“Nothing.” Midori’s chin trembled; her eyes were shiny with tears. “Just shut up and eat.”
* * *
AFTER A TENSE, silent dinner with Reiko and Masahiro, Sano thought of going out to investigate Madam Chizuru’s confession, but he was so tired that as he walked down the passage he felt as if he were wading through mud. He hadn’t slept in two days. Drowsiness engulfed his brain in a numbing fog. He desperately needed a few hours’ rest.
In the bath chamber he stripped, scrubbed, then soaked in the hot water and almost fell asleep before he hauled himself out. Clean and dry, swathed in a towel, he went to the bedchamber and found Reiko undressing. She quickly turned away as she put on her night robe. She never wanted him to see her naked. Sano smiled without humor. If she knew how tired he was, she wouldn’t worry about him making advances. He turned his back on her while he stripped off the towel and donned his own night robe, sparing her the sight of his body. She didn’t speak. Neither did Sano.
It was safer not to say anything. What a terrible blunder he’d made when he’d asked her whether she would want to be told that her child she thought was dead was really alive! Fatigue and temper had made him careless. He hadn’t realized how bad it sounded until too late. He’d hurt Reiko, so much that she hadn’t let him apologize when he’d tried.
Reiko tucked herself in bed. Sano blew out the flame in the lantern and crawled under the quilt. They lay side by side in the chilly darkness, facing away from each other. As tired as Sano was, he couldn’t fall asleep. His muscles stiffened; his old battle wounds ached. He turned, trying to find a comfortable position. Reiko was restless, too. The atmosphere buzzed with echoes of their argument. His defenses weakened by exhaustion, Sano felt Reiko’s doubts about his judgment seep into him like an infection penetrating broken skin. Had he gone too far for honor? Would it be so bad to quit his crusade for truth and justice? If it brought his family peace, why not? Nobody but himself would fault him. Weren’t his twenty years of fighting enough? These blasphemous ideas were palatable when combined with fatigue.
“What should Masahiro and I do tomorrow?” Reiko asked.
Sano was glad she’d spoken, encouraged because she was still apparently willing to work with him. Troubled by his new doubts, he had to cudgel his tired brain to come up with an answer to her question. “Masahiro should talk to the shogun’s boy again. Maybe he’s remembered something else. You talk to Madam Chizuru. After a night in jail, maybe she’ll be ready to tell the truth.”
“All right,” Reiko said.
Sano realized, too late, that it wasn’t the best idea to employ his wife and son on his quest for the truth about the confession; they were hardly objective. But Sano couldn’t tell Reiko he’d changed his mind and put him at further odds with her and Masahiro, and he had to admit that he was just as biased.
“What are you going to do?” Reiko asked.
Sano heard the accusation in her words: What other trouble are you going to get us into? She probably wanted to work with him only to counteract what she saw as his wrong thinking and actions. His hope for a reconciliation waned. “I’ll go back to the Large Interior and try to figure out who, if anybody, got to Madam Chizuru.”
“Yanagisawa?”
“Him in particular. I forgot to tell you, I caught one of his men trying to smuggle blood into the Large Interior. But not just him.”
Reiko was silent a moment, thinking. “Yanagisawa isn’t the only person who would like Madam Chizuru to take the blame for the stabbing. There are the other suspects—Lady Nobuko, and Tomoe and her cousin Lord Yoshimune.”
The quickness of her mind, and the interest in her voice, lifted Sano’s low spirits. Maybe she hadn’t entirely changed. Hope was a stubborn creature that refused to die. Glad that for once they were talking without arguing, Sano said, “Yes. Madam Chizuru’s confession lets them off the hook.”
“How could they have forced her to confess if she’s innocent?” Reiko sounded reluctant to believe it possible.
“By the same means as Yanagisawa. Money, power, and cunning. Lady Nobuko and Lord Yoshimune have all those things.” The fog of drowsiness thickened. Sano yawned; he roused himself to say, “Maybe Lord Ienobu wasn’t meant to figure into the confession. If someone did force Madam Chizuru to confess, maybe whoever it was didn’t care whether Lord Ienobu was incriminated. Maybe all that he—or she—wanted was a good scapegoat.”
He heard Reiko’s hair rustle against her pillow as she nodded. “Madam Chizuru is the only commoner among the suspects. She has no powerful connections to protect her. But why would she say Ienobu told her to kill the shogun if it’s not true? How could anybody make her say it?”
Sleep was irresistible. Sano mumbled, “Those are good questions. Maybe we’ll find out the answers tomorrow.”
He turned his head toward Reiko. Before his eyes closed, he saw her lying wide awake, facing him. Did he sense a fragile truce spreading across the cold space between them, like thin ice? Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Sano teetered on the brink of sleep, then fell into its dark embrace.
22
THE NEXT MORNING Sano, Marume, and Masahiro rode to Edo Castle. The sun shone in a brilliant blue sky, and the snow on the street and rooftops sparkled, but the air was colder than yesterday, with an edge that bit Sano’s face. At the main gate, troops from the night watch streamed out while troops arriving for day duty streamed in. Masahiro headed to the palace to see the shogun’s boy while Sano and Marume went to army headquarters, located in a watchtower high on the hill. From among the troops reporting for duty Sano chose ten soldiers he’d known when he was chamberlain, who’d had good reputations then. They accompanied Sano and Marume to the palace. The physician came out, medicine chest in hand.
“How is the shogun?” Sano asked.
“Worse, I’m sorry to say. He can’t keep down any food or water or medicine, and he passed bloody stools last night. There’s internal hemorrhaging. I’m going to mix up some medicine for it. I pray it works.”
So did Sano. He took little comfort from the fact that Lord Ienobu was no longer the shogun’s heir. If the shogun died, Yoshisato and Yanagisawa’s grip on the regime would become permanent. He took Marume and the soldiers to the Large Interior. The women were dressing and breakfasting; maids lugged bedding outside to air. The chatter was subdued by the news of the shogun’s condition. Guards loitered in the passages. Sano accosted Lieutenant Arai, the man who’d been watching Madam Chizuru yesterday.
“Who else is assigned to guard Madam Chizuru?” Sano asked.
“Lieutenant Fujisawa. He just went off night duty.”
“Go bring him back. And bring everybody else who had any contact with Madam Chizuru while she was locked in her room. I want to talk to all of you outside.”
Soon the two guards and two maids were gathered on the veranda. The soldiers stood aside while Sano and Marume eyed the lineup. Arai and the other guard were strong men in their forties. One of the maids was a girl with a round, bland face, the other an older, surly-looking woman. They shivered in the cold and clasped their hands under the sleeves of their blue cotton kimonos. They looked puzzled and nervous, the guards stoic.
Marume conducted the questioning. “Did any of you bring Madam Chizuru a message?”
Sano watched for reactions. When Marume turned his gaze on each in turn, they all said, “No,” but Sano could smell that someone was lying.
“What about a letter?” Marume asked. Heads shook. “Did you tell Madam Chizuru to say that she stabbed the shogun and Lord Ienobu told her to kill him? Did you threaten to do something bad to her if she didn’t?”
Astonishment showed on all four faces. Guards and maids shook their heads again. Sano had to consider the possibility that they were all innocent and Madam Chizuru had confessed voluntarily, but he still believed she’d been pressured by Yanagisawa.
Marume directed his next question to the guards. “Did you let anyone else in her room?”
They chorused, “No.”
Sano and Marume exchanged a conspiratorial glance. Sano announced, “Somebody’s lying. I’m going to count to ten. If that person doesn’t speak up, I’m going to kill one of you.”
The maids gasped, clutching their throats. The guards looked at each other, then turned angry, fearful gazes on Sano. Lieutenant Arai said, “You can’t do that!”
“This is about the attempted murder of the shogun,” Marume said. “Anything goes.”
Sano began counting: “One, two…”
The ten soldiers stared at him in surprise. They knew his reputation for eschewing violence during interrogations.
“Somebody’s going to die,” Marume taunted.
The guards protested loudly. The maids fell to their knees, wept, and begged, “Please, have mercy!”
Sano finished counting. Nobody confessed. Sano’s instincts pointed him to the likely culprit: Lieutenant Arai, muscular with coarsely handsome features, had an arrogance that even fear for his life didn’t quell. Sano pointed at him.
“Hey!” Arai protested. Marume seized him by the arm. He jerked, yelling, “Let me go!”
“Don’t just stand there,” Marume said to the shocked, bewildered soldiers as he wrestled with Arai and tore off his swords. “Let’s get him out of here.”
They reluctantly stepped forward. Sano ordered five of them to help Marume. “The rest of you, take these folks inside and guard them.” He gestured at the kneeling, weeping maids and the other guard, whose face had turned white with terror. He had serious qualms about threatening innocent people, and breaking Madam Chizuru’s confession went against his own interests, but honor was at stake. “I’ll be back after I cut off Lieutenant Arai’s head. If nobody confesses, I’ll keep killing people until you’re all dead.”
* * *
MASAHIRO WENT TO the section of the palace where the shogun’s male concubines lived. There he met a boy he remembered from the snowball fight. “Where’s Dengoro?”
“In the sickroom.” The boy pointed to the end of the corridor, which was hazy with incense smoke. “Nobody’s supposed to go in there. He has the measles.”
Dengoro must have caught it from the shogun, Masahiro thought, feeling sorry for him. Although he was afraid of catching it himself, that wasn’t the main reason for his reluctance to go near the boy. If he discovered that Madam Chizuru’s confession was true, it would put his father in the wrong. Masahiro was torn between his father and his mother. He loved them both, even though he was furious at them about Taeko. He hated being caught in the middle of their fights, and it seemed that whoever won, things wouldn’t work out so that they would let him and Taeko marry. Mixed up and distraught, he didn’t know what else to do except what they’d asked—question Dengoro again.
As he headed down the corridor, the incense smoke used to banish the evil spirits of disease was so pungent that he coughed. It emanated from brass burners hung by the door to the sickroom. Masahiro slid open the door, waved away smoke, and saw Dengoro sit up in the bed. A red, mottled rash covered his face, but Dengoro smiled at Masahiro.
“You came back. I was wishing you would.”
“How are you feeling?” Masahiro asked.
“Not too good.” Dengoro’s smile dimmed. “I get to drink as much tea with ice and honey as I want, but I don’t want much. And I have to take nasty medicine.”
“You’ll be all better soon.” Masahiro hoped so. He liked the boy despite his stories. “And then we’ll play together.”
Dengoro cheered up. “That would be fun.”
“In the meantime, I wanted to ask if you remembered anything else from the night the shogun was stabbed,” Masahiro said.
“I wanted to talk to you about that.” Dengoro admitted with chagrin, “I make things up sometimes. It’s funny, as soon as I say them, they seem so real, I start thinking they really happened.” Worry knitted his rash-covered brow. “If I tell you the truth, do you promise not to get mad at me again?”
If Dengoro lied again, Masahiro would be even madder, because the situation was even more serious than before. But he wanted to give Dengoro a chance to redeem himself, and he needed whatever real, honest evidence Dengoro might have. “I promise.”
Dengoro sighed with relief, then said sheepishly, “I didn’t really see Lady Nobuko. And I didn’t really hear Tomoe’s voice.”
There went the evidence against those two suspects. So far so good. “What about Madam Chizuru?” Masahiro was afraid Dengoro would recant his story about her, too.
“I really did smell her,” Dengoro said. “She was in the shogun’s chamber.”
Masahiro was caught between jubilation and distrust. He welcomed this evidence that supported Madam Chizuru’s confession and incriminated Lord Ienobu, but a man once bitten by a puppy should be careful about putting out his hand again. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Dengoro sounded confident. “I thought it over, and I’m sure I didn’t make it up.”
A liar who fooled himself into believing his own lies wasn’t a good witness. “Did you hear that Madam Chizuru confessed to stabbing the shogun?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m sure. She said she stabbed him. That proves I really smelled her. And my smelling her proves she really did it.” Seeing the skepticism on Masahiro’s face, Dengoro said anxiously, “Don’t you think so?”
Masahiro exhaled as he saw yet another reason to doubt Dengoro, aside from the fact that the boy’s story hinged on the confession itself. Now that Dengoro had admitted lying about Tomoe and Lady Nobuko, his story about Madam Chizuru was all he had left to offer Masahiro in exchange for friendship. Still, Masahiro knew his mother would be pleased by it, and maybe he could convince his father that Lord Ienobu had in fact ordered Madam Chizuru to kill the shogun. Maybe he would soon have good news for Taeko.
* * *
THE WATCHTOWER ROSE from the retaining wall on a tier of Edo Castle halfway up the hill. Built on a wide base faced with flat stones, three square stories with white plaster walls decreased in size up to the smallest at the top. The eaves of tile roofs curled like wings over the barred windows of each story. Reiko approached the tower through the covered corridor atop the wall. She carried a wicker basket in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. Patrolling guards eyed her. Cold drafts blew in through the windows. She looked out with yearning at the bright blue sky. If only she could fly away to someplace where there was light, freedom, and peace! But her troubles bound her to the dark earth as if by iron chains.
“I want to talk to Madam Chizuru,” she told the sentries at the tower door. “Sano-san sent me. I’m his wife.”
One sentry escorted her up the narrow wooden stairs that zigzagged through the tower, past troops stationed in the two lower levels. At the top story he unlocked the door, let Reiko in, and locked the door behind her. The room was dim, as cold as outside, and smelled of peppermint and jasmine hair oil, urine, and excrement. Gaps in the shutters admitted faint light. As her eyes adjusted, Reiko saw what looked to be a blanket covering a pile of straw by the wall. The pile shivered; the straw rustled.
“Madam Chizuru?” Reiko said.
A head of disheveled white hair emerged from under the blanket. Daylight striped Madam Chizuru’s face. Her lips were blue with cold. Her teeth chattered as she shivered on the bed of straw. Her red, sunken eyes brimmed with misery. A bucket in the corner contained her waste, frozen solid. Reiko wanted to believe that Madam Chizuru was guilty and deserved no better, but she hated seeing an old woman treated like an animal. And Lord Ienobu, the alleged instigator of the attack on the shogun, was probably warm and comfortable under house arrest. Reiko set down her basket and untied her bundle, a silk quilt stuffed with goose down. She spread the quilt over Madam Chizuru, then called to the guard, “Bring a brazier with hot coals.”
“She’s a traitor,” he said. “Let her suffer.”
“If you don’t warm up her room, she’ll freeze to death before she can be executed, and the shog
un will have your head instead.”
The guard brought the brazier. Soon the room was warm enough that Madam Chizuru, wrapped in Reiko’s quilt, stopped shivering. “Thank you,” she said, wincing as she sat up and her stiff joints creaked. “You are too kind.”
It wasn’t only kindness that had motivated Reiko to provide comforts for Madam Chizuru; they might induce her to talk. “Have you been given anything to eat?” Madam Chizuru shook her head. Reiko said, “I’ve brought food,” and removed lacquer lunch boxes and a jug of hot tea from her basket.
Madam Chizuru drank thirstily and devoured the rice balls, steamed fish with fermented black beans, sesame noodles with prawns, and pickled lotus root, carrots, and radish. Reiko knelt beside her and waited. Her hunger satisfied, she beheld Reiko with startled recognition. “You’re Sano-san’s wife.” Suspicion hooded her eyes. “What do you want?”
Reiko wanted her to prove that she and Lord Ienobu were guilty. But Reiko felt sorry for Madam Chizuru, and she had to consider that there was at least a chance that the woman was innocent and think twice about forcing her to incriminate herself again. Reiko had her own conscience, even if it wasn’t as exacting as Sano’s code of honor. But she also had a fierce loyalty to her family, whom she must protect above all.
“I want to talk to you about your confession,” Reiko said.
Madam Chizuru pulled the quilt tighter around her, as if Reiko might snatch it away.
“My husband says you were uncertain about some points, such as the number of times you stabbed the shogun.”
“It was four times.” Madam Chizuru seemed suddenly eager to talk.
Reiko was startled by the correct number. “How are you so sure now?”
“I remembered.”
“Do you remember the design on the iron fan?”
“Irises,” Madam Chizuru said promptly. “Blue irises on a gold background.”
“Did someone tell you?”
“No.” Madam Chizuru repeated, “I remembered.”
The Iris Fan Page 17
