Shike - Robert J. Shea (best finance books of all time .TXT) 📗
- Author: Robert J. Shea
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Towards the end of the Year of the Horse, the prince’s Chinese secretary told her that Horigawa had finally made contact with Chia Ssu-tao. Because of the chief councillor’s passion for sponsoring cricket fights, Horigawa had scoured the ten major marketplaces of Linan and all the lesser ones till he found a truly formidable fighting cricket, for which he paid one hundred bolts of silk. He sent the cricket to the great minister in an ivory cage, with the compliments of one who served the Emperor of Ge-pen in the same capacity that Chia served the Sung Emperor. It was an exaggeration, but there was no way Chia Ssu-tao could discover that. Chia sent for Horigawa. What they had discussed, precisely, the secretary had no idea.
Horigawa was invited to Chia Ssu-tao’s celebration ushering in the Year of the Sheep. The chief councillor entertained his guests on Linan’s great Western Lake, chartering a fleet of flower-bedecked pleasure boats, crewed by women and heavily laden with casks of spiced rice wine. Horigawa was among the most favoured guests, those who accompanied Chia Ssu-tao himself on the dragon barge that led the fleet. Not long after this, Horigawa sent a sealed dispatch on a trading junk to Takashi no Sogamori.
Taniko passed the days writing in her pillow book, embroidering, and playing mah-jongg with a Chinese maid who taught her the game. The elderly secretary taught her the art of painting in the Chinese manner. She compared languages with him, both of them fascinated by the way Taniko’s language was written in Chinese characters, but with the characters standing for completely different words. The old man explained that China was known as the Central Kingdom because all the other nations of the earth must come to China to learn.
One day in early spring of the Year of the Sheep, Horigawa came to her. His small, squarish face was alight with pleasure and triumph.
“I have come to advise my honoured wife to prepare herself for a long and arduous journey by land. We leave in three days’ time.”
“Where are we going?” Taniko asked coldly.
“West.” Horigawa waved expansively in that direction.
“There is war in the west.”
“Yes. Are you afraid?” He watched her keenly. Perhaps he hoped that the long months of suspense and confinement would have broken her down.
“I am not,” Taniko said firmly-. “Wherever we are going, if you are not frightened, I can be quite certain I will not be frightened.” “You have more to fear than I do.”
Once again Taniko carefully packed away her silks, jewels, combs and the other belongings she had brought with her from Heian Kyo. She had not yet worn any of her finery.
The day before they were to leave she sought out the old secretary to say goodbye. He prostrated himself before her and looked up with tears in his eyes.
Taniko smiled. “I hardly deserve such an outpouring of feelings. Perhaps if you knew me better you would weep less at this parting.”
He shook his head. “Escape, honoured lady. Run away. Do not go with the prince.”
“How can I escape? Where could I go?”
“You are being taken to your destruction. To think that I should advise a wife to defy her husband-it is a great wrong I do. But the evil he contemplates is greater.”
He would say nothing more. She passed that day and night in dread. Of course, she had always known Horigawa had some cruelty in store for her, though the uneventful voyage and the quiet months in Linan had lulled her into a feeling of safety. There was danger in the west.
How could she run away from Horigawa in an utterly strange land? Could she find her way to Jebu? How would she eat? Where would she sleep? She would either be returned to Horigawa or fall into the hands of criminals. She could only escape if she. had help. She decided to ask the secretary, since he had warned her, to help her get away.
After a sleepless night she dressed quickly. As she finished, Horigawa swept into the room.
“We depart at once.”
“I-I am not ready.”
“That is unfortunate. I’m sorry, but we leave in any case.” The little man beckoned, and two large Chinese serving-women came into the room.
“I am not going with you.”
“I suspected as much. Rumour of our destination has somehow reached you. One can appreciate at such times the usefulness of the Chinese custom of binding women’s feet.”
“I am sure the idea of torturing and deforming women appeals to you.”
Horigawa nodded to the two large women. With blank faces they stepped forward and reached for Taniko. She remembered her samurai training. She stepped towards the maid on her left, tripped her and sent her sprawling on her back. The other big woman threw her arms around Taniko from behind. Taniko drove her elbow into the woman’s stomach.
Horigawa tried to block the doorway, but Taniko thrust the heel of her hand into his chin. He fell back against the wall of the corridor.
She ran out of the room and into the arms of a steel-helmeted guard with a three-pointed sword swinging from his broad belt. He picked her up off her feet in a bear hug and held her impassively while she kicked against his massive body.
“Take her to the carriage and lock her in,” said Horigawa, panting as he picked himself up off the floor with the help of one of the maids. He bared his black-dyed teeth at Taniko. “I might say I will make things worse for you, to repay you for this. But your fate cannot be made any worse.”
They set out that morning escorted by a clanking company of soldiers carrying long spears and shields painted with fire-breathing dragons’ heads. The prince rode in solitary splendour in a vermilion and gold official state carriage of the Sung Emperor’s Court, drawn by a pure white ox. His entourage followed in less ornate vehicles, their belongings packed on the roofs of the carriages. Eive big carts, each pulled by three oxen, carried bales of silk, boxes of silver bars and other valuables.
Taniko rode with three Chinese maids, the two she had knocked down and another, grim-looking woman taller and broader than either of the others. All were strangers to her. When she tried to speak to them, they silently looked away.
The caravan rode north on the Imperial Way, passing canals and bridges and vast marketplaces. Around the market squares stood tall buildings, some as high as five storeys, a necessity in this overcrowded city. They passed through a fortified gateway and crossed a wide moat, and Taniko looked back at walls so thick, chariots could be driven along their tops.
As they travelled slowly westwards, they passed flooded rice paddies, whose green shoots were just beginning to break through the water’s surface, alternating with woodlands full of leafy trees. At night they stayed at inns, places that intrigued Taniko. People paid in silk, silver coins or the paper money issued by the Emperor, and were given food and sleeping quarters for the night. How much easier it would make travelling in her own country if such establishments existed there.
She decided that whatever was to happen to her, she must meet it looking her best. Each morning she selected a set of her finest robes and dressed in them, layer on layer, folded back one on the other at throat, sleeves and skirt to show their variegated edges. She combed and arranged her hair and adorned it with jewelled combs and pins. She powdered her face and painted her lips, carefully making her mouth, her worst feature in her opinion, look smaller than it actually was. Horigawa had taken none-of the maids from their homeland on this journey, but she was able to teach the Chinese women to help her dress in the style of a great lady of Heian Kyo.
They began to pass long lines of refugees, bundles on their heads, trudging east along either side of the road. Horigawa was heading directly for the war zone. Taniko refused to give in to fear, knowing that was just what Horigawa wanted. She remembered Jebu’s telling her that once she made direct contact with the Self, she would no longer feel fear. “There will be no necessity for it,” was the way he put it. She tried to reach the Self by invoking Amida Buddha. Perhaps Amida was the Self.
They encountered a Chinese army, its yellow and black silk tents dotting the spring-green hills, its general a tall figure in gilded armour mounted on a splendid black charger. Horigawa showed the general a scroll which he took from a carved ivory case.
They went on, but now the Chinese guards who had accompanied them from Linan were no longer with them. They had no protection whatever. This was madness, Taniko thought. Yet she knew Horigawa would never risk his person unnecessarily.
Drowsing as their carriage bumped westwards, Taniko was awakened by the screams of the Chinese women. “Mongols!”
She looked up. Pale with fear, the maids were staring out the carriage window. Taniko pushed in among them.
They were on a road running through green young wheat fields. Nearby were the burnt ruins of a cluster of houses. In the distance she could see the walls and pagoda towers of a city above which hung a cloud of grey smoke. And across the empty fields, riders were galloping towards them. Horigawa stepped down from his carriage and stood waiting for them.
They skidded to a stop with shrill cries. Their faces were very broad and a dark brown. Eor the first time Taniko was seeing Jebu’s people. They looked nothing like him. Then she noticed that two of them had moustaches the exact shade of red of Jebu’s hair. That was a shock to her, making real something she had only half believed, as if a kami should suddenly appear to her in the living flesh.
Horigawa addressed the riders in Chinese and showed them something. He was too far away for Taniko to hear what he was saying. She hoped they would ride him down and impale him with their lances. She would be content to die, if she could first see that.
Several of the warriors dismounted and began to walk down the line of carriages, looking in the windows. Would they really smell as bad as the Chinese claimed?
A round face with a long black moustache, surrounded by a felt headpiece, thrust itself in at the window. The Mongol’s eyes widened, and he exclaimed in his harsh tongue. Pulling the rear door of the carriage open, he seized the maid nearest him by the arm and yanked her out of the carriage. It was the biggest of the women. The Mongol was tall, but she was a bit taller.
The bowlegged warrior pulled the stout, pleading woman away from the road and into the knee-high green wheat. He threw her down on her back as his comrades, laughing and calling to each other, rode over and climbed down from their ponies. Taniko could hear Horigawa call out a protest, but the Mongols ignored him. Chattering gleefully, they tore the screaming woman’s robes from her body. Two of them pulled her legs apart. The one who had taken her from the carriage threw himself upon her.
Her stomach churning,
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