Once he stopped and shouted, “Here I am! Come and get me, I dare you!”
Hearing his voice echo through the mountains, he wondered whether he was going mad. When he at last saw Hakone Village below him in the distance, he welcomed his escape from solitude and return to the normal, everyday world.
Hakone Village ’s hundred-some houses clustered around a segment of the Tōkaido that ran along the southeast shore of Lake Ashi. The lake, dotted with fishing boats, reflected the leaden sky. High, wooded mountains, some with almost vertical sides, surrounded it. Mount Fuji towered above the others, a faint white peak wearing a fainter hat of white clouds.
Sano felt a vast relief as he completed his descent. He’d almost reached his destination. Soon he could rest in a clean, cozy inn, with food for his stomach and a hot bath for his aching muscles. Then he reached the checkpoint, where he encountered an obstacle he should have expected. Hakone was famous for the strength and severity of its guard. The village’s location, with mountains on one side and lake on the other, made it a natural trap for the shogun’s men to detain suspicious-looking travelers-especially samurai who were not trusted Tokugawa allies. Twenty guards in full armor manned the fortified gates barring the way into the village, and they would not let Sano pass.
“Come with me,” said one guard.
In a small bare room in the post house, Sano spent an hour answering the rapid-fire questions of three officials who wore the Tokugawa crest on their kimonos.
“Who is your family? Where are you from? What is your destination, and what is the purpose of your journey? Who is your lord? What is your occupation, and who is your immediate superior?”
Sano wanted desperately to be on his way, but he couldn’t afford to antagonize the officials, who might hold him for hours- or days-longer.
“Sano Ichirō of Edo, son of Sano Shutarō, martial arts instructor, who was formerly in the service of Lord Kū of Takamatsu Province,” he answered politely.
Through the open door he could see other officials turning out the contents of his saddlebags onto the floor in the next room. One searched his clothing, while another examined his travel pass.
“I am a yoriki under the supervision of Ogyu Banzan, the north magistrate of Edo. I am on a pilgrimage to Mishima.”
He waited for the officials to ask if he was meeting anyone in Mishima, and whom. Their job was to sniff out secret assignations related to plots against the government. Instead they seized upon his name, losing interest in the purpose of his journey.
“Yoriki Sano Ichirō of Edo,” the leader said. “Were you not involved in the murders that took place in Totsuka the day before yesterday?”
Sano was amazed at how fast their spy network passed news along the Tōkaido. He responded to their questions about the murders, suspecting that they already knew most of the answers. Finally, after a thorough reprise of the Totsuka inquest, they let him go.
Since the Temple of Kannon lay high in the mountains behind Hakone Village, Sano left his horse and baggage at an inn and set out on foot. The steep path curved and twisted. Cedars pressed in closely on each side, their heavy dark green boughs blocking Sano’s view at every turn as he climbed. Snow and ice whitened the ground in great slippery patches. Sano found a dead branch and used it as a staff as he struggled from one precarious foothold to the next. The Nius would have sent servants to ease Midori’s way, but still the trip must have been hard for her. The higher he climbed, the more the cold, wind, and dampness intensified. Droplets of icy water struck his face. He felt as though he’d reached the clouds. His heart pounded from the exertion; his lungs heaved.
But his determination to catch the murderer and avenge Tsunehiko’s death kept him going. He only hoped that what awaited him at the Temple of Kannon would make his journey worthwhile. When he finally paused to rest, he saw that he was high above Hakone, with village, lake, and mountains spread below him under a thin veil of mist. Vertigo made him sway. He leaned on his staff for support. Then he turned and once more began the perilous climb upward.
Suddenly, just when he’d almost depleted his last reserves of strength, he emerged into a level, open clearing. Here the surrounding cedars obscured the sky and created a premature twilight. When Sano’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw a temple that perhaps dated back more than a thousand years, to when Buddhism had first come to Japan.
A great free-standing gate with tiled double roofs supported on eight strong pillars marked its entrance. Sano passed through this gate and a smaller inner one, into an earthen courtyard dotted with unlit stone lanterns. To his right stood the main hall, square and forbidding on its high stone podium. On his left he saw the pagoda and the wooden cage that housed the temple bell. A few stone monuments comprised the graveyard. The lecture hall, sutra repository, and storehouses occupied ledges cut into the slope that rose behind the courtyard. Above these, a steep path led to what Sano guessed was the nunnery, a long, low building cantilevered over the mountainside on a support of interlocking wooden beams.
Although the temple must have undergone periodic repair over the years, only the five-story pagoda had been restored to its original condition. Its freshly plastered white walls shone; new blue-gray tiles covered its roofs. Gleaming paint accented the woodwork in traditional Chinese colors: green for window mullions, red and yellow for the roofs’ intricate structural members. The bells encircling the pagoda’s tall bronze spire rang softly in the wind. But the other buildings showed signs of advanced deterioration. Moss and lichen crusted their peeling plaster; wooden beams, doors, and window lattices had warped and split. Broken tiles marred the roofs’ clean lines. Sano saw no priests or nuns or pilgrims. If the watcher had followed, he did not appear. The temple seemed deserted, suspended in a timeless hush.
He climbed the stairs to the main hall. The massive door creaked open at his touch. He paused in the entryway to slip off his shoes, then entered the hall. Against the far wall, a huge Buddha sat enthroned upon a lotus flower. Time had turned the many-armed bronze statue a deep greenish black. All around it stood smaller painted wood images of guardian kings: fierce warriors with clenched fists and raised spears. Hundreds of burning oil lamps and smoldering incense burners animated the deities with a hazy, flickering glow. Years of flame and smoke had blackened the hall’s exposed rafters and suffused it with a musty, ancient fragrance. Faded murals showed ghostly sepia images of the Buddha surrounded by palaces and hills. Tucked in the far left corner, almost as an afterthought, was a woman-sized gilded wooden figure of Kannon-Kuan Yin, Chinese goddess of mercy, bodhisattva who forswore emancipation from the wheel of continual rebirth in order to save the souls of others. She wore a jeweled crown and a flaming halo.
Sano dropped a coin into the offertory box that stood on a post near the altar. He closed his eyes and bent his head over his clasped hands, offering silent prayers for his father’s health, Tsunehiko’s spirit, an end to Wisteria’s grief, and the success of his mission.
The whisper of robes dragging on the floor startled Sano out of his prayers. He turned to see a tall, slender nun in a long black robe and veil standing before him. She could have been any age between thirty and sixty, with pale, stern features and a high forehead. Her long fingers toyed with the rosary at her sash, automatically counting prayers.
“Welcome, honorable pilgrim,” she said, bowing. “I am the abbess of the Temple of Kannon, and I would be delighted to tell you about the temple’s history. The temple was built during the Heian Period, approximately eight hundred years ago.”