“I am delighted with it,” the dragon continued, and hiccoughed. “Neither wit, nor words, nor worth,” this repeated unslurred and with a startlingly good accent, despite the truly remarkable quantity of liquor which the beast had consumed, “—that has a very pleasing rhythm. This is part of your funerary rites?”
“In the theater, when they have killed him,” Laurence said, confusedly, trying to explain; he was beginning to find it difficult to make his tongue work in Chinese. “There is a dragon when he gives the speech,” he added, with some vague sense that this might be of interest to another beast, trying with movements of his hands to convey some sense of the usual staging, which he had seen once as a boy of thirteen.
“I would be glad to see it,” the dragon said. “I have lately seen a splendid performance by a troupe, who came by upon the road. I will give you a little of it.”
She began to recite in a low melodious voice, rising and falling in the unfamiliar language. Laurence was not proof against so much inducement added to his own weariness, and before she had completed the third line he had fallen to sleep beside Junichiro. When he woke, the dragon was gone; Junichiro was stirring beside him, and the sun was going down. His head ached like the very devil.
“The guardian must have gone to the water,” Junichiro said. “We should go onwards.”
“Yes,” Laurence said, wearily, “but we had better wait until the sun has gone, and eat,” the bowl holding still a handsome share of leftovers, “and in the meanwhile, I will have a few answers: I am not ungrateful, but I would know what you are about. Did you—seek to escape Kaneko’s service, yourself?” He spoke dubiously; he could scarcely imagine that to be Junichiro’s motive. The boy’s affection for his master had been too visible and sincere for that, and yet it seemed equally unlikely he had been motivated by any sense of injustice done to Laurence himself; there was certainly no personal attachment between them.
“Of course not,” Junichiro said, bitterly; he was brushing his own garments clean as best he could. “I heard my master tell Lady Arikawa you were too much of a coward to take an honorable death. There was no course of honor left for him. If he gave you up for torture to the magistrate, he would have failed in his vow; and he could not disobey the bakufu to protect you. What else was there to do?”
“What was this vow?” Laurence demanded. “Why would he have sworn an oath to aid a perfect stranger?”
“He made the vow to Jizo,” Junichiro said shortly, “who guards travelers, to ask him to look after his wife and son.”
His manner did not invite further inquiry. But Laurence recalled the silence of the house, the absence of a chatelaine, Kaneko’s black clothing, and thought he might understand: a wife lost in childbirth, and the child with her. Enough cause, surely, for a man to seek the consolation of religion, and to hold the oath he had made for their sake more dear than a mere promise to be put aside when inconvenient.
“So I will keep you alive, and get you away,” Junichiro went on. “My master will not have disobeyed the law; he will not have brought shame on Lady Arikawa and his own family: the guilt will be on my own head.”
Laurence shook his head in dismay: it was a solution which he felt could only have appealed to the excessive optimism of a young man, a wish to be the hero of the piece. “Unless that magistrate is a fool, he will hold your master accountable for your actions, and you will have only gained a crime to your account and his,” he said.
“He cannot,” Junichiro said. “Kaneko is my teacher, not my lord. I am not yet sworn to service. My family were—ronin.” Laurence did not recognize the word, but Junichiro looked away and spoke as though ashamed. “He took me in. When my training was complete, he meant to present me to Lady Arikawa, to see if she would—” His voice died away, and he swallowed visibly: a dream plainly now lost. He straightened. “My family are dead. The shame of my behavior falls only on myself, not on him,” he said. “Why do you think Lady Arikawa let us escape?”
Laurence paused and looked at him doubtfully. He had credited good fortune for the improbable success of their flight, but he could scarcely deny that a deliberate impulse on the part of their deadly pursuer was compellingly more plausible. “If so,” he said slowly, “then you have achieved your aim. Listen: let me bind you here. That dragon will free you. You can tell them that I forced you to assist me—”