The Masuda Affair (A Sugawara Akitada Novel)

by I. J. Parker

  Ohiya smiled back. ‘I do.’

  ‘I would be very grateful to hear the story.’

  ‘Would you?’ Ohiya gave him a long look. ‘Well, I must try to do my best then.’ He turned to his servant, ‘Senju, my dear, this will interfere with your shopping. I’m quite safe with Tora, I promise you.’

  ‘Now?’ exclaimed the boy. ‘Traipse across town looking like this?’ He gestured at his clothes.

  ‘Of course not, my treasure,’ said Ohiya. ‘Go and change into something very manly and fear-inspiring so you’ll look like Tora here.’

  Senju looked at Tora and back at Ohiya. ‘I won’t be gone long,’ he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘And I hope I’ll find things as I left them.’

  Ohiya chuckled as the door closed behind him and said, ‘Senju’s such a show-off, but he’s very entertaining.’

  He began Peony’s story with her rapid rise to fame. ‘Nobody had heard of her when she first came, but the girl could read and write and was a lady. One of the top courtesans, Evergreen, took her into her service and trained her. Evergreen brought Peony to me for lessons in singing and dancing. She was a quick learner and eager to make her career.’

  ‘She was a lady? What was she doing here if she was one of the good people?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ohiya, ‘good question. What does a young girl of that class need money for?’ He laughed softly. ‘I never found out, but she soon made very good money. She was a courtesan of the first rank within a year. A remarkable career, but she was a remarkable girl.’

  Tora thought about it. ‘What she was like?’ he asked.

  ‘Delightful, and desirable to many men, but stubborn.’ Ohiya grimaced. ‘Like your wife, she preferred a lusty lover to a career.’ He gave Tora a wink. Tora flushed. ‘Charming,’ murmured Ohiya.

  Tora asked, ‘Who was that lover?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember his name,’ said Ohiya. ‘A very handsome young man, but not from here. I imagine she ran away with him.’

  ‘She disappeared six years ago, right?’

  Ohiya nodded.

  ‘Do you know where she lived, who her clients were, and if any of her family, friends, or former servants still live in the city?’

  Ohiya laughed. ‘Not so fast. We have time.’ He refilled their cups. ‘Remember, it was a long time ago, and I never knew Peony well.’

  Tora said, ‘Are you sure she could read and write? A woman who worked in the quarter?’

  Ohiya winced. ‘Not everyone in the quarter is illiterate. I have quite a good education myself.’

  ‘But you’re a man,’ Tora said generously.

  ‘Hanae can read and write. Or didn’t you know?’

  Tora flushed. ‘Of course I know. Go on.’ He emptied his cup.

  Ohiya smiled and refilled it. ‘Let’s see. She had her own establishment on the Horikawa River, near the Reizei Palace. She rented a small private house with a garden on the river. Very nice. I went there once to give her lessons. By that time, people were saying that she had imperial blood. Nonsense, of course, but she had class. And noble suitors.’

  ‘When did she move to Matsubara?’

  ‘Matsubara?’ Ohiya looked shocked. ‘You must have misheard.’

  ‘Maybe. Who were her suitors?’

  ‘Oh, she played hard to get.’

  ‘Sadanori?’

  ‘Yes, he was enamored of her.’

  Tora relaxed. ‘Did she ever complain about him? You know, that he was rough or threatened her?’

  Ohiya laughed. He reached over and tapped Tora’s cheek. ‘Silly boy. Of course not. No first-class courtesan ever complains about her clients. She’s not, in any case, ever alone with them unless she chooses to be. She attends parties or gives them. If a top-class courtesan wants to take a lover, she may do so, but most hold out for a permanent arrangement. Quite different from the sort of girls you may have met in your callow youth.’

  Stung by this comment, Tora blustered, ‘There’s still only one way of doing it unless she liked an audience.’

  Ohiya laughed heartily and patted Tora’s knee. ‘You’re delightful. Actually there are quite a lot of ways – some that may never have occurred to you.’ He moved a little closer.

  ‘Oh?’ Tora wanted to leave, but the wine had made him warm, and he lacked the energy. Ohiya smiled. Tora shifted in his seat and pretended to glance about the room.

  ‘My dear boy,’ Ohiya said softly, ‘I do think we got off on the wrong foot. Shall we try again now that we’ve settled our differences?’

  Tora was becoming very uncomfortable, but there was the matter of the money owed to Ohiya. ‘About Peony …’ he began when Ohiya’s hand crept up his thigh. Tora shifted it. ‘Er, Peony. She must’ve had a maid … some female who was close to her?’

  ‘Another cup of wine?’ asked Ohiya and leaned over so he could refill Tora’s cup. His other hand slipped inside Tora’s robe.

  Tora gasped. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ve had too much already.’

  Ohiya removed his hand and smiled at him. ‘Good. Yes, there was a maid, or maybe a nurse. I’m not sure. She had an odd name.’ As he pondered, he studied Tora’s face. ‘You know, Tora,’ he murmured, ‘you have beautiful teeth and a delightful smile. It’s quite painful to me when you glower. Why are you so angry with me?’

  ‘I’m not angry.’ Tora gulped and looked around the room for inspiration. ‘And last time, I was worried about Hanae.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ohiya chuckled softly. ‘You did look like a wild man then. Very fierce. I was quite frightened. But when you had me backed against the wall and were leaning right into my face with your wild eyes and growling voice, like this –’ he demonstrated by bringing his own face close to Tora’s – ‘you took my breath away. Such force, such manliness. My knees turned to water.’

  Tora got a noseful of scent and leaned away as far as he could. He was afraid that this perfumed and painted man had designs on him. ‘That maid,’ he asked. ‘Her name? Or where I can find her?’

  Ohiya drew back with a sigh. ‘Women, that’s all you’re interested in. Her name was Little Abbess. And I cannot tell you where she is now.’

  Tora scrambled to his feet. His face felt as if it were on fire. ‘Well,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I suppose that’s all. Thank you for your help and, er, for not laying charges.’

  Ohiya rose with the grace of the trained dancer. ‘But my dear boy,’ he said, ‘I haven’t even begun to tell you all.’

  Tora swallowed and croaked, ‘I’ll have to come back another time. No time today,’ and backed towards the door.

  Ohiya followed, all gracious host. ‘Please do, dear boy. Please do.’

  Back on the street outside Ohiya’s house, Tora leaned against the wall and gulped air. No telling what would have happened if he had stayed a moment longer. Remembering Ohiya’s fixation with his teeth, he shuddered. The things a man had to do to gather information. It struck him that his master and Genba, and even Hanae, would think his troubles hilarious.

  He next went back to Rikiju. Skirting garbage and a ragged body, prone on the ground and either drunk or dead, he knocked and heard someone coughing inside. After a long time, Rikiju opened the door a crack and peered out.

  ‘It’s you again,’ she said without much enthusiasm. ‘I was trying to sleep.’

  Tora went in and closed the door behind him. ‘Had a good evening then?’ he asked, turning up his nose at the smell of stale bodies and dirty bedding spread on the floor.

  ‘No. I’ve been sick, you oaf.’ She sat down on her rumpled quilts and coughed again, great gulping, hacking coughs that seemed to wring her out. When it was over, she pushed her matted hair out of her sweaty face. ‘What do you want? You ever find Hanae?’

  ‘Yes. What’s wrong with you?’ She looked flushed, but the room was warm.

  ‘Never mind. What happened?’

  Tora leaned against the door and told her.

  When he was done, she shook her head. ‘You
two get into horrible trouble and manage to get back out. Me, I just have the usual bad luck, only mine doesn’t change.’ She went into another paroxysm of deep, rattling coughing. She staggered up to scoop some water from a wooden pail.

  ‘You need money?’ Tora fished out a string of coppers and peeled off half. She protested it was too much and staggered back to her bedding. He added half of the remainder to it and laid the money beside her. ‘When did you eat last?’

  She licked cracked lips. ‘I don’t know. When were you here?’

  He looked at her, aghast. ‘Three days ago? Have you had a doctor?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. If I don’t work, I don’t eat. And I can’t afford a doctor even when I’m working.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tora, scooping up some of the coins, ‘I’ll be right back with some hot food.’

  He left, trotted to the market where he purchased fried fish and a large serving of rice and vegetables, all of which the vendor wrapped in a sheet of oiled paper. Tora spent some of his own money on a flask of good wine. When he got back to Rikiju, she had tidied up the room a little, washed her face, and combed her hair. But the dreadful cough still racked her thin body and she ate little. The wine seemed to help. It put some color into her pasty skin, and she could speak a little more easily. Tora asked her if she’d ever heard of Peony and her maid, the Little Abbess.

  To his surprise, Rikiju said immediately, ‘Peony’s dead. Drowned herself in Lake Biwa, but Little Abbess lives only a block from me. Why?’

  She was beginning to take a little interest in the world around her, so Tora told her about the case. She was pleased. ‘Nice to know somebody cares,’ she said. ‘Even if it’s a little late for Peony. Men are bastards.’

  Tora thought that ungrateful and said so. She tried to laugh, but choked and started coughing again. ‘You’re a friend, Tora,’ she finally managed. ‘Not the same thing. Thank you.’

  Tora took his leave, slightly mollified because friends evidently didn’t count as men for her, but he worried. Rikiju did not look like she was getting better. He made her promise to send for a doctor and use the money he had left to pay for medicine.

  Little Abbess lived in another tenement like Rikiju’s, but in larger quarters. She had two small rooms and had turned the larger into a seamstress’s shop. A striped curtain covered an opening to what was probably a kitchen area. The room was filled with stacks and piles of multicolored fabric scraps and lengths, mostly ordinary stuff, dyed hemp, some ramie, and linen, but also odd pieces of silk. Tora realized she made a living from buying old clothes and painstakingly removing the stitches. Then she would wash the fabric and sew new clothes from it for those who could not afford to buy lengths of new fabric.

  Little Abbess was a squat, middle-aged woman with a bun of thick gray hair, who wore one of her own patched garments. She was busy convincing a middle-aged couple to buy the warm jacket the portly man was trying on. It was brown-and-white quilted ramie and had faded in places. The man’s tiny sharp-faced wife stood by, making disparaging remarks in hopes of getting a better price.

  The seamstress abandoned her clients for a moment to bring Tora a patched cushion and ask him to wait a moment. She looked like a motherly type, unlike the harpy who pursed her lips and plucked at the jacket while her fat husband scowled at Tora.

  Tora said, ‘By the gods, that’s a very handsome jacket. Looks warm, too. And just the color I like.’ He got up to feel the thickness of the fabric.

  The fat man jerked it out of his hand and snapped, ‘It’s mine.’

  With the purchase completed, Little Abbess turned to Tora. ‘If you’d like a jacket like that one, I could make you one.’

  Tora would not be caught dead in such a thing. ‘Sorry, but I’m broke. Are you the one they call Little Abbess?’

  ‘Nobody calls me that any more,’ she said crossly.

  ‘Rikiju sent me. She says you worked for a courtesan called Peony?’

  The woman’s face crumpled. ‘My lady’s dead.’

  Tora sat down again. This was going to be easier than he had thought. ‘Tell me about her.’

  But she was wary now. ‘Who are you? Why are you asking questions? Nobody cared when she needed help.’

  ‘I’m Tora.’ He tried one of his disarming smiles. ‘I work for Lord Sugawara. We investigate crimes the police can’t figure out, and we think your lady was murdered.’

  ‘Then you think wrong. She drowned herself. I saw her with my own eyes. Floating in the lake.’ She brushed away angry tears. ‘But you’re right about one thing. It was a crime the way they treated her. To me they are murderers, just as if they’d plunged a knife into her poor body.’

  ‘Are you sure she killed herself? What were you doing there?’

  She eyed him for a moment, then said, ‘I have no time for this. I have a living to make.’ She whisked up a garment and sat down to sew.

  ‘You can talk while you’re working, can’t you?’

  She said nothing, just glowered.

  Tora wheedled, ‘Look, I’d buy something, only I’m down to my last few coppers.’ He held up the depleted string. ‘My parents were peasants, and I work for a few coppers just like you. I’m on your side, yours and Peony’s. We can’t let the bastards get away with abusing us. Just tell me if Lord Sadanori is responsible.’

  Her head came up. ‘Lord Sadanori?’ She snorted. ‘If she’d stayed with him, she’d still be alive. Good looks aren’t everything in a man. Mostly, they’re poison where a poor girl’s concerned. Go pester someone else.’

  Blast the woman. She was insulting. As a rule, Tora had an easy time chatting up females of all ages, but this one was charm-proof. He was not about to give up so easily on his theory, though. ‘What about a guy called Ishikawa?’

  ‘Never heard that name.’

  ‘Was your mistress afraid of Sadanori? Or of somebody else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he kept her in a house here? A house he decorated for her?’

  ‘We both lived there, and he treated her like a princess.’

  The curtain to the room was flung aside. An old man staggered in, leaning heavily on his stick. ‘You done, woman?’ he wheezed.

  ‘Just about, Grandfather Shida.’

  Defeated, Tora rose. If she had told the truth about Sadanori, his master was right and he was wrong. At least she had confirmed that the Peony in Otsu and the famous courtesan Sadanori had courted were the same. At the door, he remembered to ask, ‘Your mistress had a son, didn’t she?’

  She looked up, needle poised, eyes suddenly intent. ‘They found him?’

  ‘What?’ wheezed the old man. ‘Round? I don’t want my pants round.’ He gave the garment in her lap a poke with his cane.

  Tora sidled back. ‘Maybe.’

  She pushed aside the old man’s cane and got up, her face filled with sudden hope. ‘He’s alive?’ she asked. ‘You’ve heard something? Maybe even seen him? Please tell me he’s alive.’

  ‘What wife? I have no wife.’ The old customer limped forward and poked her shoulder with a sharp finger. ‘I want my pants. You promised them.’

  Tora folded his arms. ‘I don’t know that I should tell you. You weren’t very nice.’

  But she would not be teased. She grasped his arm with a painful grip and shook it. ‘You have to tell me, curse you. He’s all that’s left of her. She loved that child.’ And then the tears ran down her face, and she clutched him, sobbing and muttering in her grief.

  ‘Hah!’ cried the old-timer. ‘Making out in the middle of the day. Stop that.’ He stuck his cane between them and tried to wrench them apart. ‘Disgusting,’ he croaked, swinging the stick dangerously close to their heads.

  ‘Sit down and wait, old man,’ Tora roared. He caught the end of the cane and pushed. The man stumbled back and sat down hard on the floor.

  ‘Help,’ he squawked, ‘Help. They’re attacking me.’ He crawled to the door, where he became tangled in the curtain in his hurry.
Once outside, he could be heard shouting for the constables.

  ‘All right,’ Tora said to the Little Abbess. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll tell you what I know, but you’ve got to help me.’

  ‘They were all I had,’ she mumbled, sniffling into her sleeve. ‘All I had in life.’

  ‘My master found a little boy in the rain, standing beside the road outside Otsu. He was about five years old and in rags. Skinny little fellow with big eyes.’ She watched him avidly, her face blotchy with tears and her mouth open. ‘The kid doesn’t speak, and my master took him for a deaf-mute.’ Her eyes dulled and she started to shake her head. ‘Wait,’ Tora said. ‘We figured out he can hear all right; he’s just not talking.’

  With a sigh, she dabbed at her face and turned away. ‘My lady’s son could speak very well. He was always prattling away. He was a bright and lively child.’

  ‘This boy was living with fishermen in Awazu. He’d been mistreated.’

  ‘Awazu? That’s outside Otsu? I’ll go see for myself

  Tora explained that the child was in better hands now, and finally she was satisfied and sat back down.

  ‘Your turn now,’ Tora said. ‘What about her family?’

  She took up her sewing again and gestured to the cushion. ‘My lady’s mother was born into a good family, but she was only a concubine in her husband’s house,’ she said. ‘She gave her husband a son and a daughter before she died. But when my lady’s father also died, the oldest son drove us away. My lady’s brother left, and we never heard of him again. My lady and I came here. What else were we to do, two women alone?’

  Tora raised his brows. ‘You turned a little lady into a working girl?’

  Anger flared. ‘I made sure she could earn a living by her beauty and talent. She was never a common prostitute. Peony had all the great lords at her feet. Lord Sadanori wanted to make her his wife.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  She nodded. ‘I talked and talked until I lost my voice, but she was in love with young Masuda. She could’ve had servants and fine gowns. She could’ve been again what she once was. Sadanori was mad about her. He settled us in a fine house until new quarters could be built for her at his mansion. He spoiled her with gifts. Life was good, but she wasn’t happy. One morning she made me pack her things and hire a sedan chair. She ran away to become a kept woman instead of a wife! And then not even that. When he died, his people left her to starve.’