The Cloud Pavilion Page 3

  She was eager to take on a new investigation. But how? And when?

  Sano rode his horse out the northern portal of Edo Castle toward the temple where his cousin Chiyo had last been seen. Although peace had blessed the capital for more than a year, troops still stood sentry outside the massive iron-banded gate and occupied the guard house above. More troops manned the watchtowers. Political or civil unrest could start up again any day. A squadron from his personal army accompanied Sano. He wouldn’t put it past Yanagisawa to attack him after lulling him into complacence.

  His chief bodyguards, Detectives Marume and Fukida, trotted their mounts beside him along the road that sloped down from the castle. Below them spread the gray tile rooftops of the vast city, whose far reaches disappeared into the mist and rain that cloaked the hills. The brawny, cheerful Marume drew a deep breath of the humid air and said, “It feels good to be out and about again. We’ve been cooped up inside the castle forever.”

  “I’m sorry your cousin is missing, Sano-san, but I’m glad to have a new investigation,” said Fukida, the serious half of the pair.

  Sano shared his men’s renewed sense of energy and excitement. The thrill of the chase was a relief after sitting at a desk, shuffling papers, conducting meetings, and defusing crises in the government. That was one reason he’d decided to lead the search himself, even though he’d had to put off other important business.

  “And guess what,” Marume said. “This is the first time we’re not working for the shogun.”

  “For once he won’t be holding the threat of death over our heads,” Fukida said.

  “Thank the gods for small favors,” Sano said.

  He and his men laughed, enjoying their unusual freedom. But darker currents of emotion ran beneath Sano’s high spirits.

  He had a blood connection to the missing woman even though he’d never met Chiyo. He couldn’t leave her fate to someone else, not even his most trusted subordinates. And what if he didn’t find her? What if she was dead when he did? Not only would a father lose his favorite daughter, a husband his wife, and two children their mother, but Sano would lose an opportunity to know this member of his new family.

  “My gut tells me that we’ll find your cousin,” Marume said.

  “Your gut has gotten fat from sitting around and eating too much,” Fukida teased with a straight face.

  Marume reached behind Sano, swatted at Fukida, and said, “No, I’m telling you, this is our lucky day. But even if we don’t find her, at least Major Kumazawa can’t kill us.”

  Nevertheless, Sano feared disappointing Major Kumazawa. He shouldn’t care what this relative who’d ostracized him from their clan thought of him, but he did. Meeting his uncle had reawakened feelings of inferiority that he’d believed he’d shed years ago. That short time with Major Kumazawa had reverted him to the mere son of a rnin he’d once been. If he didn’t find Chiyo, his uncle’s low opinion of him would be justified. And even though the strong, independent part of Sano said, to hell with Major Kumazawa, that would hurt.

  “It must be strange to meet relatives that you spent most of your life never knowing you had,” Fukida said.

  “You can’t imagine,” Sano said.

  Asakusa Kannon Temple, dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy and salvation, was Edo’s most popular temple. The route to Asakusa district lay along the sh Kaid, the northern highway. Beyond the edge of town, the highway was built up on a wide earthen embankment above rice paddies. A few peasants, water buffaloes, and tiny huts dotted the lush, green paddies. The air stank of the nightsoil used for fertilizer. Even on this wet afternoon in the rainy season, Sano and his entourage found the highway crowded with traffic.

  Bands of religious pilgrims, carrying staffs and chanting prayers, marched in step. Itinerant priests trudged, laden with heavy packs. Families traveled to Asakusa for blessings. Samurai rode, the privilege of their class; commoners walked. But not all the traffic was connected with religion.

  Once Sano and his party had to steer their horses to the edge of the highway to make way for a cart drawn by oxen and heaped with roof tiles. Carts like this, owned by the government, were the only wheeled vehicles permitted by Tokugawa law. This restricted the movement of war supplies and prevented insurrections, at least in theory.

  Many of the other travelers weren’t going to Asakusa at all. Beyond the temple lay the Yoshiwara licensed pleasure quarter, the only place in Edo where prostitution was legal. Merchants riding in palanquins, gangs of townsmen on foot, and samurai on horse back streamed toward Yoshiwara’s brothels. The law banned samurai from the pleasure quarter, but they went in droves anyway. Yoshiwara was good for business in the temple district. Men traveling to Yoshiwara often stopped at the temple for rest, refreshments, and prayers, combining the profane with the sacred.

  “What was your cousin doing in Asakusa? If she wanted to go to a shrine, why not one in town?” Marume asked.

  “The Kumazawa family estate is out there,” Sano said.

  His uncle was in charge of guarding the shogun’s rice depots, located on the river east of Asakusa. He also commanded the troops that patrolled the district. The Kumazawa house was the one in which Sano’s mother had grown up, but Sano had yet to lay eyes on it.

  Perhaps he soon would.

  Within an hour, Asakusa appeared on the misty horizon. Originally a small outpost of the city, the site of a temple since ancient times, it had grown into a large, flourishing suburb. Other temples clustered around Asakusa Kannon like chicks around a hen. Above the rooftops rose the graceful silhouettes of pagodas. The rice fields gave way to houses on streets that branched off the highway. The neighborhood soon grew as dense as any in town. Hawkers wooed customers into shops that sold Buddhist rosaries, incense, shoes, fans, umbrellas, and other merchandise—a bargain-priced sampling of the goods sold at the big market inside the temple precinct. Balconies adorned with potted plants sheltered the crowds from the drizzle that began to fall. The streets narrowed; Sano and his men rode in single file. Marume led, scouting a safe passage.

  “Have you any ideas about what happened to your cousin?” Fukida said, trailing behind Sano with the other guards.

  “The only thing I know for sure is that Chiyo is either gone from this district or still inside it,” Sano said. “We’ll try to determine which is the case.”

  He dismounted at a gate that divided one block from the next. These gates were features common to all cities. At night they were closed to keep residents confined and prevent trouble; by day, they served as security checkpoints. “This is as good a place to start as any.”

  Marume backtracked to join Sano and the other men. “Isn’t this territory that your uncle has already covered?”

  “He might have overlooked something,” Sano said, then addressed the watchman at the gate. “I’m looking for a missing woman,” he began.

  The watchman was a young peasant; he’d been chatting with a tea-seller who’d put down his bucket and cups and stopped to rest. His round face blanched with fright. “I haven’t seen her, I swear!” He fell to his knees, bowed, and cringed, almost in tears. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “If you haven’t done anything wrong, then why are you so afraid?” Sano asked.

  The tea-seller, an older man with the bluff, confident air of a street merchant, said, “Because of that other samurai who came by yesterday, asking about a missing woman. He and his soldiers roughed up anyone they thought was hiding something or who didn’t answer fast enough.”

  Dismay spread through Sano. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. He had deep wrinkles here, and here.” The tea-seller drew his finger across his forehead and down his cheeks.

  “Major Kumazawa,” Sano said grimly.

  The tea-seller gestured at the watchman. “He gave my poor friend here quite a beating.”

  “It sounds like your uncle hasn’t exactly smoothed the way for us,” Marume sa
id.

  “I understand how desperate he must be to find his daughter,” Fukida said, “but beating up witnesses won’t help.”

  Sano had thought this would be one investigation he could conduct without interference. “My apologies for what happened to you,” he said to the watchman. “Now tell me if you’ve seen a strange woman wandering by herself, or being forced to go with someone, or looking as if she were in trouble.”

  The watchman swore that he hadn’t. So did the tea-seller.

  “She’s thirty-three years old, and she was wearing a lavender kimono with small white flowers on it,” Sano said. He’d asked his uncle what clothes Chiyo had been wearing. “Think hard. Are you sure you haven’t seen a woman who matched that description?”

  Both men said they were. Sano believed them. He and his comrades moved on, along a street of food-stalls. Vendors grilled eels, prawns, and squid on skewers over open hearths, boiled pots of rice, noodles, and soup. Fragrant steam and smoke billowed into the drizzle.

  “I’m hungry,” Marume said.

  “You always are,” Fukida said.

  Sano hadn’t eaten since morning, before the tournament. He and his men bought food. After they ate, they questioned more people. They soon learned that Major Kumazawa and his troops had already passed through the whole area that surrounded the temple, intimidating, torturing, and offending everywhere. And Sano’s attempts to trace Chiyo proved as futile as his uncle’s.

  “No, I haven’t seen her,” said one vendor, shopkeeper, and peddler after another.

  “Nobody’s hiding a woman on my block,” said the headmen of every street.

  “Major Kumazawa threatened to have my head cut off if I didn’t help him find his daughter, so I’ve been looking for her on my rounds,” said a doshin—police patrol officer. “I’ve questioned everyone I’ve met, but no luck.”

  “It’s looking as if she left the district,” Sano said as he and his men led their horses through an alley, “whether on her own or against her will.”

  They turned down a road that bordered a canal under construction. Laborers armed with shovels and picks were digging a wide, deep trench. Peasants hauled up dirt and loaded it onto oxcarts. Sano, Marume, and Fukida gazed into the trench, at the lumpy, freshly exposed earth on the bottom.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Marume asked.

  Sano refused to consider the possibility that his cousin had been killed and buried here or someplace else. “We’ll keep looking. Let’s go to the shrine.”

  As they headed farther into Asakusa district, the drizzle turned into sprinkles, then a fierce downpour. Rain boiled up from tile roofs, cascaded off eaves, and puddled the streets. The air dissolved in mist. Sano, the detectives, and his other men took cover under a balcony while their horses stoically endured the deluge and people ran for shelter.

  “There go our witnesses,” Fukida said glumly.

  Lightning flashed. The dark sky blazed bright white for an instant. Thunder cracked. The world outside the small dry space where Sano and his men stood was a streaming gray blur. Down the vacant street, a lone human figure emerged from the storm and stumbled in their direction.

  “Somebody doesn’t know enough to get out of the rain,” Marume said.

  The figure drew nearer, limping and crouching. Sano saw that it was a woman. Her black hair hung in long, dripping tangles. Torn and drenched, her dark red and pale lavender kimono was plastered against her slim body. With one hand she held the garment closed over her bosom; with the other she groped as if she were blind.

  “What on earth—,” Fukida began.

  Now Sano saw that the red streaks on her kimono weren’t dyed into the fabric. The rain washed them down her skirts, into the puddles through which she limped barefoot.

  She was bleeding.

  Sano ran toward the woman. The storm battered him; he was instantly soaked to the skin. She faltered, her eyes wide and blank with terror. Rain trickled into her open, gasping mouth. She wasn’t young or old; she could be in her thirties. Her features were startlingly familiar to Sano. She recoiled from him, lost her balance. He caught her, and she screamed and flailed.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Sano shouted over a crash of thunder. “I won’t hurt you.”

  As she fought him, the detectives hurried to Sano’s aid. The woman began to weep, crying, “No! Leave me alone. Please!”

  “Stand back,” Sano ordered his men. They obeyed. “Who are you?” he urgently asked the woman.

  Her gaze met his. The blankness in her eyes cleared. She stopped fighting Sano. Her expression showed puzzlement, wonder, and hope. Sano was astounded by recognition. As the rain swept them, he flashed back to a memory from his early childhood.

  In those days his mother had often taken him to the public bath house because they didn’t have room for a tub in their small, humble home. He remembered how she’d dunked under the hot water and come up with her hair and face streaming wet. His mind superimposed this picture of his mother upon the woman in his arms. The woman was his mother’s younger image.

  “Is your name Chiyo?” Sano shouted.

  “Yes,” his cousin whispered, her voice drowned by the storm. Her eyes closed, and she went limp in Sano’s grasp as she fainted.

  Light from a round white lantern cast a lunar glow in the room where Yanagisawa and his son Yoritomo lay side by side, facedown, on low wooden tables. Their long, naked bodies were identically proportioned, Yanagisawa’s almost as slender, strong, and perfect as twenty-three-year-old Yoritomo’s. Their faces, turned toward each other, had the same dark beauty. Their skin glistened with oil as two masseurs kneaded their backs, working out the aches from the morning’s tournament. Incense smoke rose from a brass burner, sweet and pungent, masking the odors of dampness and decay. Outside, rain poured down; thunder rumbled.

  “Father, may I ask you a question?” Yoritomo said, respectful and deferential as always.

  “Of course,” Yanagisawa said.

  He didn’t hesitate to talk in front of the masseurs. Other people had blind masseurs, an ancient tradition. Yanagisawa’s were deaf and dumb. They wouldn’t hear or spread tales. And although he usually hated being interrogated, he made an exception for Yoritomo. He distrusted and disliked most people, with good reason; he’d been stabbed in the back so many times that it was a wonder he hadn’t bled to death. But his son was his love, the only person to whom he felt a connection, his blood. He had four other children, but Yoritomo was the only one that mattered. He would gladly tell Yoritomo all his secrets. Or almost all.

  “Are things really settled between you and Sano?” Yoritomo asked.

  “For the moment,” Yanagisawa said.

  But some scores could never be settled. “I don’t understand how you can be friends with him,” Yoritomo said. He and Sano had once been close friends, Yanagisawa knew. During the three years that Yanagisawa had been in exile, Sano had taken the opportunity to cultivate Yoritomo, who was the shogun’s favorite lover and companion. Yoritomo had grown attached to Sano and bravely defended him against his enemies. But no more. “Not after what he did to us!”

  Yoritomo spoke with the indignation of trust and affection betrayed. Last year Sano had accused Yoritomo of treason, and had staged a trial and fake execution, in order to force Yanagisawa into the open. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life!”

  Neither had Yanagisawa, when he’d heard that his son was to be put to death.

  “Even though Sano apologized, I’ll never forgive him,” Yoritomo said, his voice hard, his sweet, gentle nature turned hateful by Sano’s trick. “How can you?”

  Yanagisawa couldn’t. Whenever he thought of that day, he shook with fury. But he controlled his emotions, lest they goad him into rash action. And he had to convince Yoritomo to follow his example. “One can do whatever one must. Don’t dwell on what Sano did to you. It’ll only make you feel worse.”

  Yoritomo stared in amazement. “Can you honestly say that you don’t h
ate Sano as much as I do? After all, it’s not just me that Sano has humiliated.” Yoritomo was so upset that he forgot his polite manners. “Look at yourself, Father! Once you were the only chamberlain, the shogun’s only second-in-command. Now you have to share the honors with Sano. And he’s not only stolen half your position—he has your house!”

  The shogun had given the chamberlain’s compound to Sano when Yanagisawa had been exiled. The very idea of Sano in his home rankled terribly with Yanagisawa, who now lived here, in a smaller estate in the castle’s official quarter, among his subordinates. His new mansion was too close to the street; he could hear voices and hoofbeats outside. He felt crowded by his servants and troops. How he missed the space and privacy he’d once enjoyed! It was too bad that the traps he’d installed in his old home hadn’t killed Sano.

  “Why don’t you punish him?” Yoritomo said, hungry for revenge. “Why do we have to act as if everything is all right? Why can’t we fight back?”

  “Because we would lose,” Yanagisawa said bluntly.

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Yoritomo protested. “You have lots of allies, lots of troops.”

  “So does Sano.”

  “Your position is stronger than his.”

  “That’s what I thought when I went up against Lord Matsudaira. I was wrong. His troops slaughtered mine on the battlefield.” Yanagisawa’s thoughts darkened with the memory. “My allies defected to him like rats fleeing a sinking ship. No,” he declared. “I won’t risk another war.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Yanagisawa said, harsh in his determination to convince his son. “We were let off easy last time. You were allowed to stay in Edo.” The shogun had insisted on keeping Yoritomo with him, even though Lord Matsudaira had wanted to exile Yanagisawa’s whole family. “I was banished instead of killed. Next time we won’t be so fortunate.”

  Yoritomo beheld Yanagisawa with a mixture of resignation and disappointment. “You’re saying you’ve given up. Because you’re afraid of losing, afraid of dying.”