The Iris Fan

11

The sound of voices quarreling filled the Large Interior. The attack on the shogun had upset the peace like a kick to a beehive, Sano thought as he and Manabe arrived at Madam Chizuru’s room. The guard outside it let Sano in while Manabe waited in the corridor. The room smelled of peppermint and jasmine. Madam Chizuru sat on the floor, embroidering flowers on a doll-sized pink kimono. She jabbed and yanked, her delicate mouth pressed into an angry line. When she saw Sano, she threw her embroidery in a sewing box and rose.

“I can’t be kept locked up. I must tend to the women.”

Sano was already in bad temper from his confrontations with Manabe, Lord Ienobu, and Chamberlain Yanagisawa. “As soon as you convince me that you didn’t stab the shogun, you’re free to go.”

The room was crammed with wooden chests and wicker baskets stacked up to the ceiling. Sano and Madam Chizuru stood on a small, bare patch of floor where she would lay her bed at night. Shelves bulged with ledgers and scrolls-records she kept and official communications she received. Cabinets too full to close contained her garments, shoes, and linens. A portable desk equipped with writing brushes, inkstone, and water jar sat atop a table alongside a mirror, comb, brush, jars of makeup, a teapot and cup, and playing cards. Sano could see the red veins in the whites of her angry eyes.

“I’m innocent,” she said. “My word should be enough to convince you. I’ve worked for His Excellency for thirty years. My trustworthiness has never been doubted.”

“His Excellency isn’t the only one you work for. You’re also employed by Lord Ienobu.” That was the fact Sano knew about her.

Madam Chizuru reacted with dismay. “How did you know?”

For years Sano had been compiling a dossier on Lord Ienobu, and he’d cultivated a spy in the treasury. “Lord Ienobu pays you a monthly stipend.”

“He pays everybody who works in the Large Interior. He likes to know what goes on here.”

“But he pays you the most,” Sano said. “What do you do for him?”

Chizuru hesitated, trapped between fear of lying and fear of being punished by Lord Ienobu for talking. “I keep track of his concubines’ monthly courses. I’m supposed to tell him if any of them are pregnant.”

Of course Ienobu would be on the lookout for a pregnancy, Sano thought. No matter if the shogun had actually fathered the child, if it was a boy, he might claim it as his own even if he knew it wasn’t; he was that desperate to leave the regime to a direct descendant, and a new son would displace Lord Ienobu. But Sano suspected Madam Chizuru wasn’t telling the whole story of her arrangement with Ienobu.

“What else?” Sano asked.

“I’m paid not to tell anyone except him.”

“So he buys your silence,” Sano said, still unconvinced. “How many pregnancies have there been in the Large Interior since he started paying you?”

“None.”

“Then he hasn’t gotten his money’s worth, has he?”

“If there is one, I’m to make sure the baby isn’t born,” Chizuru admitted reluctantly.

Sano was shocked even though abortion was common and Lord Ienobu had already masterminded the murders of the shogun’s daughter and Yoshisato, the former heir. To pay someone to discover and kill unborn babies, as if they were vermin … “That’s pretty dirty work.”

Chizuru looked offended rather than shamed by his repugnance. “Not all of us can afford to turn down money. I have a granddaughter to support. My stipend isn’t enough.” She glanced at the doll’s dress in her sewing basket. “And you of all people should know what happens to somebody who won’t do what Lord Ienobu wants.”

Sano did, but he couldn’t let sympathy get in the way of justice, and if he didn’t solve the crime, the shogun would put him to death. If he couldn’t pin it on Lord Ienobu, then Lord Ienobu would. “So you couldn’t say no to Lord Ienobu. Did he tell you to stab the shogun?”

“No. He didn’t. And I already told you: I’m innocent.”

“He wants to rule Japan, and he was tired of waiting for the shogun to die, so he decided it was time for you to earn your pay. He sent you to assassinate the shogun.”

Chizuru folded her arms across her stout chest. “If he sent somebody, it wasn’t me.”

“You’re the only woman in the Large Interior who doesn’t have an alibi,” Sano lied. “The shogun has to blame somebody for stabbing him. It’s going to be you.”

The fear rekindled in her eyes; she apparently didn’t know that Tomoe and Lady Nobuko were also suspects.

“Do you think Lord Ienobu will protect you? No-he’ll let you take the fall.”

Chizuru backed away from Sano, but a stack of trunks against the wall stopped her. She glanced at the door. Manabe and the guard blocked her escape.

“You may as well confess and make Lord Ienobu share your death sentence.” Sano heard her breath rasp. Perspiration soured her peppermint-and-jasmine scent.

“When the shogun was stabbed, I was here, asleep. I can’t prove I was, but you can’t prove I wasn’t.” With an emphatic nod, Madam Chizuru clamped her prim mouth shut.

Sano couldn’t break her without using more persuasive tactics, and he didn’t believe in torture even though it was legal and commonly employed. It often produced false confessions, and Madam Chizuru might be innocent. Even without a confession he could make a case for his theory that she had tried to assassinate the shogun on orders from Lord Ienobu. The shogun, who was in a drugged, vulnerable state, might believe it and put Lord Ienobu to death. Sano and his family could make a fresh start.

But no matter how much he wanted that fresh start, Sano also wanted the truth about the crime, even if the truth was that Ienobu was innocent. It was a matter of honor as well as justice. Honor was the source of strength that had sustained him through the most difficult times in his life. If he ever gave up his honor, he was finished no matter how this investigation turned out.

And there were still at least two other suspects.

A guard came to the door and said, “Excuse me, but some man is trying to take that girl Tomoe out of the castle.”

* * *

Yanagisawa stalked through the gate of his secluded compound within Edo Castle. He ran past the barracks where his many retainers lived, then across the courtyard. A young woman skipped down the steps of the mansion to meet him. She was slender and graceful, with shiny black hair that reached her knees. It streamed out behind her like a cape. Her delicate face was stunningly beautiful. Her smile revealed perfect white teeth; her luminous black eyes sparkled. She opened her arms, and the long sleeves of her brilliant pink, flower-embroidered kimono spread like wings.

“Papa,” she cried. “See my new kimono!”

His daughter Kikuko was twenty-four years old, but she spun like a little girl. Yanagisawa shuddered with revulsion. Kikuko was feebleminded; she would never grow up. Yanagisawa was ashamed to have fathered a defective child, mortified because she looked like him. He sidestepped to get away from her as she fluttered around him and giggled.

His wife hurried out of the mansion. She was as ugly as Kikuko was beautiful. Her face was flat and dour, with slits for eyes, a broad nose and lips, and thin, greasy, graying hair. Yanagisawa had married her only because she came from a rich, powerful clan and had a large dowry. He’d only bedded her to get an heir, and after Kikuko had shown early signs of retarded development, he’d avoided touching his wife.

“Don’t bother your father. He’s busy.” His wife’s voice was soft and hoarse, like a rusty iron hinge creaking. She gently drew Kikuko away from Yanagisawa.

He disliked having her and Kikuko in his house. He’d only moved them in because their villa had been damaged by the Mount Fuji eruption two years ago. Before that he hadn’t seen Kikuko in almost ten years. When he’d discovered how beautiful she’d grown up to be, he’d realized that she might not be completely useless. As he strode past her, she stared vacantly at him. Saliva pooled at the corners of her smile. His wife beheld him with naked, miserable yearning. She was in love with him, Yanagisawa knew but didn’t care. His wife and daughter meant nothing to him. All his love, all his passion, were for Yoshisato, his absent son.

He hastened into the mansion, shouting, “Nakai-san!”

His chief retainer appeared in the corridor that led past offices where his staff worked. Yanagisawa spoke in a low, furtive voice. “Are there any new leads?”

Nakai was one of the few people Yanagisawa had told that Yoshisato was alive. The others were the troops searching for Yoshisato. “Not since that sighting in Kamakura last month that turned out to be false.”

Yanagisawa fought down despair. “Beat every bush in Japan for more leads. I have to find Yoshisato before the shogun dies and Lord Ienobu-”

A woman came hobbling toward him. Her brown kimono hung on her gaunt figure. It was Lady Someko, Yoshisato’s mother. She didn’t know that Yoshisato, her only child, was alive. Yanagisawa didn’t trust her to keep the secret. Once a beautiful woman, now devastated by Yoshisato’s death, she neglected her appearance. Her gray-streaked hair straggled around a face devoid of makeup. Her skin was waxy, her eyes set in dark hollows. As she neared Yanagisawa, he smelled her rank odor of urine, sweat, and dirty hair. She sucked in her cheeks and spat. A blob of saliva splattered on the front of Yanagisawa’s robe. She grinned, baring scummy teeth, then hobbled away.

Yanagisawa didn’t retaliate because she stirred a quagmire of pity and guilt in him. She’d hated him since the day twenty-three years ago when he’d stolen her from the husband she loved and made her his concubine. After she’d borne his son, he’d sent her away to an isolated villa. He’d ignored her and Yoshisato for seventeen years, then reentered her life and devised his scheme to put Yoshisato at the head of the regime. He and Lady Someko had become lovers again, even though she’d still hated him and her own desire for him. Now Lady Someko blamed him for the loss of Yoshisato.

She wasn’t entirely mistaken. If he hadn’t passed Yoshisato off as the shogun’s son-if he hadn’t made Yoshisato a political pawn-then Yoshisato would be safe with her now. Lady Someko had done everything possible to punish Yanagisawa. She’d yelled curses and insults; she’d thrown things at him. While making savage love to him in a futile attempt to conceive another child, she’d clawed and hit him. Yanagisawa still had the scars. Now she was so broken that spitting at him was all she could manage. He felt as if he deserved the abuse for letting her think Yoshisato was dead, for letting her suffer. It was fair retribution for what Yoshisato must be suffering at the hands of Lord Ienobu’s men.

If Yoshisato wasn’t already dead.

Lady Someko only lived in Yanagisawa’s house because she had nowhere else to go. But it wasn’t only pity or guilt that made him keep her with him; nor was it love or desire. They’d never loved each other, and he liked his sexual partners young and beautiful. Lady Someko was a connection to his son.

“Find Yoshisato,” he whispered urgently to Nakai. “Or you and I and everyone in this house are finished!”