Lady Yanagisawa shrank from Reiko’s sarcasm. “I don’t know what to suggest,” she murmured. “I wish I did.” She was hurt that the friend she loved should lash out at her, and beneath the hurt, the tide of her jealousy rose. Yet she hastened to appease Reiko, whose friendship she dreaded to lose. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Please forgive me.”
“It’s I who should apologize,” Reiko said, equally contrite. Midori stirred, Keisho-in mumbled in her sleep, and Reiko lowered her voice: “I shouldn’t have taken out my anger on you.”
They clasped hands. Lady Yanagisawa tried to believe that Reiko wanted to placate her because they needed each other, but the memory of their children and the pond in Reiko’s garden on a day last winter nagged at Lady Yanagisawa. Had Reiko remembered that Lady Yanagisawa had the power to hurt her?
“Desperation is no excuse for rudeness,” Reiko said. “Quarreling among ourselves does no good.” She sighed, rubbed her forehead as if it ached, and resumed prowling about the room. “But how am I to protect myself from the Dragon King? He has swords; I have no weapons. He has an army, and we’re four lone women. All the strength is on his side, all the weakness on mine.”
“But you are so clever,” Lady Yanagisawa murmured. She knew that Reiko helped Sano with his work, which endeared her to him as much as did her beauty, charm, and the perfect son she’d borne. “Surely you can outwit the Dragon King.”
Reiko halted her steps, and a thoughtful look narrowed her eyes. A ray of dying golden sunlight streaming through the roof illuminated her features as she motioned Lady Yanagisawa to follow her to the side of the room farthest from the door.
“The Dragon King does have one weakness,” Reiko said in a conspiratorial whisper that the guards wouldn’t overhear. “Desire for a woman can make a man vulnerable and careless. Maybe I can use his feelings for me as a weapon against him.” Animated by hope, Reiko said, “Maybe I can trick him into setting us free.”
Lady Yanagisawa enlaced her hands together under her chin as she brimmed with adoration for Reiko and faith in her abilities. “Oh, yes,” she breathed. For the first time since their escape attempt had failed, she began to think they might soon go home. She might see her daughter and husband again. Reiko would deliver them all from this nightmare.
“Before I can trick the Dragon King, I’ll have to gain his trust.” Reiko focused her gaze inward, as if watching the sequence of events unfold in her mind. “To gain his trust, I would have to pretend I desire him. I would have to seduce him into letting down his guard.” The animation faded from her. “I would have to welcome his love-making, and let him do whatever he wants with me until I can find a way for us to escape.”
She was obviously disturbed by the realization that her chastity could be the price she must pay for the success of her plan. A needle of panic stabbed Lady Yanagisawa. Although she hated for Reiko to put herself in peril, the plan seemed their only chance of survival.
“Surely you could manage him so that we can get away before you have to… before he can… ” Unaccustomed to talking about sex, Lady Yanagisawa could only hint at the horrible degradation that her friend risked.
“How can I control a madman?” Reiko whispered, incredulous. “What if the plan doesn’t work? I’ll have given myself over to him for nothing.” She turned toward the wall, her back stiff. “I don’t think I can do this.” Her thin voice was a poignant plea for reprieve.
For once in her life, Lady Yanagisawa was glad to be ugly, because she couldn’t attract the Dragon King’s fancy, and she wouldn’t have traded places with Reiko for anything in the world. Yet she still envied Reiko’s beauty, which now represented a pass to freedom as well as love and marital happiness. Lady Yanagisawa wished she herself had the power to bend a man to her will, as she thought Reiko could bend the Dragon King. If she had it, she could make her husband love her. The jealousy burgeoned, poisoning her affection for Reiko. There seemed no end to Reiko’s wonderful attributes. Lady Yanagisawa resented her dependency on Reiko, even as she relied on her friend.
Reiko haltingly turned, her face marred by pain and worry, her eyes glittering with tears. “But what alternative do I have, except to try to manipulate him? He’s going to take me no matter what. I could tell from the way he looked at me, the way he touched me. My ravishment is inevitable.”
Her body slumped in resignation. Then she straightened her posture, as if casting off fear and despair. “So I might as well try to turn the situation to my advantage, rather than surrender without a fight.” Now she acquired the brave, determined air of a soldier marching into battle. Her gaze encompassed Lady Yanagisawa, Midori, and Keisho-in. “I’ll do whatever it takes, and endure whatever I must, to save your lives.”
“We shall all be most grateful to you.” Though Lady Yanagisawa spoke the truth, she experienced another onrush of jealous anger. Reiko was not only beautiful, she was so noble that she would sacrifice herself for the sake of other people. As Lady Yanagisawa gazed upon Reiko, her tolerance for Reiko’s perfection abruptly snapped, like ice on a pond whose waters have suddenly heated to a seething boil. She clenched her hands so tight that her fingernails dug painful crescents into her palms.
Even here, in this miserable prison, Reiko shone like a bright flame, while Lady Yanagisawa was but a dreary shadow. Lady Yanagisawa couldn’t bear the contrast between them. Now her anguish swung her to the opposite pole of her love for Reiko. Fevered by hatred, she wanted to see Reiko brought down, her perfection despoiled, her husband, son, and other blessings torn from her. Lady Yanagisawa knew that her wish to ruin what she couldn’t have was pointless; destroying Reiko’s good fortune wouldn’t improve her own. She’d tried that once, and realized the error of her thinking. Yet she still believed in her heart that the universe contained a limited supply of luck, and Reiko had more than her share. She clung to the idea that by taking action against Reiko, she could sway the balance of the cosmic forces and win the happiness that was rightfully hers.
But how could she attack Reiko when they must stand united against their enemy? How could she satisfy her urges without jeopardizing her chance for freedom?
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Reiko said, her face taut with apprehension. “How should I go about it?”
“You’ll know what to do when the time comes,” Lady Yanagisawa said.
And so will I, she thought.
23
Before Sano traveled to the inn where Mariko had been seen, he went home and assembled a squadron of twenty detectives, because he had a hunch about what he would find at the inn, and he anticipated needing military force. Now, after another sultry night had descended upon the town, he and his men arrived in the Ginza district, named for the silver mint established there more than eighty years ago by the first Tokugawa shogun.
Ginza was a drab backwater located south of Edo Castle. To its north spread the great estates of the daimyo; to the south, upon land reclaimed from Edo Bay, the Tokugawa branch clans maintained wharves and warehouses for storing rice grown in their provinces. To the west, the Tokaido ran through the outskirts of Edo, while to the east lay a district of canals used to transport lumber. Sano rode with his troops up the Ginza main avenue, past the fortified buildings of the mint and the local official’s estate, and through a sparse neighborhood of shops, houses, and fire-watch towers. Lights shone in windows and at gates to the side streets, and voices sounded from balconies and open doors, but the streets were empty.
At the eighth block, Sano and the detectives dismounted outside the gate, left the horses with one man guarding them, and stole on foot up a street that wound into darkness relieved only by the bleached, ovoid moon that hung low above the distant hills. They filed noiselessly past warehouses closed for the night, to Ginza ’s southern edge. Here, the merchant quarter yielded to rustic cottages interspersed with woodland. The road ended at a high plank fence that enclosed thatch-roofed buildings amid trees. A signboard on the gate displayed a crude drawing of a carp and the characters for “inn.”
Faint light diffused up from within the enclosure, but as Sano and his men gathered silently outside, he heard nothing except insects shrilling in the trees and dogs barking far away. He and Detective Inoue peered through cracks in the gate. Sano saw a garden and a short gravel path to the inn. A glowing lantern hung from the eaves above its entranceway. Two samurai stood on the veranda, motionless yet alert-guarding the inn from trespassers. Their presence told Sano that the inn was what he’d deduced it was from hearing the strange tale of Mariko. His heartbeat accelerated with excitement as he and his detectives retreated from the inn.
