Once in the room, he went up to the cage to see its contents. Inside, he was repulsed to see a plate containing the carcasses of two boiled rats. They had been gnawed on, and the pink flesh of the rats lay open like some disgusting flower bursting from a gray skin sheath. In a corner of the cage was a shapeless bundle of hair and rags. It took him a few moments to realize he was looking at a human being curled into the fetal position. His brows creased into a V, and Kaze could not make sense of what he was seeing. Was Yuchan some kind of monster, keeping some miserable human as a kind of bizarre pet?
The creature in the cage looked up at him. Kaze wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman because it had an emaciated face, with the skin stretched parchment-thin across the bones of the skull. Its frightened eyes looked out at him from a tangle of matted and filthy hair.
“Why are you in this cage?” Kaze asked softly.
“To break my spirit,” the creature croaked back at him.
“Who wants to break your spirit?”
“Hishigawa. And Ando. They have done this together.”
“But why hasn’t Yuchan stopped them from committing this cruelty?”
“I am Yuchan.”
Kaze was stunned. This pathetic collection of rags and bones was the creature of ethereal beauty that Hishigawa rhapsodized about. For the first time, Kaze understood that Hishigawa’s obsession with the woman had slipped over to madness.
“How did you know my name?” the creature continued eagerly.
“Because I’m a friend. Your grandmother has sent me to see if we can get you out of here.”
“Elder Grandma?”
“The same.”
Tears formed in the dull eyes of Yuchan. “I knew she would help me. I prayed constantly to the Buddha to have pity on me and to send Elder Grandma and the whole Noguchi clan to punish these monsters.”
“The whole clan isn’t here, but Elder Grandma, Nagatoki, Sadakatsu, and I, Matsuyama Kaze, are here to help you. But I don’t understand this. Hishigawa claims he loves you. Why would he do this to you?”
“Because I don’t love him. He could abduct me and violate me, but he couldn’t get me to love him or even to say I love him. Ando thought of this punishment. She has confined me in this cage for many months. Every day they bring the most sumptuous meals they can devise and leave them just outside my reach. Then they give me disgusting things like those boiled rats to eat. They say if I just tell Hishigawa I love him, they will release me, dress me in the robe you see there, groom me, and feed me this elegant food. But I won’t tell him I love him. I’ll never tell him I love him. I’ll die before I tell him I love him!”
Kaze saw a spark of fire in the dull eyes of Yuchan, and he could tell that she was of the same strong stock as Elder Grandma. He well believed that she would die before bending her will to Hishigawa’s desires, because she was near death now and had obviously not been broken.
Kaze came across the room and inspected the lock on the cage. It was one he could not force. “Who has the key to this cage?” he asked.
“Ando. She always carries it with her. Every night she and Hishigawa come to argue with me, trying to get me to say I love the disgusting merchant. Hishigawa seems quite oblivious to my state and acts like I’m still the maiden he first met. He is touched by some evil spirit and crazed. Ando is not touched, but she is a monster, an ogre! I hate her more than Hishigawa. She knows what she’s doing, and I think she quite enjoys it.”
Kaze digested this declaration and found that he tended to agree that a sane person committing evil was more guilty than someone touched by some evil spirit. Since he could not force the lock, Kaze said, “All right, I’ll have to-”
Kaze was interrupted by the door to the room sliding open. There were Hishigawa and Ando. Hishigawa seemed shocked at the sight of Kaze. If Ando had shown a similar hesitation, Kaze might have been able to cross the room and eliminate them with two sword strokes. But Ando was too quick and started screaming, “Guards! Guards!” as soon as she saw Kaze.
There was a scramble of running feet, and Ando and Hishigawa disappeared from the doorway.
“I’ll be back,” Kaze told Yuchan.
She reached out and grabbed his arm in a surprisingly fierce grip.
“Don’t leave me!” she said.
“I have to for now. The guards will be here in moments, and their companions from the villa will be right behind. I won’t abandon you, I promise. I will be back for you soon!” Kaze gently pried loose the fingers of Yuchan’s hand, afraid he might break the bony appendages if he yanked his arm away violently.
He ducked out of the doorway and found himself in a dark passageway. He didn’t know the direction in which Ando and Hishigawa had disappeared, so he chose one at random and started running. He guessed wrong.
He came to a doorway and opened it. It was some kind of store-room, with merchandise piled high. He was at a dead end. Kaze turned and looked down the passage, hearing the clatter of running feet and seeing five guards rushing toward him. He stood and prepared to cut his way out of the trap he found himself in.
Seeing the intruder calmly standing in the door of the storeroom, his sword in the point-at-the-eye position and apparently ready for a fight, the guards slowed down. They looked at each other, unsure about how to rush the ronin when only one at a time could enter the door to the storeroom. Finally, the bravest of the guards rushed into the storeroom with a yell.
Kaze caught the attacker’s blade and, in one smooth motion, went from the defense to the offense, slashing the man’s side and letting the dying man’s momentum carry him through the doorway. The man landed on the wooden floor of the storeroom, which did not have tatami mats, and lay there groaning, his lifeblood rapidly leaking out of the large cut in his side. Kaze looked at the remaining four calmly.
“Get out of the way,” Ando ordered.
The four guards were eager to obey any order that would delay an attack on the samurai. They parted cleanly, moving to the walls of the passageway.
Ando advanced toward the door. In front of her, she held Yuchan by the hair. She had taken her out of the cage. Yuchan was struggling, but her emaciated state and weakness made it easy for Ando to control her. In Ando’s other hand she had a dagger. She stopped and held the dagger to Yuchan’s throat. “Surrender,” she said, “or I’ll cut her throat.”
“If you kill Yuchan, Hishigawa will be angry,” Kaze pointed out.
“I’ll tell him you killed her,” Ando said. “He’s already mad with jealousy. He thinks you wanted to steal Yuchan from him for yourself. He’ll believe you killed Yuchan out of jealousy when you couldn’t have her. This insolent girl has been enough of a bother as it is. It will be good to be rid of her so quickly.”
Kaze looked in Yuchan’s eyes, and he thought he saw in them a look of defiance, encouraging Kaze to fight on, even if it meant her death. But Kaze could not bring himself to cause the death of this pitiful creature. He threw his sword down.
The guards rushed him and roughly dragged him out of the store-room. They quickly bound him with rope as Ando looked on in triumph, a crying Yuchan still in her grasp. Kaze noted with approval that Yuchan didn’t start crying until the crisis was over. He couldn’t say if she was crying for him or for herself-perhaps a bit of both.
When Kaze was securely bound, Ando approached him and slapped him across the cheek. Touching a samurai’s face was the ultimate insult, but Kaze simply winced at the slap and gave no other indication that he felt Ando’s blow.
“Beat him,” Ando said. “Do it thoroughly, but don’t kill him. I’m sure Hishigawa-san will want to deal personally with the man he thinks tried to steal Yuchan from him.”
The men rushed Kaze and started kicking the bound ronin. They wore straw sandals, causing bruising but not broken bones. Kaze simply ducked his head to try to protect his face and gave no other indication that the four men were beating him.