The Iris Fan

by Laura Joh Rowland

  But life-or-death combat made such concerns seem abstract and trivial, especially when one’s side was losing. Sano’s regiment barreled through the mass, toward the castle gate reserved for the shogun on his rare trips outside. Along the avenue, soldiers loaded cannons with gunpowder and iron balls, lit fuses, and fought off Tokugawa troops who tried to interfere. Deafened by explosions, Sano saw cannonballs fly like black comets and bombard the castle walls. Gunners fired at the towers and the guardhouse over the gate. Sparks flared in the windows of the corridors on the walls; gunshots rang out as the defenders fired down at the attackers. Men in the street, hit by bullets, went down under the fighters and horses as if sucked into a whirlpool. As Sano neared the gate, mounted Tokugawa soldiers assailed his regiment. Some of Sano’s troops took mortal strikes and died in the saddle. The Tokugawa soldiers broke through the cordon around Sano, Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and Masahiro.

  Sano lashed out his blade with all his might. To penetrate armor, one had to swing hard and hope to hit lacings instead of metal plates. His own armor slowed his movement. His steel struck steel as soldiers parried. He lashed again and his blade went through a soldier’s tunic. The soldier screamed, fell, and was gone. Yanagisawa and Yoshisato forged ahead of Sano toward the gate, where their troops were battering the ironclad planks with a ram. Masahiro and Marume were fighting other soldiers. They reached the bridge that spanned the moat. On the opposite side, the gate was open.

  The invaders had breached the castle.

  Arrows rained onto Sano and his comrades. Bullets pinged off them. Each one that hit Sano felt like a punch. For hundreds of years, samurai fathers and sons had fought together in battles, but no other father could have feared for his son more than Sano did for Masahiro as they rode into a seething crush of foot soldiers at the gate. Beyond it, battling troops crowded the passage.

  “Dismount!” Sano yelled as he jumped off his horse.

  Masahiro, Marume, Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and the troops from what was left of their regiment—some twenty men—followed suit. Without horses, they could maneuver more easily and quickly. Their troops cleared a narrow path through the crush. Sano and Masahiro were through the gate. Ahead, within the uphill passage, Yanagisawa’s advance troops fought the Tokugawa army. Archers and gunners in the corridor and towers above fired down. It was like shooting fish in a trough. Arrows and bullets hit defenders as well as invaders. Yanagisawa’s gunners and archers fired back, but the rain-soaked passage filled with dead bodies; the gray, noxious haze of gunpowder smoke; and the storm of missiles.

  The only way to Lord Ienobu—and Reiko and Akiko—was through it.

  * * *

  REIKO AND AKIKO ran through the Large Interior. The passages were deserted, the rooms empty. The chanting grew louder as they approached the main palace. Reiko heard booms in the distance—gunfire. The war had started. Yanagisawa’s forces would soon invade the castle. She thought of Sano and Masahiro, and she felt a sudden longing for her husband.

  They’d parted on bad terms. She hadn’t even said good-bye to him. What if he should die before she saw him again?

  This was no time for such thoughts. Reiko clung to her hope that exposing Lady Nobuko would somehow save the day. She kept moving. The building resonated with chants, a giant beehive with an ailing monarch at its heart. Drums kept rhythm. Incense smoke breathed through the passages. Reiko cautiously opened the heavy door decorated with carved flowers and found herself face-to-face with a guard who stood on the other side.

  He was an older man she knew from when she’d lived in the castle. He frowned as he recognized her. “You’re Sano-san’s wife. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  In an instinctive, single motion, Reiko drew the dagger from under her sleeve and lashed out with the blade as she said to Akiko, “Don’t scream!”

  The guard staggered, clutching his gashed throat. Blood spurted between his fingers. Reiko pulled Akiko backward, away from the spraying blood as he fell dead across the threshold. Eyes wide with horror, Akiko clapped her hands over her mouth. Reiko felt a terrible, sickening guilt. A child should never have to see her mother kill. But a cold, matter-of-fact voice spoke from within Reiko’s warrior spirit: Akiko was born into this family. For us it’s too often a choice between killing or being killed. She’d better get used to it.

  “We have to go,” Reiko said.

  They stepped over the dead guard, holding their skirts up out of his blood, and rushed through the palace. The chanting, drumming, and booms covered the sound of their footsteps. The last corridor was jammed with people. Gripping Akiko’s hand, Reiko plunged into the crowd. Servants fingered wooden rosary beads while they prayed. Reiko and Akiko pushed past them, jostled them, stepped on their feet. Murmurs arose: “Isn’t that Reiko and her daughter? How did they get in here?”

  Wishing she weren’t so notorious, Reiko kept going; she dragged Akiko behind her. She was drenched with sweat from the heat of the packed bodies and her own anxiety. They turned a corner. The crowd here was all officials down the middle of the passage and guards along the walls. Reiko’s heart sank. The men heard the stir and turned.

  Reiko and Akiko found themselves standing alone, conspicuous. The crowd had drawn back from the trespassers. Hostile faces stared at them. Akiko’s fingernails dug into Reiko’s hand. Reiko glanced over her shoulder. People craning their necks to see what was happening blocked her way out of the palace. Her fate and her daughter’s hinged precariously on this moment.

  “I have to speak to the shogun.” Her voice was small, frightened. The chanting in the corridor stopped; people quieted down to listen. Fainter chanting and drumming came from the shogun’s chamber. The officials glared, confused and indignant. Guards advanced on her and Akiko. She’d gambled their lives for this instant. Quaking inside, she gulped. “It was Lady Nobuko who—”

  Loud booms interrupted. From the outer section of the palace men’s voices yelled, “The castle is under attack!”

  Terror sucked the breath out of Reiko. Yanagisawa’s army was here; her husband and son were with it. She and Akiko were caught in the middle of the attack. Thuds rocked the palace. The corridor became a turmoil of screams and pushing as guards charged through the crowd, toward the battle, past Reiko and Akiko. Two trespassers were a minor nuisance compared to an invasion. Reiko and Akiko fought their way against the tide. A chain-mailed elbow struck Reiko on the cheek. Feet stomped hers. Akiko’s hand was yanked from her grasp.

  “Mama!” Akiko shrilled above the screams.

  Reiko turned and saw Akiko fall beneath the mob. Akiko screamed as guards trampled her. Reiko threw herself at them, kicked, pummeled, and shoved. She pulled Akiko up, but men knocked them over. They crawled through a thrashing forest of armored legs and black silk robes. Someone kicked Reiko’s chin. Her ears rang. She and Akiko crawled free of the mob to the shogun’s bedchamber. Guards stood against the lattice-and-paper walls, flanking the door, ready to defend the shogun from the enemy. They didn’t notice Reiko and Akiko, crawling below their line of sight, until Reiko lunged at the door and yanked it open.

  “Hey! You can’t go in there!”

  She couldn’t think about what might happen to her and Akiko. She didn’t know what to do but finish what she’d started. They stumbled on their knees across the threshold. The chamber was hazy with incense smoke billowing from burners in the alcove. In a flash of mental clarity heightened by terror, Reiko absorbed the scene during the moment before the guards caught up with her and anyone else noticed her and Akiko. Lord Ienobu and a physician knelt on one side of the shogun’s bed, three priests beating drums on the other. At its end, Lady Nobuko, her head bandaged, knelt beside the lady-in-waiting whose mouth resembled a pickled plum. Many guards stood against the walls. The shogun looked like a corpse, with his eyes closed, his face waxen. Except for the priests, whose lips moved and hands drummed as they chanted prayers, everyone was as still as the shogun. Chins raised, their expressions taut with fear, they listened
to the sounds of war coming.

  The guards seized Reiko. Akiko cried, “Let go of my mother!” and pounded them with her fists. Lord Ienobu, Lady Nobuko, the physician, the priests, and the shogun’s guards swiveled toward the commotion. Surprise turned their expressions blank. The priests stopped drumming; prayers died on their lips. Lord Ienobu’s eyes bulged with anger. Reiko pointed at Lady Nobuko and cried, “She did it! She stabbed the shogun!”

  Lady Nobuko jerked, alarmed by the accusation. Her right eye squinted with the pain from the headache that contracted her face. Her left eye glared at Reiko.

  “Get them out of here and kill them!” Lord Ienobu ordered.

  The guards dragged Reiko and Akiko toward the door. As they fought, Lady Nobuko twisted her gaunt body around, the better to see. The movement pulled up the gray silk sleeve that covered her right hand. Reiko saw the glint of a steel blade protruding from her fist.

  “She has a knife!” Reiko cried. “Look out, she’s going to kill the shogun!”

  The shogun cracked his eyes open. Everyone else turned in surprise to Lady Nobuko. She froze. Both her eyes opened wider with dismay. She must have wanted to make sure the shogun died before he could change his mind about leaving the dictatorship to Lord Ienobu. Her hand quickly withdrew into her sleeve. The shogun’s guards had seen the knife, and so had Lord Ienobu and the physician, but they were too stunned to react. Lady Nobuko hurled herself at the bed. She landed on her elbows and knees on the shogun. The impact jolted a grunt from him. The knife was now clearly visible in her hand. Her eyes were wild, her crooked yellow teeth bared. The bodyguards shouted, lunged at her, and grabbed her. As she scrambled toward the shogun’s head, her silk skirts slipped from their grasp. The men holding Reiko let her go and rushed to catch Lady Nobuko. The frightened priests ran out of the room. The bodyguards fell across the shogun as Lady Nobuko threw herself on Lord Ienobu.

  Lord Ienobu exclaimed, “What are you doing?” There was a quick, furious tussle of flailing limbs and tangled robes. It ended with Lady Nobuko seated on the floor with Lord Ienobu’s head cradled in her lap. She held the knife to his throat.

  “Let go of me!” Terror shrank Lord Ienobu’s voice into a croaky wheeze. His eyes rolled up toward Lady Nobuko. His fingers clawed feebly at her wrist, but she held him tight. With his hunched shoulders, and his feet waggling in the air, he looked like a beetle turned over on its back.

  Reiko was astonished because Lady Nobuko had gone after Lord Ienobu instead of the shogun. The physician stared, dumbfounded. The bodyguards clambered to their feet and moved toward Lady Nobuko.

  “Don’t come any closer!” The harsh, guttural voice sounded completely different from her ordinary one. It belonged to the animal inside the civilized woman.

  The guards stopped, as much frightened by the change in her as by the possibility that she would hurt Lord Ienobu. Reiko realized what Lady Nobuko was doing. The same knowledge flashed in Lord Ienobu’s eyes. He said, “You don’t need me as a hostage. It doesn’t matter that you tried to kill my uncle. Before the day is over, I’ll be shogun. I’ll pardon you.” He laughed, his raspy cackle. “After all, I owe you a favor.”

  Lady Nobuko laughed. “Do you think I stabbed the shogun for you?”

  “Of course. Because we’re friends.” Stammering, Lord Ienobu pleaded, “Let me go!”

  “That’s not why.” Lady Nobuko pressed the blade against his throat. “I did it because I found out Yoshisato was alive. I couldn’t let him come back and be the shogun’s heir again.”

  Startled out of his fear, Lord Ienobu said, “You knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Lady Nobuko leaned over and snarled in his face. “Why didn’t you tell me you were responsible for Tsuruhime dying of smallpox?”

  Lord Ienobu recoiled. “I’m not! You’ve never believed it.”

  “You are! I’ve believed it ever since Reiko told me.”

  Astonishment struck Reiko. “But you said you didn’t.”

  Lady Nobuko said with sly triumph, “I fooled you, didn’t I?” To Lord Ienobu she said, “I fooled you, too. All these years I’ve rubbed my nose on your behind, you thought I was your friend. But I was just pretending. And now I have you right where I want you.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Lord Ienobu asked.

  “My mind is set on the fact that you killed Tsuruhime.” Grief coarsened Lady Nobuko’s voice. “One reason I stabbed the shogun is that Yoshisato was coming back. The other is revenge on you.”

  Lord Ienobu bleated, “You’re insane.”

  “I could have killed the shogun when I stabbed him, but I didn’t. Do you want to know why?” Lady Nobuko shook Lord Ienobu. He whimpered. “I only hurt him enough to injure him seriously. I wanted him to linger while you gloated because soon you would be shogun. So that when you thought your dream was within your grasp, I could kill you. Just like this.” She pricked Ienobu’s throat with the blade. He recoiled violently. “As you die you’ll see your dream slip away. That is your punishment for murdering Tsuruhime.”

  * * *

  “GET DOWN!” MARUME flung his arms across Sano’s and Masahiro’s backs as they entered the castle, shielding them with his armored shoulder flaps and chain-mail sleeves. They crouched, heads ducked, as they climbed uphill through the battle. In front of them, troops shielded Yoshisato and Yanagisawa. This was the purest expression of Bushido—samurai putting their own bodies between their masters and danger. Sano remembered Hirata stepping forward to take a blade for him. Stray bullets struck walls. Fragments spattered Sano. He felt Marume take the punch of a bullet. Marume staggered but kept moving. The combat around them was mostly hand-to-hand, a riot of bashing and grappling. There was little room to swing a sword. Masahiro shoved aside a bleeding, unconscious soldier whose body was held upright by the packed crowd. Sano raised his head long enough to see the open gate of the first checkpoint. Through the rain and the gunpowder haze he smelled scorched oil.

  “Look out!” he called.

  A flood of thick, crackling, smoking liquid poured from the window of the guardhouse above the checkpoint. Fighters packed into the small, high-walled enclosure screamed as the boiling oil seeped into their armor, burnt their flesh. Trying to escape the checkpoint, they slipped on the oil and fell. Writhing bodies slid downhill toward Sano. He and his comrades hurried through the checkpoint before the guards could dump more oil. The passage beyond contained another battle. Sano now knew what the journey to hell was like—an endless slog through a narrow channel that smelled of blood and gunpowder, crowded with men trying to kill one another, where arrows and bullets barraged him, paved with corpses.

  Marume was breathing hard; he leaned on Sano. Alarmed, Sano said, “Are you injured?”

  “I’m all right. Don’t stop!”

  Higher up the hill, the shooting continued; more hot oil deluged the checkpoints. The army ranks thickened as Sano neared the uppermost tier of the castle. The passage leading to the gate to the palace was deep in the corpses, awash in blood. Less than half of Yanagisawa’s advance troops were still fighting. Some shot at the guards who fired down at them. Others charged through the gate, ahead of Yoshisato and his gangsters, Yanagisawa, and his bodyguards. As Sano followed with Marume and Masahiro, he glanced backward. Only a few men from his squadron hurried after him. The others had been killed.

  The battle raging in the palace grounds engulfed Sano. Lord Ienobu’s forces vastly outnumbered the invaders. A line of them ringed the palace, swords drawn. Gangs of soldiers attacked each of Yanagisawa’s. Gunners in the nearest tower fired into the melee.

  “The Large Interior!” Sano shouted, beckoning Marume and Masahiro.

  Yanagisawa caught his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To rescue my wife and daughter.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not. You’re coming with us!” Yanagisawa and his bodyguards surrounded Sano and Masahiro.

  “I’ll get them,” Marume said, panting and sweating. “You go
kill Lord Ienobu.”

  As he and his son were rushed toward the palace, Sano looked backward and saw Marume fall. The big detective struggled to get up, then lay still while men fought around him. Sano cried, “Marume!”

  His good, loyal old friend was dead in the line of duty. Reiko and Akiko were alone at the mercy of fate. The soldiers guarding the palace attacked his regiment. They peeled troops away from Sano, Masahiro, Yanagisawa, and Yoshisato, like a tornado stripping leaves off a tree. The four of them, the gangsters, Yanagisawa’s bodyguards, and a handful of troops made it through the palace door. Soldiers chased them down the wide corridor, along the polished cypress floor, past the mural of pine trees painted on the walls. Their troops stopped to fight the defenders. Sano, Yanagisawa, Masahiro, and Yoshisato charged ahead.

  The inner passages and rooms were empty. In the sudden quiet, Sano and his comrades trod softly, swords still drawn. They met no one, but Sano’s skin prickled underneath layers of armor, clothes, and sweat. He sensed Lord Ienobu at the heart of the palace, like a monstrous spider in a web. Surely Lord Ienobu must feel the web shaking as his enemies drew near. The door to the shogun’s chambers was open, unguarded. Sano smelled incense and the fetid sickroom odor. He heard unintelligible voices raised in anger and fear. As he stealthily advanced, the garble resolved into words.

  “Just let me go!” said Lord Ienobu, tearful, pleading. “I’ll give you whatever you want!”

  “There’s nothing you can give me.” The voice was familiar yet so distorted by rage, scorn, and gloating that Sano couldn’t place it. “All I want is this.”

  Sano exchanged baffled glances with Masahiro. Yanagisawa and his bodyguards stormed the chamber, Yoshisato and the gangsters close on their heels. They all stopped so suddenly that Sano and Masahiro bumped into them. Sano saw what had halted them in their tracks.

  38

  LORD IENOBU LAY on the floor with his head in Lady Nobuko’s lap. She held a knife to his throat. The shogun was a withered effigy of himself, unconscious. Sano barely noticed the physician or the guards, he was so happy to see Reiko and Akiko. His eyes filled with tears that dissolved his anger at his wife. She and Akiko were alive. It was all that mattered.