Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro 08 - Dragon King's Palace Read online

  There, upon the dais, sat Lord Matsudaira, first cousin to the shogun, head of the major Tokugawa branch clan, and daimyo of a province in the rich agricultural Kanto territory near Edo. Lord Matsudaira looked as the shogun would if a magic mirror broadened his aristocratic features, sparked intelligence in his eyes, enlarged and toughened his frail body. The man seemed a throwback to Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shogun, who'd unified Japan almost a century ago. Only birthright had placed Tokugawa Tsunayoshi ahead of Lord Matsudaira in the bakufu.

  Surrounded by guards who stood against the walls, Lord Matsudaira glared in open hostility at his guests. Yanagisawa knelt before the dais, his men ranged behind him. They exchanged bows, wary and distrustful, like rival generals meeting on a battleground to declare war. During the ritual sharing of refreshments, they behaved with an elaborate courtesy that was more insulting than outright rudeness.

  Then Lord Matsudaira said, "I've been expecting you. What took you so long?"

  Yanagisawa pretended to misunderstand Lord Matsudaira's intimation that he knew Yanagisawa thought he was involved in the kidnapping and had come to accuse him. "I'm sorry if I've inconvenienced you," he said. "Important affairs of state commanded my attention at the palace."

  His tone implied that his status as chamberlain put him at the heart of Tokugawa politics, while Lord Matsudaira hovered on the fringes despite his exalted heritage and Yanagisawa's inferior birth. As Yanagisawa scored the first point in their battle, a flash of offense crossed Lord Matsudaira's face. Yanagisawa knew the man would like to be shogun, thought he deserved the post more than did his cousin, and resented his secondary role in governing Japan.

  "More likely they were affairs of the bedchamber that busied you," Lord Matsudaira said with a sardonic smile.

  He made no secret of the fact that he loathed Yanagisawa as a parasite who'd seduced his way to the top of the bakufu and usurped power from the Tokugawa clan. He seized every chance to condemn Yanagisawa's ignoble deeds. A flame of anger leapt in Yanagisawa, but he raised an eyebrow in feigned amusement.

  "Many men have learned the high price of wit like yours," he said, reminding Lord Matsudaira that he'd used political sabotage, physical force, and assassination to keep himself on top and punish anyone who crossed him.

  "Only an inferior official rules by coercion." Disgust contorted Lord Matsudaira's mouth. "A superior one rules by honest, fair management, in the ancient tradition of Confucius."

  Yanagisawa knew that Lord Matsudaira prided himself on his reputation for honor and integrity and had led crusades against corruption in the government. The self-righteous ass! His inherited position allowed him to scorn people like Yanagisawa, the son of a retainer to a minor daimyo, who'd struggled for the authority Lord Matsudaira took for granted.

  "Might often triumphs over virtue," Yanagisawa said in a casual tone edged with hostility.

  Lord Matsudaira had repeatedly spoken against Yanagisawa to the shogun and courted the allegiance of his other enemies; but so far, his attempts to oust Yanagisawa had failed. Now Lord Matsudaira looked annoyed at the reminder, but he countered with a smug smile: "Not as often as you would like."

  He owned the loyalty of two men on the Council of Elders, and through them, he countered Yanagisawa's policies. His influence with the Tokugawa branch clans had thwarted Yanagisawa's wish to become a daimyo and ruler of his own province. Vexation goaded Yanagisawa into a malicious retort.

  "By the way," he said, "I must offer you my condolences on the recent death of your son."

  Lord Matsudaira stared, infuriated, then spoke with bitter acrimony: "That you would even mention my son while his clan still mourns him is an unforgivable insult."

  The son, Mitsuyoshi, murdered seven months ago, had been the shogun's favorite and heir apparent. Had he lived, Lord Matsudaira would have gained even more influence in the bakufu. The murder had undermined Lord Matsudaira's goal of eventual control over Japan via ruling through his son, and of ousting Yanagisawa once and for all. And Yanagisawa had benefited from Lord Matsudaira's loss. The death of Mitsuyoshi gave Yanagisawa's son a chance at the succession.

  "May I remind you that the shogun is susceptible to evil influences, but also to pressure from his clan," Lord Matsudaira said. "He shall not disinherit our legitimate kin in favor of a bastard with a drop of Tokugawa blood. You had better watch yourself, because your future is no more secure than mine."

  For now, they were at a stalemate, Yanagisawa grudgingly recognized. Yanagisawa had the shogun's protection, many allies, a foothold on the ladder to the succession, and he controlled a third of the army. But Lord Matsudaira controlled as many troops and had as many allies. Each side was too powerful for the other to openly attack. But the kidnapping, and its consequences, could decide the victor.

  "The abduction of Lady Keisho-in was a bold move on someone's part," Yanagisawa said.

  Lord Matsudaira gave him a patronizing look that said he'd expected Yanagisawa to introduce the reason for his visit now, in this way. "What would be the motive behind such a bold move?" he said, adroitly sidestepping Yanagisawa's implicit accusation.

  "The shogun will do anything to get his mother back," Yanagisawa said. "He might even sacrifice his top official."

  Sano thought the Black Lotus wanted revenge, and Senior Elder Makino thought the kidnapper wanted money; but Yanagisawa viewed the kidnapping as an attempt to alter the nation's power hierarchy.

  "So you predict that the ransom letter will order the shogun to expel you from the bakufu." Lord Matsudaira chuckled at the hint that the motive fit him and the crime was his strike against Yanagisawa. "That's an interesting theory. But before you publicize it, consider how foolish you'll look if whoever you accuse was at home in Edo, surrounded by people, when Lady Keisho-in was taken."

  Yanagisawa greeted Lord Matsudaira's alibi with disdain. "Whoever I accuse needn't have risked a personal appearance at the crime scene." He paused, then said in a tone heavy with insinuation: "I saw you drilling troops at the practice ground the other day. You have plenty of minions to do your bidding."

  "I could say the same of you." Lord Matsudaira's voice softened with menace. "Where were your troops during the abduction? What would you do to destroy me?"

  The atmosphere seemed to crackle, as if heralding a thunderstorm. Yanagisawa could almost smell gunpowder in the air as he and Lord Matsudaira poised on the narrow divide between verbal sparring and overt strife. Their men waited motionless yet alert for a signal to attack. Yanagisawa felt currents of exhilaration and dread surge through him.

  With a narrow, sarcastic smile, Lord Matsudaira said, "But of course I wouldn't accuse you of murder and treason."

  A beat passed. "Nor would I accuse you," Yanagisawa said.

  Neither of them had evidence to incriminate the other. Neither dared turn the kidnapping into an occasion for warfare-yet. They bowed to each other in cautious farewell, backing away from a clash that could plunge Japan into civil war. Then Yanagisawa and his men rose and filed from the room. Yanagisawa's expression was sternly tranquil, though his heart thundered and his body perspired from the close call. As they exited the gate and walked away down the path, he reexamined his theory in light of what had just occurred.

  Lord Matsudaira might be guilty, despite his alibi and denials; but the fact that the kidnapping was a drastic move even for someone as ambitious as Lord Matsudaira argued in favor of his innocence. Furthermore, Yanagisawa knew the dangers of pursuing one suspect while others existed. He knew what he had to gain or lose by this investigation, and he had many other powerful enemies besides Lord Matsudaira.

  "We'll make a few more calls here in the Tokugawa enclave," he told his men. "Then we'll proceed to the official quarter."

  He must identify the kidnappers and rescue Lady Keisho-in before she could come to harm-and before anyone else saved her.

  9

  Hirata and Detectives Marume and Fukida drew their horses to a stop on a deserted stretch of the Tokaido
. Rain dripped down on them, trickled in rivulets down the steep, rocky cliff at their right, and pattered through the forest on their left. The misty air cloaked the distant mountains and merged with the sky's dense, swirling gray clouds. The cold late afternoon appeared as dim as twilight.

  "This must be where the kidnapping took place," Hirata said, his voice echoing eerily in the quiet.

  He swung himself out of the saddle, wincing at the soreness in his muscles. He and Marume and Fukida had ridden almost nonstop at a furious pace since leaving Edo early that morning. They'd followed the seacoast, scaled hills, crossed rivers, endured heat and dust. They'd eaten meals on horseback, pausing only to pass inspection and change mounts at post stations. Eventually, they'd passed the remains of the kidnappers' roadblock-massive logs that had been rolled off the highway and down the slope of a gorge. Now, chilled and drenched by the rain, Hirata felt as weary as if he'd traveled through many kingdoms. And his search for Midori had only begun.

  Detectives Marume and Fukida stood on the road beside Hirata. Water dripped off the wide brims of their hats as they looked around.

  "You wouldn't know anything had happened here," Marume said.

  "The highway officials have removed the bodies and wreckage." Hirata eyed the road, which was clear of debris and spread with fresh sand.

  "And the weather has done away with whatever they missed," said Fukida.

  The trio watched the rain slowly dissolve footprints and hoof marks in the sand. "The kidnappers had to have left a trail," Hirata said. "All we have to do is find it."

  He panned his gaze across the towering cedars in the forest and the ancient, layered rock that comprised the cliffs. He pictured a horde of faceless attackers battling soldiers, cutting down servants and women. Splashes of blood and shadows in frantic motion painted his vision. The dark, lingering aura of violence radiated from every leaf, stone, and grain of soil. Hirata smelled death. He could almost hear the clashing blades, the victims' terrified cries, and Midori calling his name.

  "The women must have been tied up and gagged to keep them from running away or making noise," he said, closing his mind against horror. "The kidnappers wouldn't have transported prisoners along the road and risked someone noticing. They would have gone through the forest."

  He and the detectives secured their horses to a tree off the roadside, out of sight from passersby. They trudged up and down inside the forest, paralleling the Tokaido and gradually moving beyond the immediate scene of the attack. The rain splashed through the gloom beneath the cedars. Trampled underbrush and broken branches gave clear evidence that people had run and fought here. On fallen leaves shielded by the trees, brownish-red bloodstains marked places where bodies had lain. Hirata found a sandal stuck in the mud, probably lost by a fleeing member of Lady Keisho-in's entourage. Fukida found a straw hat, and Marume a lone sword with the Tokugawa crest on its hilt, the blade already rusting.

  "Whatever relics that the highway officials didn't remove, the local peasants must have scavenged," Fukida deduced.

  The forest seemed unnaturally still, haunted by the spirits of the dead. A sudden fluttering noise disturbed the quiet. Hirata's heart jumped; he and his comrades started. Their hands flew to their swords as they looked up. A large black crow rose upward on flapping wings and disappeared into the misty sky. The men expelled a collective breath of relief. They resumed hunting for the kidnappers' trail. Some fifty paces away from the road, the forest seemed undisturbed. Hirata and his men separated, peering between trees and scrutinizing the ground. The leaves high over them flinched when pelted with raindrops. Longing and dread for Midori burgeoned inside Hirata. A tickle in his nose and a soreness in his throat presaged a cold. He paused to sneeze, and heard a shout from Fukida, invisible within the woods.

  "Over here!" the detective called.

  Hirata and Marume hurried over to their comrade. Fukida pointed at a strip of trodden underbrush that led away from the Tokaido. Hirata dared not hope too much, but excitation sped his pulse. He and the detectives carefully stepped twenty paces along the crushed weeds and saplings, then saw branches strewn across their path. The thin, leafy shafts were bent and trampled, the ends cleanly severed by a blade. Hirata looked up and saw cut branches on a shrub that had blocked the path. Beyond this point lay more flattened underbrush.

  "Someone has broken a trail through here," he said.

  Eyes alert, he hastened forward. The detectives followed. Hirata spied footprints in bare earth and crushed, rotting mushrooms. More cut branches marked places where someone had hacked past low-hanging tree limbs. Then Hirata spotted a small, gleaming object of irregular shape. He picked it up and found himself holding a woman's sandal with a silk thong and a chunky red-lacquered sole.

  "This must belong to Midori, Reiko, Lady Keisho-in, or Lady Yanagisawa," Hirata said, afire with hope. "One of them must have dropped it while the kidnappers brought them through here."

  On through the forest he and his men plunged. As the trail continued, they found long black hairs caught on a tree trunk, as though the bark had snagged one of the women as she passed. A torn scrap of blue-brocaded silk adorned a prickly shrub. Hirata began to feel feverish, and his sore throat worsened; but exhilaration buoyed him. Every sign convinced him that he was following the route the kidnappers had taken. until the trail abruptly ended at the vertical rocky rise of a cliff.

  Hirata and the detectives stared up at the cliff in dumbfounded disbelief. An icy wind blew mist into their faces.

  "The kidnappers couldn't have climbed that, with or without the women," Marume said.

  "The trail doesn't go anywhere else," Fukida said as he paced widening arcs in the woods at the bottom of the cliff.

  Awful realization struck Hirata. "The kidnappers planted a false trail, to fool anyone who tried to follow them. They came as far as this dead end, then backtracked along the path they'd made." Breathless from fatigue and outrage, Hirata exclaimed, "It's the oldest trick in history. And I fell for it!" He cursed the kidnappers and his own gullibility. He kicked the cliff, venting his anger.

  "We couldn't have known it was a trick," Marume said.

  "We had to follow the trail because it might have led to the women," Fukida said.

  Refusing consolation, Hirata stalked off in a direction chosen at random. "What are you waiting for? We have to keep looking!"

  The detectives ran after him, caught his arms, and restrained him. "It's getting too dark," Fukida said. "Pretty soon we won't be able to see clues. We should go back to the highway, get our horses, and find someplace to spend the night."

  "Let me go!" Furious, Hirata struggled free of his comrades. "I have to find Midori."

  "If we wander around after dark, we'll only get lost," Marume pointed out. "The sosakan-sama will have to send somebody to look for us. Lot of good that will do your wife and her friends. We must wait until morning."

  Hirata couldn't bear to call off the search for a moment, let alone a whole night, while Midori was somewhere in the vast countryside, at the mercy of killers he believed had been hired by her insane father. Yet he had to admit that Marume and Fukida were right.

  Reluctantly, Hirata accompanied the detectives back down the trail toward the Tokaido. "We'll ride to the Odawara post station and find lodgings at an inn," he said. "We can ask around town to see if anyone there has seen or heard anything that might help us find the kidnappers."

  The Edo Castle sickroom was isolated in a separate compound, situated low on the hill and far from the palace to protect the court from the spirits of disease and pollution from death. Inside the drab one-story building surrounded by a plank fence and tall pine trees, the Tokugawa physicians treated castle residents who were seriously ill or injured. A shrine beside the door contained a rock that served as a seat for protective Shinto deities. In front of the shrine burned a purifying fire. A sacred straw rope encircled offerings of food and drink, a wand festooned with paper strips, and a lock of woman's hair to keep away demon
s.

  Police Commissioner Hoshina, accompanied by two personal retainers, strode into the sickroom. At one end, apprentice physicians tended herbal infusions simmering in pots on a hearth. Screens that usually partitioned the building into separate chambers had been pushed against the walls to accommodate the large crowd of palace officials that had gathered. On the crowd's fringes hovered maids and servants. Anxious conversation mingled with chanting and the rhythmic jangle of bells. The sickroom was hot from the fire and redolent with medicinal steam.

  "Let me through," Hoshina commanded the crowd.

  People stepped aside, bowing to Hoshina as he passed through their midst. At the center of the crowd, on the tatami floor, a woman was lying upon a futon. A white sheet covered her body; a white bandage wrapped her head. Her face, with its prominent cheekbones, was deathly pale, the closed eyelids shadowed purple. Near her head, an elderly sorceress clad in white robes banged a tambourine to summon healing spirits, while a priest recited spells and waved a sword to banish evil. At her feet squatted two highway patrol captains. Dr. Kitano, the chief castle physician, knelt beside the prone woman.