“I see from your documents that you are on special assignment from the capital to Kazusa province?”

Akitada nodded.

“The men with you are your servants and you vouch for them?” The captain’s beady eyes left Akitada’s face and rested on Tora again—more thoughtfully than before.

“Yes.” Akitada tried to make his tone casual, though his heart was pounding. “The older man is called Seimei, the younger Tora.”

“I see. Why did you get papers for the man Tora in Futakawa?”

Akitada felt himself flush. “Ah,” he stammered, “the trip proved harder than expected and ... er ... Seimei is unused to traveling. We had some difficulties, and, well, it seemed a good idea to hire another servant.”

The captain gave him a long look. “Difficulties?” he said with what amounted to a sneer. “No doubt you’re not used to travel. You have actually come quite far without an escort. A lot of the young gentlemen from the capital turn tail long before they reach Hakone.”

Akitada flushed again, this time angrily, but he bit his lip and said nothing.

“What is your business in Kazusa?”

“I travel under imperial orders, as you can see, Captain ... ?”

“Saito is the name. You are not, by chance, looking into the missing tax shipments from Kazusa, are you?”

Akitada’s instructions were to use the utmost discretion, but this man might have valuable information. “I am,” he admitted. “What do you know of the matter?”

“I know that no goods from Kazusa province have passed here in years. Plenty of things going the other way—Buddhist scrolls and statuary, parcels for the governor—but no tax convoys from Kazusa for the emperor.” The captain turned to one of the clerks. “Bring the ledgers for the past two years and copies of the correspondence about the Kazusa tax shipments!” Reaching for an open ledger, he turned some pages, then pushed the ledger toward Akitada. “See for yourself! When they did not show up at the usual time again this year, I reported the matter to the capital. Again.”

Again? Akitada bent to read.

The clerk returned with a large document box that he set down. The captain took out two more ledgers and turned to the end of the entries. “Last year. Nothing. There you are.” He pointed to a line of brushstrokes. “And here the same,” he said, shoving a third ledger at Akitada. “And here are copies of the reports I sent to the capital.”

Akitada looked, then looked again in disbelief. “There has not been a single tax convoy from Kazusa for three years or more?” he asked. It seemed incredible. Worse, the documents proved that no one had bothered to investigate the matter until now.

“Three years precisely,” corrected the captain. “Before then everything was always in order and punctual as geese flying south in the winter.”

“How do you account for it?”

“I cannot,” the captain said. He appraised Akitada and compressed his lips. “I simply do my duty. My men got instructions to question everyone coming from the east about incidents on the road. There was never even the vaguest rumor of either gangs or piracy. It would take a small army to fall on a tax convoy under military escort. In my opinion—and, mind you, it is just an opinion—the goods never left Kazusa. Hrrmph.” He cleared his throat and gave Akitada another of his disconcerting stares. “Confirmed by the fact that the imperial authorities have taken their sweet time to investigate.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Until now,” he added with deliberate sarcasm.

Akitada felt himself flush hotly. He knew what the man thought. Nobody wanted the shipments found. By sending an inexperienced junior clerk to investigate a matter of this magnitude, the government had signaled the fact that they wished the whole thing forgotten. And for what reason but to protect the provincial governor who was a Fujiwara and a distant relative of the chancellor? Unfortunately, he also happened to be the cousin of Akitada’s best friend Kosehira. They had attended the university together and become close because both had been friendless, Akitada because he was poor and Kosehira because he was short and fat.

Resenting the captain’s manner, Akitada snapped, “Thank you. I must be on my way. If you are quite finished with us ... ?”

The captain grinned. “Of course! Of course! I won’t keep you. Good luck, sir.” He bowed with mocking deference.

“Seimei, the bell tokens!”

A soldier received the tokens to be exchanged for two horses and rushed away.

They were headed out the door when the captain called after them, “The weather is turning. You would be well advised to spend the night in our quarters.”

Akitada turned and said stiffly, “Thank you, but I think we will press on.”

♦

They made the descent in daylight, but the rain began soon after they had left the lakeside barrier and fell coldly and steadily all the way down the mountain. Its gray sheets obscured what would have been magnificent views; its icy wetness insinuated itself through layers of clothing to their skin. Soaked, chilled, and exhausted, they broke their journey in Odawara at the foot of the mountain and spent the night in an inn that was overrun by rats, sleeping on mats of moldy, stinking straw, covered by their own wet clothes.

The next day they awoke to more gray clouds and sheeting rain, but set out again covered by their wet straw cloaks and limp straw hats. The road wound through foothills until it approached the coast again. They could smell and taste the salt of the sea on the cold wind miles before they set eyes on it.

When they emerged from the last protective belt of forest and saw the wide expanse of open ocean before them, they were sucked into a frigid, whirling gray mist. Above them the wind swept ragged smoky clouds along; before them the charcoal-dark ocean boiled and subsided with a continuous roar, vomiting up dirty yellow foam and swallowing it again; and all about them swirled and blew the spray and the everlasting rain, tearing at their cloaks and slapping the wet, salt-laden wisps of their hats against their stinging cheeks. Seimei developed a nagging cough.

After Oiso the road veered away from the coast and they entered a huge plain, most of the year a rich and verdant source of rice for the nation. Now, in this late season, the rice paddies, lying fallow, were black sheets of water between dams, dotted here and there as far as the eye could see by farms or hamlets huddling dejectedly under gloomy trees. The Tokaido crossed this submerged plain on a raised dam, planted on both sides with pines drooping mournfully under the weight of their wet needles.

Finally, toward evening of that dismal day, the rain eased to a drizzle. Battered and weary, they reached Sagami Bay and the harbor town of Fujisawa. From there Akitada had planned to journey by water, taking a boat across the bay to Kazusa province. They would save five or six days that way, arriving in the provincial capital in two days.