, so I took a leisurely walk along the riverbank. You should try taking a walk there. The autumn colors and the chirping of the insects—it’s pleasant at the riverbank this time of year."
Lady Tsukiyama was not listening. She was staring at her husband, rebuking him for his lie. She sat rigidly straight, with an air of indifference, but without her usual self-involvement. "That's strange. If you went out for a walk to listen to insects and look the autumn colors, why would you go out into the middle of the river in a small boat, hiding from people for such a long time?"
"Aha…you knew."
“I may be confined indoors, but I know everything you do."
“Is that so?" Ieyasu forced a smile, but did not speak of his meeting with Jinshichi.
Although this woman had become his bride, Ieyasu was never able to believe that she was really his wife. If retainers or relatives of her adoptive father called on her, she would tell them everything, and she was always exchanging letters with Yoshimoto's household.
Ieyasu had to be far more careful of his wife's unintentional carelessness than of the eyes of Yoshimoto's spies.
"No, I got into that boat on the riverbank without thinking much about it, and tried to ply the oar with the flow of the water. I thought I could handle the boat, but when I out into the current, I couldn't do a thing." He laughed. "Just like a child. Where were you when you saw me?"
"You're lying. You weren't alone, were you?"
"Well, a servant ran after me later."
"No, no. There's no reason for you to have a secret meeting in a boat, with someone who appears to be a servant."
"Who in the world has told you such a thing?"
"Even though I'm stuck inside, there are loyal people who think of me. You're hiding a woman somewhere, aren't you? Or if that's not it, perhaps you've grown tired of me and planning to run away to Mikawa. There's a rumor going around that you've taken another woman as your wife in Okazaki. Why are you hiding that from me? I know that youonly married me out of fear of the Imagawa clan."
Just as her sobbing voice, driven by illness and distrust, finally found expression, Sakakibara Heishichi appeared at the door. "My lord, your horse is ready. It's almost time.
"Are you going out?" Before Ieyasu could respond, Lady Tsukiyama cut him off. You've been absent more and more at night recendy, so where in the world are you going now?"
"To the Palace." Paying her no heed, Ieyasu was beginning to stand up. But she was not satisfied with his brief explanation. Why was he going to the Palace so late? And was it going to take until midnight, like the other night? Who was going with him? She asked innumerable questions.
Sakakibara Heishichi was waiting for his master on the other side of the door, and although he was only a retainer, he was getting a little impatient with all of this. Ieyasu, however, cheerfully comforted his wife and finally took his leave. Lady Tsukiyama, unhecked by Ieyasu's admonition that she might catch cold again, came to the entrance and saw him off.
"Come back quickly," she begged, putting all her love and fidelity into these parting words.
Ieyasu walked in silence to the main entrance. But as he started out under the stars, cooled by the evening breeze, he tousled his horse's mane, and his mood changed completely—proof that youthful, animated blood coursed through his veins. "Heishichi, we're a little late, aren't we?" Ieyasu asked.
"No. There was no hour clearly indicated on the note, so how can we be late?"
"That's not it. Even though Sessai is old, he's never been late. It would pain me, as a young man and a hostage, to be late for an appointment when the senior retainers and Sessai were already there. Let's hurry," he said, spurring his horse. Besides a groom and three servants, Heishichi was the only retainer escorting Ieyasu. As Heishichi hurried along to keep up with the horse, he was moved to tears for his master, whose patient endurance with his wife and his submissive loyalty to the Palace—that is, to Imagawa Yoshimoto—must clearly cause him great anguish. As a retainer, it was his sworn duty to free his lord from his shackles. He must remove him from his subordinate position and restore him to his rightful place as lord of Mikawa. And to Heishichi, every day that went by without attaining his goal was another day of disloyalty.
He ran along, chewing his lip as he made his vow, his eyes moist with tears.
The castle moat came into view. When they crossed the bridge, there were no longer any shops or commoners' houses. Among the pines stood the white walls and imposing gates of the mansions of the Imagawa.
"Isn't that the lord of Mikawa? Lord Ieyasu!" Sessai called from the shadow of the pines.
The broad pine grove that meandered around the castle was a military assembly field during wartime, but its long, broad pathways were used as a riding ground in peacetime.
Ieyasu quickly dismounted, giving Sessai a respectful bow. "Thank you for taking the time to come here tonight, Your Reverence."
"These messages are always sudden. It certainly must be troublesome for you."
"Not at all." Sessai was alone. He walked along in old straw sandals the size of which matched the huge proportions of body. Ieyasu began to walk along with him and, as courtesy to his teacher, one step behind him, handing the reins of his horse to Heishichi.
Listening to his teacher, Ieyasu suddenly felt a gratitude to this man that he could not express in words. No one could argue that being a hostage in another province was anything but a misfortune, but when he thought about it, he realized that receiving an education from Sessai was more good fortune than bad.
It is difficult to find a good teacher. Had he stayed in Mikawa, he would never have had the opportunity to study under Sessai. So he would not have had the classical and military education he had now—or the training in Zen, which he regarded as the most precious thing he had learned from Sessai.
Why Sessai, a Zen monk, had entered the service of the lord of the Imagawa and become his military adviser was not understood in other provinces, and they considered it rather strange. Thus there were people who called Sessai a "military monk" or a "worldly monk," but if his lineage had been investigated, they would have discovered that Sessai was Yoshimoto's kinsman. Still, Yoshimoto was only Yoshimoto of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa. Sessai's fame, however, knew no boundaries; he was Sessai of all the universe.
But Sessai had used his talents for the Imagawa. As soon as he had seen the signs of defeat for the Imagawa in a war against the Hojo, the monk had helped Suruga to negotiate a peace treaty without disadvantage to Yoshimoto. And when he had arranged the marriage of Hojo Ujimasa to a daughter of Takeda Shingen, lord of Kai, the powerful province on their northern border, and the marriage of Yoshimoto's daughter with Shingen’s son, he had demonstrated great political skill by tying the three provinces into a alliance.
He was not the kind of monk who went about in splendid isolation with a staff and atattered hat. He was not a "pure" Zen monk. It could be said that he was a political monk, a military monk, or even an unmonkish monk. But whatever he was called, it did not affect his greatness.
Sessai spoke sparingly, but something he had told Ieyasu on the veranda of the Rizai Temple had stuck in Ieyasu's mind: "Hiding in a cave, roaming about alone like the wandering clouds and the flowing water—being a great monk is not in these things alone. A monk's mission changes with the times. In today's world, to think only of my own enlightenment and live like one who 'steals the tranquillity of the mountains and fields,' as if I despised the world, is a self-indulgent kind of Zen." They crossed the Chinese Bridge and passed through the northwestern gate. It was difficult to believe that they were inside the walls of a castle. It was as though the palace of the shogun had been transported here. Toward Atago and Kiyomizu, the majestic cone of Mount Fuji was darkening in the evening. The lamps were lit in the niches along the corridors that stretched as far as the eye could see. Women so lovely they could have been miitaken for court ladies passed by, cradling koto or carrying flasks of sake.
"Who's that in the garden?" Imagawa Yoshimoto held a fan in the shape of a ginkgo leaf over his slightly reddened face. He had crossed over the garden's red half-moon bridge. Even the pages who followed him wore elaborate clothes and swords.
One of the pages went back along the bridged corridor and hurried into the garden. Someone was screaming. It sounded like a woman's voice to Yoshimoto, so, thinking it strange, he had stopped.
"What's happened to the page?" Yoshimoto asked after a few minutes. "He hasn't come back. Iyo, you go."
Iyo went down into the garden and ran off. Although the place was called a garden, it was so large that it looked as if it led to the foothills of Mount Fuji. Leaning against the pillar where the bridged corridor angled away from the main walkway, Yoshimoto beat a rythm with his fan and sang to himself.