a NOBLE FATE - sample
PROLOGUE
1942
Singapore, British Malaya
A distant, tortured howl lanced Reiko’s ear. It gripped her heart. She gasped.
It had risen over the ambient noises: her puffing, her squishy footfalls in the mire, and the drizzle’s pitter-patter. The wail was bitter, raspy, and echoed of the person’s despair and sorrow, and it showed the confrontation was astir. It gave her a bearing. Tired as she was, she sped up. Up the final incline before Lornie Road.
Distracted, she didn’t spot the ditch. And crashed. Her kit went flying. Dazed, winded and spent, all she yearned was to rest and recover. She’d grazed her elbows and knees further, but she felt little besides the piercing stitch in her side and the fire in her lungs. Her terror of the eerie cemetery forgotten.
The alluring kyūdōka, whose beauty was unseen in the tempest’s bleak, scrambled about on fours, grabbed the torchlight and found her bamboo quiver next. There were slats cracked, though the arrows were intact. She crawled around more before her fingers touched a bowstring, and she pulled it towards her, then finger-walked along the hemp tsuru, the bow-limbs and grip. The massive yumi bow proved unspoiled, and she exhaled in relief, unaware she’d held her breath. Her gloves, akin to the rest of her, were sopping. She levered herself up and reset her headband, wondering fleetingly if the wetness would affect her accuracy. She forged onward.
Once past the silent roadway, the narrow twisting trail became a wider bush lane, tunnel-like, formed by the overhanging canopy of the rainforest. Straightaway, it fell pitch-dark. And grew earthy in scent. But Rei was familiar with it, being a path of her running circuit. She flicked off her lamp.
Defying the sears from acidosis in her muscles, besides her jackhammering heart, she put on a burst of speed, knowing she was closing. A minute later, she heard them. Their epic quarrel. She slowed to a stealthy slink, veered along a curve, where the cocoon of trees ceded to the openness of the lakeshore. Almost at once, she spied their silhouettes against the lake water’s lighter shade. She was towards their flank, hidden by the murkiness, while their voices grew louder and clearer as she neared. She saw a man near crazed, as the second sustained a strained calmness.
Unsure whether to intervene, she crept forth and halted behind a tree, thirty-five yards apart by her judgement. Half of the seventy, she shot with accuracy. Exhausted and breathless, she leaned on it, heaving.
An arm lifted a weapon.
It triggered an inner outrage. At once, Rei took a ya, a metal tipped bamboo bolt, set it on her bow grip with its nook on the bowstring, while calming her mind and breathing. Then she drew the missile back and adjusted her aim, her limb straining against the tension, feeling its deep-rooted power. Her adept actions were a blur of motion, completed in a twinkle.
She blinked away a raindrop. And her fingers began their release…
Mere weeks earlier…
Singapore was dying.
Besieged, engulfed in a tumultuous, stifling and noxious chaos. Britain’s last standing domain in the Orient was succumbing to a swift demise. A harrowing one. The relentless foe had battered the docks and the town and its fringes with ceaseless attacks since their arrival on the northwest coast days ago. Barrages, bombings and strafes. The once sublime paradise lay shredded, ruined.
They had caught the defenders with their trousers down by their ankles after the Allied generals deemed the swamps unlikely for landings and focused their assets elsewhere. The chiefs ought to have learnt from the prior nine weeks. That the ‘near-sighted, slant-eyed apes’ - as Anglo newspeak drew them - fought deftly, with tactics never seen. They were supple. Not to be underestimated.
It was 15 February and a bastion of British might - their ‘impregnable fortress’ or ‘Jewel in the East’ - would become a changed tenure. An Eastern one.
The island’s top sleuth Montague Bythesea sat rump on the wet floor of the dank, debris-filled room, arms wrapped around Reiko, gabbing in whispers. A busted pipe close by trickled. They’d taken refuge in the Straits Settlements Police forensic rooms at the General Hospital since the prior day, sheltering from the raging battle. The din and tremors were unending. The front had overrun their home on the outskirts.
Hours earlier, a selfless Dr Kariya Tetsuhiko saved the Briton from the bayonets and muzzles of Arisaka rifles thrust forth by soldiers hell-bent on killing him. The medico got his word across, arguing forcefully in their native tongue. But not before a fierce one-man rugby maul against the squad and catching a strike in his midriff for his efforts. But his firm air carried the hour, and the hostile lieutenant ceded. Not without venom. They quit, leaving them alone. Thereafter, they’d seen no trace of the troops. Neither of the quack.
The Englishman’s daughter, a Nihonjin alike their friend, was at the clash too in the vault-like space built into the base of Pearl’s Hill. Afterwards, she refused to leave her father’s side, likewise intent on keeping him safe.
There was a valid reason for their fears. Before the intrusion, news reached them of the past day’s slaughter at the British Military Hospital in Alexandra, two miles west. The callous murder of the medics and patients, able or infirm, European or Asian. Untold souls. As the sun peaked, along with a premature dusk caused by smothering smog, they shared a cold tin of corned beef. Using their fingers. They sniffed nothing of its aroma.
As they huddled in the gloom, he caught her feminine scent, real or imagined, against the acrid reek of spent ordnance and smoke. He studied her angelic face - which twinkled between bliss and anxiety - then at her chest, rising and falling under her hospital scrubs. An obscure feeling overcame him at once. A virile yen… for her. It shocked him and he took his wits elsewhere, dismissing his longing, chiding himself inwardly.
In the Allied zone, several miles east, hours afterwards…
Two souls stepped from a rickshaw, a short distance away on Joo Chiat, before wobbling for the Chapel Road property. By appearances, they were sozzled cronies, heading home, after grieving for their native soil and fleeing from the dread of the future. At the pub. The truth was, the boozing struck one person. The second, known to their handlers as ‘Gazo’, propped and steered Peter Lee. They made it up the steps and gained entry.
Meanwhile, the sober - babbling support - cajoled the inebriated along into the living room. Lee floated in and out of feeble awareness as his brain ached, aggravated by the jabs of daylight through the shutters. Wooziness swamped him. His legs felt akin to rubber.
By then, he’d lost all inkling of his afternoon’s aim: to secure his fellow operative. Instead, the tables had turned on him. Out of nowhere, a stick of bombs fell nearby, and Lee’s pegs already unstable failed him. He slumped. Straightaway, his compatriot yanked him up into a kneeling position and slapped him. He blinked while the other loomed large in his blurred vision, an instrument in hand. He beamed, realising - despite the fuzz and drowsiness in his head - what the tool was. And its purpose.
Even at that point, he sensed little danger and kept smiling. Lee scanned about the room, trying to orientate himself, and thought he recognised the surroundings. His favourite travel photograph, that of London’s Tower Bridge, hung centre stage on the feature wall. Relief at being home swaddled him. He grinned.
Utterances in the Nihongo tongue drew his face forth, and he spotted his friend again. He slurred, then cackled with euphoria, tickled that the metal blade was flaccid. Wobbly. In his drunken eyes, it wriggled about like a jelly toy.
The handle came into his left palm. Lee gripped and swished it around with glee, fancying himself as a noble samurai in battle slaying a nemesis. With abruptness, he tried to stand, pushing against his companion who crouched behind him, locking him. They tussled.
Without warning, the traditional Malay keris plunged into his torso. It went deep, then the wavy dagger jerked and sawed, its design - lending itself to stabbing rather than cutting - working against it. But it proved keen enough to carve with brawn, drawing sideways. At once, a foul stink imbued the space, and the sinner reeled, stomach churning, nose pursed, breath held. The blade tore a jagged track through the abdomen. Blood gushed and intestines spilled out grotesquely.
Substance-soused, Lee felt no pain, but a tickle. He part-giggled, part-shrieked, pointing to the mess at his belly, before his ticker stalled.
In his last moments, he offered a lopsided smile. And flopped forward.
❁
1940
Bythesea Cottage
The sleek yadake bamboo reed with its willow-leaf shaped tip and golden eagle fletching hissed, parting the air, flying true. In a flash, it slammed into the straw target seventy yards away, while the kyūdōka posed stock-still, dignified, as her bow, lankier than she was tall, spun in her palm and came to rest, its cord forward. She sighted down the range and saw the missile an inch from dead centre; her aiming point. She pursed her lips, displeased with herself.
Applause sprung from the small crowd of three, and she whirled, composed herself, bowed deep twice, thrice in thanks and smiled. A moment later, she readjusted herself into her elegant stance for the following arrow, starting the draw while it was above her crown, pulling back on the hemp tsuru until her hand paused behind her ear. The bolt hung level with her mouth. Her orbs absorbed.
‘Chin-chin,’ Monty chirped, after he revived their glasses with Macallan Highland Single Malt. He held up his tumbler.
‘Kampai!’ the Kariya brothers chorused.
‘Stirring to see Reiko pursuing an old feudal art. One that is graceful, despite its lethal purpose,’ Tetsu observed. ‘With outstanding skill, too.’
Shinji, the owlish and staider fraternal twin, concurred, ‘As skilled as I’d ever seen. Was it Takahashi-sensei who trained her?’
‘Kamiyo, kare o yasuma sete kudasai,’ said Montague Bythesea, the host, in fluent Nihongo, the Japanese tongue. It was a phrase meaning God Rest Him. ‘Indeed. Although he held a great love for kyūdō, he had sights on her mastering ju-jitsu.’
‘Natural, I suppose. He was a master of the close combat martial art.’
‘Quite so. In the event, she defied him at age five, insisting on archery and riding as her fortes, entertaining no argument. An early sign of her inner strength. Fancy that, eh? Going against a daunting descendant of samurai whose first name meant “Double Dragon”.’ He caressed his painter’s brush moustache in contemplation. ‘And if you think Rei’s adept releasing from a static pose, watch her let loose from a galloping horse. I wouldn’t want to do battle with her.’
Tet chuckled. ‘A proud parent, I see.’ He gripped his friend on the shoulder. ‘Understandably and deservedly so.’
‘Hear, hear...!’ Shin joined, rapping the chair’s armrest to underline his agreement.
‘Indeed, I am,’ said Bythesea in noble-born English. ‘She’s smashing! Talented, wise and beautiful in every way. True to the essence of her given name, Reiko.’
‘Much credit to you, I reckon,’ Tet responded. ‘I dare say Takahashi-san would be grateful to you.’
‘Good Heavens, no! Quite the reverse. I am indebted to him! He was more of a father to me than my own, and his teachings in wisdom and ju-jitsu saved my life more times than I can recall. Also, like you chaps, he never saw me as a gaijin. An outsider.’ Beside his rattan chair, Yuki, their akita inu, stretched as he stroked it with languid fingertips. Its fluffy, wintery appearance had inspired its name, meaning ‘snow’. ‘More so, he’d granted me a priceless gift in Rei. A gift so precious... One I could never repay. I deserve no merit for her. That was Rei’s own doing.’
‘Still, it was a grave responsibility… Not just her youth when she came into your care, but her grief. She adored her father.’
‘Indeed. But Reiko never was a millstone. She’s a joy,’ proclaimed Monty. After his family’s murder, his world had ensued colourless. Dark, baneful too. Then, months afterwards, she stormed his stage, diffusing the shroud of misery that choked him, swapping it with a tapestry of hues. She unfurled his inky spirit, and his soul reshaped.
Streaks of the morning sun spotlighted Rei then. She stood attired in a white short-sleeved keiko-gi bound by an obi belt, over a black hakama, with white split-toed tabi socks. Just now, she flicked her skirt-like trousers to cover her wooden clogged feet. For archery, she wore her long ebony mane with side bangs, knotted and set at the top of her crown with lacquered chopsticks. A ponytail flowed down her graceful neck and straight spine.
She re-gripped her shaped, asymmetrical bamboo and leather bow - the yumi - which at over two yards tall, dwarfed her. With it held a third up its length, the standing pose with the bowline drawn back was majestic. Strikingly exquisite. A sight made more alluring by her ethereal beauty. Her delicate facial features and flawless milky skin. Her lithe figure.
She posed in a Zen trance, carrying out her refinements with exacting control, giving herself to the spiritual - the munen muso. Thoughtless, illusion-less. A state of mind clear of worldly longings. Then, with a subtle, unseen easing of her fingers, another arrow freed, whizzed true and struck the target; like its inventors meant since they created the art form in the 12th century. At 131 mph, it’d glided just over a second, clipping an earlier shaft.
‘You’ve held her adoption specifics privy. Care to share, Mont? I sense there’s more,’ Tet urged in fluent English, tinted with Japanese and Malayan lilt from a lengthy patch living in the country. ‘Time you spilled the details…’
The Brit withdrew into a spell of conflicting parley. Thereafter, he said, ‘My sensei was succumbing to the insidious incursion of his organs and implored me to adopt Reiko. How could I deny him?’ What he masked was the elder had pleaded with him to marry Rei. He’d refused on two grounds, but above all because he couldn’t agree to a marriage forced upon her.
Shin lit up another ciggie and puffed, billowing fumes. ‘Was that out of pity for losing your family?’
‘I made sure it wasn’t. Could never have accepted on that basis,’ said Monty. ‘After weighing it, I agreed to a wardship. At Takahashi-sensei’s bidding, my obligation would stay till she turned twenty-two.’ He exhaled. ‘Compared to her youthful Oriental looks, I appear craggy… grey. She was then seventeen but would pass for a ninth-grade student.’ His once cinnamon brown hair had faded to salt and pepper. He was right. Strangers viewed them as odd.
‘Yes, we’d heard the whisperings.’ Shin cleaned his lenses with a handkerchief.
‘Thank God, Rei’s a self-assured soul. Poised. Against the official paperwork, we see ourselves as siblings, not father and daughter, and we enjoy an enriching relationship.’ He mused on their wa, their harmony. Just then, as he often did, he pondered: What if? But he resumed, ‘We exist as equals. Although she defers to my judgement for a good many things. She runs the home though...’
‘She’s a Japanese woman, né?’ said Tetsu, the doctor, scratching his beard in reflection. ‘Ingrained cultural customs are hard to rub out. In her case, the Confucian ethics for women: the “three obediences and four virtues”. Then, take Shin and I. Largely Western educated, yet our upbringing shapes our behaviour. You too, with your Oriental ways.’ He beamed.
‘You don’t say,’ Monty concurred, before his mind drifted anew to Reiko, musing on her serene inner beauty. An Eastern collectedness many Occidental men find endearing. He too. At that instant, he thought, If only?
‘The tittle-tattling European women allege Rei is your juvenile “toy” picked up from the alleys of Osaka. They refer to her as a “whore,” among other vile labels,’ said Shin. ‘And there’s the notion she’s your bastard child with an Asian wench. Ooh, the swill those scandalmongers spew over their high tea at the Raffles or their private clubs! Damn sickening, I say.’
Tet remarked, ‘Mind you, the Nihonjin aren’t kinder.’
‘I couldn’t care less about anyone’s opinion of me. But I am troubled by how Rei would feel regarding those harsh words.’
Yet another faint swoosh and thud sang through the forest peace.
…
The foursome wandered along the leafy Mount Pleasant Road to the Senior Police Officers’ Mess, their venue for a luncheon celebration.
Reiko, dressed in a vibrant yukata and tottering on her pretty geta, struggled to keep pace. ‘Osu! You lot! I can’t walk that fast. Not in this summer kimono and wooden sandals!’ They burst into laughter and eased their strides.
She beamed, took Shin’s arm, then did the same with his brother. And sashayed onward.
‘I detect a delightful bouquet... hmm... let me see... I smell camellias,’ Tet said, looking into the sky. ‘Aha! Shiseido Hanatsubaki!’
‘Very good indeed, Tetsu Ojisan! No fooling you.’ She snickered. ‘Yes, I bought this outfit and perfume at Isetan in Shinjuku. Been there? Their lovely flagship store? They have a gorgeous rooftop garden with sweeping views of Tokyo.’
‘On your recent trip to pay respects to your ancestors.’
Rei nodded. ‘And the quilt of momiji and icho was divine.’
‘Ahh, the autumnal hues of red and orange, with brilliant yellows.’ His mind flipped then, uttering with longing, ‘Oh, how I adore those wards? Shinjuku and Shibuya with Harajuku? And the Meiji Jingu shrine and Shinjuku Gyoen gardens?’ Struck by the memories, he sighed.
She swirled the opposite way.
‘And Shin Ojisan, a handsome man like you with no love interest? Unbelievable...’
‘Samurai like me are too occupied for romance, my goddaughter.’ He saw chasing headline stories and news scoops akin to fighting battles. ‘Besides…,’ he uttered, chuckling at his own quip, ‘… women are demanding.’
‘Yes, we are! And I make no apologies for that!’
The men chuckled.
She resumed, ‘Tetsu Ojisan, please bring your lady to visit our home.’
‘Arigato, Rei-chan, I shall,’ said Tet, the jollier of the brothers. ‘How I wish Misaki and Keni’chi were here to celebrate too?’
‘Ta, old boy, but I have darling Reiko and you two Nikkeijin loafers,’ Monty chirped, beaming. ‘You’re my family now.’