Samurai's Wife (20 page)

Jokyoden regarded her skeptically. She unlaced her hands and folded her arms.

"I have no one else to turn to," Reiko said, abandoning logic in favor of an emotional appeal. She knelt before Jokyoden. "If you won't help me, I'll have to go back to Edo without knowing who killed my husband, and depend on the bakufu to obtain justice for him. And I-I can't bear-"

An upheaval of suppressed grief shattered Reiko's artificial poise. She thought of Sano, his voice, his smile, the scent and feel of him. She imagined the long years ahead without him. Desolation swept over her. She pressed a hand against her mouth to stifle a sob and tried to compose herself by focusing on her surroundings: the morning sunlight casting the shadows of buildings across the quadrangle; the bearers standing by her palanquin; the floral pattern woven into Jokyoden's azure silk robe.

Jokyoden watched her in silent speculation. Was she weighing sympathy for a bereaved widow against her loyalty to the Imperial Court? Was she thinking of what she and Reiko shared as women unique in society and how she could honor their comradeship while protecting her kin? Or was she a murderess considering how to exploit the situation to her own advantage?

Then Jokyoden said, "My authority does not entitle me to let you roam around the palace or interrogate members of the court, but perhaps there is another way I can be of assistance, if you will accompany me on a short trip."

She spoke as though leery of committing herself, and her shrewd gaze held no warmth, but Reiko was too overjoyed to mind her manner.

"A million thanks," Reiko exclaimed, fighting tears of gratitude. "You won't regret your decision."

Jokyoden gave her an enigmatic smile. "I sincerely hope that neither of us will," she said.

Reiko chose to ignore the implicit warning in the words. She didn't know what had finally swayed Jokyoden in her favor. She could not afford to care.

Miyako's textile industry was centered in a district known as Nishijin-"Western Camp"-named for the army encampment located there during the civil wars. The main avenues of Kuramaguchi and Imadegawa on north and south, and Horikawa and Senbon on east and west, bounded a grid of narrower lanes that ran through Nishijin. Down these flowed stinking open sewers. Workers carried bolts of cloth and baskets containing silk cocoons. Women sprinkled water on thresholds to keep down the dust. Outside shops, hawkers invited customers to view shelves of bright fabrics. The rattle-clack of many looms resounded.

A procession of imperial guards and Tokugawa troops escorting two palanquins halted in the middle of a block. Reiko stepped out of her palanquin and Lady Jokyoden from the other. Together they walked to a shop. Unlike the establishments on either side, whose open storefronts were filled with customers, this one stood deserted, its tall wooden doors closed.

"What are we doing here?" Reiko asked.

Jokyoden said, "This shop belonged to Left Minister Konoe. He purchased it some years ago."

"What for?" Reiko said, baffled. The noble class didn't engage in trade, and she couldn't imagine Konoe wanting quarters in the noisy, dirty, and bustling textile district.

"He wanted privacy that he couldn't get at home." Jokyoden unlocked the shop's doors, and Reiko followed her inside.

Hot, musty darkness engulfed them. Jokyoden picked up a long wooden pole that stood near the entrance, pushed open the trap door of a skylight, then closed the doors. In the dust-flecked light from above, Reiko saw a room that had once been the display area of a textile business. It was empty, the floor littered with dead insects. She smelled mildew; sweat trickled down her temples. The ache of grief swelled in her. Would that she were here working with Sano instead of investigating his murder! She kept her misery at bay by speculating on why Left Minister Konoe had needed the privacy afforded by this shop.

Konoe had been a metsuke spy. Had he bought the shop because he needed a place from which to conduct espionage? If so, he'd found the perfect location to live a secret life: conveniently near the palace, but on the other side of the class boundary, where he could be anonymous. And maybe this secret life was related to his murder.

With the purposeful stride of someone who knew where she was going, Jokyoden walked through an open doorway at the back of the room. Reiko joined her in a second room, where an abandoned loom stood, festooned with spiderwebs, faded threads clinging to its broken beams.

"How do you know about this place?" Reiko asked.

Another door, this one closed, led to the rear of the shop. Jokyoden halted with her back against it and said, "If I am to tell you, I must first have your promise that what I say will be kept in strict confidence."

Reiko hesitated, because although instinct told her that Jokyoden's answer might be important to her investigation, she didn't know whether she could honor such a bargain. Avenging Sano's death took priority over Jokyoden's wishes. If revealing later what Jokyoden told her would benefit her cause, then she must do it. Still, perhaps she could somehow manage to keep Jokyoden's secrets without jeopardizing her own mission.

"I promise," she said.

For a long interval, Jokyoden regarded her in silence. The room was dim and Jokyoden's face in shadow, so Reiko couldn't see her expression. The incessant clatter of looms from the adjacent shops echoed through the walls. Then Jokyoden said in a tone devoid of emotion, "Left Minister Konoe and I were lovers at one time. We used to meet here, where no one who mattered would see us together."

Surprise stunned Reiko. When she and Jokyoden had talked about the left minister two days ago, Jokyoden had betrayed no personal feelings toward him. Now Reiko felt a stab of apprehension as she wondered what else Jokyoden had concealed.

"When was this affair?" she asked.

"Before Left Minister Konoe's death, obviously." With her sarcastic reply and forbidding tone, Jokyoden proclaimed that she didn't intend to elaborate on the subject. She turned to open the door, then let Reiko into the shop's last room, which had once been the proprietor's living quarters.

When Jokyoden opened the skylight and windows, Reiko saw a kitchen on one side, where a kettle sat on the hearth; shelves held a few pieces of crockery, parcels of tea, and dried fruit. On the other side, a charcoal brazier stood beside a dingy futon on the frayed tatami; a pine table held a lamp; an umbrella leaned against the whitewashed plank wall. The only item that reflected Konoe's noble rank was a desk made of dark teak with gold geometric inlays. The windows overlooked an alley whose privy sheds and garbage bins sent foul odors into the room. Reiko couldn't imagine the elegant Jokyoden lying on that bed, in this dismal place.

"This is the one place I can show you that might contain clues about what the left minister did during the days just before he died, who he saw, or why someone wanted to kill him," Jokyoden said. Her dignified poise hid any shame she felt at bringing Reiko to the scene of her illicit romance. "He sometimes kept personal papers here."

He'd kept very few things here, Reiko thought; hardly enough even for a quick tryst once in awhile. Then she noticed indented, rectangular shadows on the tatami where furniture had once stood, and hooks on the walls that might have held paintings or drapery. And she understood. The room had been comfortably furnished when Jokyoden and Konoe had come here together. Konoe must have removed unneeded furnishings because the affair had ended even before his death.

"We always traveled here separately," Jokyoden said. "Sometimes he would be writing when I arrived, and he always put the papers away in the desk. Perhaps they're still there."

Even as Reiko knelt at the desk, questions burgeoned in her mind. Why had the affair ended, and when? Reiko remembered asking Jokyoden how she got along with Konoe, and Jokyoden's answer: "We had no quarrels." But what if there had been a quarrel, one that had caused a breakup between Konoe and Jokyoden shortly before his death? Reiko thought about Lady Asagao's story of seduction by Konoe. If it was true, then perhaps his infidelity had angered Jokyoden. Earlier, Reiko had conjectured that the pair had clashed over imperial politics, but love gone bad was also a strong motive for murder.

She looked up at Jokyoden, who stood by the window, looking outside. Sunlight slanted across her profile, glittering in her eye; a cold serenity masked her thoughts. Fear turned the sweat on Reiko's skin into a film of ice water as she remembered Jokyoden closing the front doors and sealing them both in the shop. Was it Jokyoden who had killed Konoe- and Sano? Had she arranged this trip for the purpose of eliminating a woman who sought to expose her guilt?

Then Reiko dismissed her fear as ludicrous. She didn't really believe Jokyoden was a murderer, but even if she was, she wouldn't kill again here. There were people outside, including Reiko's guards; she couldn't get away with murdering Reiko. Still, Reiko's heart thudded as she examined the desk. A uniform coating of dust dulled the inlaid surface, and she hoped that this place had remained undisturbed since Konoe last came here. Her hands shook as she lifted the lid of the desk.

Inside, amid writing brushes, inkstones, and ribbons for binding scrolls, she found stacked papers, all blank. Disappointment crushed Reiko. She pulled everything out of the desk, searched for scraps she'd missed, or hidden compartments, without success. Konoe had apparently not left any writings here. As a metsuke spy, he would have taken care to conceal documents related to espionage for fear that his secret life would be exposed. Or had someone else removed things, careful not to leave signs of the disturbance?

Reiko looked up to see Jokyoden watching her. She said, "Who else besides you and the left minister knew about this place?"

"No one, as far as I know."

"When was the last time you came here?"

"If you are asking if I have been here since the left minister died, the answer is no." Jokyoden turned back to the window.

Yet maybe she'd come back after the murder, to take away personal items she'd left behind or anything else that revealed her relationship with the left minister. Reiko knew that the Imperial Court viewed adultery in much the same way as did society in general: Married men enjoyed the freedom to have affairs, but women paid dearly for sexual dalliance. If Jokyoden's affair with Konoe had become public, the abdicated emperor would probably have divorced her; she'd have lost her authority over the court amid humiliating scandal.

However, Reiko saw another reason for Jokyoden to remove papers from the desk, if they could implicate her in Konoe's murder. Such an intelligent woman would recognize the need to destroy evidence against her. Reiko wondered whether Jokyoden had brought her here while knowing she would find nothing. Had she pretended to help with the investigation so Reiko would think her innocent?

Plagued by doubts, Reiko looked around the room for somewhere else to search. Her gaze lit on the charcoal brazier. Excitement quickened her pulse. She hardly dared to hope...

She hurried to the brazier, a square wooden box with multiple slots in the top and three sides. Kneeling, she peered through the grate on the fourth side. Inside sat a metal pan containing ash, sooty coals, and a wad of partially burned paper. Reiko's heart leapt. Opening the grate, she lifted out the paper, heedless of the ash that smudged her fingers. She peeled away delicate black layers. Only the innermost had survived the fire. Darkened at the edges, it was a fragment from a page of scribbled notes. An inked circle surrounded the name Ibe Masanobu. This, Reiko knew, was the daimyo of Echizen Province. Other notations read: "Site surveillance? Watch night movements." "Arrived Month 3, Day 17." "Eleven more inside yesterday." "No outsiders allowed." "Infiltrators?"

Reiko sat perfectly still, nurturing a hope as thin and fragile as the paper she cradled in her hands. This could be notes on a metsuke job that Left Minister Konoe had been working on just before he died. Lord Ibe and whomever else Konoe had spied on could be connected to his murder. Among them might be his killer-and Sano's. Reiko allowed herself to believe this, because with the Imperial Palace closed to her and Lady Jokyoden unable to help her further, she had no other leads by which she might solve the case and avenge Sano's death.

"Have you found what you were looking for?" Jokyoden asked.

"Yes," Reiko said firmly.

Well, Sosakan-sama, I am most surprised and glad to see you alive," said Shoshidai Matsudaira. "And Honorable Chamberlain Yanagisawa, it is certainly a privilege to welcome you to Miyako."

After their confrontation in Yanagisawa's hideout in the hills, Sano had told the chamberlain how they would make their deal official. While Yanagisawa dressed, Sano had untied the three guards; then the five of them had ridden into Miyako together. Now they were seated in the reception room of the shoshidai's mansion. Mastsudaira, kneeling on the dais, looked confused by the simultaneous appearance of Sano, whom he'd believed dead, and Yanagisawa, his cousin the shogun's exalted second-in-command.

"In the confusion of last night's events at the Imperial Palace, mistakes were made." Sano spoke from his place below the dais to the shoshidai's left. "It was actually one of my retainers who died, not myself." This was the story that Sano had concocted to explain the murder of Aisu. "I shall now do everything possible to resolve any problems created by the erroneous report of my death."

"Very well." The shoshidai sounded unconvinced, but as Sano had anticipated, he was too timid to raise questions.

Yanagisawa sat at the shoshidai's right, with his three bodyguards behind him. Clad in rich silk robes, he looked his usual self, although his complexion still had a sickly gray pallor. "I've been traveling through Omi Province on business for the shogun. Since that business is finished, I have decided to lend my assistance to the sosakan-sama's investigation into the murders at the Imperial Palace."

"That is very generous of you." The shoshidai smiled, obviously deceived by Yanagisawa's genial manner.

But Sano had perceived the resentful undertone in Yanagisawa's voice, and knew how humiliating it was for the chamberlain to bow to blackmail. "Yes, his help will constitute a major improvement." Over his sabotage, Sano thought, glancing at Yanagisawa, who shot him a covert, venomous look.