Dororo: A Novel
Tsuji Masaki
Part Seven
The Tale of the Hidden Treasure
on the Cruel Cape
Chapter 1
Who saved the young phantom thief Dororo from his execution, then? To answer that question, it is necessary to set the stage.
Japan is home to countless islands: some large, some small. Dororo stood on the winding seashore of one of these islands with several horsemen behind him.
The leader of the horsemen looked somewhat strange: he was bearded, wore an eyepatch and never wore any shirt except for one specific haori.1 It was likely that he'd stolen the haori. He wore a tabard over it to protect it.
Gesturing to Dororo, the leader of the horsemen nodded toward a rocky mountain outcropping that jutted into the surrounding sea. "Dororo, look at that," he said. "That's the Cruel Cape. You can't get to it on land while the tide is low. The only way to get across is by boat."
"Why would I want to get to it?" Dororo asked.
"Don't you know that? They say your dad hid his entire fortune on that cape."
"So? That doesn't have anything to do with me." He was in an unusual mood: he cared more about what was happening to Hyakkimaru than he cared about any amount of treasure. "I don't care about what you guys want. Just take me back, or let me go. I'd rather walk back on foot than be any part of your schemes. Bye!"
Dororo tried to run off, but a large group of men surrounded him. There was no gap for him to squeeze through: he was trapped.
"Dammit, let me through!" Dororo yelled at the top of his lungs.
The men surrounding him were not impressed. He was tiny and insignificant in comparison to them, and no amount of shouting would change their minds.
"You're starting to piss me off," Dororo said. "I'll escape you yet, just you watch! No one keeps Lord Dororo imprisoned against his will!" Dororo curled up in a ball on the sandy beach, feeling the breeze move up his spine. It was getting closer to winter, and the wind was cold. The men had taken his clothes; he shivered.
The men preventing Dororo's escape grinned down at him with an avaricious glint in their eyes. Dororo looked at them, noting the swords at their hips and the unsavory way that they carried themselves. "Bandits... you're nothing but common bandits!"
"Quiet, you. My name is Itachi.'' The man in the tabard crouched down in front of Dororo. The wind fluttered through his slight beard. "Remember? I'm your father's friend."
Dororo was shocked. "What?"
This guy knows about my dad, Hibukuro... It seemed impossible. Dororo was trying to riddle it out when he remembered something his mother had told him.
"Then... then, you killed my father..."
"It’s not my fault alone." Itachi glanced at the other bandits. "I needed help, though not everyone who's here now was there then. I could have used everyone. Your dad was a strong one, brat."
Dororo clenched his small fists. "Damn you!"
"You wouldn't remember, but Hibukuro was too stubborn. Rigid. His rule was that we could kill all the samurai we wanted, but we weren't allowed to touch a peasant--not women, not children, not the old or the sick, nothing. Worse than that, we had to protect those losers from samurai warriors. If we'd kept going that way, we would have all ended up dead."
"That's why you killed him?" Dororo asked.
"No," Itachi said. "That's not why--not the only reason, anyway. He tricked us. He was hiding things from the rest of us and setting money aside for himself in secret."
"That’s a lie!"
"Is it? Hibukuro buried all that money on the Cruel Cape. That's why you're here. He mapped out the location of the treasure on you, his newborn child. There's a burn on your back, isn't there? It's a map, and you're going to show us."
"Ah!" That was why he was naked from the waist up. He fumed at the bandits, outraged at this indignity.
"I see you're finally starting to understand," Itachi said, condescending.
Dororo grumbled. He saw his clothes in a pile nearby and started putting them back on.
"Oh, it's far too late for that," Itachi said. "I've already seen the treasure map." Itachi waved one hand imperiously, pointing to the Cruel Cape. "All right, you bastards, get out of the boat! A treasure trove awaits you across the water!"
The bandits cheered. They didn't know why the cape was named Cruel Cape. Perhaps if they'd thought about that a bit more carefully, they wouldn't have traveled there.
1 The haori (羽織) is a traditional Japanese hip- or thigh-length jacket worn over a kimono. During the time period when this story is set, wearing a haori on its own and not over a kimono would have been unacceptably informal.↩
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