The Fire Kimono Read online

  Beckoning, he stalked outside. His troops herded Sano’s party after him, into the garden. More troops patrolled amid azalea bushes in bright red bloom. Increasingly baffled, Sano followed Lord Matsudaira to the heart of the estate, a group of low buildings connected by covered corridors. One lay half in ruins, walls broken, the tile roof collapsed. The ruins were covered by black soot. Servants labored, cleaning up the mess.

  “These are the women’s quarters,” Lord Matsudaira said, gesturing angrily. “My wife was inside. She has burns all over her. It’s a miracle she wasn’t killed. One of her attendants was.” He glared at Sano. “Don’t say it’s not your fault.”

  “It isn’t,” Sano said, as disturbed as sincere.

  “No more lies! Two of your men sneaked into this estate and threw jars of kerosene plugged with burning rags into the windows. My men caught them running away from the explosion. See for yourself.”

  Lord Matsudaira led Sano to a blanket spread on the charred grass near the ruins. He flung back the blanket, exposing two young samurai who lay dead and bloody.

  “They’re not mine. I’ve never seen them before in my life.” Sano turned to Hirata, Marume, and his other men; they shook their heads.

  “You have so many retainers that you don’t know everyone who works for you,” Lord Matsudaira said. “Look at the crests on their clothes.” He pointed at Sano’s flying-crane insignias. “They’re yours, all right.”

  Sano didn’t see any point in arguing; Lord Matsudaira would never believe him. “Well, I have two bodies of men that my troops caught and killed after they tried to stab my wife. They’re wearing your crests.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Lord Matsudaira protested. “Whatever business I have with you, I would never attack your woman.” His tone scorned that as cowardly, dishonorable, beneath him. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  His shock and dismay seemed genuine. A familiar uneasy sensation trickled through Sano. He said, “This isn’t the first time that people on your side have been attacked and I wasn’t responsible, or that people on mine have been and you’ve claimed you weren’t.”

  During the past six months, Sano’s troops had been ambushed, had been the target of firebombs and snipers. So had Lord Matsudaira’s. The frequency of the attacks had increased since Sano had returned from Ezogashima. Each rival had blamed the other, with reason based on evidence as well as motive. But Sano knew he wasn’t to blame, and he was ready to acknowledge that perhaps neither was Lord Matsudaira.

  “Something is going on,” Sano said.

  He’d had ideas about what it was, yet they remained unproven. Although he’d investigated the attacks, he’d found no substantiating clues as to the person behind them. He’d never mentioned his suspicions to Lord Matsudaira, who would only think Sano was trying to trick him.

  “Of course something is going on, and I know what,” Lord Matsudaira said. “You’ve been faking attacks against yourself, to make me look bad and justify attacking me. Now you’ve violated protocol against attacking inside Edo Castle.” Lord Matsudaira bunched his fists and shook with fury. “Merciful gods, you’ll stop at nothing to destroy me!”

  “The two of us should stop our quarrel,” Sano said, although he realized it was futile to hope he could convince Lord Matsudaira. “Agree to a truce. Then we can get to the bottom of these attacks and work out a peace treaty.”

  “Take your peace treaty and shove it up your behind,” Lord Matsudaira said. “Now leave before I throw you out.”

  As they glared at each other, Sano felt the war he wanted to prevent rushing on them like a tornado. The sensation was as exhilarating as it was dreadful. When he and his men turned to depart, Lord Matsudaira warned, “Remember that your home is a target, too.”

  A servant came running up to them. “Excuse me, but I have an urgent message.”

  “What is it?” Lord Matsudaira barked.

  “The shogun wants to see you. And Chamberlain Sano. At once.”

  The shogun received Sano and Lord Matsudaira in a courtyard of the castle, inside a gate normally used by servants. Loads of coal, hay, and timber surrounded him and the ten personal guards stationed in a tight cluster. Near them stood Yoritomo, the beautiful young samurai who was his favorite companion and lover. As Sano, Lord Matsudaira, and their entourages bowed to the shogun, he rubbed his frail hands together, and his gentle, refined features shone with excitement.

  “Something, ahh, momentous has happened,” he announced.

  Lord Matsudaira said under his breath, “It must be momentous indeed to lure you outside the comfort of your chambers.”

  Sano knew that Lord Matsudaira hated being inferior to the shogun, that he envied the shogun his position at the head of the Tokugawa dictatorship. He thought it should belong to him, by right of his superior intelligence and strength. The strain of grasping at it had taxed his patience for dancing attendance on the shogun. These days he barely managed to hide his contempt.

  “What’s happened, Your Excellency?” Sano asked politely.

  “It had better be worth dragging me over here,” Lord Matsudaira muttered.

  “There was a, ahh, big windstorm near the Inari Shrine in the hills this morning,” the shogun said. “It knocked down a big tree.”

  “Why do we care?” Lord Matsudaira interrupted. “If there’s a point to this story, let’s get to it.”

  The shogun narrowed his eyes at his cousin. Sano had noticed that the shogun appeared more nervous lately than usual, as if he sensed something was amiss. He didn’t know that Lord Matsudaira virtually controlled Japan, that Sano was contesting Lord Matsudaira, that the two were on the brink of war. No one had told him, and he was astoundingly unobservant. Furthermore, Sano and Lord Matsudaira enforced a nationwide conspiracy of silence because if the shogun did find out, the ramifications could tip the precarious balance of power. But even if he didn’t understand what was going on, he must have perceived that his cousin was the source of the trouble.

  “When the tree fell, the roots, ahh, came up out of the ground,” the shogun continued, speaking slowly, deliberately annoying Lord Matsudaira. “In the hole was a human skeleton. It had been buried beside the tree, in an unmarked grave.” He gestured dramatically toward his guards. “And here it is!”

  The guards parted to reveal an iron trunk. The shogun stood as far away from it as possible, avoiding the pollution of death. Yoritomo kept quietly to himself, avoiding attention. Sano understood why. Yoritomo was the son of the former, ousted chamberlain Yanagisawa. Although Lord Matsudaira had exiled Yanagisawa and his family, Yoritomo remained in Edo because the shogun had insisted on keeping him. The shogun’s fondness protected Yoritomo from Lord Matsudaira, who wanted to eliminate everyone connected to his onetime rival, but Yoritomo wasn’t taking any chances.

  Sano and Lord Matsudaira gazed at the trunk, nonplussed. “Why are you so concerned about an old skeleton, Honorable Cousin?” Lord Matsudaira forced courtesy into his tone. “It probably belongs to some pilgrim who took ill and died at the shrine ages ago.”

  “It does not,” the shogun said, triumphant. “I know who it is.”

  “How, if the grave was unmarked?”

  The shogun beckoned to a guard, who stepped forward holding a long, narrow, cloth-wrapped bundle. The guard unwrapped the cloth from around two swords. They were blackened by dirt, corroded by rust, and shorter than the weapons samurai carried. Sano estimated them as slightly longer than the ones he’d given Masahiro. They’d belonged to a child.

  “The swords were buried near the skeleton,” the shogun said. “See the characters on them?”

  Sano read the characters that gleamed gold amid the rust: ‘“Tokugawa Tadatoshi.’” He turned to the shogun in surprise. “He belonged to your clan.”

  “Yes. Do you know who he was?” the shogun asked, with the air of a child playing a guessing game.

  The Tokugawa family tree was huge, many-branched. Before Sano could think throug
h it, Lord Matsudaira said, “He was your second cousin, Your Excellency.”

  “That’s right,” the shogun said, clapping his hands.

  Lord Matsudaira gave Sano a smile that said he’d scored a point in their competition for the shogun’s favor. Whoever lost it could find himself thrown out of court, banished, or executed. The shogun still had that power.

  “Tadatoshi disappeared when he was fourteen years old,” Lord Matsudaira recalled. “In Meireki Year Three, on the eighteenth day of the first month.”

  “The day the Great Long-sleeves Kimono Fire started,” Sano said.

  “Well, well, the honorable chamberlain knows his dates.”

  Everyone knew that infamous date forty-three years ago. No one could forget that fire, Japan’s worst disaster.

  The Great Long-sleeves Kimono Fire derived its name from its origin. A girl named Kiku had fallen in love with a pageboy and made herself a long-sleeved kimono, worn by unmarried girls, out of fabric that matched the boy’s clothes. Kiku suddenly died, and the kimono was placed over her coffin at her funeral. Afterward, the kimono was passed on to another girl, named Hana. Hana died a year later, and the kimono covered her coffin. The same fate befell another girl, Tatsu. The girls’ families decided the kimono was bad luck and should be cremated in a ceremony at Honmyo Temple. When the priest lit the kimono, it went up in flames that set the temple ablaze. The fire spread across town. Eventually, some two-thirds of the city burned to the ground.

  “I remember the Great Fire,” the shogun said mournfully. “It was terrible, terrible. I was eleven years old. My family took shelter in the, ahh, western part of the castle and watched the rest of it burn. I was so scared.”

  Sano had been born two years after the Great Fire. His knowledge of it was limited to what he’d read in accounts and heard from other people, although not from his parents. They hadn’t liked to talk about those times.

  “Tadatoshi was thought to have died in the fire,” Lord Matsudaira said.

  “Over a hundred thousand people did,” Sano recalled. The casualties had exceeded ten percent of Edo’s population.

  “I always wondered where he went,” the shogun said. “Now we know. But how did he, ahh, end up buried by the shrine?”

  Sano pondered the remote site, the unmarked grave, the child’s disappearance. “It smacks of foul play.”

  “Really?” The shogun’s eyes widened and his mouth opened in awe. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Anybody but you would have,” Lord Matsudaira muttered.

  The shogun glanced at Lord Matsudaira and frowned. “Well, I would like to know exactly what happened to Tadatoshi. Chamberlain Sano, I order you to find out.”

  Sano had seen this coming the moment he’d heard about the skeleton’s identity. Now he experienced two contradictory reactions. One was eagerness for a new mystery to solve, a chance to seek the truth. Detective work was his vocation, and he missed his old job as the shogun’s sosakan-sama—Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. His spirit craved escape from the pressure of running the government while neck-deep in political intrigue. But Sano’s other reaction was sheer horror.

  He didn’t have time for an investigation. Not while he was fighting for survival; not while he had a country to save from civil war. Chasing down the truth about a long-ago death would be suicide.

  And Lord Matsudaira knew it. He looked as though he’d just received a miraculous gift. His careworn face relaxed into a smile as ugly as it was delighted. “That’s a wonderful idea, Honorable Cousin. We can count on Chamberlain Sano to get the facts.”

  The shogun beamed at this approval from the cousin who intimidated him. Sano could imagine the blows Lord Matsudaira would deal his side while he was busy with the investigation. His men’s faces reflected his dismay. Hirata stepped forward and said, “Your Excellency, the investigation into Tadatoshi’s death is within the scope of my duties.” He’d advanced to the post of sosakan-sama when Sano became chamberlain. “I’ll be glad to handle it for you.”

  “Ahh?” The shogun squinted at Hirata as if he didn’t quite remember who he was. “Hirata-san?”

  Sano had to admit that Hirata had changed since the shogun had first met him. He’d been away much of the past five years, studying the mystic martial arts. Rigorous practice had whittled the spare flesh off his frame and turned his boyish, innocent face serious and wise. Once crippled by a leg wound in the line of duty, he’d transformed himself into a magnificent fighter. But his reputation at court had suffered.

  “I’d almost forgotten you,” the shogun said. “You’re, ahh, hardly ever around.” His voice took on a petulant tone. “You can help Chamberlain Sano investigate this matter. It’s too important to leave entirely to someone who might, ahh”—he flapped his hands like birds’ wings—“go flitting off again.”

  The death of a Tokugawa relative was too important, even after forty-three years had passed, for Sano to balk at the investigation, even though the timing couldn’t have been worse. “It’s my honor to serve Your Excellency,” Sano said.

  He felt the excitement that he’d once felt at the start of each new case, and a sensation of all the time since his first one, eleven years ago, rushing him to this instant. He remembered the man he’d been then—the lowly ronin, tutor, and martial arts teacher turned reluctant police commander. That man wouldn’t have believed he would ever become the shogun’s second-in-command, would ever fight for control of the Tokugawa regime. That first case had been a crossroads for Sano. He had a hunch that this case would prove just as decisive, the climax of his journey.

  “I want progress reports every day,” the shogun said. “What will be your, ahh, first step?”

  “I’ll determine the cause of Tadatoshi’s death,” Sano said.

  “Just how do you propose to do that, when all that’s left of him is a skeleton?” Lord Matsudaira spoke with relish at the difficulty of Sano’s task.

  “I’ll look into his disappearance. Following his trail may lead me to the answer.” Sano would do that, but he had another method in mind that he couldn’t mention.

  “And if it doesn’t?” Lord Matsudaira said.

  Ignoring him, Sano asked the shogun, “What are you going to do with the skeleton?”

  The shogun chewed his lip. “I can’t keep it here.” He eyed the trunk as though afraid it would contaminate the whole castle.

  Hirata said, “I suggest that it be taken to your family mausoleum at Kannei Temple.”

  “Ahh, what a good idea,” the shogun said, relieved.

  “I’ll do it for you,” Hirata said.

  Sano knew that Hirata would take the skeleton on a long route to the mausoleum, with a stop on the way. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Excellency, I’ll begin my inquiries at once.” The sooner started, the sooner finished. Would that his world didn’t fall apart in the meantime.

  As he and his men departed, he caught Yoritomo’s eye. Yoritomo gave Sano a strange look of sympathy mixed with apology. Lord Matsudaira called, “Good luck, Honorable Chamberlain,” in a voice filled with barely suppressed glee.

  After Sano left, Reiko tried to rest, but she couldn’t because she kept reliving the attack. Her heart raced with panic that roiled through her in waves. The walls of the mansion seemed to press in on her. She felt trapped, like an animal in a cage. Today’s trip outside had been her last for the foreseeable future.

  She heard children laughing outside and stepped onto the veranda. Her little daughter toddled across the garden and bent over to examine something in the grass. The sun shone on Akiko’s glossy cap of black hair. In her pink kimono, she looked like a flower. Reiko smiled. She walked down the steps toward the child.

  “What have you found, Akiko?” she called.

  Akiko looked up. Her smile faded as she recognized Reiko. She straightened, clasped her hands behind her back, and stood rigid, as if afraid of being hurt. Reiko’s heart ached with sadness because while she’d been in Ezo
gashima rescuing her son, she had lost her daughter.

  She’d left for Ezogashima when Akiko was a year old. By the time she’d come home almost three months later, after a long, difficult journey, Akiko had forgotten her. When Reiko had tried to hold Akiko, she’d cried and screamed. Now, after three more months, the little girl was aloof. Sometimes Reiko wondered if Akiko thought her mother had abandoned her and was punishing Reiko. Whatever the explanation, the bond between mother and child had been disrupted, if not forever broken.

  “Come here,” Reiko said, holding out her arms.

  But Akiko backed away. A little girl and younger boy came running around the house. Behind them strolled Midori, their mother, who was Hirata’s wife and Reiko’s good friend. Akiko ran to Midori and clutched her knees. The ache in Reiko’s heart throbbed more painfully.

  Midori had taken care of Akiko while Reiko was gone, and Akiko behaved as if Midori was her mother and Midori’s children her sister and brother. Reiko understood why she preferred them to her real family. Midori was cheerful, cozy, and devoted to the children. Her boy and girl had adopted Akiko as a favorite pet. In contrast, Reiko and Sano were absorbed in their troubles. Reiko had chosen rescuing Masahiro over staying with Akiko. Sano left the house early in the morning and came back too late at night to see Akiko before she went to bed. Masahiro was too busy with his martial arts lessons to play with his sister. Akiko had attached herself to the people who made her feel wanted and loved.

  “Go to your mama,” Midori said with an apologetic look at Reiko.

  “No!” Akiko’s voice rose to a wail. She hugged Midori tighter.

  “Then go play.”

  Akiko cheered up and ran off with the children. While they amused themselves by throwing pebbles in the pond, Midori said contritely, “I’m sorry, Reiko-san. But she’ll get over it. Just give her time.”

  Reiko looked away, blinked, and drew deep breaths.

  “I just heard what happened to you,” Midori said. “Are you all right?”