His voice rose in both pitch and volume; he dominated the room, holding the other men motionless as he paced the platform. “Are we not sick unto death of the repression and humiliation that our oppressors have perpetrated upon us? Have our fathers and grandfathers not been stripped of their ancestral fiefs and moved to lesser ones at the ends of the earth? Have they not suffered the indignities of alternate attendance in Edo and imprisonment on their estates? Are they not unable to come and go freely?”
An angry rumble passed through the men. Backs straightened; fists clenched.
“Must we continue to let the Tokugawas drain our wealth away by forcing us to subsidize the maintenance of their castles, their roads, their waterworks?” Lord Niu shouted, eyes blazing. “Why should we finance the government while the shogun wastes his own money on his harem of boy actors and peasants? Why should we let him dictate how we should furnish our homes, and even how we should dress? Should we endure his spying upon us? Or the abominable harassment by his inspectors when we travel on the Tōkaido?”
The rumble became a roar. “We won’t stand for it any longer!” someone shouted. Other men took up the cry, quieting only when Lord Niu raised his voice over theirs.
“Tokugawa Tsunayoshi is a weak fool who lets his army and his chamberlain, the despicable Yanagisawa, run the government while he sports with the wives and daughters of his ministers. And with his enforced peace, he would drag us down to his own level of moral depravity. Do we let him deprive us of our rightful occupation-that of serving our honor by making war?”
“No! No! Down with the Tokugawas!”
Sano had to choke back a gasp of surprise. He found himself trembling with excitement. The meeting’s isolated setting, the secretive arrival of the participants, and Lord Niu’s incendiary speech could mean only one thing. The risky plan constituted a plot against the Tokugawa government. Treason. For which Lord Niu, if caught, would be executed and disgraced more certainly than if convicted for the murder of a samurai child. And for which his family would share his punishment. Now Sano wondered whether Yukiko had died not because she’d witnessed the murder, but because she’d discovered the plot. And what about Noriyoshi? Had he learned of it too?
“Do we let Tsunayoshi rob us of our samurai heritage and values as well, by turning us into simpering bureaucrats who protect dogs, or vulgar oafs who brawl in the streets for want of anything better to do?” Lord Niu asked.
“No!” all twenty voices shouted in unison.
“Then we must act without delay. We must fight as we were born to do. We will restore to our names the honor and glory that has been denied them for too long!”
Now that he’d recovered from his initial shock, Sano sensed an underlying false note in Lord Niu’s performance. His pacing, his hand gestures, and the anger in his voice and expression seemed overly theatrical. Lord Niu was playing to his audience as an actor would, exploiting their legitimate anger toward the Tokugawas. Did he really care about the shogun’s mistreatment of his or the other daimyo clans?
But the men responded with great enthusiasm to his theatrics. “Yes! Yes!” The floor shuddered as they leaped to their feet. Metal rasped as they unsheathed their swords and held them high.
Lord Niu reached behind the painted screen. He held two objects high: an open scroll half covered with characters, and a writing brush. “Then it is time to pledge our oath,” he announced.
Kneeling, he laid the scroll and brush on the platform. He drew his dagger. A hush fell over the room as he gashed his palm. Dipping the brush into his blood, he wrote the characters of his name on the scroll below the text. His face betrayed no sign of the pain he must have felt, but some of the other young men winced. One by one, they mounted the platform, cut their palms, added their signatures to the scroll, and returned to their places.
Sano’s own palms tingled as he watched. These men, although foolhardy, were serious. A blood oath was a solemn one. He would have given anything to know what the text on the scroll said.
When they finished, Lord Niu stood. “A poem to commemorate this occasion,” he announced, a sly smile lifting the corner of his mouth. Gesturing with the rolled scroll, he recited:
“The sun sets over the plain-”
Good luck as the New Year approaches.”
The poem was not familiar to Sano, nor did it seem a very good one. And its significance escaped him. But the conspirators greeted it with wild cheers and laughter that broke the tension which had accompanied their oath. Then Lord Niu began shouting more epithets against the Tokugawas, inciting his men to greater fury. The house thundered with their shouts.
“Soon we will show our fathers that we are true samurai!” Lord Niu cried. “We will make them proud to call us their sons!”
For the first time, Sano heard real passion behind Lord Niu’s words. Now he understood that while the other young men sought power and glory for their generation, Lord Niu was doing this for his father. The knowledge gave Sano an unexpected and unwilling sense of identification with Lord Niu. Filial duty compelled them both. Except in Lord Niu, some warped form of love drove him to expose the daimyo to the dubious benefits and certain dangers of having a traitor in the family. But Sano began to despair of learning the details of the plot. Even if he didn’t need them to complete his case against Lord Niu, duty required that he report them to the authorities. He looked over his shoulder for the guards. How long could he stay without getting caught?
A sudden drop in the noise level inside recalled his attention to the window. He brought his eye to the hole again. He saw the men turn toward a guard who had entered the room.
Lord Niu said, “What is it?” Breathless from his efforts, he wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
The guard bowed. “I am sorry to interrupt you, master, but I must warn you that there is a trespasser on the grounds. We almost caught him in the west woods, but he got away.”
First Sano froze. Then he felt an instinctive desire to flee. Only his compelling need to hear more kept him where he was.
“A spy!” a Hosokawa man gasped.
The others let loose a volley of panicky questions and laments. “Oh, no! Are we discovered? Who betrayed us? What will we do now?” They seemed so young, so excitable, and so easily frightened that Sano wondered how they would manage to carry out whatever plan they’d concocted.
Lord Niu strode to the front of his platform. He alone showed no fear. “Fools!” he said with a sardonic laugh. “Why do you waste time talking and worrying? Go out and kill him, and he won’t trouble us any longer.”
“He’s right! Come on!” Swords drawn, the men stampeded from the room.
“And don’t just look in the west woods-search the whole estate,” Lord Niu called after them. He remained on his platform, arms folded, face stern and immobile.
Sano didn’t wait for the bloodthirsty horde to spill out of the shinden. Turning, he ran into the woods, making straight for the wall. He scaled it and jumped into the darkness and safety that lay outside.