The Iris Fan

23

“Are you sure this is where she’s being kept?” Marume asked Sano as they rode across the bridge that spanned the Nihonbashi River. Below them, boats converged on the fish market on the north bank. The sounds of merchants haggling over the catch, seagulls screeching, and the stench of rotten fish drifted up.

“No. He owns several properties that I know of,” Sano said.

They spoke in low voices that wouldn’t carry to the army troops riding behind them through the district known as the Large Post-House Quarter. Stables and lodging houses clustered near the starting point of the four major highways that led out of Edo. The streets were crowded with travelers who had come to rent or return horses and government officials come to hire the fleet-footed messengers who ran messages all over Japan. Sano hadn’t told the troops they were here to rescue Madam Chizuru’s granddaughter. He hadn’t let them hear Reiko whisper to him that Madam Chizuru had admitted that Lieutenant Arai had told her that Yanagisawa had kidnapped her granddaughter and forced Madam Chizuru to incriminate herself and Lord Ienobu.

He was amazed that Reiko had managed to break the confession she wanted to be true. He wished she hadn’t. He, too, had hoped the confession was good.

He’d sent her home with instructions not to tell anyone outside their family. He didn’t want Yanagisawa to find out what she’d discovered. He hoped he could count on help from these troops when the time came.

“I think this is the likeliest place.” Sano confessed, “I used to wait outside the castle for Yanagisawa. Then I would follow him.” He’d been trying to find out what Yanagisawa was up to and why he’d allied with Lord Ienobu. He hadn’t told anyone then; it seemed shameful, his futile dogging of his old enemy.

They stopped in a street, between the neighborhood gates at each end that closed at night to keep the residents contained and troublemakers out. Sano pointed to a low house flanked by two stables and enclosed by a fence that concealed it up to the bottom of its tiled roof. Across the street, trees rose from within the earthen walls surrounding large inns. Sano had seen Yanagisawa use the house for meetings with men who appeared to be spies newly arrived in town, but he’d been unable to get close enough to eavesdrop. Now, as he and Marume and the troops dismounted, servants carried bales of hay into the stables. Sano led the way to the house. It was run-down, with cracked and missing roof tiles. He and Marume peered between the moss-stained planks of the fence. In the side yard, two horses were visible through the barred windows of a small stable. Sano’s heart sank even as it beat faster. Two horses there meant two samurai in the house. This had to be the place where Yanagisawa was keeping his hostage. Otherwise, it would have been vacant.

Marume heaved his shoulder against the locked gate. It broke off its hinges. He and Sano stepped over it and ran up the path, drawing their swords. The half-timbered house with peeling plaster walls squatted in a garden of snow and dead weeds. Sano beckoned the troops to follow. As they neared the door, it opened. They burst in on two samurai in the entryway. Sano recognized them as Yanagisawa’s enforcers-hard-muscled, strong-jawed. When they recognized Sano, Marume, and the Tokugawa crests on the troops’ helmets, they faltered for an instant before they drew their swords and lunged.

“Don’t kill them!” Sano shouted as he parried their strikes. “Capture them!”

Three of the soldiers had already ganged up on one of Yanagisawa’s men. He fell, blood pouring from a fatal gash across his belly. The other turned and ran into the house. Sano and Marume pounded after him, through an entryway that contained empty racks for shoes, down a corridor with rooms on either side. Marume tackled Yanagisawa’s man, then sat on him while Sano wrested his long sword from his fist and his short sword from the scabbard at his waist.

“Chamberlain Yanagisawa will kill you for trespassing on his property!” the man said as he kicked and bucked.

The soldiers, who’d followed Sano and Marume inside, watched with astonishment. One said, “This place is Yanagisawa’s? What the hell are we doing?”

“I’ll explain in a moment,” Sano said. “Tie him up.”

“You should have told us. Now we’re in trouble!”

“Not as much trouble as Yanagisawa,” Marume said.

The troops bound the captive’s wrists and ankles with his sash. Sano asked him, “Where’s Madam Chizuru’s granddaughter?”

“Who?”

Marume kicked the man. “The girl you kidnapped for Yanagisawa.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sano and Marume searched the building. In one room, Yanagisawa’s men had set up camp with bedrolls, charcoal braziers, and food. The other rooms were vacant. The soldiers talked among themselves, fretting about how to excuse their actions to Yanagisawa.

“See?” the captive called. “I told you so.”

Sano hoped Yanagisawa hadn’t really kidnapped the girl, Madam Chizuru had lied, and her confession was good. Then he heard a faint sound like a cat mewing. “Everybody shut up!”

He and Marume listened. The sound repeated. Sano followed it to the kitchen. Nobody was there, nothing except a hearth black with cold ashes. Sano looked down at the floor. He pointed at a large, square wooden board set between narrower planks. Marume crouched, inserted his fingers into a hole cut in one edge, lifted the board, and flung it aside. The mewing sound and a pungent smell of urine-soaked earth wafted up from a cellar. There lay a girl, immobilized by ropes tied around her body. A cloth gag muffled her screams. Her eyes were huge with fright.

Marume groaned. “Please tell me I’m not seeing this!”

Despair coursed through Sano. Madam Chizuru hadn’t lied. Sano had been right in thinking her confession was false, but he wished with all his heart that he’d been wrong.

* * *

Outside the palace, officials turned to watch a procession march up the path. Sano led with Madam Chizuru and her granddaughter. The girl and the old woman clung to each other, weeping. Next came Detective Marume escorting Lieutenant Arai, the guard from the Large Interior. The army soldiers followed with Yanagisawa’s man from the house in the Post-Horse Quarter. Masahiro came running across the grounds, calling, “Father! What happened?”

“Your mother found out that Yanagisawa forced Madam Chizuru to confess,” Sano said. “He took her granddaughter hostage. We just rescued her granddaughter.” His heart was heavy; he’d traded saving Madam Chizuru and the girl for his chance to convict Lord Ienobu.

Masahiro reacted with dismayed astonishment. “But Dengoro said he really did smell Madam Chizuru in the bedchamber after the shogun was stabbed.”

“He lied again. I’ve got all these witnesses to prove it.” Sano glanced at Madam Chizuru and her granddaughter, Lieutenant Arai, and Yanagisawa’s man. “I have to tell the shogun.”

“Can I come?” Masahiro asked.

“No,” Sano said. Things were going to get ugly. “Go home. Take care of your mother and sister and the others.”

He led the procession to the shogun’s chamber. There, Yanagisawa and Yoshisato knelt on either side of the bed. When they saw Sano at the door and the angry expression on his face, they quickly stood. So did the shogun’s two guards stationed by the wall.

“Many thanks for your help with my investigation,” Sano said to Yanagisawa.

“What-?” Yanagisawa’s nostrils flared as he scented danger. He moved between Sano and the shogun. “Get out. The shogun is asleep.”

Marume called from the corridor, “He’ll want to wake up for this.”

Sano stepped aside to reveal Madam Chizuru and her granddaughter. He’d made his trade-off; it was too late to back out. Yanagisawa’s face blanched.

“What a clever plan to frame Lord Ienobu,” Sano said. “It almost worked.”

“There you go again, giving me credit I don’t deserve,” Yanagisawa said. “I didn’t frame anybody.”

Yoshisato came to Yanagisawa’s side. “Who are these people?” he said with confusion that seemed genuine.

“That’s Madam Chizuru,” Sano said. “The woman who said that she and Lord Ienobu conspired to assassinate the shogun. The girl is her granddaughter.” Madam Chizuru cringed from Yanagisawa and hugged her granddaughter as Sano pulled them into the room. “Yanagisawa-san forced her to confess by holding her granddaughter hostage. I found the girl trapped in a cellar with two of his retainers guarding her.” He said to Yanagisawa, “One of them is dead, I’m sorry to say.”

Yoshisato stared in horror at Yanagisawa. “You did what?”

Yanagisawa saw his retainer and Lieutenant Arai. Rage darkened his face. Lieutenant Arai fell on his knees and whimpered, “I didn’t tell!”

“Neither did I!” Yanagisawa’s retainer said.

“Shut up!” Yanagisawa ordered.

A thin, wavering, furious voice said, “No, you shut up!”

Yanagisawa and Yoshisato whirled. The shogun glared at them from the bed. His face was even more ravaged than yesterday, his body like a bundle of sticks under the quilt. His eyes were feverish but lucid.

“I heard everything! Sano-san said you made that woman confess. You framed my nephew. You tricked me!” The shogun’s voice rose to a shrill, harsh pitch. The last offense he’d named was obviously the one that angered him most.

Yanagisawa hid his horror behind the smooth, reassuring manner he always used to coax the shogun. “Your Excellency, Sano-san is mistaken. I didn’t-”

“Yes, you did! There are all these people to prove it. You wanted to make sure that Yoshisato will succeed me, so you cooked up a plot to get rid of Ienobu.” The shogun pointed his withered finger at the door. “Get out!”

“Your Excellency, I can explain-”

“I said, shut up!” The shogun turned his feverish, angry gaze on Yoshisato. “You should be ashamed of yourself, conspiring with Yanagisawa-san to make me put my innocent nephew to death. Thank the gods that Sano-san found you out in time! You get out, too!”

Alarmed and indignant, Yoshisato said, “Honorable Father, I had nothing to do with it! I didn’t even know about it until now!”

“Don’t call me ‘Father,’” the shogun said. “Sano-san was right all along: You’re not really my son. No son of mine would be party to such an evil scheme!”

Sano’s breath caught. He heard gasps from the other men. The shogun was finally wise to the fraud. Yanagisawa’s hold on him was slipping like a rope through a greasy fist.

“I’m disinheriting you!” the shogun told Yoshisato.

This was what Sano had been wanting for years-the imposter knocked out of line for the succession-but at what cost?

Yoshisato turned a face livid with fury on Yanagisawa. “See what you’ve done?”

Yanagisawa spoke between clenched teeth to Sano. “You’re going to be sorry for this.”

“You’re no longer chamberlain,” the shogun informed Yanagisawa. “I’m demoting you to patrol guard. Move out of the castle, to someplace far away from me!”

Sano saw Yanagisawa realize that he was not only losing his chance to rule Japan, he’d fallen to the bottom of the hierarchy, the same rank to which Lord Ienobu had consigned Sano. He couldn’t hide his panic as he said, “But you and I have been friends for more than thirty years! Surely we can-”

“It’s only because we’re old friends that I’m letting you stay in my regime at all! If we weren’t, I would put you and Yoshisato to death! Now go, before I change my mind!”

Yanagisawa and Yoshisato walked out with identical proud, straight-backed postures, their fierce gazes trained straight ahead. Sano’s minimal doubt that they were father and son was gone now. He couldn’t rejoice in Yanagisawa’s fall from favor. His own fall was coming, and he’d as good as asked for it.

Breathless, weakened by exertion, the shogun said to Sano, “Fetch Lord Ienobu. Tell him I want to reinstate him as my heir. And hurry. I may not have much time left.”