Black Arrow Read Online Free Page B

has money and they have for generations sent their sons to the capital to be educated.” After a moment she added, “I hope there is no reason to suspect them of disloyalty. Perhaps you should postpone this visit.”
     
    Akitada growled, “Nonsense,” and went to a cushion near a brazier full of glowing charcoal.
     
    Lowering his tall frame gingerly, he watched his wife’s graceful movements as she placed the censer under the bamboo stand and used her fan to direct the scent of incense toward the garment. He held his chilled fingers over the glowing coals. “It is clouding up,” he said, his heavy eyebrows glowering. “The chances are excellent that I will get a good soaking on the way. The very idea, wearing a perfumed silk robe for a ten-mile ride across rough roads in this kind of weather.”
     
    “You can put your straw raincoat over it. Or better still, why don’t you let Tora take your regrets and stay here with me?”
     
    She laid down her fan, came to him and knelt, placing a cool hand against his forehead. “At least you are not feverish,” she said. “Are you still feeling ill?”
     
    Akitada shifted away irritably. “It is nothing.”
     
    He thought: And I must go. Unless I can get Uesugi to support me, I am wasted here. He clenched his fists. In the week since his arrival he had met with sullen stares from the people in the streets, and with lack of cooperation and outright insubordination from what passed as his staff at the tribunal. Not that there was much of it, for the entire paperwork of the province seemed to be in the hands of one senior clerk and two frightened youngsters. And in the jail and constabulary matters were even worse. Never had he seen a more depraved looking gang of cutthroats than his tribunal constables and their brutish sergeant, while the few prisoners in their filthy cells looked starved and bore the marks of cruel beatings.
     
    To add insult to injury, the provincial guard, commanded by the haughty Captain Takesuke, seemed to take its orders from Takata. The old Lord Uesugi was the provincial high constable. Evidently his authority also extended to legal matters, for since Akitada’s arrival not a single man or woman had come to the tribunal to lay charges or ask for adjudication of a case. He sighed deeply.
     
    “What is wrong?” his wife asked.
     
    “It may be,” he said heavily, “that we should not have come here. Nothing has gone right. The tribunal is practically a ruin, the provincial granaries are almost empty, and the people are sullen to the point of disrespect. We have yet to receive a single welcome.”
     
    She got up to return to her work. “It is true that this is a strange place, but you were eager to leave the capital. Remember how unhappy you were with your work and how cruelly the minister used you? If only winter were not so near.” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.
     
    Akitada was suddenly ashamed of having taken out his ill humor on his wife. “Tamako, are you sorry you came?” he asked anxiously. “This is called the snow country, you know. They say we will be snowed in for six months and rarely see daylight because the snow covers the whole house. And we don’t even have a house. How will you pass your time?”
     
    She gave him a smile. “We can make this place livable and we will be together.”
     
    Akitada looked about at the handsome screens and movable hangings and at the large lacquer chests holding their bedding and clothes. But he was worried about other matters. “There are no women’s quarters here. And the men are not only hostile and rebellious, but uncouth. Your maid may be raped within a week. I should never have brought either of you.”
     
    There was a brief silence. Then Tamako said in a brittle voice, “If you don’t want me here, I will go back. Then at least I shall be of some use to your mother and sisters.’“
     
    They both knew they were too far from the capital and he could not send her home,