1 Monkey 1169
Otomo Michinaga requests the pleasure of your illustrious company on the twenty-eighth day of Doji at a moon-viewing party to celebrate the Honorable Otomo Hidetome's appointment to Alternate Undersecretary, third rank, in the Ministry of Ceremonies.
We had been invited to a party. Officially, we were escorting a young Doji, whose parents were unavailable. Unlike every other escort headed for this party, we would be allowed to take part in the festivities. Isawa-sama announced all of this to us with the fanfare of an Imperial Herald.
The invitation was printed on fancy paper and with expensive ink. Isawa-sama held it in his hands as though it were declaring his promotion to Alternate Undersecretary. Hiruma-san and Shinjo-san stared in an endearingly bewildered fashion. I was looking at it like a Death Sentence.
I have been to one other major party in my adult life. It marked the posting of a dozen new magistrates to Toshi Ranbo during Yoritomo Kumiko's shuffling of clan authorities. My parents were positively beaming with pride but I was awash in self-loathing and attempting to drown myself regularly in shouchu. My parents and grandparents were all there and we were all in our finest kimono. The leadership of my family and Clan praised us, as a group, for our willingness to travel far from home to represent the Mantis to other clans.
It was an unqualified disaster. I discovered where they were keeping the bottles of Friendly Traveler Sake and I don't think I spent more than two minutes without a full cup. I got into two altercations and I think I hit on Yoritomo Kumiko herself. The only reason I was not in a duel or in a white kimono the next day was that the next day was our day of departure. I spent the entire voyage hung over and ill, an experience that helped me stop turning to a bottle as the answer to all my woes. Since then, I have scrupulously avoided social occasions that were not street festivals.
Now our rescue of the Miya had gotten us all noticed and scored us an invitation to a swanky event. I could only imagine how this was going over with the Scorpion and the Crane in First Patrol.
Isawa-sama's first question, looking up and down my gi with a disapproving eye, was "Do you have something appropriate to wear?" I bit back half a dozen harsh responses and simply replied, "Hai." Shinjo-san and Hiruma-san also both said they had appropriate clothing, though I suspect Hiruma-san's idea of "appropriate" was going to diverge wildly from what an Otomo would think of. Then we all looked at Suzume-san. Suzume san, with her threadbare kimono and little canteen of water, so that she doesn't have to order drinks she can't afford. She bowed her head to Isawa-sama.
"I can remain here." The last time her voice was that thick with shame, it had been my fault. I saw Isawa-sama seem to shrug, as if to say oh well, guess you shouldn't have been born in a poor clan. Suzume-san had done a hell of a lot more fighting than our puffed-up patrol leader and she was not going to be left at home, not so long as I could do something about it.
"Shinjo-san, let's go." Isawa-sama looked at me with an incredulous expression that screamed he was not done with his new social strut, but I have a hard time slowing down once I've got an idea of what needs doing. I made my apologies and headed into the street. I couldn't tell you now why I invited Shinjo-san to accompany me, although I would come to regret it later.
I met Imada a few weeks ago at Iyashite Kudasai. The fact that I had befriended a silk merchant and was considering how to pitch him an offer of patronage now seemed terribly serendipitous. When I arrived at his warehouse, it was buzzing with activity, a good sign if ever there was one. One of his minions showed us to a waiting area and he came to see us before long, a wary expression on his face.
I know that expression of old – merchants are invariably nervous in the presence of samurai. Their very existence is viewed by most of the ruling class as a necessary evil and they've been subjected to every sort of nonsense down the years, all the way to being invited to "donate" their worldly wealth to the government, the implicit understanding being that such a donation is, in fact, compulsory on pain of death. When I told Imada that we needed five fine-quality kimono, he looked as though I had told him we were there to devour his first-born. When I made clear that he would be compensated for his efforts, as well as possibly gaining a samurai patron in the process, his slightly dishonest smile crept back in and we set to haggling.
I would like to say that I did my grandfather proud that day and got the deal of a lifetime. Whether because I was flustered at Suzume-san's distress or, more hopefully, because Imada is just that good a negotiator, I ended up leaving five ryo on his table, which he scooped up with a snare faster than a striking cobra. We discussed the particulars of colors and delivery, including just how I would buy five kimono for my comrades without, well, buying kimono for my comrades, and set for home. Shinjo-san proclaimed that, from that day forward, I would be buying drinks at Iyashite Kudasai.
We spent the next two days figuring out where it was we were supposed to go, both to pick up the princess and to get to the party. Isawa-sama, never an idiot, demanded to know where I had been. At first, I had to stall, because Suzume-san was there and would have been shamed to know that I had bought her a kimono. When I was, finally, able to explain myself, the shugenja just nodded thoughtfully – an expression he often uses when he doesn't understand something. He's not an idiot, just a fool.
I was practicing kenjutsu in the courtyard with Daidoji Naoto when the runner came to say we were getting a delivery. I hustled Hiruma-san and Shinjo-san into our rooms and we made ourselves marginally presentable. When the servant came to announce that we had a delivery, Hiruma-san and Suzume-san looked perplexed. I did my level best to seem so as well, but it's always hard to determine if lies done only with the face are truly effective.
Imada put on quite the show for us. He proclaimed the kimono to be gifts from the local populace out of gratitude for our many good works. First patrol came out to see what all the commotion was about and, for a moment, I thought Doji-san's head was going to explode. Then it occurred to me that he must be doubly incensed: Not only were we, and not first patrol, invited to a party, but, to add insult to injury, we were charged with the care of a young Doji who would also be in attendance. He must have been boiling…and now we were getting new kimono.
Bayushi-sama asked Isawa-sama about the purchases, and the poor Phoenix stammered out a denial of all knowledge that would not have convinced my rock-thick younger brother. I quickly changed the subject by being a little overeager in inspecting my purchases, but I think First Patrol put it down as low-class greed. It wouldn't take much for our paper-thin cover to be shredded but, by then, we would be off to the party and all would be well, I hoped.
On the day of the party, we packed our kimono in travel cases – we would be walking some two hours out of Toshi Ranbo and we had to keep the finery clean. All we needed was to have brand new fine silk kimono and show up to the party covered in road dust. We marched over to the Crane district and to the house we'd found earlier in the week. It was, like most of the estates in this district, large and ostentatious, but this one took the cake for its gate: pale wood with carved images of cranes in flight swirling around it. From the look of the wood, servants would have to spend hours every day keeping it free from bugs and real birds. We were admitted by a servant who considered us beneath him and asked to kindly wait.
So we waited…and waited…and waited some more. Two and a half hours we waited on a spoiled Crane. When her nursemaid came to inform us that she was ready, she also looked at us with disdain in her eyes. I've never met anyone who can look at you like the Crane can – a gaze that dismisses you without knowing the first thing about you, the mere fact that you are not in blue and white is enough to say that you are a lesser creature. We went outside to await Doji Teishi, who came out a full thirty minutes later.
She was about 10 years old and looked like nothing so much as a kokeshi doll. She gave the same dismissive look as her nanny, from whom she probably learned it, and I idly considered how many teeth she'd save in a fight with my nine-year old sister, Ayame. As she climbed into her palanquin with her nanny, I settled on four. With that happy image in my head, we set off for this Otomo lord's manor.
We had a minor dispute with the princess' guardsman, but we managed to resolve it (mostly) amicably, and, fortunes be praised, arrived at the party without incident. If the Crane servants had seemed snooty, the Otomo ones had mastered the art of being superior and solicitous all at once. When Isawa-sama presented our invitation to the party, they looked positively flummoxed, even as they directed us to rooms for cleaning up and changing. As we passed several of the ladies, I realized that Suzume-san had nothing to put up her hair with. I cursed silently for that lapse on my part but there was nothing to be done about it now. We got dressed up for our big night out. Shinjo-san had some idea of how to wear a court kimono, but Hiruma-san was near hopeless. Isawa-sama, naturally, was quite comfortable in noble attire. When I saw myself in the small steel mirror, I almost didn't recognize myself. Imada, risking revelation, had included a contrasting underkimono in my box, white to stand out against the sea green of the kimono and black of my hakama. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like a samurai and not like a peasant cop playing above his station. We all stepped into the hall, feeling very sure of ourselves.
Suzume-san joined us and, had her kimono not been in Sparrow brown, I might not have recognized her. One of the servants had, apparently, scrounged up some combs and hair pins and she looked more like a noble lady than I had ever seen before. I tried very hard not to stare. I am fairly sure I failed. Far more confident than we had any right to be, we walked out to the lake where the party was going on.
Daidoji-san had explained the premise of a moon-viewing party during our kenjutsu practice. Noble samurai would look at the moon and then compose a poem about it. I am a terrible poet and the thought of composing a poem to share with people who were capable of actually writing had terrified me at first. Then I realized Hiruma-san would be there and my fear subsided – pain is always better when it's shared. Before we could get to viewing the moon, however, there was a banquet and time for socializing. This part ought to have terrified me as well, but, at that moment, I felt positively invincible.
My invincibility took a blow when I saw my fellow Mantis. Yoritomo Satoshi-sama greeted me, as surprised that we had been invited as the servants were. If Yoritomo Haruko could have, I think she would have spit on me right then and there. We traded what passes in Mantis circles for witty repartee before she made her excuses and left. I turned to see Hiruma-san and Shinjo-san standing there agape. Alright, so I'd told a few tales about Haruko and her lack of anything that could be remotely called virtue, but did Hiruma-san have to stare quite so greedily after her? I told him that, after she had devoured him, I would not mourn at his funeral.
I persuaded Shinjo-san to introduce us to the Unicorn delegation. If there was one group of samurai who were greater social pariahs than a band of ruffian police, it would be the representatives of the clan that tried to overthrow the Emperor. I had been in place only a short time when Moto Chagatai showed up at the capital with an army and a demand for the Steel Throne. Details on how the Khan died were sketchy, and no one seems to know for certain which army struck the first blow, but the results were undeniable: the Lion chased the Unicorn all the way back to the Utaku plains before the handful of remaining Ide managed to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. Since then, the Unicorn have gotten the cold shoulder almost everywhere and I had to break up more than a few assaults on them in the Mantis district (we're understandably fanatical in our devotion to the dynasty that made us a Great Clan).
The Ambassador's first assistant, Ide Reigiko, was everything nice one had heard about ladies of the Imperial Court, without all the haughtiness one also hears about. We discussed the finer points of being wild barbarians with no sense of decorum. As the moon rose and I went to join my companions for poetry-writing, I felt like I could actually write poetry. I hit a few stumbling blocks on the road to this point, but had overcome them all. As I sat down with brush and paper, I felt something odd well up from inside myself and I got to writing. My calligraphy is…utilitarian, but I managed to get the right number of syllables, at least.
The ever-shifting waves
Twist the moonlight to and fro
I know how it feels
It's no Basho, and couldn't compare to the sublime beauty of the Crane's Poet Laureate, whose poem even made Hiruma-san pinch his nose in that "I'm a manly samurai who does not cry at poems" way. Everything was going well, so, of course, it all had to come apart.
Isawa-sama sat, rapturously listening to someone reading their poem. He was holding his calligraphy brush in the air. I watched as a large dollop of ink slid off the brush and rocketed, like a black bolt of doom, to the orange silk of his new kimono. It splashed there and immediately began to spread, creating an angry, tentacled storm cloud over the face of one of the phoenixes in the pattern. He looked at me and then followed my gaze to the black spot on his clothing. His face, never flush with color, went the pale white of chalk dust. A roar like the ocean filled my ears as I contemplated how bad this could get. Isawa-sama was our patrol leader and, more importantly, the only one of us with any court education. If he were to lose face here, especially in front of the fashion-conscious Crane, it would be a massive embarrassment for him, for the Miya who got us the invitation, hell, for the whole Kanshigumi. I looked up at the luminaries on the dais so far away: a small gaggle of Crane, the Otomo lord and his son, Seppun Denjiro – the damned head of the Kanshigumi! Isawa-sama could not, must not, lose face here and now. Damn him and his clumsy brush. I looked at him, his mouth trying to form words. Mine were faster.
"Blame me." What did you just say croaked a voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my mother.
"What?" Isawa-sama looked as though he was going to protest.
"Blame me. Yell at me and send me to fix the problem." Isawa-sama looked me as though I had gone mad. He then began to protest that he would be lying to protect himself. I took my brush and made it a lie no longer with a dab of ink inside the spot already there.
"BAKA!" He suddenly shouted. I bowed my head and dashed over to where the Phoenix were sitting. As I tried to be as obsequious as my pride would allow, a smooth voice took over – the Otomo were offering to fix the whole problem. They had noticed. They escorted Isawa-sama off to get a new kimono and I was invited to spend the rest of the party with the yojimbo in their waiting area.
Now was my chance to allow that voice in my head some truly world-class recriminations. Everything I had accomplished tonight was now rubbish. I would no more be able to speak to Ide Reigiko again than I would be able to toss back sake with the Emperor. I had made myself the scapegoat in a moment of acting before thinking and for what? For that sniveling Phoenix who spent so much time looking down his nose at people, he probably thought he was entitled to have someone else sacrifice their own honor to preserve his. I was a first-class fool and, once word of my failure reached home, probably to be added to a list of samurai whose careers were, one way or another, over.
The yojimbo had several bottles of sake out in the waiting area and they had been working on emptying them for some time before I arrived. I looked at the bottle not half a meter from my feet – the familiar kanji of Friendly Traveler staring back at me. My throat itched intolerably as my mother's voice called me a fool who had best consider asking for permission to take this shame to the grave before he dragged his family down with him. A booming voice dragged me from my reverie of self-pity.
"What will you drink, Mantis-san?" Smiling down at me was the largest Crab in the Empire. I learned later that he was Hida Kinjiro, the Crab Ambassador's yojimbo. His hands were the size of my head, but he just grinned at me. My mouth opened and closed twice before I spoke.
"Water, please."
We stayed overnight and were off late the next morning. Word of my horrid faux pas had reached even the yojimbo, and the Doji guards seemed somewhat sympathetic, though their pity made it sting all the worse. I was working myself back into another righteous wave of self-loathing when Hiruma-san, scouting ahead for our party, came dashing back.
"Bandits."
The Crane remained to protect their charge while our patrol went forward. We took an extra box to make ourselves look more appetizing to the highwaymen but, even when I picked out the seven of them, they did not move. That was it: it was one thing to be dismissed, repeatedly, by smug and superior samurai, but to be snubbed by scum? That was too much.
"What? Are we not good enough for you? Come out and meet your fate." I pulled my kama from my back and the bandits finally acknowledged we were there. Unfortunately for my clever plan, they did so with arrows. One pierced my arm, but I felt a fury overcome me that washed away my pain. I had suffered humiliations enough, now I felt a storm break. With a howl, I charged.
The fight was quick and merciless. When I downed the one in front of me, I hurled my kama, end over end, into another. Then my tonfa went flying into the one attacking Isawa-sama. Before I had a chance to regret a battle strategy that was rapidly disarming me, the bandits were dead or dying. Faced with an inability to bring seven bandits back to the city for charges, Isawa-sama ordered me to "dispatch them."
As I retrieved my kama and considered Isawa-sama's words, I felt a grim peace settle over me. This is where I was meant to be – covered in blood and surrounded by human trash. I realized that I took responsibility for what happened because, deep down, I knew that I would never survive in high society. I'm just not their sort of samurai. My life is blood and dirt and waves. It's getting drunk and getting loud and getting your face kicked in if you threaten those I have sworn to protect. If that's all my life was, then I had best get used to it.
(Suzume’s picture is Miyazaki Aoi as the title character in NHK’s Taiga Drama Atsuhime. Moonlit pond pic belongs to VickyTH on Flickr and is used under Creative Commons. Original here.)
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