The Cloud Pavilion

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Chiyo stepped in front of it.

  “Get out of my way!” he shouted.

  She didn’t move even though her expression was filled with terror. Reiko couldn’t let her friend face Ogita alone. Leaving the gang to defend Fumiko, she ran to Chiyo.

  “Who are you?” Ogita was saying.

  Chiyo didn’t seem to notice Reiko standing by her side. She frowned in dismay and puzzlement as she beheld Ogita. “Don’t you know?”

  “If we’ve met before, I don’t remember, I’m sorry,” Ogita said impatiently. “Now please move.”

  “You had me kidnapped. You—you had relations with me while I was drugged.” Chiyo’s voice shook. “And you don’t even remember me?”

  Ogita narrowed his eyes, took another look at Chiyo. Recognition dawned. “Oh. Yes.” A lascivious smile crept across his face. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. But I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if you don’t mind—”

  “I do mind.” Chiyo was so pale that Reiko feared she would faint, but she bravely stood her ground. “You will not leave until you explain to me why you did it.”

  “Enough of this nonsense.” Ogita lifted his hand, perhaps to push Chiyo out of his way, perhaps to strike her down.

  Chiyo snatched the dagger from Reiko. She brandished it at Ogita and cried, “Don’t you touch me!”

  Reiko was as amazed as Ogita looked. Never had she thought Chiyo would have the courage to confront her rapist, let alone threaten him. But she came from the same clan as Sano. The same samurai blood ran in her veins.

  Ogita recoiled, his gaze darting between Chiyo’s tense, white face to the weapon in her hand, caught between her and the battle that still raged on. “All right, if you must know: I did it because I wanted to. And because I could.” He smiled at her shocked expression. “Are you satisfied?”

  Such fury blazed in her normally mild eyes that Reiko almost didn’t recognize her. Her lips moved, but she could find no words to convey her offense at Ogita’s callousness.

  “No?” Ogita laughed mockingly. “Well, maybe once wasn’t enough for you. Would you like to do it again sometime?”

  Reiko gasped in indignation. Chiyo flinched as if Ogita had slapped her and said, “Because of what you did to me, I’ve lost everything.” The dagger trembled in her hands. “My children, my husband, and my honor.” Tears glistened in her angry eyes. “And you think it’s a joke.”

  “I don’t if you don’t,” Ogita said patronizingly. “I’m sorry if you’re upset, but it’s water under the bridge, so let’s just forget about it, all right?” He extended his hand to her, waggled his fingers, and said, “Give me that dagger.”

  Chiyo hesitated. Reiko saw her habit of obeying men weaken her desire to stand up to Ogita. Then she gulped a deep, quick breath, as if she’d jumped off a cliff over the ocean and had to fill her lungs before she hit the water. She swiped at Ogita with all her might. The motion sent him skipping backward and her spinning in a clumsy circle. Ogita chuckled half in shock, half in amusement.

  “So you want to play rough?” he said. “Normally, I like a woman with a little fight in her, but I’ve got to go.”

  He veered around Chiyo toward the gate. She stumbled in front of him, awkwardly swinging the dagger, totally untrained in combat. Reiko watched in amazement as Chiyo’s determination made up for lack of experience. Chiyo chased Ogita straight into the battle. He ran sideways, trying to keep an eye on her and the fighters. Reiko ran after them and grabbed a sword from a dead samurai. How she regretted talking so much about justice! Chiyo had taken Reiko’s words to heart. She displayed the recklessness of a warrior on a suicide mission. She seemed oblivious to the swords and spears slicing the air around her. Her desire for revenge on Ogita might get her killed.

  Perhaps she wanted death as much as revenge.

  Would that Reiko could save her from herself!

  Ogita tripped over a bloody corpse. It was Nanbu’s. Ogita fell. He sprawled on his stomach over Nanbu. He tried to get up, but the blood was slippery, and he fell again.

  Chiyo advanced on him, the dagger raised high. The change that came over her was so startling that Reiko froze in her tracks. Her face was as serene and as hard as a stone Buddha’s. Ogita looked up at her over his shoulder as he struggled to rise. All the terror he’d caused her in the pavilion of clouds now glazed his eyes. He opened his mouth to protest, or beg.

  Chiyo slashed the dagger down. The blade cleaved deep into Ogita’s back. Uttering a pitiful croak, he stiffened. He went limp as he died, lying across Nanbu, his conspirator in sinful crimes.

  The unnatural serenity deserted Chiyo. Her face crumpled; she sank to her knees beside Ogita and Nanbu; she began to sob. Reiko moved to console her, but Fumiko came running, cut in front of Reiko, and threw her arms around Chiyo.

  “Don’t cry,” Fumiko said. “They were bad men. They deserved to die.”

  Now Reiko saw that the battle was over. Nanbu’s men and dogs all lay lifeless amid the graves. Only Jirocho and some ten gangsters, and Lieutenant Tanuma and Reiko’s other guards remained standing. They were disheveled, bruised, and bloody. In the smoke from the crematoriums and the dropped lanterns whose flames smoldered in the weeds, they looked like survivors of some dreadful catastrophe.

  Chiyo wept as though purging all the emotion from her spirit. Reiko felt tears of release sting her own eyes. Jirocho left his gang, walked slowly over to Fumiko, and laid his hand on her hair. He swallowed hard and blinked.

  “Don’t cry,” Fumiko said as she began to sob herself. “It’s all right.”

  “Hear what?” Joju frowned, impatient and threatening, his blade firm against the old woman’s throat.

  “There’s somebody here in this room with us,” Sano said.

  “There’s only you and me and her, and you’ll be gone soon,” Joju retorted.

  Sano gazed around the cabin, lifting his hand, feeling the air. “It’s somebody from the spirit world.”

  Contempt twisted the priest’s mouth. “Don’t try that on me. I’m the expert at all the tricks. You’re just an amateur.”

  “ ‘We all have the power to communicate with the spirit world.’ ” Sano quoted the words Joju had spoken to him during their first meeting.

  “But only a few of us know how. You’re forgetting the rest of what I said.”

  “I seem to have become one of the few,” Sano said, “and I don’t need music or fireworks to hear the spirit. She says she wants to talk to you.”

  “You’re stalling.” Joju held the knife firmly against the blue vein visible in the woman’s neck. “Get out.”

  “I’m getting a name,” Sano said. “It sounds like . . .” He paused, straining the muscles of his face, concentrating hard. “Okitsu.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.” But Joju looked as shocked as the moneylender he’d bilked. He obviously remembered Okitsu, the beggar woman Sano had met outside the temple.

  “She was once possessed by evil spirits who told her that people were out to get her,” Sano said. “Her parents brought her to you. You performed an exorcism on her.”

  “How—?”

  “How did I know? She just told me.” Sano cocked his head, pretended to listen. “She says you raped her and got her pregnant.”

  Joju beheld Sano with the fearful wonder of a pilgrim hearing a Buddha statue at a woodland shrine tell guilty secrets he thought nobody knew.

  Sano gambled that Joju hadn’t bothered to find out what had happened to Okitsu afterward. “She died giving birth.”

  “No,” Joju whispered. He evidently didn’t know that Okitsu was still alive and begging outside his temple.

  Sano remembered something else Joju had said: People want to believe in what I do. He realized that Joju himself believed, and he was as vulnerable to manipulation by false mediums and spirits as his own clients were.

  “What does she want?” Joju said reluctantly, unable to help himself. Sano’s knowledge of his past had convinced him that th
e spirit was real.

  “There’s another spirit with Okitsu,” Sano said. “She wants you to meet him.”

  “Who . . . ?”

  “It’s her son.” Sano paused a beat. “Your son.”

  “I never had any son.” Joju’s words were less a denial than a plea for Sano to assure him that they were true.

  “Now you know better,” Sano said. “He doesn’t have a name because he died while Okitsu was having him. She says she’s been wandering between the world of the living and the world of the dead, carrying him in her arms. She wants to show him to his father. Here he is.”

  Sano gestured at the empty air near the bed. Joju’s stricken gaze moved to the spot Sano indicated. Sano blew on the cloth that hung from the ceiling over the spot. The cloth fluttered. The flame in the lantern wavered. Joju gasped. Sano could almost see the vision the priest saw—a ghostly woman holding out a baby. The hairs rose on Sano’s own neck. The power of suggestion was potent indeed.

  “I don’t want him,” Joju said weakly to the ghost. “Leave me alone.”

  “She’s angry at you for what you did,” Sano said. “You caused her and the baby to suffer and die. You doomed them never to find peace. And now that she’s found you, she wants revenge.”

  Joju shuddered as he recoiled from the ghostly mother and child. “Please. Go away,” he whispered.

  His hand that held the knife trembled. He seemed to have forgotten the old woman was there, but one slip of the knife could kill her. Sano felt an increasing pressure to gain control of Joju, fast.

  “Okitsu says she’s putting a curse on you,” Sano said. “Misfortune will follow you wherever you go. The shogun will turn against you. You’ll lose your temple, your money, and your reputation. You’ll become a pariah begging in the streets. You’ll get every disease known to man. Everybody will shun you. You’ll suffer terribly.”

  Joju glared at Sano as if Sano were responsible for the sins he’d committed, the ills he’d brought upon himself. “Make her stop! Make them go away!”

  “I can’t,” Sano said. “I’m not an exorcist. All I can do is act as a mediator between you and Okitsu.”

  “Then do it!” Panic agitated Joju.

  Sano addressed the ghost he’d conjured up. “How can Joju make amends for what he did? What must he do in order for you to lift your curse and cross into the spirit world?”

  He pretended to listen. He forced himself to wait and let the suspense build, while Joju watched him with the helpless faith of a drowning man clinging to a rescuer’s hand. At last Sano said, “Okitsu says you must confess your sins.”

  “All right!” Joju cried. “I took advantage of her. I got her with child. It’s my fault they died!”

  “She says that’s not enough. You have to confess all your sins.” Sano asked, “Did you rape the nun?”

  Joju hesitated, clearly aware that Sano had led him onto ground where he must dig his own grave. But his fear of the future Sano had painted overcame caution. With a groan, he sank in his shovel. “Yes.”

  At long last Sano had the admission of guilt that he wanted, but he couldn’t stop there. “Okitsu still isn’t satisfied. She says that if you hurt that old woman, she’ll never forgive you. When you die, she’ll lay claim to your soul. You and Okitsu and your child will wander in the netherworld together for all eternity.”

  The priest gazed at the old woman. She slept, oblivious to the drama taking place. In his eyes warred his desire for salvation and his knowledge that if he gave up his hostage, he was doomed.

  Sano pointed at a corner of the padded floor. “Okitsu wants you to throw the knife over there. She says, get up and move away from that woman, or the curse starts now.”

  Joju’s fraught expression didn’t change, but Sano felt a dangerous impulse flare in him. Sano ducked at the same instant the priest hurled the knife straight at his heart. The knife struck the wall with a muffled thump; the padding absorbed the blade. Joju uttered a roar of desperate, reckless fury. He lunged at Sano. Sano sidestepped, grabbed Joju by the arm, twisted it behind him, and forced him to the floor.

  The resistance leaked out of Joju. Pinned under Sano’s knee, he wept, babbling, “Namo Amida Butsu! Namo Amida Butsu! I trust in the Buddha of Immeasurable Light.” It was the prayer that the nun had told Reiko he’d forced her to say while he’d raped her here, in the pavilion of clouds.

  The door crashed open. The sounds of oars splashing in water accompanied Hirata and Detective Marume into the room. “The boat owner and his guards are dead,” Hirata said. “The crew has surrendered, and they’re taking the boat back to the dock. Fukida is keeping an eye on them . . .” His voice trailed off. He and Marume stared at Sano holding Joju down, at the naked, unconscious woman on the bed, at the padded walls.

  “So this is the scene of the crime,” Marume said, dripping wet from his swim in the river. “It looks like you’ve got things under control here. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Not quite,” Sano said. The full measure of his success and failure struck satisfaction and despair into him. “I hate to tell you this, but the shogun’s wife is still missing.”

  In the morning, Sano and his detectives arrived back at Edo Castle. His troops had taken Joju to Edo Jail and the old woman to Keiaiji Convent, where the nuns would care for her until she could be identified and returned to her home.

  Sano wasn’t eager to return to his. He’d missed the shogun’s deadline, and now he must face the consequences. He had to save his family, but he was so exhausted he could hardly see straight. He’d hardly slept in days.

  Outside the gate, one of his soldiers was waiting for him. “Honorable Chamberlain Sano! The shogun’s wife has been found!”

  Fukida groaned. Marume cursed and said, “Why couldn’t it have happened just a few hours sooner?”

  Sano felt as much foreboding as relief. “How? By whom?”

  The soldier shook his head. “All I know is that she was found lying in the Ginza theater district.”

  “That’s a long way from Chomei Temple,” Sano said.

  Her abduction hadn’t followed the same pattern as the others, when the victims had been dumped near the places they’d been taken. But the two oxcart drivers weren’t the culprits this time. There was another kidnapper, still at large.

  “Where is Lady Nobuko?” Sano asked.

  “She’s being taken to the palace.”

  Sano and his men rode at a gallop through Edo Castle. They arrived at the palace in time to join a crowd of officials and troops watching four guards carry Lady Nobuko on a litter up the path to the entrance. Her thin body was covered by a blanket, her black hair matted. Her eyes were closed, but Sano could tell she was conscious. Pain, misery, and humiliation played across her pale, quivering face, which was contorted on the right side.

  The shogun scurried out of the palace, trailed by attendants. When the guards brought Lady Nobuko to him, he squinted at her as if he didn’t quite recognize her. He said, “Take her to her chambers. Call the court physician.”

  At the entrance, her maids and the other court ladies surrounded Lady Nobuko in an exclaiming, weeping horde.

  Then the shogun saw Sano, and his expression turned furious. “My wife is home, no thanks to you! I understand she was found by some policemen who, ahh, just happened to stumble upon her.” Sano started to apologize, but the shogun cut him off. “The police said my wife has been violated. I’ve been dishonored.” He seemed more angry at Sano than glad to have Lady Nobuko back alive. “And it’s all your fault because you didn’t rescue her in time!”

  He seemed to have forgotten that he’d previously thought Yanagisawa shared the blame for the kidnapping. Yanagisawa was nowhere to be seen. The shogun jabbed his finger at Sano’s face. “You’ll pay for letting me down. As soon as it can be arranged, you and your family and all your close associates shall die!”

  “Your Excellency,” Sano began.

  After twelve years during which Sano had loyally, uns
tintingly served him, the shogun turned his back on Sano and stalked into the castle.

  Everyone’s gazes avoided Sano. The crowd moved away from Sano, Hirata, and the detectives like the ocean receding from an island at low tide.

  Reiko hurried toward him. Her expression said she’d heard the shogun’s pronouncement. Masahiro also came running. Sano was aghast that his wife and son had not only witnessed his public humiliation, but would die because he had failed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said more confidently than he felt. He didn’t want to frighten Reiko and Masahiro, but he feared that this time they were all lost.

  “I have to tell you what else happened.” Breathless with excitement, Reiko said, “Nanbu and Ogita are dead.”

  She poured out a story of blackmail, an ambush and a battle in a cemetery, and the shocking outcome. Sano’s men listened with amazement. Sano could barely absorb what he was hearing.

  “Where have you been?” Reiko asked.

  Sano didn’t have a chance to answer, because Masahiro tugged his sleeve and said excitedly, “Father, I’ve seen that lady before!”

  “What lady?” Sano asked.

  “The shogun’s wife. Remember how I spied on Chamberlain Yanagisawa? She’s one of the three ladies he met.”

  This latest revelation was too much on top of too much for Sano. He and Reiko stared at Masahiro in surprise.

  “Yanagisawa had a miai with the shogun’s wife?” Reiko said.

  She sounded as confused as Sano felt. But now Sano began to understand what Yanagisawa was up to. The sheer audacity of it took his breath away.

  Masahiro pointed at the crowd of women around the shogun’s wife. “And there are the two other ladies!”

  Sano spotted an old woman with a babyish face, and a tall, plain younger one. They walked close beside Lady Nobuko as the guards carried her litter into the palace. Sano had never seen them before, but the fact that they clearly outranked the other women told him their identities.