"Tokichiro, isn't this a letter of refusal? It says that the Hachisuka clan has had a relationship with the Saito clan for generations, and to break with them now and support the Oda clan would be immoral. It's clearly a refusal. How do you read it?"
"Just as it is written." Tokichiro suddenly hung his head. "It troubles me to speak so bluntly after you've shown your friendship by coming after me this far. But if you have the least bit of consideration, please just do your duty at the castle while I'm gone and don't worry."
"If you can say that, you must have faith in yourself. Well then, take care."
"I'm obliged." Tokichiro ordered the samurai at his side to bring Inuchiyo's horse.
"No, don't stand on formality. Go on ahead."
As Tokichiro remounted, Inuchiyo's steed was led up as well. "Until we meet again." Once more waving from horseback, Tokichiro rode straight ahead.
Several unmarked red banners passed before Inuchiyo's eyes. Tokichiro turned and smiled at him. Red dragonflies peacefully flitted through the blue sky. Without another word, Inuchiyo turned his horse in the direction of Kiyosu Castle.
* * *
The moss was surprisingly thick. One might look into the spacious garden of the Hachisuka clan's mansion, so like the temple gardens that one is forbidden to enter, and wonder how many centuries old the green moss actually was. Thickets of bamboo stood in the shade of large rocks. It was a fall afternoon, and absolutely quiet.
It's survived, that's for sure, Hachisuka Koroku would reflect when he went into the garden. It reminded him of the link with his ancestors, who had lived in Hachisuka for generations. Is my generation, too, going to pass without establishing a respectable family name? On the other hand, he consoled himself, in such times as these, my ancestors might appreciate my holding on to what I have. But there was always one part of his character that refused to be persuaded.
On such peaceful days, when one gazed at this old house that was just like a castle, surrounded on all four sides by thick, luxuriant greenery, it was impossible to believe that the lord of this place was just the master of a band of ronin, leading several thousand wolflike warriors who haunted the backroads of an unsettled land. Working secretly in both Owari and Mino, Koroku had managed to secure a power base and enough influence to resist the will of Nobunaga.
Walking across the garden, Koroku suddenly turned toward the main house and called out, "Kameichi! Get ready and come out here."
Koroku's eldest son, Kameichi, was eleven years old. When he heard his father's voice he took two practice spears and went out into the garden.
"What were you doing?"
"Reading."
"If you're addicted to reading books, you're going to neglect the martial arts, are you?"
Kameichi averted his eyes. The boy was different from his powerfully built father, a his character leaned toward the intellectual and gentle. As far as the world could tell, Koroku had a worthy heir, but he was actually unhappy with his son. The more than two thousand ronin under his command were mostly uneducated, wild country warriors. If the clan's leader was not able to control them, the Hachisuka would vanish. It is a natural principle among wild animals that the weak become meals for the strong.
Every time Koroku looked at this son, who resembled him so little, he feared that this was the end of his family line, and deplored Kameichi's gentle nature and scholarly bent. Whenever he had even a little leisure, he would call the boy into the garden and try to pour some of his own fierce fighting spirit into him through the martial arts.
"Take a spear."
“Yes, sir.”
“Adopt the usual stance and strike without thinking of me as your father." Koroku leveled his own spear and charged toward his son as though he were an adult.
Kameichi's weak-spirited eyes shrank at his father's terrifying voice, and he retreated, Koroku's unmerciful spear struck Kameichi's shoulder hard. Kameichi screamed and dopped to the ground in a dead faint.
Running into the garden from the house, Koroku's wife, Matsunami, was beside herself. "Where did he hit you? Kameichi! Kameichi!" Obviously angered at her husband's rough treatment of her son, she called abruptly to the servants for water and medicine.
"You fool!" Koroku scolded her. "Why are you crying and consoling him? Kameichi is weakling because you've brought him up that way. He's not going to die. Get away from him!
The servants who had brought the water and medicine simply looked with blank expressions at Koroku's severe face, and kept their distance.
Matsunami wiped her tears. With the same handkerchief she pressed down on the blood that flowed from Kameichi's lip as she cradled him in her arms. He had either bitten his lip when his father had struck him, or it had been cut by a rock when he fell.
"It must hurt. Were you hit somewhere else?" She never quarrelled with her husband, regardless of how displeased or excited she felt. Like any woman of her day, her only weapons were her tears.
Kameichi finally regained consciousness. "I'm all right, Mother. It was nothing. Go away." Picking up his spear and gritting his teeth in pain, he got up again, for the first time demonstrating a manliness that must have delighted his father.
"Ready!" he shouted.
A smile softened his father's face. "Come at me with that kind of spirit," he encouraged him anew.
At that moment a retainer ran in through the gate. Turning to Koroku, he announced that a man claiming to be a messenger from Oda Nobunaga had just tied his horse at the main gate and said that he absolutely must speak with Koroku in private. What should be done with him, the retainer wanted to know. "And he's a little strange," he added. "He walked in casually through the gate alone, without any ceremony, looking around as though he were familiar with the place, saying things like, ‘Ah, it's just like home,' 'The turtledoves are cooing as always,' and 'That persimmon tree has gotten big.' Somehow it's hard to believe he's an Oda messenger."
Koroku cocked his head to one side. After a moment he asked, "What's his name?"
"Kinoshita Tokichiro."
"Ah!" Suddenly it was as though his doubts had melted. "Is that so? Now I understand. This must be the man who sent that message earlier. There's no need for me to meet him. Send him away!"
The retainer ran off to throw Tokichiro out.
"I have a request," said Matsunami. "Please excuse Kameichi from practice just for today. He still looks a little pale. And his lip is swollen."
"Hm. Well, take him along." Koroku left both the spear and his son with his wife. Don't spoil him too much. And don't give him a lot of books, thinking you're doing him favor."
Koroku walked toward the house, and was about to untie his sandals on the steppingstone, when the retainer ran up again.
"Master, this man is getting stranger and stranger. He refuses to go away. Not only that, but he walked through a side gate, went right into the stables, stopped a groom and a garden sweeper, and was talking with them as though he had known them for a long time."
"Throw him out. Why are you being so easy on someone coming around from the Oda clan?"
"No, I even went beyond what you told me, but when the men spilled out of the barracks and threatened to throw him over the mud wall, he asked me to talk to you one more time. He said that if I told you he was the Hiyoshi you met ten years ago at the Yahagi River, you would certainly remember. Then he stood there looking like you couldn't budge him with a lever."
"The Yahagi River?" Koroku couldn't remember at all.
"You don't remember?"
"No."
"Well then, this fellow must be really strange. He's just rambling on in desperation. Shall I rough him up good, slap his horse, and chase him back to Kiyosu?"
It was obvious the man was getting annoyed at being a messenger again and again. With a look that said, just wait and see, he turned and had run as far as the wooden gate when Koroku, who was standing on the steps to the house, called out and stopped him.
"Wait!"
"Yes, is there something else?"
"Wait a minute. You don't think it could be Monkey?"