The amorous attentions she’d once welcomed now alarmed Midori. “No! Don’t!” She tore free of Hirata.
“I’m sorry,” Hirata said, chastened. “Forgive me.”
She saw that he didn’t understand why she’d rejected him, and she’d hurt his feelings. But she was scared to tell him about the child, or let him touch her and guess. Although refusing him now wouldn’t protect her from what had already happened, she couldn’t bear more forbidden intimacies.
“I should go,” he said, backing out of the pine grove.
“No. Wait!” Midori lurched after Hirata and clung to him, weeping again.
He held her cautiously, but he spoke with a determination that gave her hope: “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to make everything all right.”
Hirata climbed off his horse beside a wooden notice board that stood at the foot of the Nihonbashi Bridge. As pedestrians streamed across the bridge, he pinned up a notice that read, “Anyone who has seen, heard of, or knows any man from Hokkaido, presently living in or formerly a resident of Edo, is ordered to report the information to His Excellency the Shogun’s Sosakan-sama.”
Contemplating the notice, he frowned in frustration, because he’d already spent hours searching teahouses in Suruga for Lady Wisteria and her lover, but found naught. He began to doubt that the many notices he’d posted along the way would bring success. Tired, cold, and hungry now, he bought tea and a lunchbox of sushi from a passing vendor and perched on the bridge’s railing.
Barges drifted down the canal below him. Crowds thronged the lanes and stalls outside the fish market on the bank. The smell of rotting fish permeated the moist, gray air; seagulls winged and squawked in the overcast sky. As Hirata ate, the problems of love and work weighed upon his spirits. He had little hope that time would heal the offense caused his father by Lord Niu, and if he didn’t find Wisteria’s lover, he and Sano might never solve the murder case.
A commotion on the bridge diverted Hirata’s attention from his gloomy thoughts. He looked up to see what was happening, and his spirits rose. The man walking toward Hirata had coarse black hair that sprang from his head and grew in a thick beard upon his cheeks, chin, and neck. Beady eyes peered from under shaggy brows. He wore a padded cotton cloak that was too large for his small stature. His pawlike hand held one end of a rope. The other end circled the neck of a large, snarling brown monkey with a red face. As man led beast along the bridge, pedestrians laughed, pointed, and exclaimed.
“Rat!” Hirata called, beckoning.
The man ambled up to Hirata and grinned, baring feral teeth. “Good day,” he said in an odd, rustic accent. He bowed, and at a command from him, the monkey followed suit. “How do you like the latest addition to my show?”
The Rat operated a freak show that featured peculiar animals as well as deformed humans, and he roamed all over Japan in a continuous search for new attractions.
“He’s amazing.” Hirata reached out to pet the monkey’s head. “Where did you get him?”
“Don’t touch him-he bites,” the Rat warned, jerking on the rope as the monkey screeched at Hirata. “He’s from Tohoku. One might almost say our kinfolk are neighbors. I grew up in Hokkaido, you know.”
Hirata had known of the Rat’s origin in that far northern island known for cold winters and the copious body hair of the natives. “Speaking of Hokkaido,” he said, “I’m looking for someone from there.” He wondered if Lady Wisteria’s lover was as hairy as the Rat, and shaved to blend with the Edo locals. “Have you come across any of your countrymen around town?”
Because the Rat collected news and had served as a reliable informant in the past, Hirata hoped for a lead on Wisteria’s lover, but the Rat shook his head.
“Haven’t seen or heard of any Hokkaido folk in these parts for years,” he said. “Far as I know, I’m the only one in Edo now.”
An idea occurred to Hirata, and though it seemed ludicrous, he had to ask: “Have you been seeing a courtesan named Wisteria?”
“Me? Why, no.” The Rat looked dumbfounded, then guffawed. “Oh, you’re joking. Even if I could afford Yoshiwara, those women would run screaming from me.”
Hirata experienced discouragement, because if the Rat knew nothing of Wisteria’s lover, then the man had kept himself well hidden. Or perhaps the pages he’d bought from Gorobei were a false clue, as Reiko had suggested. “Let me know anything you hear about a Hokkaido man, particularly one traveling with a woman,” Hirata said.
“Will do.” The Rat ambled away with his monkey.
Impatient for action, Hirata decided to press onward to Fukagawa and search the noodle shops where Lady Wisteria and her lover might have taken refuge. But first he would visit his family and test the chances of his marriage to Midori.
16
A horde of bureaucrats paraded in and out of Sano’s mansion, all with the intent of heaping suspicion on their enemies. They besieged Sano with unsubstantiated accusations until his mind whirled. By midmorning he couldn’t endure any more self-serving attempts to manipulate him. Finally, during a break between calls, Sano donned his outdoor clothes and swords, then left the house in search of the one person who could tell him which rumors were true or false.
The day was cold and bleak, the sky like raw, soiled cotton, the moist air gritty with soot. Below Edo Castle, the steel-gray river and canals carved a monotone cityscape. The hazy peaks of the hills outside town smudged the distance. Sano passed hurrying officials and patrolling troops as he ascended through the castle’s stone-walled passages. Everyone’s expression appeared as dismal as the weather. Sano walked faster, uneasy in the tension created by Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder; he could almost smell the impending purge in the air. Entering the palace, he proceeded to a secluded area in which he’d first set foot a lifetime ago.
Here, hidden within a labyrinth of corridors, government offices, and reception rooms, lay the headquarters of the metsuke. The Tokugawa intelligence service occupied a room whose mean proportions belied its power. In compartments divided by paper-and-wood screens, men smoked tobacco pipes and studied maps hung on the walls; they conversed together or pored over papers at desks laden with scrolls, message containers, books, and writing implements. As Sano passed, heads turned toward him, and voices lowered.
Inside the last compartment knelt a samurai dressed in black. He looked up from reading a ledger and bowed to Sano. “Greetings, Sosakan-sama.”
Sano returned the bow. 'Greetings, Toda-san.”
Toda Ikkyu was a senior intelligence agent, and of such nondescript appearance that Sano might not recognize him if they met anywhere else. Neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, old nor young, Toda had weary eyes set in a face that no one would notice in a crowd. Sano had consulted Toda on past cases, and Toda had once described how he’d spied on an official suspected of treason. The official never recognized Toda, although they both worked in the palace and passed each other in the corridors daily. He went to his death on the execution ground without knowing who’d sent him there.
“Can you spare me a moment of your time?” Sano asked, imagining that he might someday find himself the unwitting prey of the metsuke agent.
“Certainly.” Toda motioned for Sano to sit near him. His languid voice and gesture belonged to a man who seldom roused from a natural state of ennui. “I suppose this visit concerns your investigation of Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder?”
“Yes,” Sano said.
“And you’ve come to me because you’re deluged with rumors.”
Sano chuckled, because the extent of Toda’s knowledge never ceased to amaze him. Toda also chuckled.
“It never ceases to amaze me how far you’ve risen in the world since we first met,” Toda said.
They’d met during Sano’s first murder case, when Sano had discovered a plot against the shogun and had come
