To Break the Demon Gate Read online

  From the stunned look on the poor man’s face, it was obvious he did. “Teiko knew the poem was a forgery? Why didn’t she—?”

  At that moment Kanemore’s expression bore a striking resemblance to Lord Sentaro’s earlier in the day.

  “You understand now. Teiko knew the poem was forged for the obvious reason she did it herself. She used a carefully chosen ink that matched the original for color but was of poorer quality. I don’t know how she acquired the proper seal, but I have no doubt she did so. It’s likely she started the original rumors as well, probably through her maids. We can confirm this, but I see no need.”

  Kanemore grasped for something, anything. “If Lord Sentaro thought the letter was genuine, that does explain why he didn’t destroy it, but it does not explain why he didn’t use it himself! Why didn’t he accuse Teiko openly?”

  “I have no doubt he meant to confront her in private if he’d had the chance, but in court? Why should he? If Takahito was Kiyoshi’s son then the Emperor’s heir was a Fujiwara after all, and Teiko, the Dowager Empress, would be under Sentaro’s thumb thanks to that letter. Until that day came, he could continue to champion Prince Norihira, but he would win no matter who took the throne, or so the fool thought. Teiko was not mistaken when she said Sentaro was searching for the letter—he wanted it back as much as she did.”

  Kanemore, warrior that he was, continued to fight a lost battle. “Rubbish! Why would Teiko go to such lengths to deliberately dishonor herself?”

  I met his gaze. “To make her son emperor.”

  Despite my sympathy for Kanemore, I had come too far alone. Now he was going to share my burden whether he liked it or not. I gave him the rest.

  “Consider this—so long as the Fujiwara preferred Prince Norihira, Takahito’s position remained uncertain. Would the Teiko you knew resign herself to that if there were an alternative? Any alternative?”

  Kanemore looked grim. “No. She would not.”

  “Just so. Your sister gave Sentaro possession of the letter solely to show that he could have altered it. Then she likewise arranged for the letter to disappear and for us to find it again. In hindsight I realize it had all been a little too easy, though not so easy as to arouse immediate suspicion. Those shikigami might very well have killed me if I’d been alone, but Teiko sent you to make certain that did not happen. Her attention to detail was really astounding.”

  Kanemore tried again. “But . . . if this was her plan, then it worked perfectly! Lord Sentaro was humiliated before the Emperor, the Chancellor, the entire Court! His power is diminished! She didn’t have to kill herself.”

  I almost laughed again. “Humiliated? Diminished? Why should Teiko risk so much and settle for so little? With the responsibility for her death laid solely at his feet, Lord Sentaro’s power at Court has been broken. The entire Fujiwara clan has taken a blow that will be a long time healing. No one will dare openly oppose Prince Takahito’s claim to the throne now or speak ill of your sister in or out of the Imperial Presence. It was Teiko’s game, Kanemore-san. She chose the stakes.”

  Kanemore finally accepted defeat. “Even the shikigami . . . Goji-san, I swear I did not know.”

  “I believe you. Teiko understood full well what would have happened if she’d confided in either of us. Yet we can both take comfort in this much—we did not fail your sister. We both performed exactly as she hoped.”

  Kanemore was silent for a time. When he spoke again he looked at me intently. “I thought my sister’s payment was in gold. I was wrong. She paid in revenge.”

  I grunted. “Lord Sentaro? That was . . . satisfying, I admit, but I’d compose a poem praising the beauty of the man’s hindquarters and recite it in front of the entire Court tomorrow if that would bring your sister back.”

  He managed a brief smile then, but his expression quickly turned serious again. “Not Sentaro. I mean you could have simply ignored Teiko’s final poem, and her death would have been for nothing and my nephew’s ruin complete and final. She offered this to you.”

  I smiled. “She knew . . . well, say in all fairness that she left the choice to me. Was that a choice at all, Kanemore-san?”

  He didn’t answer, but then I didn’t think there was an answer. I stood gazing out at the moon’s reflection. The charming ghosts were in their procession. I think my neck was extended at the proper angle. The rest, so far as I knew or cared, was up to Kanemore.

  I felt his hand on my shoulder; I’m not sure if that was intended to reassure me or steady himself.

  “You must drink with me, Goji-san,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

  “I must drink,” I said. “With or without you.”

  Part Two

  A pyre, once it burns

  On the barren Plain of Smoke

  Can never be doused.

  The mountain gives up no one.

  Yet may a good name return?

  It was four months, through the end of fall and all through that winter before I finally managed to crawl out of the saké haze I’d hidden myself in, mostly due to the fact that the last of Teiko’s gold was exhausted.

  On the evening of the third day of the fourth month, I received a letter containing a single poem, written in a delicate, flowing hand. I read the poem through for the third time, but even one so unused to the intricacies of courtly communication as I could not mistake its meaning. Mount Toribe and the plain at its eastern foot were the traditional burial grounds of the capital, the Plain of Smoke: the place where all funeral pyres were lit. Not my father’s, however; he had been executed in Mutsu province and burned there. Still, his good name and my future had both gone up in smoke that day, almost literally, so the metaphor was apt.

  “Tamahara-san, who brought this letter?”

  The Widow Tamahara paused in her sweeping of the veranda outside my rooms, and poked through her iron-gray hair to scratch a spot that was apparently troubling her. “I’m not sure, Lord Yamada. Some street child,” she said. “No, wait, I think it was Nidai. Yes, I’m certain. He wears that tattered red sash.”

  “I think I’ve seen that one before. I gather he didn’t wait for a reply?”

  She grunted. “Not even so much as a ‘Ohayo, Tamahara-san’ before he was away. No manners, but then what would one expect?”

  What indeed?

  “Thank you, Tamahara-san,” I said.

  The old woman hesitated. “Lord Yamada . . . ”

  “The rent, yes? I have not forgotten. Soon, I promise.”

  The Widow Tamahara just looked glum. “Very well.”

  I wasn’t certain how much longer the Widow Tamahara’s indulgence would last, even for one of my alleged station. She had a certain respect for even such minor and landless nobility as myself, but there were limits to all things, and the Widow Tamahara’s patience was a leaky boat even on the calmest of seas.

  So, someone had just dangled something they thought I wanted right under my nose. The only obvious reason was they, whoever “they” might be, wanted something from me in return. What that something might be rather depended on whether the hints I had just been offered were intended as inducement or bait, and as things stood, I had no way of knowing which.

  I had enemies and more than a few, but only a few in a position to attempt anything and fewer still who would bother with subtlety if they meant to do harm. Furthermore, the text of the poem was written entirely in flowing kana script with no Chinese characters, suggesting the author was a woman. While it was true that more than one lady of my acquaintance might have had reason to be annoyed with me, I could think of none who had cause to want my head on a spear.

  The messenger, such that he was, had not waited for a reply. Clearly, this meant the author of the poem intended to choose the time and place to contact me again. That only left the choice of whether I wanted to wait. I decided against it.

  I returned to my rooms long enough to fetch a long dagger and tuck it into my sash. While I was perfectly within my rights to bear weapons
on the streets of the capital, such things were considered a little ungentlemanly. The long tachi especially was really a weapon of war and tended to attract attention. I wore it only when the situation dictated it would be foolish not to do so.

  The Widow Tamahara’s establishment was in the area near the Gion Shrine, between Shijo-dori and Sanjo-dori; the foot traffic on these streets was good for business, she said. They were also good for losing one’s self in the mass of people, if one wished it so or not. Even though the boy called Nidai tended to haunt the area, finding him might take considerable time. Still, without a current mission or patronage or the means for more saké, it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do.

  I was, I confess, curious.

  Since I had no idea where to begin, I let myself wander where my feet took me, swept along on the current of people. I passed the magnificent shrine itself as I followed Shijo toward the river, while the crowds thinned but never quite abated. Just past the last of the shrine outbuildings, an asobi had set up to perform in the shade of a maple. A small crowd had gathered to watch the lady dance, and I, noting no one I recognized as Nidai in that crowd, started to move on.

  I’m not certain what made me hesitate. Asobi were common enough in the capital, dancing and singing for their livelihoods and, more likely than not, providing more personal entertainments as well; because there were many unattached young men of means associated with the Imperial Court, the asobi were in great demand.

  Yet there was something odd about this dancer. Nothing immediately obvious—she was charming and quite skilled. I judged her age at around thirty, perhaps a little less. Her gestures and movements were precise, flowing, and graceful; when the dance required that she spin her fans in the air, she did both at once in perfect precision as nimbly as a juggler, catching both as if there had never been any question of the matter. It occurred to me that I had never seen a better execution of this particular dance since my brief time at Court.

  Not even at Court, I thought after some reflection.

  In a moment or two, I realized what had caught my attention, aside from the woman’s beauty and skill; it was the asobi’s hair. She wore it long, as nearly all women did when their circumstances permitted, and it reached just past her knees. There was nothing unusual about that, but the way she had dressed it was; she had confined her hair in a sort of loose ponytail tied at the middle of her back with a bright blue ribbon that matched her pink and blue kimono. What was unusual was the second blue ribbon, tied much closer to the nape of her neck. I don’t think I had ever seen that done before. Perhaps it was a new style, but such things were no real concern of mine, and certainly no reason to delay my search.

  In recognition of the asobi’s skill, I would have contributed if I had any means to do so. I did not and had no reason to remain. I moved on past the shrine and down to the river, but there was no sign of the boy. When I returned to the Widow Tamahara’s establishment, there was another message waiting for me, but this time the sender had not bothered to conceal his identity:

  The stung badger retreats

  to his new burrow to heal.

  Struck once by the wasp,

  He will remember the nest.

  Even wasps must sleep sometime.

  —Kenji

  I sighed and lay the scroll aside. While I had to admire the attempt, I sincerely prayed that Kenji’s efforts at refinement didn’t take; the idea of getting poetry from him on a regular basis was too terrible to contemplate. Besides, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was talking about. I idly wondered if Kenji himself did, but there was only one way to find out, and since the hunt for Nidai had proved fruitless, there was no reason not to change targets. Not that I believed that finding Kenji would be difficult; the man’s habits were more fixed than a watchman’s.

  Sure enough, one more brisk walk brought me to the Demon Gate at the northeast corner of the city, and there was the priest Kenji in his mendicant aspect, sitting beside the gate with a broad straw boshi covering his head and face, his begging bowl resting in front of him. Around fifty, he had one of those young-old faces that seemed infinitely adaptable to a man’s intentions. Kenji could look pious or lecherous as the mood took him, and one would think that either expression was perfectly normal for him.

  “They say that evil spirits enter the city by this gate,” I said. “Clearly this is true.”

  Kenji didn’t look up. “And friendly greeting to you as well, Yamada-san. Now sit down and listen for a change.”

  Kenji had a tone of voice that he used rarely, but I’d learned to pay attention. It meant he was serious. I found a relatively clean spot beside the gate and in the near vicinity of Kenji. The people coming in and out of the northeast gate continued to do so, and no one paid us the least attention.

  “Now,” I said, “what’s this about a badger avoiding wasps? Sounds like proper advice, but I’m not a badger.”

  “It’s proper advice for anyone, but of course you’re not the badger. The badger is Lord Sentaro,” Kenji said, though his eyes were on the people passing through the gate.

  “I think you’re marking a trail, but I can’t seem to find it. What has this to do with Lord Sentaro?”

  Kenji sighed, and when he spoke again he sounded more as if he was talking to himself than to me. “It’s possible? He hasn’t heard? I didn’t think he’d been drunk that long.”

  “As the mountain complains about the depth of the sea . . . I’ve had my fill of poetry for the moment. Speak plainly.”

  “The edict of banishment against Lord Sentaro has been lifted.”

  I just sat there for many long moments. Kenji seemed in no hurry to resume the conversation, and I was glad of that. It seemed that my capacity for surprise would never cease to be tested.

  “Lord Sentaro is coming back to the Imperial Court? That’s not possible.” At least, I hoped it wasn’t, nor did I understand how it could be so. Even a man like Lord Sentaro didn’t suffer the suspicion of the death of a princess and resume his office as if nothing had happened. Such a blow could force even an Emperor to retire.

  “I never said it was possible. I never said he was coming back to Court,” Kenji pointed out. “I said the Edict of Exile had been lifted. There were, of course, conditions. A few days ago Lord Sentaro took the tonsure at Mount Hiea.”

  Which at least explained how Kenji had been privy to this information; doubtless he had several acquaintances within the monastic community, where such news would travel quickly.

  “Lord Sentaro? A simple monk? This is priceless.”

  “Again you assume too much. Is your brain pickled?” Kenji sighed. “Lord Sentaro? A monk? Hardly. Yamada-san, he’s been named Hojo of Enryaku-ji, as the former holder of that position felt the sudden need to retire to a more austere monastery somewhere in the vicinity of Edo. Need I spell out the implications?”

  He did not, and I was feeling a chill to the depths of my being. The temple complex on Mount Hiei had first been established by order of the Emperor Kanmu, to protect the northeast entrance to his new capital from evil spirits. While the founding priest, Saicho of the Tendai Sect, had been a humble and devout man, Enryaku-ji had soon grown far beyond his original tenets. Not only was the temple deeply involved in Imperial affairs, these days it had its own private army of warrior monks, easily outnumbering the guards of the Imperial household. Lord Sentaro might not be returning to the Imperial Court directly, but as Chief Priest of the temple, he would have the power base he needed to work behind the scenes. If, in fact, that was his intention.

  I had thought I was done with Lord Sentaro. Now I wondered if he was done with me. “This is very disturbing news.” I went on to tell Kenji about the poem that had arrived that same day.

  Kenji looked thoughtful. “Lord Sentaro?”

  “It was written by a woman,” I said.

  He dismissed that. “It may well have been,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t choose the words, and if you think be
ing Hojo of Enryaku-ji will mean that he has no women about him, you’re more simple than I think you. And that’s not even speaking of the nuns housed there.”

  I smiled then. “If Lord Sentaro’s renunciation of the world actually meant anything, he would not do so, but we both know that’s probably not the case. Apparently his contrition must have appeared sincere, at least enough to satisfy His Majesty.”

  Kenji just sighed. “You know that, whatever Lord Sentaro really intends, taking the tonsure was an entirely appropriate action on his part, considering the cloud of suspicion hanging over him. I imagine the Emperor would have been in a very delicate position in regard to this, had he refused.”

  I considered this and realized Kenji was probably right. Go-Reizei would not be the first Emperor forced by the Fujiwara into an early retirement, should he make such a political missstep. The form of Lord Sentaro’s contrition was correct, and in the Imperial Court, form was paramount.

  “So Lord Sentaro gives up little and gains much,” I said, “including release from exile and a base of power. I’ll give the man his due: this was well played. Still . . . ”

  “Still what?”

  “Assuming that the earlier poem did indeed come from the former Lord Sentaro, what are his intentions? He must know that there is no way my fortunes could be restored in this manner, and I’d hardly be fool enough to believe so. As for my father’s good name, well, that moment has passed as well. As bait goes, that was rather weak.”

  “So you’d like to believe.”

  I shrugged. “All right then, I admit it—I’m interested, but it’s impossible. Even if there were some way to prove the charges against my father were false, his lands have all been given away to Court favorites or awarded as prizes to provincial lords. Even the Emperor could not restore them now. Whoever sent the poem was hinting at what cannot be.”