“After the first three or four samples, I actually started hearing it, which was strange because ‘the voice of incense’ is just a figure of speech; smells don’t really produce sounds. It was like a whispering in my ears. I started to get nervous. I said I thought I might be ill and we should stop. But Madam Usugumo said it was a breakthrough-I had reached a new level of my education. So I kept going.
“Her voice began to blend with the whisper of the incense. I couldn’t tell who was speaking. She, or it, told me to raise and lower my arm. I obeyed without intending to.” Priest Ryuko demonstrated. “It just floated up and down, as if it were attached to a string that someone had pulled. Then the whisper told me to say my name, and my mother’s name, and where I’d been born. The words just flowed out of me. I wanted to ask Madam Usugumo what kind of ritual this was, but my tongue was paralyzed except when the incense allowed me to speak.
“Then it asked me questions and commanded me to answer each one truthfully: Did I gamble? Did I bed the courtesans at the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter? Or boy prostitutes? I said no. I started getting angry. What right had anyone to ask me such personal questions? I was shaking and fuming, but I couldn’t resist. Then it asked me if there was something that I didn’t want anyone to know. Had I done something I was ashamed of, that I was afraid could get me in trouble? It said, ‘The secret is a stone you carry on your back. It’s getting heavier and heavier.’
“I swear, I could feel the stone. My back started to hurt. My shoulders bent over. I could hardly breathe. I saw Madam Usugumo gazing into my eyes as she held the incense burner under my nose. I began to realize that she must have put something, a drug, in the incense and the tea. I was in some sort of trance. Her lips moved as the incense voice whispered, ‘Just tell me your secret, and you’ll be free.’”
Sano listened, amazed. What Korin had said was true: Madam Usugumo had perverted the incense ritual to extract shameful confessions from her pupils.
“I gathered all my strength of will,” Priest Ryuko went on. “I reached out and knocked the incense burner out of her hand. The hot ash spilled. She hurried to sweep it up before it could start a fire. I stuck my finger down my throat, and I vomited up the tea that was still in my stomach. When I stopped retching, the dizziness and drowsiness went away. I couldn’t hear the incense whispering anymore.
“I shouted at her, ‘What were you trying to do to me, you witch? Put a spell on me?’ She tried to pretend she was confused. She said ‘Nothing.’ I slapped her face, then stalked out of her house. I never went back. I never saw her or heard from her again.”
Sano gazed askance at Ryuko. “Is that all?”
Ryuko looked Sano in the eye. “Yes.” His sincerity seemed a manifestation of will rather than innocence.
“You didn’t tell her your secrets?” Sano asked.
“I told you, I haven’t any.”
“Did you take any action against Madam Usugumo?”
“No.”
Sano knew that Ryuko was quick to punish anyone who crossed him. He remembered a case when some priests who disliked Ryuko’s influence at court had started evil rumors about him. “You could have told Lady Keisho-in.” She’d gotten the shogun to send the priests to work in the government’s silver mines. The priests had died there within a few months.
“I didn’t want to bother her,” Priest Ryuko claimed. “She’s getting on in years; she’s frail. It seemed better to let the whole thing go.”
But Sano thought he knew the real reason the priest hadn’t told Lady Keisho-in. “Or is it because you didn’t want her to wonder whether you had any secrets and demand to hear what they were?” By taking action against Madam Usugumo, he’d have risked his private business becoming public. And if he had indeed confessed secrets to her during the ritual, she could have exposed him before he managed to do away with her.
“For the last time, Madam Usugumo wasn’t blackmailing me. If you want to catch whoever killed Lord Hosokawa’s daughters-which I know you do, whether you’ll admit it or not-you’d better bait someone else.” Priest Ryuko said with the air of a gambler playing his best card, “Such as Minister Ogyu. He was also her pupil.”
Priest Ryuko beat a hasty escape. Sano went home and fetched his horse and troops. They rode downhill through the passages inside the castle. As they neared the castle’s main gate, a samurai came riding toward them. It was Minister Ogyu. He’d saved Sano the trip. Sano raised his hand in greeting. “Minister Ogyu. May I have a word?”
24
As Ogyu and Sano faced each other from astride their horses, Ogyu’s head felt as if the right side of his brain had turned into a fist that clenched and unclenched, crushing itself. How he wished he could go back to the academy and sort rubble! The earthquake had given him a welcome respite from interaction with people, the pressure. He must be the only person in Edo who’d found life better after the earthquake than before.
“I’d be glad to speak with you, but the shogun has summoned me.” The pain was agonizing, but Ogyu hid it. He never let his true emotions or his physical discomfort show in public. “I must go to him first.”
“I’ll go with you.” Sano turned his horse and rode uphill through the passage alongside Ogyu.
Yesterday’s talk had been bad enough. Now Ogyu dreaded having Sano present while he dealt with the shogun. “That would be my pleasure.”
Ogyu and Sano found the shogun in the sunken bathtub in his chamber. Most of Edo’s bath chambers, private and public, had been destroyed by the earthquake; the shogun was among the few people who still had one. His head and neck stuck up from the steaming water. His valet dressed his hair while he soaked. Charcoal braziers heated the moist air. Ogyu felt as if he would suffocate.
He and Sano knelt and bowed. The shogun barely nodded to Sano. He exclaimed, “Ogyu- san, I’m so glad you’re here!”
Ogyu relaxed a little; the headache didn’t stab quite so painfully. He felt more at ease with the shogun than with anyone except his wife and children. Most people feared the shogun’s power of life and death over them, but Ogyu hadn’t been afraid of the shogun since they’d first met almost twenty years ago. On that fateful day he’d crept into the shogun’s chamber, trembling with nerves, drenched in cold sweat. His aching head echoed with his parents’ orders to make the best of this onetime opportunity. Ogyu had expected the shogun to be a physical and intellectual giant, harshly critical. To his surprise, the great dictator was a slight, frail man with a meek manner. He’d invited Ogyu to read aloud a passage from Confucius, in Chinese, then translate it into Japanese. As Ogyu obeyed, his headache and anxiety faded because he was on familiar ground. The shogun was impressed. He said, “I’m having a banquet for my scholars tonight. Would you, ahh, do me the honor of attending?”
That was the beginning of Ogyu’s rise to glory. Instead of studying alone, he studied with the shogun. Instead of lecturing outside Z o j o Temple, he debated with the court’s most renowned Confucians. He even wrote the shogun’s Confucian lectures. Best of all, the shogun had to be the least observant person in the world. Ogyu never had to worry about lapses of appearance or behavior in his presence.
“How may I serve you, Your Excellency?” Ogyu said.
“A terrible problem has come up,” the shogun fretted. “I am in, ahh, desperate need of your advice.”
The shogun often consulted Ogyu about affairs of state and how to apply Confucian principles to them. Ogyu had always managed to give advice that satisfied the shogun and didn’t create hindrances for the men who really ran the government, but this was the first time the shogun had asked for his advice since the earthquake. Many political careers were foundering as officials failed to meet the shogun’s demands to solve the problems. Ogyu’s could be next.
He tried to ignore Sano while maintaining his smoothest composure. “I’ll advise you to the best of my ability. What is the problem?”
“Have you heard what my astronomer said, about the bad constellations?” the shogun said. “That they mean the cosmos is displeased with a high-ranking person within my regime and sent the earthquake as a message?”
“Yes.” Ogyu would rather not get involved in the dangerous controversy. His head pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil.
“My spies say there’s much speculation about which high-ranking person has, ahh, offended the gods. Many
