The Dragon King's Palace

21

Umbrellas, patterned in hues of red, pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green, bloomed like giant round flowers outside shops along the narrow street in the Nihonbashi merchant district. Inside the shops, the umbrella makers cut bamboo handles, glued paper to spokes, and painted designs. Customers haggled with clerks and departed carrying portable shade to protect themselves from the afternoon sun that rained heat upon the city. Sano and a squadron of detectives left their horses outside the neighborhood gate. They walked up Umbrella-maker’s Street, jostling past an itinerant tea seller. Sano stopped a boy who toted a load of bamboo poles and asked, “Where can I find Yuka?”

The boy pointed down the block. Sano looked, and saw what he at first thought was a little girl wielding a straw broom, sweeping debris out of a shop. He led his men toward her, and closer appraisal showed her to be a diminutive woman, dressed in a faded indigo robe and white head kerchief. When Sano called her name, she stopped sweeping and lifted a round, pleasant face to him. Brown spots and faint wrinkles on its tanned skin marked her age at some thirty-five years. Sano observed that she seemed in good health, and certainly not on her deathbed, as her daughter, Mariko, had told Madam Chizuru.

“Yes?” She bobbed a quick bow. Her bright eyes regarded Sano and his men with shy curiosity.

Sano introduced himself, then said, “I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter.”

“My daughter?” Yuka’s gaze dimmed.

“You are the mother of Mariko, aren’t you?” Sano said.

“Mariko?” The woman clutched her broom to her stubby, childlike body. Sano couldn’t tell whether fright or simplemindedness caused her to echo his words without apparent comprehension. Then she nodded, her expression wary.

“I must ask you some questions about Mariko,” said Sano. “Did she come to visit you seven days ago?”

“Visit me? No, master.” Confusion wrinkled Yuka’s brow.

Sano decided that Yuka wasn’t simpleminded; she just feared authority, as did many peasants, and her repetition was a nervous habit. Yet although Sano recognized that this would be a difficult interview, and he must exercise restraint while asking a bereaved mother for information about her dead child, he felt none of the impatience that had hounded him while questioning the merchant Naraya.

He now knew that Mariko had lied about visiting her mother. The lie, coupled with the gold coins she’d hidden, fueled his suspicion that she was the Dragon King’s accomplice. A growing certainty that he’d found a path to the truth infused Sano with an energy that calmed as well as elated him. Even while each passing moment heightened his desperation to find Reiko, for the first time he had faith that he would succeed.

“Then you didn’t see Mariko before she went away on the trip,” Sano clarified.

“Trip? What trip?” Yuka shook her head. “I didn’t know Mariko was going away. I thought she was working at Edo Castle. I haven’t seen her in six months.” A shadow crossed her good-natured countenance: She’d begun to understand that a visit from the shogun’s investigator boded ill for her. “Has Mariko done something wrong?”

Sano realized with dismay that Yuka didn’t know her daughter was dead. Perhaps the Edo Castle officials who were responsible for notifying the families of Lady Keisho-in’s murdered attendants hadn’t gotten around to Yuka. She probably couldn’t read and would have ignored the news broadsheets that had reported the massacre. The task of delivering the bad news fell to Sano.

“Come, let’s sit down,” he said, gesturing for his detectives to move away and give him and Yuka privacy.

He took the broom from Yuka and leaned it against the wall of the umbrella shop. They sat together on the edge of the shop’s raised floor, in the shade beneath the eaves, and Sano gently explained to Yuka that her daughter had been killed. As he spoke, he watched shock and disbelief glaze her eyes, and horror part her lips. A whimper of anguish arose from her. Quickly she turned her face away to hide her grief.

“Please excuse me, master,” she whispered.

Sano saw tears glisten down the curve of her cheek. His heart ached because he could imagine himself in her place, losing his own child. Feeling helpless to comfort her, he called to the tea seller and bought her a bowl of tea. Yuka drank, swallowing sobs, then hunched over the bowl in her hands, as though she craved its warmth even on this hot day. After she’d calmed, she began to speak in a wan, desolate voice.

“I knew Mariko would come to a bad end someday. But I don’t know what went wrong.”

Time pressed against Sano, and questions percolated in his mind, but he waited and listened. Yuka deserved the solace of speaking about her child, and he had a hunch that letting her tell her story in her own way could produce more valuable facts than would a formal interrogation.

“Her father died when Mariko was seven,” Yuka said. “He used to work in the umbrella shop. The proprietor took pity on me and hired me as a servant. He let Mariko and me live in the back room. I have to work day and night. I couldn’t watch Mariko. But at first I didn’t worry, because she was so quiet, so obedient, so good. Even when she got older, I trusted her to look after herself. She wasn’t a pretty girl-not the kind that boys chase.”

Nor did Mariko sound like the kind of girl who would accept bribes to spy on her mistress. Sano experienced a qualm of doubt that she’d been the Dragon King’s spy in Edo Castle. Would she turn out to be yet another dead end, despite her lie and her stash of gold coins?

“But two years ago, when she was thirteen, she started going out and staying away for days at a time. When I asked where she’d been, she wouldn’t tell me. She got quieter and quieter as the months went by.” Yuka’s tone recalled the anger, puzzlement, and frustration that her daughter’s behavior had caused her. “Even when I scolded and hit her, she kept her mouth shut and stared into space.”

Sano’s instincts quickened with the sense that he was going to learn something important. Here, he felt certain, began Mariko’s odyssey from Umbrella-maker’s Street to the Dragon King.

“One night, after Mariko had been away five days, I was wakened by the sound of moaning. I saw Mariko lying on the floor, writhing in pain and clutching her stomach and calling for help. I got up to see what was wrong. I thought she was sick. But a little while later, she gave birth to a baby boy. It was no bigger than my hand. It was born dead.”

Yuka stared, her teary gaze remote, as though she watched the scene in her memory. “I’d had no idea that Mariko was with child. I asked who the father was. She just closed her eyes. I wrapped up the baby and put it in the garbage bin. I didn’t want anyone to know she’d disgraced herself. I hoped she’d learned a lesson and would stop running around.”

This common tale of a girl gone bad had a mysterious undertone that whetted Sano’s appetite to hear more.

“But the next day, Mariko sneaked off again,” Yuka continued. “She hadn’t said a word about what happened! I only found out who the man was by accident, from a clerk in the shop. He said to me, ‘I saw your girl in Ginza the other day.’

“Hiroshi-san had gone there on business and stayed so late that the gates were closed and he couldn’t get home. He went to an inn to ask for lodging. A man came to the door and said, ‘There’s no room left.’ Hiroshi-san thought that was strange, because the place was so quiet, it seemed empty. He looked past the man, into the building, and saw Mariko sitting there.”

A signal chimed in Sano’s mind, alerting him to a possible clue. He resisted the urge to interrupt Yuka with questions.

“I was so glad to find out where Mariko was,” she said. “I begged Hiroshi-san to take me to her and help me bring her home. He’s a kind man, so he agreed. The next day, we went to the inn together. We walked up to the door, and the man came out to meet us. I said, ‘I’ve come to fetch my daughter, Mariko.’ He said, ‘She’s not here.’ I got angry because the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he’d fathered the child. ‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘Bring Mariko to me. I won’t leave without her.’

“But then he called two big, mean-looking fellows out of the house and told them to get rid of me. They threw Hiroshi-san and me out the gate. He said, ‘If you come back, they’ll kill you.’ Hiroshi-san and I went home. I knew Mariko had gotten mixed up with bad people, and I wanted to save her, but I didn’t know what to do, where to turn. I just hoped she would be all right. I prayed for her to come home.”

Yuka sat with head bowed and eyes downcast. “A whole year I waited, until last autumn. It was during the eighth month. Mariko came stumbling into our room at daybreak. She was panting, as if she’d run a long way. There were cuts and bruises on her face. Her clothes were torn and stained with blood. She smelled like smoke. She wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but she clung to me and cried.”

Last autumn… the eighth month. That time was indelibly etched into Sano’s memory, associated with events he would never forget. A possible explanation for Mariko’s strange behavior, and her condition that morning, occurred to him. He frowned as his perceptions shifted with an eerie feeling that the case had folded back upon itself and returned him to ground he’d abandoned after the ransom letter arrived. His heart began racing with excitement countered by disbelief.

“I washed Mariko and put her to bed,” Yuka said. “For four days she wouldn’t eat or do anything but lie there and weep. When she slept, she would cry out, ‘No, no!’ and act as if someone was attacking her.” Yuka pantomimed, tossing her head and thrashing her arms. “She would wake up screaming.”

Sano cautioned himself against seeing connections where none existed. He needed more evidence before he reverted to a theory that circumstances had proven wrong.

“I comforted her,” Yuka said, “and after awhile, she seemed calmer. Her wounds healed. She started eating and washing and dressing herself. I told her, ‘The world is dangerous. If you go, you’ll get hurt even worse. Stay here, where you’ll be safe.’ I thought Mariko understood. She stayed a month. She was polite and obedient and helped me with my work. But just as I began to believe she’d changed, she left again. The next time she came back was just before the New Year. There were two samurai with her. She said, ‘Mother, I’ve come to say good-bye.’

Weariness inflected Yuka’s voice. “By that time I wasn’t surprised by anything Mariko did. I said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Edo Castle,’ she said. One of the samurai said, ‘She’s going to be a maid to the shogun’s mother,’ and they took her away. That’s the last time I ever saw Mariko.”

Another signal rang in Sano’s head as he perceived another clue that tied Mariko to the kidnapping. He let a moment pass in silence, allowing Yuka her sad thoughts. Then he said, “The shogun has ordered me to find the person responsible for crimes that include the murder of your daughter. I need your help.”

“Help?” Yuka looked up. Her face, streaked and mottled red by tears, seemed to have aged a decade. “What could I do to help you?”

“Give me directions to the inn where you went looking for Mariko.” Sano conjectured that the inn was where Mariko had gone the night before the trip.

“It’s on a road that crosses the main Ginza street, eight blocks past the silver mint,” Yuka said. “Turn left on the road. There’s a picture of a carp on the sign at the inn.”

“Can you describe the man you met there?” Sano said. Perhaps the man was the Dragon King or his henchman, as well as the father of Mariko’s stillborn child.

Yuka pondered. “He was maybe thirty-five years old, and tall.” Sano noted that almost anyone probably seemed tall to her. “He was handsome, but there was something about him that frightened me.” She frowned in an effort to articulate her impression. “It was his eyes. They were so black, like he could see out of them, but I couldn’t see in. I felt as if they could pull me into their darkness.”

“Did you get his name?” Sano asked.

Yuka shook her head. Although Sano questioned her at length, she couldn’t remember any more about the man. But perhaps the strange eyes would better serve to identify him than would details on his other features or his clothing.

“Who were the two samurai that came with Mariko the last time you saw her?” Sano said.

“I don’t know,” Yuka said. “They didn’t introduce themselves. And I was too afraid to even look closely at them. But they wore crests like yours.”

She pointed to the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf insignias on Sano’s surcoat. A chill of dismay stole through Sano. If the men who’d taken Mariko to Edo Castle were indeed Tokugawa retainers, then here was more evidence that someone in the bakufu had planted her as a spy in the Large Interior. Sano quailed at the thought of telling the shogun that a traitor lurked within the regime. He dreaded extending the search for the Dragon King into the ranks of his comrades, and the peril that would result. Yet Sano had never backed away from danger while in pursuit of the truth. To save Reiko and his lord’s mother, he would take the investigation wherever he must.

“Mariko must have done terrible things that I never knew about.” Yuka began to weep again. “Her death must have been the punishment she deserved.”

“Perhaps not,” Sano said, rising. “I think your daughter got involved with someone who forced her to do things she shouldn’t have.”

No matter if the evidence suggested that Mariko had been an accomplice in the kidnapping, Sano believed she’d also been an innocent victim, unaware of the Dragon King’s evil schemes and in thrall to him. The mystery surrounding her life hinted at how she’d become his unwitting tool, and how various threads of the crime intertwined. Sano also believed Mariko had brought him a step closer to the Dragon King. Now he had additional reasons to persevere with his investigation, no matter the risk to himself.

“I promise to bring Mariko’s killers to justice and avenge her murder,” Sano told Yuka.