The troops carried Namiji from the room. Sano felt none of the satisfaction he usually did when he finished an investigation. Success in the past had improved his fortune, but it wouldn’t this time. This time he was still a man condemned to die, never mind that he’d solved the murder of his lord’s daughter. He had yet to make his escape, his only chance of living to see another day and reuniting with his family.
“That was impressive,” Onoda said with sincere, regretful admiration. “It’s too bad things went so wrong for you, Sano-san. I hate to lose a good man.”
“Thank you.” Knowing he’d better get lost soon, Sano edged toward the door.
A guard ran into the room. “Captain Onoda, have you seen Sano-san’s wife and children?”
Alarm struck Sano’s heart like a ramrod.
“No,” the captain said. “Why?”
“I can’t find them. They’re not in the house.”
Sano’s nerves zinged with tension; his thoughts raced. “My wife probably took the children outside to play.”
“Search the grounds,” Onoda said.
“It’s being done now.”
Sano slipped out the door; he eased down the corridor.
Captain Onoda came after him. “Weren’t they with you a little while ago? I thought I heard you talking to them.”
Sano forced himself to stay calm. “Yes, they were. I’ll go see if they’ve come back.”
Captain Onoda regarded him with growing distrust. “I’ll go with you.”
At that moment Sano knew what he would have to do. “All right.”
They walked to his room. The door he’d shut was open; someone had already searched it. Onoda looked inside, turned to Sano, and said in a grieved tone, “They weren’t there, were they? You were pretending.”
His eyes widened as he saw Sano holding the dagger he’d pulled from under his trouser leg. Before he could move, Sano stuck the blade in his throat. Blood gushed. As Onoda fell, Sano caught him. Sano dragged the corpse into the room and laid it on the floor. He heard troops shouting, “They’re not anywhere! The other woman and children are gone, too!”
Sano had no time to regret killing a man who’d been kind to him. He ran to the cabinet, pulled out the bank of drawers, and pried up the floor panel. He stole Onoda’s long sword, tucked it under his own sash, then squeezed through the hole. He dropped into the space under the house and crawled. Running footsteps shook the floor above him. Soon the troops would discover Onoda’s corpse and the secret exit. Sano had to get out of the estate fast.
He’d practiced using the secret exit before and familiarized himself with the escape route in case he ever had to use it. Bursting through the gap in the latticework, he found himself face to face with two soldiers in the back courtyard. Their faces registered surprise for an instant before Sano drew the stolen sword and slashed them across their throats. Sano heard the other troops running toward him, yelling. He tore off his outer garments. Then he was out the gate.
38
“DIDN’T YOU SUSPECT that Korika killed Yoshisato?” Reiko asked.
“I suspected,” Lady Nobuko said bleakly. “I didn’t know until you showed me that hood.”
They sat in Lady Nobuko’s chamber, waiting for Masahiro to bring Korika. Reiko thought that by now the troops at home must have noticed that seven of their prisoners were gone. There couldn’t be much time left before they went hunting for Reiko, Masahiro, and the others. Reiko forced herself to sit still and wait for Korika, her sole hope of exonerating Sano.
“Why didn’t you ask Korika if she set the fire?” Reiko asked.
Lady Nobuko sighed. “Because I didn’t want to believe it.” Reiko recalled that Lady Nobuko had been disconcerted to learn that the fire was arson and that evidence had been found. That information had fed her suspicions about Korika. “I didn’t want to know.”
Had Sano managed to escape yet? Were Midori and the children on their way out of town? Anger toward Lady Nobuko displaced some of Reiko’s anxiety. “You did it again. You withheld information.” This time the consequences were more serious than ever. “Why didn’t you tell somebody about Korika?”
“I wasn’t sure she did it. Weren’t you listening when I said so?”
“I think you were sure enough. Why didn’t you come forward and testify at my husband’s trial? How could you sit back and let him be convicted?”
“Do you think Yanagisawa would have let me testify?” Lady Nobuko chuckled through her grimace of pain. “Even if he had, what would I have said? ‘My lady-in-waiting killed Yoshisato for me’? Yanagisawa wouldn’t believe I had no part in it. He’d have made it look as if you and your husband and son and I were all in league with Korika. He’d have burned us all to death.”
Although Reiko knew Yanagisawa would have done just that, she was bitter. “So you kept your mouth shut. You’d have let my family die while you lived happily ever after.”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” Lady Nobuko asked.
“I would try to save everyone who was innocent and deliver the guilty person to justice.”
Lady Nobuko smiled pityingly. “Young women are so idealistic until their own little necks are threatened.”
Masahiro ran into the room. “I can’t find Korika. She wasn’t in the privy.”
Surprise lifted the brow over Lady Nobuko’s good eye. “That’s where she said she was going. She said she would be right back.”
“Well, she’s not anywhere around here,” Masahiro said. “I looked. Everyone’s gone.”
“She must have come back while we were talking,” Reiko said. “She must have overheard.”
“Then she knows we know that she set the fire.” Masahiro exclaimed, “She ran away!”
“We have to catch her! We need her to confess that she murdered Yoshisato. The fire hood isn’t enough proof.” Reiko couldn’t expect Lady Nobuko to testify that it belonged to Korika and that Korika had come home on the night of the fire smelling of smoke. Lady Nobuko had already made it plain that she didn’t want to implicate herself in the crime.
“I’ll go after her.” Masahiro ran out of the room.
“Maybe a confession from Korika won’t be enough proof, either.” Lady Nobuko said acerbically, “Yanagisawa will dispute it for all he’s worth. He’ll make sure no one else believes she is guilty and not your husband.”
Reiko wouldn’t concede defeat. “It’s our only chance.”
* * *
THE FUNERAL PROCESSION advanced down Edo’s main street. Mounted troops cleared the way through the crowds of spectators. First in the cortege walked Kato Kinhide from the Council of Elders. He headed banner bearers and thousands of troops carrying white lanterns on poles, and servants carrying the cages of birds and the huge bouquets of lilies, irises, and peonies. Next came the priests, like an army uniformed in saffron robes and glittering brocade stoles. They thumped drums, beat gongs, rang bells, and banged cymbals while they chanted prayers. Chamberlain Yanagisawa, the designated chief mourner, walked alone. His expression was rigid as he held the funeral tablet, a wooden placard that bore Yoshisato’s name. Behind him, the pallbearers shouldered the poles of the bier that carried Yoshisato’s coffin inside the miniature mansion decorated with gold lotus flowers. Spectators crowded closer to see the bier. Troops riding alongside the procession pushed the crowd back as a fleet of palanquins followed. The palanquins contained the shogun, his mother, and other members of the Tokugawa and branch clans. Everyone else followed on foot—hundreds of officials, court ladies, and attendants. The procession stretched all the way back to Edo Castle, whose main gate discharged more white-robed mourners.
Sano hid among the mourners still filing down through the castle. They were minor officials and their attendants. Some wore white-painted wicker hats to shield them from the sun. Sano stole a hat and put it on his own head. He pushed through the crowd of people that clogged the passages from wall to wall. The guards at the checkpoints didn’t stop or search anyone. Th
ey didn’t recognize Sano. But even with the hat tipped over his face Sano noticed people eying him strangely as he squeezed past them. He reached the gate. Crossing the moat with the procession, he saw a gigantic throng in the avenue. People craned their necks to see the procession; men sat on other men’s shoulders; women held up their children. Beggars scrambled for coins that servants in the cortege tossed. Sano thought he could easily disappear into the crowd.
Before he stepped off the bridge, a stir rippled through the people behind him. He glanced backward, saw his guards pushing mourners out of their way as they ran. They yelled to the troops riding with the procession. “Sano has escaped! He’s somewhere in the procession. Catch him!”
The mounted troops nearest Sano lined up along both sides of the procession. To flee into the crowd, he would have to get past them. He stayed in the middle of the procession, with two men walking on either side of him, screening him from the troops. The men were palace officials he knew. Keeping his head down, he felt their gazes on him. He walked faster, hoping to outpace the troops.
They called to others along the route. The others also fell into line, continuous barricades that stretched as far as Sano could see. He heard a cry: “There he is!” A backward glance showed him the guards weaving through the mourners, gaining on him. They shouted his name, ordered him to stop.
Sano bolted. He had a lucky break in the daimyo district. Daimyo and their huge entourages streamed out of their gates. The part of the procession that was behind Sano had to stop and let them in. They separated his guards from him. People who couldn’t have heard the guards stared intently at his chest as he hurried past them. He glanced down at himself. His white robe was stained red with Captain Onoda’s blood.
Dismayed, Sano ran faster. The daimyo estates on either side of the avenue sealed him in. When he reached Nihonbashi, crowds at every intersection cut off his escape. He heard his name repeated throughout the procession, faintly at first, then louder. Troops squeezed through the narrow streets, alongside mourners who walked two abreast. Sano ran from pointing fingers while his name echoed above the priests’ distant chanting, drumming, and bells. Along the country road that led to Zōjō Temple, troops on horseback formed a moving cordon that flanked the procession, all on the lookout for Sano. He couldn’t break through it to hide in the forest. As his hope of escape died, he prayed that the hunt for him would buy his family extra time to flee.
The procession crossed the bridge over the Sakuragawa Canal. Ahead, the cordon accompanied the mourners along the main approach to the temple. Sano was a fish swimming up a narrow channel. All the troops had to do was wait for him to swim out the end and net him. All he could do was keep moving.
The temple’s two-story gate engulfed him in shadow for a moment as he passed under it. The bells, chanting, and drumming grew louder. Sano smelled sweet, pungent incense smoke. The procession wound around to the area of the temple that contained the Tokugawa mausoleum.
Entering through a black-lacquered gate emblazoned with gold Tokugawa crests and flanked by statues of guardian deities, Sano saw banners and lanterns waving on poles above the mourners’ heads. He was nearing the front of the cortege. The mausoleum entrance was a long, covered corridor raised on a stone foundation, roofed with tile, its windows covered with ornate latticework, its wooden walls decorated with carved flowers and painted brilliant red. A flight of stone steps led to the door, which was shaded by a heavy, curved roof supported on pillars encrusted with gold dragons. Beyond the corridor rose the lavishly decorated roofs of the tombs where past shoguns and important Tokugawa clan members were interred. Completely renovated since the earthquake, the mausoleum shone with unreal splendor, as if it inhabited a dimension between this world and the next.
It was the end of Sano’s journey.
Pallbearers stood at the base of the steps, holding Yoshisato’s bier. A somber Yanagisawa waited by it. The priests had congregated on one side; on the other, the people with the flowers, birdcages, and incense burners. Troops and mourners filled the courtyard. Sano recognized top army officers and government officials, the most powerful daimyo, and important Tokugawa clan members. There wasn’t enough room for the rest of the procession, which must wait outside during the funeral. The shogun, his mother, Lord Ienobu, and other relatives climbed out of the palanquins. Attendants led them to the bier. The priests chanted, drummed, and rang bells. Incense smoke clouded the air. The crowd around Sano shifted as troops quietly worked their way toward him. They meant to capture him without making a scene and disrupting the funeral.
Breathless, drenched in sweat that stung the cuts on his face, Sano desperately looked around. Walls and the crowd hemmed him in. Troops blocked the gate. There was no place to run or hide. People around Sano noticed the troops homing in on him, the blood on his robes. They receded from him until he was standing alone in the middle of an empty space. The chanting, drumming, and bells faded to murmurs, taps, and jingling, then died. Voices buzzed outside the compound as people there realized something extraordinary had happened. Sano heard people inside whisper back his name. Disgust appeared on the faces turned toward him, the loathed object of all attention. He’d never felt so shunned or in so much despair. This was worse than all the bad times in the past, when he’d still believed salvation was possible.
As his time left on earth dwindled, every detail of the scene around Sano took on a crystalline, unnatural clarity—the outline of the mausoleum’s roofs against the blue sky; the snarls on the statues at the entrance; the gleams of reflected sunlight in the other men’s eyes. His vision fragmented; he saw everything simultaneously—the mute, immobile priests; the troops faltering because there was no protocol for arresting a criminal at a state funeral; the desert of paving stones around his solitary self. He watched the shogun and Ienobu slow their pace toward the mausoleum entrance, Yanagisawa pause on his way to meet them, and Lord Tsunanori step forward from the ranks of the dignitaries. Sano’s vision narrowed. Everything on its periphery lost definition as he focused on those four men.
The shock on their faces quickly altered. The shogun’s expression reverted to his customary stupidity and bewilderment, Ienobu’s to his usual canny caution. Lord Tsunanori looked irate. Yanagisawa’s face went dark. Sano focused on the shogun. He experienced a rage so powerful that his whole body engorged with hot blood and the cuts on his face throbbed. Here was the weak, selfish, frivolous fool who had brought him to this.
But the same clarity that affected his vision took command of Sano’s mind. His thoughts detached from his emotions. He saw the remainder of his life laid out before him, a short road with four branches. All led to death. But he had four choices of what to do next.
He could let himself be arrested and burned.
No.
He could draw his stolen sword, seize his last chance to fight for his life, and be massacred by the troops in an ugly, dirty, public spectacle.
No again.
He could seize his last chance for revenge on Yanagisawa and the shogun. Since he couldn’t kill both before the troops killed him, it would have to be the shogun. Even as Sano’s emotions demanded blood, his mind calculated the consequences. If he killed the shogun, he would become the murderer and traitor that the court had decided he was. That would permanently besmirch his honor, compromise the legacy he would leave for Reiko, Masahiro, and Akiko. He could forget his hope that after he was dead the regime would spare them. As the kin of the man who’d killed the shogun, they would be hunted down and slaughtered.
Sano mentally erased those three branches of the road. The crowd stirred restlessly. Ienobu scowled. Confusion appeared on Lord Tsunanori’s face. The shogun looked timidly to Yanagisawa, who opened his mouth to speak. Troops hastened toward Sano. Sano contemplated his last choice.
He could finish the investigation. The murderer he’d sought was here. Now it seemed inevitable that circumstances should have brought Sano and Lord Tsunanori together today. The fourth branch of the road g
lowed with a mystical light in Sano’s mind. He’d begun his career as a detective. He could die a detective who had managed to solve his last case. He could deliver one last murderer to justice.
That would be a legacy his family could cherish for however long they lived.
Honor steered him down the fourth branch of the short road to death.
As the troops closed in on him, Sano spoke. “Lord Tsunanori!”
His voice sounded clearer, louder, and more resonant than usual, amplified by his conviction that the choice he’d made was the right one. It silenced the crowd. Calmed by his sense of inevitability, Sano raised his hand and pointed at the daimyo.
“You murdered the shogun’s daughter,” Sano said.
39
TAHARA AND KITANO appeared at the top of the trail that led downhill from the clearing. “You two are early,” Tahara said cheerfully. His smile slipped as he became aware of the changed atmosphere between Hirata and Deguchi.
“Something’s different.” Kitano sniffed the air, as if he smelled danger.
As much as Hirata wished to delay the confrontation, he said, “You’re right. There aren’t going to be any more rituals. It’s over.”
Deguchi nodded. Tahara turned an incredulous gaze on him. “You’ve turned against us? Why?”
Deguchi’s expression was apologetic but resolute. Hirata answered, “He’s as sick of conspiracies as I am.”
“How could you?” Kitano asked Deguchi in a hard, angry voice. “After all we’ve been through together?”
“You murdered our teacher and stole his magic spell book,” Hirata said. “Why should you expect loyalty from a fellow criminal?”
“You defected to him?” Tahara pointed at Hirata.
Deguchi stared at the ground, miserable.
Fury strengthened Tahara’s and Kitano’s aura, deepened its pulse. Tahara said, “Whatever Hirata-san has told you, ignore it. He’s leading you astray.”
“Remember who your friends are,” Kitano said.
The Shogun's Daughter: A Novel of Feudal Japan (Sano Ichiro Mysteries) Page 30
