The Fire Kimono (3 page)

“And if it doesn’t?” Lord Matsudaira said.

Ignoring him, Sano asked the shogun, “What are you going to do with the skeleton?”

The shogun chewed his lip. “I can’t keep it here.” He eyed the trunk as though afraid it would contaminate the whole castle.

Hirata said, “I suggest that it be taken to your family mausoleum at Kannei Temple.”

“Ahh, what a good idea,” the shogun said, relieved.

“I’ll do it for you,” Hirata said.

Sano knew that Hirata would take the skeleton on a long route to the mausoleum, with a stop on the way. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Excellency, I’ll begin my inquiries at once.” The sooner started, the sooner finished. Would that his world didn’t fall apart in the meantime.

As he and his men departed, he caught Yoritomo’s eye. Yoritomo gave Sano a strange look of sympathy mixed with apology. Lord Matsudaira called, “Good luck, Honorable Chamberlain,” in a voice filled with barely suppressed glee.

After Sano left, Reiko tried to rest, but she couldn’t because she kept reliving the attack. Her heart raced with panic that roiled through her in waves. The walls of the mansion seemed to press in on her. She felt trapped, like an animal in a cage. Today’s trip outside had been her last for the foreseeable future.

She heard children laughing outside and stepped onto the veranda. Her little daughter toddled across the garden and bent over to examine something in the grass. The sun shone on Akiko’s glossy cap of black hair. In her pink kimono, she looked like a flower. Reiko smiled. She walked down the steps toward the child.

“What have you found, Akiko?” she called.

Akiko looked up. Her smile faded as she recognized Reiko. She straightened, clasped her hands behind her back, and stood rigid, as if afraid of being hurt. Reiko’s heart ached with sadness because while she’d been in Ezogashima rescuing her son, she had lost her daughter.

She’d left for Ezogashima when Akiko was a year old. By the time she’d come home almost three months later, after a long, difficult journey, Akiko had forgotten her. When Reiko had tried to hold Akiko, she’d cried and screamed. Now, after three more months, the little girl was aloof. Sometimes Reiko wondered if Akiko thought her mother had abandoned her and was punishing Reiko. Whatever the explanation, the bond between mother and child had been disrupted, if not forever broken.

“Come here,” Reiko said, holding out her arms.

But Akiko backed away. A little girl and younger boy came running around the house. Behind them strolled Midori, their mother, who was Hirata’s wife and Reiko’s good friend. Akiko ran to Midori and clutched her knees. The ache in Reiko’s heart throbbed more painfully.

Midori had taken care of Akiko while Reiko was gone, and Akiko behaved as if Midori was her mother and Midori’s children her sister and brother. Reiko understood why she preferred them to her real family. Midori was cheerful, cozy, and devoted to the children. Her boy and girl had adopted Akiko as a favorite pet. In contrast, Reiko and Sano were absorbed in their troubles. Reiko had chosen rescuing Masahiro over staying with Akiko. Sano left the house early in the morning and came back too late at night to see Akiko before she went to bed. Masahiro was too busy with his martial arts lessons to play with his sister. Akiko had attached herself to the people who made her feel wanted and loved.

“Go to your mama,” Midori said with an apologetic look at Reiko.

“No!” Akiko’s voice rose to a wail. She hugged Midori tighter.

“Then go play.”

Akiko cheered up and ran off with the children. While they amused themselves by throwing pebbles in the pond, Midori said contritely, “I’m sorry, Reiko-san. But she’ll get over it. Just give her time.”

Reiko looked away, blinked, and drew deep breaths.

“I just heard what happened to you,” Midori said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Reiko said.

But the situation was more serious than the cut on her cheek. All during their troubles with Lord Matsudaira, which had gone on for some five years, Reiko had tried to be strong for Sano and not complain. Now, however, she succumbed to the temptation to unburden herself to Midori.

“I don’t know how much more I can bear,” Reiko said. Once she’d been an unusually capable woman. Her father, Magistrate Ueda, had brought her up as the son he’d never had, providing her with the classical education and martial arts training usually reserved for males. While watching him conduct trials in his court of justice, she’d developed a fascination with detective work. She had later assisted Sano with his investigations, had bravely confronted murderers and faced danger. But those days were in the past. “I feel so helpless. I can’t do anything about my husband’s problems. I can’t even leave the estate, because it’s the only place that’s safe.”

Then Reiko noticed Midori eyeing her with an expression that portended bad news. “What is it?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Midori said. “Lord Matsudaira’s estate was bombed this morning. The news is all over the castle.” She explained that Lord Matsudaira blamed Sano.

Horror caught Reiko’s breath. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse!” She knew Sano hadn’t ordered the bombing, but Lord Matsudaira wouldn’t accept the truth. “Lord Matsudaira is sure to retaliate in kind.”

She gazed at the bamboo fences surrounding the women’s quarters. Beyond them were the stone walls that enclosed the estate, and the guard turrets that rose above the trees into the blue sky. But neither fortifications nor the presence of Sano’s army comforted Reiko. The Matsudaira estate had just as much security as this one. The bombing proved that no amount of precaution could guarantee that she and Sano and their children would be unharmed. Reiko could feel the bad wind of Lord Matsudaira’s ill intentions seeping through cracks, under gates, threatening her family.

“Don’t worry,” Midori urged. “The trouble will blow over. Everything will be fine.”

Reiko didn’t believe it. “No place is safe anymore.” Determined to take action against the threat, she called to a passing servant: “Go fetch Lieutenant Asukai.”

He soon appeared. “You wanted to speak with me, Lady Reiko?” His face was bruised and his arm wore a bandage over a sword wound from the ambush.

“Yes. Come with me.”

She led Asukai across the garden. On a small rise stood a pavilion with a thatched roof supported by wooden pillars. Reiko and Asukai entered and sat on the bench. From here Reiko could keep an eye on the children, but they wouldn’t hear her and her bodyguard speak of troubling matters.

“I must thank you for saving my life,” Reiko said.

“No need,” Asukai said. “It’s my job.”

Reiko studied his handsome, earnest face. She was closer to him than any other man except Sano or her father, and she spent more time with him than with them. He’d been her bodyguard for several years, assisting in investigations she’d conducted for Sano and on her own. Under other circumstances, their relationship might have caused gossip. But it was well known that Asukai preferred men to women, and Reiko cared for him as simply a friend. She also trusted him more than she did anyone else except Sano.

“I need your help,” Reiko said.

“Of course. I’ll do anything for you. Is it a new investigation?” Asukai sounded excited, because her projects often led to adventure.

“In a way,” Reiko said. “I need you to find out anything you can about Lord Matsudaira’s business, whether he has plans to attack us, and what they entail. Ask everyone you know. Listen for rumors.”

Asukai pondered. “Chamberlain Sano has spies in and around Lord Matsudaira’s estate. Wouldn’t they hear about a plot before I could?”

“I’m afraid they might miss something.”

“All right. I know a few men who are retainers to Lord Matsudaira.” Asukai came from a big family with many connections; he was also popular and had lots of friends. “He’s not an easy man to serve. He’s under a lot of strain, and he takes it out on the people around him. They might be willing to inform on him, for the right price.”

“Money is no object,” Reiko said. Sano let her spend as much as she wanted, and although ladies didn’t customarily handle cash, his treasurer had orders to give her some when she had expenses. “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

Asukai rose and said, “I’ll get started. Rest assured that if Lord Matsudaira coughs, you’ll know.”

As late afternoon waned into evening, three groups of samurai on horseback departed from Edo Castle.

One rode out the front gate. Twenty troops, displaying his flying-crane crest on flags attached to their backs, accompanied Sano. The visor of his horned iron helmet shaded his face. They moved down the wide boulevard into the daimyo district.

The second group, identical to the first, left by a side gate. More troops escorted another Sano toward the Nihonbashi merchant quarter.

The third group consisted of three low-rank soldiers dressed in cotton kimonos, leather armor tunics bearing the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest, and plain helmets. They rode out the servants’ gate. While the first two groups went their conspicuous ways, the real Sano traveled incognito with Detectives Marume and Fukida. The decoys drew attention away from their secret journey.

Meanwhile, Hirata rode accompanied by his troops toward Kannei Temple. They escorted four bearers carrying a litter. On it sat the trunk in which the skeleton of Tokugawa Tadatoshi had traveled from its grave. At the same time, two porters clad in loincloths and headbands carried a barrel in the opposite direction.

The porters trudged through the Kodemmacho slum. The wind swept debris along the twisting roads and whipped the smoke from outdoor hearths and beggars’ bonfires outside miserable hovels. The setting sun reflected pink in open, reeking gutters. The porters skirted garbage dumps and plodded across the ramshackle wooden bridge over a canal that served as a moat for Edo Jail, a dingy fortress whose gabled rooftops lurked behind high, moss-covered walls studded with watch turrets. At the ironclad gates, the porters called to the sentries in the guardhouse: “Delivery for Dr. Ito.”

Shortly after the porters entered the jail with the barrel, Sano, Marume, and Fukida arrived, confident that nobody had followed them from Edo Castle. Any spies monitoring Sano’s comings and goings must have followed one or the other of his impersonators. When he and his men reached the gate sentries, the brawny, jovial Detective Marume said, “Let us in.”

The sentries saw the Tokugawa crests on their garments and obeyed, no questions asked. Sano’s group proceeded through the prison compound, unrecognized and unchecked by guards. They dismounted in a courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence. There stood a low building with flaking plaster walls, barred windows, and a raggedy thatched roof: Edo Morgue, where the victims of floods, fires, earthquakes, and crimes were taken. The porters-men from Hirata’s detective corps-sat on the ground near the barrel, which they’d laid at the feet of Dr. Ito.

With his plentiful white hair and tall, upright figure, dressed in the traditional dark blue coat of a physician, Dr. Ito looked no different than when Sano had last seen him almost five years ago, even though he must be over eighty now. When he saw Sano, surprise and pleasure transformed his stern face.

“Sano-san! Was it you who sent me this gift?”

They exchanged bows, and Sano said, “Yes. I’ve come to beg your expert advice.”

Once a renowned physician, Dr. Ito had lost his profession, his family, his place in society, and his liberty after he’d been caught smuggling scientific knowledge from Dutch traders and performing medical experiments. The usual punishment for those offenses was exile, but Dr. Ito had received a life sentence as custodian of Edo Morgue.

“In regards to an investigation?” Dr. Ito asked. When Sano assented, he said, “I’m delighted. It’s been a long time since the last one.” Sano had solved other cases in the past several years, but none requiring Dr. Ito’s aid. “It’s also been too long since we’ve met.”

“I regret that,” Sano said.

Coming to Edo Morgue was a risk Sano couldn’t afford except under special circumstances. Associating with a criminal could cost him his good name, his allies, and the shogun’s favor. In addition, what happened here during his visits involved foreign science. Should Sano’s collaboration in it become public, he would suffer far worse punishment than Dr. Ito had. Sano had much farther to fall.

“You’ve endangered yourself by coming here today,” Dr. Ito said with concern.

“I’ve taken precautions.” Besides employing a disguise and decoys, Sano had covered the trail he’d left in the past. Years ago he’d paid the gate sentries to keep quiet about his and his staff’s clandestine visits. Later he’d transferred those men to other, faraway posts. His disguise had fooled their replacements. Now only Dr. Ito and his equally trustworthy assistant would know of Sano’s trip here today.

“A man in your position can’t be too careful,” Dr. Ito warned. “But now that you’re here, we may as well get down to business.” He gestured to the barrel. “What have we here?”

“The skeleton of Tokugawa Tadatoshi, the shogun’s second cousin.” Sano described how the boy had disappeared during the Great Fire and today been found buried near the shrine. “I’m hoping you can tell me how he died.”