The flattering lies that usually rolled off his tongue now stuck in his throat because he resented groveling to someone of inferior status. Lord Kii stood silent and unmoved, waiting to see how much lower he would stoop. Tasting a mortification that sickened his spirit, Yanagisawa dropped to his knees before Lord Kii. He never knelt to anyone except the shogun, and every muscle stiffened with resistance; humiliation galled his pride.
“Please let us remain allies.” Yanagisawa forced out the plea in a voice that he barely recognized as his own. Hot with shame and fury at his abasement, trembling in his terror, he gazed up at Lord Kii. “Please don’t desert me.”
Lord Kii only stared down at him with scorn. He uttered a laugh that expressed contempt toward Yanagisawa’s begging, and enjoyment of their reversed positions. He said, “Leave my estate at once. Never come here again.”
A sense of doom resounded through Yanagisawa. Before he could protest, Lord Kii called to his troops on the battlefield. They galloped over to him, primed for more combat.
“Training is over. Escort the honorable chamberlain off the premises,” Lord Kii told the troops.
Yanagisawa had no choice but to descend from the stands and slink across the battlefield like a whipped dog, while Lord Kii gloated. The troops followed him and his entourage until they exited the gate. As the gate swung shut behind them, a funeral procession of chanting priests, bearers carrying a coffin, and somber mourners filed down the street. Bells tingled; drums throbbed. Yanagisawa stood isolated and stunned, regretting how badly his scheme had backfired.
He’d lost the ally whose support he’d wanted to confirm. Even worse, he’d accomplished nothing to advance the search for the kidnapper. He’d not obtained proof of Lord Kii’s innocence and eliminated him as a suspect. Furthermore, the whole disastrous episode had shown Yanagisawa how seriously he’d misjudged the daimyo’s character, with disturbing consequences. It was now obvious that Lord Kii had nursed a grudge against Hoshina. Perhaps he’d also plotted revenge. If he had the nerve to repudiate Yanagisawa and the wits to understand that he could protect himself by joining the Matsudaira faction, then he wasn’t as dull or meek as Yanagisawa had thought. Perhaps he had arranged the kidnapping.
But Yanagisawa had failed to find evidence that Lord Kii was the Dragon King, or leads to Lady Keisho-in’s whereabouts. He’d gotten himself thrown out of the estate before he could even look for clues, and if he dared return, he might start a war that he couldn’t win, because his power was on the downslide. The pounding of his heart, and the thunder of his blood, produced a roar in his ears like a distant avalanche tumbling toward him. Yanagisawa knew not what to do, except hope for Sano to solve the case, prevent Hoshina’s execution, and spare Yanagisawa the downfall that would begin if no one rescued Lady Keisho-in.
21
Umbrellas, patterned in hues of red, pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green, bloomed like giant round flowers outside shops along the narrow street in the Nihonbashi merchant district. Inside the shops, the umbrella makers cut bamboo handles, glued paper to spokes, and painted designs. Customers haggled with clerks and departed carrying portable shade to protect themselves from the afternoon sun that rained heat upon the city. Sano and a squadron of detectives left their horses outside the neighborhood gate. They walked up Umbrella-maker’s Street, jostling past an itinerant tea seller. Sano stopped a boy who toted a load of bamboo poles and asked, “Where can I find Yuka?”
The boy pointed down the block. Sano looked, and saw what he at first thought was a little girl wielding a straw broom, sweeping debris out of a shop. He led his men toward her, and closer appraisal showed her to be a diminutive woman, dressed in a faded indigo robe and white head kerchief. When Sano called her name, she stopped sweeping and lifted a round, pleasant face to him. Brown spots and faint wrinkles on its tanned skin marked her age at some thirty-five years. Sano observed that she seemed in good health, and certainly not on her deathbed, as her daughter, Mariko, had told Madam Chizuru.
“Yes?” She bobbed a quick bow. Her bright eyes regarded Sano and his men with shy curiosity.
Sano introduced himself, then said, “I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter.”
“My daughter?” Yuka’s gaze dimmed.
“You are the mother of Mariko, aren’t you?” Sano said.
“Mariko?” The woman clutched her broom to her stubby, childlike body. Sano couldn’t tell whether fright or simplemindedness caused her to echo his words without apparent comprehension. Then she nodded, her expression wary.
“I must ask you some questions about Mariko,” said Sano. “Did she come to visit you seven days ago?”
“Visit me? No, master.” Confusion wrinkled Yuka’s brow.
Sano decided that Yuka wasn’t simpleminded; she just feared authority, as did many peasants, and her repetition was a nervous habit. Yet although Sano recognized that this would be a difficult interview, and he must exercise restraint while asking a bereaved mother for information about her dead child, he felt none of the impatience that had hounded him while questioning the merchant Naraya.
He now knew that Mariko had lied about visiting her mother. The lie, coupled with the gold coins she’d hidden, fueled his suspicion that she was the Dragon King’s accomplice. A growing certainty that he’d found a path to the truth infused Sano with an energy that calmed as well as elated him. Even while each passing moment heightened his desperation to find Reiko, for the first time he had faith that he would succeed.
“Then you didn’t see Mariko before she went away on the trip,” Sano clarified.
“Trip? What trip?” Yuka shook her head. “I didn’t know Mariko was going away. I thought she was working at Edo Castle. I haven’t seen her in six months.” A shadow crossed her good-natured countenance: She’d begun to understand that a visit from the shogun’s investigator boded ill for her. “Has Mariko done something wrong?”
Sano realized with dismay that Yuka didn’t know her daughter was dead. Perhaps the Edo Castle officials who were responsible for notifying the families of Lady Keisho-in’s murdered attendants hadn’t gotten around to Yuka. She probably couldn’t read and would have ignored the news broadsheets that had reported the massacre. The task of delivering the bad news fell to Sano.
“Come, let’s sit down,” he said, gesturing for his detectives to move away and give him and Yuka privacy.
He took the broom from Yuka and leaned it against the wall of the umbrella shop. They sat together on the edge of the shop’s raised floor, in the shade beneath the eaves, and Sano gently explained to Yuka that her daughter had been killed. As he spoke, he watched shock and disbelief glaze her eyes, and horror part her lips. A whimper of anguish arose from her. Quickly she turned her face away to hide her grief.
“Please excuse me, master,” she whispered.
Sano saw tears glisten down the curve of her cheek. His heart ached because he could imagine himself in her place, losing his own child. Feeling helpless to comfort her, he called to the tea seller and bought her a bowl of tea. Yuka drank, swallowing sobs, then hunched over the bowl in her hands, as though she craved its warmth even on this hot day. After she’d calmed, she began to speak in a wan, desolate voice.
“I knew Mariko would come to a bad end someday. But I don’t know what went wrong.”
Time pressed against Sano, and questions percolated in his mind, but he waited and listened. Yuka deserved the solace of speaking about her child, and he had a hunch that letting her tell her story in her own way could produce more valuable facts than would a formal interrogation.