The Cloud Pavilion (4 page)

“No, I haven’t seen her,” said one vendor, shopkeeper, and peddler after another.

“Nobody’s hiding a woman on my block,” said the headmen of every street.

“Major Kumazawa threatened to have my head cut off if I didn’t help him find his daughter, so I’ve been looking for her on my rounds,” said a
doshin
—police patrol officer. “I’ve questioned everyone I’ve met, but no luck.”

“It’s looking as if she left the district,” Sano said as he and his men led their horses through an alley, “whether on her own or against her will.”

They turned down a road that bordered a canal under construction. Laborers armed with shovels and picks were digging a wide, deep trench. Peasants hauled up dirt and loaded it onto oxcarts. Sano, Marume, and Fukida gazed into the trench, at the lumpy, freshly exposed earth on the bottom.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Marume asked.

Sano refused to consider the possibility that his cousin had been killed and buried here or someplace else. “We’ll keep looking. Let’s go to the shrine.”

As they headed farther into Asakusa district, the drizzle turned into sprinkles, then a fierce downpour. Rain boiled up from tile roofs, cascaded off eaves, and puddled the streets. The air dissolved in mist. Sano, the detectives, and his other men took cover under a balcony while their horses stoically endured the deluge and people ran for shelter.

“There go our witnesses,” Fukida said glumly.

Lightning flashed. The dark sky blazed bright white for an instant. Thunder cracked. The world outside the small dry space where Sano and his men stood was a streaming gray blur. Down the vacant street, a lone human figure emerged from the storm and stumbled in their direction.

“Somebody doesn’t know enough to get out of the rain,” Marume said.

The figure drew nearer, limping and crouching. Sano saw that it was a woman. Her black hair hung in long, dripping tangles. Torn and drenched, her dark red and pale lavender kimono was plastered against her slim body. With one hand she held the garment closed over her bosom; with the other she groped as if she were blind.

“What on earth—,” Fukida began.

Now Sano saw that the red streaks on her kimono weren’t dyed into the fabric. The rain washed them down her skirts, into the puddles through which she limped barefoot.

She was bleeding.

Sano ran toward the woman. The storm battered him; he was instantly soaked to the skin. She faltered, her eyes wide and blank with terror. Rain trickled into her open, gasping mouth. She wasn’t young or old; she could be in her thirties. Her features were startlingly familiar to Sano. She recoiled from him, lost her balance. He caught her, and she screamed and flailed.

“Don’t be afraid,” Sano shouted over a crash of thunder. “I won’t hurt you.”

As she fought him, the detectives hurried to Sano’s aid. The woman began to weep, crying, “No! Leave me alone. Please!”

“Stand back,” Sano ordered his men. They obeyed. “Who are you?” he urgently asked the woman.

Her gaze met his. The blankness in her eyes cleared. She stopped fighting Sano. Her expression showed puzzlement, wonder, and hope. Sano was astounded by recognition. As the rain swept them, he flashed back to a memory from his early childhood.

In those days his mother had often taken him to the public bath house because they didn’t have room for a tub in their small, humble home. He remembered how she’d dunked under the hot water and come up with her hair and face streaming wet. His mind superimposed this picture of his mother upon the woman in his arms. The woman was his mother’s younger image.

“Is your name Chiyo?” Sano shouted.

“Yes,” his cousin whispered, her voice drowned by the storm. Her eyes closed, and she went limp in Sano’s grasp as she fainted.

Light from a round white lantern cast a lunar glow in the room where Yanagisawa and his son Yoritomo lay side by side, facedown, on low wooden tables. Their long, naked bodies were identically proportioned, Yanagisawa’s almost as slender, strong, and perfect as twenty-three-year-old Yoritomo’s. Their faces, turned toward each other, had the same dark beauty. Their skin glistened with oil as two masseurs kneaded their backs, working out the aches from the morning’s tournament. Incense smoke rose from a brass burner, sweet and pungent, masking the odors of dampness and decay. Outside, rain poured down; thunder rumbled.

“Father, may I ask you a question?” Yoritomo said, respectful and deferential as always.

“Of course,” Yanagisawa said.

He didn’t hesitate to talk in front of the masseurs. Other people had blind masseurs, an ancient tradition. Yanagisawa’s were deaf and dumb. They wouldn’t hear or spread tales. And although he usually hated being interrogated, he made an exception for Yoritomo. He distrusted and disliked most people, with good reason; he’d been stabbed in the back so many times that it was a wonder he hadn’t bled to death. But his son was his love, the only person to whom he felt a connection, his blood. He had four other children, but Yoritomo was the only one that mattered. He would gladly tell Yoritomo all his secrets. Or almost all.

“Are things really settled between you and Sano?” Yoritomo asked.

“For the moment,” Yanagisawa said.

But some scores could never be settled. “I don’t understand how you can be friends with him,” Yoritomo said. He and Sano had once been close friends, Yanagisawa knew. During the three years that Yanagisawa had been in exile, Sano had taken the opportunity to cultivate Yoritomo, who was the shogun’s favorite lover and companion. Yoritomo had grown attached to Sano and bravely defended him against his enemies. But no more. “Not after what he did to us!”

Yoritomo spoke with the indignation of trust and affection betrayed. Last year Sano had accused Yoritomo of treason, and had staged a trial and fake execution, in order to force Yanagisawa into the open. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life!”

Neither had Yanagisawa, when he’d heard that his son was to be put to death.

“Even though Sano apologized, I’ll never forgive him,” Yoritomo said, his voice hard, his sweet, gentle nature turned hateful by Sano’s trick. “How can you?”

Yanagisawa couldn’t. Whenever he thought of that day, he shook with fury. But he controlled his emotions, lest they goad him into rash action. And he had to convince Yoritomo to follow his example. “One can do whatever one must. Don’t dwell on what Sano did to you. It’ll only make you feel worse.”

Yoritomo stared in amazement. “Can you honestly say that you don’t hate Sano as much as I do? After all, it’s not just me that Sano has humiliated.” Yoritomo was so upset that he forgot his polite manners. “Look at yourself, Father! Once you were the only chamberlain, the shogun’s only second-in-command. Now you have to share the honors with Sano. And he’s not only stolen half your position—he has your house!”

The shogun had given the chamberlain’s compound to Sano when Yanagisawa had been exiled. The very idea of Sano in his home rankled terribly with Yanagisawa, who now lived here, in a smaller estate in the castle’s official quarter, among his subordinates. His new mansion was too close to the street; he could hear voices and hoofbeats outside. He felt crowded by his servants and troops. How he missed the space and privacy he’d once enjoyed! It was too bad that the traps he’d installed in his old home hadn’t killed Sano.

“Why don’t you punish him?” Yoritomo said, hungry for revenge. “Why do we have to act as if everything is all right? Why can’t we fight back?”

“Because we would lose,” Yanagisawa said bluntly.

“No, we wouldn’t,” Yoritomo protested. “You have lots of allies, lots of troops.”

“So does Sano.”

“Your position is stronger than his.”

“That’s what I thought when I went up against Lord Matsudaira. I was wrong. His troops slaughtered mine on the battlefield.” Yanagisawa’s thoughts darkened with the memory. “My allies defected to him like rats fleeing a sinking ship. No,” he declared. “I won’t risk another war.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Yanagisawa said, harsh in his determination to convince his son. “We were let off easy last time. You were allowed to stay in Edo.” The shogun had insisted on keeping Yoritomo with him, even though Lord Matsudaira had wanted to exile Yanagisawa’s whole family. “I was banished instead of killed. Next time we won’t be so fortunate.”

Yoritomo beheld Yanagisawa with a mixture of resignation and disappointment. “You’re saying you’ve given up. Because you’re afraid of losing, afraid of dying.”

The masseur pressed his fingers deep into Yanagisawa’s shoulder joints, touching tender spots. Yanagisawa winced. His son had always idolized him, but now Yoritomo had accused him of being a coward. The accusation was unjust.

“Sometimes fear is a better guide than courage is,” he said. “Courage has led many a man to do the wrong things, with disastrous results. I learned that lesson when I took on Lord Matsudaira: We can’t seize power by force. You should have learned it, too. But you’re young.” He watched Yoritomo blush, shamed by the implied accusation of stupidity. “You don’t understand that when a strategy fails, you shouldn’t rush out and do the same thing again. If you want different results, you have to try a new strategy.”

Hope brightened Yoritomo’s gaze. “Do you mean you have a new plan for defeating Sano and putting us on top of the regime?”

“Oh, yes.” Yanagisawa smiled with pleasure as his masseur worked the stiffness out of his back muscles. “Never let it be said that I don’t have a plan.”

“But how can you win without going to war?”

“The time for war was over more than a century ago, when the Tokugawa clan and its allies conquered their rivals and unified Japan,” Yanagisawa said, wise in hindsight. “This dictatorship won’t be won by military maneuvers, I see now. Today’s political climate calls for more subtle tactics.”

“What are they? What are you going to do?” Apprehension shadowed Yoritomo’s beautiful face. “Is there a part in your plan for me?”

Yanagisawa was touched by his son’s wish to be included in whatever he did, no matter the dangers. Yoritomo was so good, so loyal. “Never fear,” Yanagisawa said. “You’re key to my whole scheme.” Yoritomo was Yanagisawa’s best hope of one day ruling Japan. Yanagisawa had big plans for him. “Now listen.”

Sano and his retinue escorted his cousin Chiyo home.

She rode, semiconscious, in a palanquin carried by bearers that Sano had hired. The storm decreased to a light rain and the afternoon faded into dusk as he and his men accompanied the palanquin through the samurai enclave near the shogun’s rice ware houses along the river. The rice was used to pay the Tokugawa retainers their stipends. Heavily guarded by Major Kumazawa’s troops, it was sold to rice brokers, and converted to cash, by a bevy of officials.

Lanterns flickered outside the walled estates where Major Kumazawa and the officials lived. Sentries in guard houses looked up to watch Sano’s procession pass. This part of town was older than the rest of Edo; the white plaster on the walls was patched, the roof tiles weathered, the roads narrow and serpentine. Sano didn’t think he’d been here before, but the double-roofed gate that displayed a banner emblazoned with the Kumazawa family crest—a stylized bear head in a circle—struck in him an eerie chord of recognition.

He and his men dismounted, and Sano ordered the sentries, “Tell Major Kumazawa I’ve brought his daughter home.”

The sentries rushed to open the gate. Sano found himself in a courtyard lit by fires in stone lanterns outside the mansion, a low, half-timbered building raised on a stone foundation. Rain trickled off the overhanging eaves. Major Kumazawa rushed out the door, trailed by a gray-haired woman. They halted on the veranda. Déjà vu assailed Sano. Images surfaced from the depths of his mind.

He had a vision of this same courtyard, of Major Kumazawa and this woman who must be his wife. But they were younger, their hair black, their faces unlined. Sano heard a woman pleading and weeping, somewhere out of sight. Dizziness and chills washed through him. For a moment he couldn’t breathe.

His vision was a memory. He had come here before. But when? And why?

The images, sounds, and sensations vanished as Major Kumazawa and his wife hurried to the palanquin. Major Kumazawa opened the door. Inside, Chiyo lay motionless, covered by a quilt that Sano had bought in a shop. Her eyes were closed, her head wrapped in a white cotton cloth stained with blood.

Major Kumazawa’s wife cried out in dismay. The major demanded, “What happened to her?”

He didn’t thank Sano for bringing Chiyo home. Detectives Marume and Fukida frowned at this affront to their master, but Sano recalled how he’d felt when re united with his own kidnapped child. Courtesy had been the last thing on his mind.

“There’s a cut on her head,” Sano said. That, as he’d discovered, was the source of the blood on her clothes. “She hasn’t any other injuries, as far as I could see. But you should send for a doctor.”

Major Kumazawa barked orders to the servants who appeared on the veranda, then asked Sano, “Where did you find her?”

“On a street in Asakusa district,” Sano said.

“I’ll bring her in the house.” As Major Kumazawa lifted his daughter, she awakened. She began to struggle.

“No!” she cried. “Don’t touch me! Go away!”

“It’s all right, little one,” Major Kumazawa said, his voice as gentle as if he were talking to a child. “It’s Papa. You’re home safe now.”

Her struggles ceased; she quieted. “Papa,” she whispered.

As he carried her toward the house, his wife bustled along with them, stroking Chiyo’s pale, muddy cheek, murmuring endearments. Major Kumazawa looked over his shoulder at Sano.

“I’m indebted to you,” he said gruffly. “If you and your men would like to come in, please do.”

“Right this way, Honorable Chamberlain,” said a servant.

Sano could tell that his uncle didn’t want him here, but he was curious to see the house. Perhaps it would trigger more memories. Furthermore, Sano had a stubborn streak.

“Come on,” he told his detectives, and followed the servant inside the mansion.

They left their shoes and swords in the entryway. They were led down a corridor with polished cedar floors, past rooms concealed behind lattice and paper partitions. They arrived in a reception room with a dais backed by a landscape mural and an alcove that held a vase of chrysanthemums. The house seemed familiar to Sano, but only because it had the same architecture and décor as other samurai homes including his own. His own was much bigger than this, but he looked at his uncle’s home through the eyes of the child he’d once been.

His family had lived in a tiny house behind the martial arts school that his father had operated. Compared to that, Major Kumazawa’s estate was a palace. Sano thought of how his mother must have felt, banished to what had surely seemed like squalor to her. He recalled days when food had been scarce, winters when their house had been freezing because they couldn’t afford enough coal. He knew his mother had suffered more than he had.

Major Kumazawa must have known about her poverty. He could have helped but hadn’t.

Sano thought of the memory he’d experienced outside. He tried to dredge it up into the light where he could examine it, but it slipped away, elusive as a ghost.

After a long interval, Major Kumazawa entered the room. “Chiyo is being cared for by her mother and her maids.” He gestured to Sano and the detectives and said, “Please sit.”

Sano knelt in the position of honor by the alcove, the detectives near him. Major Kumazawa seated himself on the dais. He didn’t offer refreshments, not that Sano would have accepted. Major Kumazawa was clearly ill at ease: He didn’t like entertaining a stranger who was his blood kin and an outcast. Sano himself didn’t exactly feel at home.

“I looked all over Asakusa district and didn’t find Chiyo,” Major Kumazawa said. “How did you find her?”

“I spotted her wandering in the rainstorm,” Sano said.

“What a stroke of good luck.” Then Major Kumazawa seemed to realize how ungracious he sounded. “But you brought my daughter back to me. I apologize for my bad manners.” For once he seemed honestly contrite about how he’d behaved toward Sano. “A thousand thanks.”

Sano bowed, accepting the thanks and the apology. He began to realize that Major Kumazawa’s treatment of him wasn’t entirely personal. Old samurai often became curmudgeons. If that was true of his uncle, Sano could live with it.

“How did Chiyo get there?” Major Kumazawa asked.

“It would seem that someone kidnapped her, then dumped her in the street,” Sano said.

“Who?” Major Kumazawa clenched his fists; his expression tightened with anger.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Sano said. “While I was tending to your daughter, I sent my men to look around the area. It was deserted because of the rain. They didn’t see anyone.”

Major Kumazawa brooded darkly. “Two days Chiyo was gone. Where was she? And what happened to her during all that time?”

The sound of a sob interrupted the conversation. Sano, the detectives, and Major Kumazawa looked up and saw Chiyo’s mother standing in the doorway. Tears streaked her contorted face. Major Kumazawa rose and went to her. She whispered in his ear, then fled. He returned to his guests, clearly shaken.

“My daughter,” he began, then swallowed and drew a deep breath. “When my wife undressed and bathed Chiyo, she saw . . . injuries. And blood.” He finished in a low, broken voice, “My daughter has been violated.”

Her torn clothes had suggested the possibility of rape to Sano, but he was dismayed to have his suspicions confirmed. Major Kumazawa sank to his knees, stricken with horror and anguish. Rape was a terrible thing to happen to a woman, perhaps worse than death. Rape contaminated her body and spirit, destroyed her chastity and her honor. Sano and the detectives bowed their heads in sympathy.

Indignation transformed Major Kumazawa’s face into a hideous mask so flushed with red that Sano thought the man would burst a vein. “This thing that has been done to my daughter is a disgrace! But it’s not against the law!”

Tokugawa law didn’t recognize rape as a crime. Men could take their sexual satisfaction where they chose, against a woman’s will, and not be punished. But Chiyo’s case was different.

“Your daughter was the victim of a kidnapping,” Sano said, “and she was injured. The violation constitutes an assault. Kidnapping and assault are both illegal. The law won’t let whoever hurt Chiyo get away with it.”

This rapist had earned a stay in prison and torture by the jailers. He could also be sentenced to live as an outcast for a term set by the magistrate. And since he’d chosen a victim with political connections, he might even get the death penalty.

Major Kumazawa grimaced. “Tell that to the police. They wouldn’t do anything to find Chiyo. They won’t catch her attacker. No,” he said, pounding his fists on the floor. “If I want him punished, I’ll have to do it myself. But first I’ll have to find him.” He fixed his bitter gaze on Sano. “I must trouble you for another favor. Will you help me catch the bastard?”

Sano realized that he and his uncle had found common ground: They both wanted justice for Chiyo. Sano saw the attack on Chiyo as a personal offense to himself as well as her immediate family. He felt a new, unexpected kinship with his estranged relatives.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll start at once. The first thing I need to do is speak with Chiyo.”

“Why?”

“To ask her what happened.”

Resistance flared in Major Kumazawa’s eyes. “She was kidnapped and violated. What more do we need to know? I don’t want her forced to relive it. She’s been through enough.”

Sano saw that working with his uncle would be no easy partnership. “Chiyo will relive what happened to her whether she talks about it or not.” Sano knew that although Reiko seldom spoke of the episodes of violence in her life, she still had nightmares about them. “And right now Chiyo is our only source of information about her attacker.”

“I don’t want you to upset her,” Major Kumazawa said, obstinate. “We should go out and shake up everyone in the district until somebody talks.”

They might have to resort to that eventually, but Sano couldn’t ignore their best lead, the victim who’d witnessed the crime. And he was getting fed up with his uncle’s interference. “Understand that I don’t need your permission to question Chiyo.” Sano rose; so did his detectives. “You can be present while I do it, but I will question her, make no mistake.”

Detectives Marume and Fukida looked gratified because Sano had put his foot down. Major Kumazawa stared in offense because Sano had pulled rank on him. How he must resent that Sano the outcast had risen so high in society!

He obviously realized that he’d been given an order he must obey, but he said, “Can’t you at least wait until tomorrow?”

“No.” Sano was loath to cause further pain to Chiyo, but the passage of time could erase important clues from her mind. He added, “I’ll be careful with her. I give you my word.”

Major Kumazawa rose reluctantly. “Very well.”

In the women’s quarters, Sano and Major Kumazawa entered a room where Chiyo lay in bed, her mother and the physician kneeling on either side. She looked small and delicate under a thick quilt. Her eyes were closed. The right side of her head had been shaved around an ugly red cut, crossed by stitches. Major Kumazawa stared at it, appalled.

The physician was a middle-aged man who wore the dark blue coat of his profession. “The cut wasn’t deep.” He covered it with salve and a cotton pad, then wound a bandage around Chiyo’s head. “It should heal perfectly.”

“What about the inside of her head?” Major Kumazawa said.

“It’s too soon to tell.”

“Is she unconscious?”

“No, just drowsy. I’ve given her a potion to ease the pain and let her sleep.” The physician picked up a tray that held his instruments, jars of medicine, Chiyo’s hair clippings, and a bloodstained cloth. “I’ll come back to check on her in the morning.” He bowed and departed.

Major Kumazawa knelt at the foot of the bed, obviously disturbed by his daughter’s condition. His wife glanced up at Sano. She seemed too shy as well as too upset to speak. Chiyo’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around, her pupils dilated wide and black by the drug. Her gaze fixed on Sano. Her lips formed broken, halting speech: “. . . thanks . . . rescuing me . . . grateful . . .”

Sano was moved by her effort. Even in her condition she had better manners than her father did. Sano knelt near her and noticed again her resemblance to his mother. She had the same sweet, pretty features set in a rectangular face. He thought of a time when he’d interrogated his mother about a crime, when she’d lain drugged and sleepy just like this. But Chiyo was the victim, not the accused.

“Chamberlain Sano is going to catch the person who did this to you,” Major Kumazawa told her. “But first he needs to ask you a few questions.”
Only a few
, his gaze warned Sano.

Chiyo nodded weakly. Sano began in a quiet voice, “Do you remember wandering in the Asakusa district before I found you? Can you tell me how you got there?”

Vagueness clouded her eyes. “I woke up lying in an alley. My head hurt. It was raining. When I stood up, I was so dizzy I could hardly walk. I didn’t know where I was. But I kept going. When I was a child, Papa told me that if I were ever lost, I should walk until I saw something I recognized, I shouldn’t just cry and wait for help.”