Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro 07 - Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria

by Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria(lit)

  I was shocked by Sano-san's nerve, then delighted at my good luck. Sano-san has put himself under my power! All I need do is play my cards right, and he will give me everything I wish.

  Reiko closed the pillow book. She sat paralyzed, her heart drumming while she envisioned Sano indulging in sexual depravity. Feverish waves of horror assailed her. To think that Sano's liaison with Lady Wisteria had continued after their marriage! Perhaps it had continued until Wisteria disappeared.

  But this was unthinkable to Reiko. Sano did love her. She recalled their first months together, and their passionate lovemaking. Sano couldn't have committed adultery, not then, not ever. A unique spiritual bond joined them; they belonged only to each other.

  Then Reiko remembered the many times they'd spent apart. Sano could have visited Wisteria during his absences. And one of those absences had occurred the night Reiko gave birth to their child. Sano had gone away on business for the shogun. or so he'd said. Was their love a sham, and her trust in Sano misplaced?

  A stinging onslaught of tears rushed upon Reiko; she felt like vomiting. Sano had always seemed a loving father, incapable of trading Masahiro for political security. That he would give their son to the shogun, who used young boys as sexual playthings, was beyond belief. Yet Reiko knew how precarious was Sano's position at court, and what a toll his constant struggle to stay in the shogun's good graces took upon him. The honorable samurai she knew would never insult his lord nor plot to usurp power, but perhaps Sano had grown desperate and wayward enough to do both.

  She couldn't know for certain that he hadn't, because they'd grown apart and he didn't confide in her. And if he would betray her, then why not Masahiro?

  Clutching the pillow book, Reiko glanced around the room, which looked unfamiliar, as if transformed into an alien place. Her mind went on adding links to a terrible chain of logic.

  Sano had been hiding something from her.

  He didn't want her to investigate Wisteria.

  He'd behaved strangely after discovering the corpse-as if someone he knew and cared about had died.

  She had already begun to suspect that there had been something between him and the missing courtesan.

  With an anguished cry, Reiko hurled the book across the room. It fell behind a gilded screen; yet she could not ignore the book. Nor could she escape realizing that it was as much of a threat to Sano as Lady Yanagisawa had claimed, and not just because it jeopardized his marriage. She felt helpless in her fear and misery.

  24

  Various inquiries took Sano from Edo Morgue to the palace, to the official quarter and daimyo district, and finally to Yoshiwara. Now a sentry at the gate clapped two wooden blocks together to signal midnight and curfew. Lanterns still blazed along the streets; hawkers called customers to teahouses and brothels; samurai and commoners still loitered, flirting with courtesans in the window cages. Gay music spangled the air. A small group of men who didn't want to spend the whole night in Yoshiwara streamed out a small door in the gate. Among these were Sano, Hirata, and the eight detectives they'd brought. As they rode along the dark causeway toward the city, Sano and Hirata exchanged news.

  "The woman we found in Fujio's house was beaten to death," Sano said. "She may or may not be Lady Wisteria." But he'd grown more certain that the dead woman was indeed the courtesan.

  "Fujio may not be the killer." Hirata described how he'd interviewed, then arrested the hokan. "Today I talked to his wife, in-laws, friends, and mistress. They confirmed that he was with them when he says he was. Unless they're lying, he couldn't have committed murder in the hills."

  "Maybe Fujio didn't kill Lord Mitsuyoshi either. Maybe Treasury Minister Nitta was guilty, and a third party murdered Wisteria." Sano had difficulty believing that the murders were unconnected. Still, he couldn't ignore the possibility.

  "I've checked the stories I heard from the Council of Elders and other officials," he said. "It's been hard to investigate Mitsuyoshi's background without appearing to do so. But I learned that Lord Dakuemon and several other men mentioned to me were in Yoshiwara the night of Mitsuyoshi's murder. Some are former clients of Lady Wisteria. The next step is to determine where they were during the time between Wisteria's disappearance and the discovery of the body."

  This would be simple if not for the shogun's orders. Sano regretted that he couldn't directly interrogate the new suspects instead of working through spies and informants, a laborious, time-consuming process.

  "If the killer isn't Fujio or a bakufu official, there's still Lady Wisteria's Hokkaido lover," Hirata said. "But no one in Yoshiwara seems to know anything about him, and I haven't gotten any response to the notices I posted."

  Sano gripped the reins; the icy wind penetrated his garments as his horse's hooves pounded the ground under him. The landscape of fields and starlit sky flowed past, so unchanging that he couldn't gauge the progress of his journey.

  "Things will look more promising after a good night's rest," he said.

  Hours later, Sano arrived home, frozen and exhausted, to find that Reiko had waited up for him. She was standing in their bedchamber, and one look at her face told Sano something was amiss. Her jaw was set, her gaze simultaneously frightened and accusing.

  "What's wrong?" Sano said, afraid that something bad had happened to her or Masahiro.

  She stepped back to avoid the hand he extended to her, and thrust a small book toward him. "Will you please explain this?" Her voice was brittle, stretched between dread and reproach.

  Puzzled, Sano took the book, opened it, and frowned in surprise at the inscription. "The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria? Where did this come from?"

  Reiko didn't answer. Unnerved by her strange expression, Sano began reading the pages. His surprise turned to alarm, then horror at the mixture of fact and fabrication. Lady Wisteria couldn't have written such disgusting slander about him! The book must be a forgery. But while he read, it was as if he could hear Wisteria's voice speaking the words, and who except she could have known intimate details of their relations?

  If only he'd already told Reiko about the affair! How could he now persuade her that most of the story was a lie while he admitted concealing from her the parts that were true?

  Sano read the last passage, which showed him insulting the shogun and plotting to make Masahiro the next dictator. His blood boiled with outrage. Feeling shamed and trapped, he slowly closed the book, delaying the moment when he must face Reiko. When he at last raised his eyes, she regarded him with the brave caution of a warrior encountering a stranger who may be friend or foe.

  "Where did you get this?" Sano asked.

  "From Lady Yanagisawa." Reiko explained how the anonymous package had arrived for the chamberlain, and her friend had brought it to her. "Is the story true?"

  Nerves raised sweat on Sano's brow. "Let's sit down and talk," he said.

  Reiko didn't move, but her eyes went round, and Sano saw her pride crumble. "Then it is true," she whispered. "She was your lover. I thought we were-all the while you-" Abruptly Reiko looked away.

  "It was over before we married," Sano said.

  "Then why didn't you tell me about her at the start of the investigation?"

  "I didn't want to upset you." Sano ached with guilt. The brief pleasure he'd gotten from Lady Wisteria wasn't worth this.

  "That's what you said to her when she was upset to learn you were engaged." Reiko was afire with hurt, suspicion, and anger. She gestured toward the book that Sano still held. "She was beautiful. You loved her. She did everything for you that a man could want." Bitterness twisted Reiko's mouth. "You only married me because I'm from a high-ranking samurai family instead of a brothel."

  "I didn't love her," Sano protested. "There was nothing between us but sex." He saw Reiko's eyes narrow. "It was just a brief affair that had no future."

  "Then why did you free her?" Reiko retorted. "Or didn't you?" she added in a querulous tone that bespoke her need to believe he hadn't performed this act that signifi
ed deep commitment to a courtesan.

  "I did," Sano said, though aware that the admission made him look guiltier.

  Reiko briefly closed her eyes.

  "But it wasn't because I wanted the affair to go on." Regretting to hurt her more, Sano nonetheless realized that he must tell her the whole story, and hastened to explain: "I met Wisteria on a case I investigated while I was on the police force. She gave me information. We spent a night together."

  "During which she taught you the art of lovemaking?"

  Hearing the pain behind Reiko's sarcasm, Sano nodded reluctantly. "Certain people were displeased that Wisteria helped me. She was punished. Her suffering was my fault, and I had to compensate her." He described the events that had made this possible. "But I didn't go to Yoshiwara to take her away." Leafing through the book, he said, "There was no departure ceremony, no trip together to her new home. The bakufu provided the money and handled everything. Wisteria wasn't my mistress. I never intended her to be."

  "So you were never together again?" Eagerness underlay Reiko's skeptical query.

  Though he hated to disappoint his wife, Sano said, "We were, but only twice-before you and I met. Wisteria was unfriendly to me. I was busy working for the shogun, and I never bothered going back to Wisteria. There were no violent quarrels, no reunions, no perverted sex, no insults toward the shogun, and certainly no scheme to use Masahiro-chan for my own benefit."

  Sano flung down the book, incensed anew by its portrayal of him. He was relieved that his secret had come out, but upset that it had come out this way. Gazing upon Reiko's rigid, unhappy face, he said, "I love you. I've always been faithful to you." Sincerity and tenderness hushed his voice: "I swear it on my life."

  Reiko looked torn between wanting to believe and wanting not to be deceived. Then she turned away. Sano inwardly cursed the Black Lotus for her morbid distrust that extended to him and what she knew in her heart about him.

  "You're always telling me that a good detective bases judgment on evidence," she said. "What evidence is there to prove you're not an adulterer?" She swallowed hard, as if to forestall crying. "What evidence is there to prove you weren't involved in Lord Mitsuyoshi's death?"

  She even suspected him of murdering Mitsuyoshi so that Masahiro could take his place as the shogun's heir! Sano lifted his eyes to the ceiling as despair filled him. He had nothing to prove the pillow book was a fraud. The only person who could say for a fact that he'd never done the things described in the book was Lady Wisteria. Sano thought of the mutilated corpse and shook his head. Then his gaze lit on the book, which lay on the table where he'd thrown it. A phrase that hadn't registered while he read now jarred his memory. He snatched up the book and whipped through pages until he found it.

  "Reiko-san, look," he said.

  She didn't move. Eagerly Sano read aloud: " `It was in the year that the child was born, during the month of leaves, while Sano-san and I sat on the roof viewing the full moon.' But I couldn't have been with Wisteria on the night of the full moon in the seventh month after you gave birth to Masahiro-chan. I was with you. Don't you remember?"

  Now Reiko did remember. She also remembered the passage in the book that she'd overlooked because she'd been too upset to read objectively. A rush of confused emotions made her feel faint. Stunned, she turned to Sano.

  "Yes," she said, and heard breathless relief in her voice.

  Her distrust and his confession had transformed her husband into a stranger capable of adultery and treason; but now Sano looked his familiar self. An encouraging smile dawned through the worry on his face.

  "The shogun had given you a holiday that month," she said. "You took Masahiro-chan and me on a religious pilgrimage." The temple where they'd stayed was a three-day journey from Edo, their holiday had lasted ten days total, and therefore Sano could not have gone to Wisteria in Nihonbashi at any time near the full moon.

  "After you put Masahiro-chan to bed, you and I watched the moon from the garden," Sano said.

  "And we made love there." The tears Reiko had been holding back now spilled. She wept with gladness that one small, false detail had shown the pillow book to be an elaborate lie, and shame that she'd not immediately recognized it as such. "Will you forgive me for doubting you?"

  "If you forgive me for keeping a secret I should have told you," Sano said.

  He looked so earnest and chagrined that Reiko's lingering anger melted away. Unaware of whether she moved toward him, or he toward her, she found herself and Sano embracing. She felt her sobs resonate through him, and the wetness on her cheek that could have been her tears or his. Sano's hands caressed her with a tenderness that she could tell Lady Wisteria had never known from him. Her body responded with a welling of desire. His breath quickened and his grasp on her tightened.

  Lovemaking would have followed, but they moved apart because they had serious matters to discuss. Reiko heated a vessel of sake, and they knelt with the pillow book and the tray of cups before them.

  "If Wisteria didn't write the book, who did?" Reiko said, pouring the steaming liquor.

  Sano's expression turned grim as he accepted a cup. "I can think of one person who would like me implicated in the murder and branded a traitor."

  "Yoriki Hoshina?"

  Sano nodded. "Hoshina knows about the pillow book, and what it looks like, because he heard Wisteria's kamuro describe it to me. Maybe he forged his own version and had it delivered anonymously to Chamberlain Yanagisawa. After that, all he had to do was wait."

  "For the chamberlain to use the book against you?" Reiko warmed her hands on her cup of sake before she drank. "But what about your truce with him?"

  "The truce wouldn't protect me in this case," Sano said. He drained his cupful and poured himself another. "No matter if Yanagisawa wants us to remain at peace, he couldn't ignore evidence that I insulted and plotted against the shogun or had reason to kill Lord Mitsuyoshi. He would have to give the book to the shogun, whether he believes I'm guilty or not."

  Now Reiko understood. "For him to shield a possible traitor would make him a traitor as well."

  "He might hesitate to act if he were the only one who knew about the evidence," Sano said, "but he's not. The author of the book also knows. And the author knows that Yanagisawa received the book. While Yanagisawa and I are no longer at war, we're not exactly friends. He would never conceal the book and endanger himself for my sake. And Hoshina knows how his lover thinks. He's been looking for a way to attack me." Sano eyed the pillow book. "That must be his doing."

  In spite of the strong reasons to believe Hoshina had written the book, a different possibility occurred to Reiko.

  "If Hoshina isn't the author. " Her voice trailed off because the idea seemed at once plausible and outlandish.

  "Do you have someone else in mind?" Sano said.

  "I'm thinking of Lady Yanagisawa," Reiko said.

  Sano regarded her with surprise. "How could she have known Wisteria had written a pillow book, or that it was missing?"

  "Maybe she overheard the chamberlain and Hoshina discussing the case."

  "Even if she did, how would she have known what to write?"

  Reiko saw that he didn't think Lady Yanagisawa could be familiar with Yoshiwara customs, what went on between prostitutes and clients, or political ploys. "Yoriki Hoshina might have learned about you and Wisteria from metsuke spies, but women have their own ways of finding out things," Reiko said. "Maybe Wisteria told her friends or clients about her affair with you, and gossip traveled from Yoshiwara to Edo Castle, where Lady Yanagisawa heard it from her servants. She must also hear plenty that the chamberlain and his men say about bakufu business."

  "That's possible. But the story in the book seems so real that the author must be a clever writer and have experience with the situations in it," Sano said. "That description would fit Hoshina better than Lady Yanagisawa."

  "I think she's smart enough to write a good story," Reiko said, "and imagination can make up for lack of experien
ce."

  Sano's expression conveyed doubt. "Supposing Lady Yanagisawa did manufacture the pillow book, she could have also invented the story about the anonymous package to fool you. But you said she wants to be your friend. Why, then, would she try to hurt you by writing slander about me?"

  Here Reiko's logic foundered. "I don't have a good reason. But Lady Yanagisawa is odd. I don't like the way she looks at me, or the way she sought my acquaintance at this particular time."

  Instinct told Reiko that the chamberlain's wife had befriended her for some secret, nefarious purpose. But instinct had also encouraged her to trust a suspect in the Black Lotus murders, and to doubt Sano's fidelity to her and loyalty to the shogun. Reiko was more afraid than ever that the Black Lotus investigation had permanently damaged her judgment.