Black Lotus

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Do you want to see what’s inside the hole?” Toshiko whispered.

  Midori shuddered at the idea of going down there. “Let’s find out what the abbess and those men are doing.” Reiko would want to know why Junketsu-in had sneaked two high-ranking samurai from a powerful clan into the temple. “Come on!”

  They followed the trio, creeping along behind the shrubs that bordered the path. The abbess led the samurai up the stairs to the veranda of a secondary worship hall. Dim light shone through the barred windows. Midori and Toshiko hid behind a prayer board outside and watched one samurai open the door.

  “Not so fast,” Junketsu-in said irately. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  The men reached inside their kimonos, removed objects too small for Midori to see, and handed them to the abbess. Then the three vanished into the building.

  Midori said to Toshiko, “We’ll listen at the windows.”

  They scurried over to the base of the building and crouched in the shadows. Midori heard footsteps inside, and the scrape of doors sliding. Then a male voice said, “I’ll take her.” Another said, “That one will do for me.” Soon Junketsu-in exited the building, alone. She walked toward the main hall. Midori was torn between investigating the mysterious activities here, or spying on Junketsu-in. Afraid of the abbess, she decided to stay.

  Low murmurs came through the window above; Midori couldn’t make out the words. Toshiko rose, poked her finger through the bars, pierced the paper pane, and gingerly tore a hole in it. While Midori watched, daunted by her boldness, Toshiko peered into the hole.

  “Look!” she whispered excitedly.

  After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, Midori stood and looked through the hole. Inside were a nun and one of the samurai who’d come with Abbess Junketsu-in. The samurai had stripped nude. He was kneeling, while the nun hunched before him, sucking his organ. He groaned, caressing her shaved head. Midori gasped in shock.

  Toshiko tugged her arm. “Let’s see what’s happening in the other rooms.”

  They crept to the next window, where Toshiko tore another hole. In this room they saw a naked monk crouched on all fours. The other samurai knelt behind him, thrusting into his buttocks. Recalling the exchange she’d observed between Junketsu-in and the two samurai, Midori realized that the men had been paying for sexual services and choosing their companions. The temple was running a brothel for rich patrons.

  “Have you seen enough?” Toshiko whispered. “Can we leave?”

  Midori would have liked nothing better than to flee the temple, but she doubted that Reiko or Hirata would think much of what she’d learned so far. Prostitution outside the Yoshiwara licensed district was a crime, but it revealed nothing about the murders or the Black Lotus’s plans.

  “We can’t go yet,” Midori told Toshiko. “Come this way!”

  They stole through the grounds, back to the site of the burned cottage. Crouching at the edge of the hole, they peered inside. Midori saw a shaft with plank walls; a wooden ladder extended down one side into a deep pit. Dim light shone at the bottom, and she heard a distant clattering noise.

  “There’s something in there. It’s dark,” Toshiko whimpered “I’m afraid to go down.”

  So was Midori, but she must be brave. “You can wait for me here,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

  “But I’m afraid to be alone.”

  “Then you’ll have to come with me.”

  Midori began climbing down the creaky ladder. The dark shaft enclosed her. As she descended, the air grew cooler and damper, exuding the odor of soil. A panicky, trapped feeling built inside Midori. She gripped the sides of the ladder and her feet fumbled for the rungs while she imagined hands reaching up from the darkness to grab her. Reaching the bottom, she found herself in a cave. The light came from oil lamps mounted on the reinforced walls of three tunnels that joined where she stood. A moment later, Toshiko came scrambling down the ladder.

  Having her friend by her side renewed Midori’s courage. “This way,” she said, picking a direction at random.

  Treading softly upon the earth floor, they started down a tunnel. The steady beat of the clattering noise echoed around them. Air gusted from holes in the ceiling, and a strong odor of fish and pickled radishes permeated the atmosphere. Rooms lined the tunnel. Midori peeked through the open doorway of one and saw ceramic urns stacked to the ceiling. The next rooms contained rice bales, and the next, water barrels.

  “These must be the provisions we saw them bringing into the temple,” Midori said. The cool temperature would preserve the food, but she didn’t understand why the sect would amass so much, or bother hauling water underground.

  Toshiko gazed down the tunnel, her eyes alert and frightened. “Someone’s coming!”

  Midori heard the footsteps in the distance. She ducked into the room containing the water barrels, pulling Toshiko with her. They watched six priests march by. After the group passed, they started down the tunnel again.

  “Where are we going?” Toshiko whispered.

  “I guess we’ll follow the noise.”

  This grew louder as they wound deeper into the subterranean complex. They passed more pantries, rooms lined with mattresses set on wide shelves, and junctions where the tunnel branched. At one junction, a shaft rose to ground level. Four nuns came down its ladder. Midori and Toshiko leapt back into the tunnel just in time to hide.

  “Let’s go back up,” Toshiko pleaded.

  “Not yet.”

  The clatter rose to a shuddering racket. Through it Midori heard resounding metallic clangs and eerie cries. Now they came upon a spacious hollow. Inside, Midori saw what looked to be a gigantic machine composed of pleated, tubular cloth bellows, wooden wheels, and a vertical iron conduit as wide as a tree trunk running through the ceiling. Ten muscular priests pumped the bellows and turned cranks.

  “They’re pumping air in from outside so people can breathe down here,” Midori deduced.

  She and Toshiko slipped past the hollow. They rounded a corner, and a deafening cacophony burst upon them, accompanied by a powerful reek of urine and rank earth. Down the passage, shaven-headed men and women shoveled, swung pickaxes, erected beams and walls, and hoisted loads of dirt up a shaft, building new tunnels. Sweat and grime soiled their clothes; iron chains shackled their ankles. Torches flared through dust clouds. Priests armed with clubs strolled through the scene, hitting workers who paused to rest. Pained cries rent the air.

  “I think I’ve seen enough,” Midori said, appalled to discover that Reiko’s tale of slavery in the temple was true, and increasingly afraid of getting caught. “Let’s go back up.”

  Hurrying back through the tunnels with Toshiko, she followed the route by which they’d come, but somewhere she took a wrong turn into unfamiliar territory. Here, the passage stank of rotten fish, and Midori heard grinding noises coming from a room. Signaling Toshiko to stand back, she stole up to the doorway and peeked inside. A man stood at a long table against the wall, writing. It was Dr. Miwa.

  Fear clenched Midori’s stomach as she observed that the room was some sort of workshop, furnished with equipment strange to her. A nun was lifting small, dead fish from a basin of water and dropping them into a ceramic pot. Another nun pounded the fish with a sharp-bladed chopper, while more nuns strained slimy pulp through cloths and gathered the liquid in jars. Midori recognized the fish as fugu—puffer fish. Everyone knew that fugu was poisonous and its sale illegal in many places. What could the Black Lotus be planning to do with the extract?

  Suddenly Toshiko gasped, clutching Midori’s arm, as footsteps approached. The girls scurried around a corner, peered cautiously out, and watched three priests cross a junction some twenty paces away. One was High Priest Anraku. The others carried lanterns. Midori remembered the ceremony and Anraku’s fathomless eyes, hypnotic voice, and unsettling touch, his sexual arousal and her own. She wanted to run fast and far from him, but he was the heart of the Black Lotus
and important to her mission.

  “we’ll follow him,” she told Toshiko.

  They hurried after Anraku. Suddenly a group of nuns came around a corner and straight toward them. Toshiko shrank back, but Midori pulled her forward, murmuring, “Keep going. Act like you belong here.”

  The nuns passed, bobbing perfunctory bows, which Midori and Toshiko returned. Ahead, Anraku and the priests entered a room. Midori and Toshiko huddled near the door.

  “How many pieces?” Anraku’s voice said.

  A priest replied, “Our samurai patrons have donated enough to arm everyone in the temple and all our brothers and sisters outside.”

  “Excellent.”

  Midori stole a look through the doorway, into a large cave where Anraku and the priests stood, their backs to her. An eerie radiance surrounded them. Midori saw that the radiance was light from the priests’ lanterns, reflecting on the steel blades of thousands of swords, spears, daggers, and lances mounted in racks on the walls, hung from the ceiling, and stacked on the floor. The sight amazed her. There must be almost as many weapons here as in Edo Castle!

  Anraku walked toward an ironclad door at the back of the cave. “Leave the lanterns here. We don’t want to ignite the gunpowder bombs until we’re ready.”

  The priests obeyed, following him into the dark cavern beyond the door, from which Midori overheard them discussing the quantity of bombs and the area they could destroy. A thrill of revelation and dread swept through her as she at last perceived the meaning of what she’d seen tonight.

  “The Black Lotus is preparing for a war and siege!” Midori whispered excitedly to Toshiko. This was just the sort of discovery that would help Reiko and impress Hirata. “We must go up and warn people!”

  She turned to her friend … and discovered that she’d spoken to empty air.

  “Toshiko-san?” she said. “Where are you?”

  The girl had disappeared. Midori fought panic; she wasn’t sure she could get out by herself, and even if she could, she couldn’t leave Toshiko in this awful place. Desperate to find her friend, she ran down the tunnel.

  A gang of priests hurried toward her, shouting, “There’s the intruder. Catch her!”

  Terrified, Midori turned and ran in the other direction, but two figures standing in the passage blocked her escape. She skidded to a halt, alarmed to recognize Anraku and Toshiko.

  “Such a pity.” Anraku shook his head, regarding Midori with what looked to be genuine regret. “You had a wonderful future with me, but I regret to say that your betrayal of my trust has altered your destiny. They who oppose the Black Lotus must be punished.”

  A wave of nauseating horror washed over Midori, followed by remorse. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” she said to Toshiko.

  However, Toshiko didn’t look brightened. Her face wore a smug smile. Anraku beamed down at her, and terrible comprehension dawned on Midori.

  “This morning you asked me what Anraku-san promised me,” Toshiko said. “When I joined the Black Lotus last year, he said that my purpose in life was to expose his enemies, and he would reward me with a life of luxury in his new kingdom.”

  Too late, Midori recalled warning signs: how easily Toshiko had befriended her, gone along with her plans, and gotten away from the combat lesson to accompany her here. Toshiko wasn’t a fellow newcomer and victim; she was a Black Lotus spy, who must have been planted among the novices to watch them, her fear and reluctance a mere pose. When she’d vanished a moment ago, she’d gone to report Midori to her superiors.

  Now, as the priests seized Midori and marched her down the tunnel, she rued her naïveté. Surely she would pay for it with her life.

  31

  Beware of rulers, princes of kingdoms, high-ministers, and heads

  of offices

  Who stubbornly adhere to untruth.

  —FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA

  Huddled in her palanquin, Reiko heard shouts and clashing blades from the battle raging outside. Then the world shifted, and she was standing alone inside Minister Fugatami’s house, where the minister and Hiroko lay dead in their blood-spattered chamber. Reiko fled through empty rooms and corridors, seeking a door that didn’t exist, fleeing an unknown danger. She came to a window and wrenched at the bars that covered it.

  “Help!” she called.

  Outside, in a garden eerily still in the gray dawn, stood Haru. She held a flaming torch.

  “Haru, let me out!” Reiko pleaded.

  But the girl, whose face wore a look of blind, intense concentration, didn’t seem to notice her. Haru raised the torch, and fire exploded around Reiko. She screamed.

  The sound of her own voice startled her awake. She sat up in bed, her heart thudding. Now she recognized her own chamber, its windows pale with morning light. An afternoon, evening, and night had passed since the attack in Nihonbashi, but she again experienced the breathlessness and tremors of a delayed reaction that had set in after she’d arrived home.

  Because her palanquin bearers had all perished in the battle, Reiko had ridden back to Edo Castle on a horse that had belonged to one of Sano’s dead retainers, while Sano held the reins and rode beside her. She’d thought herself unaffected by the attack, until she and Sano were seated in the parlor of their mansion and she tried to discuss what had just happened.

  “Surely now you must realize how dangerous and evil the Black Lotus is,” she said.

  “Yes, I know the sect is evil,” Sano said. His matter-of-fact tone echoed hers, though he watched her with concern. “But so is Haru.”

  “Then you still mean to leave her in jail, awaiting her trial?” Reiko said, dismayed.

  “I believe that the arson and murders were Haru’s contribution to the Black Lotus’s scheme, whatever it is,” Sano said. “But let’s not talk about this while you’re upset.”

  “I’m fine,” Reiko said, but a sudden onrush of tears contradicted her claim. “You can’t condemn Haru to death when there’s a chance that she’s innocent and blaming her could leave the real killers free to do whatever they please!”

  Sano had refused to continue the discussion, and insisted that Reiko. go to bed. Toward dawn, she’d fallen into a restless sleep that had brought the nightmare. Now she drew deep breaths, willing away emotion. She couldn’t bring the Black Lotus to justice unless she pulled herself together.

  She tried to forget her dream about Haru, and everything it implied.

  Reiko washed, dressed, and forced herself to swallow some tea and rice gruel. She fed Masahiro, then went to the palace. She found Lady Keisho-in in her chambers in the Large Interior, eating her morning meal.

  “I’ve come to see Midori,” Reiko said.

  “She’s not here.” Slurping fish broth, Lady Keisho-in looked surprised. “I thought she was at your house.”

  “Not this time,” Reiko said. “I haven’t seen her since the night before last.”

  “Well, she told me she had important business, so I gave her a holiday,” Keisho-in said. “She left here some days ago, early in the morning before I was up.” Keisho-in turned to her attendants. “Midori-chan hasn’t come back at all, has she?”

  The women shook their heads. Keisho-in said in peevish disapproval, “I didn’t mean for her to be gone so long, and a young lady has no business staying out all night. Midori-chan is probably gallivanting in town with disreputable folk. If you find her, tell her she must return at once.”

  “I will,” Reiko said as anxiety stole through her. Midori wasn’t the kind of girl who ran wild. Her extended absence boded no good.

  After bidding Keisho-in farewell, Reiko went home and ordered a manservant to find out whether Midori had reentered the castle and might be somewhere inside. Reiko sent another servant to Lord Niu’s estate in the daimyo district to see if Midori had stopped there to visit her family. Within an hour, Reiko received news that the gate sentries recalled Midori leaving, but she hadn’t returned. She wasn’t at her family’s house, and Reiko doubted that
Midori had anywhere else to stay. A dreadful suspicion burgeoned in Reiko’s mind.

  Then, as she paced in her chamber, oblivious to the sight of Masahiro and his nurses playing in the sunny garden outside her window, she caught sight of a scrap of paper lying on the floor. The wind must have blown it off her desk. Absently, Reiko picked up the paper, and the words she read on it turned suspicion to terrible reality.

  Midori had broken her promise and gone to the Black Lotus Temple.

  After seeing what the Black Lotus had done to Haru, after the Fugatami murders and the attack by the priests, Reiko knew the sect had no mercy. What if Midori had been caught spying at the temple? The sect would surely kill her. Reiko dreaded telling Sano what had happened, but she must.

  She hurried to his office, interrupting him in a meeting with Hirata and several detectives. “Please excuse my intrusion, but it’s an emergency,” she said, bowing to Sano.

  Sano dismissed the detectives, but asked Hirata to stay. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

  Reiko knelt and poured out the whole story of Midori’s plan to spy on the temple and the note that Reiko had just found. She watched Sano’s face reflect incredulity, then outrage.

  “You brought Midori into a murder investigation?” he demanded. “You’ve done many foolish things during this case, but this is the worst!”

  “No, I didn’t. Midori begged to help,” Reiko defended herself as Hirata stared at her in open-mouthed horror. “I told her not to go, but she went anyway.”

  Shaking his head, Sano smacked his palms down hard on his desk. “You must have given her the idea to go. She wouldn’t have thought of it herself. This is all your fault. Midori’s only fault is her ill-conceived loyalty to you.”

  Reiko didn’t want to appear craven by making excuses, but neither could she let Sano misinterpret the situation and think the worst of her. She said, “I tried to talk Midori out of spying—”