The Dragon King's Palace

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “May I remind you that the shogun is susceptible to evil influences, but also to pressure from his clan,” Lord Matsudaira said. “He shall not disinherit our legitimate kin in favor of a bastard with a drop of Tokugawa blood. You had better watch yourself, because your future is no more secure than mine.”

  For now, they were at a stalemate, Yanagisawa grudgingly recognized. Yanagisawa had the shogun’s protection, many allies, a foothold on the ladder to the succession, and he controlled a third of the army. But Lord Matsudaira controlled as many troops and had as many allies. Each side was too powerful for the other to openly attack. But the kidnapping, and its consequences, could decide the victor.

  “The abduction of Lady Keisho-in was a bold move on someone’s part,” Yanagisawa said.

  Lord Matsudaira gave him a patronizing look that said he’d expected Yanagisawa to introduce the reason for his visit now, in this way. “What would be the motive behind such a bold move?” he said, adroitly sidestepping Yanagisawa’s implicit accusation.

  “The shogun will do anything to get his mother back,” Yanagisawa said. “He might even sacrifice his top official.”

  Sano thought the Black Lotus wanted revenge, and Senior Elder Makino thought the kidnapper wanted money; but Yanagisawa viewed the kidnapping as an attempt to alter the nation’s power hierarchy.

  “So you predict that the ransom letter will order the shogun to expel you from the bakufu.” Lord Matsudaira chuckled at the hint that the motive fit him and the crime was his strike against Yanagisawa. “That’s an interesting theory. But before you publicize it, consider how foolish you’ll look if whoever you accuse was at home in Edo, surrounded by people, when Lady Keisho-in was taken.”

  Yanagisawa greeted Lord Matsudaira’s alibi with disdain. “Who-ever I accuse needn’t have risked a personal appearance at the crime scene.” He paused, then said in a tone heavy with insinuation: “I saw you drilling troops at the practice ground the other day. You have plenty of minions to do your bidding.”

  “I could say the same of you.” Lord Matsudaira’s voice softened with menace. “Where were your troops during the abduction? What would you do to destroy me?”

  The atmosphere seemed to crackle, as if heralding a thunderstorm. Yanagisawa could almost smell gunpowder in the air as he and Lord Matsudaira poised on the narrow divide between verbal sparring and overt strife. Their men waited motionless yet alert for a signal to attack. Yanagisawa felt currents of exhilaration and dread surge through him.

  With a narrow, sarcastic smile, Lord Matsudaira said, “But of course I wouldn’t accuse you of murder and treason.”

  A beat passed. “Nor would I accuse you,” Yanagisawa said. Neither of them had evidence to incriminate the other. Neither dared turn the kidnapping into an occasion for warfare—yet. They bowed to each other in cautious farewell, backing away from a clash that could plunge Japan into civil war. Then Yanagisawa and his men rose and filed from the room. Yanagisawa’s expression was sternly tranquil, though his heart thundered and his body perspired from the close call. As they exited the gate and walked away down the path, he reexamined his theory in light of what had just occurred.

  Lord Matsudaira might be guilty, despite his alibi and denials; but the fact that the kidnapping was a drastic move even for someone as ambitious as Lord Matsudaira argued in favor of his innocence. Furthermore, Yanagisawa knew the dangers of pursuing one suspect while others existed. He knew what he had to gain or lose by this investigation, and he had many other powerful enemies besides Lord Matsudaira.

  “We’ll make a few more calls here in the Tokugawa enclave,” he told his men. “Then we’ll proceed to the official quarter.”

  He must identify the kidnappers and rescue Lady Keisho-in before she could come to harm—and before anyone else saved her.

  9

  Hirata and Detectives Marume and Fukida drew their horses to a stop on a deserted stretch of the Tkaid. Rain dripped down on them, trickled in rivulets down the steep, rocky cliff at their right, and pattered through the forest on their left. The misty air cloaked the distant mountains and merged with the sky’s dense, swirling gray clouds. The cold late afternoon appeared as dim as twilight.

  “This must be where the kidnapping took place,” Hirata said, his voice echoing eerily in the quiet.

  He swung himself out of the saddle, wincing at the soreness in his muscles. He and Marume and Fukida had ridden almost nonstop at a furious pace since leaving Edo early that morning. They’d followed the seacoast, scaled hills, crossed rivers, endured heat and dust. They’d eaten meals on horseback, pausing only to pass inspection and change mounts at post stations. Eventually, they’d passed the remains of the kidnappers’ roadblock—massive logs that had been rolled off the highway and down the slope of a gorge. Now, chilled and drenched by the rain, Hirata felt as weary as if he’d traveled through many kingdoms. And his search for Midori had only begun.

  Detectives Marume and Fukida stood on the road beside Hirata. Water dripped off the wide brims of their hats as they looked around. “You wouldn’t know anything had happened here,” Marume said.

  “The highway officials have removed the bodies and wreckage.” Hirata eyed the road, which was clear of debris and spread with fresh sand.

  “And the weather has done away with whatever they missed,” said Fukida.

  The trio watched the rain slowly dissolve footprints and hoof marks in the sand. “The kidnappers had to have left a trail,” Hirata said. “All we have to do is find it.”

  He panned his gaze across the towering cedars in the forest and the ancient, layered rock that comprised the cliffs. He pictured a horde of faceless attackers battling soldiers, cutting down servants and women. Splashes of blood and shadows in frantic motion painted his vision. The dark, lingering aura of violence radiated from every leaf, stone, and grain of soil. Hirata smelled death. He could almost hear the clashing blades, the victims’ terrified cries, and Midori calling his name.

  “The women must have been tied up and gagged to keep them from running away or making noise,” he said, closing his mind against horror. “The kidnappers wouldn’t have transported prisoners along the road and risked someone noticing. They would have gone through the forest.”

  He and the detectives secured their horses to a tree off the roadside, out of sight from passersby. They trudged up and down inside the forest, paralleling the Tkaid and gradually moving beyond the immediate scene of the attack. The rain splashed through the gloom beneath the cedars. Trampled underbrush and broken branches gave clear evidence that people had run and fought here. On fallen leaves shielded by the trees, brownish-red bloodstains marked places where bodies had lain. Hirata found a sandal stuck in the mud, probably lost by a fleeing member of Lady Keisho-in’s entourage. Fukida found a straw hat, and Marume a lone sword with the Tokugawa crest on its hilt, the blade already rusting.

  “Whatever relics that the highway officials didn’t remove, the local peasants must have scavenged,” Fukida deduced.

  The forest seemed unnaturally still, haunted by the spirits of the dead. A sudden fluttering noise disturbed the quiet. Hirata’s heart jumped; he and his comrades started. Their hands flew to their swords as they looked up. A large black crow rose upward on flap-ping wings and disappeared into the misty sky. The men expelled a collective breath of relief. They resumed hunting for the kidnappers’ trail. Some fifty paces away from the road, the forest seemed undisturbed. Hirata and his men separated, peering between trees and scrutinizing the ground. The leaves high over them flinched when pelted with raindrops. Longing and dread for Midori burgeoned inside Hirata. A tickle in his nose and a soreness in his throat presaged a cold. He paused to sneeze, and heard a shout from Fukida, invisible within the woods.

  “Over here!” the detective called.

  Hirata and Marume hurried over to their comrade. Fukida pointed at a strip of trodden underbrush that led away from the Tkaid. Hirata dared not hope too much, but excitation sped his pulse.
He and the detectives carefully stepped twenty paces along the crushed weeds and saplings, then saw branches strewn across their path. The thin, leafy shafts were bent and trampled, the ends cleanly severed by a blade. Hirata looked up and saw cut branches on a shrub that had blocked the path. Beyond this point lay more flattened underbrush.

  “Someone has broken a trail through here,” he said.

  Eyes alert, he hastened forward. The detectives followed. Hirata spied footprints in bare earth and crushed, rotting mushrooms. More cut branches marked places where someone had hacked past low-hanging tree limbs. Then Hirata spotted a small, gleaming object of irregular shape. He picked it up and found himself holding a woman’s sandal with a silk thong and a chunky red-lacquered sole.

  “This must belong to Midori, Reiko, Lady Keisho-in, or Lady Yanagisawa,” Hirata said, afire with hope. “One of them must have dropped it while the kidnappers brought them through here.”

  On through the forest he and his men plunged. As the trail continued, they found long black hairs caught on a tree trunk, as though the bark had snagged one of the women as she passed. A torn scrap of blue-brocaded silk adorned a prickly shrub. Hirata began to feel feverish, and his sore throat worsened; but exhilaration buoyed him. Every sign convinced him that he was following the route the kidnappers had taken . . . until the trail abruptly ended at the vertical rocky rise of a cliff.

  Hirata and the detectives stared up at the cliff in dumbfounded disbelief. An icy wind blew mist into their faces.

  “The kidnappers couldn’t have climbed that, with or without the women,” Marume said.

  “The trail doesn’t go anywhere else,” Fukida said as he paced widening arcs in the woods at the bottom of the cliff.

  Awful realization struck Hirata. “The kidnappers planted a false trail, to fool anyone who tried to follow them. They came as far as this dead end, then backtracked along the path they’d made.” Breathless from fatigue and outrage, Hirata exclaimed, “It’s the oldest trick in history. And I fell for it!” He cursed the kidnappers and his own gullibility. He kicked the cliff, venting his anger.

  “We couldn’t have known it was a trick,” Marume said.

  “We had to follow the trail because it might have led to the women,” Fukida said.

  Refusing consolation, Hirata stalked off in a direction chosen at random. “What are you waiting for? We have to keep looking!”

  The detectives ran after him, caught his arms, and restrained him. “It’s getting too dark,” Fukida said. “Pretty soon we won’t be able to see clues. We should go back to the highway, get our horses, and find someplace to spend the night.”

  “Let me go!” Furious, Hirata struggled free of his comrades. “I have to find Midori.”

  “If we wander around after dark, we’ll only get lost,” Marume pointed out. “The ssakan-sama will have to send somebody to look for us. Lot of good that will do your wife and her friends. We must wait until morning.”

  Hirata couldn’t bear to call off the search for a moment, let alone a whole night, while Midori was somewhere in the vast countryside, at the mercy of killers he believed had been hired by her insane father. Yet he had to admit that Marume and Fukida were right.

  Reluctantly, Hirata accompanied the detectives back down the trail toward the Tkaid. “We’ll ride to the Odawara post station and find lodgings at an inn,” he said. “We can ask around town to see if anyone there has seen or heard anything that might help us find the kidnappers.”

  The Edo Castle sickroom was isolated in a separate compound, situated low on the hill and far from the palace to protect the court from the spirits of disease and pollution from death. Inside the drab one-story building surrounded by a plank fence and tall pine trees, the Tokugawa physicians treated castle residents who were seriously ill or injured. A shrine beside the door contained a rock that served as a seat for protective Shinto deities. In front of the shrine burned a purifying fire. A sacred straw rope encircled offerings of food and drink, a wand festooned with paper strips, and a lock of woman’s hair to keep away demons.

  Police Commissioner Hoshina, accompanied by two personal retainers, strode into the sickroom. At one end, apprentice physicians tended herbal infusions simmering in pots on a hearth. Screens that usually partitioned the building into separate chambers had been pushed against the walls to accommodate the large crowd of palace officials that had gathered. On the crowd’s fringes hovered maids and servants. Anxious conversation mingled with chanting and the rhythmic jangle of bells. The sickroom was hot from the fire and redolent with medicinal steam.

  “Let me through,” Hoshina commanded the crowd.

  People stepped aside, bowing to Hoshina as he passed through their midst. At the center of the crowd, on the tatami floor, a woman was lying upon a futon. A white sheet covered her body; a white bandage wrapped her head. Her face, with its prominent cheekbones, was deathly pale, the closed eyelids shadowed purple. Near her head, an elderly sorceress clad in white robes banged a tambourine to summon healing spirits, while a priest recited spells and waved a sword to banish evil. At her feet squatted two highway patrol captains. Dr. Kitano, the chief castle physician, knelt beside the prone woman.

  “This is Lady Keisho-in’s maid, Suiren, who survived the massacre?” Hoshina asked the doctor.

  “Yes, Honorable Police Commissioner,” said Dr. Kitano. He had a creased, intelligent face, and sparse gray hair knotted at his nape. He wore the dark blue coat of his profession.

  Hoshina turned to the officials. “Leave us,” he said, annoyed that they’d come to gawk at Suiren, when he himself had important business with her. “You, too,” Hoshina told the maids. He gestured for the sorceress and priest to move away. “Not so loud.”

  Soon he was alone with his own men, the highway soldiers and the apprentices, Dr. Kitano and the patient. While the priest and sorceress quietly continued their ritual in a corner, Hoshina crouched by Suiren. She lay still, apparently oblivious to the world. Her breath sighed slowly through her chapped, parted lips. Hoshina frowned in concern.

  “Is she asleep?” he said to Dr. Kitano.

  “She’s unconscious,” the physician said. The news dismayed Hoshina. He addressed the patrol captains: “You brought her back to Edo?”

  “Yes, Honorable Police Commissioner.” The captains, brawny and keen-featured, sweating in their armor, spoke in unison.

  “How long has she been like this?” Hoshina said.

  “Ever since we found her after the massacre,” said one captain.

  “Describe how you found her,” Hoshina said.

  “We were examining the bodies to see if there were any survivors,” said the other captain. “We thought she was dead. There was blood all over her, and she didn’t move.”

  “But then we heard her moan. We rushed her to Odawara post station. The local doctor treated her,” continued the first captain. “He warned us that she was too sick to travel, but our superiors said she had to be taken to Edo. We were afraid she would die on the way here.”

  Hoshina had hoped that a quick, easy interview with the witness would give him the identity of Lady Keisho-in’s kidnappers. Disappointed, he turned to Dr. Kitano. “Exactly what are her injuries?”

  “I was just about to examine her.”

  Dr. Kitano gently unwrapped the bandage from Suiren’s head, exposing hair clipped away from a large, indented purple bruise above her right temple. Frowning, he covered the wound, then drew back the sheet that blanketed Suiren and opened the white cotton kimono she wore. A white bandage swathed her abdomen. Dr. Kitano removed this. Underneath, a gash slanted from just below the left side of her rib cage to her navel. The wound, crusted with dried blood and stitched together with horsehair, oozed yellowish fluid. Hoshina winced; Dr. Kitano’s frown deepened. Suiren didn’t even stir.

  “This is a very bad sword cut,” the physician said. “The head wound is also serious.”

  Dr. Kitano touched the skin around Suiren’s sunken eyes, lifted
the lids, and peered into her dull, sightless pupils, according to ancient Chinese medical technique. His fingers palpated her cheeks, rubbed her dry, brittle-looking hair, and squeezed her neck. He opened her mouth, revealing pale gums and tongue, then sniffed the air near her face. Finally, he clasped one wrist, then the other. The sorceress’s tambourine marked the lengthy passage of time as Dr. Kitano felt the pulses that corresponded to different internal organs. When he finished, he covered the maid and lifted his troubled gaze to Hoshina.

  “She is suffering from a deficiency of blood, fluid, and ki—life energy,” Dr. Kitano said. “There is also internal festering and inflammation.”

  “Can you heal her?” Hoshina said.

  “I’ll do my best,” Dr. Kitano said, “but it will be a miracle if she lives.”

  Hoshina cupped his chin in his hand and brooded over Suiren while the tambourine rang and the priest chanted. The maid represented a chance to save Lady Keisho-in and solidify Chamberlain Yanagisawa’s position in court long enough for the shogun to name Yoritomo his heir. But Hoshina had other, personal reasons for wanting Suiren to recover. If he could extract from her a clue that led to the kidnappers, he would win the shogun’s esteem and gratitude for himself. The bakufu would have to recognize him as a power in his own right, not just as Yanagisawa’s lover. And Yanagisawa would have to treat Hoshina with the respect he craved instead of always demeaning him.

  “I must question Suiren about the kidnapping,” Hoshina told Dr. Kitano. “Wake her up.”

  Concern shadowed the doctor’s eyes. “It is not advisable to disturb her. She needs rest.”

  Hoshina experienced overwhelming impatience. Unless he could find the kidnappers and rescue Lady Keisho-in, he might never make his name in the bakufu. He and Yanagisawa might fall so far from the shogun’s grace that their plans for the future could never work. And failure, like success, posed serious personal ramifications for Hoshina. His lover admired skill and despised incompetence, and so far, Hoshina had managed to do everything Yanagisawa asked—but what if the kidnapping case proved more than he could handle? Would Yanagisawa cease to want him?