she lives?”
The crowd shifted and murmured. A man lurched forward, pushed by his neighbors. He was short, solid, in his fifties, with a tanned, wind-burned face. Bowing hastily, he said, “She’s my aunt.”
Reiko and her guards followed him to a house at the edge of the village. Larger than the others, it had a stone wall with a roofed gate. The thatch was neatly trimmed, the walls coated with fresh white plaster. The nephew ushered Reiko into the house while her guards waited outside. After she removed her shoes in the entryway, he took her to a room that served as kitchen and parlor, with the hearth, cookware, hanging utensils, and cutting board at one end and a raised tatami floor at the other. He gestured for Reiko to sit on the tatami near a brazier.
“Auntie!” he called. “You have company!”
A tiny woman shuffled in through a doorway at the back of the room. Skeletally thin, bent at the waist and shoulders, her elbows sticking out at angles, she leaned on a wooden cane. She reminded Reiko of a grasshopper. Loose skin hung on her pointed face, which had caved in around her toothless mouth. Her hair was like cobwebs. She was probably closer to eighty than a hundred. She halted in front of Reiko and peered into her face. “Who are you, little girl?” Her voice was high, tremulous. Droopy lids shaded her eyes.
Reiko spoke in a loud, clear voice. “My name is Reiko. I’m the wife of Chamberlain Sano, the shogun’s second-in-command.”
Kasane winced. “You needn’t shout. I may be almost blind, but I’m not deaf.”
“I’m sorry,” Reiko said, ashamed of her mistake.
Carefully lowering herself to the floor, Kasane folded her bony limbs and knelt opposite Reiko. She laid her cane at her side and called to her nephew, “Make my guest some tea.”
She overrode Reiko’s polite refusals. The nephew brewed and poured tea, set rice cakes on a dish, then decamped. Kasane’s toothless smile brimmed with pleasure. “I never had a samurai lady come to visit me. Not even when I lived in Edo. I used to be a nursemaid in the house of a very important family there, the Ogyu clan. My young master grew up to be head of the shogun’s big school.”
“Yes, I know,” Reiko said.
Kasane beamed proudly, then looked confused. “What was it you wanted?”
Reiko had spent much of the journey thinking about how best to approach Kasane. “I need to talk to you about Minister Ogyu.”
“Well, I haven’t seen him in-oh, it must be twenty years. Since I came to live here.”
Ogyu had tried to cut his ties to his old nurse. Reiko was more certain than ever that Kasane had dangerous knowledge about him. Maybe he believed that if she didn’t see him, she would forget it, or that any tales she told wouldn’t reach the ears of anyone who mattered.
“But he still sends me letters and money,” Kasane said. “Because I took care of him when he was young. He’s taking care of me now that I’m old. He was always such a good, kind boy. I never married or had children, but I raised him and loved him as if he were my own.”
But Reiko heard a dubious note in Kasane’s wavering voice. That wasn’t the real reason, and Kasane knew it. The pension Minister Ogyu had given his nurse, that must have paid for this house, was akin to the blackmail Reiko was now sure he’d paid Madam Usugumo.
“I came to see you because Minister Ogyu is a suspect in a murder that my husband is investigating,” Reiko said.
“Murder?” Kasane’s toothless mouth gaped. “Who was murdered?”
“A woman named Usugumo, his incense teacher. And two young ladies, her other pupils.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Madam Usugumo found out something about Minister Ogyu. It must be the same secret you’ve been keeping for him.”
“Secret? I don’t know any secret.” Kasane’s gaze wandered, belying her words.
Reiko described the bodies in the sunken house, the fatal incense game. “She blackmailed him. He poisoned her so that he wouldn’t have to pay her anymore and she could never talk. I must warn you that he may kill you next.”
“But I’ve kept quiet for twenty years!” Alarmed into forgetting to deny knowing the secret, Kasane said, “Why would he think I would tell now?”
“He’s tired of paying you and waiting for you to die.” Reiko was intentionally brutal. “He’d rather murder you than let nature take its course.”
The nurse sat in the shambles of her illusions about the man she’d thought of as her son. She reminded Reiko of the earthquake victims sitting by their ruined homes. “I don’t want to die.” She clutched at Reiko. “What should I do?”
“The only way to protect yourself is to tell me the secret,” Reiko said. “I’ll let the whole world know. Then it won’t serve any purpose for Minister Ogyu to kill you. You’ll be safe.”
Kasane trembled. Reiko thought of the earth quaking and splitting open the ground. The secret buried inside Kasane was erupting, shattering her as she wrestled with her conscience, her instinct for self-preservation, and her loyalty to her master. She said, “I always knew I would have to tell someday.” The words shook out of her like rice on the sieves used to separate grains from husks. Resignation eased her trembling, saddened her face. “It’s time.” She sighed.
“My mother was a midwife in Nihonbashi. My father was a doctor. He died when I was very little.” Kasane’s voice took on a remote, nostalgic tone. “But my mother made a good living. She was one of the best midwives in Edo.”
Reiko glanced at the window. It was past noon, and if she wanted to get home before darkness made the journey even more difficult, she must leave soon. She resisted the urge to hurry Kasane, which might change her mind about confessing.
“Very few of the babies she delivered ever died,” Kasane said proudly. “Very few of the mothers, either.” That was a great accomplishment, Reiko knew, considering that childbirth was fraught with hazards and many mothers and infants didn’t survive. “All the rich ladies in town would call her in as soon as they knew they were expecting. She gave them potions she made from secret recipes she learned from her mother, who was also a midwife. It kept them and the babies healthy. And she learned acupuncture from my father. When the women went into labor, she used the needles to relieve the pains. The parents paid my mother very well. And they told other people about her. Samurai ladies started asking her to deliver their babies. When I was ten years old, she started taking me to the births. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a child born.” Awe illuminated her old face. “Out of all the blood and suffering, a miracle.”
Reiko smiled. Truer words she’d never heard.
“At first I helped my mother with simple things, like boiling water and laying out her tools and cleaning up afterward. As I got older, she taught me her trade. How to make the potions. How to turn a baby that was coming out feet first. How to sew up tears. How to stop bleeding and cure fevers. She died when I was twenty.” Sadness tinged Kasane’s voice. “By then I was almost as good a midwife as she’d been. It was me that everybody called to deliver babies. I never got around to marrying, but I didn’t mind. It was as if I was put on earth to be a midwife. And one day I was called to the Ogyu house.”
At last she was getting to the meat of her story. Reiko’s impatience eased.
“Lady Ogyu-my master’s mother-was pregnant,” Kasane said. “She’d already had four miscarriages and two stillborns. She begged me to help her bear a live child. She was desperate. I promised to do my best. But some women aren’t meant to have children. When she went into labor, I prayed as hard as she did. I’d never lost a baby yet, and it was my worst fear.”
Reiko imagined the scene-the pregnant woman convulsing on the bed, the midwife holding her hands and urging her to push, both hoping for the miracle that neither expected.
“The gods must have heard us,” Kasane said. “The baby was born alive. It was the last one I ever delivered. It was a healthy, perfect little girl.” Her expression signaled a deep, incongruous guilt. “So now you know.”
“That’s the secret? That Minister Ogyu has an older sister?” Reiko couldn’t imagine why this fact would be worth killing to hide.
“It wasn’t his sister,” Kasane said. “He was his parents’ only child.”
“What?” Reiko was thoroughly confused. “You just said his mother gave birth to a-”
