behind other piles, he and Marume stole up to the houses.
There were three, flanked by the burned remains of neighboring residences. Peasants armed with spears were stationed at the gates. In many improvised forts like this, the lucky few citizens who still had their homes tried to bar trespassers seeking loot or shelter. Sano and Marume positioned themselves behind a pile some thirty paces from the houses.
Priest Ryuko walked up to the guards, who let him in the gate. Sano waited. His head throbbed. He blinked to focus his eyes on the house. After a long while, a muscular peasant man backed out the gate, carrying one end of a large wooden trunk. A second man followed, holding the other end. The porters dropped the trunk by the palanquin. Priest Ryuko emerged, shepherding a woman and a little boy. The boy was about three years old and so padded with clothing that he looked like a ball, his fat arms sticking out from his sides, a red cap with earflaps on his head. The woman was slender and young. She wore a blue coat whose hood framed a pretty, anxious face. Priest Ryuko led her and the boy to the palanquin and opened its door. He spoke to the woman. Sano couldn’t hear his words, but he seemed to be reassuring her. She climbed into the palanquin. Priest Ryuko crouched before the boy. He smiled and said something that made the boy laugh. Then he lifted the boy into the palanquin and settled him beside the woman.
“Priest Ryuko isn’t going on the journey,” Sano said. “They are.”
Sano and Marume strode toward the priest. Ryuko shut the door of the palanquin and turned. His eyes hollowed and his mouth sagged with shock. “What are you doing here?” He moved in front of the palanquin, as if to hide it from Sano’s view. “Did you follow me?”
“Yes.” Sano peered around Ryuko. The open window of the palanquin framed the woman’s and boy’s frightened faces. “Who are those people?”
Ryuko’s expression darkened. “That’s none of your business.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Sano said. “I can guess. The woman is your mistress. The boy is your son. They’re your secret, aren’t they?”
“Yes, damn you, and keep your voice down. I don’t want the whole world to hear.”
“You mean, you don’t want Lady Keisho-in to hear.” Sano realized the magnitude and dangerousness of the priest’s secret. “Imagine what she would do if she found out that you’d not only been unfaithful to her, but that you have a child with your mistress.”
“Lady Keisho-in is insanely jealous.” Fear of her wrath made Ryuko’s voice quiver. “She would kill me.” He gestured toward his woman and son. “She would kill them, too.”
“Madam Usugumo knew about them, didn’t she?” Sano asked. Ryuko nodded weakly. “You confessed to her during her incense ritual. You couldn’t stop yourself.”
“A curse on her! She threatened to go to Lady Keisho-in unless I paid for her silence.”
“Would Lady Keisho-in have believed her?” Marume said skeptically. “Would she have even been able to get an audience with Lady Keisho-in? Couldn’t you have kept them apart?”
“Madam Usugumo wouldn’t have had to speak with Lady Keisho-in. She could have started a rumor. Lady Keisho-in hears all the rumors, and she listens. She’s always accusing me of something or other-stealing from her or making friends with people she doesn’t like. I’ve always managed to get around her. But this-” The breath gushed out of Ryuko. “This, she would never forgive.”
“So you paid Madam Usugumo,” Sano said.
“Yes.”
“She was bleeding you dry. You were afraid you would run out of money and she would let out your secret. So you slipped her the poisoned incense.”
“No!” Ryuko swelled with the wind of his denial. “I said I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t.”
“You said you didn’t have any secrets, but you do,” Sano reminded him.
“I’m telling you the truth this time. The truth is that I would have killed Usugumo if I thought I could get away with it. But it turned out that I didn’t need to.” Ryuko smiled, triumphant yet shamefaced. “Because somebody else did.”
Sano didn’t know whether to believe him. “Either you were fortunate or you’re still lying.”
“You can’t prove I poisoned her.”
“But you’re still my best suspect,” Sano said. Unless Reiko discovered evidence just as incriminating about Minister Ogyu. “Because now I know that you have a secret that’s worth killing to hide.” He pointed to the woman and child in the palanquin. “There’s proof.”
Priest Ryuko wiped his hand down his face, which was shiny with sweat. His ghastly expression said he’d been struck anew by the seriousness of his predicament. “I should have sent her away before our son was born, but I couldn’t bear to let them go.”
He gazed at his family, and Sano saw love in the eyes of this vain man who’d never appeared to care about anyone except himself. Mother and child gazed solemnly back at him with utter trust and dependence. Sano pitied them.
“I have to get them out of town to someplace where they’ll be safe. Before anyone else can find out about them.” Ryuko raised his clasped hands to Sano. “Please don’t keep them from leaving. Please don’t tell Lady Keisho-in.”
Sano saw a dilemma. The mistress and son were evidence in his investigation. If he let them go, Ryuko could deny their existence. Ryuko would have no verifiable motive for the murders even if he were guilty. Without one, could Sano convince Lord Hosokawa that Ryuko was the culprit? Lord Hosokawa had already warned him against framing a scapegoat. If Ryuko were guilty and Lord Hosokawa didn’t believe it, Sano would either have to frame someone else or let Lord Hosokawa join the rebel daimyo clans and the civil war would begin. Ryuko would surely escape justice because Lady Keisho-in and the shogun would never believe he was guilty in the absence of any reason for him to have committed the crime. They would protect him. And Sano would have let a killer go free.
“I’m begging you!” Priest Ryuko fell to his knees, heedless of the mud that soiled his cloak. He lay forward, arms extended, fingers at Sano’s toes. “Have mercy!”
But Sano couldn’t subject that innocent woman and child to the jealous wrath of Lady Keisho-in, even if Priest Ryuko was a murderer.
“They can go,” Sano said. “I’ll keep your secret for now. But if I find out that you killed Madam Usugumo and Lord Hosokawa’s daughters, it will have to come out.”
33
The trip to Mitake was more difficult than Reiko had anticipated. Escorted by four mounted guards, she traveled all morning. They detoured through fields, avoiding huge cracks in the road. She frequently had to get out of her palanquin so that the bearers could maneuver it through the woods. About two-thirds along the way they met a massive landslide of rocks and earth, a cliff that had fallen across the highway. Reiko had to abandon her palanquin and tell her bearers to wait for her. As she climbed over the landslide, her sandals slipped on loose dirt. She clung to Lieutenant Tanuma’s hand for support. Her other escorts walked the horses up. Reiko was afraid she’d fall, afraid for the child inside her, but she’d come too far to turn back. The downward slope was gentler, and Sano needed the information she’d promised him. She wouldn’t let the truth go undiscovered and have a civil war start because she was a coward.
On the other side of the landslide, Tanuma lifted Reiko onto his horse and climbed up in front of her. She clung to him and hoped the swaying and jolting wouldn’t shake the baby loose.
Fewer obstacles arose the farther they traveled. By the time they turned onto the branch of the highway that led to Mitake, it seemed as if the earthquake had never happened. Dikes and canals bordered wide rice fields frosted with snow. Crows flew, black and sharp-edged as ink marks against the blue sky. Mitake consisted of a dirt road that ran past some fifty huts with mud walls and thatched roofs, surrounded by bamboo fences and small yards cluttered with farm equipment. A torii gate marked the entrance to a Shinto shrine. As Reiko and her party rode into the village, peasants lined up along the road to watch. It was probably rare for any samurai except local tax collectors to visit them, and they’d probably never seen a lady on horseback.
“We want to talk to an old woman named Kasane,” Lieutenant Tanuma announced. “Who can tell us where
