Black Lotus

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Alarm shot through Reiko. Who were these witnesses? What was Sano up to?

  “Permission granted,” Magistrate Ueda said.

  Sano nodded to Hirata, who left the court, then returned with a middle-aged couple. Both man and woman wore the modest cotton kimonos of peasants. They huddled together, their faces apprehensive.

  “I introduce Haru’s parents,” Sano said.

  Haru cried joyfully, “Mother! Father!” Shedding her meek, frightened demeanor, she rose up on her knees and leaned toward the couple. “Oh, how I’ve missed you! And now you’ve come to save me!”

  But Reiko guessed why Sano had brought them. Filled with dismay, she watched helplessly as Hirata led Haru’s parents up to the dais. They averted their eyes from Haru. Kneeling, they bowed to the magistrate. The mother began weeping quietly; the father hung his head.

  “What’s wrong, Mother?” Haru said in confusion. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Your cooperation is much appreciated,” Sano said.

  His tone conveyed sympathy for the shame the couple obviously suffered from public exposure at their child’s trial. In response to gentle questions from him, the parents described how they’d married Haru off, and her contradictory stories about the fire that had killed her husband.

  “Why are you saying those things?” Haru interrupted, and hurt eclipsed the happiness on her face. “I told you I didn’t set the fire. Why do you want to turn everyone against me?”

  Her father regarded her sadly. “We were wrong to hide what we know about you. Now we must tell the truth.”

  “And you must face up to what you’ve done,” said her mother, turning a tear-streaked face toward Haru. “Repent, and cleanse the disgrace from your spirit.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” Haru protested, beginning to wheeze as she glared at her parents. “You never loved me. No matter how hard I tried to please you, I was never good enough. It’s all your fault that I’m in trouble.”

  Sano had kept quiet during this exchange. He’d identified Haru’s feelings for her parents as a vulnerability, Reiko thought, deploring the cruel tactic by which he’d exposed a dark side of Haru. Now he said, “But it wasn’t your parents who committed murder and arson. It was you.”

  “They made me marry that horrible old man. I told them how badly he treated me and begged them to let me come home, but they wouldn’t listen.” Louder wheezes rasped from Haru; she squirmed, straining at her bonds. “You didn’t care how I suffered,” she shouted at her parents, who cringed. “All you cared about was the money the old man gave you. I had to protect myself.”

  “And that’s why you killed your husband?” Sano said.

  “No, no, no!” Haru shrieked, rocking back and forth. “The night he died, he got angry at me for serving him cold tea. He hit me, and his arm knocked over a lamp. It set his clothes on fire. I ran away and let him and his house burn. He deserved to die!”

  The confession descended upon Reiko like a vast iron bell that resonated with her shock and horror. She barely heard the audience’s outcry. Everything seemed hazy. She felt sick because she no longer believed anything Haru said.

  “More lies.” Sano addressed the girl with scornful contempt. “I suggest that you threw the lamp at your husband and set him on fire. Did you kill Commander Oyama, too?”

  Haru’s resistance suddenly broke into hysteria. “Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, yes!”

  Reiko bowed her head, mournfully resigned to the knowledge that Haru had deceived her from the start. She’d compromised her marriage and her vocation over a liar and criminal. There would be no exoneration of Haru, no ultimate justification of Reiko’s defense of the girl. Reiko had made a fool of herself in public and failed to direct the power of the law toward the Black Lotus. Mortified, she looked to see if Sano would acknowledge his victory over her, but he was watching Haru.

  “What happened that night at the Black Lotus Temple?” he said.

  “Commander Oyama told me to meet him in the cottage. I didn’t want to, but the Black Lotus needed his patronage.” The words rushed from Haru like water pouring through a broken dam. “So I sneaked out of the orphanage. When I got to the cottage, he was already there, naked on the bed. He ordered me to—” Haru’s voice dropped in shame “—to suck on him.

  “He said that unless I obeyed, he would stop giving money to the Black Lotus, and Anraku would be angry with me and expel me from the temple. I was afraid he was right, so I knelt and took him in my mouth.” Haru gulped, as if swallowing nausea engendered by the memory. “Suddenly his legs came up around my neck and started squeezing, choking me. I begged him to let go, but he just shouted at me to keep sucking. I broke free, and he started hitting me. He pinned me down on the floor and rammed himself inside me. He was strangling me. Everything started going dark. I was so frightened that he was going to kill me.”

  Through her emotional turmoil, Reiko absorbed the fact that Oyama had caused Haru’s bruises. But what did it matter that Reiko had correctly believed Haru had been the victim of an attack that night, when she’d been mistaken about too much else?

  Haru began to cry in loud, whooping sobs. “I had to stop him. There was an alcove in the wall, with a little brass statue of Kannon inside. I grabbed the statue and struck at his face with it. He ducked, but he let go of my neck and fell off me. I kicked him in the crotch. He howled and doubled up in pain. Then I hit him on the back of the head with the statue. All of a sudden his voice stopped. His eyes were open, but he didn’t move. There was blood all over his head, on the floor, on the statue. I knew he was dead.”

  Whether Haru had really killed Oyama in self-defense, or was twisting the truth again, Reiko didn’t know what to think, for she could no longer trust her instincts. They’d failed her, and she perceived the worst of what she’d done. Instead of serving justice, she’d sabotaged Sano’s work and dishonored her vocation. Self-hatred tormented Reiko.

  “I was so terrified that I couldn’t move,” Haru went on. “I sat there for a long time, crying and wondering what to do. I thought of going to High Priest Anraku for help, but I was afraid he would get angry at me for killing an important patron. Finally I decided to make it look like an accident. I picked up the statue, left Commander Oyama lying in the cottage, and ran to the main hall. I wiped off the statue and set it in a niche with a lot of other statues like it. Then I got the idea that Commander Oyama was still alive. I had to see, so I went back to the cottage. That was when someone came up behind me and hit my head. I didn’t see who it was. The next thing I knew, the firebell was ringing, I was lying in the garden, and it was morning.”

  Tears streaming down her face, Haru cast a beseeching gaze up at Sano. “Yes, I killed Commander Oyama. But not the others. I didn’t even know they were there. That’s the truth, I swear!”

  It sounded as if someone else had killed Chie and the boy, then framed Haru for their murders by knocking her unconscious so that she would be found at the scene. Their bodies must have been put in the cottage while Haru was hiding the statue, or while she lay oblivious. Perhaps someone else had indeed set the fire. Yet Reiko had little hope of this, and even if the girl was telling the truth now, it would make little difference to her fate.

  “Honorable Magistrate,” Sano said, “whether or not Haru is responsible for the deaths of the woman and boy, she has confessed to killing an important man. She deserves punishment.”

  Nor did the possibility of a second murderer change the fact that Reiko had been wrong to ever believe in Haru’s innocence. Sick with shame and regret, Reiko wanted to rush from the room, but a stubborn need to see the case through to the end compelled her to stay.

  “Haru, I pronounce you guilty of two instances of murder and arson,” Magistrate Ueda said solemnly. Reiko saw in his face his personal conviction that he’d chosen the correct verdict. “The law requires that I sentence you to death by burning.”

  “No!” Haru’s shrill, terrified protest pierced the quiet of
the courtroom. She writhed, as if already beset by flames. “Please, I can’t bear it.” She turned to Reiko, begging, “Help! Don’t let them burn me!”

  Reiko wordlessly shook her head because she couldn’t help Haru even if she’d wanted to.

  Sano exchanged glances with Magistrate Ueda. When the magistrate nodded, Sano said to Haru, “There is one way you can earn a quicker, more merciful death, if you wish.”

  The girl exclaimed in desperate relief: “Yes! I’ll do anything!”

  “You must tell me everything you know about what’s going on inside the Black Lotus Temple and what the sect plans to do,” Sano said.

  Comprehension stunned Reiko. Now she knew why Sano had convened the trial, then pushed so hard for Haru’s conviction. He’d meant to break Haru, thus forcing her to inform on the Black Lotus. Reiko wished he’d told her his intentions even as she inwardly berated herself for not guessing them. By defending Haru, she’d almost ruined Sano’s attempt to get the facts needed to justify an inspection of the temple. She remembered the look he’d given her: He’d been trying to let her know what he was doing. By disregarding his silent plea, she might have cost Midori her life!

  “But I can’t tell,” Haru said, recoiling in horror. “I mean, I don’t know anything.”

  “Very well,” Sano said. “Then you must endure your original sentence.” He signaled to the guards. “Convey her to the funeral pyre at the execution ground.”

  The guards moved toward Haru, who cried, “No! Wait!”

  Sano’s raised hand halted the guards. Reiko watched Haru struggle against whatever loyalty or fear kept her in thrall to the Black Lotus. Her eyes flicked from side to side; she bit her lips. Sano looked directly at Reiko for the first time since before Haru had confessed; his frown warned Reiko to keep silent She bowed her head, miserably aware that she’d already done too much wrong for her to even consider intervening. Haru’s fate was in her own hands now.

  At last Haru slumped, her resistance gone. “The mountains will erupt,” she mumbled. “Flames will consume the city. The waters will flow with death, and the air will breathe poison. The sky will burn and the earth explode.”

  A chill passed through Reiko as she recognized the words spoken by Pious Truth when the priests captured him. Puzzled exclamations broke out among the audience.

  Haru spoke in an emotionless monotone, as if reciting a lesson: “High Priest Anraku has transformed his followers into an army of destroyers who will set fires and bombs around Edo and poison the wells. They will slay the citizens in the streets. The conflagration of death and destruction will spread all across Japan. Only the true believers of the Black Lotus will survive. They shall achieve enlightenment, acquire magical powers, and rule a new world.”

  34

  When the faithful hear the prophecy,

  They will rush to meet their destiny,

  And in body and mind be filled with joy.

  —FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA

  The highway approaching the Zj temple district lay beneath a clouded indigo night sky. Faint radiance from the full moon behind the clouds touched the hilltops. The forest bordering the road loomed still in the windless air. Hoofbeats and the steady rhythm of marching steps came from the direction of Edo to the north.

  Sano, clad in full armor, rode beside Hirata near the head of a procession that numbered two hundred troops mounted and on foot, including all his detectives and guards, plus other Tokugawa soldiers from Edo Castle. Their lanterns illuminated grim faces beneath iron helmets.

  “What if we’re too late?” Hirata said anxiously. “If the Black Lotus has hurt Midori …”

  “We’re almost there. She’ll be fine,” Sano said.

  Yet he, too, was worried that they wouldn’t reach the temple soon enough to rescue Midori. The necessary preparations for this expedition had consumed hours that might have cost Midori her life.

  After Haru had confessed and agreed to inform on the Black Lotus, Magistrate Ueda had adjourned the trial. Sano and Hirata had thoroughly interrogated Haru about the sect’s activities. She’d confirmed Pious Truth’s story and admitted that she’d been among a group of sect members responsible for the trouble in Shinagawa, which was a rehearsal for an attack on Edo. She’d claimed to know where High Priest Anraku’s underground arsenal and prison were, and agreed to guide Sano there.

  Next, Sano had reported the news to the shogun. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had vacillated, torn between fear for his regime and fear of his relatives’ disapproval. In desperation, Sano had resorted to a ploy that Chamberlain Yanagisawa often used. He had praised the shogun for his wisdom and flattered his pride, then gently hinted that he would be making a terrible mistake to ignore the threat of the Black Lotus. When the shogun had begun yielding to Sano’s stronger will, Sano had described in lurid detail the widespread destruction that would occur unless they crushed the sect now. Finally, the frightened shogun had signed an edict granting Sano permission to do whatever was necessary to protect the regime.

  Sano, ashamed of his manipulative, dishonorable behavior, had taken the edict and fled before the shogun could change his mind. Then Sano had gathered troops for an invasion of the temple. Things had turned out better than he’d expected—with one hitch.

  Haru had balked at going to the temple. She’d cried, screamed, and struggled against his troops as they tried to put her in a palanquin, and called for Reiko. Even though they threatened to burn her, she still resisted, and she had the advantage because Sano needed her to guide him through the Black Lotus underground. Sano didn’t want Reiko involved in the expedition; nor did he welcome further association between her and Haru. But he feared that he wouldn’t get the promised cooperation from Haru unless someone calmed her down, so he’d hurried home to fetch Reiko.

  He’d found her sitting alone in her chamber. Her eyes were red from crying, and she regarded him with wariness, but Sano had no time to indulge emotions or attempt a reconciliation. He wasn’t sure that the latter was possible; Reiko’s speech in the Court of Justice represented the final, intolerable act against him.

  “Haru is being difficult,” Sano said. “She’s calling for you. I want you to coax her into going to the Black Lotus Temple. Then you’re coming along to help me control her.”

  Reiko gaped, momentarily stricken speechless. “I can’t,” she said in a hoarse, unsteady voice. “I don’t ever want to see Haru again.”

  “This is the least you can do to make up for your interference,” Sano said, unrelenting.

  Reiko had unhappily assented. She’d soothed Haru, coaxed her into a palanquin, then climbed in with her. Now Sano turned in his saddle, looking backward at the palanquin, which trailed near the end of the procession. The trial should have destroyed Reiko’s sympathy for Haru, but still … Had he made a mistake by bringing his wife?

  The forest gave way to fields and thatched houses, and finally the procession entered the narrow lanes of the temple district. Reiko sat in the palanquin, enduring the rapid, jouncing motion of the bearers’ steps. She fixed her gaze on the temple walls moving past the open window because she couldn’t stand to look at Haru, seated opposite her. Imprisoned with the girl, Reiko felt ill with hatred, polluted by the acts of violence Haru had committed. Whether or not Commander Oyama or the husband deserved punishment for hurting Haru, she was a criminal, marked for death. Yet Haru remained a living presence impossible to ignore. The warmth from her body, the smell of her sweat and sour breath, nauseated Reiko.

  Several times during the trip, when Haru had started to speak, Reiko maintained a frosty silence, but as they neared the Black Lotus Temple, she turned to face Haru. “I suppose you’re proud of the way you tricked me,” she said in a quiet voice that shook with rage.

  Huddled miserably in the corner of the palanquin, Haru mumbled, “No, I’m not proud. I’m ashamed.”

  “The first time we met, you guessed that I would be useful to you,” Reiko said bitterly. “All along, you must have been congratulati
ng yourself on how smart you were to take advantage of the ssakan-sama’s gullible wife.”

  “That’s not true.” Haru’s eyes reflected hurt and alarm. “I was sorry I had to lie to you. I only did it because you wouldn’t have helped me if you knew what I’d done.”

  “Oh, stop making excuses,” Reiko said, furious. “You accepted my hospitality and the things I gave you, all the while laughing behind my back.”

  “I never laughed,” Haru protested.

  “How it must have pleased you to see me make a fool of myself defending you in court!” The memory humiliated Reiko.

  “It didn’t please me,” Haru said vehemently. “I hate myself for deceiving you, after you were so kind to me. You’re my friend, and I love you.” Her face crumpled. “I’m so sorry for hurting you. Please forgive me.”

  Reiko expelled her breath in a gust of contempt and folded her arms. She supposed that Haru’s company was the least punishment she deserved. And Reiko foresaw no opportunity to cleanse the dishonor from her spirit, or to reclaim what she’d lost.

  Before they’d left Edo, Sano had told her to watch over Haru and make sure she behaved well, but not to do anything else whatsoever. He’d spoken as if he doubted whether Reiko could perform this simple task. And he was right to doubt her, Reiko thought miserably, after she’d defied him and failed at the investigation for which she’d had such high hopes.

  “I want to make up to you for the trouble I caused,” Haru said, “so I’m going to tell you something.” She laid her hand on Reiko’s. “We can’t go to the temple—it’s dangerous. You must tell your husband to turn back.”

  Outraged, Reiko recoiled from Haru’s touch. “You must be mad to think I’ll believe more of your stories! It’s obvious that you want to get out of leading us to Midori and the arsenal, and you want me along to help you shirk your obligations and run away. Well, expect no more favors from me.”