#two ronin

[talesofedo]

[talesofedo]

Ochiyo, the innkeeper's daughter, is taking good care of Masaharu while he's sick at their inn. (And I'm making up for my lack of writing with a picture...) 😅 (Who already figured out what illness he picked up at the cheap inn?)

[talesofedo]

As it turned out, fleas were not the only thing Masaharu picked up at the cheap inn that night.

Just prior to reaching Kyoto where he had planned to rest a few days before traveling the Tokaido the remainder of the way to Edo, he began feeling unwell. At first, he started feeling warm and sweaty, but this was easy to dismiss because the spring days were gradually growing warmer and by mid-afternoon, humidity usually hung heavy in the air and made his hair cling to his neck and his clothing stick to his body.

It wasn't long, however, before he developed a dry cough and started finding it difficult to continue at the pace he'd been traveling, often reaching his next waypoint only late into the night, or having to find a rest spot by the side of the road when he was unable to make it to the next inn or temple on his map.

He was still at least a day from the city when he arrived in a small town late at night. His eyes had been red and swollen for most of the day and his cough had progressed to a point where he found it difficult to catch his breath, forcing him to take frequent breaks. Seeing the inn with its brightly lit lanterns made him almost jump for joy at the prospect of having a soft futon for the night and a hot bath in the morning, regardless of how expensive his stay might be.

He ducked underneath the curtains and entered a well-lit entrance room, out of breath but glad to have made it. He gratefully sunk down onto the platform to rest his body and wait for the proprietor to appear.

It was his coughing that alerted the innkeeper's daughter to the new arrival while she was carrying empty dinner trays back to the kitchen, and she rushed to the entrance at the front of the building to find a samurai sitting down, stretching his back.

She bowed politely. "Welcome, o-samurai-sama."

"I would like a room for the night," he said.

The girl remained bowed, her hands on her knees. Timidly, as if expecting him to shout at her, she apologized, "I'm sorry, o-samurai-sama, but we have no available rooms." She lifted her head up and then bowed again, this time even deeper. "I am really very sorry."

"I see." The samurai sighed and slowly got to his feet. He was feeling unsteady and lightheaded, but if the inn was full there was not much he could do except look for a different place to stay. "I'm sorry to have troubled you." He picked up his sword and made it as far as the doorway before another coughing fit halted him in his steps, causing him to seek the support of the door frame as he tried to catch his breath.

"Please wait," the girl called out when he was starting to walk away. She was worried about turning a sick man out into the night, especially since the town had no other inns. "If you... if you won't mind, we have a large shed you could use for the night. It's not much, but you wouldn't need to pay for it. We would have an actual room for you in the morning if you wanted to stay a few days to recover."

"That would be fine, thank you,” he said gratefully.

"Please wait here, I'll fetch a light and show you the way." The girl rushed away and returned quickly, holding a lamp in one hand and a straw mat in the other. She escorted him around the back to a large shed that stood perpendicular to the main building on the opposite end of a courtyard surrounded by tall trees. 

Inside, a raised platform held assorted equipment, broken screens yet to be fixed, and various other things needed to maintain and run an inn. Underneath the platform, dried wood and bamboo were stacked, ready for use in making repairs. The girl put the lamp and mat on the platform.

"I'm sorry, we do not have any spare futons. But I will bring you blankets and a pillow right away." She rushed out again.

When the girl returned only minutes later, balancing a pillow on top of the thick blankets she cradled in her arms, she was surprised to find the lamp already extinguished. When she stepped inside the shed, the light cast by the inn’s lanterns across the courtyard was barely enough to illuminate her way and she had to stand still for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

She was surprised to see the samurai had spread the mat out on the packed dirt floor rather than the platform, and he appeared to already be asleep, curled on his side in his travel clothing. He was using his furoshiki-wrapped bundle as a pillow and his hand was resting on the sheath of his long sword, which lay between him and the wall.

He must have been exhausted, she thought, because he hadn't even taken off his waraji. She was worried that he might wake and draw his sword on her if she approached him with the blankets now, and for a while she just stood there weighing her options.

She could walk away but her father would surely scold her for not bringing the man his blankets and making sure he was settled, even if it was only in the shed. And her father would scold her even more if she brought the blankets but didn't make sure to cover a sick man, though she figured it was more out of a sense of self-preservation - after all, what innkeeper would want to be blamed for not giving appropriate care to a samurai - than of genuine concern.

"O-samurai-sama," the girl called into the silence, hoping that it would wake him, but he didn't even stir. She called out to him a second time and then timidly approached, squatting down at arm's length to untie his sandals, still worried to startle him. 

She felt more confident to approach him when taking off his sandals hadn't caused him to wake, and she covered him with the blankets, carefully tucking them around him. She felt bad that they couldn’t offer him a proper room and bed for the night, especially now that she was close enough to see how flushed his face was with fever, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead and neck even though he was shivering.

When she shut the door behind her after leaving, she made a mental note to bring him tea first thing in the morning and hoped he would feel better by then.

[talesofedo]

He didn't realize how expensive some of the post town inns were until he paid his bill that morning, and in an effort to stretch his travel budget he opted to stay at the cheapest inn he could find the following night.

He regretted this decision almost immediately.

Cheap inns offered only shared spaces where weary travelers spent the night with complete strangers on either side unless they traveled with a large party of their own. The few screens available to partition areas for a small semblance of privacy had been claimed by the time he arrived, and so he found himself on a futon of questionable cleanliness within an arm's length of a woman with a cranky toddler on his left and an elderly couple who were already snoring in unison on his right.

Tucking his swords underneath the covers with him lest they should be stolen in the middle of the night, he wondered whether sleeping in the center of the road outside would not have been both quieter and more comfortable.

When he was awoken by the bustle of people readying themselves for the next part of their journeys in the morning, he felt like he hadn't slept at all. He did have a vague memory of waking up with the child's foot pressed uncomfortably against the side of his face, so he supposed he'd at least slept for a short while.

He groggily dragged himself and his belongings over to the well for a quick wash before moving on, and found to his great dismay several fleas jumping away as he stripped his upper body bare before dousing his face with cold water.

Just great, he thought sarcastically. I didn't get any sleep and I picked up fleas.

While he scrubbed behind his ears and then gathered his dripping hair back up into some semblance of a ponytail, he made a mental note to pick kujin grass from the wayside to keep pests at bay, and to try different accommodations going forward. He wondered if he could buy a map in this town showing the inns and temples along the road so that he could plan ahead for the remainder of his journey.

[talesofedo]

When you don't have talent with a sword, like Yukihisa, there are plenty of other ways to make ends meet in Edo... 😏😉

[talesofedo]

[talesofedo]

I'll do something proper with this sketch later, but it was fun playing with the monochromatic palette.

[talesofedo]