Sano Ichiro 12 The Snow Empress (2007)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Hirata walked with the chieftain, who slowed his pace for the Japanese. Detective Marume brought up the rear, but Urahenka forged ahead.

  “What did you want to ask me?” Chieftain Awetok said.

  Hirata had many questions about the barbarians’ world and spiritual practices as well as the murder. “There’s an energy in Ezogashima, like a pulse. I sensed it as soon as we landed here. What is it?”

  The chieftain glanced at Hirata, as if surprised that he’d noticed something which Japanese usually didn’t. “It’s the heartbeat of Ainu Mosir.”

  “Who is that?” Hirata said, wondering if the chieftain meant some barbarian god.

  “Ainu Mosir is our name for this place. It means ‘human land.” Ainu—human—is what we call ourselves. It’s you who call us barbarians and our home ’Barbarian Island.“”

  “Oh.”

  Hirata hadn’t realized how insulting was the Japanese word for the natives. He was ashamed because he hadn’t known that they minded, or that they didn’t think themselves the wild, half-animal creatures that the Japanese did.

  “Why does… Ainu Mosir have a heartbeat?” From now on he must avoid using the words Ezo and Ezogashima in the presence of the natives. “I’ve never felt one in any other land.”

  “Ainu Mosir is alive,” said Chieftain Awetok. “She hasn’t been killed by men who cut down forests, plow land for farms, and build cities.” By the Japanese, implied his tone, in your own land.

  “The heartbeat is growing stronger.” It vibrated in Hirata’s bones, behind his eyes.

  “The Matsumae have driven Ainu Mosir’s spirit away from the coast. Her interior is where it is most powerful.”

  It tantalized Hirata, beckoned him, promised him secrets. He wanted to learn more about it, but snow had begun falling. A few flakes sifting to earth rapidly became thick white veils. The hunting party would have to get to work fast or return home empty-handed. And the murder investigation was Hirata’s first priority.

  “I’ve heard some things,” he began.

  “People will tell you many things,” Chieftain Awetok said. “That doesn’t mean you should believe them.”

  That was wise enough advice, if not the kind Hirata ultimately wanted from the man. “What I heard was about Tekare.” Although the chieftain didn’t react, Hirata felt his guard go up. “She seems to have been a bad woman.”

  He described what the gold merchant had told him of Tekare’s ambitious, conniving nature. “Is that true?”

  “The truth has many faces,” Awetok replied. “A man may see only one because his prejudices blind him to the others.”

  Hirata noted that the chieftain could be as deliberately inscrutable and obstructive as Ozuno, his mentor. Must his fate always lie in the hands of old men who made younger ones work hard for every scrap of information doled out? Impatient, Hirata said, “Did Tekare in fact give herself to men, then climb over them to her position as Lord Matsumae’s mistress?”

  “In fact, yes,” Awetok admitted. “But there is more to truth than fact. There is more to knowing Tekare than knowing what she did.

  “What else is there?”

  Awetok gazed through the veils of snow. Ahead of them, the Rat and Urahenka were barely visible, shadows in a whitening landscape. “Life is dangerous for our women. Japanese men like the gold merchant invade our villages and help themselves to the girls. When Tekare was fourteen years old, a band of traders caught her in the woods while she was gathering plants. She was missing three days before we found her, badly beaten and left for dead. It took months for her body to get well. Perhaps her mind never did.”

  Hirata pondered this story and its relevance to the murder. “I don’t understand. If Tekare was mistreated by Japanese men, why would she want anything more to do with them? How could she bear to have them touch her? Wouldn’t she have wanted revenge instead of sex with them?”

  “There is more than one kind of revenge.”

  Tekare had apparently taken hers by driving the Japanese wild with her charms, extorting gifts from them, then enjoying their pain when she dumped them. But there was something else Hirata didn’t understand. “Was Tekare’s behavior considered acceptable by the Ezo—I mean, the Ainu?”

  “Not at all.” The chieftain frowned, as though Hirata accused his people of condoning immorality.

  “Then how could she be your village’s shamaness? Isn’t that too important a position for a woman like her?” In Hirata’s opinion, that would be akin to making a courtesan the abbess of a nunnery. “I should think you’d have chosen someone of better character.”

  “We do not choose our shamaness,” Awetok said. “The spirit world does.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Early in life, a girl who’s destined to be a shamaness will show a sign that the spirits have chosen her as their vessel. When Tekare was young, she caught a terrible disease. She was unconscious for a long time. But she survived. That was the sign. While she was unconscious, her soul left her body and joined with the spirits. They agreed to speak through her and none other in our village.”

  Skeptical, Hirata said, “Yes, well, then, didn’t the spirits mind that she was a troublemaker? Didn’t that upset the equilibrium of the cosmos?”

  Chieftain Awetok gave him a thin, sidelong smile. “I see you’re still ready to believe everything you’ve heard about us from those who would slander our people. But, yes, Tekare’s behavior did put our relations with the spirit world in danger.”

  “And it was your job, as chief, to bring her back to the village and make her behave properly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or to get rid of her when she wouldn’t cooperate?”

  Awetok’s smile hardened into a grim fissure in his weathered face. “By ‘get rid of,” I suppose you mean ’kill.“ You misunderstand our traditions. We Ainu have no penalty of death for crimes.”

  Unlike you Japanese. Hirata heard the message behind Awetok’s words: Which of our races is more barbarous?

  “I would have performed an exorcism, to drive out the evil spirits that had possessed her,” the chieftain said.

  “And what would that involve?”

  “A ritual, not a spring-bow trap.”

  Hirata wanted to believe the chieftain was innocent, but he wasn’t sure a ritual could cure a habit of causing trouble. And he mustn’t forget what Awetok had said: People will tell you many things. That doesn’t mean you should believe them. That advice applied to the chieftain as well as anyone else.

  “Suppose you had performed this exorcism on Tekare,” Hirata said. “Does that mean everything bad she’d done in the past would have been forgiven?”

  “All would have been forgiven,” Awetok said. “That is our custom.”

  But Hirata doubted that a ritual could erase years of bad feeling. Forgiveness didn’t come that easily, and Hirata could think of one Ainu whom Tekare must have hurt the most. He peered through the snow at Urahenka. The young man had trekked so far ahead and was so covered with white flakes that he was almost invisible. Hirata sensed that Urahenka was less eager to reach the hunting grounds than determined to avoid conversation. Hirata called to him, “Hey! Wait!”

  Urahenka reluctantly turned and stopped. When Hirata and the Rat caught up with him, he began walking faster, to shake them loose. He grumbled, and the Rat said, “He wants to know what you want.”

  “To talk about your wife.” Hirata tried not to pant as he struggled to keep pace. Chieftain Awetok and Detective Marume had already fallen behind.

  “I already told you everything yesterday.”

  “Not everything,” Hirata said. The path had disappeared, and they were forging through dense woods. The slope of the terrain rose into the hills. Hirata had a sense of moving deeper out of his own element. “You said Lord Matsumae stole your wife from you. But that’s not true, is it? You didn’t tell me that she went to him voluntarily.”

  A terse, defiant reply came from Urahenka. “He stole her.”
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  “She not only went to live with Lord Matsumae, but she had many other Japanese men before him,” Hirata said.

  When the Rat translated, Urahenka didn’t answer. His mouth compressed behind his whiskers.

  “Tekare left you,” Hirata goaded him. “She preferred Japanese men because they gave her more than you could. She whored herself to Lord Matsumae, the highest bidder.”

  Snowflakes pelted Urahenka’s forehead and disappeared, as if vaporized by the heat of his anger. But was his anger directed at his dead wife or toward Hirata for insulting her memory? At last he began speaking rapidly. “I have nothing else to say about Tekare. It’s time to hunt now. Be quiet or you’ll scare away the deer.”

  Primitive didn’t equal stupid, Hirata noted; refusal to talk was a good way for a suspect to avoid being trapped into admitting guilt, and Urahenka obviously knew it.

  The chieftain and Detective Marume joined them. The Ainu men left the dogs with the sled, then led the way farther into the forest. Stay behind us so you don’t get shot,“ the chieftain told Hirata, Marume, and the Rat.

  He and Urahenka carefully placed one snowshoe in front of the other, easing down their weight. Hirata and his comrades followed suit as best they could. The Ainu men aimed their bows and arrows from side to side, scanning the landscape for prey. The forest was so quiet that Hirata could hear the snow patter on a dead leaf here, plop onto the ground from a branch there. He watched and listened for movement, but the trees and the dense curtains of snow obscured his view. The land seemed empty, lifeless.

  Suddenly the Ainu men froze. They simultaneously released their arrows, which zoomed into a stand of pines. Hirata heard thumps as the arrows struck wood. A deer with a silvery pelt bounded out from the trees and scampered away unharmed.

  Urahenka muttered what sounded like a curse. Chieftain Awetok merely drew another arrow from his quiver. Amazed, Hirata said, “I didn’t even know the deer was there. If it had been a man, I would have sensed his presence.” His mystic martial arts training had taught him to detect the energy that people gave off. Nobody could sneak up on him.

  Awetok chuckled. “You samurai focus too much on the world of humans. You ignore the world of nature, which is just as important. Until you learn to pay attention to what nature has to show you and tell you, you are as good as blind and deaf and crippled.”

  A sense of revelation struck Hirata. Was nature the dimension missing from his awareness? Did it hold the key to enlightenment? The idea seemed too simple, yet alluring. Was oneness with nature and the entirety of the cosmos what he’d come to Ainu Mosir to learn from the chieftain?

  As the hunt resumed, Hirata strayed away from the other men. He inhaled and exhaled deep, slow breaths in the meditation technique that he’d learned from Ozuno. Fresh, wintry air flowed through every fiber of him, stimulating yet calming. He let his thoughts drift up into the gray sky. The cold whiteness of the landscape and the sting of snowflakes on his face overwhelmed his senses, liberated his spirit. A trance possessed him.

  His spirit inhabited the body trudging through the woods yet floated in a dimension free of himself. He felt his awareness expand as though his mind’s energy had burst out of his skull that confined it. He had a terrifying, awesome perception of the world as much vaster, richer, and more complex than he’d ever dreamed. Around him and through him flowed the spirit of Ainu Mosir. Her heartbeat drummed powerfully in rhythm with his own. The forest became animated with forces he hadn’t noticed before—the life dormant in the leafless trees and in the animals hibernating in burrows, the energy bound up in rocks, earth, and ice. Nature clamored at Hirata in voices beyond the range of normal hearing, in languages he didn’t know. Arms spread, face lifted to the sky, he grasped for comprehension.

  A human presence suddenly intruded upon his awareness. His trance shattered. The voices were silenced. Nature’s dimension withdrew from Hirata as fast as a hermit crab scuttling into its shell. His spirit snapped back into the iron cage of his body. A premonition of danger blared through Hirata’s mind. He whirled in the direction from which it came.

  Urahenka stood amid the trees some ten paces away. He held his bow vertical, string pulled back, sighting along the arrow aimed at Hirata. As their gazes met, Urahenka grinned. Hirata was looking death straight in the face.

  Triumphant shouts startled them both. The Rat came thrashing through the trees. “Hey!” he yelled. “The chieftain’s shot a deer!”

  Urahenka quickly lowered his bow and arrow.

  “It’s a big one,” the Rat said happily. “We can go home now, thank heaven.” He looked from Hirata to Urahenka and frowned. “What’s going on?”

  Urahenka gestured at Hirata and spoke. Hirata didn’t need to know Ainu language to understand that the man was saying, “He got lost. I found him.”

  Hirata stared at Urahenka as he walked past him. Urahenka met his eyes, innocently bland. Had he intended to warn Hirata off investigating him and the chieftain? Or had he really meant to kill Hirata—then claim it was an accident—because he was guilty of murder and eager to prevent Hirata from finding out?

  17

  Reiko sank to her knees in her chamber, exhausted from her visit with Lady Matsumae.

  In the past she’d held her own against bigger, tougher adversaries who’d threatened and attacked her, but this encounter had battered her emotions. She’d had her heart rubbed in her worst fears about her son. Although she’d promised to help Sano with the murder investigation, and she knew that solving the crime was their best hope of freeing themselves and Masahiro, she didn’t think she could bear to go on with it.

  She looked at her hands: They were shaking. Even though the room was freezing cold, her clothes were damp with sweat. A headache pounded in her temples, and nerves twisted her stomach into a tight, nauseous coil.

  Lilac added coal to the braziers. “It’ll be warm soon.”

  “Thank you,” Reiko murmured. Sick and dizzy, she doubled over to keep from fainting.

  “What’s the matter?” Lilac asked. “Don’t you feel good? I’ll get you something.” She hurried from the room and returned with a ceramic jar and cup. Kneeling, she poured amber-colored liquid. “Here. Drink this.”

  Reiko took the cup and sniffed. Alcoholic fumes stung her nostrils. “What is it?”

  “Native wine. Made from millet and rice. It’ll make you feel better.”

  It could hardly make her feel any worse. Reiko drank it down. The liquor was tart and strong. It burned her throat, but her nausea abated, and a calming, sedative relief crept through her. “Thank you.”

  Lilac beamed, happy to be of service. As she took the cup from Reiko, their fingers touched. “Your hands are like ice. Here, let’s warm them up.” She pulled a brazier close to Reiko.

  “You’re very kind,” Reiko said, gratefully holding her hands over the heat.

  Yet she still didn’t care much for Lilac. She felt the pressure of an ulterior motive behind the girl’s kindness. But if the girl wanted to be useful, Reiko would give her the opportunity.

  “What do you have to tell me that you couldn’t when we were with Lady Matsumae?” Reiko asked.

  Lilac’s eyes sparkled with eagerness, but she hesitated. “I don’t know if I should say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll get in trouble if I talk about Lady Matsumae.”

  That was an understandable fear for a servant at the mercy of her mistress, but Reiko suspected a less admirable reason behind Lilac’s sudden reticence. “In that case, I’d like to be by myself,” she said, not in the mood for games. “You’re dismissed.”

  As Lilac rose, she seemed torn between her need to keep quiet about what she knew and her wish to stay with Reiko. She said slowly, Lady Matsumae wasn’t jealous about her husband. That’s not why she hated Tekare.“

  Reiko motioned Lilac to sit. “Why did she?”

  Lilac obeyed, although Reiko could see her calculating how to make the most of the least that she co
uld tell. “It was what happened to her daughter.”

  The last thing Reiko wanted was to hear another story about Lady Matsumae’s dead child, but it might illuminate a possible motive for the murder. “What happened?”

  “When Nobuko got sick, the Japanese doctors couldn’t cure her. Lady Matsumae was desperate. Tekare was a shamaness. She was supposed to be able to cure diseases with magic. Lord Matsumae said to let her try to cure Nobuko. Even though Lady Matsumae doesn’t like the natives, she agreed. So Tekare performed a spell.”

  Lilac paused. Thoughts creased her brow. Reiko prompted, “What kind of spell?”

  “A spell to drive off the evil spirit that was causing the sickness. Tekare burned a branch of spruce. She beat on a drum and sang prayers. She wrapped Nobuko with bulrush cords. Then she cut them off with a knife. She said that would cut the spirit’s power, so it couldn’t hurt Nobuko anymore. And she gave Nobuko a potion to drink, to make her strong again.”

  “But she didn’t get better,” Reiko finished.

  “She died the very next day. Tekare said it was because the spirit had too strong a hold on Nobuko. Lord Matsumae believed her. But Lady Matsumae didn’t. She said Tekare had put poison in the potion. She accused Tekare of murdering Nobuko.”

  Surprise jarred Reiko. No wonder Lady Matsumae had laughed at the suggestion that she’d killed Tekare because the native woman had stolen her husband’s affections. It was so far off the mark—if Lilac was telling the truth.

  “Ask the other servants,” Lilac said, noticing Reiko’s distrust. “They’ll tell you that’s what happened.”

  “But why would Tekare have killed Nobuko?” Reiko asked.

  “You’ve seen how Lady Matsumae treats the Ezo women. Maybe Tekare wanted to get even with her.”

  “Badly enough to poison the child?” Incredulity filled Reiko.

  “Tekare wasn’t a nice person,” Lilac said. “She didn’t put up with Lady Matsumae or anybody else being mean to her. She could have done it.”