The official scavengers were busy at the Great Gate, a customary place to leave your unburied dead. Beyond stretched the Saikaido, highway to the western ocean, toward a green and mountainous countryside. In the far distance, hidden in a blue haze, was Haseo’s home and the sacred Hachiman Shrine. Akitada left death behind, hoping to find a way back to life.

Along the highway was more evidence of the epidemic. He passed two rotting corpses. In their haste to flee the city, a man and a woman had succumbed to the disease, proving, like Soga, the foolishness of trying to escape fate.

Akitada considered fear and found he had none. It seemed to him that this was so because he no longer valued his life. Only those who found happiness and contentment in their existence feared losing it. It was a cruel twist of fate that death had snatched Yori, so young and full of joy and laughter, and left behind his father.

But dwelling on Yori’s death caused unbearable pain, and so Akitada fled—leaving behind an empty house, agonizing memories, and constant reminders of guilt. He followed the trail of an old murder and betrayal, hoping to drive his demons back into the shadows of his mind.

By the time he reached Toba, he had reviewed the facts of Haseo’s case and felt hungry. He could not recall his last meal, or any meal he had felt an appetite for. Now that he had left the nauseating smoke of Toribeno behind and the air was sweeter, his body clamored for sustenance even when life seemed unbearable. Unfortunately, all the doors of the small town were closed to him. People feared travelers from the capital.

He rode on with a painfully empty belly. The highway soon crossed the Kamo River. There was boat traffic here, and a few miles farther he found a temple and stopped.

The monk who greeted him at the gate said they were low on provisions, having fed so many fugitives from the capital that they had only beans and millet left. The beans and millet had been boiled into a thick, pasty stew, but Akitada ate hungrily. He had taken only a few bites, when a small family arrived, a man with two women and two children. One of the children was a boy Yori’s age, and Akitada choked on his food. Leaving most of it behind, along with a donation, he fled back to the road.

Soon the Katsura River joined the Kamo, and more boats plied their trade on the water. He passed the vast Ogura swamp, through which the Uji River flowed to join the Kamo and the Katsura, and within another mile the Kii joined also, forming a wide river delta of swamps and sandbanks before becoming the fast and treacherous Yodo, which carried all the heavy shipping to the Inland Sea and Korea and China beyond. At the river confluence, the highway crossed a long timber bridge and turned west. All around Akitada was a flat landscape of watery rice paddies, with occasional farms shaded by trees rising like islands from a green and billowing sea. Here the peasants worked their land as they always had.

The mountains rose to the south, blue against a paler sky. Some inner need drove Akitada to visit the shrine first. To reach Mount Otoko he passed the barrier into Settsu Province and then crossed the river by ferry.

Before ascending the sacred mountain, Akitada bathed in the river and changed his clothes to cleanse himself of the pollution of the past days. It was getting dark before he reached the shrine on top of the sacred mountain and stabled his horse.

Perhaps he was foolish to come here, but something drew him to this place, a spiritual bond with the ancient gods of heaven and earth. As soon as he had passed under the red-lacquered torii and entered the forest path, he felt that he was in the presence of the gods. Large trees—camphor trees, he thought, but it was too dark here to be certain—enclosed him like sheltering wings. He felt calmer than he had in many months. His grief did not entirely disappear—he was convinced it never would—but it felt more natural, not like some foreign object which had been thrust deep into his belly and lay there festering. He felt a part of the mountain, the trees, the night, and when the tears finally spilled from his eyes, he let them fall unchecked.

Near the shrine was a small Buddhist temple where he asked for and received a place to sleep. And here he found his first rest after many sleepless nights.

He awoke well after sunrise to the cooing of hundreds of doves, and rose to pay his respects to the gods. There was no one about as he walked to the shrine building in the cool mountain air, rinsed his mouth and his hands with the clear water in a stone trough, and then prayed humbly to the gods of the mountain, and to Hachiman, protector of warriors and immanent spirit of this sacred place. He found no answering enlightenment for his troubles or Haseo’s, but he felt a sense of peace, and when he stepped from the shrine, the morning air seemed purer, the scent of camphor and pine fresher, and flocks of doves rose to circle the shrine hall.

He could see for miles from this mountaintop, across a green and fertile land, across the web of rivers, rice paddies, lakes, and villages, all the way to the distant hazy shimmer that was the capital. This land of the rising sun would endure. All else was immaterial, transitory, and of no importance. Men, like the doves of this sacred mountain, were individually short-lived and insignificant, but they too would endure like the mountain itself. And during their fleeting lives, they could soar.

The priest was a member of the Ki family, hereditary head priests of the Hachiman Shrine. He was past middle age, very dignified in his white garments and black court hat, and he received Akitada with smiling courtesy in his private apartments. Another priest, perhaps Ki’s secretary, was bent over some paperwork.

Shinto priests could marry and, apart from their training in ritual and their devotion to the gods, were not much different from ordinary men of rank and education. But this was the shrine of the guardian deity of the Imperial Family, and Ki was accustomed to receiving emperors, chancellors, and nobles of the highest rank. After a few polite preliminaries and fielding a question or two about conditions in the capital, Akitada asked him about Haseo.

The priest’s smile did not fade. He nodded. “I knew him and his family well. They were faithful supporters of this shrine. A dreadful affair. What is it that you wish to know?”

“Did you think him capable of the crime?”

Ki hesitated. “All men are capable of extraordinary acts—both good and evil—if it is fated and their nature demands it. Let me explain. Haseo wanted to take up the life of a warrior, but his father refused his permission. The elder Tomonari wished his only son to manage the family estate and provide him with heirs. Haseo married and fathered two sons, but he held on to his dream of becoming an officer in the Imperial Guard. On the day of the murder, he came to me to take his leave. He was about to tell his father of his decision.” The priest sighed deeply. “They say there was a violent quarrel.”

Akitada found Ki’s continued smile irritating. He could accept Haseo’s anger with his father, but not what the priest suggested. He asked, “What became of his family?”

Ki hedged. “Surely it cannot matter, since they were not witnesses to the murders?”

Akitada said harshly, “When Haseo died in my arms in Sadoshima, his last thoughts were for his family.”

Ki, still smiling, shook his head. “It does you great credit to be concerned on your friend’s behalf, but I assure you that they are well. Consider please that great harm might come to them if the past were stirred up again.”

There it was again: the warning to leave matters alone. Akitada persisted. “There was a nurse who witnessed the crime. Can you at least tell me where she lives?”