The Dragon Scroll

by I. J. Parker

  The small man was not moving, but Scarface was up and coming at him with a knife in each hand.

  A two-handed knife fighter was the most dangerous. Tora retreated, saw a wooden stool, and grabbed it to ward off the knife thrusts while looking for a weapon of his own. There was nothing, not even a broom handle.

  Scarface slashed and Tora dodged, fending off one knife with the stool, then twisting out of reach of the other one. It was an uneven contest he had little hope of winning. He was about to try to make a run for it when someone extended a bamboo pole to him.

  Tora snatched it with his free hand and immediately attacked. Scarface cursed when one of his knives skittered across the floor. His right arm hung useless. But he kept coming, his face distorted with pain, his eyes wild, the long puckered scar that ran from his hairline to his nose turning blood-red with his fury. A mad animal.

  Tora dropped the stool and concentrated on working the pole. He almost enjoyed himself. The scarred man suffered a hard hit on the skull and another vicious jab in the stomach before the pole deprived him of his remaining knife, then pinned him against the wall by the neck.

  Noisy applause broke out. Tora, breathing hard, adjusted the end of the pole firmly on his opponent's windpipe and looked around. What he saw almost caused him to drop his weapon.

  The giant was stretched out on the floor. On his back sat a burly man with thick gray hair and beard surrounding a deeply tanned face. His eyes twinkled gleefully at Tora, and the grin showed a gap in his front teeth.

  "Hito!" gasped Tora. "What the devil are you doing here?"

  The other man gave a laugh. "Glad I found you in time, little brother. I was passing and thought I heard your voice."

  The scarred man began to gasp and choke and his face turned purple. Tora eased the pressure on the pole a little. "Go get some rope," he told the host, who was wringing his hands and goggling at the scene.

  Hidesato asked, "What will you do with them?"

  Tora considered. "Turn them over to the constables?"

  There was a collective gasp from the patrons. A few men began to inch toward the door. The host, coming back with an armful of rope, cried, "Not the constables! We'll take care of them ourselves."

  Their disposition could wait, but they made secure bundles of the three before Tora and Hidesato sat down together to drink to their unexpected reunion.

  "You've been well?" Tora asked, looking at the gray in Hidesato's hair and beard.

  The other man grimaced. "Left the army a month after you did. Been knocking about since then, hiring myself out to people with more money than fighting skill."

  Their fat host became obsequious, bringing a large pitcher of wine, two bowls of soup, and a platter of rice and vegetables. "On the house," he said with an ingratiating smile.

  "Much obliged," said Tora, raising his cup to Hidesato. "Welcome, older brother!" he said. "It warms my heart to see you. Wait till you hear what's happened to me."

  Hidesato took a sip of his soup and nodded at Tora's clothes. "You look very respectable."

  "More than respectable. I'm special assistant to ..." He leaned across and whispered in Hidesato's ear.

  Hidesato stared, then raised his cup and said dryly, "I congratulate you." Turning to the host, he said, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but we got the feeling you don't like those men over there any better than we do."

  "Those bastards?" The host spat in the direction of their prisoners. "Been paying the weasel and his idiot for years, and a small fortune since the ugly devil joined them. Most of my customers get knocked about every time they show up. I'd like to see them flayed alive, but we don't care much for constables here."

  "They've been extorting money from the market vendors," Tora said.

  Hidesato raised his brows. "You don't say. A gang."

  "Tax collectors," shouted the comedian in the group. "Taking from the poor just like those cursed dogs the governor sends around."

  All eyes turned to Tora and an embarrassed silence fell.

  Hidesato grinned.

  Tora inwardly cursed his blue robe. "I'm just a visitor," he said, "and I work for wages like you do. But if we let those three bastards go, they'll be back and take it out on you."

  The host paled. "He's right. Let's kill them," he decided.

  "That'll bring the constables for sure," Tora pointed out.

  The host waddled behind the counter and brought out a heavy earthen jar. Delving into its clinking depth, he took out ten silver pieces. "Here," he said, counting out five each for Tora and Hidesato. "That's for you if you get rid of them."

  "No," said Tora, pushing the silver back.

  "C'mon! A quick slash with a knife and it's done. And we'll help you carry the bodies to Squatters' Field later. They always find bodies there. Nobody'll know the difference, and you'll be long gone before there's any trouble."

  "No. We're not hired assassins," snapped Tora.

  Hidesato gave him a long look, then got up to peer at the three ruffians. "You know their names?" he asked the host.

  The host spat again. "Scum. The big monster's Yushi. A guy I know watched him disembowel a puppy. Yushi used to work for the thin geezer, Jubei. Jubei was a pimp for the soldiers till they found out he trained his girls to roll their customers. They beat him up and told him to stay out of that business. That's when he got into the extortion racket around the market. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the ugly guy showed up. We call him Scarface. Nobody knows his name."

  "They should be in jail," said Tora stubbornly.

  "Suppose," said Hidesato, "my very official-looking friend here tells the constables they attacked him, which is no more than the truth. You all say that you're not sure what happened exactly. The constables take them away and lock them up till the next court session. If no one appears against them, the magistrate will let them go, but they'll leave you alone from then on, for fear that you'll testify against them. They may even move to another province."

  This was considered and met with approval. The constables arrived, listened to Tora's story, and departed with their prisoners.

  Tora breathed a sigh of relief. He was going to invite Hidesato to his quarters for the night so that they could talk over old times, but when he looked around for him, his friend was gone. Without so much as a good-bye.

  * * * *

  EIGHT

  THE WIDOW

  Akitada, neatly robed and wearing his official hat, knocked for the second time that day on the gate of the Tachibana mansion. By now the news had spread and he had an audience of a gaggle of curious idlers. This time the response was prompt and he was admitted by Junjiro, who was dressed in the hempen robe appropriate for servants in mourning for their master but also wore an expression of cheerful importance. When he saw Akitada, he straightened his back, folded his arms across his chest, and bowed deeply from the waist. In a high, penetrating voice, he sang out, "Welcome. This poor hovel is greatly honored by Your Highness's condescension."

  This provoked a burst of laughter from the people in the street. Akitada stepped in quickly. "Ssh!" he said. "Close the gate."

  Junjiro obeyed. "It is not the right thing to say?"

  "No. Only your master and mistress can refer to their home in those terms. And if you must use an honorific, er, a title for me, you may call me 'Excellency.'"

  "I am grateful for your instruction, Your Excellency," said Junjiro, then spoiled the effect by adding with a broad grin, "You missed all the fun. All those baldpates chanting and hopping about on their bare feet, the servants squalling, pulling their hair, and looking like sacks of beans in these hemp gowns"--he held out his robe and grimaced--"and outside the gate everybody's trying to see what's going on. Just like a bon festival."

  "Aren't you grieving for your master?" asked Akitada, astonished at such callousness.

  "Time enough to grieve when the mistress throws us out," said the boy. "I like to eat."

  Akitada opened his mouth but thought better of it. "Take me to he
r," he demanded instead.

  "She's in there with the corpse and the monks," Junjiro informed him crudely, pointing to the main building.

  Muffled sounds of Buddhist chanting came from inside. On the veranda, Junjiro helped Akitada remove his wooden clogs and then opened the door.

  The odor of incense overwhelmed Akitada. Chanting flowed back and forth across the dusky space, seemingly drawn, like a tide, by the periodic tinkling of small brass bells at opposite ends of the room: the waves of sound swelled and pulsated with the rhythmic throbbing of drumbeats. He could barely discern shapes in the thick fog of incense. It hung low over the seated figures of yellow-robed monks, the pale hempen gowns of kneeling servants, and the darker, more formal robes of visitors, all of them faceless with their backs toward Akitada, all of them motionless in respect to the dead. Wisps of incense floated about standing candles and outlined each flame in a glowing nimbus of smoke and light.

  The thick scent of burning aloe and sandalwood made Akitada's eyes water and his nose burn. He blinked and perceived in the center of the flickering candles the funeral palanquin with the shrouded body of the late Lord Tachibana seated like some deity about to be carried in procession.

  Behind and toward the side of the palanquin, a screen had been placed. The corner of a full sleeve showed at its bottom. The widow.

  Suddenly aware that she had a clear view of him from behind the wooden lattice, Akitada approached the palanquin, bowed, and took a seat as close to the screen as he dared.

  He could now see the monks and mourners better. The servants, only five of them, were clustered about old Sato and looked not so much sad as fearful. The visitors, all male and strangers to Akitada, wore the politely pious expressions of people who would rather be elsewhere. Where were Tachibana's friends? Had he outlived them all? Where were the friends of the widow?

  Poor young girl! She had no family of her own, he knew, and was too young and too timid to have cultivated friendships with ladies from neighboring families. His heart went out to her and he glanced toward the screen. He thought he heard a soft sob, but the sound was drowned out by a renewed tinkling of brass bells.

  The monk who handled the bells was young and emphatic in his movements, too emphatic perhaps. The drumming also rolled along unevenly, and Akitada, who was no connoisseur in matters of Buddhist ritual, thought the chanting lacked practice. This struck him as strange, and he studied the faces of the monks. They were almost all young, their expressions a mix of self-importance and boredom. They reminded him of the young recruits to the imperial guard he had watched at their first public parades in the Daidairi, the seat of the imperial administration, not sure whether they ought to be insulted or flattered by the function they had been given. There was certainly nothing monklike about these young men. Still, they did not look quite as reprehensible as the ones Akitada had seen in the market or seem at all capable of behaving like the two who had abducted Tora's deaf girl. Perhaps their expressions and lack of expertise with music were typical of novices.

  His thoughts wandered to his distant friend Tasuku, who by now must be a novice himself, perhaps chanting sutras at this very moment. It seemed to him that only great personal tragedy could make a man like Tasuku give up both his pleasures and a promising career.

  This time he was certain he heard a sigh from behind the screen. When he glanced that way, the sleeve twitched a little. He bowed, trying to convey his pity with his eyes.

  A silken rustling. Then the sleeve was abruptly withdrawn, followed by more rustling and the sound of a door closing softly in the rear of the hall. Akitada felt oddly bereft. Ashamed, he turned his attention back to the service.

  The shape of the dead man was only a vague outline in its shrouding and looked insubstantial and shrunken. They must have broken his joints, Akitada thought, to achieve the customary seated position. The body had already been stiffening when he found it. An old man, done with life. Akitada recalled how Tachibana's skeletal, age-spotted hand had stroked the shell pattern on the dark blue silk robe he had worn to Motosuke's dinner. He had died in a different gown. What had he done after he arrived home? Had he retired but then got up again, dressed in a plain gown, and gone to his death? When had that happened? Had someone or something roused him? Where had he gone? He had not died in his study. There had not been enough blood there. Neither had there been any green-glazed splinters apart from the one found in his topknot. Akitada wondered again about the weapon. Whatever it was, it must have been made of glazed clay; it had broken or cracked on impact. No, it was hopeless. Better to think of a motive.

  If Tachibana had been killed to prevent him from speaking to Akitada, then someone at Motosuke's dinner had visited during the night or sent an assassin. Once again Akitada weighed each man and what he knew of him. Motosuke, though most suspect in the tax theft, would hardly murder an old man at this point. He was about to become the emperor's father-in-law. Not, at any rate, unless he believed that Akitada and Tachibana between them could change the emperor's mind, and Akitada doubted that.

  Yukinari was hiding something. The young captain had appeared too opportunely on the scene this morning. What had he been doing there? Since the crime must have happened in the dark, a murderer might have wanted to check the scene by daylight, before Akitada's visit, to make sure nothing had been overlooked. Akitada's early arrival would have surprised and dismayed the killer, and Yukinari had looked upset. Akitada recalled that the young man had acted strangely at Motosuke's. Somehow he must be connected with both Motosuke and Tachibana, and in a way that touched him profoundly and perhaps shamefully.

  What about the abbot? Akitada glanced at the chanting monks and noticed for the first time an elderly man, the only old monk there. As Akitada stared at him, the man lifted his eyes and looked back. A strange expression crossed his face and he raised his hands to make the gesture of the praying Buddha before looking down again. Very odd! Everything about Joto and his monks was strange. Could Joto have sent, one of his disciples to remove the troublesome ex-governor? Very possibly. The villainous monk in the marketplace would make a good assassin. Akitada decided to look into the wealth of that temple.

  Lastly there was Ikeda, who had persistently called the death an accident when he should have known by training and experience that it was not. Seimei's explanation that Ikeda was a mere provincial booby was not convincing in view of the very knowledgeable way in which the prefect had quoted local laws and ordinances to Akitada. But Ikeda seemed too colorless and cautious a man to plot and mastermind criminal activities on this scale.

  Akitada shifted uncomfortably. He was stiff and cold, and his back was beginning to hurt. How long should he remain? He wanted to offer his condolences to the widow, to this child left alone among servants who resented and hated her. As far as he knew, she had no one to support her but her nurse. No relation, no male protector, not even a woman friend of her own class. Had anyone been to see her? Yukinari? Ikeda? Motosuke? A girl of her tender years could not be expected to know much about settling and managing an estate. Akitada pictured her, deserted by the servants, cowering in the middle of this large, dark, empty hall, without food, while rats scurried about waiting to gnaw . . . Something tugged at his sleeve and he jerked it violently aside.

  But it was only one of the servants, a large, middle-aged female wrapped in the stiff folds of hemp. She was kneeling next to him, staring at him from eyes that looked like blackened seeds in a large, doughy moon cake.

  "My mistress begs the gentleman for a moment of his time," she said in a harsh whisper accompanied by a thin spray of spittle.

  This must be the nurse, Akitada thought. Dabbing at his face, he rose stiffly on feet that prickled painfully from the cold and followed her from the hall.

  Upright, the nurse was as tall as Akitada and seemed like a giantess. She stepped along with the large, noisy strides of a brawny laborer. They passed through a number of dim corridors along wooden floors that felt and looked like sheets of black ice.
He caught occasional glimpses of rooms, sparsely but elegantly furnished. Once he noted a beautifully written calligraphy scroll, another time an earthenware container planted with a miniature pine tree of perfect shape.

  When the big woman finally pushed open the door to her mistress's quarters, Akitada blinked. Innumerable candles and lanterns spread light over an exotic scene that resembled a Chinese palace more than a Japanese villa. The beams overhead were lacquered bright red and green, and the room seemed filled with standing racks holding embroidered robes and brocade-trimmed curtains of state. Against the wall stood carved and lacquered tables, decorated leather trunks for clothes, and tea stands of woven bamboo with dainty cups like those Akitada had once seen in the capital in the shop of a Chinese merchant. When he stepped inside, he felt underfoot a softness, warmer and more caressing than the thickest mat of sea grass and saw that rarest of luxuries, a Chinese carpet with a colorful pattern of blossoms and butterflies. Even the sliding doors were made of lacquered latticework or covered with scenic paintings on paper. The one behind him closed with a soft swish, and he was alone with the widow.