Takenori stared back at him. He slowly turned pale. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“Where are they? In your room in your father’s house? Or somewhere in this building?”
“Why would you accuse me? Anyone could have stolen those things.”
Akitada noted that so far the young man had avoided an outright denial. He pressed his advantage. “No. Not anyone. Only you or your father could have removed anything from this place and brought it to your house, and I saw the figurine in Akiko’s room myself. No one else in that house had access to the treasures, and no one here had access to her room. As I said before, I have come to like your father a great deal. He is as incapable of theft as of lying about it afterward. You, on the other hand, are a stranger to me.”
Takenori stared back at him. The color came and went in his pale face.
“I have wondered a great deal lately what sort of person you are,” continued Akitada thoughtfully, folding his arms across his chest and studying the young man. “Are you, for example, greedy for wealth and power? Or do you feel such resentment toward your father that you are willing to sacrifice your whole family and yourself to punish him for putting you and your brother aside for the child my sister bears? Or perhaps you are merely playing some sort of childish game by which you hope to break up your father’s marriage to my sister?”
Takenori flushed scarlet and bit his lip.
“Ah, so that was it. I thought so. Well, it won’t work, young man. You are playing with fire. The other day you hoped to provoke a scene between your father and his superior by placing the emperor’s figurine in my sister’s room, thinking that your father would take the director there to show him the new screen. If I had not happened to visit that day, disaster would have struck. Your father would have been arrested. How did you hope to extricate him from the trap you had built?”
Takenori cried, “They would not have dared arrest him. He does not need to steal. He is rich. It would simply have been ascribed to thoughtlessness as before. But you would have heard about it and thought he was guilty. And she would have left my father.”
“I see. Tell me, why do you resent my sister so much?”
Takenori looked away. “I have served as my father’s secretary for several years now and I saw the marriage settlements. My brother and I plied the matchmaker with wine, and he told us all about it. Your sister married my father only for his money. Your mother and your sister apparently were quite frank about it during the negotiations.” He gave Akitada a sudden, bitterly resentful look. “Cruelly frank, I might add.”
Akitada grimaced. That had the ring of truth about it. “Does your father know about this?”
Takenori flashed, “Of course not. We would never tell him what was said. My brother and I tried to talk Father out of this marriage, tried to make him renege on the contract, but he refused. When my brother became too insistent, my father got angry and sent him away.” He clenched his fists and added bitterly, “He sent his own son away to die. I know your sister suggested it to him, because we stand in the way of her unborn son. When I saw what had happened to my brother, I decided to become a monk. At least a monastery is safer than a war.” He buried his head in his hands.
Akitada knew only too well the pain of feeling rejected by a parent. “You do not really desire the monastic life, I gather?” he asked gently.
There was no answer.
Akitada sighed. “My sister has her faults,” he said after a moment, “but she had nothing to do with your brother’s decision. Neither did your father. He told me that he tried to talk Tadamine out of it. It appears that your brother is just such a hothead as you, but unlike you he is enamored of soldiering. Unfortunately, since you both made such drastic changes in your lives, Akiko has come to look at the unborn child as the natural successor to your father. It may, of course, be a girl, but there will be other children. Still, if my sister’s children succeed to the entire estate, it will be no one’s fault but yours and your brother’s. I suggest you reconsider your own plans and urge your brother to return. He can always carry out his martial activities here as a member of the Imperial Guard.”
Takenori raised his face from his hands to stare at Akitada. “B-but I thought,” he stammered, “that you and she wanted it this way. I… I assure you, the marriage contracts are very specific about her rights.”
“I know all about the contracts. I signed them and provided my sister’s dower. However, I had nothing to do with the terms. My late … mother was a shrewd businesswoman when it came to providing for her daughter. I may not approve of all that passed in my absence, but it is right that Akiko and her unborn child should be secure if something were to happen to your father. However, that does not mean that anyone wished you and your brother to be disinherited.”
“Oh.” Takenori looked suddenly lost, uncertain about what had just taken place, and not yet believing in his good fortune.
Akitada rose. “I cannot stay. Someone might come in, and I have no desire to be caught in explanations. Your plan was quite irresponsible and extremely dangerous. I trust that you would not have let it come to the point of your father’s arrest?”
Takenori started. “Oh, no! I would have confessed immediately.”
“Well, whatever you may have thought, your father loves both his sons and is very proud of you and Tadamine. It would hurt him badly to know what you did. That is why I had to come to speak to you without his knowledge. You will keep the matter to yourself, and I rely on you to return the missing items immediately to their proper places. Find a plausible explanation for how they came to be misplaced.”
Takenori scrambled to his feet. “Yes. Right away. I… am so sorry about all this. You were very good to …”
But Akitada had already slipped out of the door.
Outside, the same winter sun shone brightly. Akitada blinked his eyes against the brightness. The day no longer seemed sad to him. If life was a path through darkness into death, then at least it was good to extend a helping hand to another traveler. Besides, the past had taught him lessons which would light the way in the future.
ELEVEN
Miss Plumblossom
As it turned out, it was a whole week later before Tora and Genba were free to visit the city. They were by now well into the last month of the year, and appropriately the weather was bitter cold. There had been too many chores to do in the sadly understaffed household. But after some of the most urgent—and quiet—repairs had been made, even Akitada could see that hammering and sawing were not appropriate in a house of mourning, at least not until the taboo tablets had been taken down from the gates.
The pair were on their way toward the riverfront in the southern part of the capital. It was late afternoon, and already the light was fading. The weather was not only frigid, but a heavy gray cloud cover threatened snow. They wore their quilted robes and lined boots and stepped out briskly, eager to sample the night life.
Their way took them through residential streets, quiet and sedate, lined with tall plaster walls which hid low-roofed pavilions in large tree-shaded gardens. Here servants swept the street in front of important double gates, and litters picked up the inhabitants for their errands.
The farther south they walked, the more the character of the streets changed. The houses moved closer together and added second stories whose roofs almost touched, and the gardens shrank to a few trees which grasped for the leaden sky with skeletal branches through narrow openings between roofs. Here the merchants lived, doing business in the house which they occupied with several generations of their families. Their wives or kitchen maids swept the street here, and customers and apprentices hurried in and out of many narrow doors.