by I. J. Parker
*
Lieutenant Maeda looked as weary as Akitada and Saburo, but he listened with raised brows to Akitada’s request. “The men would have mentioned such a thing, sir,” he said dubiously.
“Don’t forget they had little light to see by and were sent down for a very specific thing, the body of a woman in the first instance, and a bundle of clothes in the second. Also, some time had passed. For all we know, other debris may have been dumped there.”
Maeda nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. But the murder of a high-ranking government official? Surely it will bring the army down upon us.”
“Frankly, Maeda, that’s the least of my worries. With a string of murders and the disappearances of a governor and my assistant, Hakata and its inhabitants deserve no less.”
The police chief hung his head. “I’ll get to it right away, sir. Do you care to witness the search?”
“Certainly.”
They set out for the abandoned well, followed by a group of disgruntled constables carrying ropes, pulleys, shovels, and lanterns and pulling a cart for anything of interest they might find.
The well was only wide enough to allow one man to work with a shovel. The rest of the constables crouched in a circle above, peering down and shouting encouragement. Now and then, they lowered a large basket to remove dirt and garbage. Nothing else happened for a long time. They dug in shifts and brought up the basket filled with assorted debris many times. Not only garbage was down below, but also rocks, broken tiles, and other building debris. Akitada was about to call the effort off. It had been too far-fetched. But before he could admit having mad an embarrassing mistake, there was a shout. He and Maeda pushed into the circle of constables and looked down.
The upturned face of the unfortunate constable, who had been sent down by the luck of the draw, was a pale circle with shock-widened eyes. “Another corpse, Lieutenant,” he reported. “And this one’s wearing a fine silk robe.”
Maeda said heavily, “It seems you were right, sir.”
Akitada nodded grimly. “Bring him up.”
But first the constable who had made the discovery emerged, looking green and walking away a few steps before vomiting into a bush.
Akitada peered down into the darkness of the pit. He thought he saw some faint colors below, a bit of white and some green, and a pale round object that might be a skull.
Two more constables descended the ropes with a large piece of cloth. A short while later, a shout from below caused those above to start pulling on the rope. Slowly the body rose to the daylight, wrapped in the cloth and tied securely. They swung it out and lowered it to the ground, where one of the constables untied it and opened the cloth. The smell of decomposition was strong and nauseating.
Both Maeda and Akitada looked at the partially decomposed body of a nobleman. The type of clothing the dead man wore made that much certain. Identifying him as a particular person was no longer possible. The features had lost any resemblance to a living human being. Apart from a few patches of moldy, darkened skin, the face had become a skull, its bones showing pale against remnants of black hair and the folds of a green, shell-patterned silk robe. The formerly white silk trousers were stained and clung loosely to the bones beneath.
Given the clothing and the fact that no other member of the nobility had gone missing, it must be Tachibana. It seemed shocking that a powerful and fortunate man at the height of his career and in the full enjoyment of a privileged life should end up like this.
Not only had much time elapsed since the governor’s death, but the recovery of the body had involved clumsy handling by the constables. Akitada and Maeda both knelt beside the body for a closer look. Akitada refrained from touching anything, but Maeda lifted a fold of clothing here and there, searching for signs of wounds. He pointed to dark stains and tears in the outer robe and matching black stains on the white silk undergarment. These were on the front and left side of the body’s chest area.
“Knife wounds, I think,” Maeda said softly. “He was stabbed.”
“They cut off his hair,” Akitada commented, looking at the short strands. “Possibly he was also tortured. Someone enjoyed killing him.”
The constables had all come to stare at the corpse. Contact with the dead made them all ritually unclean and prohibited their taking part in certain Shinto observances. Their profession should have inured them to this, but they looked morose and muttered.
Maeda asked the two constables who had been in the well, “Did you find a weapon?”
They shook their heads. One of them said, “We looked good this time, Lieutenant.”
Akitada rose. “Will your coroner be able to confirm the cause of death?”
The police chief nodded. “I think so. He’s a good man. What will happen next, sir?”
Akitada glanced at the corpse of Lord Tachibana. “Identification of the body as that of Lord Tachibana. It should be easy, given his clothing. People will have seen him and remember. It was murder, and the murderer is here in Hakata. He must be found. I shall report to the assistant governor general and to our government in the capital. You carry on with the investigation.”
But as they loaded the ex-governor’s corpse onto the cart and gathered their tools, another of Maeda’s men arrived at a run. He was flushed with exertion and gasped, “We found Hiroshi.”
Akitada asked, “Where is he? Did you arrest him?”
The man was breathless and just shook his head.
Impatiently, Akitada turned to Maeda. “Come, we must question him at once. This is about Tora.”
But the constable finally managed, “He’s dead, your Excellency. Murdered.”
Akitada’s disappointment was staggering . With Hiroshi dead, chances of Tora being alive had just shrunk to nothing.
27
THE ISLAND
The green water boiled around the black rocks, tossing men and parts of the ship mercilessly against the sharp teeth of the island. Most of the men were already dead, drowned or killed by the battle on board.
Tora swam by instinct only, breathing when his head happened to emerge briefly from a wave and fighting against the dark pull of the sea that battered the rocky shore. Eventually he managed to cling to a rock much like barnacles did. Here he rested, his eyes closed, feeling the rush of the cold water hit his back, then pull at him as it tried to suck him back into the hungry sea.
He thought of nothing except resistance to the pull of the water until he heard his name called.
He had to hear it twice before he managed to open his eyes and peer around. Another wave washed over him, but he had seen enough of the open water to know the ship lay impaled on rocks, its masts gone and its body breaking apart. The sea was littered with debris, but he saw no living human beings. A dream, he thought, as the wave receded.
But the shout came again. And this time he looked the other way, toward land. And there on a rock lay a man, looking down at him from a bearded, shaggy face.
Shigeno?
It was Shigeno. He was waving and shouted, “Swim ashore. Hurry!”
Tora was afraid of releasing his rock. The next wave would pull him back out to sea, and he did not think he had the strength to swim. But he could not stay here forever, and there was another rock only some ten feet away. Each time a wave hit, the water would spout up from between the two rocks before receding and leaving for a few moments a calm surface.
He watched the next wave and trying to time it carefully, let go of his rock and plunged into the water. It instantly sucked him out again and he struggled desperately, but then, quite suddenly, he was free and reached the next rock. From there it became easier. The waves did not come in with as much force and he made his way to the shore where his feet met rough sand. There he collapsed, lying prone and exhausted.
Shigeno seized his arm. “Get up! You can sleep later.”
Tora spat out some sea water and sat up. His side protested with a sharp pain that left him gasping. He found that Shigeno’s sash, sodden
with water, had slipped to his waist. Looking at the big convict, he said, “By all reason you should be dead, yet here you are and in better shape than me.”
Shigeno snorted. “I’m a better man than you. Besides, I grabbed hold of a hatch cover and let the sea carry me ashore. But no time for chit-chat. We’ve got to get away before they notice us.”
Tora looked at their surroundings. A rocky shoreline extended in both directions. Up ahead toward the west, forest had crept down almost to the water. In the other direction, debris from the capsized ship lay washed up on shore, along with some of the crew. They lay about, exhausted, unconscious, or dead.
Shigeno extended a hand and pulled Tora to his feet. Tora groaned, but Shigeno said again, “No time for that. Head for the trees.”
Together they staggered toward the line of green that showed beyond the black rocks and pale sand. It seemed miles away.
Once there, they paused to peer back at the scene of the shipwreck. Shigeno had been right. Here and there, men stirred. Tora hoped they were too stunned by the disaster and their survival to wonder about the escaped convicts. He sat down cautiously, feeling his ribcage. The cut on his shoulder mostly itched. He hoped the sea water had cleansed the wound so it would not get infected.
“How are your wounds?” he asked Shigeno.
The big man had lost his shirt. He looked down at his broad chest. The knife wounds had stopped bleeding and looked pale. He touched them, one by one. “Mostly superficial, except for this one.” He showed his upper arm where a deep cut to the flesh still oozed a little.
Tora unwound the sodden sash from his waist. “Here, let me make a bandage with this. My side feels fine,” he lied. “Maybe the exercise was good for it.” He hoped this was true.
Shigeno nodded.
As Tora wrapped and tied the makeshift bandage around Shigeno’s arm, he asked, “What next? We aren’t much better off, having landed on a convict island.”
Shigeno grinned. “We’re free. All we need is a boat.”
Tora stared back. “A boat? Is that all?”
“Well, we should have held on to our weapons. Those knives would have come in handy.”
“We have no boat and we no longer have anyone to sail it,” Tora reminded him. “I guess the others didn’t make it.”
“Wrong. Ito didn’t make it. Takeshi’s looking for a boat.”
“Which one’s he?”
“The one that prayed.”
“You’re kidding.”
Shigeno chuckled. “Goes to show, doesn’t it?”
Tora shook his head. “He was good with a knife.”
“Sailors use those long knives all the time. They can do some damage to thick hemp ropes as well as to people’s bodies.” He regarded his arm with a frown. “Well, let’s move on up the coast. There’s nothing for us to do here.”
The broken wreckage and the few—very few—figures on the distant beach seemed a lifetime away. The survivors were beginning to pick through the flotsam, perhaps searching for their friends.
“Terrible!” muttered Tora, shaking his head.
“You’re a softy.” Shigeno chuckled. The big man’s face wore a broad, happy smile, his teeth glinting from his bushy beard. At Tora’s expression, his mouth opened even wider and he laughed out loud.
Tora clamped his hand over the other man’s mouth. “Are you mad? Do you want them to hear you?”
Shigeno stopped laughing and nodded. Tora removed his hand. “How can you laugh?”
“Because I’m alive, Tora. Because I’m filled with joy to be alive to see the beautiful world around me. How can I not laugh?”
The beautiful world was cold, gray, and windy. The sea looked choppy, and a few rain drops struck their faces.
Tora shivered. “Postpone your happy dance,” he said sourly. “We’re still in trouble.”
“You’re right, but I can’t help how I feel. Let’s go then and find Takeshi.”
They started walking along the shore, away from the wreck. It was hard going, because the terrain was rocky and took them up and down, forcing them to trudge inland to skirt small bays and offering little but desolate land with occasional glimpses of the slate-gay sea.
Whenever they rested, Tora asked questions.
“Do you know this place?”
“No.”
“Any idea where they keep the convicts?”
“Near the mine, I’d think.”
“Where is it?”
“Don’t know.”
It was not helpful. And there was no sign of Takeshi who might have been a better source of information. Dusk fell as they approached the sea again. Seagulls circled above, their harsh cries as inhospitable as the weather and the land. Tora was exhausted, and Shigeno had slowed down and stopped often to rest. When they reached a small mossy knoll, Tora suggested a rest. Shigeno nodded and collapsed on a rock.
For a while neither spoke. The seagulls came to look them over, screaming their disappointment at not finding food, and swooped away again.
“This place is uninhabited,” Tora said wearily. “I wish I had something to eat. It’s been at least a day, maybe two.”
“I wish we had some water,” said Shigeno.
They fell silent again. Tora shivered and looked at his companion. If he did not have that scruffy beard and tousled hair, Shigeno might be good-looking. His remaining clothes were mere rags by now, but he was slender, muscular, and not much older than Tora. More interesting were other aspects, not visible to the naked eye. Shigeno was no illiterate thug. He almost seemed wise at times, and his speech was that of an educated man. In addition, he was a formidable fighter and had shown great courage on the ship. How could such a man end up a convict?
But Shigeno had his own doubts about Tora also. He broke the silence first. “Was it the truth that you used to work for a governor?”
Tora smiled. “I still do. I wonder what he’ll have to say about all this.” He paused. “Not just any governor either. I work for Sugawara Akitada, the new governor of Chikuzen province. He’s a famous man in the capital for solving crimes.” He paused again. “I help him,” he added modestly.
“So what happened?”
“We-ell, we barely got to Kyushu, and all hell broke loose. The former governor had been recalled, you see. He left without paying his people. They stole everything they could lay their hands on, and we found an empty tribunal. That bastard Okata refused to investigate, and my master dismissed him.”
Shigeno’s eyes widened. He whistled softly. “I like it so far. Go on.”
“Turns out the former governor never reached home, and we had an investigation on our hands to see what happened to him. I was making some progress with that when Okata and his hired thugs jumped me, beat me up, and left me trussed up like an animal. Turns out that bastard Okata told them to ship me to Tsushima. And that’s how we met.”
“Okata did this just to get back at the new governor?”
Tora pursed his lips. “Well, not quite. I was the one who reported his mishandling of an investigation and his methods. It was personal all right.”
Shigeno laughed and stretched out a hand. “Shake, brother. I’m one of the ones who suffered from his methods.”
They shook hands, and Tora said, “All right. Your turn. What did you do?”
Shigeno’s smile disappeared. “I killed a man, was tried, and sentenced. I’m a convict by rights. The story doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
Shigeno gave him a searching look. “It’s complicated.”
“We have time.”
Shigeno turned his face away. “I don’t like to remember. It’s easier to be no one.”
“I doubt it. How can you wash away the past? It lives with you.”
Shigeno lowered his hands. “You’re right. Since you insist, I grew up in Osumi province. My father had land there, quite a lot of land, but it was poor, so we were poor. There were my father, my mother, my sister, and me. Because we were poor,
another man offered my father money for some acres in the mountains. My father refused to sell. It was rough land. Nothing would grow there, but my father and I liked to hunt in the mountains. It was beautiful. You could see for miles.” Shigeno’s eyes misted over as he looked out over the sea.
“What happened?” Tora urged.
“We discovered some men digging on our mountain and sent them away. My father thought they must be searching for silver or gold. Then the same man came to us again. This time he claimed the land belonged to him. Our mountain is on the border between Osumi and Higo. The man was the district prefect on the Higo side. The case went to Dazaifu to be resolved by the assistant governor general. We won. Then, within a month, my father was attacked on the road and left for dead. When he didn’t come home, I went to look for him. He was barely alive and told me the men who attacked him had worn the prefect’s colors. He died in my arms. I carried him home and left immediately for the prefect’s house. There, I killed him in front of his family. I was arrested, tried, sentenced to exile, and our land was confiscated by the government. So, there you have it.”
Tora shook his head. It wasn’t all that rare an occurrence, he thought. Everywhere in the country such things happened, and men in power always ended up getting what they wanted. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Was there silver in your mountain?”
“How should I know? I never got to see my home again. I spent months in the prison in Dazaifu until they moved me to Hakata for transport to Tsushima.”
Silence fell.
Shigeno frowned. “I wonder,” he said and stood up to look around. “I don’t think we were at sea long enough to reach Tsushima. This might be some other island. Ikishima maybe.”
“So we’re lost?”
“Well, yes, but we may be much closer to Kyushu than we thought.”
Tora brightened. “Come, let’s walk again. There must be some fishing village on the coast. We can borrow a boat. And once we get home, I’ll have my master look into your case.”
Shigeno received this promise with a snort of derision. “Forget it. He’ll have no chance against the Dazaifu. I bet he won’t even try. I’m fed up with officials. As for borrowing a boat, how will you accomplish that? Fishermen need their boats. They won’t let you have one without getting paid extremely well.”