Noon found us ready for the start, our swords girt on under the flowing priest robes, and hats drawn low to shade our faces. Upon our feet iron-shod sandals were bound firmly over the white silk foot mittens, in keeping with our role of monks of noble blood, vowed to a pilgrimage to Zozoji and just in off the road. But the hilts of our swords were within convenient reach inside the edge of our robes, and, despite Yoritomo’s warning, my revolvers were no less ready. I assured him, however, that they would not be used unless the occasion justified.
When it came to the parting, I looked to see Kohana protest or at least shed a tear over this short ending of her lover’s visit. After three weary years of absence he had come back to her for a single night, and was now going from her again, it might be to his death. Yet she neither wept nor betrayed any other sign of grief. Smilingly she conducted us from her house and down the path to the gateway, where he signed her to stop.
“If all goes well,” he said, “I will send for you or come again to Shinagawa.”
She kowtowed, with a softly murmured word of parting, “Saionara!”
“Farewell, Kohana San,” I responded. “The tojin carries away with him grateful thoughts of his kind and beautiful hostess.”
“Gracious indeed is the condescension of the august lord in deigning to overlook the conduct of one so rude and ignorant,” she said. Yoritomo was swinging away at a rapid stride. She rose quickly, and held out her hands, clasped palm to palm. Her eyes gazed up into mine, full of timid appeal, and her lips quivered with a pitiful smile. “Woroto Sama is a lord of the tojin, he is powerful. While he slept I looked at the strange weapons he bears, and my lord told me their use. The tojin sama is a friend of Yoritomo Sama!”
“If they kill him, they kill me,” I answered.
With a swift movement she drew from her sleeve and pressed into my hand a dirk whose richly ornamented hilt and sheath told of a precious blade within. I would have sought to return the gift, but she sank down and beat the ground at my feet with her forehead. I thrust the dirk in beside my sword, and turned away, feeling that this girl of a despised profession had honored me with her trust and gratitude. Indeed, I might say she had ennobled me, since I had needed the dirk to become a samurai, a two-sword gentleman.
With hat brim down, hands demurely folded within priestly sleeves, and body waddling samurai-fashion from the weight of cartridges about my waist, I followed after my friend across the beautiful little landscape garden of the teahouse. There were many guests strolling along the shaded walks or lunching in the little kiosks which from the crest of a terrace looked out over the blue bay. But, unheeded either by guests or attendants, we passed up the garden and out through a wicket gate in the wall across from the teahouse.
As we came into the narrow alley upon which the gate opened, Yoritomo warned me to keep my hand on my swordhilt. On either side, preening themselves behind barred verandas, I saw rows of pretty young girls clad in gorgeous robes. We had entered a street given over to the joro, or courtesans. Throughout the length of the lane, samurais flushed with sake and evil-eyed ronins swaggered aggressively up and down, with swords cocked high in their girdles.