Red Chrysanthemum

Reiko’s laughter echoed strangely in his ears. Her image wavered before him. “I put poison in your cup,” she said in a voice that sounded remote, distorted into an eerie drone. As he gasped and clutched his throat, she said, “But it won’t kill you. I’ll do the honors myself.”

She rose and glided toward him. No! Leave me alone! Lord Mori tried to cry but couldn’t. He staggered backward into his bedchamber. He collapsed with a thud that shook the floor. Reiko stood over him.

Help! His lips formed the soundless word.

Reiko grabbed his feet and dragged him onto his bed. He tried to resist, but his limbs were paralyzed. He felt the poison spreading a noxious lethargy through him. She untied his sash and opened his robe. His mind was the only part of him that remained alert, his eyes the only part he could move. Wide with terror, they tracked Reiko as she undressed herself. She flung her garments into a corner. She stood naked except for a dagger strapped to her arm.

“I don’t want to get blood on my clothes,” she said.

She drew the dagger and plunged it into his abdomen. Horrendous pain stabbed him. He uttered a muffled squeal. Blood spewed from the wound, gurgled in his throat, splashed Reiko. She laughed at his suffering while she stabbed him again and again. Her beautiful, crazed face filled his vision as he swooned. She seized his genitals in her fist and lowered the blade to them.

Wild, helpless outrage thrashed inside Lord Mori. “You won’t get away with this,” he managed to whisper.

“Oh, yes, I will.” Her voice echoed and intertwined with the throbbing of his wounds. “I’m married to Chamberlain Sano. He’s invincible. No one can touch him. Or me.”

The blade slashed.

10

A horrendous scream burst from the medium. Everyone in the shogun’s audience chamber flinched. Lady Nyogo’s childish face contorted as though from the pain Lord Mori had felt when the knife cut him. Her body jerked in convulsions; her head tossed. The exposed whites of her eyes bulged. The scream propelled saliva from her mouth. Sano started to interrupt, as he had many times during the seance, to protest the outrageous lies she’d told about Reiko and himself. But the shogun waved a hand, silencing Sano yet again.

“Oh, spirit of Lord Mori,” the shogun said, “what happened next?”

Lady Nyogo twitched, groaned, and choked. Police Commissioner Hoshina and Captain Torai watched her, and Sano, with undisguised glee. Hirata looked as beset by apprehension as Sano felt. Lord Matsudaira fixed an ireful, ominous gaze on them. The medium’s convulsions diminished; she sagged.

“I felt my heart pumping the blood from me.” The deep, masculine voice was now weak, sorrowful. “I felt my life-force waning. The world dissolved into blackness before my eyes.” She breathed slow, labored sips of air. “And then I died.”

“What did Lady Reiko do?” the shogun asked eagerly.

“I didn’t see.” The voice faded. “My spirit drifted off into the cosmos. I can tell you no more.”

“She’s, ahh, coming out of her trance,” the shogun said.

Nyogo’s eyes closed; her face relaxed. She stirred, blinked, and stretched, as if awakening from a nap. Her innocent, puzzled gaze surveyed the men staring at her. “What happened?” She seemed to have forgotten. “Did I say anything?”

“Yes, indeed,” Lord Matsudaira said grimly.

“You did very well,” the shogun told her. “You may go now.”

As she rose, Sano said, “Wait just a moment.” Even though the seance had been impressive, he didn’t believe that Lord Mori’s spirit had spoken through her. He wasn’t about to let her leave until he’d exposed her as a fraud.

Nyogo hesitated; she looked to the shogun.

Police Commissioner Hoshina said quickly, “Your Excellency, we’re finished with the girl. We need to discuss the information she’s given us. Let her go.”

Sano doubted that Hoshina thought the medium was any more genuine than he did. But Hoshina had a vested interest in having everyone else believe her.

“Your Excellency, that seance was a hoax,” Sano declared. “None of what Nyogo said happened. That wasn’t the spirit of Lord Mori we heard. It was her pretending to be him.”

“No, you are mistaken,” the shogun said. “She’s a genuine medium. I have, ahh, communicated with my ancestors through her on many an occasion.” Stubbornness hardened his weak features. “I believe that what she said is the absolute truth. Shame on you for trying to discredit her.”

Sano’s heart sank because his protest had backfired and he’d angered the shogun, which he couldn’t afford to do. Hoshina gleamed with malicious satisfaction.

The shogun said to Lady Nyogo, “You’re dismissed.” As the door closed behind her, he announced, “Well, ahh, now we know how Lord Mori died and who killed him.”

Even while Sano opened his mouth to defend himself and Reiko against the medium’s ridiculous accusations, and Hoshina made ready to counter him, the shogun said, “But I don’t quite understand why.” He turned to Lord Matsudaira. “What was all that business about a war? Why would anyone plot to overthrow you? Why did Lord Mori think you rule Japan?”

Danger thickened the air. Nobody moved. Sano thought the shogun was at long last about to learn what was going on. Everyone waited in suspense for Lord Matsudaira’s answer.

“I don’t know, Honorable Cousin,” Lord Matsudaira said smoothly. “Lord Mori was mistaken about the part of his tale that had to do with me.”

“Oh.” The shogun nodded as if he preferred this simple explanation to a more complicated, truthful, and disturbing one.

“Then he could also have been mistaken about the part that had to do with my wife and myself,” Sano pointed out.

“Perhaps.” Lord Matsudaira fixed a hostile stare on Sano. “But perhaps not.”

Sano saw that even if Lord Matsudaira suspected the medium was a fraud, he was so insecure that he was ready to distrust Sano.

“Does this mean that not only did Lady Reiko kill Lord Mori, but Chamberlain Sano is plotting to take over the country from me?” Horror filled the shogun’s expression.

Before the seance, Sano had thought things couldn’t get worse; yet now he, as well as Reiko, had been implicated in the murder. “No, Your Excellency,” he said with calm, controlled sincerity, “because she didn’t and I’m not.”

“He’s lying,” Hoshina rushed to say. “He’s ambitious to seize power, and he sent his wife to do his dirty work for him.”

“Chamberlain Sano has built up a huge personal army during the past few years,” Torai said. “What is it for, if not to overthrow Your Excellency?”

The shogun looked at Sano with fearful loathing. “I thought you were my friend. How could you betray me like this?”

“I haven’t,” Sano insisted. “I maintain those troops to keep order and help me run the government for you.”

Pushed further onto the defensive, he launched a counterattack at Hoshina: “A few moments ago you were all in favor of believing Lady Mori’s story about the murder. Now you’ve jumped onto the medium’s story, which completely contradicts it. How can you justify that?”

Hoshina grinned. “I like the medium’s story better.”

That it incriminated Sano certainly benefited Hoshina’s campaign against him. Sano said, “There’s no evidence to support it.”

“Indeed there is,” Lord Matsudaira said with dark satisfaction. “Her version of Lord Mori fits the man I knew-a timid, weak soul.”