SI2 Bundori (1996)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  The actor slunk off stage. The music resumed, and another actor started down the bridgeway. Now Sano understood that this wasn’t a performance given by the shogun’s troupe of professional actors, but an audition for amateurs, those among the Tokugawa vassals and daimyo clans-families who governed the country’s provinces-who curried favor by catering to their lord’s taste in entertainment. A sudden awful thought occurred to Sano: Did Tsunayoshi want him to audition? His visions of performing some feat of great courage began to fade, and he took an involuntary step backward. Then the shogun beckoned.

  “Ahh, Sōsakan Sano,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi called. “Approach.” To the actors and musicians: “Go away until I call you.”

  The men on stage bowed, walked down the bridgeway, and disappeared into the dressing room. Sano, self-conscious before the curious gazes of the watching officials, crossed the courtyard and knelt before the dais.

  “I await Your Excellency’s command,” he said, bowing with his forehead touching the ground and his arms extended straight in front of him.

  “Rise,” the shogun ordered, “and come closer.”

  Sano did. He locked his knees to still their trembling as Tsunayoshi studied him. Risking a direct glance at the shogun, he wasn’t surprised to see lack of recognition in the mild eyes, or puzzlement creasing the thin, aristocratic face. If he’d forgotten Tsunayoshi’s features, so must the great dictator have forgotten his.

  “Well, ahh,” Tsunayoshi said at last. “You seem an able-bodied and able-minded samurai, just right for the task I have in mind. In fact, I cannot think why I have not utilized your services thus far.”

  He looked around at his attendants, who offered noncommittal murmurs.

  “However, I shall do so now,” Tsunayoshi said. “Kaibara Tōju was murdered last night. His head was severed from his body and mounted like a, ahh, war trophy.”

  The nature of the crime shocked Sano, as did the victim’s identity. The taking of trophy heads was a war tradition, not normally practiced in peacetime. Kaibara Tōju was a hatamoto, a hereditary Tokugawa vassal-one of many soldiers whose clans had served the shogun’s for generations and held time-honored positions in his vast empire. But neither piece of news disturbed Sano as much as his heart-sinking realization that the shogun was going to ask him to investigate the murder. Too many lives had been ruined or lost during his first and only other case. But Sano’s interest stirred in spite of himself. A not wholly unpleasant surge of fearful anxiety made him feel more alive than he had in months. Without his realizing it, his short-lived police career had given him a taste for danger and adventure. And he’d always had a yearning to seek and find the truth. Lately he’d had no chance to satisfy either desire. But now…

  “The bundori was found, ahh-” The shogun paused, frowning in an obvious attempt at recollection.

  “On a firewatch tower in the Nihonbashi pharmacists’ district, Your Excellency.”

  Silk garments rustled as the shogun and his retainers turned toward the sound of a man’s voice that came from within the building. Following their gazes, Sano saw Chamberlain Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu standing behind the dais. His curiosity roused at the sight of this man, about whom he’d heard much but seen only once before.

  Yanagisawa’s combination of height, slimness, graceful carriage, and sharp, elegant features added up to a striking masculine beauty. The keen intelligence of his expression drew attention away from his brilliant, fashionable robes and kept it on his face. Rumor said that Yanagisawa, now thirty-two years old and Tsunayoshi’s protégé since his twenties, had been and still was the shogun’s lover. Whatever the truth, Yanagisawa supposedly had much influence over bakufu affairs.

  Now Yanagisawa knelt beside the dais, in the place of honor nearest the shogun. The retainers’ obsequious bows and the haste with which they made room for him testified to his power.

  “Your Excellency,” he said, bowing to the shogun.

  Tsunayoshi smiled in greeting. “Ahh, Chamberlain Yanagisawa.” His voice held a hint of relief, as though he welcomed the arrival of someone more knowledgeable than himself. “We were discussing last night’s unfortunate incident. I have decided to give the task of apprehending the, ahh, murderer to my new sōsakan.”

  Yanagisawa glanced at Sano. His eyes, large and liquid and enhanced with thick, slanting brows, looked black even in the sunlight, as if the pupils were permanently dilated. The hostility in them pierced Sano to the core. What could he have done to offend the chamberlain?

  He’d sensed a heightened alertness about the others, including the shogun, when Yanagisawa appeared. Now the tension slackened as Yanagisawa said suavely, “A wise decision, Your Excellency.”

  The shogun seemed pleased to have his chamberlain’s approval, and the retainers grateful that no conflict had arisen, Chests heaved sighs of relief; bodies relaxed more comfortably on the cushions. Sano’s own uneasiness subsided. Yanagisawa sounded sincere, despite that first malevolent glance. He even favored Sano with a smile that lifted one corner of his finely modeled mouth.

  Tsunayoshi turned to Sano. “This murder constitutes an, ahh, act of war against the Tokugawa clan. The offender must be caught and punished promptly. We cannot let him get away with such a heinous affront to our regime, or let the daimyo think us vulnerable to attack. Therefore I am granting you the full cooperation and assistance of the, ahh, police force. All the necessary orders have been given.

  “In addition,” the shogun continued, “you will have the services of the castle’s chief shrine attendant, a mystic who has the power to communicate with the spirit world. I have ordered her sent directly to your residence. Now, Sōsakan Sano, go and begin your inquiries at once. Report to me in my chambers this evening to inform me of your, ahh, progress.” He waved his fan in dismissal.

  Sano bowed deeply. “Thank you, Your Excellency, for the great honor of being allowed to serve you,” he said, hiding his surprise and skepticism at the mention of the mystic. Never had he heard of one assisting in a criminal investigation-it wasn’t standard police procedure-but he couldn’t challenge the shogun’s decision. “I shall do my humble best.”

  He would have gone on to express his appreciation for the assistance granted him, but the shogun’s gaze wandered toward the stage. Obviously he was eager for the auditions to resume.

  “Many thanks, Your Excellency,” Sano repeated, turning to leave the theater.

  He fought to keep the bounce out of his step, and his exuberance from erupting in an unseemly smile. Earlier this morning, his hope of distinguishing himself had looked minimal. Now he had a chance to prove himself a worthy practitioner of Bushido; to perform an act that could earn his family name a place in history. A chance to experience excitement and danger, and, even more important, to find truth, deliver a criminal to justice, and possibly save lives. Furthermore, with such a wealth of resources at his disposal, success seemed almost assured. Self-confidence flowed through Sano in a warming rush. The assignment offered great potential rewards at small risk.

  As he left the palace and stepped out into the bright spring morning, Noguchi’s warning and Chamberlain Yanagisawa’s initial hostility made only a small dark shadow in the back of his mind.

  Chapter 2

  The way to Sano’s residence led down the hill through another series of passages and guarded checkpoints, over a bridge that spanned the castle’s inner moat. From there, he passed through another gate into the Official Quarter, composed of the office-mansions of the shogun’s chief retainers and highest officials.

  Sano entered the quarter, experiencing his usual disbelief that he actually lived there. Splendid estates lined the roads, each surrounded by two-story barracks with whitewashed walls decorated with black tiles laid in diagonal patterns, and rows of barred windows. Roofed gates with twin guardhouses punctuated the long expanses of black and white. Past them moved a stream of well-dressed officials and their attendants, ladies in palanquins carried by strong bearers, servants and porters, b
ands of samurai both mounted and on foot. Sano exchanged brief, formal bows with his colleagues, most of whom he knew only slightly, then stopped before his residence. There the two guards bowed and opened the gate. He passed into a paved courtyard. The empty barracks, meant for retainers he didn’t yet have, loomed around him. A high wooden fence enclosed the main house. With the reluctance he always felt upon arriving home, Sano walked through the inner gate.

  From atop a high stone foundation, the house, a huge, half-timbered building with a heavy brown tile roof that spread deep eaves over a broad veranda, seemed to repel rather than welcome him. Dark lattices covered the windows; wooden steps ascended to a protruding entrance porch. Sano entered, remembering the day he’d moved to the castle.

  When he’d protested that the house was too big for one man, and its stable of horses unnecessary, the official who’d welcomed him had said, “If you refuse that which His Excellency has bestowed upon you, he will think you ungrateful.”

  Sano had acquiesced and taken possession of the house. Now it swallowed him up in its vast, hushed space. He left his shoes in the entryway. Then, resisting the urge to tiptoe, he walked down the corridor and into the main hall.

  “Has the shrine attendant sent by His Excellency arrived yet?” Sano asked the manservant who greeted him.

  “No, master.”

  Sano grimaced in annoyance. He would rather begin his investigation by examining the murder scene, where vital evidence might be lost if he didn’t get there soon enough. He could ill afford to wait for some elderly woman to hobble over from the shrine, and he felt a strong resistance toward the shogun’s plan. He didn’t share Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s superstitious belief that communication with the spirit realm would reveal the killer’s identity. Practical means would more likely provide the answers. But the shogun had as good as ordered him to consult the mystic. For the first time, Sano suspected that his new position, for all its prestige and authority, might have constraints that would make solving a murder case harder instead of easier.

  The servant was waiting for his orders. Sano, realizing he was hungry, said, “I’d like a meal now.” With much work ahead of him, he didn’t know when he might get another chance to eat. He could do so while he waited for the mystic.

  “Yes, master.” Bowing, the servant left the room.

  Sano knelt on the dais and surveyed his new domain with customary awe and discomfort. Fine tatami covered the floor. A brilliant landscape mural decorated the wall behind him. Sliding doors stood open on both sides of the room. Through them to his left, he could see past the veranda to a garden of flowering cherry trees, mossy boulders, and a pond. Sunlight shone upon the teak-wood shelves, cabinets, and desk in the study niche, and lit the scroll and the vase of lilies in the alcove. On the right, he looked across the corridor to his bedchamber, where a maid was dusting the lacquer cabinets and chests. Faint sounds told him that other servants were at work in the kitchen, the bathchamber, the privies, the six other bedchambers, or the long corridors. But to Sano the house seemed empty, unlived-in. With his books and clothes stowed away in cabinets, nothing of him showed, except for the Buddhist altar in a corner of this room, where incense burners, a cup of sake, and a bowl of fruit stood before his father’s portrait. Accustomed to close quarters, he couldn’t expand to fill the house’s space. Neither could he relax in its grandeur.

  He’d lived for most of his life in a crowded Nihonbashi neighborhood, in the small house behind his father’s martial arts academy, with his parents and their maid Hana. The four tiny rooms had walls so thin that they could never escape one another’s sounds, or those of the city outside. His rooms in the police barracks had been larger but just as noisy. The relative silence of his new mansion unnerved him. But even worse than the silence was the loneliness.

  After his father’s death, he’d brought his mother and Hana to live with him, but his mother hadn’t taken to life at the castle. Afraid to go outside, afraid of the sophisticated neighbors and servants, she’d refused to leave her bedchamber. When Sano tried to comfort her, she just stared at him in mute misery. She couldn’t eat or sleep.

  After ten days, Hana said to Sano, “Young master, your mother will die if she stays here. Send her home.”

  Reluctantly Sano had complied, regretting that he couldn’t share his new affluence with his mother. His loneliness worsened after she and Hana left. He spent as much time as possible at the training grounds, in the archives. He went to parties given by the shogun’s other retainers, who didn’t understand why their lord had promoted him, because circumstances prohibited them from knowing. Consequently they resented him, even as they courted his favor. But after martial arts practice, work, and recreation ended, there always came that dreaded moment when he must return home, alone.

  Perhaps a marriage with Ueda Reiko would fill the emptiness in his life. Sano hoped the miai, that first, most important formal meeting between their families, would go well.

  A maid entered and placed a tray laden with covered dishes before him. He ate vegetable soup, rice, grilled prawns, sashimi, pickled radish, quail eggs, tofu, steamed sweet cakes-all tasty, prettily arranged, and in abundant quantity. Whatever he disliked about life at the castle, he couldn’t complain about the food or service. He was just finishing when he heard footsteps in the corridor. Looking up, he saw a woman, escorted by his manservant, enter the room.

  “His Excellency’s shrine attendant,” the servant announced.

  Sano had never visited the Momijiyama, the Tokugawa ancestral worship site in the castle’s innermost precinct. He’d therefore based his notion of its attendant on the old crones who tended the peasants’ Shinto shrines in the city. Now he felt a jolt of surprise when he looked at her.

  She was tall, perhaps his own height, and probably near his age. Her face was bare of white makeup, yet very pale. A spray of rare freckles dotted her cheeks and the bridge of her long, thin nose. Thick glossy black hair, which glowed rust-brown in the sunlight, was piled neatly on her head, except for one long strand that had escaped the combs to lie against her neck. She had a square jaw, its uncompromising shape repeated in the set of her shoulders and in the strong, blunt-fingered hands she placed on the floor as she knelt before the dais and bowed.

  “I am Aoi,” she said.

  Her voice had the rich, vibrant tone of a temple bell; it resonated pleasurably through Sano’s body. When she sat back on her heels to face him, her movements had a natural grace that softened her body’s angularity. Somehow she made her simple cotton kimono-pale blue printed with white clouds and green willow boughs-look more elegant than a fine silk robe on a slimmer, daintier figure. Sano thought that many men might consider her plain, a far cry from conventional standards of feminine beauty. To him, she was one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen.

  Unflinchingly, she held his gaze for several heartbeats. Her eyes were a strange, luminous light brown, Sano noticed. Then she flashed him a brief smile. His breath caught as dimples wreathed her face, transforming its somber beauty into something mercurial and mysterious.

  “His Excellency has explained that you’re to help me investigate the murder of Kaibara Tōju?” Discomfort stiffened Sano’s manner. In his world, convention kept men’s and women’s work separate. All the bakufu officials, secretaries, and clerks were male. Gone were the days when samurai women rode into battle beside their men. The novelty of the situation hadn’t troubled or even interested him when he’d imagined the shogun’s mystic as old and matronly. But to consult and collaborate with such a young, attractive woman…

  “Yes. The shogun has explained.”

  Sano had never seen anyone so serene, so self-possessed as Aoi. And she exuded a subtle but unmistakable aura of power. On some primitive level, he, like the shogun and even the most modern and sophisticated of other men, believed in the ancient myths and legends, in powers beyond human comprehension, in the existence of ghosts and demons. As he looked at Aoi, his skepticism wavered. Perhaps she re
ally could command the spirit world. A tinge of atavistic fear added to Sano’s uncertainty. Such power set her outside society’s rigid class system, where a peasant must automatically defer to a samurai. Not knowing exactly how to address Aoi, Sano took refuge in brusqueness.

  “So. Do you think you can identify the killer?”

  “Perhaps.” She lowered her eyes, inclining her head in a slow nod. Evidently a woman of few words, she showed no intention of helping the conversation along.

  “How?” Sano asked, resisting the nervous urge to fidget.

  Aoi’s gaze met his, its candor somehow more alluring than coy flirtatiousness. “I’ll perform a ritual. To contact the spirit of the dead man. Perhaps we may see the killer through his eyes. What he knew, we can know. From him. If the spirits are willing.” Her strong hand turned palm up in an eloquent gesture that conveyed the uncertainty associated with such a venture, as well as the miracles possible.

  “I see,” Sano said, intrigued by both the idea of taking a shortcut to the truth and the prospect of seeing Aoi again. But the murder scene awaited him, as did witnesses, and possible suspects among Kaibara’s family and friends. The painstaking, earthbound search for information must come first. “I’ll come to the shrine tonight.”

  “Tonight. Yes.” Taking his words as a dismissal, Aoi bowed again and rose, adding, “For the ritual, I’ll need something that belonged to the victim. To establish a link with his spirit.”

  Sano nodded. “All right.”

  And she was gone, as unobtrusively as she’d come.

  Sano gazed thoughtfully after her, wondering whether her ritual really might lead him to the killer. Then he called the manservant and ordered his horse brought to the gate.

  As he left the house, he felt a surge of anticipation that had nothing to do with his assignment. For the first time, he found himself looking forward to night at the castle.

  Chapter 3