at every move. As for his skin, apart from being covered with sweat, almost every part of him was painful to the touch, and there was an itching scab on his forehead.
At first he did not bother to think, to remember, to wonder what had brought him to this state. But pain is a great stimula-tor of thought. Pain will be recognized and acted upon. Pain has nothing to do with dying, and everything to do with being alive.
You might wish you were dead, but pain fights blessed oblivion and forces you into some sort of action.
The blinding ache in his head and the swelling on his skull had no associations whatsoever, but when he thought about the leg, touching it and encountering a grossly enlarged knee, something clicked. A cudgel. Many cudgels in a forest clearing.
Wada’s constables. The mad escape attempt on the horse and Wada with his sword raised high. Then nothing. Strange, he felt no sword wounds, smelled no blood.
But wait. Someone else had been there. Kumo!
With Kumo’s image came the rest. So it had been Kumo all along! And that raised the question: why was he still alive?
The fact that there was no satisfactory answer exercised him for days, though he did more than think. During those days he managed to explore his grave by touch, a very slow process because of his weakness and injuries. He learned that it was carved from solid rock, moist, and hard under his fingers, that the rock floor was gritty and full of sharp bits of gravel. This fact jarred his memory about the distant hammering, which seemed to last for hours at a time. A stonemason might make such sounds. Somewhere nearby people were chipping their way into the rock.
He was in one of Kumo’s silver mines. For no logical reason this discovery gave him new strength of will and curiosity.
He could not stand, so he was uncertain of the height of his grave, but by careful rolling and shifting, he established that he occupied a square slightly larger than he was, perhaps six feet by six. Its only opening was barred by thick wooden planks, a door of some sort that was only opened by the female goblin with his food and water. The rock walls felt rough and were bare.
He moved away from the vomit and excrement to a clean corner and took off most of his filthy clothes, using them to clean himself with. The shirt he kept on. All of this took the best part of a day and required concentration and willpower, but afterward he felt marginally better.
At some point he had begun to count the visits of his wardress, but he soon became confused. He guessed she had come ten times since he had first seen her. But how much time had passed before, he did not know. He wondered if someone was looking for him. Surely Mutobe would have sent out search parties to comb the island from one end to the other. But they would scarcely look for him underground.
In his blackest moments he thought of Tamako, his wife.
And of his baby son. Of old Seimei, who had been both father and mother to him. Of Tora, with his ready smile and his eagerness to be of service. Surely Tora would come to find him.
Dear heaven, where was this mine? Kumo’s secretary had said the mines were in the northern mountains. Not too far from Mano, then. Two weeks, perhaps more, had passed. On a small island like Sadoshima that meant he was hidden too well to be found. Only his jailers knew he was still alive.
He forced his mind away from the present and thought of the conspiracy. Okisada, Taira, Sakamoto, Nakatomi, and Kumo. As unlikely a group of rebels as he had ever encountered.
The prince, of course, had rebelled before, and Taira supported him. But Sakamoto, a fussy professor who spent his nights getting drunk in Haru’s restaurant, was hardly a useful ally. Nor was Nakatomi, who had neither the rank nor the education of the others, though he appeared greedy enough for the spoils.
At best, these two were minor players. Kumo was different.
Though he was without ties to the capital, he had enough wealth and local power to make their grandiose plot feasible.
He had been playing for control of Sadoshima, just as Mutobe had charged.
The plot failed when the prince had killed himself, yet the conspiracy had continued and was still continuing, or Akitada would not be here. The vengeful Genzo had provided Kumo with Akitada’s papers, proving that his suspicions of the convict Taketsuna had been correct. Treason was punishable by death in one of its more painful forms, and that explained why Kumo had ordered Akitada captured. But it explained nothing else.
When Akitada was not thinking about Kumo, he exercised his body. He began by stretching his limbs and moving all but his injured leg regularly and repeatedly. The slop he ate, unappetizing though it was, gradually brought back some strength so that the enervating trembling stopped and he was less light-headed.
The pain was still with him, but head and neck improved until he could sit up and lean against the rock. His right leg did not get better. He feared that he was permanently crippled, for however much he tried to bend his knee, he could not do it. Still he persisted, over and over again, gritting his teeth against the pain as he massaged the swollen flesh, and wondered why he bothered.
The day he pushed himself up against the wall and stood upright for the first time, the goblin caught him. He heard her at the plank door, but did not manage to get back down because of his stiff leg. When she saw him, she shrieked and disappeared, slamming the door behind her.
He took a deep breath and made himself slide along the rock toward the door. The right leg hurt abominably every time he put his weight on it, but he needed only a few steps. When his fingers touched wood, they were wet with sweat, and his eyes burned with perspiration. Still he pushed and pulled on the door. But it was locked. He felt all around and above it. The ceiling was barely a foot above his head at its highest point, but the door was much lower, so that he would have to bend to get out.
He was still leaning against the door when he heard them and saw the light again. In a panic, he tried to get away from the door too fast. Pain, hot like scalding water, shot up and down his right leg and he fell. The door, when it flew open, struck his foot, and Akitada writhed in agony.
They had no trouble at all with him after that. The three men made quick work of tying him up with a thick rope. The goblin held a burning torch for them, and later he was to remember the scene like something from a painting of hell, with himself the tortured soul about to be fed to the flames. Then the door clanked shut and he was alone again.
Things were immeasurably worse than before. His wrists were lashed together behind his back, and the rope continued to his ankles, which were also tied together. Not only did the rope restrict his circulation, but he was now in an arched position causing continuous pain to both his neck and injured leg.
He also could no longer feed himself. The goblin had left his soup and water within reach, but he was lying down and his hands were tied. Eventually ravenous hunger drove him to stretch enough so that he could lap like a dog, covering his face and beard with food, dirtying his water.
Why did they not just make an end of him? What was he being saved for?
After a while, he resorted again to taking his mind off his condition by concentrating on other things. He was not entirely successful in this, because the moment he cast his mind back to his family and pictured himself with his wife and child, or practicing stick-fighting with Tora, he would be seized by despair. Even the playing of an imaginary flute did not work any longer. Eventually he turned his thoughts again to the events in Sadoshima.
The trial must be long over by now, its outcome surely a guilty verdict without Akitada’s information. Had Toshito been taken to the capital or quickly executed in Mano? And what about his father? Mutobe would hardly remain governor.
Perhaps father and son had been taken off the island together.
That would account for the lack of interest in the disappearance of the convict Taketsuna. And even if Mutobe reported in the capital, help would not reach Akitada in time.
All his thoughts tended to the same dismal conclusion. More time passed. Nothing happened, except that now when the goblin brought his food and water she was accompanied by a short, burly man with the same long matted hair and a long curly beard. The man carried a cudgel and wore some sort of fur. Once Akitada tried to speak to them, begging to have the rope loosened a little, but he was ignored. They communicated only with each other in strange grunts and left again as soon as possible.
It came to him then that they must be Ezo. He had seen people of mixed Japanese and Ezo blood. But these were full-blooded Ezo. That accounted for their curly hair, their strange light eyes, the fur clothing, and their
