suspended under the floor. Stinking basins set on the ground marked the locations of privies. No sound came from the rooms above her until she saw a square patch of light on the ground ahead. The light came from an opening in the floor, as did voices. Reiko looked up the hole, through the room above her, to a ceiling crisscrossed with carved beams. The hole was a space where a brazier had been removed. Reiko felt a draft as the room’s heated atmosphere sucked cold air up through the hole. A man stammered and ranted. Was it Kajikawa?
Were Sano and Masahiro there?
The urge to raise her head through the hole and peek was almost irresistible. But if Kajikawa should see her, there was no telling what would happen. Reiko crept toward the side of the building. She pushed and pulled the lattice until it loosened. Crawling from beneath the palace, she emerged in a courtyard garden that resembled a frozen sea studded with boulders like black icebergs. She climbed the steps to a veranda, moved sideways between curtains of icicles, and slipped through the door.
Inside, she tiptoed along dim corridors. The voice led her around a corner. Here the passage was suffused with lantern light that shone through a paper-and-lattice wall. Reiko saw indistinct shadows on the other side. The voice that she took to be Kajikawa’s broke into sobs. Desperate to know what had become of her husband and son, Reiko pulled her dagger out of its sheath under her sleeve and poked it through the paper pane. She winced at the faint noise of the blade slicing the stiff, brittle rice paper. Ages seemed to pass before she’d cut the top and sides of a square no wider than her eye. She peeled down the flap and peeked through the hole.
On the other side was a room, a vacant platform to her right. Yoritomo stood by the opposite wall. His shoulders were slumped; his beautiful face wore a look of misery. Reiko’s eye darted left, toward the voice that spoke words too low for her to understand. It came from a short, dumpy samurai who stood with his back toward her. He must be Kajikawa. With his left arm he held someone pressed against him. His body partially hid the other man. But she could see the cylindrical black cap that the other man wore. It was the shogun. Kajikawa’s right elbow was cocked upward; he held a sword against the shogun’s throat.
Alarm flashed through Reiko. What had become of Sano and Masahiro?
Her gaze dropped to the floor. Human bodies lay, in contorted positions, strewn across it. Blood gleamed in a shocking red puddle around one body. Reiko’s heart gave a sickening thump. Were all those men dead? Had Kajikawa murdered everyone?
She heard whimpering and thought it came from her, but it was the shogun’s. She peered more closely at the bodies and noticed that their feet and hands were bound with cloth strips. Their eyes blinked. Their faces twisted in expressions of woe. Everyone was alive but the gray-haired old man lying in the blood.
It was Ihara. Not Sano or Masahiro.
Relief cheered Reiko. She scrutinized the other men. Some had the cropped hair and cotton garb of servants. Some were youths-the shogun’s boys. Reiko couldn’t find Sano, but she recognized the brown-and-orange-striped kimono that Masahiro had been wearing this morning.
Masahiro lay on his side, turned away from Reiko, about fifteen paces distant. His bound wrists and ankles were drawn so tightly together that his spine arched. He trembled with pain. Horrified by the sight of her child suffering, Reiko wanted to tear through the wall and rescue him, but if she did, Kajikawa might panic and kill the shogun. Reiko thought of the forty-seven
She carefully cut the hole bigger, enough to speak through and look through at the same time. “Masahiro,” she whispered.
He didn’t react. He couldn’t hear her. Other people lay between them. One, a boy who was facing Reiko, met her gaze. Reiko shushed him, then whispered Masahiro’s name louder. He jerked as he recognized her voice.
“Don’t look at me,” Reiko whispered urgently.
Masahiro froze. Kajikawa rambled on. Reiko whispered, “Move this way. Slowly. Don’t make a sound.”
Masahiro wriggled backward. The others shifted out of his way. Reiko held her breath, afraid Kajikawa would notice, but he didn’t turn. Yoritomo seemed oblivious. When Kajikawa paused, a voice uttered quiet prompts. It was Sano’s voice. Kajikawa was talking to Sano. Reiko almost fainted with gladness that her husband was there, alive. He must have convinced Kajikawa to talk, in order to buy himself time to save the shogun.
Masahiro moved beneath her vantage point. Reiko heard his muffled, pained grunts and the soft scrape of his body against the straw matting. At last he stopped, panting, at the wall. She knelt and cut another hole that framed Masahiro’s hands and feet.
“Don’t move.” She sliced the red and orange sash that tethered Masahiro’s wrists to his ankles. His spine relaxed; he sighed. When she cut the bonds, there was no time to be careful. Her blade made bloody nicks in his skin. Her heart broke while he endured the pain. At last he was free, but he remained in the same, contorted position, as if still tied up.
“Wait until I tell you to move,” Reiko whispered. She thrust the dagger into Masahiro’s hands. “Then do exactly as I say.” She hoped she would know what to tell him, and when.
37
1700 Autumn
On a glorious, sunny day, Kajikawa and his son Tsunamori walked up the white gravel path to the palace. Kajikawa looked at Tsunamori with pride. Tsunamori was a fine boy, even though he was small for his twelve years. He was also an only son, a precious thing. In him resided all Kajikawa’s hopes for the future.
Kajikawa stopped, turned Tsunamori to face him, and said, “This is a very special day.”
“Yes, Father.” Tsunamori’s eyes were bright with anticipation. He could hardly wait to start his first job in Edo Castle.
“You’ll be working for a very important man.” Kajikawa glanced toward the palace and saw Kira Yoshinaka strolling toward them. “Here he comes now.”
Dressed in his black court robes, Kira was a tall, dark silhouette cut out of the bright day. He joined Kajikawa and Tsunamori and looked down at them. His face was in the shadow that he cast over Tsunamori.
Father and son bowed. Kajikawa said, “Greetings, Honorable Master of Ceremonies. This is my son. A thousand thanks for allowing him to be your page.”
“I’m sure he’ll make my favor worthwhile.” The smile Kira gave Tsunamori was tinged with something ugly. “Are you ready to learn your duties?”
Shy and nervous, eyes cast politely downward, Tsunamori said, “Yes, master.”
“Work hard,” Kajikawa told his son. “Do everything Kira-
He ignored the signs at first. Every day, after work, Tsunamori was unusually quiet. When Kajikawa asked him what he’d been doing, he made brief, vague replies. Kajikawa thought it was because he was growing up and wanted privacy. Then one night Tsunamori came home with his face bruised, his clothes torn.
“What happened?” Kajikawa said, alarmed.
Tsunamori mumbled something about a fight. Kajikawa knew that the boys at the castle always picked on newcomers. Tsunamori would learn to defend himself, like everybody else, and then he would be fine. Or so Kajikawa thought, until the day he visited Kira and asked for a report on Tsunamori’s progress.
“He’s doing an excellent job,” Kira said. “See for yourself, if you like. He’s at the Momijiyama, helping to prepare it for a ceremony.”
Kajikawa went to the Tokugawa ancestral worship shrine inside the castle. He walked under the
There he saw three figures joined together. In the center was Tsunamori, naked, on his hands and knees. A castle guard knelt behind Tsunamori. His kimono was hiked up around his waist, his loincloth hanging. He grunted
