Death at the Crossroads

CHAPTER 3

“Sooooo?”

Nagato hated this. Lord Manase loved subtlety and indirectness. Nagato was just a rough country samurai, and he knew it. He was at a loss as to how to deal with this peculiar master, who kept such strange customs and who talked with such an odd accent. Now, after reporting the murder at the crossroads and the encounter with the samurai, the Lord was expecting Nagato to make some comment, but Nagato could get no hint of what kind of comment the Lord was expecting from his one-word question.

“It was probably the work of Boss Kuemon, Manase-sama,” Nagato said.

“Sooooo?”

That response again. They were sitting in the Lord’s study. For some reason, Lord Manase preferred a study with sturdy wooden shutters, instead of the usual paper shoji screens. The result was a dark and gloomy place, with deep shadows like a cave. Lord Manase sat in the center of the room, surrounded by books and trinkets. When the servants of the manor gossiped with village people, they talked of the Lord’s scholarship, how he would sit in his study late into the night, as a single candle flickered in a large metal candlestick sitting on the floor, and peruse ancient texts. The Lord loved fine things and lived and dressed in opulence, but his habits were monkish and austere. Past lords of the small district had always been rough country samurai, interested in hunting, eating, and gathering concubines. A bookish lord was something outside the realm of experience.

Nagato always found the effect of the dark study, crammed with books, unsettling. It was made all the more unsettling by the strong perfume the Lord wore. The servants said that Lord Manase seldom bathed. In this, he was just like the hairy barbarians from the far-off country of Europe, creatures that Nagato had heard of, but never seen. Lord Manase used a variety of perfumes, both purchased and invented by himself. The perfume combined with the memory of candle smoke and the grassy smell of old tatami mats made a suffocating, heavy, and complex atmosphere that Nagato found quite unbearable.

Nagato knew enough not to mention this to his master, but when they were locked together in the small, closed study, the pungent scents assaulted his nose. Nagato was desperate to say the right things to his master for many reasons. First, he wanted leave to escape the claustrophobic study. Next, the Lord’s strange speech behavior always made him uncomfortable in any circumstances. And last, and most important, this murder was one he didn’t want his Lord taking an interest in.

Lord Manase raised his closed fan to his lips, a sure sign he was losing patience with Nagato’s silence. “Perhaps there’s another explanation, Manase-sama,” Nagato blurted out.

“Sooooo?” This time Nagato could tell the intonation of the single word indicated interest.

“Yes, yes. Perhaps that ronin killed him.”

Manase gave a high, tittering laugh. “Whyyyy wooould you think that?”

Nagato knew he wasn’t clever, but he was certainly cunning. “I noticed many things about the body that indicated it wasn’t killed at the crossroads.”

“Sooooo?” Now more interest.

“Yes, yes, Lord. The merchant had only one sandal. The other sandal was not at the crossroads, which meant it was lost where the merchant was really killed.”

“Aaannd you observed that?”

Nagato squirmed a bit. Manase might ask that fool of a village headsman, Ichiro, so he didn’t want to lie directly. “I got that information by questioning the ronin.”

Lord Manase started absently tapping his closed fan into the palm of his hand, a sure sign he was thinking.

“Interesting,” Lord Manase said.

“And there’s more, Manase-sama.”

“So?”

“I am almost certain it wasn’t Boss Kuemon who killed this merchant.”

“Honto? Truthfully?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“How do you know this?”

Nagato almost smiled. He had gotten the Lord to communicate with him in full sentences, instead of the single words and subtle movements of a fan or eyebrow that the Lord normally used. “Because,” Nagato said, “when I examined the dead merchant, he still had money in his pouch. Even if for some reason Boss Kuemon would move a body to get rid of it, he would never allow it to be dumped with money.”

Nagato felt the Lord look at him with new respect.

“That’s a very interesting point, Nagato,” Lord Manase said. It was one of the few times he used Nagato’s name, and the Magistrate sat up straighter. “But why do you think the ronin killed the merchant?”

“He just knows too much about it,” Nagato said flatly. “He said the merchant wasn’t killed at the crossroads, and he said he knew even more about the murder, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. The only way he could know so much was if he did it himself.”

Once again the tapping of the fan in the open palm of the other hand. Finally, Lord Manase said, “But I thought the charcoal seller said he saw the ronin coming down the road from Uzen after he found the body.”

Now Nagato played his trump card, one that had occurred to him only moments before. “The charcoal seller and the ronin did it together. Yes, yes. Maybe he was paid, but for some reason that peasant is lying about how he found the body and the time when the ronin appeared.”

“That’s a very interesting idea. Frankly, Nagato, I’m surprised you were able to think of it.” Nagato didn’t hear the rebuke, instead he only heard the surprise and pleasure in Lord Manase’s voice. Nagato gave a solemn bow of thanks to his master.

“Sooo … are you going to arrest him?” Lord Manase said, putting his fan up to his mouth to indicate his boredom with these mundane details of administration.

Nagato started licking his lips. He gave another bow, this time one of apology. “That might be very difficult to do,” he said. “The samurai seems very strong, and with my men … that is, it seems … ahh …”

Lord Manase looked at Nagato as if he were an especially interesting variety of cricket. “In other words, you’re afraid to arrest him.”

Nagato bobbed down again. “It’s not a matter of … well …” He bowed yet another time.

“All right,” Lord Manase said. “I’ll think about this when I find the time. After all, what’s the death of another merchant? This conversation has gotten very tedious.” Manase flicked his closed fan as if he were knocking away a flea. “Leave now. When I think of something, I’ll tell you.”

Nagato gave a final bow and left the chamber of the District Lord. As soon as he was out of the room, he gave a sigh of relief. The Lord had not asked too many questions, and he had not been ordered to capture the samurai. Nagato’s objectives for the interview had been met. He swaggered down the path from the Lord’s manor to the village.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from the Lord’s manor to the village. As he made his way on the path, Nagato congratulated himself for outsmarting the weird Lord. All too often, the Lord had made it clear that he considered Nagato a fool, openly laughing at some of Nagato’s responses to the cryptic questions he asked. The snot.

The Lord affected the old-time courtly speech of nobles, but Nagato knew that the Lord’s family was no more noble than his own. They were both samurai, and although Nagato had let his own martial skills decline over the years, he was still convinced that he could best the effete Lord in a duel, if only the iron-clad bindings of duty would allow such a thing. Instead, because of an accident of battle that everyone in the village knew, the small, pasty-faced man sitting in the darkened room was absolute master of the District, and Nagato was Magistrate, sworn to serve him until death. Nagato summoned up a viscous ball of phlegm from deep within his throat and spat it out on the side of the path.

The unfairness of the situation was something that Nagato ruminated on often, especially when he was in his cups and feeling unhappy with his circumstances in life. It was a dangerous feeling to have, but it was a dangerous time. If the Taiko had risen from peasant to ruler of Japan, why couldn’t a samurai like Nagato Takamasu dream of ruling one miserable, 150-koku district like this one? (A koku was the amount of rice it took to keep one warrior fed for a year.) This was a common fantasy for the Magistrate, and it was a measure of his limited horizons that his fantasies never extended to ruling more than the tiny mountain district. Unfortunately, despite his fearsome attitude toward the farmers and peasants of the village, Nagato was not even the ruler of his own household.

Nagato’s mother-in-law had reached the age of sixty-one, the traditional age when a Japanese could say and do what he or she pleased. Of course, she had never inhibited herself too much from doing that anyway, at least in the confines of the Nagato house. But she was increasingly more blatant about her disappointment over the adoption of Nagato.

The Magistrate was not born a son of the Nagato household, and the old woman would lament that her now-deceased husband had made a terrible mistake in his haste to perpetuate the Nagato line. The Magistrate also thought a mistake was made, but for very different reasons.

The Magistrate was the firstborn son of Hotta Masahiro. By tradition, the firstborn son should inherit the rights and lands of his father, but the fact that the Magistrate had been offered for adoption meant that he was actually the product of a love affair that occurred before his mother married Hotta. Otherwise, a firstborn son would never be adopted out. Undoubtedly, this love affair had been with someone other than Hotta, although the Magistrate was never able to ascertain who his real father was.

An unexpected pregnancy would also explain why his mother, who was of a higher social status than Hotta, would marry beneath her. It was hard to arrange marriages on short notice with families of equal social status. Such marriages were complicated affairs done to solidify position or, by using the marriage to cement a military alliance, security. They took considerable time, and with a pregnant daughter growing larger by the day, a family did not have as much time as a normal marriage would require. It could arrange a marriage that was a step down the social ladder much faster than a union of peers. The groom who accepted such a bride ended up with a mate that enhanced his social status, even though the pregnancy was obviously an embarrassing inconvenience that would have to be ignored.

The Magistrate’s mother had married beneath her, and sending her firstborn to be adopted by the Nagatos was a further step down for the child. Since the child was not really a Hotta, his reputed father could adopt him out with no social stigma attached to the transaction. Hotta was a doting father to his own children, but the Magistrate was never given the privileges that a firstborn son should receive in a Japanese family, and even at an early age he knew it. When the child became a teenager, Hotta saw an opportunity to get rid of a longtime embarrassment and had him married and adopted into the Nagato family.

The Nagatos had no male heir, and they were using their daughter as a way to continue the Nagato name. A husband would be found for their daughter, and then the new son-in-law would be adopted into the family, assuming the Nagato name. Then the next generation would be “real” Nagatos.

Since the adoption could be undone, the Nagato family had tremendous power over the Magistrate, forcing him to put up with a meddling mother-in-law and a disobedient wife. The wife took strength and pleasure from her mother’s support and sharp tongue, and together they would regularly berate the man who was supposed to be the strong force in the District. It made Nagato feel small and impotent to be trapped in life by the indiscretion of his mother.

Still, Nagato thought, it was possible to better yourself even if you couldn’t undo a bad birth, a worse marriage, or a position as the vassal of a strange District Lord. It only required money, and money was what Nagato was focused on currently because he had a goal. He wanted a concubine.

Nagato’s wife had done her duty by bearing him a son; a small, nasty child that clung to, and acted like, his mother. Having done her duty, she was not expected to bring passion into his life. For that, a samurai was expected to find other women or boys. She, of course, was expected to remain faithful to him while he satisfied his appetites with others.

Nagato was a man of large appetites, but except for food, his appetites had been thwarted. Power, money, status, and women had eluded him. Now he was determined to change that. Money was the key, and once he had money, he could have the rest.

He idly thought about whom he would acquire as his concubine. That fool of a village headman, Ichiro, had a tasty eleven-year-old daughter who would do for a start. She was artless, but the thought of her taut skin brought a familiar stirring to his groin.

Nagato was taught that grace and delicacy were the marks of femininity, but the child was gawky and awkward and ran around the village like a boy. He was taught that soft flesh and a lack of muscle was desirable in a woman, but the child had bony limbs and she had already been hardened by a short lifetime filled with work. He was taught that refinement in the arts was erotic, but the child was ignorant in the ways of the Court and culture and only familiar with the life of a farmer. He was taught that the nape of a long, swanlike neck was the apex of feminine beauty, but her neck was short and stubby. Finally, as Nagato could see for himself when the child walked around, she had large peasant’s feet, not the tiny mincing feet he associated with a lovely woman.

Despite all this, the child still provoked Nagato’s lust for a simple reason: She was vulnerable.

How such a succulent morsel could come from that bag of bones of a village headman was beyond Nagato’s comprehension. He had often intimated that he would be willing to bestow his favors on the headman’s nubile daughter, but the peasant always seemed oblivious to what Nagato was talking about. Nagato sighed. Peasants were always so stupid! No matter; when the money was there he could simply buy the girl from the fool.

“Tadaima! I’m home!” he gruffly shouted as he entered his house, which was bigger and grander than that of the peasants in the village. He sat at the entryway and untied his sandals. His wizened mother-in-law came to greet him, instead of his wife, as was proper. She curled up her nose as she approached him.

“You smell of that place again. You’ve been up to see the Lord. Wash your dirty body before you come into the house,” the old woman ordered.

Nagato’s lips twisted with frustration and hatred, but he stepped outside to comply.