The Convict's Sword (48 page)

Near the shrine was a small Buddhist temple where he asked for and received a place to sleep. And here he found his first rest after many sleepless nights.

He awoke well after sunrise to the cooing of hundreds of doves, and rose to pay his respects to the gods. There was no one about as he walked to the shrine building in the cool mountain air, rinsed his mouth and his hands with the clear water in a stone trough, and then prayed humbly to the gods of the mountain, and to Hachiman, protector of warriors and immanent spirit of this sacred place. He found no answering enlightenment for his troubles or Haseo’s, but he felt a sense of peace, and when he stepped from the shrine, the morning air seemed purer, the scent of camphor and pine fresher, and flocks of doves rose to circle the shrine hall.

He could see for miles from this mountaintop, across a green and fertile land, across the web of rivers, rice paddies, lakes, and villages, all the way to the distant hazy shimmer that was the capital. This land of the rising sun would endure. All else was immaterial, transitory, and of no importance. Men, like the doves of this sacred mountain, were individually short-lived and insignificant, but they too would endure like the mountain itself. And during their fleeting lives, they could soar.

The priest was a member of the Ki family, hereditary head priests of the Hachiman Shrine. He was past middle age, very dignified in his white garments and black court hat, and he received Akitada with smiling courtesy in his private apartments. Another priest, perhaps Ki’s secretary, was bent over some paperwork.

Shinto priests could marry and, apart from their training in ritual and their devotion to the gods, were not much different from ordinary men of rank and education. But this was the shrine of the guardian deity of the Imperial Family, and Ki was accustomed to receiving emperors, chancellors, and nobles of the highest rank. After a few polite preliminaries and fielding a question or two about conditions in the capital, Akitada asked him about Haseo.

The priest’s smile did not fade. He nodded. “I knew him and his family well. They were faithful supporters of this shrine. A dreadful affair. What is it that you wish to know?”

“Did you think him capable of the crime?”

Ki hesitated. “All men are capable of extraordinary acts—both good and evil—if it is fated and their nature demands it. Let me explain. Haseo wanted to take up the life of a warrior, but his father refused his permission. The elder Tomonari wished his only son to manage the family estate and provide him with heirs. Haseo married and fathered two sons, but he held on to his dream of becoming an officer in the Imperial Guard. On the day of the murder, he came to me to take his leave. He was about to tell his father of his decision.” The priest sighed deeply. “They say there was a violent quarrel.”

Akitada found Ki’s continued smile irritating. He could accept Haseo’s anger with his father, but not what the priest suggested. He asked, “What became of his family?”

Ki hedged. “Surely it cannot matter, since they were not witnesses to the murders?”

Akitada said harshly, “When Haseo died in my arms in Sadoshima, his last thoughts were for his family.”

Ki, still smiling, shook his head. “It does you great credit to be concerned on your friend’s behalf, but I assure you that they are well. Consider please that great harm might come to them if the past were stirred up again.”

There it was again: the warning to leave matters alone. Akitada persisted. “There was a nurse who witnessed the crime. Can you at least tell me where she lives?”

“She is dead. Of the people who were in the house that day, no one is left now. They have all died or gone away.”

As if they had never existed, thought Akitada. Had they fled because of shame or due to coercion? “Who lives on the Tomonari Estate now?”

“No one. The manor and the land belong to the emperor. Lord Yasugi is the administrator and sees to the cultivation of the fields.”

Strange the way the lines crossed and recrossed: Yasugi held Haseo’s lands; Yasugi’s unhappy wife was Hiroko, who knew Tomoe, the blind singer of ancient warrior ballads, who was also known to Matsue, who had had Haseo’s sword.

Akitada found neither answers nor encouragement here. Perhaps he should not have expected it. As head priest of the emperor’s tutelary deity, Ki would certainly do nothing to interfere with present arrangements. Before leaving, Akitada asked one more question.

“Did Haseo have any close male relatives his own age? Perhaps a first cousin?”

Ki raised his brows. “None at all. That is what caused the quarrel between father and son in the first place. There was no one else to carry on the family name.”

The priest’s secretary rose and left the room on silent feet, and Ki cleared his throat impatiently. Akitada asked, “May I take it that you know of no one else who might have done the killings?”

“Believe me, if I did, I would have said so at the time,” Ki said in a slightly reproving tone.

Akitada had no reason to doubt him and made his farewells to the still smiling Ki.

Outside the elderly secretary awaited him. “I beg your pardon,” he said urgently, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your question.”

“Yes?”

“I grew up in Tsuzuki District. People gossip among themselves about things they don’t mention to outsiders.”

“I understand. What is it that you know?”

The old man fidgeted. “
Know
is perhaps too strong a word. As I said, it’s mere gossip. The old lord was said to have fathered a child with a servant. People saw a resemblance when the boy grew up. When Lord Tomonari gave a farmstead to the mother of this boy, it confirmed people’s suspicions. Mind you, there may be nothing to it. Except for an outward resemblance, Sangoro had nothing at all in common with the young master.”

“Where does this Sangoro live?”

“His farm is just over the hill from the Tomonari place. His mother used to walk to work every day.”

Akitada thanked the priest and walked down the mountain, trying to recall where he had heard the name Sangoro before.

The Tomonari Estate was substantial, and peasants worked its fields, treading waterwheels, pulling weeds, and building dams between paddies. They did not raise their heads to stare at the lone horseman, and Akitada soon saw why. An overseer stood on a small hill, a whip tucked under his arm.

The gate to the manor stood open, and Akitada rode in to look around and perhaps to ask directions to Sangoro’s farm, but there was no one about except a scattering of chickens. He dismounted and led his horse to the water trough. The manor resembled many such across the land, a cluster of simple halls with thickly thatched roofs, their wooden walls blackened by age and the elements. The main residence lacked the amenities of noble houses in the capital, but this was a rural household; the men who had built it had maintained a simple lifestyle close to the land around them. Now it looked neglected. The doors were shuttered, grass grew on the roof, and swallows nested under the deep eaves.

The silence and emptiness reminded him of houses in the capital where everyone had died. It opened again the door to memory, shattering the peace so fleetingly won on the mountain. Overcome by his loss, he sank down on the rim of the trough and put his head in his hands.

After a time, he became aware of an odd sound among the clucking of chickens, chirping of birds, and occasional snorting from his horse. Someone was thrumming a zither. Abruptly his memory leapt backward and he was standing again outside the wall of the Yasugi mansion.

His heart beating faster, he tied up his horse.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

HIROKO

 

 

 

Behind the main house was a small overgrown garden, and beyond that an area of shrubs and trees from which rose another, smaller pitched roof. The music was louder here. The zither player plucked the strings tentatively, halfheartedly, putting long pauses between clusters of notes so that the cheerful folk song struck his ear like a lament.

Someone had made a rudimentary path through the small wilderness, and Akitada took it, skirting thorny vines and dusting his boots and the skirts of his traveling robe with yellow pollen from wildflowers. Bush clover bloomed here among buzzing bees, and saffron flowers, and small pink carnations almost suffocated by ferns. Many years ago, as a small boy, Haseo must have played in this garden.

Like Yori.

She was sitting on the wooden porch of a vine-covered garden pavilion, her attention on the zither before her. He almost did not recognize her in a peasant woman’s gray cotton robe and trousers, and with her long hair braided into a single plait. Her face was bare of cosmetics, but her beauty made his heart contract at the futility of his desire.

Reminding himself of her lies, he strode up to the stone step of the porch and demanded, “Are you alone?”

She started and the melody splintered. Then her eyes widened and her face softened into joy. “How did you find me?” she asked.

He said coldly, “By accident. I had planned to call on you at your husband’s house, but this will do very well. How do you come to be here, and where are your people?”

The joy faded. “I have been banished. Yasugi sent me here.”

“You mean you are a prisoner?”

“Something like that.” She studied his face anxiously. “You have changed, Akitada. You look . . . ill.”

He brushed that away. “I’m well enough.” He glanced into the building behind her. It was empty except for a straw mat and the sort of bundle people make of a change of clothes when they travel. “You stay here? Why didn’t they at least open the main house for you?”

“They say it’s haunted. Someone was murdered there.”

“Yes,” he said harshly. “I know, and so do you. This used to be your home. You lied to me.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

“No, don’t deny it. Your first husband was the Tomonari heir. He died in exile for crimes he didn’t commit. Tell me, did you believe him guilty? Is that why you accepted so eagerly the rich man’s offer? Did you at least wait until the authorities confirmed your first husband’s death before you leapt into Yasugi’s bed?”

She had turned very white. The ivory plectrum in her right hand jerked across the zither, and a string tore with a loud, dissonant twang. She dropped the plectrum and bent her head, hunching her shoulders as if she expected him to strike her. “Please don’t.”

He was unmoved. Life was full of horrors, and he had no time for pity; he wanted answers. He said fiercely, “Your husband was my friend and died in my arms. His last thoughts were of you and the others, of the children. He believed you would stay together, and I promised I would find you. But I found only you, married to a rich man and living in luxury. Where are the others? Where are his children?”

She shuddered but did not answer, and that angered him. He went to her, seized her shoulder, and shook her until she raised her head and met his eyes. “Damn you, woman! You will speak and you will not lie to me this time, for I shall have the truth somehow. Your personal feelings no longer matter to me.”