Sano Ichiro 4 The Concubine's Tattoo (1998)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  "Ugh!" Reiko spat into the basin."How can anyone stand this?"

  "They all do, and so will you. Twice a month, to maintain the color. Now continue, and be careful not to stain your lips or your kimono."

  Wincing and gagging, Reiko applied layer after layer of dye to her teeth. Finally she rinsed, spat, then held the mirror before her face. She viewed her reflection with dismay. The dead, black teeth contrasted sharply with the white face powder and red lip rouge, highlighting her skin's every imperfection. With the tip of her tongue, Reiko touched her chipped incisor, a habit in times of strong emotion. At age twenty, she looked ancient-and ugly. Her days of study and martial arts practice were over; hope of romance withered. How could her husband want her for anything besides obedient servitude now?

  Reiko choked down a sob, and saw O-sugi regarding her with sympathy. O-sugi had been married at fourteen to a middle-aged Nihonbashi shopkeeper who'd beaten her daily, until the neighbors complained that her cries disturbed them. The case had come before Magistrate Ueda, who sentenced the shopkeeper to a beating, granted O-sugi a divorce, and hired her as nurse to his infant daughter. O-sugi was the only mother Reiko had ever known. Now the bond between them strengthened with the poignant similarity in their situations: one rich, one poor, yet both prisoners of society, their fate dependent upon men.

  O-sugi embraced Reiko, saying sadly, "My poor young lady. Life will be easier if you just accept it." Then, in an effort to be cheerful, "After all this wedding excitement, you must be starving. How about some tea and buns-the pink kind, with sweet chestnut paste inside?" This was Reiko's favorite treat."I'll bring them right away."

  The nurse limped out of the room: Her brutal husband had permanently crippled her left leg. Seeing this ignited angry determination inside Reiko. Then and there she refused to let marriage cripple her own body, or mind. She would not be imprisoned inside this house, talents and ambitions wasted. She would live!

  Reiko rose and fetched a cloak from the wardrobe. Then she hurried to the front door, where Sano's staff was unloading the wedding gifts.

  "How may I serve you, Honorable Madam?" asked the chief manservant.

  "I don't need anything," Reiko said."I'm going out."

  The servant said haughtily, "A lady cannot just walk out of the castle alone. It's against the law."

  He arranged an escort of maids and soldiers. He summoned a palanquin and six bearers and installed her inside the ornate, cushioned sedan chair. He gave the escort commander the official document that allowed Reiko passage in and out of the castle, then asked her, "Where shall I tell the sosakan-sama you've gone?"

  Reiko was appalled. What could she do while hampered by a sixteen-person entourage that would undoubtedly report her every move to Sano and everyone else at Edo Castle? "To visit my father," she said, accepting defeat.

  Trapped in the palanquin, she rode through the castle's winding stone passages, past guard towers and patrolling soldiers. The escort commander presented her pass at the security checkpoints; soldiers opened gates and let the procession continue downhill. Mounted samurai cantered past. Windows in the covered corridors that topped the walls offered brief glimpses of Edo's rooftops, spread out on the plain below, and the fiery red-and-gold autumn foliage along the Sumida River. Against the distant western sky, Mount Fuji's ethereal white peak soared. Reiko saw it all through the small, narrow window of the palanquin. She sighed.

  However, once outside the castle's main gate and past the great walled estates of the daimyo, Reiko's spirits rose. Here, in the administrative district, located in Hibiya, south of Edo Castle, the city's high officials lived and worked in office-mansions. Here Reiko had enjoyed the childhood whose end she now regretted so keenly. But perhaps it wasn't entirely lost.

  At Magistrate Ueda's estate, she alit from the palanquin. Leaving her entourage outside the wall among the strolling dignitaries and hurrying clerks, she approached the sentries stationed at the gate's roofed portals.

  "Good afternoon, Miss Reiko," they greeted her.

  "Is my father home?" she asked.

  "Yes, but he's hearing a case."

  Reiko wasn't surprised that the conscientious magistrate had returned to work when the wedding banquet was canceled. In the courtyard she wove through a crowd of townspeople, police, and prisoners awaiting the magistrate's attention, into the low, half-timbered building. She slipped past the administrative offices and shut herself up inside a chamber adjacent to the Court of Justice.

  The room, once a closet, was barely big enough to hold its one tatami mat. With no windows, it was dim and stuffy, yet Reiko had spent some of her happiest hours here. One wall was made of woven lattice. Through the chinks, Reiko had a perfect view of the court. On the other side of the wall her father occupied the dais, wearing black judicial robes, his back to her, flanked by secretaries. Lanterns lit the long hall, where the defendant, his hands tied behind him, knelt on the shirasu, an area of floor directly before the dais, covered with white sand, symbol of truth. Police, witnesses, and the defendant's family knelt in rows in the audience section; sentries guarded the doors.

  Reiko knelt to watch the proceedings, as she'd done countless times before. Trials fascinated her. They showed a side of life that she could not experience firsthand. Magistrate Ueda had indulged her interest, letting her use this room. Reiko's tongue touched her chipped tooth as she smiled in fond memory.

  "What have you to say in your own defense, Moneylender Igarashi?" Magistrate Ueda asked the prisoner.

  "Honorable Magistrate, I swear I did not kill my partner," the defendant said with earnest sincerity."We fought over the favors of the courtesan Hyacinth because we were drunk, but we settled our differences." Tears ran down the defendant's face."I loved my partner like a brother. I don't know who stabbed him."

  During discussions of cases, Reiko had impressed Magistrate Ueda with her insight; he'd come to value her judgment. Now she whispered through the lattice, "The moneylender is lying, Father. He's still jealous of his partner. And now their whole fortune is his. Push him hard-he'll break and confess."

  She'd often given her advice during trials this way, and Magistrate Ueda had often followed it, with good results, but now his shoulders stiffened; his head turned slightly. Instead of interrogating the defendant, Magistrate Ueda said, "This session will adjourn for a moment." Rising, he left the courtroom.

  Then the door to Reiko's chamber opened. There in the corridor stood her father, regarding her with consternation. "Daughter." Taking Reiko's arm, he led her down the hall, into his private office. "Your first visit home shouldn't take place until tomorrow, and your husband must accompany you. You know the custom. What are you doing here, alone, now? Is something wrong?"

  "Father, I-"

  Suddenly Reiko's brave defiance crumbled. Sobbing, she poured out her misgivings about marriage; the dreams she could not forsake. Magistrate Ueda listened sympathetically, but when she'd finished and calmed down, he shook his head and said, "I should not have raised you to expect more from life than is possible for a woman. It was an act of foolish love and poor judgment on my part, which I deeply regret. But what's done is done. We cannot go back, but only forward. You must not watch any more trials, or assist with my work as I've mistakenly allowed you to do in the past. Your place is with your husband."

  Even as Reiko saw the door to her youth close forever, a gleam of hope brightened the dark horizon of her future. Magistrate Ueda's last sentence recalled her fantasy of sharing Sosakan Sano's adventures. In ancient times, samurai women had ridden into battle beside their men. Reiko remembered the incident that had ended the wedding festivities.

  Earlier, preoccupied with her own problems, she'd given hardly a thought to Sano's new case; now, her interest stirred.

  "Maybe I could help investigate Lady Harume's death," she said thoughtfully.

  Concern shadowed Magistrate Ueda's face. "Reiko-chan." His voice was kind, but stern. "You're smarter than many men, but you are young, na�
�ve, and far too confident of your own limited abilities. Any affair involving the shogun's court is fraught with danger. Sosakan Sano will not welcome your interference. And what could you, a woman, do anyway?"

  Rising, the magistrate led Reiko out of the mansion to the gate, where her entourage waited. "Go home, daughter. Be thankful you needn't work to earn your rice, like other, less fortunate women. Obey your husband; he is a good man." Then, echoing O-sugi's advice, he said, "Accept your fate, or it will only grow harder to bear."

  Reluctantly Reiko climbed into the palanquin. Tasting the bitterness of the dye on her teeth, she shook her head in sad acknowledgment of her father's wisdom.

  Yet she possessed the same intelligence, drive, and courage that had made him magistrate of Edo-the post she would have inherited if she'd been born male! As the palanquin carried her briskly up the street, Reiko called to the bearers: "Stop! Go back!"

  The bearers obeyed. Disembarking, Reiko hurried into her father's house, to her childhood room. From the cabinet she took her two swords, long and short, with matching gold-inlaid hilts and scabbards. Then she returned to the palanquin and settled herself for the trip back to Edo Castle, hugging the precious weapons-symbols of honor and adventure, of everything she was and wanted to be.

  Somehow she would make a purposeful, satisfying life for herself. And she would begin by investigating the strange death of the shogun's concubine.

  4

  In the slums of Kodemmacho, near the river in the northeast sector of the Nihonbashi merchant district, Edo Jail's complex of high stone walls, watchtowers, and gabled roofs hulked over its surrounding canals like a malignant growth. Sano rode his horse across the bridge toward the iron-banded gate. Sentries manned the guardhouse; doshin herded miserable, shackled criminals into the jail to await trial, or out of it toward the execution ground. As always when approaching the prison, Sano imagined that he felt the air grow colder, as if Edo Jail repelled sunlight and exuded a miasma of death and decay. Yet Sano willingly braved the danger of spiritual pollution that other high-ranking samurai avoided. In the city morgue, housed inside the peeling plaster walls, he hoped to learn the truth about the death of Lady Harume.

  The sentries opened the gate for Sano. He dismounted and led his horse through the compound of guards' barracks, courtyards, and administrative offices, past the jail proper, where the howls of prisoners drifted from barred windows.

  In a courtyard near the rear of the jail, Sano secured his horse outside the morgue, a low building with scabrous plaster walls and a shaggy thatched roof. He took the bundled evidence from Lady Harume's room out of his saddlebag. Crossing the threshold, he braced himself for the sight and smell of Dr. Ito's gruesome work.

  The room held stone troughs used to wash the dead; cabinets containing the doctor's tools; a podium in the corner, piled with books and notes. At one of the three waist-high tables, Dr. Ito assembled a collection of human bones in their relative positions. His assistant, Mura, cleaned a pan of vertebrae. Both men looked up from their work and bowed when Sano entered.

  "Ah, Sano-san. Welcome!" Dr. Ito's narrow, ascetic face brightened with glad surprise. "I did not expect to see you. Is this not the day of your wedding?"

  Dr. Ito Genboku, Edo Morgue custodian, whose scientific expertise had aided Sano in many investigations, was also a true friend-rare in the politically treacherous Tokugawa regime.

  Shrewd of gaze and keen of mind at age seventy, Dr. Ito had short, abundant white hair that receded at the temples. His long, dark blue coat covered a tall, spare frame. Once esteemed physician to the imperial family, Dr. Ito had been caught practicing forbidden foreign science, which he'd learned through illicit channels from Dutch traders in Nagasaki. Unlike other rangakusha-scholars of Dutch learning-he'd been punished not by exile, but by being sentenced to permanent custodianship of Edo Morgue. Here, though the living conditions were squalid, he could experiment in peace, ignored by the authorities.

  "I was married this morning, but the wedding banquet and my holiday were canceled," Sano said, laying his bundle on an empty table. "And once again, I need your help." He explained about Lady Harume's mysterious death, the shogun's orders for him to investigate, and his suspicion of murder.

  "Most intriguing," Dr. Ito said. "Of course I shall assist in any way I can. But first, my congratulations on your marriage. Allow me to present you with a small gift. Mura, will you please fetch it?"

  Mura, a short man with gray hair and a square, intelligent face, set aside his pan of bones. He was an eta, one of society's outcast class who staffed the jail, acting as corpse handlers, jailers, torturers, and executioners. Eta also performed such dirty work as emptying cesspools, collecting garbage, and clearing away dead bodies after floods, fires, and earthquakes. Their hereditary link with such death-related occupations as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually contaminated, unfit for contact with other citizens. But shared adversity forged strange bonds; Mura was Dr. Ito's servant and companion. Now the eta bowed to his master and Sano and left the room. He returned with a small package wrapped in a scrap of blue cotton, which Dr. Ito handed to Sano.

  "My gift in honor of your marriage."

  "Arigato, Ito-san." Bowing, Sano accepted the package and unfolded the wrapping. Inside the cloth lay a flat, palm-size circle of black wrought iron: a guard meant to fit between the blade and hilt of a samurai's sword. The filigree design was a variation on Sano's family crest, with a crane's elegant, long-beaked head in profile, a slit for the blade cut through its body, and elaborately feathered, upswept wings. Caressing the smooth metal, Sano admired the gift.

  "It's just a poor, humble thing," Dr. Ito said. "Mura gathered scrap iron in the city. One of the janitors was a metalsmith before being convicted of thievery and sentenced to work here. He helped me make the sword guard at night. It's not really good enough for-"

  "It's beautiful," Sano said, "and I'll treasure it always." Carefully he rewrapped the sword guard and tucked the package in his drawstring pouch, more moved by Ito's thoughtful gesture than by any of the lavish presents he'd received from strangers currying favor. Then, to fill the awkward silence that ensued, he opened his bundle and explained the circumstances of Lady Harume's death. "Her corpse won't arrive for examination until later. But there's a strong possibility that she was poisoned." Sano set out the lamps, incense burners, sake decanter, razor, knife, and ink jar. "I want to know whether one of these things is the source of the poison."

  At the doctor's orders, Mura fetched six small, empty wooden cages, and a larger one containing six live mice. Dr. Ito lined the cages up on the table. In the first two small ones, he lit a lamp and incense burner from Lady Harume's room, placed a wriggling gray mouse into each cage, and covered them with cloths.

  "This method should expose the mice to any poison in the oil or incense," Dr. Ito said, "while protecting us from dangerous fumes."

  In the third cage he set a dish of the sake that Harume had apparently imbibed shortly before her death, and a third mouse. To test the razor, Dr. Ito shaved a patch of hair off a fourth mouse's back; with the pearl-handled knife he made a shallow cut on the fifth mouse's belly, then dropped the animals into separate cages.

  "And now the ink." From a cabinet Dr. Ito took one of his own knives. "I'll use a clean blade to avoid introducing extraneous contamination." He made a scratch on the sixth mouse's belly, unstoppered the lacquer jar, and brushed black ink onto the wound. Then he dropped the mouse into its cage and said, "Now we wait."

  Sano and Dr. Ito watched the cages. Faint scratchings came from within the two cloth-covered ones. The third mouse sniffed the liquor, then began to drink. The razor-shaved mouse roamed his cage while the others licked their wounds. Suddenly a high shriek rang out.

  "Look!" Sano pointed.

  The mouse with ink on its cut belly writhed, back arching, tiny claws grasping the air, tail whipping back and forth. Its chest heaved as if trying desperately to suck air into the lungs; its eyes
rolled. The little pink mouth opened and closed, emitting cries of agony, then a gush of blood. Sano indicated the symptoms which matched the castle physician's description of those suffered by Lady Harume: "Convulsions. Vomiting. Shortness of breath."

  A few more squeals and gasps, a final paroxysm, then the mouse lay dead. Sano and Dr. Ito bowed their heads in respect for the animal that had given its life to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Then they checked the other cages.

  "This mouse is intoxicated, " Dr. Ito said, observing the creature that staggered around the now-empty sake dish, "but otherwise healthy." The shaved animal and the knife-cut one scampered about their cages. "No apparent ill effects here, either." Dr. Ito lifted the cloths off the last two cages, releasing clouds of pungent smoke and revealing two groggy but living mice. "Or here. The ink alone contained poison."

  "Could this have been suicide?" Sano asked, still hoping for an easy resolution to Lady Harume's death.