The Iris Fan

22

The next morning Sano, Marume, and Masahiro rode to Edo Castle. The sun shone in a brilliant blue sky, and the snow on the street and rooftops sparkled, but the air was colder than yesterday, with an edge that bit Sano’s face. At the main gate, troops from the night watch streamed out while troops arriving for day duty streamed in. Masahiro headed to the palace to see the shogun’s boy while Sano and Marume went to army headquarters, located in a watchtower high on the hill. From among the troops reporting for duty Sano chose ten soldiers he’d known when he was chamberlain, who’d had good reputations then. They accompanied Sano and Marume to the palace. The physician came out, medicine chest in hand.

“How is the shogun?” Sano asked.

“Worse, I’m sorry to say. He can’t keep down any food or water or medicine, and he passed bloody stools last night. There’s internal hemorrhaging. I’m going to mix up some medicine for it. I pray it works.”

So did Sano. He took little comfort from the fact that Lord Ienobu was no longer the shogun’s heir. If the shogun died, Yoshisato and Yanagisawa’s grip on the regime would become permanent. He took Marume and the soldiers to the Large Interior. The women were dressing and breakfasting; maids lugged bedding outside to air. The chatter was subdued by the news of the shogun’s condition. Guards loitered in the passages. Sano accosted Lieutenant Arai, the man who’d been watching Madam Chizuru yesterday.

“Who else is assigned to guard Madam Chizuru?” Sano asked.

“Lieutenant Fujisawa. He just went off night duty.”

“Go bring him back. And bring everybody else who had any contact with Madam Chizuru while she was locked in her room. I want to talk to all of you outside.”

Soon the two guards and two maids were gathered on the veranda. The soldiers stood aside while Sano and Marume eyed the lineup. Arai and the other guard were strong men in their forties. One of the maids was a girl with a round, bland face, the other an older, surly-looking woman. They shivered in the cold and clasped their hands under the sleeves of their blue cotton kimonos. They looked puzzled and nervous, the guards stoic.

Marume conducted the questioning. “Did any of you bring Madam Chizuru a message?”

Sano watched for reactions. When Marume turned his gaze on each in turn, they all said, “No,” but Sano could smell that someone was lying.

“What about a letter?” Marume asked. Heads shook. “Did you tell Madam Chizuru to say that she stabbed the shogun and Lord Ienobu told her to kill him? Did you threaten to do something bad to her if she didn’t?”

Astonishment showed on all four faces. Guards and maids shook their heads again. Sano had to consider the possibility that they were all innocent and Madam Chizuru had confessed voluntarily, but he still believed she’d been pressured by Yanagisawa.

Marume directed his next question to the guards. “Did you let anyone else in her room?”

They chorused, “No.”

Sano and Marume exchanged a conspiratorial glance. Sano announced, “Somebody’s lying. I’m going to count to ten. If that person doesn’t speak up, I’m going to kill one of you.”

The maids gasped, clutching their throats. The guards looked at each other, then turned angry, fearful gazes on Sano. Lieutenant Arai said, “You can’t do that!”

“This is about the attempted murder of the shogun,” Marume said. “Anything goes.”

Sano began counting: “One, two…”

The ten soldiers stared at him in surprise. They knew his reputation for eschewing violence during interrogations.

“Somebody’s going to die,” Marume taunted.

The guards protested loudly. The maids fell to their knees, wept, and begged, “Please, have mercy!”

Sano finished counting. Nobody confessed. Sano’s instincts pointed him to the likely culprit: Lieutenant Arai, muscular with coarsely handsome features, had an arrogance that even fear for his life didn’t quell. Sano pointed at him.

“Hey!” Arai protested. Marume seized him by the arm. He jerked, yelling, “Let me go!”

“Don’t just stand there,” Marume said to the shocked, bewildered soldiers as he wrestled with Arai and tore off his swords. “Let’s get him out of here.”

They reluctantly stepped forward. Sano ordered five of them to help Marume. “The rest of you, take these folks inside and guard them.” He gestured at the kneeling, weeping maids and the other guard, whose face had turned white with terror. He had serious qualms about threatening innocent people, and breaking Madam Chizuru’s confession went against his own interests, but honor was at stake. “I’ll be back after I cut off Lieutenant Arai’s head. If nobody confesses, I’ll keep killing people until you’re all dead.”

* * *

Masahiro went to the section of the palace where the shogun’s male concubines lived. There he met a boy he remembered from the snowball fight. “Where’s Dengoro?”

“In the sickroom.” The boy pointed to the end of the corridor, which was hazy with incense smoke. “Nobody’s supposed to go in there. He has the measles.”

Dengoro must have caught it from the shogun, Masahiro thought, feeling sorry for him. Although he was afraid of catching it himself, that wasn’t the main reason for his reluctance to go near the boy. If he discovered that Madam Chizuru’s confession was true, it would put his father in the wrong. Masahiro was torn between his father and his mother. He loved them both, even though he was furious at them about Taeko. He hated being caught in the middle of their fights, and it seemed that whoever won, things wouldn’t work out so that they would let him and Taeko marry. Mixed up and distraught, he didn’t know what else to do except what they’d asked-question Dengoro again.

As he headed down the corridor, the incense smoke used to banish the evil spirits of disease was so pungent that he coughed. It emanated from brass burners hung by the door to the sickroom. Masahiro slid open the door, waved away smoke, and saw Dengoro sit up in the bed. A red, mottled rash covered his face, but Dengoro smiled at Masahiro.

“You came back. I was wishing you would.”

“How are you feeling?” Masahiro asked.

“Not too good.” Dengoro’s smile dimmed. “I get to drink as much tea with ice and honey as I want, but I don’t want much. And I have to take nasty medicine.”

“You’ll be all better soon.” Masahiro hoped so. He liked the boy despite his stories. “And then we’ll play together.”

Dengoro cheered up. “That would be fun.”

“In the meantime, I wanted to ask if you remembered anything else from the night the shogun was stabbed,” Masahiro said.

“I wanted to talk to you about that.” Dengoro admitted with chagrin, “I make things up sometimes. It’s funny, as soon as I say them, they seem so real, I start thinking they really happened.” Worry knitted his rash-covered brow. “If I tell you the truth, do you promise not to get mad at me again?”

If Dengoro lied again, Masahiro would be even madder, because the situation was even more serious than before. But he wanted to give Dengoro a chance to redeem himself, and he needed whatever real, honest evidence Dengoro might have. “I promise.”

Dengoro sighed with relief, then said sheepishly, “I didn’t really see Lady Nobuko. And I didn’t really hear Tomoe’s voice.”

There went the evidence against those two suspects. So far so good. “What about Madam Chizuru?” Masahiro was afraid Dengoro would recant his story about her, too.

“I really did smell her,” Dengoro said. “She was in the shogun’s chamber.”

Masahiro was caught between jubilation and distrust. He welcomed this evidence that supported Madam Chizuru’s confession and incriminated Lord Ienobu, but a man once bitten by a puppy should be careful about putting out his hand again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Dengoro sounded confident. “I thought it over, and I’m sure I didn’t make it up.”

A liar who fooled himself into believing his own lies wasn’t a good witness. “Did you hear that Madam Chizuru confessed to stabbing the shogun?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m sure. She said she stabbed him. That proves I really smelled her. And my smelling her proves she really did it.” Seeing the skepticism on Masahiro’s face, Dengoro said anxiously, “Don’t you think so?”

Masahiro exhaled as he saw yet another reason to doubt Dengoro, aside from the fact that the boy’s story hinged on the confession itself. Now that Dengoro had admitted lying about Tomoe and Lady Nobuko, his story about Madam Chizuru was all he had left to offer Masahiro in exchange for friendship. Still, Masahiro knew his mother would be pleased by it, and maybe he could convince his father that Lord Ienobu had in fact ordered Madam Chizuru to kill the shogun. Maybe he would soon have good news for Taeko.

* * *

The watchtower rose from the retaining wall on a tier of Edo Castle halfway up the hill. Built on a wide base faced with flat stones, three square stories with white plaster walls decreased in size up to the smallest at the top. The eaves of tile roofs curled like wings over the barred windows of each story. Reiko approached the tower through the covered corridor atop the wall. She carried a wicker basket in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. Patrolling guards eyed her. Cold drafts blew in through the windows. She looked out with yearning at the bright blue sky. If only she could fly away to someplace where there was light, freedom, and peace! But her troubles bound her to the dark earth as if by iron chains.

“I want to talk to Madam Chizuru,” she told the sentries at the tower door. “Sano-san sent me. I’m his wife.”

One sentry escorted her up the narrow wooden stairs that zigzagged through the tower, past troops stationed in the two lower levels. At the top story he unlocked the door, let Reiko in, and locked the door behind her. The room was dim, as cold as outside, and smelled of peppermint and jasmine hair oil, urine, and excrement. Gaps in the shutters admitted faint light. As her eyes adjusted, Reiko saw what looked to be a blanket covering a pile of straw by the wall. The pile shivered; the straw rustled.

“Madam Chizuru?” Reiko said.

A head of disheveled white hair emerged from under the blanket. Daylight striped Madam Chizuru’s face. Her lips were blue with cold. Her teeth chattered as she shivered on the bed of straw. Her red, sunken eyes brimmed with misery. A bucket in the corner contained her waste, frozen solid. Reiko wanted to believe that Madam Chizuru was guilty and deserved no better, but she hated seeing an old woman treated like an animal. And Lord Ienobu, the alleged instigator of the attack on the shogun, was probably warm and comfortable under house arrest. Reiko set down her basket and untied her bundle, a silk quilt stuffed with goose down. She spread the quilt over Madam Chizuru, then called to the guard, “Bring a brazier with hot coals.”

“She’s a traitor,” he said. “Let her suffer.”

“If you don’t warm up her room, she’ll freeze to death before she can be executed, and the shogun will have your head instead.”

The guard brought the brazier. Soon the room was warm enough that Madam Chizuru, wrapped in Reiko’s quilt, stopped shivering. “Thank you,” she said, wincing as she sat up and her stiff joints creaked. “You are too kind.”

It wasn’t only kindness that had motivated Reiko to provide comforts for Madam Chizuru; they might induce her to talk. “Have you been given anything to eat?” Madam Chizuru shook her head. Reiko said, “I’ve brought food,” and removed lacquer lunch boxes and a jug of hot tea from her basket.

Madam Chizuru drank thirstily and devoured the rice balls, steamed fish with fermented black beans, sesame noodles with prawns, and pickled lotus root, carrots, and radish. Reiko knelt beside her and waited. Her hunger satisfied, she beheld Reiko with startled recognition. “You’re Sano-san’s wife.” Suspicion hooded her eyes. “What do you want?”

Reiko wanted her to prove that she and Lord Ienobu were guilty. But Reiko felt sorry for Madam Chizuru, and she had to consider that there was at least a chance that the woman was innocent and think twice about forcing her to incriminate herself again. Reiko had her own conscience, even if it wasn’t as exacting as Sano’s code of honor. But she also had a fierce loyalty to her family, whom she must protect above all.

“I want to talk to you about your confession,” Reiko said.

Madam Chizuru pulled the quilt tighter around her, as if Reiko might snatch it away.

“My husband says you were uncertain about some points, such as the number of times you stabbed the shogun.”

“It was four times.” Madam Chizuru seemed suddenly eager to talk.

Reiko was startled by the correct number. “How are you so sure now?”

“I remembered.”

“Do you remember the design on the iron fan?”

“Irises,” Madam Chizuru said promptly. “Blue irises on a gold background.”

“Did someone tell you?”

“No.” Madam Chizuru repeated, “I remembered.”

Reiko thought of Yanagisawa’s men. They’d heard her confession; they knew where its holes were; they would have told Yanagisawa, who had all the information about the stabbing. He could have told them the details and sent one of them to help Madam Chizuru fill in the holes. But Lady Nobuko and Lord Yoshimune were also possibilities. They, too, had spies in the palace; they, too, could have smuggled the information to Madam Chizuru. Reiko began to suspect, against her will, that Sano was right and Madam Chizuru’s confession was false.

She asked the question that loomed large in her mind. “Why are you trying so hard to make everybody believe you’re guilty?”

Madam Chizuru tightened her jowls. “I already told your husband.”

“You’re about to be executed. Why are you so eager to die?”

“I don’t want to talk anymore.” Madam Chizuru began shivering again, even though the room was warm.

“Have you a grudge against Lord Ienobu? Did you confess to get him in trouble?”

Obstinacy stiffened Madam Chizuru’s spine. “He’s guilty. So am I.”

Reiko felt pulled in opposite directions. This talk was going exactly as she’d hoped-Madam Chizuru had filled in the holes in her confession, which indicated that she and Ienobu were in fact guilty-but Reiko intuited that something was terribly wrong. On a hunch, she said, “Do you have any family?” She recalled hearing that Madam Chizuru had been widowed long ago, before she’d become a concubine to the previous shogun.

Madam Chizuru maintained her stiff posture, but her lips quivered. “Only my granddaughter,” she whispered. “She is eleven years old.”

“Have you thought about what will happen to her if you’re executed for treason?” Reiko asked. “She’ll be executed, too. It’s the law.” She pictured a little girl who looked like Akiko kneeling on the dirt while the executioner raised his sword over her. The awfulness of the image touched on Reiko’s grief for her baby. She blinked away the tears that were always ready to fall. “If your confession is a lie, it’s not too late to take it back.” Aware that every word she said went against her own family’s interests, Reiko said, “Why don’t you try to save yourself, for your granddaughter’s sake?”

“I’m doing it for her!” Madam Chizuru burst out. Her self-control shattered with an abruptness that stunned Reiko. She rocked back and forth. “Chamberlain Yanagisawa kidnapped her! He said that if I confessed that I stabbed the shogun because Lord Ienobu told me to, he would let her go. I would be put to death, but she would be safe. If I didn’t, or if I told anybody what he told me, then he would kill her!” She leaned over, beat her forehead on the plank floor, and sobbed violently. “I should have kept my mouth shut! Now we’ll both die!”

Reiko experienced an overwhelming astonishment and distress. She’d broken Madam Chizuru’s confession so easily, so exactly against her wishes. For a moment she considered not telling Sano. What if she convinced Madam Chizuru that the best way to protect her granddaughter was to keep Yanagisawa’s threat a secret and let herself and Lord Ienobu be executed for a crime they hadn’t committed? That would be the end of the danger Ienobu posed to Reiko’s family. But Reiko felt responsible for this poor woman desperate to save her granddaughter who was only a little older than Akiko. She couldn’t not tell.

* * *

Marume and the soldiers dragged the shouting, cursing Lieutenant Arai out of the palace. Sano led the way down the hill to a watchtower. He ordered the guards inside to leave. Marume and the soldiers dumped Arai on the floor of the cold, square bottom level.

“I’ll give you another chance to tell me the truth before I take you out of the castle and kill you.” Sano drew his sword. “Are you working for Chamberlain Yanagisawa? Did he tell you to make Madam Chizuru confess?”

Arai leapt to his feet. “No.” Insolence shone through the fear in his glare. “You can’t make me say I did.”

Sano wondered what he would do if Arai wasn’t Yanagisawa’s messenger or wouldn’t admit it. He wasn’t really going to kill anybody … or was he? To kill under circumstances like these was a line he’d always refused to cross. Sano felt a terrifying, disorienting uncertainty. How far would he go to learn the truth about a confession that he would do better to let stand?

How far to uphold honor?

Last night’s doubts, temporarily quelled by a restorative sleep, reawakened in Sano.

There was a scuffle outside. A guard said, “You can’t go in there.” A woman shouted, “I have to speak with Sano-san! I have something important to tell him!” It was Reiko.