The Dragon Scroll (11 page)

Akitada lengthened his stride. When he reached the quarter where substantial private compounds, secluded behind high walls, lined the streets, he asked directions of a beggar, tossing him a few copper coins in return.

Lord Tachibana’s villa was not far, but after Akitada knocked at the fine old wooden gate, there was a considerable delay before it creaked open. He was admitted by an aged male servant, so bent and decrepit that Akitada expected him to creak like the gate. Beyond the small courtyard rose the main house, its steep roof covered with snowy thatch, and its wooden walls and shutters, blackened by years of exposure to the weather, stark in their contrast.

“I am Sugawara,” Akitada told the old man, who raised a hand to his ear and blinked at him uncertainly. “Lord Tachibana asked me to call today,” Akitada shouted.

Without a word, the servant turned and shuffled off down a snowy path that led past the main house into the garden. After a moment’s hesitation, Akitada followed.

The garden had been laid out by a master. Elegantly clustered rocks, shrubs, and clipped pine trees, beautiful even in this season, were covered with new snow. The path wound past a stone lantern and a small pond, where, with flashes of silver and gold, carp moved sluggishly on the murky bottom.

Their path joined another, this one swept clean of snow, and they came to a small building, a secluded pavilion surrounded by a wooden veranda.

The old servant climbed the steps slowly and slipped out of his wooden clogs. Akitada, following, bent to take off his boots. He heard the sound of the door sliding open, then a cry. Quickly pulling off his boots, he looked into a spacious studio, its walls lined with shelves of books and document boxes, and its floor covered with thick grass matting.

The servant had his back to him. “Master?” he quavered. “Oh, my poor Master! Oh, sir. Would you see if he is alive? Oh, I must run for the doctor. Oh, dear! How terrible!”

Since he seemed incapable of movement, let alone running, Akitada said, “Calm yourself,” and stepped past him.

Lord Tachibana, bareheaded and dressed in a plain gray silk robe, lay facedown next to his desk and just below one of the walls of shelves. A stepping stool was beside him, on its side, and loose papers, half-opened document boxes, and rolls of records were strewn about his lifeless figure.

Akitada knelt and felt for a pulse on the old man’s neck. There was none and the body was quite cold. A very small amount of blood had seeped into the matting under Lord Tachibana’s head. Akitada tried to recall what the medical texts had said about timing a person’s death. He touched the old man’s hand, flexed the fingers, and moved the wrist. There was some resistance: the body was stiffening. It meant that death had occurred many—he was not sure how many—hours ago.

But did it really matter when? On one corner of the writing desk were traces of blood and a few gray hairs. Akitada glanced up at the shelves. One of them, quite high up, was partially empty. And there was the toppled stool and the scattered papers. Apparently the former governor had suffered an accidental fall while reaching for some documents.

“I’m afraid your master is dead,” Akitada said, rising to his feet.

The old man stared at him. His eyes dimmed with tears, but he did not respond.

“There is no need to go for the doctor,” Akitada said, raising his voice. “Your master died last night. He may have fallen while standing on that stool and reaching for the boxes on those shelves up there.”

“Oh, dear, oh dear.” The old man turned alarmingly white and clutched his chest.

Putting an arm around his shoulders, Akitada walked him to the open door. “Take a few deep breaths,” he said. After a moment, recalling Lord Tachibana’s stumbling the night before, he asked, “Was your master troubled by dizzy spells?”

“Never. He was very healthy” The old servant gulped and suddenly became voluble. “Oh, yes, quite energetic and agile. I often envied him. And now he is dead.” A slightly smug look crossed his face as he shook his head at the unpredictability of fate.

Akitada, remembering the frail old gentleman clutching his arm for support the night before, raised his eyebrows. “But he had a doctor? You were about to call him.”

“Oh, no. Not his doctor. The master never had a doctor. Not even last summer when he had that stomach complaint. He did not hold with doctors, said they just made people sicker and poisoned them with their medicines. Clean living and hard work, he used to say, that’s what kept him in such good shape. He told me to eat more onions and to stop sleeping so much and my backache would go away.”

Fascinated, Akitada asked, “And did it?”

“It is very hard for me to stay awake and I don’t like onions. But the master cured himself of the stomach cramps. Oh, yes. He cooked his own rice with special herbs and got well right away.”

“I see,” said Akitada. “Well, if you feel up to it, perhaps you had better tell Lady Tachibana what happened. Then you must go and report Lord Tachibana’s death to the authorities. Go to the prefectural office. They will know what to do. I shall wait here until they come.”

The old servant cast a sorrowful glance over his shoulder and nodded. “Terrible.” He sighed. “I shall run as fast as I can, sir.”

Akitada stood in the doorway and watched him as he lowered himself painfully to the first step to put his clogs back on. His eyes fell on a second set of wooden clogs standing near the door. They must be Lord Tachibana’s. He bent to touch them. They were quite dry.

Eventually the old servant staggered to his feet and shuffled off in the direction of the house. There would be plenty of time before anyone came back.

Akitada went back inside and knelt beside the body. This time he studied the position of the corpse carefully and then felt the dead man’s skull. Through the thinning gray hair just above the topknot, he felt a depression the size and shape of a large oyster shell. The bone gave under his touch, and when he removed his fingers they were stained with blood and brain tissue. He was about to wipe his hand on the grass mat when he caught the glint of something green among the hairs of the topknot and carefully extracted a small bloodstained shard, no bigger than his small fingernail. This he placed on one of the scattered sheets of paper. It was slightly curved, with a shiny green outer side and a dull white inner one. The broken edges were red clay. The shard reminded him of the colored tiles used on roofs, except that commonly their color was more bluish. He looked about the room and then stepped out on the veranda again. No tiles in sight anywhere! Every building in the Tachibana compound was thatched.

Returning to the studio, he wrapped the shard in the piece of paper and tucked it into his sash. Then he sat down to think.

When he had first laid eyes on the body, disappointment had struck him like a physical blow, and he had been ashamed of his selfishness. Then he had remembered the urgency of Lord Tachibana’s summons, and a suspicion had taken shape in his mind that this death was too convenient to be an accident.

Had someone overheard them last night and followed the old man home?

Akitada wondered if he would find an answer among the dead man’s papers. The label on the fallen box read “Agricultural Products.” Akitada glanced up at the shelves. There were other boxes for “Fishing and Shipping,” “Silk Production,” “Local Customs and Curiosities,” “Temples and Shrines” (this might contain information about Abbot Joto’s temple), “Merchants and Artisans,” “Plants and Animals,” “Entertainers and Courtesans,” and “Crime and Local Administration” (another interesting title). Akitada looked for a box that might deal with tax collection but found nothing. There was only one other box, called “Dwelling Among Frogs and Cicadas.” Intrigued, he took this down and opened it.

Inside he found an odd assortment of papers. On top lay several poems praising nature—Akitada was no connoisseur of poetry and merely glanced at these; then came ink sketches of rocks, plants, and flowers, in juxtaposition and in differing arrangements, followed by notations about cultural matters, copies of various old Chinese texts describing famous people’s gardens, and finally, on the bottom of the box, a treatise entitled “Dwelling Among Frogs and Cicadas.” It described the pleasures and chores of making a garden and bore Tachibana’s seal.

Akitada was charmed by this private passion of the scholarly man and suddenly felt a sharp sense of loss at not having had the chance to know such a man. He was sadly closing the box when he heard the sound of running steps outside.

Replacing it quickly, he turned toward the door and noticed two pairs of square indentations in the straw matting. Each pair was about two feet apart, with a distance of four feet between the pairs. Something heavy must have stood there on four square legs.

Outside someone scrabbled at the veranda steps. Akitada went to take a look.

A thin boy of about twelve or thirteen was kneeling there. He stared up at Akitada with anguished eyes. “The master? Is it true?” he squeaked, his voice breaking.

Akitada nodded. “Lord Tachibana took a fall. He is dead.”

The boy swallowed, looked woeful, then said, “I am to offer my assistance.”

Akitada smiled. “You are very young. Where are the other servants?”

“Aside from old Sato, there’s only the women,” the boy said dismissively.

“What is your name?”

“I am Junjiro, Your Honor.”

Again that catch in his voice. Akitada looked at him more closely. “You were fond of your master?” he asked.

The boy nodded and ran a grubby hand over his face. “What are Your Honor’s commands?” he asked gruffly.

“You can point out your mistress’s quarters. Has she been informed yet?”

A stubborn look crossed Junjiro’s face. “We don’t go there. Only her nurse is allowed. It’s that way.” He flung up an arm and pointed at one of the sloping roofs among the trees.

Akitada’s eyes narrowed. He could not have mistaken the animosity of the tone, nor the ferocious glare that accompanied the words and gesture.

“Do I take it that her nurse is something of a dragon?” he guessed. “I’m obliged for the warning.”

The boy sniffed. “She won’t try her tricks on a gentleman. It’s just us servants she hates. Telling lies about us to his lordship. Saying we steal and break stuff and we don’t do our work. And when we get near her ladyship’s quarters, she says we’re snooping. She’s an evil one, that one. She got most of the servants dismissed and yesterday she was at it again, telling the master that Sato’s too old for his work and sleeps all day.” He bit his lip. “I don’t know what’s to become of us now.”

“I’m sure in time things will settle down,” Akitada said soothingly. “Your master will have left a will that makes provision for the household servants. Now, I am waiting for the authorities who should arrive at any moment. Why don’t you go and watch for them at the gate? You can show them the way.”

The boy bowed and dashed off.

Akitada returned to Lord Tachibana’s studio and bent over the indentations. They were sharp and clearly defined. Whatever had stood there had been moved recently before the fibers could resume their shape. He looked about the room. The low writing desk was the only piece exactly the right size to have made the depressions. In fact, it became obvious now that the desk was placed awkwardly. A man working at it would be facing the wall. Was it likely that Lord Tachibana would turn his back on the lovely landscape outside? Why had he moved the desk? Or if not he, who had, and why?

He considered the position of the fatal wound, the blood on the corner of the desk, the whole scene of the supposed accident, and looked grim.

On the desk were the usual writing materials, a neat pile of blank rice paper with a new writing brush next to it. The ink block in its jade container was well used and the water container was full. Akitada touched the ink block. It was quite dry. More surprisingly, he saw neither lamp nor candle, not even a lantern in the room.

He was about to bend down to the fallen papers when he became aware of a soft rustling behind him. He whirled and stood transfixed.