第110节

place, behind the Herald,

some three and a half feet to his left, the long killing-sword held

ready in both hands.

Watching from either side of the garden were the Shogun and several

members of the Inner Court.

Toshiro glimpsed Ieyasu's grey, angular face amongst them.

The Chamberlain had every reason to feel satisfied.

He had shaken the Shogun's faith in his Heralds and had demonstrated

that his own power to influence events remained undimmed. It would not

be long before his private office reinserted itself between the Shogun

and his Heralds. They were intelligent, well-intentioned young men,

like their master, but they did not know the ways of the world. His

nephew Yoritomo needed further guidance before he could be safely left

to take Ne-Issan into the next century. He, Ieyasu, would provide that

guidance in the few years left to him.

There were difficult times ahead. Yoritomo had all the qualities

required to surmount those difficulties, but he needed to introduce a

certain flexibility into his moral judgements. In the ancient world,

it had been termed 'double standards'; the mental suppleness that

allowed a man to bend with the winds of change without being

uprooted.

Toshiro reached out and picked up the knife, gazed at it for a moment

as if admiring its lethal grace and then, after adjusting his grip so

as to hold it firmly with both hands, he drove the full length of the

blade into the left side of his belly. The impact caused him to

breathe out sharply. He inhaled deeply without relaxing his grip and,

with a slow, deliberate sawing motion, he began to draw the blade

across to the right hand side of his body.

Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, but apart from his eyes which

stared with frightening intensity at the stone and pebble landscape

before him, his face showed no sign of the excruciating pain he was

inflicting upon himself. At the end of the lateral cut, he turned the

blade of the dagger in his body and made a short, upward cut. The

jumonji; the final ghastly flourish.

The Herald had gone much further in the act of self-mutilation than was

normally deemed necessary, but he had instructed Kamakura not to act

before he had pulled the knife from his body. The end to the perfect

act of seppuku. But his hands had become slippery with blood, and he

no longer had the strength to remove the dagger.

Kamakura leaped to his feet. As the kaishaku-run, his duty was to

spare the principal actor unnecessary agony.

He was empowered to intervene at a prearranged moment - which could

even be during the act of reaching out for the knife - or at the

slightest sign of irresolution.

As the Herald bent forward in one last effort to pull out the blade,

Kamakura raised his sword high in the air and cut off the young man's

head with one swift blow.

It had been a good death, but it gave Kamakura scant cause for

satisfaction. As Toshiro's swordmaster he had spent countless hours

instructing and counselling the young man, and now Fate had forced him

to give the coup de grace to his most promising pupil.

The same blow had put paid to his wife's cherished dreams of having a

Herald for a son-in-law. How she had schemed and laboured over the

years! And now her plans had come to naught. Kamakura did not relish

having to break the news to her. She would understand why he had been

obliged to perform this doleful task, but she would never forgive

him.

And neither would his daughters.

He looked down at the bloodied head with its half-closed eyes. Eyes

that had followed him so attentively over the years as he had revealed

his unrivalled skill with the sword. What a waste! Kamakura cleaned

and sheathed his sword, then turned away. His eyes brimmed with bitter

tears, but he held them in check. There would be tears enough. The