The Cloud Pavilion Read online

  A servant directed Sano and the detectives to a minor worship hall secluded by a grove of pine trees. Two men who looked like wrestlers disguised as monks guarded the door. They bowed curtly to Sano and his men.

  “We want to see Joju,” said Fukida.

  “His honorable holiness can’t be disturbed at the moment. He’s conducting an exorcism.”

  “This is the Honorable Chamberlain Sano, and he disturbs whomever he wants when he wants,” Marume said.

  The monks stood aside. Sano and his men removed their shoes and entered the hall, a large, cool chamber that smelled powerfully of sweet incense. It was dark except for a single lamp burning at the far end, illuminating a tall man. His saffron robe, his brocade stole, his naked arms, and his shaved head gleamed as if he were made of gold. He seemed to float rather than stand. His face was obscured by the shadows that filled the chamber, whose walls and ceiling were draped in black cloth, but Sano figured he must be Joju. Hands pressed together under his chin, fingers pointing upward, Joju gazed silently at the floor. As Sano’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw other persons present.

  One lay at Joju’s feet. A second knelt nearby. They and the priest occupied a dais, elevated above the floor on which Sano and his men stood. Below the dais, huddled figures sat.

  “Want me to stop the ritual?” Marume said quietly to Sano.

  “No.” Sano knelt behind the audience; his men followed suit. He was interested in what the ritual could tell him about the exorcist.

  Joju addressed the figure that knelt by him. “What is your name?” His voice was hushed, but so deep and so resonant that it filled the chamber.

  “Mankichi,” the figure said in a voice that belonged to a man in his forties or fifties. “I’m a moneylender.”

  Fukida whispered, “That figures. You have to be rich to afford an exorcism performed by Joju.”

  Spirit possession was rampant all over Japan. People often attributed illnesses, mental problems, or bizarre behavior to evil spirits that had taken over their bodies. Exorcists enjoyed a flourishing trade, and Joju was in such demand that he could charge exorbitant prices for his rituals.

  “Who is this you’ve brought me?” Joju asked.

  “My wife,” said the moneylender. “Her name is Onaru.” The prone figure was a woman swaddled in a blanket. Her body squirmed like a caterpillar trying to break out of its cocoon. She whimpered and grunted. “She won’t eat or sleep. She won’t talk. She just makes those noises.”

  Onaru’s head tossed from side to side. When it turned toward the lamp, Sano glimpsed her face. Her eyes were closed, her features sunken. From the audience came the muffled sound of a woman weeping and other people shushing her. They must be relatives of the couple.

  “Do you think she’s possessed?” the moneylender asked fearfully.

  “Do you?” Fukida whispered to Marume.

  “I guess we’re going to find out,” Marume whispered.

  There had been a time when Sano had thought that most if not all people taken over by spirits were either faking or deluded. But then he’d gone to Ezogashima and witnessed an actual horrific case of possession that had changed his mind.

  “We shall see,” Joju said.

  He knelt beside Onaru. His face came within the halo of brightness around the lamp’s flame. He had features so perfect, so handsome, and so strongly masculine that he looked like an idealized vision of a man. Sano knew that Joju was well over forty, but in the dim light he seemed ageless. His large, deep-set eyes glowed with wisdom and compassion.

  Joju held his hands over the woman, palms down, just above her body. He moved them slowly up and down her length, not touching her. The air between his hands and the woman shimmered. The smell of incense grew stronger, the air thick with smoke. An eerie feeling rippled through Sano. His eyes, throat, and head began to ache. The detectives stirred uneasily. Onaru moaned as if in pain.

  “I feel the presence of not one, not two, but three spirits inside her,” Joju said.

  The audience murmured in consternation. The moneylender said, “Please, can you make them go away?”

  “I will try,” Joju said.

  “This should be good,” Marume whispered to Fukida.

  Closing his eyes, reaching toward the woman, Joju intoned, “Oh, spirits within Onaru, speak to me.”

  An orange light flashed to the right of the dais. The audience murmured. The light went out. Its afterimage burned into Sano’s vision, trailing streamers of smoke. A blue light, then a red, flared in different parts of the room, then disappeared. A primitive fear crept into Sano. The audience sat in frozen silence.

  “I hear them,” Joju said. “Honorable spirits, tell me who you are.” He listened. “They say they have no names. They are children who died before they were born.”

  Amazement stirred the audience, even though everyone knew Joju was famous for communicating with the spirits of dead fetuses.

  “Children, how did you die?” There was a pause; Joju frowned as if much disturbed. “They were murdered.”

  Horrified exclamations arose.

  “Children, who was your mother?” Joju said.

  Onaru gasped and groaned. She sounded as if his outstretched hands were extracting some physical substance from her body. A weird, tuneless music began. Hairs rose on Sano’s nape. Fukida nudged Marume, who muttered under his breath.

  “I can’t hear you. Could you speak more clearly?” As Joju concentrated, the muscles of his face strained. “I’m getting a name. It sounds like ee, eh—”

  “Emiko!” the moneylender cried in a voice filled with horror.

  Joju opened his eyes and asked, “Do you know this woman?”

  “She was a maid in my house.”

  Sano supposed that Joju could have made a lucky guess, and the moneylender had supplied the name. Furthermore, these exorcisms were booked months in advance, long enough for Joju to investigate his clients. But Sano had once communicated with a spirit himself. He knew the dead did speak.

  “The children say you are their father,” Joju told the moneylender. “They say that after you planted each of them inside Emiko, you sent her to an abortionist. He cut the children out of her womb. They suffered terribly, and during the third abortion, Emiko died.”

  As the family members gasped, another orange light flared above the dais, accompanied by a soft explosion. In its brightness appeared an image of fetuses. Their eyes were covered by lotus leaves, their bodies severed at the waist and dripping blood. Women in the audience screamed. Fukida and Marume cursed out loud. Revulsion gripped Sano.

  The light went out. The gory image disappeared.

  “Is it true?” Joju asked the moneylender. “Did you impregnate Emiko, then have her and her children destroyed?”

  “Yes,” the moneylender said, sobbing with terror and guilt. “I confess. I didn’t want a pregnant maid around; my wife would be jealous. I didn’t want the children. I didn’t know what else to do!”

  His story was a variation on a common tale. People succumbed to lust, begetting unwanted babies; married couples had children they couldn’t support; prostitutes were impregnated by their customers. As a result, many infants were killed before or soon after birth, and abortionists had proliferated in Edo. The government forbade abortionists to advertise their services on signs outside their shops, but didn’t outlaw them. The number of abandoned, homeless orphans was a big problem. And although Sano deplored this widespread practice of killing children, he conceded that sometimes abortion was the best solution.

  Some women were raped. Would Chiyo and Fumiko be among those to discover themselves pregnant afterward? Sano hoped they wouldn’t have to bear their rapists’ children and compound their suffering.

  “The souls of your unborn children are caught between the realms of the living and the dead,” Joju said. “They have entered your wife’s body. She is so weakened by their sorrow and loneliness that she may die.”

  “No!” the moneyl
ender cried. “I beg you to save her!”

  Joju raised his hands and moved them as if palpating an invisible object in the air. Concern darkened his handsome features. “I feel the presence of another spirit.”

  A rush like wings in flight whooshed over the assembly. Onaru let out a bone-chilling wail. Her family screamed. Sano felt something soft graze his head. As everyone ducked and gazed fearfully around the room, only Joju remained calm.

  “It is Emiko,” he said. “She is here.”

  “Look!” cried a woman in the audience. “Her ghost!”

  She pointed at the ceiling. There hovered a black, translucent shape that rippled like a veil in the wind.

  “Merciful gods,” Marume said.

  The moneylender threw himself facedown on the dais, his head shielded by his arms, and moaned. Joju lifted his palms to the ghost. “Emiko-san, why have you come?”

  A low, thunderous sound quaked the room. Women in the audience shrieked; men muttered. Onaru wailed and thrashed.

  “She’s angry with you,” Joju explained to the moneylender. “She wants revenge for her and her children’s suffering and death. She has punished you by sending the children to haunt your wife.”

  Weeping hysterically, the moneylender said, “Make her stop them! Make her go away!”

  The thunderous sound rumbled louder. The ghost fluttered with a noise like a monsoon whistling. “I cannot,” Joju said regretfully. “Only you can.”

  “But how?”

  “You must repent for your sins. She demands a sacrifice.”

  “Tell me what it is! I’ll do anything she wants!”

  Thunder boomed. Joju listened, then said, “You must donate a hundred koban to this temple, in order that I may continue helping those in need.”

  Sano knew that all exorcisms ended like this. The spirits all wanted money, and since they couldn’t spend it, the money went to the priest.

  The moneylender grabbed a box that had been lying near him in the shadows, opened it, and dumped shiny gold coins in front of Joju. “Here!”

  Joju ignored the coins even as they cast glittering reflections onto his face. He addressed the ghost: “You have your wish. Now call your children to come out of this innocent woman.” He gestured to Onaru. “You are free to depart to the spirit world, where you belong.”

  A burst of white light engulfed the ghost. Red, orange, and blue lights flickered. Onaru howled and writhed like a woman giving birth. Screams from the audience drowned in thunder and explosions that rocked the temple. Joju stood, hands spread and face lifted to the heavens, chanting prayers. Acrid smoke billowed while the weird, dissonant music played and Sano, Marume, and Fukida watched in awe.

  Then the lights went out; the sounds and music faded. The silence hushed the assembly. Joju announced, “Emiko and the children are gone.”

  From behind the black curtains stepped monks carrying round white lanterns. Everyone blinked in the sudden brightness. Smoke tinged the air. The moneylender sat up and looked at his wife. “Onaru?”

  She lay still and peaceful on the litter on which she’d been brought. “Husband,” she murmured.

  “Take her home and let her rest,” Joju said. “She’ll be fine.”

  The moneylender and the family bowed to Joju. All smiles, they carried the dazed Onaru out of the room.

  “Was that real?” Fukida asked.

  “I don’t know.” Marume sounded shaken out of his usual cheer. “But if they’re happy, I’m happy.”

  Sano rose and walked toward Joju, who stood on the dais, hands clasped at his chest. He didn’t seem surprised to see Sano; he must have been aware of Sano’s presence all along. Perhaps those deep, glowing eyes could see in the dark.

  “Welcome, Honorable Chamberlain,” Joju said. “Although we’ve never been formally introduced, I know you by sight.”

  He didn’t look as ageless now. The shadow of black stubble on his head receded far back on his scalp. Lines in his golden skin bracketed his mouth and webbed the skin at the corners of his eyes. His muscles had begun to sag. He also seemed tired from his exertions; he was bathed in sweat. But he descended from the dais with the agility of a young man, and he had an allure that transcended his physical being. He wore holiness as he did his glittering stole. Which caused Sano to distrust him more than he would the usual suspect.

  “That was quite a show you put on,” Sano said.

  Wry humor upturned the corner of Joju’s mouth. “I’ll take that as a compliment. The salvation of souls can be quite dramatic, as you’ve just seen.”

  “Especially with a little help from opium in the incense and a few theatrics?” Sano said. No such theatrics had accompanied the phenomena he’d witnessed in Ezogashima. Sano had more than a hunch that Joju was a charlatan.

  Joju laughed, the sound startlingly boisterous. “I see that you like rational explanations. Supposing I did employ the kind of trickery that you accuse me of: Why not, if it drives out the spirits and restores people to sanity?”

  “Point taken,” Sano said, “but possession by spirits isn’t the cause of every illness. It may be rarer than it seems.”

  “Indeed not. Spirits are all around us, always seeking innocent victims to haunt.” Joju opened his arms wide. “We all have the power to communicate with the spirit world, but few of us know how to use it. I am one of the few. I have dedicated my life to freeing humanity from evil spirits and laying them to peaceful rest.”

  He spoke as if he believed what he said. Perhaps he truly did. “At a handsome profit,” Sano commented.

  Irritation glinted in the black wells of Joju’s eyes. “Not for myself. For my temple. For the benefit of the faithful who come to worship. May I ask why you’re here? Perhaps you are in need of my services?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Sano said.

  “Oh?” Joju said, smug because he thought he had the advantage over Sano. “Who is in trouble?”

  “My cousin,” Sano said. “Her name is Chiyo.”

  Joju didn’t react to the name, but he was clearly a man in control of how he appeared. “What are her symptoms?”

  “She has nightmares,” Sano said. Reiko had told him that.

  “Nightmares are often caused by spirit possession.”

  “Not in this case,” Sano said. “My cousin was recently kidnapped and raped. So was a twelve-year-old girl named Fumiko. I need your help with finding the person who did it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what use I could be,” Joju said. He hadn’t reacted to the mention of the crimes, or seemed to recognize Fumiko’s name. “I’m not a policeman.”

  “You can speak to the spirits. Maybe they can give me some information.”

  “The spirits speak to me about themselves and their wishes. I can’t interrogate them about matters that don’t concern them.” Joju remained courteous, but impatience tinged his voice.

  “Never mind the spirits, then,” Sano said. “You can help me in another way.”

  “How is that?”

  “You can tell me about your relations with two oxcart drivers named Jinshichi and Gombei.”

  Joju looked confused, perturbed. Sano thought he’d finally hit his target, but then Joju said, “They transport supplies for the temple. Are they responsible for the crimes you mentioned?”

  “They’re suspects.” Sano wondered whether Joju’s business with the drivers was as innocent as the priest claimed. If not, Joju might have denied knowing them. But he also might have realized that people had seen him with them and it was better not to lie. “Can you tell me where they are?”

  “I’m afraid not. I haven’t seen them in perhaps a month. If they turn up here, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  He walked toward the door, drawing Sano and the detectives with him, anxious for them to leave. Maybe Sano had hit him close to home after all.

  “They’re not the only suspects,” Sano said. “Your name also came up in the course of my investigation.”

  “M
y name?” Joju’s expression altered. Sano saw shock, and an emotion harder to interpret. “You can’t believe that I kidnapped those two women.”

  “Three women,” Sano said. “There was another—a nun from a convent near this very temple.” Was that fear in Joju’s eyes? “No, I don’t believe you kidnapped them. I believe Jinshichi and Gombei did. They procure women for clients with special tastes. Are you one of those clients?”

  “Of course not.” Joju’s expression shifted into outrage mingled with disdain. “When I became a priest, I vowed never to harm anyone. I also took a vow of celibacy.”

  “Vows can be broken.”

  “Not mine.” Joju radiated sanctimoniousness. “The work I do requires me to be pure in mind, body, and soul. If I had committed those crimes, the spirits wouldn’t speak to me.”

  Marume laughed. “That was one of the more original proofs of innocence we’ve ever been offered.”

  “It’s not good enough. Let’s see if you can come up with something based in this world.” Sano asked the priest where he’d been during the periods when the women were missing.

  “I can’t recall exactly,” Joju said, “but I was probably praying, conducting exorcisms, and fulfilling my other duties at the temple from sunrise to sundown.”

  “And after sundown?” Sano said.

  “I sleep.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you?”

  “The monks, the servants, and the other priests here. The people for whom I conducted exorcisms. I may have called on some government officials.”

  “I’ll need a list of everyone,” Sano said.

  “I’ll gladly provide it. I’ll also provide you a list of good character references.” Joju said with a sly smile, “The shogun will be at the top of that list. Are you aware that His Excellency is my patron?”

  “I am.” Sano knew the shogun was enthusiastic about religion in general and mysticism in particular. But now Sano realized that the shogun’s patronage of Joju threatened to complicate his investigation.

  The shogun was often more loyal to his favorite priests than to his top retainers. In a conflict between Sano and Joju, whose side would he take?