They mounted their horses and rode as far as the crossroads in the castle town.
“Where are you off to today, Hideyoshi?' Inuchiyo asked.
“I'm going to Kyoto, as usual.'
Well, we'll separate here then. We still have to return to our lodgings and make our rations for the journey.'
“I'd like to look in on Lord Katsutoyo,' Hideyoshi said, 'to see if he's improved.'
Inuchiyo, Kanamori, and Fuwa returned to Kitanosho on the tenth day of the same month, and immediately reported to Katsuie. Katsuie was overjoyed that his plan to establih a pretense of peace had been carried out more smoothly than he had anticipated.
Soon thereafter Katsuie held a secret meeting with his most trusted retainers and told
them, 'We'll keep the peace through the winter. As soon as the snows melt, we'll butcher our old enemy with a single blow.'
As soon as Katsuie had completed the first stage of his strategy by making peace with Hideyoshi, he dispatched another envoy, this time to Tokugawa Ieyasu. That was at the end of the Eleventh Month.
For the last half year—since the Sixth Month—Ieyasu had been absent from the center of activity. After the Honno Temple incident, the entire nation's attention had been focused on filling the void that had been created when the center had so suddenly collapsed. During that time, when no one had had a moment to look anywhere else, Ieyasu had taken his own independent road.
At the time of Nobunaga's murder, he had been on a sightseeing tour of Sakai and had barely been able to return to his own province with his life. Immediately ordering military preparations, he pushed as far as Narumi. But the motive behind that action was quite different from the one Katsuie had had for crossing over Yanagase from Echizen.
When Ieyasu heard that Hideyoshi had reached Yamazaki, he said, 'Our province is entirely at peace.' Then he withdrew his army to Hamamatsu.
Ieyasu had never considered himself to be in the same category as Nobunaga's surviving retainers. He was an ally of the Oda clan, while Katsuie and Hideyoshi were Nobunaga's generals. He wondered why he should take part in the struggle among the surviving retainers, why he should fight to pick over the ashes. And there was something far more substantial for him now. For some time he had watched eagerly for a chance at territorial expansion into Kai and Shinano, the two provinces that bordered his own. He had been unable to play his hand while Nobunaga was alive, and there would likely be no better opportunity than now.
The man who foolishly opened up a path toward that goal and who gave Ieyasu a splendid opportunity was Hojo Ujinao, the lord of Sagami, another of the men who took advantage of the Honno Temple incident. Thinking that the time was ripe, a huge Hojo army of fifty thousand men crossed into the former Takeda domain of Kai. It was a large-scale invasion, executed almost as though Ujinao had simply taken a brush and drawn a line across a map, taking possession of what he thought he could.
That action gave Ieyasu a splendid reason to dispatch troops. The force he raised, however, consisted of only eight thousand men. The three-thousand-man vanguard checked a Hojo force of well over ten thousand men before it joined Ieyasu's main force. The war lasted more than ten days. Finally, the Hojo army could do nothing more than make a last stand or—as Ieyasu had hoped for and as it finally did—sue for peace.
'Joshu will be handed to the Hojo, while the two provinces of Kai and Shinano will be awarded to the Tokugawa clan.'
That was the agreement to which they came, and it was just as Ieyasu had intended.
* * *
Their packhorses and traveling attire covered with the snow of the northern provinces, Shibata Katsuie's envoys to Kai arrived on the eleventh day of the Twelfth Month. They were first asked to rest in the guest quarters in Kofu. Their party was a large one and was led by two senior Shibata retainers, Shukuya Shichizaemon and Asami Dosei.
For two days they were more or less entertained. Otherwise, however, it seemed that they were being put off.
Ishikawa Kazumasa apologized profusely, telling the party that Ieyasu was still busy with military affairs.
The envoys grumbled at the coolness of their reception. In response to the many gifts of friendship from the Shibata clan, the Tokugawa retainers had simply received a list of the gifts and had given no other recognition at all. On their third day, they were granted an audience with Ieyasu.
It was the middle of a severe winter. Nevertheless, Ieyasu was sitting in a large room without even a hint of a warming fire. He did not look to be a man who had been afflicted by hardships and reverses since his youth. The flesh of his cheeks was plump. His large earlobes gave a certain weight to his entire body, like the rings of an iron teakettle and caused the visitors to wonder if the man could really be a great general still only forty years old
If Kanamori had come as an envoy, he would have quickly seen that the phrase 'unwavering at the age of forty' applied absolutely to this man.
'Thank you for coming all this way with so many gifts of friendship. Is Lord Katsuie in good health?'
He spoke in an extremely dignified manner, and his voice overwhelmed the others, even though it was soft. His retainers stared at the two envoys, both of whom felt like the representatives of a dependent clan bringing tribute. To relate the message from their lord now would be mortifying. But there was nothing else they could do.
“'Lord Katsuie congratulates you on your conquest of the provinces of Kai and Shinano. As a token of his congratulations, he sends these gifts to you.'
“Lord Katsuie has sent you here to give me his congratulations at a time when we've been out of contact for so long? My goodness, how polite.'
So the envoys set out on the road home with a truly bad aftertaste in their mouths. Ieyasu had not given them any message for Katsuie. It was going to be difficult reporting to Katsuie that Ieyasu had not said a kind word about him, quite apart from reporting the cold treatment they themselves had received.
Particularly galling was the fact that Ieyasu had written no reply to the warm letter Katsuie had sent. In short, it was not simply that their mission had ended in complete failure, but Katsuie seemed to have humbled himself in front of Ieyasu far more than was necessary for his own ends.
The two envoys discussed the situation with some anxiety. Naturally their enemy, Hideyoshi, featured in their somber thoughts, but so did their long-standing foes, the Uesugi. If, added to those dangers, there were the threat of discord between the Shibata and Tokugawa clans… They could only pray that that would not come to pass.
But the speed of change always outruns the imaginary fears of such timid people. At about the time the envoys returned to Kitanosho, the promises made the month before were broken, and just before the year's end, Hideyoshi began to move against northern Omi. At the same time, for unknown reasons Ieyasu suddenly withdrew to Hamamatsu.
It had been about ten days since Inuchiyo had returned to Kitanosho. Katsuie's stepson, Katsutoyo, who had been forced to stay at Takaradera Castle because of illness, had finally recovered and went to take his leave of his host.
'I shall never forget your kindness,' Katsutoyo said to Hideyoshi.
Hideyoshi accompanied Katsutoyo as far as Kyoto and took pains to ensure that his return journey to Nagahama Castle was comfortable.
Katsutoyo ranked with the highest in the Shibata clan, but he was shunned by Katsuie and looked down upon by the rest of the clan. Hideyoshi's kind treatment had worked a change in Katsutoyo's attitude to his stepfather's enemy.
For nearly half a month after Hideyoshi had seen off Inuchiyo and then Katsutoyo, he did not seem to be occupying himself with castle construction or events in Kyoto. Rather he turned his attention to some unseen arena.
At the beginning of the Twelfth Month, Hikoemon—who had been sent to Kiyosu— returned to Hideyoshi's headquarters. With that one move, Hideyoshi departed from the passive and patient period of rest he had gone through since the Kiyosu conference, and for the first time slapped down the stone on the
