The Lady Of The Rain(Naruto Fanfiction)

Iwate, The Land of Rivers, Spring 1431 PT.2

Lord Jiro, the Duke of Konohagakure, has his way, the great Earl of Asakusa has his way, the great men of the Land of Fire have their way. Jomei alone, without advisors to keep her safe, changes her mind about her confession, takes off her woman's gown and puts her boy's clothes back on. She cries out that she was wrong to deny her voices, wrong to plead guilty. She is not a heretic, she is not an idolater, she is not a witch or an hermaphrodite or a monster, she will not confess to such things, she cannot force herself to confess to sins she has never committed. She is a girl guided by the angels to seek the Prince of the Land of Rivers and call him to greatness. She has heard angels, they told her to see him crowned as king. This is the truth before God, she proclaims - and so the jaws of the Land of Fire snap shut on her with relish.

From my room in the castle I can see the pyre as they build it even higher. They build a stand for nobility to watch the spectacle as if it were a joust, and barriers to hold back the thousands who will come to see. Finally, my aunt tells me to put on my best gown and tall hat and come with her.

“I am ill, I cannot come,” I whisper, but for once she is stern. I cannot be excused, I must be there. I must be seen, beside my aunt, beside Atsuko the Duchess of Konohagakure.  We have to play our part in this scene as witnesses, as women who walk inside the rule of men. I will be there to show how girls should be: virgins who do not hear voices, women who do not think they know better than men. My aunt and the duchess and I represent women as men would like them to be. Jomei is a woman that men cannot tolerate.

We stand in the warm May sunshine as if we were waiting for the starting trumpet of a joust. The crowd is noisy and cheerful all around us. A very few people are silent, some women hold a crucifix, one or two have their hands on a cross at their necks; but most people are enjoying the day out, cracking nuts and swigging from flasks, a merry outing on a sunny day in May and the cheering spectacle of a public burning at the end of it.

Then the door opens, and the men of the guard march out and push back the crowd who whisper and hiss and boo at the opening inner door, craning their necks to be first to see her.

She does not look like my friend Jomei - that is my first thought when they bring her out of the little sallyport of the castle. She is wearing her boy’s boots once more, but she is not striding out in her loose-limbed, confident walk. I guess that they have tortured her and perhaps the bones of her feet are broken, her toes crushed on the rack. They half-drag her and makes little paddling steps, as if she is trying to find her footing on uncertain ground.

She is not wearing her boy’s bonnet on her black cropped hair, for they have shaved her head, she is as bald as a shamed whore. On her bare cold scalp, stained here and there with dried blood where the razor has nicked her pale skin, they have crammed a tall hat of paper like a bishop’s mitre, and on it are written her sins, in clumsy block letters for everyone to see: Heretic. Witch. Traitor. She wears a shapeless white robe, knotted with a cheap piece of cord at her waist. It is too long for her and the hems drags around her stumbling feet. She looks ridiculous, a figure of fun, and the people start to catcall and laugh, and someone throws a handful of mud.

She looks around, as if she is desperate for something, her eyes dart everywhere, and I am terrified that she will see me, and know that I have failed to save her, that even now I am doing nothing, and I will do nothing to save her. I am terrified that she will call my name and everyone will know that this broken clown was my friend and that I will be shamed by her. But she is not looking at faces crowding around her, alight with excitement, she is asking for something. I can see her urgently pleading; and then a soldier, and she clutches it as they lift her and push her upwards to the bonfire.

They have built it so high it is hard to get her up. Her feet scrabble on the ladder and her hands cannot grip. But they push her roughly, cheerfully, from behind, hands on her back, her butt, her thighs, and then big soldier goes up the ladder with her and takes a handful of the coarse material of her robe and hauls her up beside him like a sack, turns her around, and puts her back to the stake that runs through the pyre. They throw up a length of chain to him and be loops it around and around her and then fastens it with a bolt behind. He tugs at it, workmanlike, and tucks the wooden cross in the front of her gown, and in the crowd below a friar pushes to the front and holds up a crucifix. She stares at it unblinkingly, and I know, to my shame, that I am glad she has fixed her eyes on the cross so that she will not look at me, in my best gown and my new velvet cap, among the nobility who are talking and laughing all around me.

The priest walks around the bottom of the pyre reading in Old-japanese, the ritual cursing of the heretic; but I can hardly hear him above the yells of encouragement and the rumble of growing excitement from the castle and walk around the pyre, lighting it all the way round the base, and then laying the torches against the wood. Someone has dampened the wood so that it will burn slowly, to give her the greatest pain, and the smoke billows around her.

I can see her lips moving, she is still looking at the upheld cross, I see that she is saying “God, God,” over and over, and for a moment I think that perhaps there will be a miracle, a storm to drown the fire, a lightning raid from the Beie forces. But there is nothing. Just the swirling thick smoke, and her white face, and her lips moving.

The fire is slow to catch, the crowd jeer the soldiers for laying a poor bonfire, my toes are cramped in my best shoes. The great bell starts to ring, slowly and solemnly, and though I can hardly see Jomei through the thickening cloud of smoke, I recognise the turn of her head under the great paper mitre as she listens and I wonder if she is hearing her angels through the rolling of the bell, and what they are saying to her now.

The wood shifts a little and the flames start to lick. The inside of the pile is drier - they built it weeks ago for her - and now with a crackle and blaze it is starting to brighten. The light makes the ramshackle buildings of the square jump and loom, the smoke swirls more quickly, the brightness of the fire throws a flickering glow on Jomei and I see her look up, clearly I see her form the word “God,” and then like a child going to sleep her head droops and she is quite.

Childishly, I think for a moment perhaps she has gone to sleep, perhaps this is the miracle sent by God, then there is sudden blaze as the long white robe catches fire and tongue of flame flickers up her back and the paper mitre starts to brown and curl. She is still, silent as a little stone angel, and the pyre shifts and the bright sparks fly up.

I got my teeth, and I find my aunt's hand clutching mine. “Don't faint,” she hisses. “You have to stand up.” We stand hand clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of Fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more then men.

I look through the haze of fire to our window in the castle, and I see the maid, Eiko, looking down. She sees me looks up at her and her and our eyes meet, blank with horror. Slowly, she stretches out her hand and makes the sign that Jomei showed us that day by the moat in the sunshine. Eiko draws a circle in the air with her forefinger, the sign for the wheel of fortune, which can throw a woman so high in the world that she can command a king, or pull her down to this: a dishonored agonising death.