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The Choshu Chronicles: Chapter Five

by Omasu Oniwabanshi ::: Jan.2005

The rifles, bought by Sakamoto Ryoma for Choshu in Satsuma's name, arrived at the docks. Katsura took Kenshin and Nakamura with him to the practice field the next day to watch Murata teach the men how to use the new weapons.

The air was filled with gunpowder smoke, and the sounds of rifle fire became almost deafening at times. Kenshin schooled his body to remain still and not jump at every shot.

He stood a little behind Katsura, allowing Nakamura to stand alongside the leader of the Choshu loyalists, and other officials who'd come out of curiosity to view the first widespread use of breech loading rifles.

Kenshin forced his muscles to unclench. Of all the places he'd accompanied Katsura, the practice field was his least favorite. Murata, strutting proudly in his black hakama and white kimono style top, went from group to group, demonstrating how to ‘break' the gun open on its hinged middle, and load the bullets. As always, he shouted at anyone he deemed too slow or too stupid.

The officials with Katsura gestured excitedly as one group of peasant soldiers managed to hit their targets nearly dead on.

Katsura stepped back quietly until he was standing by Kenshin.

"What do you think?" he asked him, gazing at the busy field.

"They are doing well." said Kenshin neutrally, as he watched the squad of peasant riflemen reloading.

"What do you think of our new weapons?" Katsura probed again.

Kenshin turned his eyes on his mentor. "I prefer the sword."

Katsura's small dark eyes searched, blinked, then took on an unreadable expression. "I thought you might say that."

"I'm sorry if I disappoint you."

Katsura had just opened his mouth to respond when Nakamura, who'd been craning his neck by the officials to eavesdrop, wheeled around and interrupted.

"If the boy can't handle the new weapons, Katsura, I can. Allow me to learn this, please." Though Nakamura's words were deferential, his tone was low, and demanding.

Katsura crossed his arms and nodded.

Nakamura gestured to Takahata, who was officially off-duty, but tagging along to watch the practice session. Takahata quickly agreed to take Nakamura's place as second bodyguard. Then Nakamura strode up to Murata, whose face creased in a wolfish smile of welcome, and handed him one of the new rifles.

Nakamura missed the target his first few tries, but by the end of an hour, he'd managed to improve. Murata seemed pleased. When Katsura and the officials left, Nakamura barely seemed to notice.

After several more hours at the Administration building, Katsura went home. Kenshin handed bodyguard duty off to Shunme, who was on evening duty. Takahata left quickly, so as not to have to walk home with Kenshin.

Shunme scowled after him. "That one should find a better hero to emulate than that stuck up samurai Nakamura." He nudged Kenshin with his shoulder. "Don't let them bother you." He said, and turned to follow Katsura into the house.

Kenshin left, walking slowly along the row of houses lining the roadway. Bother him? Why would it? Nakamura was a samurai, and like most samurai, he thought himself better than non-samurai warriors. It had been the same in Kyoto. If it hadn't been for Kenshin's obvious skill and his job as battousai, or head assassin, his youth and his non-samurai status would have let him in for a lot of hazing.

In Kyoto he'd been left alone by the others, out of respect or fear, but most of the Choshu patriots from Kyoto were dead now, massacred at Ikedaya Inn by the Shinsengumi, and no one in Choshu besides Katsura and Takasugi now knew that he'd once been battousai. To Nakamura, Kenshin was simply another bodyguard, and one of inferior social standing at that. Kenshin was used to his contempt.

He came to a crossroads. The streets were busy now at the close of day. Soldiers were making their way home from the practice fields. In the outer villages practice had ended long since, to give the peasants time to work at their necessary chores, but on this day the men from Yamaguchi castletown had practiced until the light faded.

Kenshin paused at a crossroads and stepped back to allow a group of laughing, tired men to pass by. As he did, he caught sight of Nakamura, walking beside a much shorter girl, headed down the street to his left. The girl turned her face to listen to something Nakamura was saying. As she did so, Kenshin recognized her. It was the girl from the docks.

The soldiers passed him, and without really considering it, Kenshin turned left, away from the inn, and followed Nakamura.

His experience as battousai came back to him. He'd tailed other men before. The instinctive keeping to shadows and walking just close enough behind a group of pedestrians to look a part of them should his quarry glance back, were second nature.

Nakamura didn't notice a thing. Eventually he and the girl, still clad in her dark kimono with the white flower pattern, ducked down a quiet street where a row of small, cheap but clean two room houses lined either side. The girl went to the entrance of one, and slide open the wooden partition serving as a door. She stepped back and bowed at the waist, allowing Nakamura to precede her.

Kenshin leaned back against the wall of the first house on the corner, where the roof protruded into the street, causing a deep shadow. What was he doing here? Why did he bother to follow Nakamura and the girl? To satiate Shunme's curiosity? Or his own?

A few moments later, the girl came out of the house carrying a bucket. She bent and turned her back to the street to close the wooden partition behind her. As she did, a strand of her hair pulled out of the ponytail down her back, and hung down by her cheek. An ache began in Kenshin's heart.

Then the girl turned around, and was once again an eleven-year-old child carrying a bucket, and bearing no resemblance at all to the woman Kenshin had loved.

The girl made her way down the street to the end away from where Kenshin stood, and turned the corner. Kenshin waited a moment, and then followed.

As she came to the end of the street, she glanced to her left, then scuttled quickly to the right, turning the corner.

Kenshin was halfway down the street, walking quickly, when he saw two men in tattered kimonos weaving drunkenly along the street that intersected the one Kenshin was on. They must have been what made the girl hurry to get around the corner.

As he came forward he heard what they were saying. The taller one in a rust kimono was making a crude comment about little girl's development. The smaller one snickered and likened the maidservant to a tasty morsel.

Kenshin reached them just as the taller one suggested that they ‘take a bite' out of her.

The cross street was dark. As he reached it, Kenshin glanced both ways. To his left, the street zigzagged away. Faint noise indicated that if there were pedestrians that way, they were past the zag and out of earshot. To his right, past the lumbering forms of the drunks, the cross street dead-ended into another street a short ways away. The servant girl was out of sight already.

Kenshin quickened his pace and passed the two men. Pivoting on his heel, he came to a stop directly in front of them, and stood, legs slightly apart, arms folded.

"Go back the other way." He said quietly.

The drunks stopped, wavering at the sudden cessation of forward movement.

"Huh?" The taller one squinted. "Who's this?"

"Get out of the way!" shouted the short one, pawing at the air with his open hand in a shooing gesture, and nearly falling over at the effort.

They were truly too drunk to be much of a danger, but Kenshin was a trained killer. The girl wasn't.

"Go back the way you came." He repeated his request, narrowing his eyes.

"Who're you to tell me what to do?" The shorter drunk staggered forward.

When he tried to lean into Kenshin's face, Kenshin flicked the tsuba of his sword to loosen it from the sheath, and in one fluid motion, he grasped the hilt low by the tsuba with his right hand and brought it up sharply.

The fuchi, the metal base of the hilt, slammed into the bottom of the drunk's chin.

Kenshin resheathed the sword without ever having drawn it completely out of the sheath.

The drunk crumpled to the ground, out cold.

"Hey!" The taller drunk yelped. He looked down at his friend on the ground, then back at Kenshin. Behind the drunken haze, an enraged animal expression began to form in his eyes.

Kenshin braced himself.

The tall drunk put a hand inside his kimono, drawing a short dagger as he lurched forward.

For this one, Kenshin didn't even bother to draw his sword. As the drunk lunged he thrust the dagger out in his right hand, extending the arm like a sword in a parallel thrust. Kenshin evaded by leaning to the right and allowing the man's dagger arm to move past his chest.

As the man's arm came level with Kenshin's torso, he immediately grabbed the man's wrist in his left hand, and with his right he grabbed the man's upper arm directly above the elbow joint.

Twisting his left hand, he forced the man's arm to bend under, back towards his torso, and used the blade, still gripped by the drunk, to cut a slash across the man's ribs.

As the drunk howled, Kenshin dropped his right hand from the man's upper arm, and used his right elbow to bludgeon the man's nose. Then he released his grip and stepped back.

The man staggered back and landed on his rear in the street. With a gasp, he dropped his dagger and lifted both hands to his now broken nose.

"Take your friend, and go."

The tall drunk began to snarl.

Kenshin put his right hand on his sword hilt. The man stopped snarling, crawled to his prone comrade, and began trying to lift him up, too scared to even retrieve his dagger.

Kenshin took a few steps backward, watching to be sure the drunk didn't try again, and when he was satisfied that the man only wanted to get away, he turned completely around and strode to the dead end.

The cross street to both the right and left was clear. The fight, if you could call it that, took more time than he'd thought. He'd have to search both directions for the little maidservant.

He found the girl two streets later, kneeling by a well.

When her bucket was full, she lifted it awkwardly and began to carry it, hunching over to the side due to its weight.

As she came closer to where Kenshin stood in the shadows, he tried to decide what to do. Shunme would simply walk up to the girl and start a conversation. He wasn't Shunme, but at least he could ask her name.

She was nearly level with him. He stepped out into the roadway, blocking her path.

"Oh!" She jumped, and dropped the bucket.

Water splashed the street and spilled out in a pool.

"I'm so sorry! Forgive me! Did I get you wet?" she asked, her face pinched in worry. Her accent wasn't a Choshu one, or a Kyoto one either. Kenshin couldn't place it.

"No." answered Kenshin simply.

"Oh good!"

She hadn't been so lucky. The lower edge of her kimono was drenched. She brushed at it distractedly, and sighed, giving up on it.

Reaching for the bucket, she stopped in surprise when Kenshin grasped it first and set off toward the well.

"You need more water." He observed, throwing the words over his shoulder.

"Oh yes. Thank you! Thank you!" she gasped and ran to catch up.

Kenshin drew the water, and once again took the bucket out of her reach when she tried to grasp the handle.

"I'll carry it." He told her, standing. "Where is your house?"

She pointed back down the street. "That way, but it's kind of far. Are you sure you want to carry it all the way?"

Kenshin nodded and set off. She skipped to catch up and walked along him in silence.

What to do now? For once, Kenshin truly wished Shunme was with him. Shunme knew how to talk to children. As battousai, Kenshin hadn't spoken much to his victims. Once he'd found his targets, he'd simply killed them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

They reached the end of the street with the well. Now there were only three streets left to go.

"Do you live with your parents?" Kenshin asked, the question coming to him from out of the blue.

"Oh no. I have no parents." The girl confided cheerfully. "My father died the year I was born, and mother died two years ago. My stepfather doesn't count."

"Doesn't count?" asked Kenshin, glancing at the little girl.

Her face took on a serious expression. "He had his only children first, before he married my mother, and after she died he didn't like having me around so he tried to sell me to a brothel."

Kenshin nearly tripped. "What did you say?" He knew such things went on. Starving peasants sold their children in order to buy food for the rest of the family to survive. Still, it was a shock to hear it from her mouth.

"Oh, it didn't work!" She giggled. "He thought my lady was the brothel keeper when she came to the door. He sold me to her, but she was just leaving the brothel since master Nakamura had redeemed her. She used most of her moving money to buy me to be her maidservant."

"Your lady is…"

"Tamako. Master Nakamura's concubine." The little girl's voice became solemn. "Master Nakamura told me I must take very good care of her. She's ill, you see. That's why he bought her, to take her away from the bad place so she could rest and get well."

"Where was this?"

"The brothel? Oh, it's in Shimonoseki. My stepfather took me there by boat so that no one from our town would know he'd sold me."

"Then you're not from Choshu province?"

"Oh no. I'm from Shimabara."

Kenshin thought of his first boat trip, the noise, the bustle and confusion of the docks. "Were you scared?"

"Not really, I prayed you see and…" The girl stopped dead and covered her mouth, eyes round and shocked.

Bemused, Kenshin stopped too. "What is it?"

"I'm not supposed to tell anyone about praying. Not even stepfather. Please don't tell anyone I told you."

"Why?" Kenshin was genuinely curious. There were plenty of Buddhist temples scattered around the Shinto shrines. Many of Choshu's samurai followed some form of Buddhist teachings. "Buddhism isn't forbidden."

"I'm not a Buddhist." The girl informed him softly, staring at the ground.

Kenshin narrowed his eyes, then it came to him. She was from Shimabara, the site of the Shimabara revolution led by Christian peasants against greedy daimyos. His master, Hiko told him about how the Tokugawa forces had massacred every last man woman and child who'd rallied around Amakusa Shiro and dared to revolt against his daimyos and the backbreaking taxes they'd levied on the region. He also told Kenshin of the torture and punishments meted out before the revolution. After it was over, and the last decapitated body was cleared away from Hara Castle, Christianity was forbidden in Japan. Even now, hundreds of years later, it was seen as subversive and traitorous by the Bakufu.

Remembering something he'd seen Shunme do to Tama back at the inn, Kenshin placed his free hand on top of the girl's head and gently rumpled her hair.

She looked up at him inquiringly, but without fear.

Looking into her eyes, Kenshin promised, "I won't tell anyone that you're a Christian."

"Thank you!" The little girl smiled. "You're really nice."

Kenshin's breath caught. What a joke. Nice? If the child only knew the truth about him.

Making a huge effort, he kept his bleak thoughts from appearing on his face. "Come." He told the girl, and walked her in silence back to her street.

As soon as they reached the house, Kenshin set the bucket down, nodded, and walked quickly away, without giving her a chance to speak. It was now almost completely dark. He knew she couldn't have seen him very well in the dim starlight, and he'd been careful to keep his head down, and his hair forward over his scar. If Nakamura asked her, she'd only be able to say that a young stranger had helped her carry the water home.

Nakamura. Now that Kenshin knew he cared for a concubine enough to buy her freedom from a brothel, he didn't quite know what to do with the information. It changed nothing. And he would never let Nakamura know what he'd discovered. As he'd promised the little girl, he now made a silent promise to the angry samurai. He'd never tell. Nakamura's heartaches were his own.

Decision made, Kenshin walked on through the night to the inn.