'Hear what?' Joju frowned, impatient and threatening, his blade firm against the old woman's throat.
'There's somebody here in this room with us,' Sano said.
'There's only you and me and her, and you'll be gone soon,' Joju retorted.
Sano gazed around the cabin, lifting his hand, feeling the air. 'It's somebody from the spirit world.'
Contempt twisted the priest's mouth. 'Don't try that on me. I'm the expert at all the tricks. You're just an amateur.'
' 'We all have the power to communicate with the spirit world.' ' Sano quoted the words Joju had spoken to him during their first meeting.
'But only a few of us know how. You're forgetting the rest of what I said.'
'I seem to have become one of the few,' Sano said, 'and I don't need music or fireworks to hear the spirit. She says she wants to talk to you.'
'You're stalling.' Joju held the knife firmly against the blue vein visible in the woman's neck. 'Get out.'
'I'm getting a name,' Sano said. 'It sounds like…' He paused, straining the muscles of his face, concentrating hard. 'Okitsu.'
'I don't know anyone by that name.' But Joju looked as shocked as the moneylender he'd bilked. He obviously remembered Okitsu, the beggar woman Sano had met outside the temple.
'She was once possessed by evil spirits who told her that people were out to get her,' Sano said. 'Her parents brought her to you. You performed an exorcism on her.'
'How-?'
'How did I know? She just told me.' Sano cocked his head, pretended to listen. 'She says you raped her and got her pregnant.'
Joju beheld Sano with the fearful wonder of a pilgrim hearing a Buddha statue at a woodland shrine tell guilty secrets he thought nobody knew.
Sano gambled that Joju hadn't bothered to find out what had happened to Okitsu afterward. 'She died giving birth.'
'No,' Joju whispered. He evidently didn't know that Okitsu was still alive and begging outside his temple.
Sano remembered something else Joju had said: People want to believe in what I do. He realized that Joju himself believed, and he was as vulnerable to manipulation by false mediums and spirits as his own clients were.
'What does she want?' Joju said reluctantly, unable to help himself. Sano's knowledge of his past had convinced him that the spirit was real.
'There's another spirit with Okitsu,' Sano said. 'She wants you to meet him.'
'Who…?'
'It's her son.' Sano paused a beat. 'Your son.'
'I never had any son.' Joju's words were less a denial than a plea for Sano to assure him that they were true.
'Now you know better,' Sano said. 'He doesn't have a name because he died while Okitsu was having him. She says she's been wandering between the world of the living and the world of the dead, carrying him in her arms. She wants to show him to his father. Here he is.'
Sano gestured at the empty air near the bed. Joju's stricken gaze moved to the spot Sano indicated. Sano blew on the cloth that hung from the ceiling over the spot. The cloth fluttered. The flame in the lantern wavered. Joju gasped. Sano could almost see the vision the priest saw-a ghostly woman holding out a baby. The hairs rose on Sano's own neck. The power of suggestion was potent indeed.
'I don't want him,' Joju said weakly to the ghost. 'Leave me alone.'
'She's angry at you for what you did,' Sano said. 'You caused her and the baby to suffer and die. You doomed them never to find peace. And now that she's found you, she wants revenge.'
Joju shuddered as he recoiled from the ghostly mother and child. 'Please. Go away,' he whispered.
His hand that held the knife trembled. He seemed to have forgotten the old woman was there, but one slip of the knife could kill her. Sano felt an increasing pressure to gain control of Joju, fast.
'Okitsu says she's putting a curse on you,' Sano said. 'Misfortune will follow you wherever you go. The shogun will turn against you. You'll lose your temple, your money, and your reputation. You'll become a pariah begging in the streets. You'll get every disease known to man. Everybody will shun you. You'll suffer terribly.'
Joju glared at Sano as if Sano were responsible for the sins he'd committed, the ills he'd brought upon himself. 'Make her stop! Make them go away!'
'I can't,' Sano said. 'I'm not an exorcist. All I can do is act as a mediator between you and Okitsu.'
'Then do it!' Panic agitated Joju.
Sano addressed the ghost he'd conjured up. 'How can Joju make amends for what he did? What must he do in order for you to lift your curse and cross into the spirit world?'
He pretended to listen. He forced himself to wait and let the suspense build, while Joju watched him with the helpless faith of a drowning man clinging to a rescuer's hand. At last Sano said, 'Okitsu says you must confess your sins.'
'All right!' Joju cried. 'I took advantage of her. I got her with child. It's my fault they died!'
'She says that's not enough. You have to confess all your sins.' Sano asked, 'Did you rape the nun?'
Joju hesitated, clearly aware that Sano had led him onto ground where he must dig his own grave. But his fear of the future Sano had painted overcame caution. With a groan, he sank in his shovel. 'Yes.'
At long last Sano had the admission of guilt that he wanted, but he couldn't stop there. 'Okitsu still isn't satisfied. She says that if you hurt that old woman, she'll never forgive you. When you die, she'll lay claim to your soul. You and Okitsu and your child will wander in the netherworld together for all eternity.'
The priest gazed at the old woman. She slept, oblivious to the drama taking place. In his eyes warred his desire for salvation and his knowledge that if he gave up his hostage, he was doomed.
Sano pointed at a corner of the padded floor. 'Okitsu wants you to throw the knife over there. She says, get up and move away from that woman, or the curse starts now.'
Joju's fraught expression didn't change, but Sano felt a dangerous impulse flare in him. Sano ducked at the same instant the priest hurled the knife straight at his heart. The knife struck the wall with a muffled thump; the padding absorbed the blade. Joju uttered a roar of desperate, reckless fury. He lunged at Sano. Sano sidestepped, grabbed Joju by the arm, twisted it behind him, and forced him to the floor.
The resistance leaked out of Joju. Pinned under Sano's knee, he wept, babbling, 'Namo Amida Butsu! Namo Amida Butsu! I trust in the Buddha of Immeasurable Light.' It was the prayer that the nun had told Reiko he'd forced her to say while he'd raped her here, in the pavilion of clouds.
The door crashed open. The sounds of oars splashing in water accompanied Hirata and Detective Marume into the room. 'The boat owner and his guards are dead,' Hirata said. 'The crew has surrendered, and they're taking the boat back to the dock. Fukida is keeping an eye on them…' His voice trailed off. He and Marume stared at Sano holding Joju down, at the naked, unconscious woman on the bed, at the padded walls.
'So this is the scene of the crime,' Marume said, dripping wet from his swim in the river. 'It looks like you've got things under control here. All's well that ends well.'
'Not quite,' Sano said. The full measure of his success and failure struck satisfaction and despair into him. 'I hate to tell you this, but the shogun's wife is still missing.'
42
In the morning, Sano and his detectives arrived back at Edo Castle. His troops had taken Joju to Edo Jail and the old woman to Keiaiji Convent, where the nuns would care for her until she could be identified and returned to her home.
Sano wasn't eager to return to his. He'd missed the shogun's deadline, and now he must face the consequences. He had to save his family, but he was so exhausted he could hardly see straight. He'd hardly slept in days.
Outside the gate, one of his soldiers was waiting for him. 'Honorable Chamberlain Sano! The shogun's wife
