chief fit into the mystery.
“While we were bargaining with the lady,” continued the young eta, “she kept looking at our chief. He looked back at her. They didn’t speak, but we could tell that something was happening between them, couldn’t we, Father?” The older man cowered, hands over his face, obviously ruing his son’s betrayal of their superior and wishing himself far away. “After the lady bought the hair and fingernails, our chief ordered us to go away. She stayed.
“But we were curious, so we stood outside the wall and listened. We couldn’t hear what they said, but they talked for a long time. Then she went to the inn across the street. He waited at the back gate until she let him in.”
Delight filled Sano. His hunch had paid off. Lady Harume’s ghost had led him to the surprising identity of her secret lover: Not a high official with a good reputation to protect, but a man whose outcast status had appealed to the low taste Harume had learned from her mother.
Danzaemon, chief of the eta. His two swords had misled the innkeeper to believe he was a samurai.
“Honorable Master, I beg you not to punish our chief for violating a lady from the castle,” the older eta pleaded. “He knows he did wrong. Everyone tried to warn him of the danger. If the shogun found out, soldiers would kill him! But he couldn’t help himself.”
“They went on meeting. And now she’s dead.” The youth sighed. “Such a beautiful story,” he said wistfully. “Just like a Kabuki play I once heard while I was cleaning the street in the theater district.”
The beautiful forbidden love that had endangered the outcast leader had threatened Lady Harume no less, Sano knew. Any infidelity would have incurred the shogun’s wrath, and resulted in Harume’s death. But an affair with the eta chief? Punishment would have also included brutal torture at Edo Jail; an angry mob hurling stones and insults at Harume and her lover along the way to the execution ground; their bodies displayed by the highway for passersby to revile and mutilate, as a warning to other criminals. Now Sano understood the true meaning of phrases from the hidden passage in Harume’s diary:
“Lying together in the shadows between two existences”; “Your rank and fame endanger us”; “We can never walk together in day-light…”
To risk the terrible consequences of discovery, Lady Harume and Danzaemon must have been deeply in love. Had the affair turned sour? Was the chief of outcasts her killer? Sano wondered whether he was getting close to the truth about the murder at last.
“Where can I find Danzaemon?” he asked the eta.
35
A painted map of Japan covered an entire wall of Chamberlain Yanagisawa’s office in the palace. In a rich blue ocean floated the large landmasses of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, as well as minor islands. Black characters designated cities; gold lines defined the boundaries of provinces labeled in red; white lines traced highways; brown peaks represented mountains; blue patches and squiggles were lakes and rivers; green meant farmland. Yanagisawa stood before this masterpiece, holding a lacquer box of pins with round heads made of jade, ivory, coral, onyx, and gold. While he waited for the messenger to bring news that Sano had accused Lady Keisho-in of murder, he planned his glorious future.
He didn’t really expect Keisho-in to be convicted or executed. The shogun would never kill his own mother, or precipitate such a scandal. But neither would their relationship ever be the same. The gentle Tokugawa Tsunayoshi would recoil from the taint of suspicion that would cling to Keisho-in. Knowing what she stood to lose if he begot an heir, he would always wonder whether she was capable of murdering his concubine and child. Yanagisawa could easily persuade him to exile Keisho-in to… The chamberlain smiled as he stuck a coral pin on the remote island of Hachijo. After the shogun’s mother was out of the way, he could execute the next phase of his plan. He began sticking pins in the sites of major Buddhist temples.
During the ten years of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s reign, a fortune had been squandered on the building and upkeep of these institutions; on food, clothing, and servants for the priests; on extravagant religious ceremonies and public charity. Priest Ryuko, acting through Lady Keisho-in, had convinced the shogun that the expenditure would bring good fortune. But Yanagisawa saw a better use for the money and property. He would expel the clergy and take over the temples, staffing them with men loyal to him. The sites would become his power bases in the provinces. He would establish himself as a shadow ruler-a second shogun, commanding a bakufu within the bakufu. For his headquarters he chose Kannei Temple, situated in the hilly Ueno district north of Edo. He’d always liked its halls and pavilions, its beautiful pond and spring cherry blossoms. Soon it would be his private palace.
Pushing in a gold pin to mark his territory, Yanagisawa chuckled. The first thing he’d do once he took possession of Kannei Temple would be to host a huge party to celebrate the execution of the traitor Sano Ichiro. Already he tasted the exhilaration of being free of his rival, secure in his unlimited power. He could almost feel grateful to Sano for unwittingly making everything possible!
Dreams of triumph restored the equilibrium that Shichisaburo’s declaration of love had upset. Cradling the box of pins in his palm, Yanagisawa looked ahead to a future where the old hurts and needs of his past no longer mattered.
At the sound of a knock at the door, his heart leapt. A tingle of anticipation vibrated within him. “Come in,” Yanagisawa called, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. The news had come. The future was here.
Instead of a messenger, in walked Priest Ryuko, saffron robe flowing, brocade stole glittering, an insolent smile on his face. “Good day, Honorable Chamberlain,” he said, bowing. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“What do you want?” Yanagisawa’s disappointment turned to anger. He hated the upstart priest who had parlayed an affair with a foolish old woman into a position of influence. Ryuko was a leech, sucking up Tokugawa wealth and privilege while hiding his ambitions under a cloak of piety. As much a rival for power as Sano, he was a major part of the reason Yanagisawa wanted Lady Keisho-in gone.
Ignoring the question, Ryuko strolled around the room, looking at everything with great interest. “You have a most attractive office.” Inspecting the alcove, he said, “A four-hundred-year-old Chinese vase from the Sung dynasty, and a scroll by Enkai, one of Japan ’s master calligraphers.” Ryuko examined the furniture. “Teak chests and lacquer cabinets from the days of the Fujiwara regime.” He fingered the tea service on Yanagisawa’s desk. “Koryu celadon. Very nice.” Opening the blinds, he beheld the garden of moss-covered boulders and raked sand paths. “And a most beautiful view.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Furious, Yanagisawa stalked over to the intruder. “Get out of here. Now!”
Priest Ryuko trailed his fingers over the silk embroidery of a folding screen. “I need an office in the palace. Lady Keisho-in has told me to choose whichever room I like. Yours shall do very well.”
Such unbelievable audacity! “You, take my office?” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said with an incredulous laugh. “Never!” Someone was going to pay for this affront. Yanagisawa would punish his staff for letting Ryuko in, then begin a campaign to persuade the shogun to banish him. “And take your hands off that screen!” Seizing Ryuko’s arm, he shouted, “Guards!”
Then he gasped as the priest’s fingers locked his wrist in a bruising grip. Smiling straight into the chamberlain’s eyes, Ryuko said, “It didn’t work.”
“What?” An unsettling sensation crept through Yanagisawa, as if his internal organs were shifting position.
“Your plot to frame my lady and destroy the sosakan-sama.” Gloating in triumph, Ryuko spoke with slow, exaggerated clarity, driving home his point while relishing Yanagisawa’s dismay: “It-did-not-work.”
He explained how a music teacher had seen Shichisaburo sneaking around the Large Interior; how the sosakan-sama’s wife had deduced that the actor had planted false evidence; how the news had arrived just in time to prevent Sano from making an official murder charge against Lady Keisho-in. As Ryuko’s spiteful voice went on and on, Yanagisawa’s surroundings seemed to recede in a tide of shock and nausea. The lacquer box fell from his hand. Pins scattered across the floor.
In a desperate attempt to dissemble, Chamberlain Yanagisawa said haughtily, “Your story is absurd. I have no idea what you’re talking about. How dare you accuse me, you avaricious parasite?”
