The Fire Kimono

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Sano was still reeling from the horror of seeing his mother hauled off to jail and his own fate—and that of everyone who mattered to him—dependent on what he accomplished in three days. He drew on samurai discipline to calm his mind and help him think up a strategy.

  “We need to undo the damage that Egen did,” he said.

  “I say we make him undo it himself,” Marume said. “How about I pay him a visit and convince him to eat his words?”

  “Good idea,” Fukida said. “I’ll help you teach him a lesson.”

  Hirata said, “I’m all in favor of one bad turn deserving another, but coercing Egen won’t solve the problem.”

  “Why not?” Marume said.

  “The most that Egen can do for us is admit he lied,” Hirata said. “That won’t prove Sano-san’s mother is innocent.”

  “He’s right,” Sano said, and the other men nodded reluctantly. “It also won’t help us identify the real killer. What we need is evidence.”

  “What kind of evidence can we hope to find after forty-three years?” Fukida said.

  Marume punched Fukida’s arm. “Hey, don’t sound so discouraged.”

  Sano hid his own discouragement. He must bolster his men’s morale, keep them and himself moving.

  “All right,” Fukida said with forced cheer. “Where do we start looking for witnesses and evidence?”

  “How about the soldier that Egen said was your mother’s partner in crime?” Marume suggested to Sano.

  “Chances are he’s either dead, lost, or Egen made him up. Let’s not waste our time on him.” Sano thought about his visit to Tadatoshi’s family. “I’d like to talk to Lady Ateki and her daughter again. I’ll ask them to testify on my mother’s behalf. At least they can give her a good character reference. That would help counteract what Egen said. And maybe they can direct us to other witnesses.”

  “Maybe those witnesses will lead us to some evidence,” Hirata said.

  “I had a feeling that Lady Ateki and Oigimi know more than they told me,” Sano said. “I’d like to find out what it is.”

  On his way out of the house, Sano met Reiko in the corridor. She said, “I heard you were home. I need to talk to you.” Looking around, she said, “Where’s your mother?”

  When Sano told her, Reiko’s face showed dismay, but none of the shock he’d expected. “What is it?” He recalled how he’d come upon her and his mother arguing in the garden, but he didn’t have time for her now. He explained where he was going and why. “Can we talk later?”

  Reiko hesitated, then said, “Yes. It can wait.”

  A brief rain spattered Sano and his men during their second trip to Fukagawa. When they arrived at the estate where Tadatoshi’s family lived, the wet street was deserted. With its shutters closed against the rain and its eaves dripping water, the house had an inhospitable air. And the moment Sano walked into the reception room, he noticed a change in the atmosphere.

  Lady Ateki and Oigimi greeted him with the stiff courtesy due a stranger visiting for the first time. It was as if they’d forgotten the conversation they’d had with him yesterday. Lady Ateki made the usual offer of refreshments. The tiny, birdlike old woman was pensive, her gentle face troubled. She sat in silence while food and drink were brought. Oigimi brooded under the black head drape that hid the scars from her burns. She exuded coldness.

  “How may we serve you?” Lady Ateki said politely.

  Sano knew something had happened. “I’m still investigating your son’s murder, and I’m looking for more witnesses. Do you know the whereabouts of anyone who belonged to your household when Tadatoshi disappeared?”

  The women didn’t answer.

  “Any family members, retainers, or servants?” Sano prompted.

  “We have already informed you that most of the people from my father’s estate were killed by the fire,” Oigimi said in a distant tone.

  “More have died in the years since,” Lady Ateki said, equally distant. “Others have scattered. We don’t know where or if they’re still alive.”

  “Are any living in this house?” Sano asked.

  “No,” Oigimi said.

  “I’m sorry we can’t help you.” Lady Ateki’s air of finality hinted that Sano should leave. When he didn’t, she said, “Was there something else?”

  “Yes,” Sano said. “I want you both to tell the shogun what you said about my mother yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “To attest to her good character and help me prove that she’s innocent.”

  Lady Ateki and Oigimi exchanged glances that united them in opposition. “I don’t believe we can do that,” Lady Ateki said.

  Sano began to have an idea why he’d lost their cooperation. “Have you recently had news about Tadatoshi’s murder?”

  “As a matter of fact, we have,” Lady Ateki said.

  “We’ve learned that you’ve found Egen the tutor,” Oigimi said, “and that he says your mother and a soldier from the estate kidnapped and killed my brother.”

  Bad news traveled fast. Sano was dismayed to have one of his suspicions proved correct. “How did you learn that?”

  “Lord Matsudaira was good enough to send an envoy to tell us,” Lady Ateki said.

  Sano’s other suspicion had hit the mark. Lord Matsudaira had wasted no time capitalizing on Egen’s treachery. He’d quickly moved to influence these witnesses. They now believed Sano’s mother was guilty and so was Sano, by association.

  “Egen lied,” Sano said, hiding his rage lest it offend the women and increase their antipathy toward him. “He and my mother were both accused of the crime. He told me they were both innocent, but when he testified in front of the shogun, he changed his story. He put the blame on my mother to protect himself. Did Lord Matsudaira’s envoy tell you that?”

  Sano could tell from Lady Ateki’s and Oigimi’s blank expressions that they hadn’t been told. “Egen can’t be trusted. Don’t believe anything he said.”

  “We don’t believe everything we hear.” Oigimi’s tart voice rebuked Sano for implying that she and her mother were so gullible or should take his word as the truth. “But the news about Egen made us think.”

  “About Etsuko,” said Lady Ateki.

  “We decided that maybe we didn’t know her so well after all,” Oigimi said.

  “She seemed like a good, harmless girl,” Lady Ateki said, “but that could have been just the face she showed us.”

  “She might have been hiding her true nature,” Oigimi said. “She was beautiful. She could have made that soldier fall in love with her. Maybe she talked him into kidnapping my brother to get the money they needed to run away together and elope.”

  Bitterness edged her voice. Her head turned slightly toward Sano, who glimpsed the twisted, grotesque features on the left side of her face. He wondered if Oigimi wasn’t just angry at his mother because she believed his mother had killed Tadatoshi but because her beauty hadn’t been ruined by the fire. Probably no man had ever fallen in love with the scarred, mutilated Oigimi. Sano pitied her, but he was also infuriated by her baseless conjecture.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve swallowed hearsay from a man you never knew well and haven’t seen in forty-three years. You’ve let it change your mind about my mother.”

  “With all due respect, Honorable Chamberlain, but it wasn’t just Egen’s story that changed our minds,” Oigimi said haughtily. “While Mother and I were talking, we remembered things about Etsuko that we’d forgotten until now.”

  “Such as?” A bad feeling slithered, like a poisonous serpent, through Sano.

  “Etsuko used to sneak off while she was supposed to be doing errands for me,” Lady Ateki said.

  “I often saw her roaming around the estate, following my brother,” Oigimi said. “I watched her hide so he wouldn’t notice her. She was spying on him.”

  “And why would she, unless she had evil designs on him?” Lady Ateki said.

  “So now you must under
stand why we cannot speak on her behalf,” Oigimi concluded.

  Things were even worse than Sano had thought. The women had offered more evidence against his mother, and instead of being certain that it was false, he felt his misgivings about her increase. She’d hidden something from him. Could it be the fact that she and an illicit lover had plotted to extort money from Tadatoshi’s father, spied on the boy, taken advantage of the chaos during the Great Fire to kidnap him, then murdered him because he’d resisted?

  But Sano perceived another reason why the women had changed their tune. “Did Lord Matsudaira’s envoy tell you anything besides the tutor’s story?”

  Another glance passed between mother and daughter. Oigimi said, “He warned us that you were looking for someone else to blame for the murder.”

  “That I am.” And here were two new suspects, Sano thought. They’d taken the envoy’s hint; they weren’t stupid. They’d chosen to help Lord Matsudaira build up the case against Sano’s mother for fear that if she didn’t take the fall, they would.

  Sano felt the atmosphere change as he shed the role of a son fending off an attack on his mother and reinhabited his position as chamberlain and investigator. Lady Ateki shrank with fear. Oigimi was still hostile, but on her guard.

  “Where were you when Tadatoshi disappeared?” Sano asked.

  “We were in the house, getting ready to travel across the river,” said Lady Ateki.

  “My mother and I were together the whole time,” Oigimi said.

  They were each other’s alibis for the kidnapping, if indeed there had been one. Sano said, “What did you do when your father gave orders to look for Tadatoshi?”

  “We obeyed,” Oigimi said. “When nobody could find him in the estate, we went outside to the city.”

  “Our attendants went with us,” Lady Ateki said.

  Which meant they couldn’t have done any evil without witnesses. Sano asked, “What happened there?”

  “We called Tadatoshi’s name up and down the streets. We could see smoke coming toward us.” Lady Ateki’s eyes searched the distance for her lost son. “The buildings up ahead were in flames. A mob of people came running away from them. We got caught in them, caught in the fire.”

  Caught up in the memory, she shuddered. “We couldn’t get away. We were trapped in a narrow road. The houses around us went up in flames. The wind blew them at us. I heard my daughter scream. Her hair and clothes were burning.”

  Oigimi sat as motionless as a corpse propped on a funeral pyre. Sano imagined fire engulfing her, blackening her clothes. She stiffened her posture against the recollection.

  “The guards beat their capes on her and rolled her on the ground until the flames were out,” Lady Ateki said. “She was unconscious. I thought she was dead. The guards picked her up. They carried her as we ran.”

  Sano pictured the burned, limp girl in the soldiers’ arms, the hysterical mother, the crying ladies, their frantic flight through the inferno.

  “My ladies-in-waiting fell behind. They were lost in the crowds. I never saw them again. All the guards except the two carrying Oigimi were killed when a balcony collapsed on them. It was only by the grace of the gods that we reached the hills. I held my daughter while we watched the city burn.”

  Rarely had Sano ever felt such distaste for interrogating suspects. If it was for anyone else besides his mother, he would leave them alone. “You never saw Tadatoshi?”

  “No.” Oigimi’s voice was sharp with impatience. “We thought he’d died in the fire—until you told us otherwise. He never came back.”

  But Sano speculated that perhaps Tadatoshi had come back after the fire, to what was left of his family. “Suppose he had. Would you have been glad to see him?”

  “Of course!” Lady Ateki exclaimed. “All I wanted was to have my son again.”

  “Even though he was the reason you were caught in the fire?” Sano said. “At the time nobody thought he’d been kidnapped; you must have thought he’d wandered off, as he was in the habit of doing.”

  “He was just a child! He didn’t know any better!”

  “Fourteen is almost a man,” Sano pointed out. “Tadatoshi was old enough to know that when there’s a fire and one’s family is about to run for safety, one shouldn’t go wandering. Because you had to look for him, you never got across the river. Didn’t you think to blame Tadatoshi?”

  “No!” Lady Ateki cried.

  “I blamed him,” Oigimi said. A strange note pealed in her voice, a chord of anger and hatred muted by time. “But if you’re suggesting that he came back and I killed him … Well, I couldn’t have. I was an invalid for years after the fire. I hadn’t the strength.”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” Sano said, and turned to Lady Ateki.

  She gaped, shook her head, and said, “I never would have hurt my own boy.”

  “Your husband was killed, and so were most of the people from your estate,” Sano reminded her. “Your daughter was burned. Didn’t he deserve to be punished?”

  “No!” Lady Ateki raised herself up like a wounded bird trying to fly. “I loved him. No matter what!”

  Oigimi said, “My mother is innocent. Leave her alone.”

  “Daughter, mind your manners. You’ll offend the honorable chamberlain,” Lady Ateki pleaded.

  “I don’t care. I’m not afraid of him,” Oigimi said. “There’s nothing he can do to me that’s worse than what’s already happened.”

  She flung off her drape. Her neck was corrugated with scars, her scalp crusty and bald on the burned side. Her dead eye stared blankly. She pushed up her left sleeve to reveal the mottled red stump of her arm. Sano’s repugnance vied with pity. Oigimi had nothing to lose except her life, which must be a terrible burden.

  “You’ll never be able to prove we’re guilty,” she said. Her good eye sparked with fury and triumph. “If you bring us before the shogun and accuse us, we’ll testify against your mother. The shogun and Lord Matsudaira can decide who’s telling the truth. We’re willing to take a chance. Are you?”

  At Sano’s estate, Reiko and Akiko played ball with Midori, her children, and Lieutenant Asukai in the garden outside the private chambers. Reiko threw the soft cloth ball to little Tatsuo. She noticed that Lieutenant Asukai was good with the children; he gently tossed them the ball, and when they threw it with all their might only to have it land near their feet, he gallantly dashed forward, retrieved it, and backed up for another throw. Although Reiko smiled and cheered with everyone else, her mind dwelled in dark realms.

  She was glad she hadn’t told Sano about her conversation with his mother. He had enough to worry about already. For him to know that Reiko believed his mother to be guilty would do him no good. And Reiko had no basis for her judgment except her intuition, no proof that Sano would accept. Although Reiko was upset that her mother-in-law was in jail, she couldn’t help feeling relieved to have Etsuko out of the house. She thought jail was exactly where Etsuko belonged. Yet Reiko felt no true satisfaction. Etsuko’s imprisonment was another step toward disaster for the whole family and a sign that Sano couldn’t save them. The fearful tension that had plagued Reiko during the past few days mounted higher.

  Sudden loud, agonized screams shattered the peace. Reiko froze. The ball she’d just caught fell from her hands. Her heart stopped in terror, then began to race.

  “What was that?” Midori said, looking toward the house, from which the noise had come.

  An explanation occurred to Reiko. She rushed into the house, followed by Lieutenant Asukai and the others. They ran down the corridor to her chamber. Inside, the cabinet built into the wall was open. An armor-clad samurai stood in front of the cabinet, one arm thrust into it, the other beating wildly at the air while he screamed and his body jerked. He turned, his face ferocious with pain.

  “Captain Ogyu!” Reiko said as she recognized him. He was the commanding officer of the squadron that protected her family’s quarters.

  “You’re the spy!” Lieutenant As
ukai exclaimed in disbelief and shock.

  “No!” Ogyu roared.

  But the truth was obvious. Ogyu had opened the secret compartment in which Reiko had hidden the book that named Sano’s “spies.” When Sano and his family had first moved into the estate, Masahiro had found the compartment, filled with a stash of gold coins that Yanagisawa had left behind when he’d been exiled. Now the book lay inside the compartment. Captain Ogyu’s fingers were touching the black silk cover. His hand was immobilized by a dagger stuck through its back, into the compartment’s wooden base. When he’d opened the compartment he’d triggered the trap, a hidden spring that had driven the dagger into his hand.

  Reiko was so astounded by how well her plan had worked that all she could do was stand silent, her hand over her mouth. Midori took one look at the captive, whose blood welled around the dagger and spilled on the floor, and hustled the children away. “Wait!” Masahiro cried. “I want to see!”

  Captain Ogyu stammered, “I was just—I thought—”

  “You thought the book was a list of spies,” Lieutenant Asukai said. “You just wanted to steal it for Lord Matsudaira. Well, the book is a fake, this is a trap, and you fell for it.” He seized Ogyu by his topknot and banged his head against the cabinet for good measure. “Now we’ve caught you dead to rights.”

  Captain Ogyu shouted curses. With his free hand he wrenched at the dagger’s handle. He begged, “Get it out of me! Let me loose!”

  “Oh, we will,” Asukai said. “But don’t be in such a hurry. What’s going to happen to you next will hurt a lot worse.”

  When Sano and his entourage arrived back at Edo Castle, a sentry at the main gate said, “General Isogai wants to see you.”

  General Isogai was the supreme commander of the Tokugawa army. He owned the loyalty of thousands of troops, and he’d pledged their military support to Sano. No matter that Sano had important things to do, he couldn’t brush off his chief ally.

  He found General Isogai at the Tokugawa army’s central headquarters, located in a turret that rose up from a wall within Edo Castle, high on its hill. The turret, a square structure faced with white plaster, was crowned with tile roofs that protruded above each of its three stories. General Isogai had an office at the top. Inside, swords, spears, and guns hung in racks on the walls, alongside maps of Japan on which army garrisons and main roads were marked. General Isogai paced the floor like a soldier in a drill. He had a squat, heavily muscled figure and the appearance of no neck between his thick shoulders and his ovoid head.