The Fire Kimono (2008)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Reiko looked away, blinked, and drew deep breaths.

  “I just heard what happened to you,” Midori said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Reiko said.

  But the situation was more serious than the cut on her cheek. All during their troubles with Lord Matsudaira, which had gone on for some five years, Reiko had tried to be strong for Sano and not complain. Now, however, she succumbed to the temptation to unburden herself to Midori.

  “I don’t know how much more I can bear,” Reiko said. Once she’d been an unusually capable woman. Her father, Magistrate Ueda, had brought her up as the son he’d never had, providing her with the classical education and martial arts training usually reserved for males. While watching him conduct trials in his court of justice, she’d developed a fascination with detective work. She had later assisted Sano with his investigations, had bravely confronted murderers and faced danger. But those days were in the past. “I feel so helpless. I can’t do anything about my husband’s problems. I can’t even leave the estate, because it’s the only place that’s safe.”

  Then Reiko noticed Midori eyeing her with an expression that portended bad news. “What is it?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Midori said. “Lord Matsudaira’s estate was bombed this morning. The news is all over the castle.” She explained that Lord Matsudaira blamed Sano.

  Horror caught Reiko’s breath. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse!” She knew Sano hadn’t ordered the bombing, but Lord Matsudaira wouldn’t accept the truth. “Lord Matsudaira is sure to retaliate in kind.”

  She gazed at the bamboo fences surrounding the women’s quarters. Beyond them were the stone walls that enclosed the estate, and the guard turrets that rose above the trees into the blue sky. But neither fortifications nor the presence of Sano’s army comforted Reiko. The Matsudaira estate had just as much security as this one. The bombing proved that no amount of precaution could guarantee that she and Sano and their children would be unharmed. Reiko could feel the bad wind of Lord Matsudaira’s ill intentions seeping through cracks, under gates, threatening her family.

  “Don’t worry,” Midori urged. “The trouble will blow over. Everything will be fine.”

  Reiko didn’t believe it. “No place is safe anymore.” Determined to take action against the threat, she called to a passing servant: “Go fetch Lieutenant Asukai.”

  He soon appeared. “You wanted to speak with me, Lady Reiko?” His face was bruised and his arm wore a bandage over a sword wound from the ambush.

  “Yes. Come with me.”

  She led Asukai across the garden. On a small rise stood a pavilion with a thatched roof supported by wooden pillars. Reiko and Asukai entered and sat on the bench. From here Reiko could keep an eye on the children, but they wouldn’t hear her and her bodyguard speak of troubling matters.

  “I must thank you for saving my life,” Reiko said.

  “No need,” Asukai said. “It’s my job.”

  Reiko studied his handsome, earnest face. She was closer to him than any other man except Sano or her father, and she spent more time with him than with them. He’d been her bodyguard for several years, assisting in investigations she’d conducted for Sano and on her own. Under other circumstances, their relationship might have caused gossip. But it was well known that Asukai preferred men to women, and Reiko cared for him as simply a friend. She also trusted him more than she did anyone else except Sano.

  “I need your help,” Reiko said.

  “Of course. I’ll do anything for you. Is it a new investigation?” Asukai sounded excited, because her projects often led to adventure.

  “In a way,” Reiko said. “I need you to find out anything you can about Lord Matsudaira’s business, whether he has plans to attack us, and what they entail. Ask everyone you know. Listen for rumors.”

  Asukai pondered. “Chamberlain Sano has spies in and around Lord Matsudaira’s estate. Wouldn’t they hear about a plot before I could?”

  “I’m afraid they might miss something.”

  “All right. I know a few men who are retainers to Lord Matsudaira.” Asukai came from a big family with many connections; he was also popular and had lots of friends. “He’s not an easy man to serve. He’s under a lot of strain, and he takes it out on the people around him. They might be willing to inform on him, for the right price.”

  “Money is no object,” Reiko said. Sano let her spend as much as she wanted, and although ladies didn’t customarily handle cash, his treasurer had orders to give her some when she had expenses. “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  Asukai rose and said, “I’ll get started. Rest assured that if Lord Matsudaira coughs, you’ll know.”

  As late afternoon waned into evening, three groups of samurai on horseback departed from Edo Castle.

  One rode out the front gate. Twenty troops, displaying his flying-crane crest on flags attached to their backs, accompanied Sano. The visor of his horned iron helmet shaded his face. They moved down the wide boulevard into the daimyo district.

  The second group, identical to the first, left by a side gate. More troops escorted another Sano toward the Nihonbashi merchant quarter.

  The third group consisted of three low-rank soldiers dressed in cotton kimonos, leather armor tunics bearing the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest, and plain helmets. They rode out the servants’ gate. While the first two groups went their conspicuous ways, the real Sano traveled incognito with Detectives Marume and Fukida. The decoys drew attention away from their secret journey.

  Meanwhile, Hirata rode accompanied by his troops toward Kannei Temple. They escorted four bearers carrying a litter. On it sat the trunk in which the skeleton of Tokugawa Tadatoshi had traveled from its grave. At the same time, two porters clad in loincloths and headbands carried a barrel in the opposite direction.

  The porters trudged through the Kodemmacho slum. The wind swept debris along the twisting roads and whipped the smoke from outdoor hearths and beggars’ bonfires outside miserable hovels. The setting sun reflected pink in open, reeking gutters. The porters skirted garbage dumps and plodded across the ramshackle wooden bridge over a canal that served as a moat for Edo Jail, a dingy fortress whose gabled rooftops lurked behind high, moss-covered walls studded with watch turrets. At the ironclad gates, the porters called to the sentries in the guardhouse: “Delivery for Dr. Ito.”

  Shortly after the porters entered the jail with the barrel, Sano, Marume, and Fukida arrived, confident that nobody had followed them from Edo Castle. Any spies monitoring Sano’s comings and goings must have followed one or the other of his impersonators. When he and his men reached the gate sentries, the brawny, jovial Detective Marume said, “Let us in.”

  The sentries saw the Tokugawa crests on their garments and obeyed, no questions asked. Sano’s group proceeded through the prison compound, unrecognized and unchecked by guards. They dismounted in a courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence. There stood a low building with flaking plaster walls, barred windows, and a raggedy thatched roof: Edo Morgue, where the victims of floods, fires, earthquakes, and crimes were taken. The porters—men from Hirata’s detective corps—sat on the ground near the barrel, which they’d laid at the feet of Dr. Ito.

  With his plentiful white hair and tall, upright figure, dressed in the traditional dark blue coat of a physician, Dr. Ito looked no different than when Sano had last seen him almost five years ago, even though he must be over eighty now. When he saw Sano, surprise and pleasure transformed his stern face.

  “Sano-san! Was it you who sent me this gift?”

  They exchanged bows, and Sano said, “Yes. I’ve come to beg your expert advice.”

  Once a renowned physician, Dr. Ito had lost his profession, his family, his place in society, and his liberty after he’d been caught smuggling scientific knowledge from Dutch traders and performing medical experiments. The usual punishment for those offenses was exile, but Dr. Ito had received a life sentence as custodian of Edo Mor
gue.

  “In regards to an investigation?” Dr. Ito asked. When Sano assented, he said, “I’m delighted. It’s been a long time since the last one.” Sano had solved other cases in the past several years, but none requiring Dr. Ito’s aid. “It’s also been too long since we’ve met.”

  “I regret that,” Sano said.

  Coming to Edo Morgue was a risk Sano couldn’t afford except under special circumstances. Associating with a criminal could cost him his good name, his allies, and the shogun’s favor. In addition, what happened here during his visits involved foreign science. Should Sano’s collaboration in it become public, he would suffer far worse punishment than Dr. Ito had. Sano had much farther to fall.

  “You’ve endangered yourself by coming here today,” Dr. Ito said with concern.

  “I’ve taken precautions.” Besides employing a disguise and decoys, Sano had covered the trail he’d left in the past. Years ago he’d paid the gate sentries to keep quiet about his and his staff’s clandestine visits. Later he’d transferred those men to other, faraway posts. His disguise had fooled their replacements. Now only Dr. Ito and his equally trustworthy assistant would know of Sano’s trip here today.

  “A man in your position can’t be too careful,” Dr. Ito warned. “But now that you’re here, we may as well get down to business.” He gestured to the barrel. “What have we here?”

  “The skeleton of Tokugawa Tadatoshi, the shogun’s second cousin.” Sano described how the boy had disappeared during the Great Fire and today been found buried near the shrine. “I’m hoping you can tell me how he died.”

  “Fascinating. I’ll be glad to try.” Dr. Ito called through the open door of the morgue, “Mura-san!”

  His assistant came out. Mura’s gray hair had turned silver, and deep lines etched his square, clever face. He was an eta—one of Japan’s outcast class that had a hereditary link with death-related occupations such as butchering and leather tanning. Other citizens shunned them as spiritually contaminated. They did dirty work like collecting garbage and nightsoil. They also served in Edo Jail as wardens, corpse handlers, torturers, and executioners. Dr. Ito had befriended Mura across class lines, and they’d worked together for more than twenty years.

  On Dr. Ito’s orders, Mura lugged the barrel into the morgue, which was lit by lanterns and furnished with cabinets, waist-high tables, and stone troughs for washing the dead. Mura pried up the lid. Everyone peered inside at the jumble of dirty brown bones. The only one Sano could identify was the skull.

  “Can you tell anything from that?” Marume said doubtfully.

  “Perhaps,” Dr. Ito said. “First we must wash the bones.”

  Mura fetched buckets of water and filled a trough. He gently removed the bones from the barrel, immersed them, and scrubbed them with a brush. He did all the work associated with Dr. Ito’s examinations that required handling the dead. The dirt came off the bones, but the brown stain from the earth persisted. When Mura was finished, the skeleton lay on the table like pieces of a puzzle.

  “Now we put him together,” Dr. Ito said.

  He hung a scroll on the wall, an ink drawing of a human skeleton, the bones labeled. Referring to the chart, Dr. Ito picked up the bones with tongs and assembled Tadatoshi’s skeleton. Some small bones from the hands and feet were missing; perhaps they’d been lost at the graveside. But when Dr. Ito had finished, the skeleton appeared almost whole. A moment passed in silence as everyone contemplated the structure that had once supported a human body.

  “From the size I deduce that this was a child,” Dr. Ito said.

  “Tadatoshi was fourteen when he disappeared,” Sano said.

  “He must have died not long afterward. That is to say, he didn’t live to grow up before expiring at the shrine.” Dr. Ito’s gaze moved over the skeleton. “Cause of death can be difficult to determine when the flesh and organs are gone. Let us take a closer look.”

  Dr. Ito produced a large, round magnifying lens mounted on a wooden handle. He walked around the table, peering at the bones, pausing to study features through the lens. His eyebrows rose, and he pointed at a thighbone. “Observe this marking.”

  Sano, Marume, and Fukida crowded around the table. The marking was large enough for Sano to see without the lens. It appeared to be a crack in which black dirt remained stuck.

  “Here’s another,” Dr. Ito said, “and another.” He indicated similar markings on the ribs, the arm bones.

  “They look like the cracks in oracle bones,” Fukida said.

  The serious, scholarly detective was referring to the animal bones used in magic divination rituals. Fortune-tellers heated pokers in fire and applied them to the bones, causing cracks to form. By interpreting the shapes and patterns of these cracks in the “oracle bones,” they read the future.

  “Could they be breaks from a fall or other accident?” Marume asked.

  “Unfortunately not,” Dr. Ito said. “They are cuts. From a sword blade.”

  Sano hadn’t expected the death to have been an accident. If it had, then why bury Tadatoshi in an unmarked grave and let everyone think he’d perished in the Great Fire? The breath gusted from Sano as the idea of murder entered the picture.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, wanting to be absolutely certain before he opened a box of troubles.

  “Yes. I’ve seen cuts like these many times.”

  So had Sano seen many sword wounds, but in flesh, not on bared bones after the body had decomposed. Dr. Ito turned over hand and arm bones with his tongs, displaying more cuts. “He acquired these when he tried to protect himself.”

  Sano envisioned a boy flinging up his arms as a sword slashed at him, the blade opening bloody gashes. His screams echoed across the years. “Then he was hacked to death.”

  Dr. Ito nodded. “This is definitely a case of murder. I’m curious about the swords buried with Tadatoshi. Why would the killer leave them as a clue to his identity instead of letting him remain anonymous and forestalling an inquiry into his death?”

  “That’s a good question.” As Sano gazed down at the skeleton, the sword cuts seemed to glow red and give off smoke like cracks burned into oracle bones. He had a disturbing sense that the message they portended for him was pure bad luck.

  “My cousin Tadatoshi was murdered?” the shogun said in dismay when Sano delivered the news to him that evening. “How did you find out?”

  He lay facedown in bed, covered by a quilt below the waist, while a physician inserted acupuncture needles into his bony, naked back. He suffered from muscle aches, joint pains, heart palpitations, and other ailments real or imagined, and he tried every treatment known to man. The chamber was hot from the many charcoal braziers he needed to keep warm, and smelled of medicines. Sano was thankful that he didn’t have to watch the herbal enema.

  “I made some inquiries,” Sano said, deliberately vague on details. He was glad Lord Matsudaira wasn’t present to ask questions. “I’ve also assured that Tadatoshi’s remains have safely reached the mausoleum.”

  Mura had repacked the skeleton in the barrel, and the porters had carried it to Kannei Temple. There, Hirata had sneaked the skeleton into the trunk. Tomorrow the priests would give Tadatoshi a proper cremation and burial.

  “But he cannot rest in peace,” the shogun said, wincing as the needles stung him, “not until justice is done. Sano-san, find out who killed him.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency.” Sano’s code of honor demanded justice for the murdered relative of the master he was duty-bound to serve even while he battled Lord Matsudaira for control of the regime. “Tadatoshi’s killer must be punished—if he’s still alive.”

  “If so, I shall help you catch him,” the shogun said with uncharacteristic, decisive vigor. Lately he had spells during which he tried to take part in court business. Sano thought he’d become aware that he’d left too many important affairs to his officials and begun to regret how little control he had over the government. “Is there something I can do to, ahh, furth
er your investigation?”

  “Perhaps there is,” Sano said. “I need to understand Tadatoshi. Can you tell me what kind of person he was?”

  The shogun puffed up with pride because Sano was truly consulting him, not just pretending. That didn’t happen often. He frowned in an effort to remember. “Well, ahh, it was a long time ago when I knew him. His father used to bring him to play with me. Many children were brought.”

  Sano figured their parents had wanted to ingratiate them with their future ruler.

  “Tadatoshi was rather, ahh, shy and quiet.” The shogun flinched as the physician twiddled the needles between his fingers, stimulating the flow of energy through nerves. “He liked to wander off by himself. Once he did it during a visit to me. The servants turned the castle upside down, searching for him. They found him in the forest preserve. But I’m afraid he’s, ahh, mostly a blur. I can’t recall what he looked like.”

  At least Sano had the beginning of a portrait of the murder victim. Maybe Tadatoshi had wandered off one time too many, and met his killer. “Do you remember the day he disappeared?”

  “I could never forget it,” the shogun said with passion. “It was the day the Great Fire started. There had been no rain for almost six months. A strong northern wind was blowing.”

  He and Sano listened to the wind keening outside, rustling the trees. This winter and spring had also been abnormally dry and windy, and fires had broken out around town.

  “Late in the afternoon, we heard that a fire was burning through the city,” the shogun continued. “Everyone was afraid the fire would reach the castle. My mother wanted to run for the hills, but we were told that the fire brigades would surely put out the fire before it could reach us.”

  Edo’s fire brigades had consisted in those days of four small regiments levied from the daimyo. They’d proved grossly inadequate to combat the Great Fire. Now four squadrons of three hundred men each were managed by Tokugawa bannermen and assisted by the police. The townsfolk had organized their own brigades. Edo had learned its costly lesson.