“You will see,” he said, replete with private satisfaction.
“Kidnapping the shogun’s mother and slaughtering her entourage is treason against the Tokugawa regime. You’ll never get away with it.” In her growing anxiety, Reiko resorted to threats: “The army will hunt you down. You’ll die in disgrace, while your enemy goes free.”
“The army won’t touch me.” The Dragon King lifted his receding chin and rested a hand on his swords. “I’ve warned the shogun that if he sends the army after me, I’ll kill you all. He must grant my wish, or lose his beloved mother.”
Reiko couldn’t fathom what wish had spurred this man to such extreme behavior. “What did you ask the shogun to do?” she said, her curiosity almost equaling her fear.
“Be patient,” the Dragon King said with an air of condescension. “Time will tell.”
Although Reiko had learned the futility of expecting the answers she wanted from him, she said, “What will happen to us?”
“That depends on the shogun. For now, you will stay here with me. We might as well enjoy this time we have together.”
He crept close behind her. His feverish warmth and odor of incense engulfed Reiko; his breaths rasped loudly. An urge to flee almost launched Reiko to her feet, but she saw Ota hovering in the doorway and the men on the veranda, all watching. The Dragon King’s fingers tangled in her hair, fumbling and stroking. Reiko felt her skin ripple with revulsion.
No man except her husband had ever touched her in such an intimate manner. She wanted no man except Sano. She would have turned on the Dragon King, grabbed for his sword, and fought him off, but if she did, Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, and Midori would pay.
The Dragon King brushed her hair to one side. His hot, moist breath fanned the back of her neck, that erotic, intimate zone of the female body. His fingertips grazed her nape. Reiko went rigid with terror of ravishment-the worst injury, short of death, that a man could inflict upon a woman.
“The dragon lifts his spiny tail,” he whispered. “His majestic body swells and pulsates. Steam bursts from between his glittering scales. His flaming breath ignites passion.”
Reiko shuddered at this obscene parody of a love poem. She gagged on bile as she anticipated the agonizing ravishment, and the terrible disgrace.
“An ocean of desire envelops the princess in the underwater palace. Her ivory skin flushes scarlet. She parts her rosy coral lips. Her will drowns in his power. She must surrender.”
His moving lips touched Reiko’s ear. His hand quivered while he stroked her neck. “Surrender to me now, Anemone, my beautiful drowned princess,” he muttered. “Reward me for the justice I will bring you.”
Now Reiko comprehended with horror that he wasn’t just playing a game. He had such a tenuous grip on reality that he kept forgetting who she was and actually believing she was the woman he called Anemone. He wasn’t merely eccentric and irrational-he was insane. What sense could she hope to make of a madman’s purpose?
Indecision paralyzed Reiko. If she resisted him, her friends might lose their lives, but enduring his advances might not guarantee their survival. Must she submit to him? Should she fight instead? If she fought, would he or his men kill her?
“You’re trembling,” the Dragon King said. “You recoil from my touch. Why do you seem not to want me?”
Hurt and confusion echoed in his words. Reiko dared not move or speak. His hand continued stroking her. Then he said, “Ah,” in a glad tone of enlightenment. “My haste has offended your feminine sensibility. You would prefer that we delay our lovemaking until we become reacquainted. And your wish is my privilege to honor. Waiting will enhance our pleasure.”
The Dragon King’s hand dropped from her neck. He stood and called to his men: “Take her back to the keep.”
Such overwhelming relief swept through Reiko that her muscles went weak and a sigh gushed from her. Yet even as she silently thanked the gods, she knew the reprieve was only temporary.
The men entered the room and surrounded Reiko. The Dragon King gazed upon her, his eyes burning and face dark with lust. “Good-bye until next time, my dearest Anemone,” he said.
As the men led her away, Reiko prayed for a miracle to save her before the next time came.
18
The route to Izu branched southwest off the Tōkaidō and wound through mountainous, sparsely populated landscape. While Hirata and the detectives galloped along the road, the clouds dispersed, revealing brilliant blue sky, and the afternoon grew warm. Sunlight and shadow painted the cypress forests in vivid shades of green. Steam issued from cracks in the cliffs; hot springs bubbled across the rocky terrain; volcanoes breathed wisps of smoke. Tiny villages, clinging to hillsides, flashed past Hirata as his horse’s hooves thrummed under him. The wind roaring in his ears, the tumultuous speed, and the certainty that he was following the path to Midori, elated his spirit. Now he and Marume and Fukida brought their horses to a skittering halt at the junction between the main road and a narrower track that extended west and east into wilderness.
In the sudden quiet stillness, Hirata heard birds singing. He saw, on the west side of the road, a niche carved into a cliff. The niche held a little stone statue of Jizo, the Shinto patron god of travelers.
“There’s the shrine Goro mentioned,” said Fukida.
“The kidnappers sent away the porters because they didn’t want anyone to see where they went from here,” Marume deduced. “They carried the chests themselves, down that crossroad. Which way do you think they went?”
Eerie vibrations in the clear, bright air aroused Hirata’s instincts. He peered along the crossroad in one direction, then the other. An internal compass pointed him toward Midori. “This way,” he said, and rode ahead of his comrades down the westbound track.
The track climbed a slope, then gradually descended and leveled. Cypress, pine, and oak forest narrowed the track and darkened the sunlight. Leading his comrades in single file, Hirata spied dung and trampled leaves on the ground ahead.
“Someone recently brought horses this way,” he said. Moments later he glimpsed deep footprints in a stretch of bare, damp earth. “And someone carried a heavy object through here.” His heart beat fast with the increasing conviction that this road would take him to Midori and the other women, and that he would fulfill his duty to Sano and the shogun.
After perhaps an hour’s ride, a blaze of sunshine through the trees heralded a clearing in the forest. Hirata, Fukida, and Marume dismounted and walked from cool shadow into warm daylight, blinking as their eyes adjusted. The track extended down a short incline, where tree roots protruded through grass and soil, and ended at a dock built of planks. Beyond this spread a marsh-rimmed lake. A breeze rippled the water, which gleamed like an alloy of gold, copper, and quicksilver. In the middle of the lake, some hundred paces distant from where Hirata and his men stood at the forest’s edge, was an island. From its shore jutted another dock surrounded by three small boats. Nearby rose what appeared to be a fortress comprised of white buildings with curved tile roofs, a stone wall, and guard towers, amid woods.
Hirata, Marume, and Fukida gazed across the lake, their mouths agape and hands shading their eyes from the sun.
“A castle on an island in the middle of nowhere?” Fukida said in a tone that expressed their disbelief.
“It must be left over from the civil wars,” Marume said. “The forest and lake would protect the castle from attack.”
“And it’s perfect for a prison,” Hirata said. A smile cracked the rigid mask of misery that had overlain his face since he’d heard the news of Midori’s abduction. New strength infused him, and his cold even seemed to abate, because his search had finally paid off. “This must be where the kidnappers took Midori, Reiko, Lady Keisho-in, and Lady Yanagisawa.”