The Shogun's Daughter (26 page)

The captain said somberly, “It looks like arson.”

Sano, Marume, and Masahiro exchanged alarmed glances. If it was arson, Yoshisato’s death was murder. The repercussions would be enormous.

Sano looked around. The men in the crowd had removed their hoods. Their sweaty faces were visible in the light of dawn. Sano recognized army officers and castle functionaries; no one outranked him. The higher officials had probably stayed away from the fire because they didn’t want to risk their lives or be held responsible if Yoshisato died. Sano was in charge.

“Before you tell the shogun the fire was arson, we need evidence,” he told the captains. “You look for witnesses. I’ll search the area.”

The captain headed toward the crowd. Sano began exploring the grounds with Marume and Masahiro. “What are we looking for?” Masahiro asked

“Anything that doesn’t belong,” Marume said.

Sano searched the singed bushes near the ruins. From under the third bush he pulled out a metal basket, the kind used to hold coals for lighting tobacco pipes. The basket was empty, the inside coated with ash. Sano also retrieved an empty brown ceramic jar and a bundle of rags. He sniffed them. They smelled of kerosene.

He’d often been ecstatic to find clues during murder investigations. Now he couldn’t have been more disturbed as he gathered up the basket, jar, and rags to show the fire brigade captain.

“Yoshisato! Where is he?” Yanagisawa shouted, barreling through the gate with a squadron of troops. His lavishly patterned silk robes were a colorful, glaring contrast to the bleak scene. When he saw the burned wreckage, he stumbled to a halt. Terror blanched his face. “What happened?”

*   *   *

NO ONE ANSWERED.
Yanagisawa saw men in fire capes staring at him. Their features were carved in lines of exhaustion and despair. Yanagisawa roamed through the crowd, searching.

“Yoshisato! Yoshisato!” he cried with increasing urgency.

Only the echo of his own voice replied. He read the terrible news in the other men’s eyes. He staggered toward the ruins, his high-soled sandals slipping in puddles. Grief began to rise in his spirit, like a tidal wave forming under water when a volcano explodes the ocean floor. He clambered among charred boards that tore at his robes. The night was eerily quiet. The wind had died down. The crowd watched him in silence. He almost stepped on the first corpse.

He screamed as he reeled away from the grinning, broken skeleton covered with blackened flesh. Crawling over broken tiles that cut his hands and knees, he found three more burned, curled-up bodies. None were recognizable. None even looked human. Yanagisawa desperately resisted believing that one was Yoshisato, but his mind did the dire calculation. Four corpses. Yoshisato and his bodyguards. They were all accounted for. Yoshisato was dead.

A dizzying, crushing sensation came over Yanagisawa as he knelt amid the wreckage. Fifteen months ago, Yoritomo had died a violent death. Tonight so had Yoshisato. Yanagisawa had already lost one son. Now he’d lost another, his better chance at complete domination over the regime. His hope of ruling Japan through Yoshisato had gone up in the smoke he’d seen while riding back to Edo Castle. But the demise of that hope seemed trivial. The anguish that flooded him was all for Yoshisato.

His insolent, contrary, tough-minded son!

His son that he loved despite Yoshisato’s efforts to punish and alienate him, despite his knowledge that love made him vulnerable.

Yanagisawa hadn’t thought that anything could hurt as much as Yoritomo’s death, which had dropped him into an abyss of mourning. But Yoshisato’s death was the greater tragedy. The sweet, obedient, devoted Yoritomo was nothing compared to Yoshisato. Yoshisato was special. He could have been a great man someday. Wracked by grief, Yanagisawa wept.

He could never make peace with Yoshisato. Yoshisato had died hating him.

Each sob tore a bleeding gash in Yanagisawa’s viscera. He didn’t care who saw. He cursed himself. If only he hadn’t gone to that banquet tonight, to socialize with his allies, to strengthen their political support. If only he’d persuaded Yoshisato to come with him! But Yoshisato had insisted on being left alone at night. If only Yanagisawa hadn’t let him be! How he wished he’d been here to protect Yoshisato!

The thought of his own culpability was too agonizing to bear. Yanagisawa also couldn’t bear to think that Yoshisato or his guards had carelessly left a lamp burning too close to a paper wall, that Yoshisato was a victim of a stupid accident.

Yanagisawa stood, glaring at the men in the crowd. “Who let this happen?”

No reply came. Yanagisawa smelled fear, as pungent as the smoke in the air. His sobs stopped as his instincts whispered that when a controversial person died violently, assassination was a likely cause. Yanagisawa wiped his eyes with his sleeve. His gaze skipped over face after face, then stopped at three people standing together by a bush.

Sano, with his bodyguard Marume and his son, Masahiro.

Yanagisawa beheld Sano as if through a scrim of leaping flames. He stalked toward the trio. Sano and Marume stepped forward, their expressions wary.

“What are
you
doing here?” Yanagisawa said, his voice thick with hatred.

“We came to help put out the fire,” Sano said, “but it was too late. I’m sorry.”

“How dare you pretend you’re sorry Yoshisato is dead?” Yanagisawa didn’t give Sano time to answer. “What’s that in your hands?”

Looking down at the objects he held, Sano seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten them. The crowd waited. The silence was so complete, Yanagisawa heard faint, distant shouts and the clacking of sticks from a brawl in the city.

“The fire was arson. I found these under a bush.” Sano held up a metal smoking basket, some rags, and a ceramic jar. “The jar and rags smell of kerosene. The arsonist must have left them behind.”

Yanagisawa was horrified by the thought of Yoshisato innocently sleeping while someone set his house on fire. He was so furious that he could hardly speak. “You can’t fool me! You brought them yourself. You were trying to take them away before anyone else could find them. You’re the arsonist!”

“I’m not. That’s ridiculous!” Sano looked stricken, confused.

“You didn’t want Yoshisato to be the next shogun. You tried to prove he wasn’t the shogun’s son, and you failed, so you killed him!”

“I didn’t set the fire. I’m not trying to fool you,” Sano said, angry now. “For once in your life, realize that everything bad that happens to you isn’t my fault! I didn’t get here until after it was already burning.”

“That’s right,” Marume said angrily. “I was with him.”

“Shut up!” Yanagisawa was certain Sano was guilty. Sano had resorted to murder to thwart Yanagisawa’s quest for power, and Yoshisato was the casualty.

“The well was plugged,” Sano said. “The firemen suspected arson. I started an investigation. This is the evidence I found.”

“No more lies!” Yanagisawa snatched the basket, rags, and jar from Sano’s hands. He called to his troops, “Arrest him!” He said to Sano, “You got away with Yoritomo’s death. I won’t let you get away with Yoshisato’s!”

*   *   *

SANO WAS ASTOUNDED
by the sudden reversal of his position and Yanagisawa’s. A moment ago Yanagisawa had been his primary suspect in Tsuruhime’s murder. Now Sano was the suspect in Yoshisato’s. He’d been searching for proof that Yanagisawa was guilty. Now he’d been caught holding the evidence left by the arsonist. Sano realized how guilty he looked. He also realized that the crime he was accused of was much more serious than the one he believed Yanagisawa had committed.

Infecting the shogun’s daughter with smallpox was picayune compared to burning the shogun’s heir to death.

Sano’s past troubles were nothing compared to those he now faced.

As the troops advanced on Sano, he said to Yanagisawa, “You’re making a mistake. If you blame me for the fire, the real arsonist will go free!”

“I’ve got the real arsonist,” Yanagisawa said with vengeful satisfaction.

He really believed it, Sano was disturbed to see. As the troops seized Sano, an uproar rose from the crowd: Everyone was thrilled to see the feud between Sano and Yanagisawa finally culminate. Sano struggled, angrily resisting arrest.

“Let my father go!” Masahiro cried, throwing himself on the troops.

Marume rushed to defend Sano. So did Sano’s other men. None of them had brought their swords, which would have gotten in the way of putting out the fire. They wrestled the troops. Masahiro punched and kicked. Sano, caught in the middle, saw Yanagisawa’s troops brandishing swords.

“Go ahead, Sano-
san
!” Yanagisawa called, hysterical with grief and rage. “Fight. Give me an excuse to kill you and your son right now!”

“Stop!” Sano yelled. He ceased struggling. “I surrender!”

“No!” Masahiro protested.

Groans came from the crowd. Surrendering was the most disgraceful thing a samurai could do. Surrendering deeply shamed Sano. But he must surrender rather than fight a battle unarmed and see his son killed.

“Do as I say,” he ordered Masahiro, Marume, and his troops.

They reluctantly fell back.

“Go home,” Sano called to Masahiro as Yanagisawa’s troops dragged him away. “Tell your mother what happened. Tell her not to worry.” He said what he hoped was true and knew wasn’t: “Everything’s going to be all right.”

26

YANAGISAWA’S TROOPS LOCKED
Sano in a guard tower. He waited alone in the bare, stone-walled room. Rain began to clatter on the roof tiles. A chill in the air turned Sano’s sweat cold under the leather fire cape he still wore. He stood at the window and watched morning break over Edo.

Was this his last morning?

What would happen to his family?

He tried to think of how to get himself out of his predicament, but behind his stoic façade, his mind was a cyclone of desperation. All he could do was wait.

Finally, Yanagisawa’s troops escorted him uphill through the covered corridors. They marched him through lashing rain to the palace. In the reception chamber, the shogun knelt on the dais with Yanagisawa seated at his right. The four old men from the Council of Elders knelt in two grim, silent rows opposite one another on the upper level of the floor below the dais. Soldiers stood against the walls. The troops pushed Sano to his knees on the lower level of the floor. Drenched and shivering, he faced his superiors.

“There had, ahh, better be a good reason for calling a meeting at this early hour,” the shogun said.

“There is.” Yanagisawa’s voice was ragged from weeping, his bloodshot gaze as hard as if his tears had solidified into red-hot iron. “Sano will tell you what happened last night.”

Sano looked at the elders. They gazed at the floor; they already knew. Yanagisawa had designated Sano as the unfortunate messenger of the bad news that nobody else wanted to break to the shogun. Sano couldn’t resent the unfairness of it. Guilt weighed heavily upon him. He’d been Yoshisato’s detractor; he’d failed to rescue Yoshisato. The least Sano could do for Yoshisato was to report the fact of his death.

“There was a fire at the heir’s residence,” Sano said.

The shogun’s eyes widened with fright. “Yoshisato…?”

“I’m sorry, Your Excellency,” Sano said. “Yoshisato … didn’t survive.”

The shogun recoiled from Sano in horror. An ugly, satisfied smile appeared on Yanagisawa’s face.

“No. It can’t be.” Trembling and frantic, the shogun looked around the room. When nobody contradicted Sano, he wailed, “The poor, dear boy!” and burst into tears. “Ahh, how terribly he must have suffered!”

Even while distressed by the misery his words had caused and in fear for his life, Sano marveled at how Yoshisato’s death had affected the shogun.

“He was such a wonderful young man! That he should be cut down in the prime of his life! What a tragedy!” The shogun prostrated himself on the dais as he wept.

Sano had expected the shogun to be strictly concerned about himself, as he’d been after his daughter’s death. This time he lamented Yoshisato, not the disruption of his own world. Yoshisato had been, as Sano had begun to think, a truly special person.

“My son! I loved him so much!” The shogun sobbed so hard he gasped for breath. “I only had him for, ahh, such a short time. And now he’s gone!”

Sano had never known the shogun to love anybody. His sincere grief made Sano feel even guiltier. Yanagisawa watched it with perverse pleasure. The shogun raised himself on his elbows. Anger surfaced through his grief. His wet gaze raked Sano’s leather garments.

“Why didn’t you put out the fire? Why didn’t you save Yoshisato?”

“I tried.” Sano felt the hot roar of the flames blasting out the door. “It was too late.”

“He set the fire,” Yanagisawa said, his voice loud with indignation.

“Can this be true?” The shogun gaped at Sano. “You murdered my son?”

“No,” Sano said vehemently. “Chamberlain Yanagisawa is wrong.”

“He’s lying. Here’s the evidence he left.” Yanagisawa reached behind him and brought forth the smoking basket, the jar, and the rags.

“It’s not mine,” Sano said.

The shogun handled the ash-coated metal basket with finicky fingers, wrinkling his nose as he smelled the rags. “What are these?”

“The jar that Sano used to carry the kerosene to the heir’s residence,” Yanagisawa said. “He brought hot coals in the smoking basket. He lit the rags to start the fire.” Conviction rang in Yanagisawa’s voice. During the past few hours he’d become entrenched in his belief that Sano had murdered Yoshisato.

“I never saw them until after the fire was out,” Sano insisted, glancing at the elders. They eyed him dubiously. Either Yanagisawa had persuaded them that Sano was guilty or they were afraid not to go along with him. “I was investigating the fire. I found them under a bush.”

“You were sneaking them away, so that nobody else would find them. But I caught you.” Yanagisawa said to the shogun, “Sano didn’t want Yoshisato to inherit the dictatorship. He tried to discredit Yoshisato, but he failed. So he burned him to death.”