Fear, hostility, and foreboding thickened the atmosphere in the room. Sano knew he’d cast enough aspersion on Chamberlain Yanagisawa, Lord Matsudaira, and Police Commissioner Hoshina to land them all in deep trouble no matter who was guilty or not. But the shogun regarded Sano with an expression of utter, blank confusion.
“I ahh, did not quite follow everything you said,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi said. His timid voice conveyed his ever-present fear of seeming stupid. “What I want to know is, who killed Makino? Who killed Daiemon?”
Yanagisawa and Lord Matsudaira impaled Sano with sharp, steely gazes, each compelling him to name the other. This, Sano realized, was his last opportunity to choose sides, the end of negotiating the path between the two rivals. He felt angry as well as hounded by them. His natural stubbornness hardened his will. He would not bend to pressure, come what might.
“It’s too early to know who the murderer is,” Sano said. “There are still other suspects who must be investigated, such as the members of Senior Elder Makino’s household and the woman who met Daiemon at the house of assignation and is now missing.”
Disappointment sagged the shogun’s posture. Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa glared at Sano. He saw that by refusing to bend to either, he’d outraged both. Then their gazes turned cold and distant; they looked away from him. Sano imagined himself standing at the edge of a river full of perilous rapids. He envisioned the tenuous security offered by Yanagisawa and Lord Matsudaira as fragile rope bridges, slashed by his own sword, falling into the water.
“Well, ahh, you had better get busy,” the shogun told Sano. “I hold you responsible for, ahh, finding out who killed Daiemon as well as Senior Elder Makino.”
In addition to all his other troubles, Sano must now solve two murder cases instead of one. Maybe they were related, and the killer was the same person in both instances, maybe not. But both cases promised him the same, dire penalties for failure-demotion, exile, or death.
“You’d better watch your step, Sōsakan Sano,” Lord Matsudaira said in a tone replete with malevolence.
“A man who walks alone has no one to catch him if he falls,” Yanagisawa said softly. “A warrior who throws away his shield during battle invites injury.”
Menace, scorn for Sano’s stubbornness, and pity mingled in his voice. His meaning was clear: If Sano failed to solve the crimes, he couldn’t expect either faction to protect him from punishment as he could have if he’d allied himself with one or the other. And Yanagisawa had just revoked the truce that had shielded Sano against attacks from him.
“As for you…” The shogun pointed a trembling finger at Yanagisawa, Lord Matsudaira, and Hoshina. His eyes shone with the atavistic fear of a man confronted by evil spirits. “I don’t want to see any of you again until, ahh, I am certain that you did not kill Daiemon or Senior Elder Makino.”
Concern marked Yanagisawa’s, Lord Matsudaira’s, and Hoshina’s faces. Sano saw that this meeting had worsened their situation, too. Their open attacks on each other had backfired, and they’d all lost the shogun’s trust. Without it, one faction might crush the other but fail to reach the ultimate goal of dominating the present regime or the next. To what lengths would they go to recoup this critical ammunition that could determine the victor?
“You are dismissed,” the shogun said, flapping his hand at Sano, Lord Matsudaira, Chamberlain Yanagisawa, and their men. As they rose, so did Yoritomo. The shogun reached toward him and caught the hem of his robe. “You may stay.”
Sano saw the triumphant look that Yanagisawa flashed at Lord Matsudaira as they all led their men from the reception hall. Lord Matsudaira scowled in reply. Yanagisawa had entered the meeting as a man in extreme jeopardy and left it with a slim advantage: His potential successor to the dictatorship was alive, while Lord Matsudaira’s was gone.
Outside the palace, a wintry wind rattled the bare, black branches of the trees. Gray clouds trapped the rising sun and darkened the sky. Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa ranged themselves and their troops against each other.
“I won’t wait for Sōsakan Sano to deliver you to justice for killing my nephew,” Lord Matsudaira told the chamberlain. An ugly smile bared his teeth; hatred, grief, and fury raged like wildfire in his eyes. “I’ll avenge his death myself. My retribution will begin this very day.”
“Then so will your demise,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said, equally hostile.
The two foes and their troops stalked away. Sano suddenly saw his personal concerns dwarfed by the perils that faced Japan. The murder of Daiemon had escalated political strife to the point of war.
22
Thousands of soldiers marched through Edo. Banner bearers waved flags; horses in battle caparison carried swordsmen, archers sporting bows and arrows, and gunners equipped with arquebuses. Foot soldiers held their spears high. Pale rays of morning sun glinted on armor. As the armies moved along the main street, commanders shouted orders; drummers conveyed signals to troops. War trumpets blared while townspeople exclaimed at the sight of such a great military force, unseen since the civil wars that had ended almost a century ago.
A short distance away, Reiko and three other maids walked behind a palanquin in which rode Senior Elder Makino’s widow and concubine. Mounted guards and male servants on foot escorted the women. Reiko shivered with cold in her thin cloak and cotton robes, hungry after a meager breakfast of gruel and tea, fatigued from her first night in the servants’ quarters of Makino’s estate.
It had been almost midnight when the servants were finally excused from work. Reiko had endured a bath in a communal tub of scummy, lukewarm water, then retired to quarters so crowded that she could hardly move on her narrow pallet without bumping someone. Snores, coughs, mutters, and biting fleas kept her awake. Before dawn, the housekeeper Yasue had bustled through the room, beating wooden clappers and ordering everyone out of bed. She’d allowed them barely enough time to dash to the reeking privies outside and wash themselves with ice-cold water in buckets. Then Reiko had cleaned fish until sent out with Agemaki and Okitsu on a shopping expedition. At last she had another chance to spy on them.
Now a horde of troops galloped by, squeezing Reiko and her companions against a wall. Reiko was alarmed to see the Matsudaira and Yanagisawa clan crests on their armor. Excited cries arose from the other maids: “Where can all those soldiers be going? What’s happening?”
Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa must have declared war, Reiko realized. What had finally ignited the war? Cut off from her husband, Reiko could only wonder. But she had a premonition that solving the murder case might be more important now than ever. As the procession began moving again, she hurried after Agemaki and Okitsu.
Lady Yanagisawa disembarked from her palanquin outside the sōsakan-sama’s estate. Her legs were so wobbly and her head so dizzy that she almost fell. Recent, momentous events in her life had caused her a turmoil never before experienced. Her body still burned with the memory of the chamberlain’s caresses; she heard again his every tender word. But other, less pleasant memories intruded.
The conditions attached to his love were even more appalling than Lady Yanagisawa had at first thought. A black, noxious cesspool in her mind churned with thoughts she didn’t want to think. Nausea born of guilt and revulsion spoiled her anticipation of the rewards to come. She wavered among exhilaration, horror, and the temptation to give up now and avoid further torment. But she’d come this far, and the gods hadn’t struck her down as punishment for treachery committed or intended. She must go the rest of the way toward fulfilling her husband’s wishes.