Was Yoshisato’s death driving him mad?
At the sound of footsteps in the corridor, hope resurged. Yanagisawa rushed out of the room and bumped into Kato Kinhide from the Council of Elders. He shouted.
“Sorry if I frightened you,” Kato said.
Yanagisawa could barely contain his disappointment. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw the scene Lady Someko made at the funeral.” Apprehension tinged the disgust on Kato’s flat face. “Is she under control?”
“For the time being.”
“That’s not good enough. You should get rid of her.”
Kato was right, but Yanagisawa balked at the idea of killing Lady Someko. He hated her viciousness, and at this moment he couldn’t even imagine desiring her sexually, but she was Yoshisato’s mother. She was his only connection with Yoshisato.
“I can’t,” Yanagisawa said. “She’s the only person who can say for sure that the shogun is Yoshisato’s father. That still matters even though Yoshisato is dead.” Again he had that irrational feeling that Yoshisato was nearby, alive. He couldn’t breathe a hint of it to Kato, who would think he was losing his mind. “If the shogun stops believing Yoshisato was his son, he’ll be furious, and you and I and all our friends had better prepare to die.”
“She’s the only person who can say for sure that the shogun isn’t Yoshisato’s father.” Kato obviously suspected the truth. “She’s dangerous.”
“I can take care of her,” Yanagisawa assured himself as well as Kato.
“You’d better take care of Sano, too. As long as he’s alive, he’ll cause you trouble.”
Yanagisawa responded indignantly. “I tried to take care of him. You and the other elders stopped me. Why? Don’t tell me you really think Sano might be innocent and he should get a fair trial.”
“Some people are still sympathetic toward Sano. You don’t want them to think you’re rushing to frame him.”
“Not many. They can’t hurt me,” Yanagisawa scoffed.
“You’re wrong. The political situation has changed drastically since yesterday,” Kato said. “Ienobu is the heir apparent again. The next battle will be you fighting him for control of the regime. You can’t afford to offend Sano’s friends. You need to get them on your side.”
Vexed because Kato was right again, Yanagisawa said, “How would you have me do that?”
“When Sano goes to trial, make the case against him so conclusive that everybody will believe he’s guilty. Then nobody will take offense at his death. His former allies will join your camp. Ienobu has the advantage of being the shogun’s nephew, but he’s repulsive. You aren’t. Never underestimate the power of good looks.”
Yanagisawa hesitated, torn between his craving for immediate revenge against Sano, his need to shore up his political position, and his urge to search for Yoshisato.
“You lost a war ten years ago,” Kato reminded him. “You should strengthen your forces as much as possible for this one.” The slits of his eyes gleamed with fear for himself. “Do you really want your hatred for Sano to push you into hasty action and then gamble that you’ll be able to pull off another comeback?”
Yanagisawa sighed, conceding to reality.
“Look at it this way,” Kato said. “You can make Sano suffer for a little while longer before he dies. Pile the mud on his name. He’ll be the most despised criminal in Japan.”
* * *
“WELL, LOOK WHO’S here, right on time,” Tahara said to Hirata.
“We thought you wouldn’t show up,” Kitano said.
They and Deguchi sat on the bank of a canal in the Kanda district, under an overturned wooden boat that sheltered them from the rain. Kanda had been hit hard by the earthquake. Houses, embankments, and bridges had collapsed. Ruins still lay everywhere. Rebuilding had barely started. Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi were the only people Hirata saw.
“Why wouldn’t I show up?” Dismounting from his horse, Hirata avoided looking at Deguchi, who avoided looking at him. They mustn’t let Kitano and Tahara guess that they were now in league against the secret society.
“You haven’t exactly been enthusiastic about working with us,” Kitano said. He and Tahara and Deguchi crawled out from under the boat.
“I’ve decided to quit fighting you and enjoy the benefits of being in the society,” Hirata said as nonchalantly as he could.
“Will wonders never cease?” Eyes twinkling, Kitano clapped Hirata on the back.
The four men walked to the canal’s edge. The government had cleared most of the waterways, but this was a narrow branch in what had been a poor neighborhood. It was a swamp clogged with broken boats, a fallen bridge, collapsed houses, and other debris, all blanketed by a green scum of algae. Gnats and mosquitoes buzzed. The men began to breathe in slow, deep rhythm. Mystical powers started to flow. Hirata’s lungs expanded his ribs; his heartbeat accelerated to a thunderous drumming. The blood in his veins swelled with invigorating forces. He chanted an ancient Chinese magic spell. His nerves and muscles tingled. He felt a stiffening sensation as the physical, mental, and spiritual energies within him gathered and aligned. He and Deguchi, Tahara, and Kitano extended their hands toward the canal.
Invisible rays of energy shot from their fingertips. The air around the rays shimmered; raindrops vaporized. Jolts shook Hirata as his power locked onto objects in the canal. He and the other men slowly raised their hands. Boards and stones levitated. They hung in the air, dripping water. The men gestured, wafting the debris toward the opposite bank. They cut off the flow of power long enough for the debris to fall on the ground. They brought up furniture and pieces of the bridge. They gasped as fatigue began to set in. Levitation required a lot of energy. Up came more debris. The water level dropped. Something big was hidden below the surface. As Hirata and the other men strained to lift it, his fingertips burned as if they were on fire. The thing slowly rose.
It was an oxcart filled with water that streamed out of cracks in the bottom. Ropes tied to the yokes stretched under the heavy weight of two dead oxen. Decayed meat clung to the skeletons. The men let the whole mess drop on the bank. The spell broke. Panting, they collapsed. Sweat poured from Hirata. He and the others lay still, their eyes shut, their mouths open, swallowing rain to cool their parched throats.
“I hope General Otani has a good reason for putting us through that,” Tahara said.
“Maybe he’ll tell us what it is at the ritual tomorrow,” Kitano said.
Alarm snapped Hirata’s eyes open. He raised himself on his elbow. The other men sat up. He smelled the stench of the ox carcasses. “Another ritual? Tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Tahara said. “Something wrong?”
Hirata glanced at Deguchi. The priest was looking at him in naked horror. “No,” Hirata said, trying to sound unconcerned. “I’m just wondering why so soon.”
Tahara and Kitano didn’t catch Deguchi’s expression. Kitano said, “It’s time.”
Neither Hirata nor Deguchi could risk going into a trance. General Otani would know they’d banded together against him and Tahara and Kitano. He would kill them both. But they had to pretend to go along with Tahara and Kitano and not arouse their suspicion.
“All right,” Hirata said. Deguchi nodded. “When tomorrow?”
“The hour of the snake,” Tahara said.
“In the morning?” Hirata said, alarmed because he and Deguchi had less than a day to prepare for killing Tahara and Kitano.
“There’s no rule that says all rituals have to be done at night,” Tahara said.
“Let’s go back to town and have a drink,” Kitano said. He and Tahara stood.
Hirata glanced at Deguchi, then groaned and lay down again. “I’m not ready to move yet.” Deguchi lay down, too, shutting his eyes.
“See you tomorrow morning,” Kitano called as he and Tahara rode away on their horses.
Hirata and Deguchi waited until the sound of hoofbeats faded. They sat up and turned to each other. Deguchi raised
his eyebrows, spread his palms, and opened his mouth in a mute demand: What are we going to do?
“We’ll kill them when they come for the ritual,” Hirata decided.
How?
They needed more than will or luck to kill Tahara and Kitano. Hirata dragged himself to his feet. “We’d better go make some preparations.”
* * *
THE HEIR’S RESIDENCE was a pile of blackened timbers, cracked roof tiles, and cinders drenched by the rain. Masahiro walked through the grounds, which were awash in sooty puddles. He smelled burned meat under the odor of smoke. He held his nose, trying not to throw up. He didn’t want to go where he’d seen the corpses of Yoshisato and the other men. But he must look for clues. This was the most important investigation ever, no time to be a sissy. Unless he and his mother found out who’d set the fire, his father would be convicted of arson and put to death.
Masahiro stopped at the edge of the wreckage. Despair crept through him. What clues could possibly not have burned up?
Three oxcarts rolled through the gate. Laborers jumped out of the carts as the drivers halted near the wreckage. They began picking up burned debris and tossing it into the carts. Masahiro hurried toward them, to tell them to wait until he finished searching for clues. Then two men came into the compound. They were high-ranking officers from the Tokugawa army, with elaborate armor and helmets. Masahiro instinctively knew they wouldn’t be pleased to find him snooping around. He scampered to a grove of pine trees and hid.
“What are we looking for?” said one of the officers.
“Evidence to use at Sano’s trial,” said his comrade.
They looked at the ruins, then at each other. “It seems hopeless,” the first man said. He had a squat body and thick jowls. Masahiro recognized him. His name was Okubo. He and his comrade were Yanagisawa’s friends.
“I agree, but we’d better go through the motions of searching.” The other man was named Kitami. His armor hung on his bony figure like hide on a skeleton. The features under his helmet were gaunt, pinched. “If we don’t, somebody might say the investigation wasn’t thorough enough and raise a stink.”
Masahiro was horrified. That his father’s fate depended on a lazy investigation by men who worked for Yanagisawa!
The laborers heaped the oxcarts with debris. Kitami said, “Let them do the dirty work. We’ll see if they turn up anything interesting.”
He and Okubo watched the laborers. Masahiro knew that if he interfered, they would only laugh at him and throw him out. He waited helplessly, trembling with rage.
Okubo coughed. “Ugh, the smell is making me sick.”
“Me, too,” Kitami said. “Let’s go stand over there.”
They headed straight for Masahiro’s hiding place. He scuttled backward, farther into the trees. He crouched behind the biggest one.
“Hey, what’s that?” Okubo said.
Masahiro thought he’d been spotted, but the men weren’t looking at him. Okubo pointed at something caught on a stub of branch that protruded from a pine tree. Kitami pulled it off, held it up, and said, “It looks like a fire hood.”
Masahiro saw that it was indeed a fire hood, made of pale leather, shaped like a cone with a blunt tip. It had a hole cut out for the eyes and a flap that tied over the nose and mouth with ribbons.
“Whoever was wearing it must have got caught on the tree and it came off,” Okubo said.
“It’s a woman’s,” Kitami said. “See the flowers.” He touched the pink cherry blossoms embossed in the leather.
Masahiro pictured flames licking at the heir’s residence while a woman dressed in a leather cape and flowered hood ran away through the trees. He saw the branch snag the hood and tear it off her head. His heart raced with excitement. Here was evidence that someone other than his father—a woman—had set the fire.
“What are we going to do with this?” Kitami asked. “Bring it to Chamberlain Yanagisawa?”
Okubo said, “It doesn’t belong to Sano. No man would wear this.”
The men looked at each other. Masahiro read their shared thought: Yanagisawa only wanted evidence that incriminated Sano.
Kitami carried the hood to an oxcart that was almost full of debris. He threw the hood in. Masahiro watched, dismayed, as the laborers dumped burned planks on top of it. The driver cracked his whip at the oxen. They began hauling the cart away. Masahiro wanted to run after the cart, but Kitami and Okubo stood between him and the gate through which it disappeared. He clenched his fists and jittered, silently begging them to leave. He had to get that hood. It was proof of his father’s innocence.
32
SANO PACED THE floor in his chamber. The wounds on his head and face hurt, and he was exhausted because he’d hardly slept last night, but he was too restless to lie down. The house felt like a cage that shrank with every passing hour. Whenever he left his chamber, his jailers followed him around. Now it was late afternoon. He hadn’t seen anybody else all day except the servants who brought his meals. He’d sent Detective Marume to find out how a fire could have been set in a heavily guarded section of the castle. He’d never felt so trapped, isolated, or powerless in his life.
Yoshisato’s murder was his biggest case, the one in which he had the most at stake, and he had to depend on his wife, his twelve-year-old son, and his chief retainer to solve it. He was alone with his hatred of the shogun, which preyed on him like wolf’s teeth gutting a live deer. His mutinous thoughts and desire for revenge multiplied. He dreaded his impending trial.
Marume came into the room, saying, “I tracked down the guards who were on duty around the heir’s residence last night. That’s three in the watchtower that overlooks the residence, three in the nearest checkpoint, and three on patrol. One of the watchtower guards is a friend of mine. He said they were called away from their posts.”
“Called away, how?” Sano was intrigued. “By whom?”
“A message from the captain of the night watch. It ordered them to come to a meeting at headquarters, which, as you know, is on the other side of the hill and two levels down.”
“When was this?”
“A little less than an hour before the fire started.”
“So nobody was watching the heir’s residence at the critical time,” Sano deduced. “Which explains how the arsonist entered the compound and left without getting caught.”
“Listen to this: When the men got to headquarters, there was no meeting.”
“The message was a ruse to get them out of the way, then. Who delivered it?”
“A page,” Marume said. “He brought it to their supervising lieutenant at the watchtower. My friend doesn’t know the boy’s name, never saw him before. He also told me the night watch captain says he never sent any message. Maybe the page was an imposter sent by the arsonist.”
“Or by the person the arsonist was working for. This crime required careful planning.”
Marume followed Sano’s line of thought. “It sounds too sophisticated for someone who does dirty work like setting fires. The arsonist must have been the hands. Who was the mind?”
“Lord Ienobu,” Sano said. “If not him, then Lady Nobuko.”
“Any word about her from your wife?”
Sano shook his head. “None from Masahiro yet, either. That was good work, Marume. Thank you.” Words were inadequate to express his appreciation for his retainer’s competent, loyal service.
“I hope to do even better,” Marume said, cheered by Sano’s praise. “I’ve launched a search for that page. Somebody must have seen him. Or seen something at the heir’s residence before the fire started. I’ve called in every favor. If there are any witnesses, I’ll dig them up.”
“That will take time. Yanagisawa isn’t going to wait for me to find evidence to clear my name. I need some sort of defense. Will your friend testify for me at my trial?”
The cheer drained from Marume’s face. “I asked him. He said no. The lieutenant ordered him and the other guards to keep quiet about wh
at happened. They’ll get in trouble if it comes out that they left their posts. If they’d been there, they might have rescued Yoshisato. They could be put to death for letting him burn.”
“Whoever lured them away knew they would be afraid to talk,” Sano said, disappointed but not surprised. “Where’s the message they received?”
“It was verbal, not written.”
“And he was careful not to leave tracks.”
“Don’t lose hope,” Marume urged. “Our luck is bound to change.”
Without warning, soldiers invaded the room. The leader said to Sano, “It’s time for your trial. Come with us.”
Sano felt as though he’d been standing at the edge of a cliff and a thunderbolt had suddenly fractured the ground under his feet. He was falling away from everything solid and safe, into the abyss. “But I have to wait for my wife and son.” They might have evidence that could save him. Even if not, Sano couldn’t leave without seeing Reiko and Masahiro. He might be put to death immediately after the trial.
“You can’t. We have orders to bring you to the palace now.”
The bottom of the abyss came rushing up to meet Sano. Cut loose from all loved ones and all possibility of rescue, gripped by panic, Sano backed away from the troops.
“Come peacefully, or we’ll take you by force,” the leader said.
There was no use delaying the inevitable. Instinct and training took over. A wise samurai knows not to waste energy on undignified, futile struggling when the decisive battle is yet to come. Sano had to keep his strength for the trial, his last chance to save himself. He held up his hands, yielding.
“I’m going with him,” Marume said, “to testify on his behalf. He couldn’t have set the fire. He was at home asleep when it started.”
“He’s not allowed to bring any witnesses,” the leader said.
“That’s against the rules!” Marume protested.
“Chamberlain Yanagisawa sets the rules.” The leader shoved Marume aside.
Marume shoved him back. Suddenly the troops were all shouting, yanking at Marume, grabbing at Sano. Marume roared, throwing punches. Cries rang out as his fists connected with flesh. Steel rasped as the troops drew their swords.
The Shogun's Daughter: A Novel of Feudal Japan (Sano Ichiro Novels) Page 25