Free The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) by Lucia St. Clair Robson

rigid partitions at the joints held a naginata shaft in the bamboo’s hollow center and kept it from rattling around. A wooden stopper fit tightly into the opening at the top. Fastened over it was a cap of ornate iron filigree in the shape of a paulownia leaf. Three iron rings hung from each side loop.
    Housed in a leather sheath, then swaddled in cloth, was the long, gracefully curved blade that attached to the naginata shaft. The government forbade the use of metal in stage swords, but Shichisaburo’s troupe had skirted the law by rationalizing that a naginata wasn’t a sword.
    Cat would have preferred to carry a weapon she didn’t have to stop to assemble, but this was far better than nothing. The naginata was unadorned, but solid. Musashi would have approved of it. He wrote that just as a horse must have endurance and no defects, so it was with weapons.
    The naginata was the weapon of choice of women of the samurai class. Several of them had hung over the front doorway of Cat’s mother’s house. In these times of peace neither Cat nor her mother would have been required to defend the mansion against invaders, but the naginatas hung there anyway. They were symbols of the days when the women of a samurai household were a castle’s last defense.
    Shichisaburo also had given Cat a priest’s wicker backpack with the bamboo framework extending below the bottom to form feet. Usually such packs were filled with religious articles, but Shichisaburo had ransacked the actors’ dressing rooms for useful items and stray food that hadn’t been nibbled by cockroaches.
    Cat’s pack contained the naginata blade, spare straw sandals, a rain cloak of paper soaked in persimmon juice, an extra coat made of heavy paper, and a well-worn pair of tabi. Packed on top of the clothes was a dried bonito wrapped in oiled paper, a comb in a charm bag, a peck of uncooked hulled rice, and most important, a packet of powder that Shichisaburo had assured her would discourage fleas.
    Cat also had five silver mame-ita, the smallest denomination, and the string of a hundred copper mon that Shichisaburo had given her. They were all that he had had on him. He had offered to get more for her when his banker opened his shop in the morning, but Cat had dared not wait for that.
    Cat put her arms through the woven straps and adjusted the straw pads under them where they dug into her shoulder. She bowed and once more chanted a prayer to her father’s memory.
    “You! What do you want?” Spring Hill Temple’s new assistant abbot was so fat, he rocked from side to side as he rumbled down the steep stone steps of the temple’s main hall.
    Cat figured this was as good a place as any to try begging. She held out her cracked wooden bowl and thumped her walking stick, jangling the iron rings on top.
    “Namu Amida Butsu. Homage to Amida Buddha,” she droned through her nose. “I ask a small donation in the name of the All-Loving Buddha for the temple we are building to honor the god often thousand good fortunes.”
    “Begone!” The assistant abbot ran out of breath halfway down the steps. He wheezed like a pair of wet sandals and waved his sleeves at Cat.
    “Buy a talisman of the Thousandfold Blessing,” she said. “It will banish the danger years. It will make you fertile.” Cat held the bowl out farther.
    “Begone!”
    “Who is it?” The head abbot stood in the temple’s doorway.
    “Some wretched, thieving ‘abandoning-priest.’ “ His assistant trundled back up the stairs toward the clangor of the monks’ bells.
    Even though the head abbot couldn’t see Cat’s face, she lowered her head and retreated. Spring Hill Temple was near her former home. The abbot had been an old friend of her father’s.  He had given Cat and her mother religious instruction. Unlike his new assistant, he was a kind man. Even if he thought her no more than a mendicant priest, he might have invited her in for morning tea and a talk.
    Cat paused before passing