The Fire Kimono

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Greetings, Sano-san,” he said in a voice loud enough to carry across a battlefield.

  Sano returned the greeting; they exchanged bows. He noted that General Isogai didn’t invite him to sit or offer him a drink. “Why did you want to see me?”

  General Isogai’s thick lips smiled; his eyes glinted with wits and good cheer. “Always ready to get right down to business, aren’t you? No wasting time. That’s what I always liked about you.”

  Sano noticed that General Isogai had spoken in the past tense. “I suppose you’ve heard that my mother is in Edo Jail for murder and I’m three days away from execution for treason.”

  “Everyone’s heard.” General Isogai’s expression sobered. “The news is halfway across the country by now.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you called me here to sympathize with me,” Sano said in a tone that prompted the other man to state his business.

  “I do offer my sympathy,” General Isogai said, feigning hurt. “Rotten luck for you and your mother. Wouldn’t wish that on my own mother, may she rest in peace. I’m not totally without a heart.”

  “But?”

  “But there’s something I have to tell you.” General Isogai spoke with the air of a judge delivering a death sentence: “I can’t support you any longer.”

  Although Sano had expected as much, he felt as if the loss of General Isogai and the Tokugawa army had knocked his legs out from under him. He couldn’t hide his bitterness as he said, “You were among the men who pushed me to challenge Lord Matsudaira. You led me to believe you’d stand by me. And now you back out at the first sign of trouble.”

  General Isogai bristled at Sano’s hint that he was a quitter and a coward. “So I encouraged you. It was your decision, and you were aware of the risks. You know that the wind can change at any moment; alliances aren’t necessarily forever. Any man who doesn’t is a fool.”

  “Better a fool than a rat,” Sano said evenly.

  General Isogai grinned and spread his hands to show that the offense intended hadn’t been taken. “Rats are smart. They know to leave a sinking ship. If I’m a rat, I’m not the only one. Uemori Yoichi and Ohgami Kaoru asked me to convey a message to you.” Those men were Sano’s allies on the Council of Elders, Japan’s chief governing body. “They can no longer afford to be associated with you, either.”

  This was how it felt to be caught in a tornado, fighting to stand upright while one’s house and belongings were sucked away by the wind. But Sano didn’t protest or beg; that would display weakness, and it was no use.

  “Then there’s nothing more to say.” Sano leveled a cold gaze on General Isogai and started toward the door.

  “Nothing except good-bye,” General Isogai said, regretful yet pragmatic. “And good luck.”

  When Sano came out of army headquarters, Hirata and the detectives were waiting for him. “What did General Isogai want?” Hirata asked.

  Sano told them. Marume said, “That bastard!”

  “It’s a good thing you found out before he and his fellow traitors could desert you on the battlefield,” Hirata said.

  “You’re better off without them,” Fukida agreed.

  But they knew, as did Sano, that he’d just lost more than half his faction. And Sano had even more pressing concerns. “Three days is long enough to lose the rest of my allies, but I don’t have time to worry about that now. Three days in Edo Jail could be the death of my mother even if I exonerate her. I’d better go there and make sure she’s all right.”

  As he and his men mounted their horses on the path that ran along the top of the castle wall below the covered corridors, a patrol guard strolled toward them. The guard saw Sano, paused, and said, “Excuse me, Honorable Chamberlain. I’ve just heard there’s trouble at your estate.”

  Sano, Hirata, and the detectives rushed home. Leaping off his mount at the gate, Sano called to the sentries, “What happened?”

  “Lord Matsudaira’s spy has been caught,” said one of the men.

  Marume and Fukida exclaimed in surprise. The sentries opened the gate, and as Sano rushed in it, he asked, “Was anyone hurt?” His heart filled with anxiety about Reiko and the children.

  The guard captain on duty met Sano in the courtyard. “Your family is safe,” he said, running alongside Sano, Hirata, and the detectives. “The situation’s under control.”

  He led them inside the mansion, to the private quarters. They arrived to see a group of soldiers leading out a man Sano recognized as Captain Ogyu. Ogyu’s right hand was wrapped in a bloodstained bandage. When the soldiers stopped him in front of Sano, he hung his head rather than meet Sano’s eyes. Huddled against a wall nearby were Lieutenant Asukai and Reiko. They looked relieved and triumphant.

  Sano hastened to his wife. “What’s going on here?”

  While Reiko explained, Sano shook his head in astonishment. “Well,” he said, “it was clever of you to put that trap to such good use.” He turned to Captain Ogyu and demanded, “What have you to say for yourself?”

  Ogyu remained sullenly quiet.

  “Are you all right?” Sano asked Reiko.

  She seemed to wilt. “Yes,” she said with a smile as fleeting as bright. Her body trembled, as if she’d only now just realized that the enemy in their midst could have done worse than try to steal information. Sano saw that the exposure of the spy, so soon after the ambush, had profoundly upset her. Her valiant courage was eroding. Her eyes shone with belated terror as well as relief that the enemy was captured, the danger averted.

  “I’d better see to the children.” As she hurried away, she swiped her hand across her eyes.

  Sano glanced at Captain Ogyu, then said to his troops, “Get this piece of filth out of here and put him to death.” He didn’t like to use capital punishment, but he would make an exception in this case. Beckoning Hirata and the detectives, he strode out of the courtyard. “Too bad for Lord Matsudaira that his spy is finished. He’s lost this round.”

  As Sano, Hirata, and the detectives mounted their horses outside the gate, Hana came running from the estate. “What’s happened to your mother?” she cried.

  Sano had forgotten about Hana. He owed her an explanation that he couldn’t just yell over his shoulder as he rode off. “Wait,” he told his men.

  He jumped off his horse and led Hana into the estate, to the grounds that fronted the mansion. These were empty except for a few gardeners working. Sano told Hana how the tutor had incriminated his mother in front of the shogun.

  “So Egen turned on her.” Distraught but not surprised, Hana said to herself, “I knew nothing good would come of that.”

  “Come of what?” Sano said.

  “Nothing,” Hana said quickly. “Did the shogun believe Egen?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. He pronounced my mother guilty.”

  “He did?” Hana stamped her feet. “That stupid idiot!”

  Sano blinked. This was the first time he’d ever heard anyone say aloud what many thought of their lord. Hana was angry enough to insult the shogun even though it was punishable by death if anyone reported her.

  “Where is your mother?” Hana demanded.

  “She’s been taken to Edo Jail,” Sano said.

  As he explained that she’d been imprisoned to await execution, the terrible reality of it sank in. A lump filled his throat.

  “No!” Hana was equally devastated. “You’ve got to get her out!”

  “I’m trying.” Now Sano saw a chance to break through the barrier of Hana’s evasions. “But I need your help.”

  “I can’t bear to think of her in that place,” Hana fretted, pacing in a circle like a trapped mouse. “She must be so frightened. I’ll do anything. Just tell me what!”

  “Tell me what happened during the Great Fire.”

  Hana faltered to a stop. “I did.”

  “We both know better. And we can’t waste any more time on games. My mother’s in jail, I have three days to prove she’s innocent, and if I don’t, she�
��ll die.” Vexed that Hana kept putting him off, Sano said, “Now talk!”

  “It won’t help your mother.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong. And my inquiries have come to a dead end. You, and she, are all I have.”

  “All right.” Defeated, Hana took a deep breath, then said, “The day the Great Fire started, your mother and I packed our things to go across the river. Then we learned that Tadatoshi was missing. We went out to look for him.”

  “I’ve already heard that,” Sano said, warning Hana not to repeat her lies.

  “I’m getting to the part you haven’t heard,” she snapped. “I turned my back on your mother—just for an instant. And she was gone.” Hana’s pupils dilated with the panic she must have felt. “I forgot Tadatoshi. It was Etsuko that I cared about, who was out in the city while the fire was burning, that I had to find. I ran through the streets, calling her name—until I saw the fire coming.”

  Her eyes shone as if with the reflections of the flames in her memory. “People came running away from it toward me. I was carried along with them. We tumbled down the bank of a canal and into the water. I was pushed under it. All around me people were kicking and screaming, trying to swim.” Hana flailed her arms. “I almost drowned. But the water saved my life. The fire leaped across the canal. It passed right over my head to the other side, but I wasn’t hurt at all.”

  Even now, forty-three years later, Hana was clearly awed by the miracle. “It was dark when I climbed out of the canal. It was so cold I almost froze.” She bent a vindictive yet sad gaze on Sano. “I didn’t find Etsuko until eight days later.”

  Sano’s heart plummeted because Hana had retracted his mother’s alibi for the time of the Great Fire, when Tadatoshi had probably met his death.

  “I wandered the city, looking for her,” Hana continued. “I asked everyone I met whether they’d seen her. By the time the bakufu put up the tents, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t go on. I gave Etsuko up for dead. I lay down in a tent with strangers and I grieved … until the morning I awakened to hear her calling my name. At first I thought I was dreaming. Then I looked outside the tent, and I saw Etsuko running toward me.” Hana’s face wore the expression of a person beholding a divine vision. “She was alive!”

  Even though Sano was upset to learn that his mother had a period of time unaccounted for, he recognized his good luck. How close he’d come to never being born! He owed his existence to whatever miracle had saved his mother from becoming one of the fire’s hundred thousand victims.

  “People I’d asked about her had directed her to me.” Pantomiming an embrace, Hana said, “I hugged her. We both cried. We were so glad to see each other! But then I noticed the blood.”

  Sano’s sense of good fortune evaporated. “What blood?”

  “The blood all over her clothes.” Hana stroked her own sleeves, as if touching phantom stains. “I thought Etsuko was hurt. I pulled her into the tent and undressed her so I could find the wound and try to help her. I washed her from head to toe. She was hysterical. But there wasn’t any wound on her.” Hana’s voice rose in surprise. “Not a scratch.”

  Horror trickled like ice water through Sano, but he felt less surprise than a sense of inevitability. “Then it wasn’t her blood.”

  “No.” Hana’s relief for his mother’s sake mingled with anger at Sano because he’d forced this compromising truth out of her. “When I asked Etsuko where the blood came from and what had happened, she refused to say. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been. I can guess what you’re thinking—that the blood was Tadatoshi’s.”

  “It could have come from someone else who was hurt while trying to escape the fire,” Sano said, grasping for an excuse.

  Hana said bitterly, “Your mother is innocent. I know. But now you know that what I didn’t want to tell you isn’t going to save her. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Sano and his troops thundered on horseback over the bridge across the canal that fronted Edo Jail. Smoke from a nearby fire veiled the roofs. Guards in the towers at the corners of the stone walls kept watch in case the wind should shift and the fire threaten the jail. Sano dismounted, stalked up to the gate sentries, and ordered, “Show me where my mother is.”

  The guards had clearly been expecting him. Everyone in the jail must have been talking about the incarceration of the mother of the shogun’s second-in-command. They opened the gate, and one guard said, “Right this way, Honorable Chamberlain.”

  Sano followed with a few troops. He’d sent Detectives Marume and Fukida to hunt for people who’d lived at Tadatoshi’s estate before the Great Fire, and Hirata to investigate Colonel Doi, still his favorite suspect. Now Sano had plans besides seeing to his mother’s health and comfort. The false testimony from his enemies and hers was one matter; the evidence from her own loyal servant, another entirely. Sano had to know the truth, come what might.

  The guard led Sano and his men to the dungeon, whose grimy plaster walls rose from a high stone foundation. Sano braced himself for the sight of his mother locked in a filthy cell with thieves and prostitutes, abused by cruel wardens. But the guard took Sano’s party through a side door and down a passage where the wails and groans of the prisoners were but faintly audible. They arrived at a chamber that contained only two people.

  Sano’s mother lay on a bed of clean straw on a wooden pallet. A ragged but clean blanket covered her. Her eyes were closed, her face slack. Kneeling beside her was Dr. Ito.

  “Greetings,” Dr. Ito said.

  Near him sat his medicine chest of herbs and potions in jars, and a tray that held cups, a teapot, and spoons. He gave no sign that he recognized Sano. Neither did Sano address Dr. Ito as his friend: They weren’t supposed to know each other. After dismissing the guard, Sano stationed his troops outside the door to keep everyone away.

  “I heard they’d brought your mother to the jail,” Dr. Ito said when he was alone with Sano. “This is the sickroom, where I treat prisoners who have contagious diseases. I persuaded the chief warden to put her here instead of in a cell.”

  “A thousand thanks,” Sano said. The stench of urine, excrement, and rot in the dungeon was faint here. He knelt and studied his mother. She didn’t react to his presence. “Is she asleep?”

  “Yes. I gave her a sedative. She was very upset when she arrived. I thought it best to calm her and relieve her suffering.”

  “I must speak with her,” Sano said. “Can you wake her up?”

  “She may become agitated again.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  “Very well, then.” Dr. Ito opened a jar from his medicine chest, poured a dose into a cup, and diluted it with water from the teapot. “This is a stimulant.” He spooned the potion into her mouth. She grimaced at the taste as she swallowed. After some moments passed, her eyes opened, the pupils hugely dilated.

  “Mother?” Sano said, bending over her. “Can you hear me?”

  Her gaze fixed blearily on him. Her lips formed his name.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Sano said. “We have to talk, about the murder of Tadatoshi.”

  She mewled in protest. Even though Sano hated pressuring her in her condition, he said, “I can’t let you put me off any longer. Things have gone from bad to worse. Lady Ateki and Oigimi say you were involved with Tadatoshi’s kidnapping and murder. They said they saw you spying on him before he disappeared.”

  Fear welled in her black, drugged gaze.

  “That’s not all.” Sano couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “Hana told me she lost you during the Great Fire. She told me that when she found you afterward, you had blood all over your clothes. Was it Tadatoshi’s?”

  “… Hana wouldn’t,” she whispered.

  Sano pitied his mother, betrayed by her lifelong companion. He loved her as much as ever, but at that moment he hated her more than any criminal who’d ever deceived him. Her actions had put not only her own life at risk, but his family’s, his friends’. “Did you kill Tadatoshi?” he demanded.r />
  “No!”

  Her voice was weak yet vehement. Sano couldn’t tell whether she was denying the accusation or expressing her horror that Sano had found her out. “If you weren’t involved in kidnapping him, why did you spy on him? If you didn’t kill him, why have you lied to me?”

  Impatient, he prodded her shoulder. She convulsed; her breath rasped. Dr. Ito said, “Be careful.”

  Forcing himself to speak gently, Sano said, “Mother, you have to tell me the truth. No matter how bad it is, at least I’ll know what I have to do to save us.”

  An internal struggle waged within her, twitching her muscles. Then she went limp and closed her eyes. Sano thought she’d fallen asleep, but she murmured, “All right.”

  Sano was amazed that she’d finally capitulated. Dr. Ito said, “The sedative has the effect of breaking down resistance.”

  That it could achieve what talk, pleading, and threats hadn’t! Sano listened as his mother began to speak.

  A sharp-edged silver moon illuminated the garden of the estate. As Etsuko crept through the shadows, her heart raced. All day she’d waited impatiently for her tryst with Egen. She reached the tea ceremony cottage, a small wooden house secluded in a grove of pine trees, unused in the winter. Egen was already there.

  He caught her in his embrace. Their desire was so great that they couldn’t wait to get inside the cottage. She pressed her body against his and felt the hardness at his loins. He fumbled the door open. They fell into the cottage, onto the mattress they’d sneaked inside. Egen kicked the door shut. Etsuko flung the quilt over them. In the warm, musty darkness under it, legs intertwined with legs. Hands tore open clothes. Flesh met hot, ardent flesh.