'Did you take a walk to the riverbank?'
'Yes… just to kill time. What is it?'
'There was a messenger.'
'From whom?' Without answering, Heishichi handed him a letter. It was from Sessai. Before cutting open the envelope, Ieyasu raised it reverently to his forehead. Sessai was a monk of the Zen sect who acted as a military adviser to the Imagawa clan. To leyasu, he was the teacher from whom he had received instructions in both booklearning and martial arts. His letter was concise:
The customary lecture will be given to His Lordship and his guests tonight. I will wait for you at the Northwest Gate of the Palace.
That was all. But the word 'customary' was a codeword well known to Ieyasu. It meant a meeting of Yoshimoto and his generals to discuss the march on the capital. 'Where is the messenger?'
'He left already. Will you go to the Palace, my lord?'
'Yes,' Ieyasu replied, preoccupied.
'I think the proclamation of Lord Yoshimoto's march on the capital is near at hand.' Heishichi had overheard the important war councils that had touched on that subject a number of times. He studied Ieyasu's face. Ieyasu mumbled a reply, seeming to be uninterested.
The Imagawa clan's evaluations of Owari's strength and of Nobunaga were very different from what Jinshichi had just reported. Yoshimoto planned to lead a huge army, made up of the forces of the provinces of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa, to the capital, and they expected to meet resistance in Owari.
'If we advance with a large army, Nobunaga will surrender without bloodshed.' This vas the superficial view expressed by some of the members of the war council, but alhough Yoshimoto and his advisers, including Sessai, did not have such a low estimate of Nobunaga, none of them took Owari as seriously as Ieyasu did. He had offered an opinon on this once before, but he had been laughed down. Ieyasu was, after all, a hostage and young; and among the field staff he counted for very little.
Is this something I should bring up or not? Even if I press the point… Ieyasu was deep in thought, with Sessai's letter in front of him, when an old lady-in-raiting who served his wife spoke to him with a worried look on her face. His wife was in terrible mood, she said, and she urged him to visit her for just a moment.
Ieyasu's wife was a woman who thought of nothing but herself. She was completely indifferent both to affairs of state and to her husband's situation. Nothing entered her head other than her own daily life and the attentions of her husband. The old lady-in-waiting understood this well, and when she saw that he was still talking with his retainer, she waited uneasily and silently, until another maid came in and whispered in her ear. There was nothing else the old lady-in-waiting could do. She interrupted them again, saying, 'Excuse me, my lord…I'm terribly sorry, but Her Ladyship is very fretful.' Bowing to Ieyasu, she timidly urged him once more to hurry.
Ieyasu knew that his wife's servants were troubled more than anyone else by this situation, and he himself was a patient man. 'Ah, yes,' he said, turning, and then, to Heishichi: 'Well, make the necessary arrangements, and come and tell me when it's time.' He stood up. The women ran in front of him with small steps, looking as though they had been saved.
The inner part of the house was some way off, so it was not unreasonable that his wife often longed to see him. Passing through the many turns of the central and bridged corridors, he finally got to his wife's private apartments.
On their wedding day, the clothes of the poor hostage husband from Mikawa could not compare with the luxury and brilliance of the dress of Lady Tsukiyama, an adopted daughter of Imagawa Yoshimoto. 'The man from Mikawa'—known by this epithet, he was an object of contempt for the Imagawa clan. And living with such pride in her secluded quarters, she despised the retainers from Mikawa but showered her husband with all the devotion of her selfish, blind love. She was also older than Ieyasu. Considered within the limits of their shallow married life, Lady Tsukiyama saw Ieyasu as little more than a submissive youth who owed his existence to the Imagawa.
After giving birth in the spring following their wedding, she had become even more selfish and unreasonable. His wife taught him perseverance every day.
'Oh, you're up. Are you feeling a little better?' Ieyasu looked at his wife and, as he spoke, was about to open the sliding doors. He thought that if his sick wife could see the beauty of the autumn colors and the autumn sky, her mood might brighten.
Lady Tsukiyama had left the sickroom and was sitting in the middle of the reception room with a frigid look on her livid face. She narrowed her eyebrows as she spoke. 'Leave them closed.'
She was not exactly a beauty, but, as might be expected of a woman brought up the privileged environment of a wealthy family, her complexion had a fine sheen. Beyond that, both her face and her fingertips were almost translucently white, perhaps because her first delivery. She held her hands neady folded on her lap.
'Sit down, my lord. There is something I'd like to ask you.' As she spoke, her words and eyes were as cold as ashes. But Ieyasu did not act at all as a young husband would be expected to behave—such mellow-spirited handling of one's spouse was more appropriate for a mature man. Or perhaps he held a certain opinion of women, and he was looking objectively at the person whom he should have loved the most.
'What is it?' he asked, sitting down in front of her as she had requested. But the more obedient her husband was, the more unreasonable she became.
'There's something I'd like to ask you. Did you go out somewhere a moment ago? Alone, without attendants?' Her eyes filled with tears. The blood was rising to her face, still thin from childbirth. Ieyasu knew both the state of her health and her character, and he smiled at her as if he were humoring a baby.
'Just now? I was tired of reading, so I took a leisurely walk along the riverbank. You should try taking a walk there. The autumn colors and the chirping of the insects—it’s pleasant at the riverbank this time of year.'
Lady Tsukiyama was not listening. She was staring at her husband, rebuking him for his lie. She sat rigidly straight, with an air of indifference, but without her usual self-involvement. 'That's strange. If you went out for a walk to listen to insects and look the autumn colors, why would you go out into the middle of the river in a small boat, hiding from people for such a long time?'
'Aha…you knew.'
“I may be confined indoors, but I know everything you do.'
“Is that so?' Ieyasu forced a smile, but did not speak of his meeting with Jinshichi.
Although this woman had become his bride, Ieyasu was never able to believe that she was really his wife. If retainers or relatives of her adoptive father called on her, she would tell them everything, and she was always exchanging letters with Yoshimoto's household.
Ieyasu had to be far more careful of his wife's unintentional carelessness than of the eyes of Yoshimoto's spies.
'No, I got into that boat on the riverbank without thinking much about it, and tried to ply the oar with the flow of the water. I thought I could handle the boat, but when I out into the current, I couldn't do a thing.' He laughed. 'Just like a child. Where were you when you saw me?'
'You're lying. You weren't alone, were you?'
'Well, a servant ran after me later.'
'No, no. There's no reason for you to have a secret meeting in a boat, with someone who appears to be a servant.'
'Who in the world has told you such a thing?'
'Even though I'm stuck inside, there are loyal people who think of me. You're hiding a woman somewhere, aren't you? Or if that's not it, perhaps you've grown tired of me and planning to run away to Mikawa. There's a rumor going around that you've taken another woman as your wife in Okazaki. Why are you hiding that from me? I know that youonly married me out of fear of the Imagawa clan.'
Just as her sobbing voice, driven by illness and distrust, finally found expression, Sakakibara Heishichi appeared at the door. 'My lord, your horse is ready. It's almost time.
'Are you going out?' Before Ieyasu could respond, Lady Tsukiyama cut him off. You've been absent more and more at night recendy, so where in the world are you going now?'
'To the Palace.' Paying her no heed, Ieyasu was beginning to stand up. But she was not satisfied with his
