The Dragon Scroll (13 page)

“Well, it’s time you started, boy.” Sato glowered; and Junjiro dashed away.

Sato accompanied Akitada to the street. At the gate, Akitada asked him, “Did Lord Tachibana entertain many friends?”

“Not lately, sir. In the old days we had many guests. His lordship’s first lady was still alive then. But that’s all changed.” He looked around sadly.

“I see you have served your master a long time,” Akitada said sympathetically. “Nowadays it is rare to find older servants still carrying on. Most of them retire and let young people take over.”

Sato sucked in his breath. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he cried. “I’m as strong as an ox. People shouldn’t think that an old man cannot do the same work as a young one. I’ve been with my master for forty-five years, sir. Since long before the second ladyship, and I’ve always given good service.” He was shaking with emotion, and tears stood in his eyes.

Akitada remembered something Junjiro had mentioned and decided to probe a little further. “The present Lady Tachibana came recently?”

Sato took a breath and brushed at his eyes. “Yes, sir. She’s the daughter of an old friend of the master’s. My lord took her in as his second lady because of a promise he made to her dying father. When the first lady died, the second lady took over the household.” Sato compressed his lips and shot an angry glance toward the house. He obviously had little affection for his young mistress.

Akitada said coldly, “There are always difficult adjustments to be made. It isn’t easy to switch one’s loyalty so quickly. Besides, so young a lady is not, perhaps, very experienced in household matters.” He thought of the slender childlike creature who had smiled tremulously up at him.

“It may be so,” Sato said dully. “There was gossip when her first ladyship died and most of the servants had to leave. There are only five of us left, and we mind our business. Junjiro and I are the only men, and Junjiro is just a foolish boy. I can’t be everywhere at once.”

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer, but I shall be back to go through your master’s papers. Is there some side gate I can use without disturbing the mourners?”

“We have a small gate to the alley behind the property. It’s kept locked, but if you send word, I can have Junjiro let you in.”

“Yes. Thank you. That will do very well.”

Sato struggled to open the gate. Akitada, giving him a hand, asked, “You did not move any of the furniture in the studio recently, did you?”

“Oh, no, sir. His lordship didn’t like his things disturbed. He was very particular about that.”

♦

When Akitada walked into their private courtyard at the tribunal, he found Tora sitting in the sun on the veranda steps, looking glum. Two long bamboo staves were leaning against one of the posts. Tora said accusingly, “I’ve been waiting for hours. You are very late.”

Even among equals this speech would have been ill-natured. From a servant it amounted to gross insubordination. Many another master would have had Tora beaten unmercifully. Akitada winced. He had decided to accept Tora on Tora’s terms because he could not bring himself to spoil a friendship that was as strange as it was satisfying. Tora’s total lack of subservience, his complete honesty, and his bluntness of speech and sentiment were more valuable to Akitada than mere obedience and submission. And Akitada was afraid that any attempt to change Tora would surely drive him away.

Now he merely nodded and said, “I left very early for an appointment with Lord Tachibana. When I got there, I found him dead and had to wait for the authorities.”

Tora’s eyes grew round. “Ah! Some bastard got to him before you could.”

Precisely what Akitada thought himself, but he asked, “What makes you say that?”

Tora grinned. “You dashed off without telling old Seimei. I figured you were on the trail of something criminal.”

“Yes, well. You may be right, though the prefect called it an accident. But let’s save the details for later. If you’re ready for a workout, let’s have it now, and then a bath. I missed both this morning.”

They stripped to their baggy trousers, tossing their outer clothes over the veranda railing. Tora took up the bamboo staves, threw one to Akitada, and they began. The air was still cold, but the sun had melted the thin layer of snow in this protected corner. After only a few bouts, sweat glistened on their backs and chests and steamed off their skin. For a span of time, they thought of nothing but the contest of strength and skill. The air rang with their shouts, the clack clack of the staves, and the crunching of feet on wet gravel. A few timid heads of the tribunal staff peered around the courtyard entrance and disappeared again. Oblivious, they advanced, retreated, slashed, whirled, collided, feinted, and parried stroke for stroke until their breaths came in gasps and their faces reddened with the exertion. Tora was, by a small margin, the stronger and able to push Akitada backward, but Akitada was agile and had learned to plan his moves. The bout ended abruptly when Akitada managed to twist Tora’s stave from his grip and trip him at the same time. Tora landed with a thud on his backside and burst into a roar of laughter.

“Now for that bath,” Akitada shouted, throwing his stave on the veranda and dashing off in the direction of the bathhouse. He felt wonderful, completely alive and happy. For the moment none of his worries mattered. He had finally beaten Tora. He had mastered stick fighting. The blood in his veins sang, and he leapt into the air with joy.

Tora followed with a grin on his face.

“You had me then, sir,” he remarked a little later, when they were crouching naked next to each other. Two attendants in loincloths dipped rough hempen bags filled with rice husks into buckets of cold water and scrubbed their glowing bodies. “It won’t be long till I’ll have nothing left to teach you. I suppose you won’t need me anymore then.”

Akitada sluiced himself down with a bucket of cold water, gasped, and slipped into the steaming vat. The shock of the sudden heat changed to a blissful comfort. He slipped down till the water reached his chin, rested his neck against the wooden rim, and closed his eyes. He said, “Don’t be silly. I can’t spare you from your other duties.”

“I thought so,” said Tora complacently, and stepped into the vat himself. “I’ve got a knack for solving problems and getting to the bottom of things.”

“Hmm,” said Akitada dreamily. He could feel his muscles unknotting and his skin becoming soft and malleable. The steam settled in beads of moisture on his face and tickled, but he was too limp to care. He closed his eyes.

Lord Tachibana had asked him to come—asked him with both urgency and secrecy—and someone had killed him the same night. Why? Had Tachibana been killed to prevent his meeting with Akitada? Because he knew something that could not be passed on to the inspector? That something could only relate to the tax shipments. So far, so good! But there was more. Only someone who had overheard Tachibana’s words could have killed him so promptly. Akitada tried to think of the men who were closest to them at that moment. Motosuke must have been nearby, for courtesy demanded that he accompany his highest-ranking guests. But who else? Yukinari? Ikeda? Joto? For the life of him he could not recall.

He decided not to force it and turned his mind instead to the Tachibana residence. It was the home of a wealthy and cultured man. The buildings, for all their simplicity, were large and beautifully designed and constructed. The furnishings and objects in the studio had been of the finest materials and craftsmanship. Akitada considered their owner. The fact that the ex-governor had spent his retirement compiling a history of his province proved he was a man who took his duties to posterity seriously. But he was also someone who loved gardening. A man of great seriousness and high moral purpose, but also of a spirituality that sought peace and happiness in the creation of beauty. In other words, a man of honor. Such a man would have abhorred the crimes against his emperor. Apparently he had waited for Akitada to arrive before speaking out. Had he also possessed wisdom? Perhaps not. For how could this aged man have taken to wife that beautiful girl-child who had stood so timidly on the threshold of that scholar’s room, her eyes swimming with tears and her trembling lips so soft and moist... ?

A hand seized his shoulder and shook him, and his eyes flew open.

“You’ll drown if you go to sleep,” growled Tora. “Come on. Let’s get out. I want to hear all about the murder.”

They sat with Seimei around the sunken brazier in Akitada’s room. A servant had brought the noon meal and they helped themselves to bowls of rice and pickled vegetables. Tora poured wine.

As soon as the servant had gone, Akitada told them about the events at the Tachibana mansion and passed around the green shard he had found in the dead man’s hair. “He was murdered,” he said flatly. “The body was too carefully arranged, and the murderer made a mistake when he moved the desk. Also, the head wound was on top of the head, not on the side or back, where it would have been if he had hit the corner of the desk in falling. Ikeda tried to explain that away by pointing to the document boxes. He insisted that one of them must have struck his head and knocked him out. But in that case the box would have been stained, not the desk. Besides, the boxes were not heavy enough to inflict a fatal wound. The top of Tachibana’s skull was crushed. Ikeda seemed strangely eager to pronounce the death accidental.”

Tora snorted. “An official! What do you expect? He’s probably involved. That explains why the bastard showed up himself. Probably just sitting there in his office, waiting for the summons. That’d give him a chance to fix up any mistakes, too. He sure didn’t expect you to show up.”

Seimei bristled. “The great sage,” he announced stiffly, “said that serving one’s prince is the highest calling in the land. Those who serve in official positions do so because they have acquired an education. He also said that it is the lowest class that toils without ever managing to learn. You are a member of that class, and therefore know nothing and should keep your mouth shut when your betters converse.”

Tora flushed with anger. But, to Akitada’s surprise, he said only, “Let’s hear your views then, so that I may learn and become a better person.”

Seimei nodded graciously. “Very well. It strikes me, sir, that the prefect may be merely incompetent. Provincial officials,” he explained to Tora, “are poorly trained in the investigation of crimes and he was filling in for the absent magistrate. What about the time of death, sir?”

Akitada nodded. “Yes. That may be important, and I wish I could be more certain. My guess is that Tachibana was not dead more than two or three hours when I arrived. And that, of course, means that he could not have gone to his studio upon his return from the dinner. He had changed his clothes. Also, there was no candle, and the room was without a brazier. He could not have been working on his papers when he was killed.”

“But you said the body was stiffening,” protested Seimei. “It must have been there all night.”

“It was bitterly cold. That may have accelerated the stiffening. But whatever the time of death, I don’t think Tachibana died in his studio. The murder happened elsewhere, and the body was carried to the studio to stage the accidental fall. His clogs were outside the door, but they were dry and clean. Besides, and this did not occur to me until I was about to leave, someone swept the path between the main house and the studio. The servants did not do it, so it must have been done by the murderer to remove footprints in the newly fallen snow. I wonder when it started to snow.” Akitada looked at Tora.

“I think,” said Tora, feeling invited to express an opinion, “that the murderer must be a strong man to have struck the old man over the head and then carried him across the garden. I hate to say it, but that prefect isn’t much of a man from what I hear. Perhaps it was the captain after all. He’s young and a soldier.”

Akitada said, “Yes, and that reminds me. Yukinari also showed up and tried to get into the studio. And I thought he behaved very strangely when I suggested he might offer his assistance to the widow instead. Whatever happened, we forced someone’s hand and that should bring us closer to the answer, but I feel as though I am groping in a fog. I know the road is there and I’m walking in the right direction, but I can’t see my way.”

“I can see it,” cried Tora. “Remember the widow! She’s young, isn’t she?”

Akitada frowned. “Very young.”