The Concubine’s Tattoo

11

Eta corpse handlers placed the shrouded body on the table in Dr. Ito’s workroom at Edo Morgue. Sano and Dr. Ito watched as Mura unwrapped the white folds of cloth from Lady Harume. Her eyes had dulled, and encroaching decay had blanched her skin. The foul, sweet odor of rot tainted the air. She still wore the soiled red silk dressing gown; blood and vomit still smeared her face and tangled hair. Hirata had indeed made sure that no one tampered with the evidence. Having known what to expect, Sano experienced only a momentary pang of revulsion, but Dr. Ito seemed shaken.

“So young,” he murmured. As morgue custodian, he had examined countless bodies in worse condition; yet lines of pain deepened in his face, aging him. He said in a bleak voice, “I had a daughter. Once.”

Sano recalled that Ito’s youngest child had died of a fever at about the same age as Harume. He’d also lost contact with his other children upon his arrest. Sano and Mura stood silent, heads bowed in respect for their friend’s grief, so seldom expressed. Then Dr. Ito cleared his throat and spoke in his normal brisk, professional manner. “Well. Let us see what the victim can tell us about her murder.”

He walked around the table, studying Harume’s corpse. “Dilated pupils; muscular spasm; vomiting of blood-symptoms that confirm my original diagnosis of poison by Indian arrow toxin. But perhaps there is more to learn. Mura, would you please remove her garment?”

Despite his unconventional nature, Dr. Ito followed the custom of letting the eta handle the dead. Hence, Mura performed most of the physical work of examinations, under his master’s supervision. Now he took a knife and cut the robe away from Harume’s rigid form. The dark nipples and tattoo contrasted harshly with her waxen pallor. Her limbs were smooth and shaved hairless, her skin without blemish. Sano felt rude to violate the privacy of this woman who had obviously taken care over her personal grooming.

Dr. Ito bent over the corpse’s midsection, frowning. “There’s something here.” He spread a white cotton cloth over Lady Harume’s abdomen, then pressed his hands against her, the cloth shielding him from the polluting contact with death. His fingers palpated and squeezed.

“What is it?” Sano asked.

“A swelling. It may be an artifact of the poison, or some other unrelated abnormality.” Dr. Ito straightened, his expression grave as he met Sano’s eyes. “But I’ve treated many female patients in my medical career. Unless I’m mistaken, Lady Harume was in the early stages of pregnancy.”

A heavy weight of dismay thudded inside Sano’s chest like an iron clapper in a temple bell. Pregnancy would have serious ramifications for the murder case, and for Sano as well.

Dr. Ito’s gaze conveyed unspoken concern and understanding, but he was not a man to shy away from the truth. “A dissection is the only way to tell for sure.”

Sano drew a deep breath and held it, containing the fear that burgeoned within him. Dissection, a procedure associated with foreign science, was just as illegal as when Dr. Ito had been arrested. During other investigations, Sano had risked banishment and disgrace for the sake of knowledge. So far the bakufu hadn’t discovered his involvement in taboo practices-even the most avid spies avoided Edo Morgue-but Sano feared that his luck would run out. He dreaded verification of Harume’s condition, and the consequential danger. However, a pregnancy offered myriad possible motives for Harume’s murder. Without exploring these, Sano might never identify her killer. And he never evaded the truth, either. Now he exhaled in resignation.

“All right, " he said to Dr. Ito. “Go ahead.”

At a nod from his master, Mura fetched a long, thin knife from a cabinet. Dr. Ito removed the cloth from Lady Harume’s abdomen. In the air over it, he sketched lines with his forefinger: “Cut here, and here, like so.” Carefully, Mura inserted the sharp blade into the dead flesh, making a long horizontal slash below the navel, then two shorter, perpendicular cuts at each end of the first. He drew back the flaps of skin and tissue, exposing coiled pink bowels.

“Remove those,” Dr. Ito instructed.

A strong fecal odor arose as Mura cut away the bowels and placed them in a tray. Nausea clutched Sano’s stomach; the unclean aura of ritual contamination enveloped him. No matter how many times he observed dissections, they still sickened his body and spirit. He saw, within the cavity of Lady Harume’s corpse, a fleshy, pear-shaped structure about the size of a man’s fist. From this extended two thin, curved tubes, the ends fanning out in fibrous growths resembling sea anemones, meeting two grapelike sacs.

“The organs of life,” Dr. Ito explained.

Shame exacerbated Sano’s discomfort. What right had he, a man and stranger, to look upon the most private parts of a dead woman’s body? Yet growing curiosity compelled his attention while Mura sliced into the womb, then laid it open. Inside nestled a frothy inner capsule of tissue. And curled within this, a tiny unborn child, like a naked pink salamander, no longer than Sano’s finger.

“So you were right,” Sano said. “She was pregnant.”

The child’s bulbous head dwarfed its body. The eyes were black spots in a barely formed face; the hands and feet mere paws attached to frail limbs. Threadlike red veins chased the skin, which stretched across ridges of delicate bone. A twisted cord connected the navel to the womb’s lining. The vestige of a tail elongated the diminutive rump. As Sano stared at this new wonder, awe overcame him. How miraculous was the creation of life! He thought of Reiko. Would their troubled marriage succeed and produce children who would survive, as this one had not? His hopes seemed as fragile as the dead infant. Then professional and political concerns eclipsed Sano’s domestic problems.

Had Lady Harume died because the killer had wanted to destroy the child? Jealousy might have compelled Lady Ichiteru or Lieutenant Kushida, rival and rejected suitor. However, a more ominous motive came to Sano’s mind.

“Can you determine the sex of the child?” he asked.

With the tip of a metal probe, Dr. Ito uncurled the infant and surveyed the genitals, a tiny bud between the legs. “It is only about three months old. Too early to tell whether it would have become a boy or a girl.”

The uncertainty didn’t alleviate Sano’s worries. The dead child could have been the shogun’s long-desired male heir. Someone might have murdered Lady Harume to weaken the chances of continued Tokugawa reign. This scenario posed a serious threat to Sano. Unless…

“Could the shogun have sired a child?” Dr. Ito voiced Sano’s unspoken thought. “After all, His Excellency’s sexual preference is well known.”

“Lady Harume’s pillow book mentioned a secret affair,” Sano said, then described the passage. “Her lover could be the father of the child-if they didn’t limit their activities to the kind Harume wrote about. Maybe I can prove it when I visit Lord Miyagi Shigeru today.”

“I wish you good luck, Sano-san.” Dr. Ito’s face reflected Sano’s hope. The stakes had risen; mortal danger now overshadowed the investigation. If the child belonged to another man, then Sano was safe. But if it was the shogun’s, then Lady Harume’s murder was treason: not just the killing of a concubine, but of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s flesh and blood, a crime that merited execution. And if Sano failed to deliver the traitor to justice, he himself could be punished by death.