MAIDO'S PENALTY
As the time passed and no word came from his father Shibusawa began to
realise the full force of his presentiments. He had not the power to go
to his parent's relief, and his only hope lay in his ability to guard
against still further and greater disaster to the family. He fully
realised his responsibility, and undertook to acquit himself with due
respect to the inevitable and a proper regard for truth.
The aged daimyo had stood patiently the journey and borne up well under
the charge until reaching the Tokyo dungeon, into which he was thrust
without even a chance to meet his accusers, much less any opportunity to
hear or explain.
The foul place which held him prisoner lay in a damp, dark hole in the
cellar, underneath the very building in which his son-in-law swayed the
sceptre of his vast power; and though many of these gruesome cells, each
holding its captive, they were so constructed, with huge walls and
peephole grates, that no person could be seen or a voice heard from one
to the other. Not a rat or uncanny thing could get in there, nor was
there room to lie down on the cold, hard tramped floor. As Maido entered
his last hope vanished; he knew too well his doom. He could not eat the
miserable food each day silently pushed in at the bare opening high up
in the narrow door, nor could he sleep, but sank down and prayed. He
asked his god only that his son escape.
With Maido thus caged below, Ikamon busied himself above; he believed in
doing the thing once he had made up his mind. The consequences could and
would better adjust themselves afterwards. He had made his way by bold
and unflinching strokes, and he reasoned that a change of policy now
would certainly bring, if it did not merit, disaster; therefore he
hastened the trial, and concluded the testimony after the first ordeal.
The morning came on gloomy, and a murky atmosphere hung over the city
like a pall. Ikamon rose early and hurried to his great seat in the hall
of state; then hastily donned the gown of justice and took up the cudgel
of vengeance. There was no one to dispute his right, no one to stay the
hand which had now turned to fiend, and he fiercely called out:
"Jigokumon!"
"Sayo, most honourable high minister," answered the doughty keeper as he
came trudging forward, bowing and attesting.
"Have the prisoners confessed?" asked the mighty, speaking purposely in
the plural.
"No; your most honourable perfectness, they have not had--they have
not."
"Then proceed with the ordeal; the court cannot be so trifled with."
The tormentor withdrew. He knew where to begin his awful work, for
Ikamon had long before told him that, and cautioned him about the
victims. He groped his way below and fumbled at the keyhole. The great
iron lock creaked as he threw back the rusty bolt. He hauled and shoved
at the grimy door, and the filthy den belched its nasty air. Two vile
lubbers fell upon the faint and helpless daimyo, roughly dragging him
out. He made no resistance, nor did he cry aloud. They hurried him
through the long, dark, narrow passage to a muffled exit. The door
closed behind them, and Jigokumon thrust a lighted torch in Maido's
face, and snarled:
"What now, you hinin?"[19]
Maido did not speak; he was beyond that. The light blinded him and
terror overcame him. He glanced pitifully at Ikamon's ruffians, then
sank back unable to comprehend. His torturer sneered as he snuffed the
light and hissed:
"To the torments!"
Throwing open the outer, or last door, the two flunkeys thrust the lord
daimyo forward upon the hot cinders covering the earthen floor.
Jigokumon remained outside; it was too awful in there, even for him.
They hustled Maido to the centre of the room and lashed his hands at his
back with one end of a cord which hung loosely from a beam overhead.
After securely tying his feet together the two heavy men slowly pulled
at the loose end of the cord from above; whereat the victim's arms
fairly twisted in the sockets and, with downcast face, his limbs hung
limp. Maido groaned, then nerved himself to the ordeal.
Having raised him a trifle from the ground, the monsters slid beneath
his bare feet a pot of burning coals from which the lid was stripped.
The sulphur pots were lit, and the red light flashed--the fiends
disappeared, and the fumes rose, enveloping the suffering patriot. He
uttered no sound, but looked upon the hellish scene with stoic
indifference. Perhaps he thought of man's sphere as compared with God's.
Possibly he contrasted the good with the evil of life, as lived on
earth; and he may have glimpsed at a truer way, the one that heaven
foretells.
He had hung there only a few minutes--it seemed to him an age--before
his feet shrivelled and blackened, while the fire crackled and sizzled
around them. As his contorted body dangled in the air, his face
upturned, he momentarily saw, peering through a glass-covered peephole,
his trusted son-in-law, Ikamon; then a smile crossed his face and he
lost all consciousness.
While Maido was being pushed into the cellar of torture, Ikamon had
seated himself in the judge's cubby-hole, which adjoined the chamber of
testimony, permitting a close watch of the victim and a taking of the
confession, if such were made, without suffering the annoyance of the
fiery fumes within. He looked only once, and fate revealed the sickly
smile, whereat he quickly drew the curtain, and turning, shouted:
"Jigokumon; Jigokumon; relieve the victim; the confession is made!"
Suddenly the fires were extinguished, and Maido, more dead than alive,
was restored to the damp cell from which he had been taken. He did not
recover consciousness for a long time, but when he had done so he
suffered such intense pain that he begged the dumb walls for death.
He had, however, long to wait, for he had been left there to suffer all
but that. Ikamon, though, gauged well the time, and before too late
pronounced the sentence: Maido, together with all the rest, was led
forth into the wilderness of Musashijamoku, where they were scattered
about and permitted, one after another, the right of harakiri. There
overhung the marsh land a mist, and the murky wet clung to the smooth,
round bamboos, echoing a grave-like sound as each pronounced the parting
word. All excepting Maido had gone, and it now came his turn. He sat
there in the cold wet with his snarled and decaying limbs crossed under
him. His face was upturned and in his right hand he held the sharpened
steel. He had thanked his accusers for respecting his right to die as
became his rank, and now thought only of his own, his son. Out of the
gloom of the swamp there arose the sound of the executioner's voice; it
said only:
"Maido."
The blow was struck, and his head dropped forward. Then there came from
the still forest a silent, anxious step, and trembling voice, saying:
"It is too late! He is gone!"
She bent over him and whispered:
"It is I."
He raised his face to hers and answered:
"Takara!"
Then she cried:
"It was not I! Oh, honourable father, it was not I that did it!"
Maido said:
"I understand. It was he who stole it. You are my deliverer. You have
brought me news."
"And he knows not your fate, but is not deceived. He lives and I am
still his wife. Shibusawa will vindicate his father's name. I swear it!"
Takara straightened up and the fire flashed from her eyes, as her words
pierced the dull air around her.
"It is well."
These were the words with which Maido bade the world a last farewell,
with which he forgave his traducers, and with which he welcomed death.
He knew Takara's power and believed in her sincerity. He was ready to
die.
Maido fell face downward, and Takara bathed her handkerchief in the
blood that flowed from the wound at his waist; then wrapping up the
stained symbol, hid it in the folds of her obi;[20] she had taken the
oath that is--until avenged.
Takara stood there as if held by some wild, untrained spirit; she stared
this way and that, then a low cry escaped her lips. The haunted woods
around mocked her, and trembling she listened. Not until now had she
realised the awful situation or divined the peril of her strange
adventure. She turned to go, but a rough officer seized and quickly led
her away.
Upon learning of the wholesale arrests, as they were being made, Takara
had missed from its place of keeping the document which Maido had
intrusted to her care. She recalled Daikomitsu's nervousness at the time
of her reading it, his chance of seeing her hide it away, and his sudden
departure from the garden, and thought of his strange actions
afterwards; then she concluded--not reasoned--that these peculiar
circumstances bore some connection with the unexpected seizure of so
many of the daimyos who were present at the meeting. No one knew
Daikomitsu better than Takara, and while she believed him a coward of
little consequence she considered him capable of the meanest
villainy--in the prospect of gain without detection. She did not stop to
inquire about a motive, though she might have discovered one lurking
between his repeated trips to Tokyo and the few unguarded disclosures
made to her in the course of their long acquaintance.
Divining the clue to Ikamon's source of information the mikado's
daughter had set out post-haste to frustrate his designs. She first
called upon Kido, but he proved to be powerless, in fact was only too
glad to have escaped. Then she went to Kanazawa, and there was horrified
to learn that her beloved father-in-law too had been snatched away. She
did not stop to right herself with Shibusawa, who now charged her with
being the accomplice of Daikomitsu--the one person more than any other
interested in the downfall of the house of Maido--and when he finally
dismissed her, saying:
"There is now nothing to merit even our friendship," she stooped with
sorrow and answered:
"It is true. I am justly served."
Though their meeting had been a pitiful one, Takara did not break down
under the weight of his accusation nor did she weaken in her purpose.
She had discovered still greater reason for her activities, and
incidentally learned that Shibusawa was fully prepared to withstand any
further assault upon his stronghold. She, therefore, left him and
resumed her journeying toward Tokyo.
At her arrival there the whole populace seemed in an uproar, the excited
mobs everywhere crying:
"To the swamp! to the wilderness! The yamabushi![21] the vile! the
disloyal! Asano! Kurano! Maido! Let their bodies be ripped!"
Takara shuddered when she heard the fierce rabble, and her heart poured
out its measure. Divining Maido's last thought, she hastened forward in
the hope of reaching him before too late to deliver the word that would
give him peace before death. Leaving her carriers at the wood side, she
clambered through the mire and under the big trees. Time and again the
weird, painful sound grated upon her ears as one after another of the
victims said his last:
"Sayonari."
She struggled on, not knowing which way to go, until she had come within
hearing of the mysterious voice of the hidden executioner, who called in
rotation the names of those that were performing the honoured rite. She
stole after him, and upon calling the name of her lord and master's
father she rushed ahead in time to greet him with the assurance that was
to him a recompense for all his trials and sorrow.
Fortunately Takara did not see the sickening evidence of his prolonged
and terrible suffering; his abused limbs had sunken into the mire, and
she saw only that he had died the death of honour. And she felt happy
that she had reached him in time, though Shibusawa knew not that she
carried the message. Maido's joy rewarded her.
The luckless woman's captor rudely hurried her through the woods, and
departing the scene she did not look back. She made no resistance, but
obeyed the eager fellow's command; nor did she think much of the
consequences. She tramped along, and as they went the air grew more
stifling. The hot breath of the forest rose and choked them, and upon
reaching the open they found it there, too, suffocating.
Continuing toward the city, they presently reached the outskirts
exhausted--the keeper more than his prisoner--and climbing to the top of
a low hill halted for the night. Here there stood a temple, and near by
a small tea house in which he undertook, because of his inability to go
farther, to hold her captive; proposing to rest until morning,
proceeding then to Ikamon's dungeon, the intended place of her
imprisonment. Having securely lodged the hopeful woman in a small
detached room, the ponderous captor refreshed himself and lay down in
front to keep guard.
The humbled daughter of a proud royalty had failed in her mission, yet
in that failure fate had revealed to her the sweetest rite, the
consoling of a dying friend. Maido's lips had been sealed, but in that
there arose a fresh desire, and had Takara been privileged to meet the
living as she had parted with the dead, she would gladly have resigned
herself to her doom. The new responsibility made imperative to her the
seemingly hopeless task of again reaching Shibusawa.