The Dragon King's Palace

by Laura Joh Rowland

  It slammed shut; the iron bolts dropped. Footsteps descended the stairs. The outer door closed, and leaves rustled as the men retreated. A moment passed while Reiko, Midori, and Keisho-in sat, stunned and wordless amid the scattered food, their ragged breaths the only sound in the room. Lady Yanagisawa lay unconscious. Outside, squirrels chattered, as if mocking their predicament. Reiko stood on legs unsteadied by the crisis and walked to Keisho-in.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “No. He broke my wrist.” Keisho-in spoke in a raspy growl. She proffered the wrist for Reiko to examine.

  “It’s swelling,” Reiko said, gently palpating the joint beneath Keisho-in’s age-spotted flesh, “but I think it’s just sprained.” She tore off an end of her sash and bound the wrist.

  “Someday that beast will be sorry he dared to hurt me,” Keisho-in fumed.

  “Until then, perhaps you’d better not anger him again,” Reiko said with a courteous tact that hid her own anger at Keisho-in. She was obligated to protect the shogun’s mother, but the old woman stupidly defied prudence. “He’s dangerous. He could have killed us all.”

  Keisho-in sulked, unrepentant, but pity cooled Reiko’s anger. For the almost fifty years since she’d given birth to the shogun, Keisho- in had been indulged by everyone and never needed to develop self-control. There was no use expecting her to change now. Reiko sighed and gathered up the food.

  “We’d better eat,” she said, doling out dirty pickles and mochi. “We need to keep up our strength.”

  Keisho-in grudgingly accepted a share, but Midori shook her head. “My stomach feels too sick to eat,” she said.

  “Try,” Reiko said. “Maybe you’ll feel better.”

  While they sat glumly chewing, Reiko mulled over the incident that had just passed. The five kidnappers seemed the kind of men who had more physical strength than brains. That they’d brought food meant they wanted to keep her and the other women alive. They would come again, and next time, perhaps Reiko could outwit them and escape.

  Yet even as she drew hope from these thoughts, others disturbed her. Did the men she’d seen work for someone else who’d ordered the kidnapping, someone who meant to kill her and her friends after they’d served whatever his purpose was? How many more men were stationed around the prison? And her wits alone were no match for steel blades.

  Reiko experienced such discouragement and helplessness that she almost wept. But she was determined to escape her captors, and she must make the best of the circumstances they’d dealt her. She finished eating, then searched the room for anything she could use as a weapon. She examined the food and waste buckets. The flimsy wooden containers offered limited possibilities. The kidnappers knew better than to leave anything that would endanger them. Reiko inserted her fingers into cracks in the floor and tried to pry up boards, but dislodged only useless splinters. Desperation cast her eyes up toward the ceiling.

  Then, as Reiko contemplated the rafters, a plan formed in her mind. Hope awakened, but she realized that she would need help. She looked over her companions. Her gaze bypassed Midori and Keisho-in, dismissing the latter as too foolish and both as too physically weak, and lit on Lady Yanagisawa. Here was the accomplice she needed—if only she could bring Lady Yanagisawa out of her trance.

  Reiko knelt close beside the woman and peered into the glazed, sightless eyes. “Lady Yanagisawa,” she said, “can you hear me?”

  8

  Concealed in a guard tower that topped the wall of his estate inside Edo Castle, Chamberlain Yanagisawa stood looking out the window across a garden below him. A gap in the sunlit foliage revealed the shogun’s private quarters, some hundred paces distant. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi sat propped on cushions on the shady veranda while physicians dressed in dark blue coats fed him medicine. The anxious tones of their conversation drifted up to Yanagisawa, who knew the shogun was so upset about his mother’s kidnapping that he’d taken ill in the night. Yanagisawa himself had spent sleepless hours thinking over the consequences that the crime posed for him. Now he heard someone walking toward him along the wall, looked out the door, and saw Police Commissioner Hoshina approaching.

  Hoshina entered the tower and stood at the window beside Yanagisawa. “I’ve got our troops ready to march as soon as we need them for a rescue mission,” Hoshina said. “And I’ve ordered all my officers to scour Edo for information about the kidnapping.”

  His arrival caused a quickening inside Yanagisawa, even after three years as lovers, even at a time when affairs of state preoccupied him. It was as if his heart were a bell, and Hoshina the clapper that awakened song from cold, inanimate metal. The sight of Hoshina aroused an intense desire that Yanagisawa stifled. Need rendered him vulnerable, and vulnerability was fatal for a man in his position. He felt a stab of resentment toward Hoshina, the weak spot in his armor.

  Hoshina’s eyes took on a look that betrayed his effort to guess what his lover was thinking and his fear of displeasing Yanagisawa. “Is something wrong?” Hoshina said cautiously.

  “Your behavior at the meeting last night was reprehensible.” Yanagisawa hid his feelings behind criticism, which he often used to keep Hoshina at a distance. “You acted as if the kidnapping was the best thing that ever happened. Fortunately, the shogun didn’t notice— but everyone else did. Your attitude endangers us both.”

  “My apologies,” Hoshina said, clearly chastened by Yanagisawa’s cold rebuke. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

  Shared memories of every night they’d spent together, drinking and joking between bouts of sex, eased the tension between them. Yanagisawa relented, and although he only nodded his forgiveness, Hoshina’s mouth curved in a smile of relief.

  “I admit that I do consider the crime to be an opportunity,” Hoshina said. Excitement underlay his businesslike tone. “If we rescue Lady Keisho-in and catch the kidnappers, we’ll rise in the shogun’s favor, while Sano and other rivals sink. Your power will be greater than ever.”

  As would Hoshina’s, thought Yanagisawa. His lover was so transparent in his ambition, and so focused on his goals, that he ignored the pitfalls before him. Yet love excused worse flaws than greed, impulsiveness, or lack of vision.

  “If we fail, and Sano succeeds, I’ll lose face and standing in the bakufu,” Yanagisawa reminded Hoshina. “Neither my skill at manipulating the shogun nor my history as his paramour will preserve his good opinion of me. This crime is a potential catastrophe for me— and for you.”

  “We won’t fail,” Hoshina said staunchly.

  His reassurance heartened Yanagisawa, who’d suffered agonies of fear alone before Hoshina came into his life. Having someone in whom to confide lessened the torment. But Hoshina’s confidence quickly faded into doubt.

  “Do you worry because you think Sano is a better detective than I, or that his troops are better than those I’ve trained for you?” he said.

  “Of course not,” Yanagisawa said, though he did rate Sano’s expertise higher than Hoshina’s. He wasn’t blind to fact; yet lying came naturally to him, and he would lie to serve affection as well as political necessity. “You’ve satisfied all my expectations.”

  Inclining his head modestly, Hoshina basked in the praise.

  “I worry because we’ve met our match in the kidnapper,” Yanagisawa said. Possessed of ruthless cunning himself, he could well recognize it in his adversary.

  Hoshina nodded, pondered a moment, then said, “What if every-one’s efforts fail? What if Lady Keisho-in and the other women never come back?”

  They looked across the garden to the palace. The shogun lay on his back, moaning, while physicians applied herbal poultices to his chest. “If he should lose his mother,” Yanagisawa said, “grief may ruin his health.”

  “Should he die soon, his reign would end without a direct heir to succeed him,” Hoshina said. The shogun had a wife and a hundred concubines, but he preferred sex with men, and he had no children. “Who would become the next shogun?”

&nbs
p; Long before the kidnapping, many contenders had already begun to plan for his death. Tokugawa relatives connived to raise themselves or their sons to the throne. Yanagisawa and Hoshina had their own plans that they dared not openly voice, because spies abounded in Edo, and not even Yanagisawa’s own domain was guaranteed safe from them.

  “The timing is wrong,” Yanagisawa said, answering Hoshina’s un-spoken hint that the kidnapping could benefit their plans. “If the crime had happened a year or so later, then we might have cause to celebrate. But right now we aren’t ready for a change of regime.”

  “Your bonuses and favors that I’ve distributed have won you a large following,” Hoshina murmured. “Many daimyo, Tokugawa vassals, and a third of the soldiers in the army consider you their master.”

  Yanagisawa had made Hoshina a partner in his scheme to transfer the allegiance of the army, vassals, and feudal lords from the shogun to himself, and Hoshina was performing superbly. But Yanagisawa frowned, dismissing their achievement. “That isn’t enough.” The success of their plans required a large majority of influential men on his side. “And the crucial basis for our future is by no means secure.”

  Down in the palace, a tall, slender young samurai dressed in brilliant silk robes walked across the veranda toward the shogun. Yanagisawa and Hoshina watched the shogun sit up, his face brighten. The samurai gracefully knelt before the shogun and bowed. His handsome profile was a mirror of Yanagisawa’s.

  “The shogun likes your son,” Hoshina said.

  Yanagisawa contemplated his son, Yoritomo, born sixteen years ago, the illegitimate product of his affair with a palace lady-in-waiting. Because she was a Tokugawa cousin, Yoritomo was blood kin to the shogun and eligible for the succession. Yanagisawa had supported Yoritomo in a luxurious villa outside Edo, given him gifts, visited him, and won the impressionable boy’s obedience. This year, Yanagisawa had introduced Yoritomo to the shogun. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had been quickly smitten. Yanagisawa meant for the shogun to adopt Yoritomo and designate him as heir to the regime. But even if the shogun did, Yanagisawa needed more political and military support to crush the opposition that his many rivals would undoubtedly raise against him. And those rivals were as eager as he was for the role of father to the next dictator and power behind the scenes.

  “His Excellency also enjoys the company of many other young men,” Yanagisawa said, watching two more samurai join the shogun. They were sons of other officials, as young and comely as Yoritomo. “He’s not ready to pick a favorite.”

  “Rumor says that Yoritomo has the advantage because he knows how to please His Excellency,” said Hoshina.

  The shogun waved the newcomers away and extended his hand to Yoritomo. The young man helped him rise, and as they moved together to enter the palace, Yoritomo looked over his shoulder at the guard tower. His anxious face communicated reluctance to do what his lord expected, and need for his father’s approval. Then he and the shogun vanished into the palace. As Yanagisawa pictured the scene in the bedchamber, he experienced a stab of guilt. Yet what choice had he except to pander his own son to the shogun? When the current regime ended, his enemies would destroy him and Yoritomo unless he could position them both at the head of the next regime—and prepare to fight a war, if need be, to keep them on top.

  “Nothing is for certain until the official heir is installed in the crown prince’s residence,” Yanagisawa said.

  Time would have furthered Yoritomo’s progress there; time would have allowed Yanagisawa to profit from Lady Keisho-in’s abduction and the shogun’s demise. But luck had cheated him.

  “I understand,” Hoshina said, his initial high spirits deflated. “What shall we do?”

  The future that Yanagisawa envisioned necessarily included Hoshina by his side, though he would let Hoshina fear he might be cast off at any time. “We try our best to rescue Lady Keisho-in,” said Yanagisawa.

  They exited the tower, stepping from shadow into sunlight, just as a messenger hurried along the wall toward them.

  “Excuse me, Honorable Chamberlain.” The messenger bowed. “Soldiers have just brought Lady Keisho-in’s maid back from the Tkaid. She’s in the sickroom.”

  Yanagisawa dismissed the messenger, then said to Hoshina, “We need to know what the maid saw during the massacre. She may be able to help us identify the kidnappers.” This first possible break in the investigation elated him. “Go and question her immediately, before Sano does.”

  “Very well.” An edge to Hoshina’s subservient tone said he disliked taking orders from his lover even though he understood the importance of interviewing the only witness to the crime. Lately, he chafed at the uneven balance of power that Yanagisawa maintained to protect himself. “What will you be doing?”

  As they descended the stone stairs to ground level, Yanagisawa said, “I’m going to visit my current worst enemy and determine whether he organized the massacre and kidnapping.”

  A small entourage paraded with Chamberlain Yanagisawa through the special enclave inside Edo Castle where important Tokugawa clan members lived. In front of him on the flagstone path walked the two secretaries required for formal visits to high officials; close behind him trailed the five bodyguards who accompanied him everywhere. Around them rose the humming whine of insects in the landscaped terrain that lay motionless in the hot, hazy sunshine. Smoke from a fire burning somewhere in the city sharpened the air; war cries drifted from the distant martial arts practice ground. Troops patrolled the area or occupied guardhouses along the walls that separated the estates. Yanagisawa’s procession halted outside a gate that boasted a three-tiered roof and ornate double ironclad doors.

  One of Yanagisawa’s secretaries addressed the gate sentries: “The Honorable Chamberlain Yanagisawa wishes to call on the Honorable Lord Matsudaira.”

  Soon attendants ushered Yanagisawa into a mansion that nearly equaled the palace in size and refined elegance. Behind his cool demeanor, his heart drummed fast, and he braced himself as he and his party entered an audience chamber.

  There, upon the dais, sat Lord Matsudaira, first cousin to the shogun, head of the major Tokugawa branch clan, and daimyo of a province in the rich agricultural Kanto territory near Edo. Lord Matsudaira looked as the shogun would if a magic mirror broadened his aristocratic features, sparked intelligence in his eyes, enlarged and toughened his frail body. The man seemed a throwback to Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shogun, who’d unified Japan almost a century ago. Only birthright had placed Tokugawa Tsunayoshi ahead of Lord Matsudaira in the bakufu.

  Surrounded by guards who stood against the walls, Lord Matsudaira glared in open hostility at his guests. Yanagisawa knelt before the dais, his men ranged behind him. They exchanged bows, wary and distrustful, like rival generals meeting on a battleground to declare war. During the ritual sharing of refreshments, they behaved with an elaborate courtesy that was more insulting than outright rudeness.

  Then Lord Matsudaira said, “I’ve been expecting you. What took you so long?”

  Yanagisawa pretended to misunderstand Lord Matsudaira’s intimation that he knew Yanagisawa thought he was involved in the kidnapping and had come to accuse him. “I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you,” he said. “Important affairs of state commanded my attention at the palace.”

  His tone implied that his status as chamberlain put him at the heart of Tokugawa politics, while Lord Matsudaira hovered on the fringes despite his exalted heritage and Yanagisawa’s inferior birth. As Yanagisawa scored the first point in their battle, a flash of offense crossed Lord Matsudaira’s face. Yanagisawa knew the man would like to be shogun, thought he deserved the post more than did his cousin, and resented his secondary role in governing Japan.

  “More likely they were affairs of the bedchamber that busied you,” Lord Matsudaira said with a sardonic smile.

  He made no secret of the fact that he loathed Yanagisawa as a parasite who’d seduced his way to the top of the bakufu and usurped power from the Tokugawa clan. He seized every c
hance to condemn Yanagisawa’s ignoble deeds. A flame of anger leapt in Yanagisawa, but he raised an eyebrow in feigned amusement.

  “Many men have learned the high price of wit like yours,” he said, reminding Lord Matsudaira that he’d used political sabotage, physical force, and assassination to keep himself on top and punish anyone who crossed him.

  “Only an inferior official rules by coercion.” Disgust contorted Lord Matsudaira’s mouth. “A superior one rules by honest, fair management, in the ancient tradition of Confucius.”

  Yanagisawa knew that Lord Matsudaira prided himself on his reputation for honor and integrity and had led crusades against corruption in the government. The self-righteous ass! His inherited position allowed him to scorn people like Yanagisawa, the son of a retainer to a minor daimyo, who’d struggled for the authority Lord Matsudaira took for granted.

  “Might often triumphs over virtue,” Yanagisawa said in a casual tone edged with hostility.

  Lord Matsudaira had repeatedly spoken against Yanagisawa to the shogun and courted the allegiance of his other enemies; but so far, his attempts to oust Yanagisawa had failed. Now Lord Matsudaira looked annoyed at the reminder, but he countered with a smug smile: “Not as often as you would like.”

  He owned the loyalty of two men on the Council of Elders, and through them, he countered Yanagisawa’s policies. His influence with the Tokugawa branch clans had thwarted Yanagisawa’s wish to become a daimyo and ruler of his own province. Vexation goaded Yanagisawa into a malicious retort.

  “By the way,” he said, “I must offer you my condolences on the recent death of your son.”

  Lord Matsudaira stared, infuriated, then spoke with bitter acrimony: “That you would even mention my son while his clan still mourns him is an unforgivable insult.”

  The son, Mitsuyoshi, murdered seven months ago, had been the shogun’s favorite and heir apparent. Had he lived, Lord Matsudaira would have gained even more influence in the bakufu. The murder had undermined Lord Matsudaira’s goal of eventual control over Japan via ruling through his son, and of ousting Yanagisawa once and for all. And Yanagisawa had benefited from Lord Matsudaira’s loss. The death of Mitsuyoshi gave Yanagisawa’s son a chance at the succession.