The Shogun's Daughter

27

At Sano’s mansion, Reiko stood on the veranda with Masahiro and Detective Marume. They’d been waiting there for hours since Masahiro and Marume had brought her the news that Yoshisato had died in the fire and Sano had been arrested. Now the temple bells tolled noon. Reiko watched the rain drip from the eaves and puddles spread in the courtyard. She clasped her arms around her belly, protecting the child within, and shivered.

“You should go in the house, Mother,” Masahiro said.

“No, I’m all right.” Praying for Sano to come home, Reiko felt her terror increase with every moment that passed. She knew he hadn’t done this terrible thing, but would anyone else believe he was innocent? Had he already been put to death? Reiko tried to calm down for the baby’s sake, but her heart beat so fast that she felt dizzy and faint.

“Your husband will get out of this,” Marume said uncertainly.

Masahiro said, for the tenth time, “I’ll go out to the street and see if he’s coming.” He ran through the rain, splashing across puddles.

Akiko came out onto the veranda. “Mama, what are you doing?”

“Waiting for your father,” Reiko said.

“Why?”

“To greet him when he comes back.” Reiko didn’t want to upset Akiko.

“Where is he?”

“He’s working,” Marume said cheerfully, rumpling Akiko’s hair. “Young lady, you ask too many questions.”

Reiko had a sudden terrible vision of Sano’s dead body being carried to the house. “Akiko, go inside.”

“Mother!” Masahiro came running, his expression filled with anguish.

Reiko’s breath caught; her heart seized. Five soldiers marched after Masahiro. They accompanied a man dressed in a grimy leather fire cape, whom she at first didn’t recognize as Sano. Her relief at seeing him alive immediately gave way to horror. His face was a mass of welts, darkening bruises, and blood. His eyes were swollen shut. Two soldiers held his arms while he hobbled. Akiko screamed.

Reiko grabbed Akiko and called to Masahiro, “Take your sister to her room!”

Masahiro dragged the screaming, crying little girl into the house. Reiko rushed to Sano, heedless of the rain that drenched her. “Merciful gods, what happened?”

Sano turned his head toward her. He didn’t speak. The soldiers shoved him at Reiko. He stumbled. His weight unbalanced her. Marume caught her and Sano.

One of the soldiers said, “He’s been charged with murdering Yoshisato. He’s under house arrest until his trial.”

Most trials ended in convictions, and because the victim was the shogun’s heir, this one surely would. Reiko forbade herself to think about that. Tending to Sano was her first concern.

“Let’s go inside,” she said in the gentle, calm voice she used when the children were sick and she was worried and trying to hide it. Sano leaned against her. She could feel his body shaking. She and Marume had to help him up the stairs; he couldn’t see.

“Get lost,” Marume told the soldiers.

Some accompanied Reiko, Marume, and Sano into the house. The leader said, “Guard him. Make sure he doesn’t run away. Lock up his troops. Confiscate all the weapons and money.” Troops swarmed the estate, herded Sano’s men toward the barracks.

Marume glared at their captors as he and Reiko led Sano down the passage. Servants gaped at their injured master. Reiko called to them, “Lay out our bed. Bring hot water and clean cloths. Fetch the physician.”

They rushed to obey. In the bedchamber, Reiko and Marume eased Sano onto the futon. She told Marume, “Go keep an eye on those soldiers.”

Marume left. Reiko said to Sano, “Who did this to you?”

Sano didn’t answer. He sat there, shaking violently.

Reiko’s anxiety spiked higher. “Where else are you hurt? Take off your clothes so I can see.”

He began to undress, but his hands shook so much that Reiko had to help him. She was glad to see only minor bruises on his shoulders and torso. The leather fire cape had protected him. But his trembling rattled the house. His breath came in gasps.

“Is something else the matter?” Reiko’s voice quavered with fear that his injuries had affected his mind. “Can’t you speak?”

Sano mumbled through cut, bleeding lips, “The shogun. Did this.” Tremors jolted the words out of him. “To me.”

Reiko’s relief plunged into horror.

A maid came to the door and said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, the physician won’t come.”

The news about Sano was already spreading, Reiko understood; the physician didn’t want to help an accused traitor. At least she had the experience of watching him treat Sano after other battles. She bathed the cuts on Sano’s head, applied healing balm, and fastened cotton bandages over the worst-one on his left cheek, the other on his brow. She gently pulled up his eyelids.

“Can you see?”

Shaking, Sano nodded.

Reiko held up three fingers. “How many?”

“… Three.”

“What’s your name and rank? Who am I? Name your children?”

Sano gave the correct answers, punctuated with tremors. His brain didn’t seem injured. Reiko asked, “Why are you shaking?”

He didn’t answer. It must be a reaction to the trauma. Reiko made him lie down with a pillow under his neck, covered him with a quilt, and put herbal poultices over his swollen eyes. His situation was far worse than his injuries.

The shogun, who abhorred violence, had savagely beaten Sano. He must believe Sano had murdered his heir.

Reiko knelt beside Sano. “What happened?” She had to know everything, no matter how terrible it was.

Sano haltingly told the story. Reiko listened, outraged by the false accusation, distraught about Sano’s predicament. The only ray of hope came from the elders’ insistence on following legal procedure before executing Sano.

“We have a chance to save you,” Reiko said. “Let’s figure out what we’re going to do.” Sano relapsed into muteness. She seized his hand. “I know you’re hurt, but we must think of something fast! Yanagisawa will hurry up the investigation. We’ve no time to lose!”

“I hate him.” Sano spoke with a rabid vehemence that Reiko had never heard in his voice. Now she realized why he was shaking. It was from anger and the effort to control it.

“I know. I hate Yanagisawa, too.” All her own fury toward their enemy rose up in Reiko like a hot bile. “After all these years of attacking us, he’s finally got us where he wants us.”

“Not Yanagisawa,” Sano said. “I hate the shogun.”

Reiko was shocked. She stared at Sano’s bandaged, poulticed face. “How can you say that? He’s your lord.” To a samurai his lord was his god, his reason for existence.

Sano uttered a sardonic, humorless laugh. “A fine example of a lord he is. He was only brave enough to hit me because I couldn’t hit him back.”

For years Reiko had harbored critical thoughts about the shogun, but she’d never heard them from Sano. She was a mere woman, free to think whatever she liked as long as she kept it to herself. Sano was obligated to respect the shogun. “What about Bushido?”

“What about it?” Sano’s tremors had ceased; he’d given up trying to control his emotions; his body relaxed. “After all my service to the shogun, after everything I’ve gone through to satisfy him, this is what it’s come to.” His hand gestured at his face. “The Way of the Warrior is just an excuse for the shogun to treat his retainers however he wants. We’re all fools for swallowing it and letting him get away with abusing us!”

Reiko realized that the shogun’s assault had changed her husband. Sano had tolerated threats and insults before, but this injury was more personal. Loss of face was the worst thing that could happen to a proud samurai, and Sano had been literally defaced.

“I wish I hadn’t bothered investigating Tsuruhime’s murder,” Sano said bitterly. “I didn’t manage to prove Yanagisawa is guilty, and I never will. But to hell with it!”

The change in Sano terrified Reiko as much as the fact that he was under arrest for the murder of the shogun’s heir.

“I wish I’d never opposed Yanagisawa’s schemes and tried to prevent the shogun from leaving the dictatorship to Yoshisato,” Sano said. “If I hadn’t, things might be different now; Yoshisato might still be alive, and I wouldn’t be charged with his murder. I’d be better off if I’d just left the shogun to his own weak, gullible devices!”

Panic shot through Reiko. Where was the honorable samurai she’d married? Evidently, the shogun had pushed Sano too far. “Be quiet!”

“Why? Because someone might hear me and report me to the shogun? Who cares?” Sano laughed again. “I’m already as good as condemned to die.”

“We’re not giving up,” Reiko said, alarmed by his fatalism. In the past, whenever trouble had plagued them, Sano had been the one to reassure her, to keep up the family’s morale. “We’re going to fight this.”

Sano lay there, stiff and unmoving as wood. The poultices over his eyes oozed fluid onto his cheeks. It looked as if he was crying. Reiko remembered the morning after the earthquake, when she’d first seen the wreckage of the city. She felt the same devastation now. In the past, she and Sano had always been partners, their individual strength multiplied by their togetherness. But now the husband who once would have risen valiantly to any challenge was breaking down before her very eyes. The earthquake was partly to blame. Sano had worked day and night for months, helping the survivors, rebuilding the city. He’d also solved a difficult murder case in order to prevent a civil war.

No man could take all that strain without consequences.

His beating from the shogun had been one too many traumas for Sano.

Reiko had never felt so scared or alone in her life. Sano, the foundation of their family, had collapsed like the city during the earthquake.

She heard Masahiro’s footsteps in the corridor. Gripping Sano’s hand, she whispered, “Not one word of this to Masahiro!”

Masahiro entered the room; he looked worriedly at Sano. “Father? Are you all right?”

Reiko pinched Sano’s hand to prevent him from speaking. “He will be. He’s resting.” With an effort, she kept her manner calm. “How is Akiko?”

“She’s all right. I took her to the kitchen and the cooks gave her some cakes.” Masahiro asked, “What are we going to do?”

Reiko took the heavy responsibility for the fate of their family upon her own small shoulders. “We investigate Yoshisato’s death.”

“I see. If we find out who really killed Yoshisato, then Father won’t be punished for it.” Masahiro sounded not entirely relieved. “I can look for clues, but Father is under house arrest, and you’re not supposed to go outside.”

The constraints on them made it even more difficult to save themselves. “Things have changed,” Reiko said. “We must exonerate your father. If we don’t, then we’ll all die, including the baby. I’ll try not to do anything physically strenuous.”

Masahiro nodded, thought for a moment, then said, “Both of the shogun’s children have been murdered within such a short time. Could the two murders be connected?”

“Maybe.” Proud of his intelligence, Reiko felt better. Although Sano lay as still as if he were already dead, she had Masahiro to stand in as head of the family. She also had Detective Marume. Her fear receded enough that she could apply her mind to the new investigation. “There may be different suspects, however.”

“Who could have wanted to kill Yoshisato?” Masahiro asked.

Combing through the tangle of politics and alliances, conflicts and motives, Reiko said, “I can think of at least two people.”

“If the murders are connected, then maybe we can solve Yoshisato’s by solving Tsuruhime’s,” Masahiro said.