Ota shrugged. “Minami said she must have sneaked away from the party last night, come up here, and killed herself. There was a disturbance—some guests got in a fight and had to be expelled from the quarter. No one noticed that Peony was gone. Her chambermates were entertaining clients in the guest rooms. The maids didn’t like Peony—she was a mean girl and a sloppy worker—so when she didn’t show up for her chores this morning, they didn’t bother looking for her. Then the cook noticed blood leaking through the pantry ceiling. We kept her just the way she was found because we thought you’d want to see.”
The explanation sounded reasonable, yet a sense of wrongness nagged at Sano’s mind when he recalled Peony serving the other courtesans, and the meeting at Governor Nagai’s office. He walked around the corpse to the table. It held a mirror, comb, lamp, and a lacquer box containing a sheet of thin paper covered with inked characters.
“Her suicide letter,” Ota said as Sano picked it up.
Sano noted that while the table and other articles all bore spatters of dried blood, the letter was clean. It read:
I must die to pay for killing the man I loved. It was an accident, but I blame myself.
During our love games, Spaen-san often brought out a gun he’d hidden in his room. He would lie on the bed, and I would mount him and point the gun at him while we coupled. We both enjoyed this. But last time, I got too excited. My finger pulled the trigger. The gun went off: boom! Spaen-san screamed. And through the smoke, I saw him lying dead, with a bloody hole in his chest.
I was so scared I didn’t know what to do. I took Spaen-san’s knife and tried to cut out the bullet, thinking I could bring him back to life. My hands shook so much that I stabbed his chest many times.
I knew I would be punished if anyone found out what I’d done, so I decided to make it look as if he’d run away. I dressed him in his trousers. I hung his crucifix around his neck and wrapped his body in bedclothes. I dragged him outside, to the water gates. It was raining very hard, and no one was around. I unbarred the gates and pushed Spaen-san into the sea. I threw the knife and gun in after him. Then I ran back to his room. I washed myself, made up a clean bed, and pretended to be asleep until the guards came in the morning.
May the spirit of my lover forgive me for what I have done. May we meet again in paradise, and spend all eternity together.
Peony
“So I guess this ends our problems,” Yoriki Ota said. “I’ll have her body wrapped up to deliver to the Dutch captain. I’ll tell the harbor patrol to arrange the ship’s escort, and Chief Ohira to prepare for its landing.”
Sano didn’t answer. The scenario Peony described seemed as believable as the apparent circumstances of her death. He could close the case and mend Dutch-Japanese relations. He and Hirata could begin the inspection of Nagasaki and restore their former harmony.
But he couldn’t overlook the obvious discrepancies he saw. With much regret, but no less resolve, he turned to Yoriki Ota and said, “Director Spaen’s killer hasn’t been caught yet.”
Ota’s eyebrows shot up. “But the whore confessed. She killed herself out of remorse. What more proof do you need?”
“When I met Peony yesterday,” Sano said, “she poured tea and combed another courtesan’s hair—using her right hand. Don’t you think it odd that she would stab herself with her left hand?”
Ota shrugged. “So people do strange things when their minds are troubled.”
“The divers haven’t recovered a gun or knife from the waters off Deshima. And about this letter.” Striding over to Ota, Sano held it before the yoriki’s face. “Very nice and neat; it accounts for all the evidence. But Peony was a peasant girl. I’d be surprised if she could write at all, let alone this well.”
“So she had someone write it for her.” Ota stood his ground, but his ruddy complexion darkened. “She had a miserable life. Uglier than a pig; bedding dirty foreigners. Minami, the clients, the other courtesans, and even the servants treated her like dung. Death probably seemed better than all that. Killing her lover pushed her over the edge. I’ve been in the police service for twenty years. Are you telling me I don’t know my business?”
Sano faced the gruesome tableau. “What if she came up here last night not to commit suicide, but to meet someone? He came; they argued. He stabbed her.” Sano turned to Yoriki Ota. “Then, before he left, he put the letter—free of blood, because he’d kept it inside his clothes—in the box.”
Ota guffawed. “That’s ridiculous. The knife came from the kitchen downstairs—the cook identified it. Minami says Peony stole things all the time, including the box. And who would want to kill that ugly whore?”
“Jan Spaen’s murderer,” Sano said. “Peony was on the island with Spaen the night he disappeared. She might have seen something.” Sano recalled her sly reference to things happening on Deshima that weren’t recorded. “If she knew who the killer is, he couldn’t let her live to tell. If he shot me, he wouldn’t have hesitated to silence Peony.”
“Any idea who this person might be?” Ota asked disdainfully.
“The merchant Urabe,” Sano said. “Peony is the only witness to his presence on the island. He’s having financial troubles, and might have killed her to avoid blackmail.” Remembering Urabe’s explanation for Peony’s grudge against him, Sano added, “He’s also a client of this house. He could have attended the party last night and sneaked up to the women’s quarters.”
Then another, more ominous possibility loomed in Sano’s mind. What if Peony had also possessed dangerous knowledge about someone in Nagasaki’s administration—Chief Ohira, another Deshima staff member, or even Governor Nagai himself? Had this person arranged a “suicide” for Sano’s benefit? Unfortunately there were many men in the bakufu capable of murdering a helpless citizen for personal gain.
Sano didn’t voice his suspicions to Ota, who might be an accomplice, if not the killer. Instead he fervently hoped that his plan for tonight would lead to the truth, so he needn’t launch an investigation of Nagasaki officialdom and court the political danger it would entail.
“What about the barbarians?” Ota said with an exaggerated sneer perhaps intended to hide worry. “Are you going to tell me they escaped Deshima and killed the whore?”
“No,” Sano said. “But there’s at least one other suspect besides Urabe who was free to move about town, and might have wanted Peony dead.”
High in the hills above Nagasaki, evening rites had ended at the Chinese temple. In his austere room, Abbot Liu Yun knelt on the floor to meditate. The lamp’s mellow, soothing light warmed the plaster walls. Once this had been Liu Yun’s favorite time of day, when peace filled his soul and spiritual enlightenment seemed within reach. But his brother’s death had destroyed his serenity, and his faith. The past had returned to haunt him.
Liu Yun began to chant, willing the ritual to calm him, but the ceaseless lament howled in his mind: Hsi! My brother. Gone, forever! As he stared at the wall, scenes from another time and place appeared there.
Spring, sixty-five years ago, on the Liu family’s estate in Shantung Province. The scent of flowers drifted through the window of the study where Liu Yun and Liu Hsi, aged ten and eight, took their lessons. Old Teacher Wu fixed his shrewd gaze on Liu Hsi. “What are the five cardinal virtues of Confucius?”
“The five virtues are, uh …” Hsi gulped, then blurted, “What good is school, when I want to be a soldier?”
“Don’t talk back to teacher!” Liu Yun exclaimed, mortified because he was the good son who wanted to please his elders. Also, he’d coached Hsi in his lessons, and his brother’s failure reflected poorly on him.
Teacher Wu pummeled Hsi’s head and shoulders with his cane. “You will apologize for your rudeness!”
As Hsi sobbed, a wild, contradictory impulse seized Liu Yun. He’d often tried to beat sense into Hsi, but couldn’t bear for anyone else to hurt his brother. An invisible cord—stronger than love, hate, or blood—joined them. Liu Yun shot out o
f his seat and jumped on Teacher Wu’s back, shouting, “Leave him alone!”
Teacher Wu screamed and whirled and struggled, trying to dislodge Liu Yun, while Hsi laughed and clapped his hands.
“What a good fighter you are, elder brother!” he cried. “Let’s run away together and become soldiers!” And Liu Yun, though horrified at his own behavior, roared in triumph.
Their victory was short-lived. Teacher Wu resigned; Liu Yun’s father beat both sons for driving away their tutor. Still, the early pattern held. Liu Yun would coach, beg, and punish Hsi, trying to mold him into the Confucian ideal of scholarship and filial piety. Hsi would resist. Liu Yun would defend his brother, and they would both suffer.…
Now Abbot Liu Yun acknowledged the impossibility of meditation and sleep. Tonight other matters besides grief troubled his mind. The shogun’s detective was investigating Jan Spaen’s murder. Liu Yun feared that his alibi and statements wouldn’t withstand close scrutiny. Furthermore, he’d recently embarked on a venture that could bring him great satisfaction—or disaster. He longed to know which.
He carried the lamp to his study, a chamber lined with shelves of holy texts and documents concerning the temple’s administration. From the cabinet he took a cylindrical lacquer container, incense, writing materials, and a book wrapped in black silk. He would consult the I Ching—the Oracle of Change, which revealed the secrets of the universe, used by Chinese philosophers, statesmen, warriors, and scientists for some four thousand years.
Liu Yun spread the silk on the table. Upon it he laid the Book of Changes, the ancient text that interpreted the oracle’s messages, and bowed to it three times. He ground the ink and readied paper and brush. He lit incense in a brass burner. While the fragrant smoke rose to the ceiling, he sat at the table, opened the lacquer container, poured out fifty long, thin yarrow sticks, then voiced his question to the oracle:
“Should I proceed with my planned venture?”
He performed the elaborate ritual of dividing, counting, discarding, and grouping the sticks until he had three piles. On the paper, he inked a broken line, which corresponded to the numbers of sticks in the piles. Then he repeated the process. His hands moved automatically; his thoughts drifted. Once again, memory carried him into the past.
He saw himself and his brother as young men—Hsi, tall and robust; Liu Yun the slight, refined scholar—walking together down a country road beneath golden autumn foliage, returning home from the provincial capital where they’d taken the civil service exams that would determine their futures.
“I don’t care about failing those stupid exams.” Scowling, Hsi kicked a rock.
“But what will you do?” Liu Yun said. “You’ll never get a government position now.”
Hsi flung down his pack of books and clothing and glared. “Elder brother, how many times must I tell you? I don’t want to be a bureaucrat. Anyway, it’s over. You passed your exams—you be the family success.”
“Repeat the exams,” Liu Yun pleaded. Since childhood, he’d dreamed of their getting posts in the same government office. “I’ll tutor you. Your score will be higher next time. Please—”
Hsi grasped Liu Yun’s shoulders. “Listen. A war is coming. When we were in the capital, I heard that the Manchus have already conquered Shensi and Honan Provinces. Eventually they’ll invade Peking. I plan to join the emperor’s army and save our kingdom from this foreign scourge.” His childhood dream—of being a soldier—hadn’t changed, either.
Liu Yun had dismissed the news as gross exaggeration. “The Ming emperors have ruled China for almost three hundred years. The northern tribesmen will never take Peking. Father will never let you join the army. Nor will I!”
Hsi shouldered his pack and stalked down the road; Liu Yun hurried to catch up. “No regime is invincible, elder brother,” Hsi retorted. “That much history I’ve learned, even though I failed the exam.” Then he halted in his tracks and pointed. “What’s that?”
From over the hill drifted black smoke. The brothers broke into a run. They reached the family estate to find the house and outbuildings on fire. Through the wreckage galloped mounted Manchu troops, clad in leather and fur, long queues waving as they carried away loot and trampled fleeing servants.
“Father! Mother!” Liu Yun cried.
The old couple lay at their door, throats slashed. Sobbing, Liu Yun knelt beside his parents. Hsi launched himself at the nearest horseman, yelling, “You’ll die for this!”
The Manchu soldier laughed and drew his sword. Aghast, Liu Yun hurried to his brother’s rescue. “No!” he shouted, pulling Hsi out of the blade’s path.
The soldier rode off with the family silver chest. Hsi struggled in Liu Yun’s restraining grip. “We must avenge our parents’ death!” he cried. “We must save our lands.”
“Don’t be foolish, younger brother. There are too many of them, and we have no weapons. We must flee!”
Liu Yun dragged the reluctant Hsi to the village to seek shelter—only to discover that the Ming army had arrived. In the marketplace, commanders drafted local men to help fight the invaders. Hsi broke away from Liu Yun, pushed his way to the head of the line of conscripts, and enlisted.
“Good-bye, elder brother,” he called from astride the horse the army had given him. His eyes, filled with dreams of glory, shone brighter than the blade of his new sword. “We’ll meet again when the war is over.” Then he galloped after his new comrades, leaving Liu Yun standing alone with tears in his eyes and a raw emptiness in his soul.
Now Abbot Liu Yun completed another round of the I Ching ritual. He drew a line on the paper, above the first. Through the old pain burned a fresh anger. Hsi’s death had taught him what their parents’ had not: the consuming desire for vengeance, which no amount of prayer or meditation could banish. He wanted to kill everyone connected with the massacre of Hsi’s rebel band on Taiwan. Though his Confucian beliefs forbade him to punish the Chinese government, he hated himself for submitting to Manchu rule and not defending Hsi. His impotent anger, seeking an external target, had focused on the Dutch, who had slaughtered Hsi and the other rebels to gain trade privileges with China; on Jan Spaen, the ruthless adventurer who had tortured Hsi to death.
As Liu Yun counted and arranged the sticks, he hoped he’d managed to conceal his emotions from the shogun’s sōsakan. Surely he had, after a lifetime spent perfecting the art of negotiation and manipulation …
Penniless and homeless, the young Liu Yun had traveled to Peking, which remained peaceful, unchanged. The emperor still resided within the Forbidden City’s great complex of lavish palaces surrounded by bloodred walls; merchants, scholars, entertainers, and outlaws still sought their fortunes in this center of commerce and culture. Forced to support himself by begging, Liu Yun almost died of cold and hunger that winter. Then, when his exam score finally reached Peking, the government awarded him a clerkship in the Bureau of Foreign Relations, where he exhibited a talent for languages and diplomacy and began his climb up the civil service ladder. Over the next nine years, he heard distressing news of Hsi. The Ming army was losing ground; the Manchus had taken Szechuan and Fukien Provinces. Famines and peasant uprisings plagued the country. Hsi got wounded, recovered, and became a general. He went missing; was presumed dead. Then one day his prediction came true.
Forty-six years ago, peasant rebels had attacked Peking. The weak, corrupt Ming government was powerless to resist. The emperor hanged himself. In desperation, the bureaucrats asked the Manchus to quell the rebellion, ceding the capital to them as a reward. Manchu troops entered the Forbidden City, cutting down peasants armed with sticks. As Liu Yun and other Ming officials, now under Manchu domination, rescued documents from a burning building, Liu Yun looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. His heart lurched.
Into the courtyard rode his brother, leading troops resplendent in Ming army regalia. “Hsi!” Liu Yun cried as gladness filled his heart. “You’re alive!”
Then he watched in horror while Hsi’s
troops attacked the Manchus. “Younger brother, what are you doing?”
Bloody sword still raised, Hsi turned on Liu Yun. The battle raged around them. “I could ask you the same question, elder brother.” Hsi’s stern face showed no joy at their reunion. “How can you serve those who slew our parents and stole our land?”
“Younger brother, your war is over,” Liu Yun said, stung by Hsi’s hostility. “The Manchus have won. The Ming rulers have lost the Mandate of Heaven to them. Surrender.”
“Coward! Fool! You’re not my brother anymore!” As more Manchu soldiers stormed the courtyard, Hsi launched another offense, shouting orders to his troops.
Within days, the Manchus had slain the last peasant rebel. They occupied Peking, completing their conquest of China. Liu Yun and his colleages transferred their allegiance to the new rulers. China’s civil service machine ground on. Liu Yun rose to the position of minister of foreign relations. He married; fathered children. Later, with his wife dead and his sons grown, he took religious vows and began his second career as an overseas priest. He tried to forget the brother who had spurned him, whom he never saw again after that meeting at the besieged palace.
Still, Liu Yun had secretly followed his brother’s desperate exploits: the renegade army’s victories at Amoy and Quemoy; the raid on Chekiang; the defeat at Nanjing and flight to Taiwan. Finally he’d received news of Hsi’s death.
Then, two years ago, fate had brought him and Jan Spaen together in Japan, where Abbot Liu Yun had conceived his plan. He knew about Spaen’s greed and ambition; he knew Japanese who shared these traits. He provided the juncture at which they would come together and he could achieve his revenge. Yet Spaen’s murder had failed to satisfy him. The invisible cord still pulled, even though there was no brother at the opposite end, and nothing except his own death could reunite him with Hsi. Therefore, he’d decided to proceed with his plan; to reap more vengeance.
The Way of the Traitor Page 17